Elden Ring: Exploring The Roundtable Hold

From the Nexus to the Firelink Shrine to Majula, From Software’s dark fantasy realms have always had a place of respite to hang out, resupply, and talk to a variety of collected NPC guests gathered from adventures around the world. Access to Elden Ring’s hub realm, known as the Roundtable Hold, does not come right away when starting the game, though it may be possible to speed access given the player fulfills the right conditions. Melina may appear to offer guidance and commentary about the Lands Between if you stumble upon a place of loss of grace. 

During an encounter early on, Melina provided Torrent, the Spectral Steed and the ability for leveling up. On my quest, I encountered Melina again at a site of lost grace up the hill from Stormveil, right before entering the “second” zone, a sunken biome filled with shallow waters, deep waters, half-submerged buildings, giant lobsters, turtle warriors, and more. It’s important to note that you can just walk into this area (and the area to the east of Limgrave, foreboding wastelands with a blood-red sky) without ever dealing with any bosses at all. Potentially, one could head to this checkpoint and trigger this meeting with Melina almost immediately after picking up Torrent, but it’s impossible to tell what the exact circumstances were that led to the meeting. Melina takes the player to the Roundtable hold, where the tainted are guided by grace. You cannot access the Roundtable Hold via fast travel, and it is not on any world map.

Many of the functions for player upgrades can be found at every site with lost grace, but there are many additional services that the player can access and which they can also upgrade. There are many NPCs that normally exist here, but some others will come along after you meet them in the world. Roderika the “spirit tuner” that I met in a broken-down shack came along after I met her, as did the enigmatic undead hunter “D” that I met near the battle with the Bonebeckoner Mariner. D actually has new information and marked my map with an X to indicate where someone is related to Beast Clergymen. I never got to go check that out, but I’m assuming it’s worth investigating.

“Collected” characters join an impressive roster here in the Roundtable Hold, which is a place of majesty, a sort of darker version of an Arthurian round table aesthetically. Blacksmith Hewg is located here, a prisoner, hammering away on finely crafted weapons – this is where the player can come to upgrade gear past the paltry +3 that’s offered at the do-it-yourself anvils in the overworld. Hewg is quite similar in appearance and demeanor to Souls’ Andre, which isn’t all that unexpected. However, he has quite a few dialogue options beyond the normal “hey, I want to upgrade my sword,” for players to dive into.

In the Roundtable Hold is a curiousity that I have not been able to find functionality for in my lengthy play session. It’s called The Two Maiden Husks. This rather morbid duo asks the player for “bell bearings” which I have no idea how to obtain – or what the rewards would be for turning them in. The Two Maiden Husks are just one mystery in this hub, another which lies below off a balcony in a wide arena area. Listen, in any From Software game, when you jump into or enter a wide arena with lots of bloodstains, you know what’s going to happen, even in an area that’s otherwise considered safe. Taking a jump off a balcony, I enter an incredibly one-sided battle with a Frenzy-Tongue, ostensibly some kind of amped-up superhuman that’s not too happy to see me. The character rips me apart with a massive scythe (Yes he does look and act a lot like Gehrman in Bloodborne). Clearly, I’m probably supposed to peek down into the depths of the Roundtable Hold later in the experience.

Many other NPCs and blocked-off rooms exist in the hold, but we’ll highlight just one more. Fia, Fia the deathbed companion embraces the player inside a bedroom. This embrace gives the player a special consumable that increases poise, and ostensibly you can return to collect more if you’re not already holding one.

Even in the early stages of the game, The Roundtable Hold felt alive with characters, conveniences, and more. Extrapolating the hub out from the early game, it’s fairly safe to say it will be From Software’s biggest hub yet in terms of characters, interactions, and development.