Elden Ring Co-Op: How To Play Multiplayer

Fighting your way through Elden Ring in co-op is the best way to play for some players, but as is expected with a From Software game, the system in place for this is a bit more complicated than you might like. If you need a hand learning how to engage in Elden Ring's multiplayer, we've got a complete guide here so that you can easily invite friends for boss battles, exploration, and all else the game has to offer you.

Elden Ring: How to play co-op

When you arrive in The Lands Between, you'll default to playing games in solo mode, but you can easily change this using an item you'll start the game with once you get past the tutorial.

The first thing you'll want to do is check your network settings under the game's system options menu. You'll see options for cross-region play, voice, chat, and more. Set these to your preferences, including possibly turning co-op off entirely by selecting your launch setting to offline. But since you're here, you're more likely looking to play in co-op, so here's what you need to know.

In the game's menu--I hesitate to call it a pause menu since you can't actually pause Elden Ring--you'll see three strange items when you click on multiplayer: Finger Severer, Tarnished Furled Finger, and Small Gold Effigy. Each of these has specific purposes relating to multiplayer.

Tarnished Furled Finger: Leaves a gold summoning sign to play cooperative multiplayer. You can only place one summoning sign, so when you place a new one, your previous gold summon sign will be removed. In other players' worlds, they may see your gold summon sign, and should they interact with it, they will summon you into their game

Small Gold Effigy: Sends a cooperative summon sign to several nearby summoning pools (activated pools only). In essence, this tells the game that you'd like to join a multiplayer session, and it may mean you're pulled into another player's world at any point once you've activated this.

Finger Severer: Allows you to disband a co-op session with your ally, sending them out of your multiplayer session and returning you both to solo play.

A fourth item is needed to summon players into your game. This is the Furcalling Finger Remedy. Use one and you will see gold summoning signs appear, particularly around boss gates and at summoning pools. Though it's a consumable item, you can use a crafting kid and the Erdleaf Flower to easily make more--don't worry about running out, as you can find this flower practically anywhere outdoors.

If you'd like to invite a specific player, you can set up a multiplayer password and you'll only be matched with other players using the same password. This works basically like a game invite, allowing you and other specific players to play together while keeping other randomized players from joining or taking you in as their co-op partner.

You can also create up to five group passwords that allow you to filter out the messages, summoning signs, bloodstains, phantoms, and other multiplayer elements from anyone not using your group passwords. This is useful because a lot of player messages can be deceiving or even absurd, so using a group password will help ensure you're only receiving environmental messages from players whom you trust.