At this point, I've probably sunk more than 100 hours into Elden Ring. Fun fact: I'm guessing I'm somewhere between half and three quarters of the way done. This game is huge. Now, I'm a slow, meticulous gamer. Others estimated the total runtime around 80 hours. Regardless, this is a big game. Delightfully, the game is still surprising me and challenging me even now. 

As a refresher, this is my diary as I play through the game. My goal is to reflect on the experience as it changes over time and to tell the stories that naturally arise from the many secrets and surprises of the world. Check out my other entries for my expectations, first impressions, and then my adventures through the starting area, Liurnia and Caelid.

For this entry, I spent a lot of time wandering in the Altus Plateau – one of the first regions in a separated northern area that you can't reach for a while. I also spent quite a bit of time going back and doing side quests while fighting tough bosses I'd walked away from when lower leveled. Click away now if you don't want spoilers for the first half of Elden Ring, through the Altus Plateau. 

Otherwise, I'll dive into how this game is shaping up in my mind now, as I clean up the first part and prepare to focus on the end game. 

Animal lover

Elden Ring and Dark Souls have taught me to be scared of frogs. In both games, they hop around in quick, darting patterns that are hard to predict while spraying a deadly toxin. In Dark Souls, if your character inhaled enough of that toxin, you'd slowly turn to stone while screaming in agony. When you came back to life, your maximum health had been cut in half. 

To restore your health, you had to find a rare item and a hidden character in the world who could heal you with it. Otherwise, if you journeyed into the land of the frogs again, and again got caught by the toxin, you could have your health cut once more down to a quarter of what it once was. Keep trying your luck, and you could be forced to survive on a sliver of your former health pool.

In Elden Ring, frogs aren't quite that mean. They still shoot poison at you. They still look terrifying and jump at you with alarming quickness. However, the poison won't permanently cut your health bar in half. Instead, if you inhale enough, your character just screams in agony while getting torn apart and impaled by branches that emerge from the ground. No big deal.

To be fair, you can recover from the instant death more easily than the sliced health bar. Still, they scare me. Imagine my relief when all that happened when I inhaled their poison was instant, painful death. 

For that first encounter, I had wandered quite far through underground tunnels filled with bus-sized ants. These ants weren't a huge problem one on one, but that's the problem with ants isn't it? You never find just one. Imagine my trepidation, then, when I'd made it through a long stretch of these tunnels to find a room full of treasure, only to notice the telltale bulbous eyes of frogs glaring back at me from the darkness. Elden Ring knows how to frighten, that's for sure.

Not all of the animals are terrifying, however. Many wander the open world, chewing on grass and minding their own business. The turtles are particularly peaceful. You can even find a giant talking turtle wearing a pope's hat in one of the churches in a northern region. He's delightfully serene. 

I've even learned to make peace with jellyfish – which scare me in real life. In Elden Ring, they float near caves and are slightly bigger than a person. If you don't attack them, the almost translucent beings will leave you alone as well. I made the mistake of attacking one when I first found them and the entire group of them turned red and started to spray me with an entirely different kind of deadly acid. 

While I have a better relationship with jellyfish in Elden Ring than I do in real life, it's quite the opposite with dogs. I really like hanging out with canine friends in real life. In Elden Ring, I hate dogs with every fiber of my body. The mangy mutts are small and nimble. They bite you quickly and can move away before you can retaliate. They're easy to kill once you can land a couple of hits, but getting those hits is tricky, especially if you're fighting more than one. 

At one point, I was nearing the end of a tricky dungeon. I'd just beaten the last tough enemy. I could see a save point in the distance. All I had to do was dispatch that enemy's two guards dogs and I was free to save and then tackle the boss. I made a mistake you can never do with lowly grunts in Elden Ring: I took the guard dogs lightly. 

I'd made it all the way to the end of this dungeon having taken down much bigger and more powerful foes, but those two damn dogs found a way to dart around my attacks and kill me while chomping at my ankles. I almost launched my controller out of my window. 

I love Elden Ring in part because it always forces you to pay attention, which makes the exploration that much more rewarding. In that moment, though, I forgot all of that while bellowing a five minute tirade of cuss words at my poor, innocent television.

Secrets and revelations

I'm finally starting to get to the bottom of some of the mysteries of this game. That's not to say I have all of the answers, far from it. But I mentioned some of the intrigue in a previous entry, and I'm starting to get the satisfaction of circling back to those long standing question marks.

Before that entry, I found a secret area under the starting area of Limgrave. It was a beautiful and expansive riverbed. Back then, I could tell there was more to it that I couldn't access yet. I'd seen buildings and structures in the distance and wondered how to get up there. Last night, I was standing on top of those same buildings and looking back at the riverbed I traversed 40 odd hours of playtime ago. I love this game.

In that same area, I saw a lone figure standing at the end of a distant rampart. I got there last night and beat that dude. It was a fantastic fight. 

When you first start the game, you wake up in a chapel and get killed by a powerful monster as a way of introducing how death works. I finally found my way back to that same chapel and kicked that monster's butt. 

Where I am in the game, I'm still finding foes that make me cower. Just two nights ago, I walked away from a boss fight for the first time in awhile. I recently beat a horseback boss that could kill me in one hit with a lightning attack. And this boss called the Fallingstar Beast repeatedly kicked my butt with its area attack magic and powerful melee strikes.

Elden Ring is now frequently mixing those moments with ones where I feel like a total badass. For example, when wandering towards the end of the Altus Plateau, I got attacked by the ghost of Margit – the first main boss of the game.

This boss had gotten the best of me for hours when I first fought him to the point that I went against my own policy and summoned help to win. A lot of times, when I come across a tough boss in the open world, as with Margit, I run for a save point and come back when I'm ready. This time, I didn't budge an inch. 

Yes, my character was stronger, but Margit was too, so that didn't matter much. The difference came from my own practice. I'm much better at the game now than I was then, and I absolutely dominated the ghost of Margit. I then proceeded to dance around my apartment in glee for 25 minutes. 

Both in terms of intrigue and battles, I'm starting to solve parts of the game that have hung over me for a long time, and Elden Ring continues to show me that there's more yet to come. I have plenty of challenges yet to face and more mysteries to solve. 

What lies ahead in the Capital City at the heart of the game? What the heck is the deal with the windmills that the crazy ladies dance around while giggling maniacally? What's behind the doors in Redmane Castle? Am I ever going to find the magical dragon that disappeared from Liurnia? 

I look forward to answering those questions as well. Knowing Elden Ring, when I do find the answers, it'll be at a moment that perfectly illustrates just how far I've come since I first asked the questions.