Elden Ring mod allows co-op with friends and without interruptions

A modmaker in the Souls community has released a mod that allows all of Elden Ring to be played in co-op. Normally, co-op partners are sent away again when they or the host die or when a boss is defeated. You can also play with friends.

Without this adjustment, players in Elden Ring will only be able to summon a random co-op partner temporarily and at specific points; that’s how it’s meant to be in the game. The mod, which is only for the Windows version, also removes all fog walls and other barriers from the game world, leaving players free to follow their own path in the game. If a player dies, he returns to the last site of grace where he rested. When a player rests at such a site, the world resets for all players involved.

In total, hosts can summon three co-op partners. In the game there are normally a maximum of two, so an extra level of enemy scaling has also been introduced. Friends can find each other by sharing the password for the session. Everyone can also ride their own horse.

Whoever uses the mod ends up in a separate matchmaking pool. The standard form of invasions and summons is therefore no longer possible. Easy Anti-Cheat is also disabled when the mod is active, so a ban is not a risk according to the author.

A description, instructions and a faq for the mod can be found here on Nexus mods and in one pinned comment under one of the creator’s YouTube videos. The mod, which is in early beta, is called Seamless Co-op and was created by LukeYui. That’s a well-known name in the community; the mud is also responsible, among other things, for the Blue Sentinel anti-cheat software for Dark Souls III, which the community believes is much needed to keep the cheaters out in the pvp.

While this type of cooperative play is a sought-after feature in the Soulsborne games, it goes against the ideas of the game’s genius, Hidetaka Miyazaki. He found the inspiration for his summoning system, in which a co-op partner disappears as soon as a boss is killed, on a winter night many years ago. Miyazaki got his car stuck in the snow on a hill and a bunch of strangers pushed his car to the top of the hill for him, but they disappeared into the night before he could thank them. Miyazaki talked about his designs in a interview in The New Yorker.

Elden Ring is a third-person action RPG in the same style as other games from studio FromSoftware, such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The game came out in February and is available for Windows, Xbox One and Series, PS4 and PS5. The game has sold more than 13.4 million units.