Summary
- Elden Ring Reforged and The Convergence are both popular mods that offer new spells, equipment, and improved gameplay mechanics, but they have different approaches to design.
- Reforged focuses on creating a balanced and challenging combat experience while maintaining the core progression of the original game.
- Reforged offers a player-driven experience with a wide range of difficulty options, alternate game modes, and side content such as timed archery challenges and collectible hunts, making each playthrough feel different.
Elden Ring is a massive game to tackle, no matter how much a given Tarnished tries to stick to its main path. Many caves and miniature dungeons dot the landscape, on top of unique enemy encounters and all sorts of treasure around every corner. With said treasure often coming with tangible gameplay effects, Elden Ring can keep surprising players for hours on end. By the time they reach the end of a playthrough, every player should have gone through a full game’s worth of adventure.
However, that's not enough for everyone, and dedicated fans finished their first Elden Ring runs not long into its life. Thus, a portion of the game’s PC players have turned to overhaul mods to extend their play time. Elden Ring's randomizers can have similar effects, but Elden Ring’s most impressive mods make their playthroughs feel like starting the base game again for the very first time. Elden Ring: The Convergence is one of the better known examples, but alongside it is Elden Ring Reforged, offering its own unique experience to any player looking for more than just a fresh save file.
5 Elden Ring Mods That Make The Game Harder
There are a handful of awesome Elden Ring mods out there that actually make the game quite a bit harder.
How Elden Ring Reforged Stacks Up Against The Convergence
Elden Ring Reforged has changed a lot from the base game, but its features and goals are better summarized in relation to The Convergence. Both mods have plenty of similarities, such as how they add new spells and equipment, significantly improve magic and crafting, and are both descended from Dark Souls 3 mods. Open progression was The Convergence's main draw, while Reforged plays out like a version of Elden Ring from another universe with more system-level options. The Convergence sounds like the more ambitious Elden Ring mod, but that’s before considering Elden Ring Reforged's stated approach to design.
"ELDEN RING Reforged is an overhaul of ELDEN RING's balance and mechanics with the intent to create a more balanced experience with fair, but still challenging, combat. It is not about "easier" or "harder," but more interesting and balanced combat."
By maintaining balance even with its new mechanics and altered enemies, Reforged resembles Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin as an updated re-release to the original Elden Ring. Meanwhile, Elden Ring: The Convergence reshapes Elden Ring into a new game, one that is more concerned with different magic builds and original content. The Convergence may prompt multiple new playthroughs with its many possible progression paths, but Reforged is occupied with making Elden Ring into the best version of itself.
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Elden Ring Reforged Puts Players In Charge Of Their Experience
What that means will be different for everyone, so Reforged made serving each player their best version of Elden Ring one of its goals. A massive number of difficulty options and alternate game modes are available on the title screen and at every Site of Grace, with difficulties alone giving Elden Ring both easy modes and hard modes with altered enemy behaviors. More granular settings can do anything from making Elden Ring nearly effortless, to cutting players’ invincibility frames in half and forcing them to rely on a Sekiro-like deflection system.
Side Content Is Elden Ring Reforged’s Forte
That is only the start of the player-driven experience Reforged offers, though other features are more involved than changing the general difficulty. Alternate modes include a version of Elden Ring with fast travel replaced by more portal shortcuts, and a time loop where players must complete side quests for power similar to Majora’s Mask. Timed archery challenges bring Elden Ring’s bows to the forefront with armor dyes as the reward, and marking enemies will fill out a new bestiary called the Codex of the All-Knowing. There are even separate collectible hunts to earn Fortunes that act like class modifiers, or forge Binding Runes for lasting passive buffs. Just because Reforged features Elden Ring's original progression doesn't mean every playthrough can't feel different.
Elden Ring Reforged Handles Difficulty Very Carefully
Reforged can skew its difficulty at the player's behest, but this mod has its own vision of a balanced Elden Ring, and players will need to adhere to it. The aforementioned treasure hunts can get a lot more treacherous when dealing with powered-up Leaders in encampments guarding locked chests, clearing out foes before unsealing ruins, and enabling Latent Spiritsprings by defeating Spiritspring Stormhawks. Said inactive Spiritsprings also speak to wider design choices in removing many of Elden Ring's shortcuts, with some new ones added, and averaging Rune drops between bosses and enemies to encourage fighting overworld mobs.
Reforged Gives Elden Ring Players Tools It Expects Them To Use
The addition of a duck-dodge, deflection, loosened right/left arm equipment rules, faster casting, easy FP regeneration, and spell catalyst weapons all make Reforged players obscenely strong on paper. Many enemy and boss attacks now have hitboxes that match their animations, a severe nerf even if they got cut moves back in the process. However, every known cheese strategy in Elden Ring was also nerfed, and enemies' improved scaling and AI mean Tarnished can't afford to get cocky. If nothing else, it would be embarrassing to fall prey to an Erdtree Avatar using the 
Ruptured Crystal Tear explosion. New Game+ in particular has been given extra teeth now that its enemy scaling has been standardized across the game at Haligtree levels.
All of this is without even getting into other impressive features, like Redmane Castle becoming a Legacy Dungeon, boss re-fights, reworked Spirit Ashes, Torrent customization, and a new superboss harboring a game-changing Whetblade. Even the compatible Elden Ring Seamless Co-op has its own difficulties, allowing some of Elden Ring's bosses to become Starscourge Radahn-like raids. The Reforged mod allows for many new experiences in Elden Ring without changing what made the original game great, and will only produce more as its development continues.
Elden Ring
-
OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 95 /100 Critics Rec: 98%
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Publisher(s)
- Bandai Namco Entertainment, From Software
- Engine
- Proprietary
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op, Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- PS4 & PS5 and Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X
- How Long To Beat
- 58 Hours
- Metascore
- 96
- Platforms That Support Crossplay
- PS4 & PS5 and Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
