15 items you need to survive in Elden Ring PvE
I love Dark Souls and Bloodbourne and Elden Ring! What I love about them is the exploration, challenging enemies, looting, and experimenting with builds. In essence, I love the player vs environment experience. I like to travel around and role-play with different play styles and get all the items, fight all the enemies, and playing around in the world. I play the majority of the game alone and in so doing I have to solve problems myself by learning what tools, items, and tactics work for different problems. I have played Elden Ring for 222 hours so far and I have not beaten the game yet. The gameplay and unique experiences are what excite me about the game and I love strategizing my way through areas. Sometimes a sneaky approach is fun. Sometimes you run out of flasks and have to think of some way out or through the area. There are so many different scenarios and being prepared for whatever might happen is part of the fun for me.
The following is a list of the 15 items that some may choose not to have available but that I go out of my way to keep on hand and ready for the unpredictable time I will need them. I want to be able to solve problems in different ways depending on the circumstances and there are a lot of items in the game to try to solve these problems. I collect everything in the game but these are the not-so-obvious items that I make sure every character has on their journey through the lands between. I don’t count flasks or spirit ashes as they are more obvious or automatically aquired and technichally you can beat the game with just your fists if you want to but I’m not going to do that.
FYI: Each item name contains a link to the Fextralife Wiki for that item so if you want to find it or learn more about it click the link.
Bow and Arrows
A bow is very useful for tons of reasons. It can be manually aimed to aggro something specific in a group or that is far away. You can cheese many things with it. You can use the bleed, rot, or poison arrows to great effect in certain situations. It can help take aggro away from other coop players. It is the only thing I know of that can take out the first Chariot puzzle. A bow is good on horseback, especially against Erdrree Avatars or anything big and slow.
Poison Boluses (Neutralizing)
Being poisoned is annoying and easy to get rid of. Just make sure you have a few of these on you and ready to go at any time. You will get poisoned and there’s no reason to just accept it. Save your HP for when you need it.
Scarlet Rot Boluses. (Preserving)
Being scarlet-rotted to death is annoying and easy to get rid of. Obviously, try not to get rotted but you will definitely get rotted and it is even more important to have these guys around for when you do. The material to make them is not as easy to find as for poison so these are even more important than the poison boluses.
I don’t know about you but I like to see my enemies coming and there are a ton of areas that are very dark. Having a lantern allows you to keep both hands free and make your way through dark dungeons when the night man cometh. You can get one very quickly so there is no reason not to use one nearly everywhere you go.
Margit’s Shackle
I always forget to use this on Margit because I just use it every time I’m in a building, dungeon, or catacomb to reveal hidden walls. I use it when I first get into the area and maybe a couple of times throughout if it is a big enough area. Why go looking for illusory walls when you can just get rid of them before you even start exploring? It’s like the walls were never illusions at all. They also work great for activating fire pillars that can be deadly.
Poison Mist (Sacred Seal to use it)
There are a ton of opportunities to use this against enemies by sneaking up behind them and they will never aggro while they are dying. Really difficult enemies can be killed this way. The best example is the Draconic Tree Sentinal. You can get behind him, quit the game, then when you reload the game you are standing behind him and can use the poison to kill it without fighting at all. Try it on any enemy that you can sneak up behind and see what happens. Saves you from getting hurt and it doesn’t take very much FP. Even if you are a magic build this trick is very helpful.
Heal Incantation (Sacred Seal to use it)
While this is useful for healing if you end up needing it I use it offensively to kill the Wraith Callers, Roayl Revenants, and Revenants. Being able to stagger them or kill them quickly is very nice in quite a few situations. Even if you’re a magic build you can use this to make quick work of these bad guys.
Crystal Dart
These are good to have ready for quick ranged damage or to get aggro on specific enemies. They have the added benefit of affecting stone golems and imps by scrambling their minds into attacking anything nearby including their friends. This is only mildly useful while running around but it is good to have available and they cheap to make.
Sleep Pot
These are awesome for any of the Godskin enemies but also work on a lot of other enemies as well. These can help slow down a speedy bad guy which can give you time to heal or get away or to get one huge hit in. Having fire pots is also very helpful as well because it doesn’t take FP and many things are weak to fire. I’m gonna sneak that in here as another item. Don’t tell anybody.
Quickstep Ash of War
Always having a weapon available with the quickstep ash of war allows you to get through poison, high water, or scarlet rot areas faster. It can also help you get by some enemies that are annoying as well.
Beast Repellent Torch
This torch is not only good for lighting your way but it also pacifies rats and basilisks. They just stand there like idiots if you have this out! With this torch, you can simply walk past these annoying and deadly enemies or kill them at your leisure. How nice!
Sentry’s Torch
This item is only needed a few times in the game but when you need it it is the only thing that works. It allows you to see the invisible black knife assassins and while you can defeat them without seeing them it is way easier with this torch. Also, if you are playing coop you can pull yours out and it benefits everyone.
Boiled Crab/Prawn
Boiled prawns and crabs can be purchased from Blackguard Big Boggart and increase physical defense for 60 seconds by 15% for prawns and 20% for crabs. Why not have these in the quick menu and pop one before a tough boss?
Beastial Vitality (Sacred Seal to use it)
This incantation takes very little FP and is useful when you are just a little low on HP and don’t want to use an entire flask. I use it when I’m below 100% HP and am still walking around the area. I use it during boss fights if I just want to use up the last of my FP before I use a flask as well. This is easy to get early and gives 5 hp every second for 120 seconds. Not bad at all.
Bonus Item: Hoarfrost Stomp Ash of War
This is specifically for invisible scarabs. I think the hoarfrost stomp works that best but other spells or skills probably well too because swinging a sword around in the air all day sucks when you are trying to kill an invisible scarab. Just use an attack that covers the area in front of you, specifically on the ground, right as the scarab is running toward you. Makes quick work of these tricky buggers.
I hope that this list was helpful and allows you to make your way through Elden Rings's vast map easier. Having these items and using them strategically will get you farther without having to re-group or re-spawn because you will die less and take out foes efficiently.
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