Can You Keep Playing After Beating Elden Ring?

If you are asking yourself: “Can you keep playing after beating Elden Ring?”, you are not alone since the Game of the Year for 2022 offers heaps of fun!

The answer is: yes, you can! FromSoftware (the devs) have made it possible to try out everything there is and even carry over your progression into a new game.

Keep on reading to see what you can do after beating Elden Ring!

Can You Still Play Elden Ring After Beating the Game?

First things first: after beating the Elden Beast, you get the option to end the game by triggering one of the endings you have unlocked so far.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do that, and you can carry on exploring or unlocking the game’s alternative endings. To do so, you must complete a certain questline, thus allying yourself with a certain NPC, like Brother Corhyn or Ranni.

Perhaps you want to peek into every nook and cranny of the world to discover hidden passageways and scary dungeons. You can do that as well!

But can you keep playing after triggering an ending in Elden Ring?

Definitely! If you decline to start Journey 2 (the game’s version of New Game+), you can seek out any optional bosses that are left standing or see every area of the Lands Between, i.e., the true name of the vast domain of Elden Ring.

14 Things to Do After Beating Elden Ring

You’ve finally defeated the final God boss at the Elden Throne and have no idea what to do next? The following activities are sure to keep you busy for a while:

1. Complete Achievements

Nothing screams ‘completionist’ more than getting all achievement trophies, and let us tell you, Elden Ring offers heaps of them. While some are very easy to get, such as completing the game at least once, others are rather tricky and time-consuming.

If you decide to dedicate your time to this task, you’ll spend most of your time finding and defeating tough bosses and collecting various items and spells, including legendary weapons, ashen remains, talismans, and incantations.

Note: Once you collect all achievement trophies, you’ll be awarded the Elden Ring platinum trophy in recognition of all your hard work.

2. Defeat Optional Bosses

Most of you will miss certain dungeons if you rush through the game’s storyline. That’s unfortunate since you very well know that the main appeal of FromSoftware’s Souls games is their challenging yet immensely rewarding boss fights.

Elden Ring is no exception, and it includes a plethora of optional boss challenges that will give you a real sense of achievement once you defeat them.

Also, perhaps you’ve avoided confronting certain difficult bosses since you were not ready yet to face them. What better time to do that than after beating the game? You surely have the experience and equipment needed to make them regret meeting you.

3. Collect All Great Runes

Elden Ring’s Great Runes are Key Items that offer beneficial boons, which will surely help you on your journey. To acquire them, you must kill the game’s Demigods, such as Godrick and Rennala, which reside in Legacy Dungeons.

However, you cannot simply equip them to gain their power. First, you have to restore them at their respective Divine Tower and then consume a Rune Arc—a special item that activates the effects of the Great Rune you have obtained.

4. Continue Exploring

In general, most players run through new games quickly, intending to beat them as soon as possible. But, if you do that, you will not get the chance to explore Elden Ring’s dark, astounding world. How about you get to it now?

Simply travel to an in-game spot with a view and take in your surroundings. After that, you can explore in any direction you wish since the Lands Between are an open world hiding all kinds of beauties and dangers in equal measure.

5. Finish NPC Questlines

In all likelihood, you will not meet every NPC or complete their questlines during your first playthrough. Well, now’s your chance!

Completing every quest in the game is also a must if you are a lore nerd since they greatly expand on the existing story and the in-game universe.

So, if you love Elden Ring, finishing these incredibly intricate and memorable missions is time well spent. Remember: you’ll also get extra loot too!

6. Solve the Tower Puzzles

On top of the slew of amazing content offered by Elden Ring, from deadly enemies to gorgeous vistas, you’ll also encounter several special towers that contain fascinating puzzles that reward you with various spells and items.

While initially confounding, these puzzles are rather easy to solve if you think outside the box. For instance, the Oridys’s Rise puzzle asks you to “Seek three wise animals”, after which you have to find and attack three spectral turtles nearby.

7. Collect Weapons

If you are persistent enough, you can track down every item and weapon the game has to offer, and some of them are quite huge, deadly, and unique.

Even though you may not really need these powerful items after beating the last boss, most players love to collect, equip, and brandish them.

Other than that, you can carry them over to your next run-through or even upgrade them, should you choose to replay the game via the Journey 2 option.

8. Farm Runes

Similar to the Souls of previous FromSoftware titles, runes act as the game’s main currency that buys you attribute points and various weapons and goods.

So if you run through the game during your first playthrough and somehow manage to defeat all bosses, you shouldn’t expect to walk out with a bounty of runes.

No worries, you can now fight and beat all remaining enemies and even play some PVP to obtain enough runes for the best gear you can buy.

That way, you’ll be prepared for a new and tougher journey in the Lands Between.

9. Try Out New Builds

Thankfully, respeccing in Elden Ring is possible and often very much necessary to beat the game’s toughest bosses. However, even if you complete the game with your original build, you can still respec afterward to try out new and fun builds.

To reallocate all your attribute points, you have to meet two prerequisites:

1. Beat Rennala at the Raya Lucaria Academy;
2. Obtain a Larval Tear at one of a handful of in-game areas.

While these requirements sound straightforward, they are rather challenging since Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon, is a hard-to-kill Legend Boss, whereas Larval Tears are limited and hard to get by, and you have to spend one per each respec.

10. Help Out Other People

Once you complete the main story and become a powerful Elden Lord, you may find enemies are not as challenging as they were. But your friends may still be struggling to beat certain bosses. Thankfully, you can lend them a hand.

To play together, simply leave a summon sign outside the boss area, allowing other players to invite you into their game. But first, you must type in the same multiplayer password to see each other’s summoning signs.

11. Duel in the Colosseum

With a free DLC update, FromSoftware have introduced an organized PVP system that allows players to duel in three PVP-designated Colosseums.

The devs have also implemented an arena ranking system that lists all duelists based on their success, which they can show off via their banners.

However, in order to bloody your fingers, you first have to locate Elden Ring’s colosseums, each of which offers different PVP modes:

• Leyendell Colosseum—Duel Combat
• Limgrave Colosseum—United Combat and Combat Ordeal
• Caelid Colosseum—Spirit Ash capabilities

Note: Once you unlock an arena, you won’t have to travel there again. You can simply reaccess it from Marika’s statue in the Roundtable Hold.

12. Start New Game+

While completing your first Elden Ring journey should prove a blast, you can continue your adventure via a New Game+ mode.

Called Journey 2 in Elden Ring, this new yet familiar experience allows you to carry over most of your progress, including your level, stats, weapons, and most of your items—which you will sorely need since the enemies will be much stronger.

However, you will have to unlock the Great Runes, Sites of Lost Grace, and certain story-specific keys again. Also, note that the difficulty stops increasing beyond Journey 7, but by that point, you will have tried everything Elden Ring offers.

13. Start From Scratch

To motivate you to play the game as much as possible, FromSoftware have designed Elden Ring to allow up to 10 different characters at any single time.

Meaning, if you so wish, you can easily create a new character in a different class (Character Base) equipped with a new keepsake item. Then, you can proceed to explore a different path and build your hero differently.

You don’t even have to worry about saving your game progress before doing so since the game automatically and regularly saves your journey.

14. Play the Other Souls Games

Elden Ring is the newest entry in FromSoftware’s long-standing Souls franchise that started with 2009’s best and most unique RPG: Demon’s Souls.

Taking advantage of their unprecedented success, the devs have expanded their Souls-like offering with games such as the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and you’ve guessed it: Elden Ring—their latest and bestest entry.

If you’ve loved Elden Ring (we know you did!), check out the other Souls games—you will definitely find them thrilling and even more challenging.

Bottom Line

After defeating the Elden Beast, you can go back to the Lands Between to collect all remaining weapons and runes, defeat the optional bosses, or finish the game’s puzzles. Then, when you’re truly ready, you can start your next Elden Ring journey.