Top 10 Tips for
Switch 2 Newcomers

#1 Level Vigor early — don't neglect your HP

Vigor is the stat that raises your maximum HP, and on a first playthrough it is the single most important number on your character sheet. Elden Ring does not punish you for low damage the way it punishes you for low health: a hit that would barely scratch a well-built tank can delete a glass-cannon mage in one or two taps. Almost every newcomer we have watched start the game pours the early levels into the flashy offensive stats — Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence — and then gets frustrated when a stray dog or a spear thrust ends their run.

Here is the practical rule: get Vigor to around 20 by the time you hit level 25-30, and push it toward 40 by the middle of the game. Vigor's returns soften at two soft caps (40 and 60), but those are numbers you reach later, not now. In the early hours, each point of Vigor buys a chunk of HP that directly turns into more mistakes you can survive. You will still die — that is the point of the game — but you will die less, and you will learn the boss patterns instead of getting deleted before you ever see them.

#2 Explore Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula before Stormveil

After the tutorial cave spits you out into Limgrave, the open world opens up and it is tempting to charge straight at the first big castle on the horizon — Stormveil. Don't. Stormveil is a legacy dungeon and a genuine difficulty wall, and walking in under-leveled and under-geared is how people quit the game in the first ten hours.

Instead, treat Limgrave as your training yard and then cross the Bridge of Sacrifice to the south into the Weeping Peninsula. The Peninsula is one of the safest low-level regions in the whole game: the enemies are scaled for a fresh Tarnished, the layout teaches you about ledges, caves, and ambushes, and it hands you a map fragment, golden seeds, and sacred tears that upgrade your Flask of Crimson Tears. Clearing it gets you to a comfortable level and loads you with upgrade materials before you ever touch Stormveil's gate. If a zone feels impossible, that is the game's way of telling you to go somewhere else for a while.

#3 Use Spirit Ashes — get the bell from Renna at the Church of Elleh at night

Spirit Ashes are collectible summons that call spectral allies to fight beside you, and they are built into Elden Ring specifically as a crutch for newer players. You get your first one (the Spirit Calling Bell and a set of Lone Wolf Ashes) from Renna, the witch who appears at the Church of Elleh — but only at night, after you have already met Melina and received Torrent. Fast-travel back to the church after dark, talk to her at the ruin, and the bell is yours.

From there, equipping an ash and summoning it during a fight pulls enemy aggression off you, buys time to heal, and turns a one-versus-one you were losing into a fight you can win. They cost FP, you can only have one out at a time, and a few bosses forbid summons, but for the vast majority of the game they are fair game. Upgrade them later with Glovewort. Nobody is keeping score of whether you "needed help" — use every tool the game gives you.

#4 Upgrade your weapon, not just your stats

A common newcomer mistake is to sink every level into a damage stat while swinging a weapon that has never been touched by a whetstone. In Elden Ring, raw weapon level matters far more than offensive attributes for most of the early and mid game. A +6 Longsword will out-damage a +0 greatsword even if the greatsword's stat requirements are met and yours aren't a problem.

You upgrade weapons with Smithing Stones at the anvil of Hewg, the blacksmith waiting for you at Roundtable Hold (you are brought there automatically after a key early boss). Early stones are everywhere — scattered in caves, dropped by miners, and sold in unlimited supply by the Isolated Merchant at the Bridge of Sacrifice in the Weeping Peninsula, who stocks Smithing Stone [1] and [2] for a few hundred runes each. Pick one weapon you like and pour stones into it. Don't spread your upgrades across five half-built toys.

#5 Ride Torrent to skip danger and reach graces

Torrent, your spectral steed, is handed to you by Melina after you rest at a Site of Grace early on. Most players treat him as a taxi and stop there, which wastes half his value. Torrent's real job is escape and repositioning: his double jump clears gaps you cannot cross on foot, his speed outruns most enemies you have no business fighting, and the act of mounting instantly breaks a bad engagement so you can ride to the next Site of Grace and reset the area.

You can also attack from horseback — jump attacks in particular hit hard and keep you mobile against slower foes. When a field boss or a pack is stomping you, the correct move is often "mount up and leave," not "die again." Torrent has his own health bar and revives when you rest at a grace, so don't be shy about using him as a panic button.

#6 Use Sites of Grace as fast travel and your level-up point

Every glowing Site of Grace does three things: it refills your HP, FP, and flasks, it is where you spend runes to level up, and — most useful for getting around — it is a fast-travel point. Once you have discovered a grace, you can warp to any other discovered grace from the map, which means no more slogging back across the world after a death.

The map itself marks revealed Sites of Grace so you can plan routes, and grabbing the map-fragment obelisks in each region fills in the terrain. The one catch: you cannot fast-travel while in combat or inside most boss arenas, so if you are stuck in a bad spot, reaching the nearest grace on foot is your out. Make a habit of touching every grace you pass — they are both your checkpoints and your travel network.

#7 Don't fight every boss the moment it appears

Your map lights up with boss icons as you reveal each region, and a new player reasonably assumes they all must be dealt with. They don't. The bosses that actually gate the story are the ones inside legacy dungeons (Stormveil and the rest) and the Shardbearer demigods beyond them; clearing those is what opens the path forward. The long list of red field-boss markers — ancient dragons, Deathbirds, Tibia Mariners, the big knights out in the open world — are optional encounters.

If a boss is one-shotting you and the arena is wide open with no legacy-dungeon walls, it is almost certainly a side boss you are not required to beat yet. Ride past it, level up elsewhere, come back later when your weapon and Vigor have caught up. Skipping a boss you aren't ready for is not cowardice; it is reading the map correctly.

#8 Learn to dodge into attacks, pace your R1s, and block with a 100% shield

The dodge roll has invincibility frames — brief windows where you simply cannot be hit. To use them, roll toward or through the attack, not away from it; rolling backward often leaves you at the tail end of the move with your i-frames gone. Practice this against basic enemies before you bring it to a boss. At the same time, stop mashing — light attacks (R1) have rhythm, and pacing your hits around an enemy's recovery is how you trade safely instead of getting punished mid-swing.

Early on, a shield that absorbs 100% of physical damage is the safest teacher in the game. The Heater Shield (buy it from the Roundtable Hold husks, or find a Brass Shield in a Limgrave carriage) lets you raise guard, walk into pressure, and learn a boss's tells without dying. Block, watch the wind-up, then guard-counter. You can drop the shield later; for a first run, it turns terrifying bosses into readable ones.

#9 Summon co-op helpers and NPC phantoms when stuck

When a boss has you walled, look at the ground near the fog gate for golden summon signs — other players' cooperators and, in several fights, named NPC helpers like Nepheli Loux or Rogier who will fight alongside you. To see summon signs you use a Furlcalling Finger Remedy, which you craft from Erdleaf Flowers (plenty grow along the roads). NPC summons work offline and cost nothing; player summons need you to be online.

There is no shame in calling for help. A second body splits the boss's attention, soaks hits, and gives you windows to land your own. If you have tried a fight a dozen times solo, summon someone — you will often clear it in two attempts and wonder why you suffered. Co-op is part of the intended experience, not a fallback for the weak.

#10 Manage expectations: dying is the game, runes are recoverable

The most important tip is the headspace one. In Elden Ring, death is not failure — it is the loop. You die, you drop your runes as a bloodstain where you fell, and you get one trip back to pick them up. Die before you reach them and they are gone, but your level, your gear, your unlocked graces, and every boss you already killed stay exactly where they were. You lose progress measured in runes, never in permanence.

So when a boss is grinding you down, remember: each attempt taught you the opening, the combo, the tell. The run is not reset, only the runes are at risk, and runes come back fast once you are stronger. Take the death, walk back, and treat the recoverable bloodstain like a side quest on the way to the rematch. The players who "get" Elden Ring are the ones who stopped fearing the death screen.

Switch 2-specific tips

The Tarnished Edition runs on Switch 2 hardware, and a couple of habits are worth setting up on day one so the port works with you instead of against you.

• Calibrate motion controls if you use Joy-Con. Switch 2 Joy-Con support gyro aiming, and if you use them in handheld mode for bows, throwing items, or camera nudges, drift will throw off your reticle. Open the controller settings and calibrate the gyro before a long session so your aim stays steady. A Pro Controller skips this entirely.
• Play docked when you need to read the HUD. The handheld screen is a sharp 7.9-inch 1080p panel, but item descriptions, flask counts, and boss health bars are small on it. Docking to a TV gives you a bigger, calmer view for reading loot text and tracking buff timers — handy during longer boss fights where the HUD matters.
• Mind the cart. Tarnished Edition ships as a Game-Key Card: the cartridge is a license, and the full ~64GB game downloads to your system. The cart has to stay inserted to play, so don't expect to lend it out and keep playing.