My Edlen Ring Arcana Run - Part 1 (Getting Started)

Introduction

Welcome to my Arcana Run.

This is a walkthrough to play along at your own leisure. For whomever is capable and interested.

Herein highlighted are the essential aspects of the run; Including items we need, rune acquisition and levelling guidelines. This run is for the most part ... a run. We'll do an aweful lot of running or riding from A to B - with a little bit of gameplay sprinkled in between. You may - and maybe should - do a little bit of doing some exploration on your own; But because of certain stat requirements you should spend your runes on buying items rather than levelling up.
For - what we won't do in this run, as per the recommendations, is buy a lot of stuff. Because we don't have the time nor the nerve for that. So, Merchants that sell Handbooks, Pots, Parfumer Bottles and other useful items - like Stonesword Keys - make for a great way to deck out your Character beyond the confines of the run. If you have the runes.
The Levelling recommendations follow as we acquire sufficient runes. If you put Levels into something other than what we need, the problem may be that we don't have sufficient runes, because the levelling costs increase with each level we take. And, or however, the runes you carry as from killing mobs don't factor into these equations; And so we also won't farm any mobs to gain Levels. I will so just assume that we run around with 0 Runes because we did something stupid.
To not spoil anything I don't want to tell you which way we're going here, but if you can't help it ... [here]'s ... the thing.
Else - just hold on unto your Golden Runes.

As for Starting Classes and Build Variety - the situation is the following: We're going to start with the Thief - and levelling suggestions are made accordingly. It is the Starting Class with the lowest starting Level, other than just starting at Level 1. You may choose some other Class - Warrior being the next best for what we want to do - but the Thief is recommended.
As Starting Item you can pick what you want - but the Golden Seed might be the best. Alternative get a Stonesword Key perhaps - if you intend to do some Spelunking on your own.

As for Build Variety - you may naturally do whatever you want. Since we're doing an Arcana Build - all the items acquired are chosen accordingly. If you want an Intelligence build - you'll have to do some of your own research. If you want a Faith build you can do so with just minor adjustments ... hoping it'll work out somehow. If you want a Strength build ... you probably don't really want to follow this guide anyway. And that's the idea. Arcana means ... you follow the secret book. Faith requires some individual adjustments; And with intelligence ... you're mostly on your own.

I will point out certain alternatives along the way - and we'll also try to get some Quests going, including Ranni's quest because there are some things we want in Nokstella. But that's further down the road.

Part 1 - Weapon Get

First Steps

This walkthrough starts once you made it to Limgrave proper. Here a wonderful vista awaits you. Step up to the rock in front of you and take a look around. The Church you see there is our first target. Somewhere behind it you can see Stormveil Castle, and slightly to the left of it the Starting Area. If you didn't do the Tutorial, or you got through it without dying, you may still see the Rune Symbol on your compass.

Once you're at the Church, activate the Grace and pick up the Smithing Stone on the Anvil. The guy you see sitting there is Kale - one of many Merchants you'll find accross the map. Each has different items - or prizes. Right now we don't have anything to buy with - so, we're moving on.

Beyond the Church, towards Stormveil Castle, you'll find a small forrest. Here you'll encounter soldiers. You can try to swing at them with your knife - but don't waste any Arrows. They might be of use later. What you should however try to learn here - is how to properly backstab. Try to walk up on their back, maybe crouch to sneak up on them, and hit the attack button. If they noticed you, don't panic. Just move back, slowly, out of range - and try to walk around them. It's really easy. They're also one-shots.
Slashing at them with the Dagger may also reveal to you the bleeding effect. The more we Level the Arcane stat, the more bleed will be built up and so the effect will trigger faster. However. The reason we're here is because one of the Soldiers is sitting in front of an item we want; The Kukiri's. Throwing Knives. Four of them. It ain't much - but we really only need three.

Then move on, northward, to the Grace by the gate. Activate it and Rest at it so Melina can give you the Horse. After that - check out the nearby Camp. You'll see a Guard with Spear standing next to a Chariot. When in Combat, those Spear Guards aren't one-shots when backstabbed - but just dinging them with the dagger, even against the shield, is enough to kill them then. You can farm the soldiers here for the stuff they wear, except for the Spear. The Longsword they can drop is worth trying to grind a little. Also to get comfortable with the combat. Though we won't be using the knife for long. If you're comfortable picking off the soldiers standing at the sides you may try to engage the big dude ... but the reason we're here is the Greatsword in the chest of the Chariot that speardude mentioned earlier is standing at. We'll use that for particular enemies lateron.
Also ... don't forget to pickup the Map (they'll usually be in front of Stele's just as the one here).

Once you're done here - return to the Church (at best via Fast travel) - for now that we have the horse, Ranni will appear and give you the Summoning Bell and the "Wolfpack" Spirit Ashes. Two things you might really want from Kale are the tools to Craft items with; And the Handbook of the Nomadic Warrior [1] - which will cost you 800 runes. Also nice to pick up eventually are the pots.

Once done here, we best return to the Grace right at the start. Facing away from Stormveil Castle you will see a swamp - and some ruins at the right end of it. Practically right in front. Here you'll see an Arch - and in the tower to the Left of it is one item we'll need. I tell you this here because in those ruins are dogs. One of them is particularly nasty. And these aren't the ordinary kind of dogs you'll encounter elsewhere in the game either. These are a little bit more aggressive. So, you can either do a runby on horse - if you have no Runes to loose you can play it a little bit more reckless - but you can also use the bow and arrows you got to pick out the dogs from afar. One of them is different, you'll notice, so ... eventually you'll have to get on the horse to gain some distance again. The dudes there aren't much of a threat though. The only thing to watch out for are the torches ... as they have a lingering hurtbox it would seem. Attacking into them with a dagger may hurt.
Also notice the bats between you and the ruins. You might want to try to circumvent them.

Before rushing off:
Make sure you know how to use the Bow/Dual Wield

Pushing left or right up or down will cycle through the items you have in either position of your equipment. By default the bow is in the left hand, which means that to use it you'll have to dual wield it first. So, with the bow in the left hand, push [Triangle+Left Attack Button] to dual wield it or return to normal mode. Then use it with the right attack button. If you run out of arrows, Kale sells more - and if you have the items for it, you can also craft them.

This is a crucial thing to learn for this run. But it's not necessary to master it.

Equipping Torrent

In Elden Ring you can set four items on quick access. Once pushing start, you'll see that on the upper right of the interface, before going into the Equipment menu. If you select a slot and hit triangle, you may assign one. Now, everyone does this differently. Some have the red and blue potion there - I usually have the red potion as it is, the blue one on the upper slot, torrent to the right, the physik flask (we'll get to it) on down and the lamp (we may be getting it) on left.

If you then hit [triangle] and the according directional button, the item will be used.
Also - if you cycle through your items; And you just hold the directional button instead of tapping it, the slot will jump to the first position. So - holding down for instance resets the active item to the red potion.

So, when ready, approach the ruins.
You can look at them from a bit of a distance. There's a rock you can hop onto - just to the right of the ruins. From there you can see a clear route to the tower mentioned earlier, but more importantly you'll find the foundations of a house that seem to be empty. You can get in there using Torrent, just jumping over the wall. Gown down the stairs you find there and pick up the item. It's our main Weapon for the run. For now. There are some other stairs in those ruins. But ... don't open the Chest. "It's a Trap!". Literally!
It'll teleport you to a really nasty place.
To get out you'll have to find and rest at a site of grace, until then telportation is also ... locked.

Weapons:

From what I hear, some find the twin-blade bad. It certainly takes a bit to get used to. The main reason I think is this, that the weapon actually attacks twice. This also means that an attack animation lasts longer than the usual attack animation. This is especially bad when trying to get in on an enemy during short periods of vulnerability; While the weapon eventually also lacks the impact to stagger them.
Right now, you may find, we can however not even use it. But, that's OK.

Pilgrimage

Moving on past the Ruins - away from Stormveil - you'll see a huge arc made of some strange architecture scattered all around. Passing through it you'll find an NPC you can talk to. We'll have some dealings with him soon enough ... so, might as well say hi. Beyond that, you'll find a bunch of soldiers fighting with some strange creatures. You can get fairly close without aggroing them. It's a neat spot to farm up some runes. You don't have to kill them for their runes to get to you - but you can also wait until you feel comfortable joining in. However ... just past them head directly to the East and you'll find a site of Grace by a road. You might want to return to it later to explore the region to the south, but we'll follow the road north - quite a long way - until we get to a shack with a painting in it and a Grace next to it.

Here you'll learn that Torrent is your friend, he's (or is it a she?) awesome and ... although not Invulnerable ... most Creatures in the Land Between certainly can't keep up with ... it. And because he's summoned so easily, it's a very strong get out of Jail Free card.
Whenever you see a skull with glowing eyes on the ground, try to run them over with torrent while pressing [triangle]. Torrent will smash the skull and you'll pick the therein contained item us as soon as it spawns. Usually ... a Golden Rune [1] worth 200 runes.

Also, the shack we're looking for is straight up north. So, once the road takes a turn, don't bother. Just move North and you'll find it. From there we'll move a little further north - and then to the east (right). A little bit downhill you'll find a graveyard a bit off to the left. That's where we're going. Pick up all the items. That should be enough runes to get us to where we need to be to use the Twinblade.

Then, check for the arch that takes you further downhill. The Character ontop of it is Kenny. Talk to him until he starts repeating himself. He's part of Nepheli's Quest to become the successor of Godrick the Grafted. For a better Limgrave!

Looking to the North/North-East you'll see the ruins of a Church. There you can find a bowl containing the physik flask and nearby a statue you can find a holy tear used to improve the potency of the potions. Upon resting at the grace Melina offers you a chat, but you now also have the new option to setup, equip and use the physik flask. At this point we don't have much ... but a last ditch refill of health. Not too bad!
You should here also use all the runes you got from the Graveyard (5200 worth) - which is enough to get Strength to 10 and Dexterity to 18.
As for our equipment: We keep the dagger in the main hand and hold the twin-blade in the off hand. We generally want to use the twin-blade two-handed, so it doesn't matter in which hand we equip it. If we want to access our mainhand weapon for whatever reason; As to maybe access its skill; We simply have to return to the normal mode.


Eventualities
At some point Melina may offer you to take you to Roundtable hold. Once there, you technically have access to the Longsword for 1000 runes. It's arguably better than the one you can get from the Godrick soldiers - but eventually two swords are better than one anyway. Using two short-swords is a neat alternative to the twinblade approach; And if you play it right you have access to two weapon arts. Once we acquire the Black Whetblade we can add a blood affinity to the Duel Ash - and the Duel Ash I think is a nice one to have against enemies with shields. But not all ... which is where the skill falls a bit short. There then a Great or Colossal sword with Stomp would be the better option - which we eventually can't easily throw into this build either. But the name of the game is to play around things that don't work out so well ... anyway.

And now ... Have Fun!