Elden Ring’s 1.12 patch is live now, and it’s bigger than I expected.
Elden Ring’s big pre-Shadow of the Erdtree update is now live, and one of the biggest changes is one that wasn’t previously teased: Yes, it’s true, you can now summon Torrent for the final fight against the Elden Beast.
Torrent enables significantly increased mobility during combat—horses, even weird magic ones, are a lot faster than people—and an awful lot of players really felt its absence during the climactic battle, which takes place in a large, open arena against a highly mobile boss. That’s reflected in the immediate positive reaction to the change, which was casually noted in a single line stuffed in the middle of the «new inventory features» section.
Interestingly, some players said the change isn’t so much a nerf of the Elden Beast fight, but just a quality of life change. «It doesn’t make the fight easier just less annoying to keep running around everywhere», redditor SirSabza wrote. «With how big Elden Beast is I’d rather not get knocked off my horse every 5 seconds.»
Others have also expressed wonderment that it took this long to make the change, and of course there’s speculation that diehard soulslikers will consider the addition of Torrent an asterisk in the record books: «‘I platinumed Elden Ring when you couldn’t use Torrent for Elden Beast’ will be the new ‘I beat Radahn pre-patch'», _wirving_ wrote.
So that’s obviously a highlight, but for my money the big winner is an entirely different addition supporting poor, overlooked mouse and keyboard players like me: «Added key assignments to open the map in the Key Settings menu.»
Previously, you see, you couldn’t remap Elden Ring’s «map» keybind, and worse, the game provided absolutely no indication (that I noticed or remember, anyway) about what key it was even bound to. Even worse than that, the damn thing is G. Who presses G for «map?» And why? M is the obvious choice, Tab is an acceptable alternative; hell, I can live with mashing Esc and then having to select it from a menu. But G?
Yes, for the record, I played Elden Ring with a mouse and keyboard, and frankly I did pretty well by it. But I was never not at least slightly annoyed by the horrendous M&K interface: I get that soulslikes are supposed to be difficult but I don’t think an endless struggle with shitty controls is meant to be part of that. (And yes, much of my clearly-still-fresh irritation arises from the fact that I jumped back into Elden Ring a couple nights ago and had to look up how to get into the map, again. Mashing G is counter-intuitive nonsense, and I apologize for nothing.)
Mouse-and-keyboard warriors will also appreciate the addition of a new «lock-on change threshold» for mouse controls (actually labelled «target changing sensitivity» in the keyboard/mouse settings), which will hopefully help reduce the incidence of accidentally switching to the wrong target in the heat of battle. We’ve all been there, right? (Right?)
The patch also makes numerous improvements to Elden Ring’s inventory functionality, including a marker for newly acquired items and a new tab that displays all your recently snagged stuff in one place. Note that these additions are not switched on by default: You’ll need to go into the display menu in Elden Ring’s settings and enable them if you want to use them.
There’s a whole lot more going on in this patch, including balance adjustments for both PvP and PvE gameplay, and numerous bug fixes—you can see the full Elden Ring 1.12 patch notes below. And in case you need a reminder, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will arrive very soon: Here’s a full rundown of Shadow of the Erdtree unlock times, and a handy guide on how to access it.New features
Added support for the DLC Shadow of the Erdtree
Five new hairstyles have been added to the game. They can be selected during character creation, using the Clouded Mirror Stand or using Rennala’s Rebirth feature.
Added «Map Functions Menu» to the Map Menu.
New Summoning Pool features:
— Active Summoning Pools will now be carried over to NG+.
— Individual Summoning Pools can now be enabled / disabled in the newly added Map Functions Menu.
— If «Include Distant Areas» is selected when using the Small Golden Effigy, summoning pools within the Mohgwyn Palace will not be selected for summoning, even if you have activated them.
— If you are within the Moghwyn Palace and select “Nearby Only” when using the Small Golden Effigy, you will be able to be summoned within the area.New Inventory features
Newly obtained items will be marked with a «!“.
A new tab called «Recent Items» has been added to review recently obtained items.
Display settings can be changed from the Display tab in the system menu.
Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast the boss battle.
Added new feature to the colosseum: crafted consumable items that have been used during a battle will be replenished at the end of your session.
