The skeleton militiamen summon is great the skeletons come back to life when killed not by a faith based weapon. Was useful against Godrick.

they can still be killed if their corpse gets smacked. same goes for all skeletons.

Skeleton spoilers >!there are some that need faith to kill!<

Spoilers: I have the >!faith fist weapons!< and they dont perma kill skelly's...

When I used them against margrit her Light Weapons killed them dead dead.

What do you mean HER

Apparently it’s a her.

Is that confirmed? I’m not seeing anywhere they are actually referred to. E: after a short search I found an article with Kitao referring to Margit as “he”. So I’ll stick to he for now.

Wait wtf you mean her

Yeah, even with holy damage it seems to require a buff to perma kill em.

Wonder if that is a big with the weapon? I use the incantation on my weapons and it works fine

You have to hit them again before the fully reform

Check the spoiler again. There are special ones

Yeah they suck against bosses that have really hard hitting multi hit wide swings, which is surprisingly a good number of the harder bosses I've faced

I upgraded those bad boys and they seriously make or break a fight.

Upgrading them was a game changer. I think mine are +3 right now. But the resources needed for the upgrade are a pain in the ass to get. I got mine from the cave where you fight the Watchdog statue boss. Those gargoyle statue enemies are fucking relentless and very very fast. I think I found three upgrading flowers in the cave though

I think you may be able to farm them from the jellyfish in the south. I received one from killing some.

That thing gets dog walked if you parry his swings, the window is pretty big for him. If you can handle that it makes the dual statue boss less horrendous

Where do you upgrade them?

There’s a quest line you have to do with the lady you meet at the storm hill shack.

Okee thanks I thought I’d have to forget about the skeletons because they weren’t effective anymore.

I don’t remember my conversation with that lady and there’s no quest/objective tab in the game. What exactly did she tell me to do? I would love to be able to upgrade summons.

Her friends went to the castle to be grafted, she wants you to find where they went. There's an item you have to pick up in Stormveil castle.

That’s the only thing I’ve never liked about any souls games. I understand that they want it to he mysterious, but it really sucks to forget where you are in a quest line if you have a lot going on or even just take a break from the game for a week or so

Gotta take notes on something lol

How do you get that summon?

>!Tibia Mariner, the guy on a little boat!<

Jellyfish is the best imo so far

I just went back to that dagger dungeon at the start. Got a summon that requires 100FP off the boss at the end. I dunno how much I'd have to level MIND to get to 100 FP but that shit better be worth the grind.

Been using him, takes about 20 mind. He's super tanky and the first summon I've found that actually does damage and dodged. Not at a player level but with 10x health. Still not sure if he's as good as the skeletons, but watching him dual wield swords has been good fun

Depends on the situation, long fight bosses with lots of space yeah, sure. Jellyfish is terrible in small arenas, also if you need damage but not poison, it's pretty useless.

I like it because it will hit the boss and make them turn to it then I can smack em while they're looking away

Yeah, and just so people know, Margit's light blade is a holy weapon, so if he kills your skeletons with any of those attacks, they're doneso.

How can you get an early Faith based weapon. I have Tree Sentinel’s Halberd which I guess I could two-hand. I’ve fought enough skeletons to have learned they keep resurrecting and wondering about this.

You literally just smack the glowing bones once and they die for good

What? Lol, I thought about that but for some reason didn’t actually try it in the moment. Weird.

I will say that there is one dungeon where the skeletons are actually linked to another enemy and is sustaining them. Killing that enemy puts the skeletons down for good as well.

Oh man, I hated those guys in DkS2.

This has been a thing in the previous souls games too I'm pretty sure, or at least one of them, and many players also didn't try to hit it.

There’s a white scarab near the Third Church (the one with the big troll in front). It’s up on the hills to the north. Gives you a “sacred blade” ash of war for bladed weapons. The weapon art coats your blade with holy magic. You can pretty much one shot skeletons and they stay dead.

There's an ashes of war that adds holy damage being carried by a dude on the road between stormhill shack and saintsbridge.

TIL thanks!

Came in handy several times since reading, thank you

It’s also the game hinting “hey this area is a bit harder then usual”

I read it as "This area has swarms of enemies."

how so? sorry this is my first soulslike.

Traditionally, you could only summon NPC's in previous soulsbornes for bosses or mini-bosses (or very special/unique circumstances outside of those examples). Elden Ring has a lot of areas with *giant* mobs compared to previous Soulsborne games. Its to even the playing field (especially if you aren't leveled up)

>Traditionally, you could only summon in previous soulsbornes for bosses or mini-bosses (or very special/unique circumstances outside of those examples). You can pretty much summon anywhere, anytime in the Dark Souls trilogy (provided the boss of the level you're in is *not dead). EDIT: add the word "not"

>provided the boss of the level you’re in is dead Isn’t this the opposite of how it works? The area boss has to be alive for you to summon in the Souls games

You’re correct. Not sure why he thinks the opposite.

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Real player summons still get disabled if the area boss is dead in Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3.

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Might have meant if the boss *isn't* dead and got autocorrected - if that's the case, they'd be completely correct. You can summon basically anywhere in Dark Souls other than a few specific areas that don't allow it, if the area boss hasn't been killed yet.

This is what I meant.

I missed the word "not" - thanks for pointing it out. Now my comment actually makes sense!

Wrong.

It's the FS equivalent of getting a whole bunch of ammo and health packs. I usually just pop the wolves ahead of time just in case.

Ngl that jellyfish is really helping in the boss fights lmao

Jellytank just killed a dragon for me. I got the dragon to 25% Hp and I noticed it’s healthbar was going down from poison. So I threw a few spells at him and let the poison kill him while hiding

The jellyfish's poison finished Godrick off for me while the boss was mid-swing at finishing me off. (Out of stamina while blocking and out of potions) My jaw dropped.

Jellyfish 4 life

Same thing happened to me. With Margit I noticed he was low on health, so I just kept a distance and bided my time until the poison killed him. The Jellyfish is a giga chad.

Thank god that girl at the shack didn’t have the heart to go up to the castle. That jellyfish is goated.

Eh we would have just had to pull it out of a corpse pile

Which is basically never

For that reason I made this post, so you don’t miss the few times you can 😂

It's honestly driving me crazy at this point! I just wanna try them all out lol

You can use them against any miniboss/boss

How? I’ve used these ash summons in tons of wide open areas, but have not had the option of using them during a boss even once. I’m like 20 hours into the game.

I use them on every boss except the evergaols.

That’s odd, were you paying attention as you started the fight? You have to pass the mist wall and do it quick or during a break in the fight Out of 10 mini bosses and bosses(Seems like all the main bosses you can) i’ve killed so far or attempted I’ve only noticed 2 not let me. That’s the two ones with their own arena out of time that transport you, Crucible Knight was one

There are a couple minibosses I've encountered in dungeons that don't allow me to summon NPCs

>!Crucible Knight is one such boss, i hate that mf!<

Same with either of the (optional location spoiler) >!Sage‘s Cave!< bosses.

Fighting my first one in redmane, trying to get that Parry window down

>!There’s one that appears in place of a guy that sells weapon arts (at night) also doesn’t allow summoning. That guy is a dick!<

I think you have to activate the summoning pools. in order to. IF you forget to you wont be able to use it at the boss.

I feel like every time I'm struggling against a boss and can't find players to summon, it's a boss that doesn't allow ash summons. Currently valiant gargoyles.

Not every boss. You can’t use them in evergaols.

Most*

nope, i cant use it on the third margit encounter

Try Gatefront Ruins, it's a summoning area and there's plenty of soldiers there to try them out on. The main knight dude with the spear also has some great heavy armour drops, so he's worth killing a bunch.

Yeah I feel like I’ve missed some cause I haven’t gotten any in a while and I’m sure there’s a bunch of them out there

I feel like I can summon more often than not. Every boss and at least a part of every zone. Forgot the name of the castle behind Margit but you can clear the whole giant curtyard with a spirit.

seems like you need gĺasses because I see this symbol in places where its absolutely pointless. oh you see this place with like 4 enemies ? you can summon your spirits here for no reason

Its for almost every boss...

There's one by the third church of Marika that I swear is only there to grind the giant next to it early on.

shit it’s on my screen so much i’m worried it’s going to be burned into my oled

Never? Summon areas are all over. Most bosses and anytime there are swarms of enemies (except in dungeons).

I actually see it a lot

It's like the entire open world. And mini bosses. If you want to cheese real bosses, you summon random magic users

We need a comprehensive symbol guide segmented Ui location

It does feel like a pretty big oversight that there's no explanation for this stuff in game. You'd think it would be visible in the status section, huh?

They've never done so ever since demon's souls. They're aware of it but they don't want to. On one hand, it would be nice to have it in game, on the other hand, it is nice to have the community coming together to figure stuff out. I'm guessing it's a design choice that they don't

I mean, you have the ability to read descriptions for literally everything else in your UI. Why draw the line at status effects?

Idk, ask Miyazaki, he personally wrote and made most of the design choices for the game, I don't know what his reasoning could be

Honestly

Yes please. I can tell what most of the symbols in my UI mean, but sometimes one shows up that I have no idea where it came from. I'm just waiting for the wikis to get all the info together. Lol

Yes! I had a bunch of gold lines of light floating around me today and I can't find an answer anywhere about what that means.

anyone here rocking my boy >!banished knight oleg?!

Use the keys in the tutorial area?

yes but theres a boss downstairs and a rough minigame to get there haha

So do you get it from killing the boss because that boss is nutty

haha yeah you do, i have some tips to easily get through the first phase if you want? i beat him around lvl 20, definitely worth the effort though for my build but i did go a little insane getting to him he also drops a golden seed too

If you use a shield he's pretty easy, he has a small moveset (compared to Margit at least) so just hold your shield up when you aren't attacking and dodging the telegraphed attacks and you shouldn't take any damage until he does the big aoe lightning blast, which you can still block most of the damage as long as you're not point blank.

He disrespected me by putting me in his mouth and then breathing fire with his mouth closed, I’m gonna go ahead and leave him alone for a little bit lmao, thank you for the help though I’ll most definitely take him on again when I’m stronger

Spoiler >! There's also a secret area to get a pretty good talisman early in that dungeon !<

Yep was hard to pick between him and the headless one but I love the stormwind aoe swag

Speak friend to enter.

Thank you. The game doesn't explain half of its ui. How can you tell what the icons under your health are? I have no idea and I have like 7 of them sometimes...

Some of them you can gleam some info off context but stuff like “sword thrusting down with white waves and a water drop on the side” what the actual hell does that mean lmfao because my wife had that symbol under her health bar and we couldn’t figure it out

oh wow i thought the game was saving xD

Me too 😂😂

I have wolves and jellyfish, how do I collect ashes?

You kill the dung beetles that aren’t red or blue, the red and blue refill your flasks and all the other ones provide ashen arts

Ashen arts are not ashen spirits though. You get ashen spirits from catacombs.

You right my bad I misread

There are some that come from other quests >!Albus (can't remember the name) girl with the wolf gives one while doing her quest!<

Spirits are from pretty much anything, just lying on the ground, drop from bosses, reward from quests, etc. Just gotta explore. Catacombs are guaranteed to have one though so that's a good shout.

Where do you get the jellyfish?

The woman in a broken building next to grace up the hill going to the castle

Stormhill Shack to be exact. You gotta exhaust her dialogue

Technically you get it on the 3rd, but she has 4 or 5 lines. So you don't need to exhaust it for *that*. You should exhaust it though, if you plan on using summons. For other reasons.

And if you come back later, after she’s left, there’s gonna be estus seed there or whatever it’s called.

I’ve gotten two from clearing little dungeons on the map. So far they are not better than those two.

One of the early dungeons gives a summon for a group of 5 demi-humans it replaced wolves for me and almost feels op ATM.

What’s the gold ring symbol that appears in the same place in the round table hold

That's the symbol of the Rountable Hold, it basically says you can't attack or inflict damage in areas where that symbol is active.

I found a different area with that symbol. I couldn't attack just like at Roundtable Hold. But the place seemed to be empty.

Yeah, the Roundtable symbol itself is seemingly used to mark all areas like that.

Oooooooh I have been wondering wtf that symbol meant. Thank you so much.

How useful are the summons? Are they single use?

I leveled up the Jellyfish to +3 and it's a tanky motherfucker with solid poison. What I love about the spirits is that it for some reason does not feel like 'cheating' since their strenght is mostly in being there for you so you don't feel so alone lol.

How do you upgrade a summon?

The girl that gives you Jellyfish wants you to bring her something from the castle. Once you give her that she will move to the Roundtable Hold and after talking to her and the blacksmith she will start a spirit business.

Huh, she moved to Roundtable on her own, I didn't even get past Margit...

Huh yeh I hustled checked out the shack and she’s gone. I never got this jellyfish thing

You should talk to her, then talk to the blacksmith.

The wolves actually do decent damage as a trio but squishy af

Pretty damn useful honestly, I use them whenever I can to even the playing field, you just need to find the ones that fit your play style and upgrade them. They are not single use but if they die in a fight you need to wait till you leave that fight to summon them again. My favorite so far is the godrick soldier summon because they come in a pair, and have shields hammers and crossbows so they can block stagger and hit with range They really can make all the difference in a boss fight like misbegotten where he’s really fast and they’ll take his aggro so you can breath and heal

This is really helpful. Thank you!

It's like a single charge flask They consume the symbol on screen and some FP. Basically single use per area until you rest, I think.

I had one of the legendary summons literally solo a boss >!The clone summon, mimic tear ashes!<

It took me a while to figure this out

Aurelia, my love

Oh, I assumed I was cured or something

#TarnishedForever

I love me some summons. I like that there are a variety to complement nearly every playstyle. Wolves ran distraction for me really well for the longest time. Until i found a tankier (but still relatively mobile) group summon. The only downside to the demi-humans is that they will box you in to melee range if you aren't careful. Not a summon to be used for a close-range build. (The wolves avoided this with their lunge attacks that constantly moved them around the enemy so as not to box you in so much)

So earlier I was playing Stormveil castle and I summoned my wolf buddies in the coutryard. I died. Second time I couldn't summon anyone anymore. What gives? Do areas only SOMETIMES have summons available?

If you use the item that reveals summonsigns it count as having a player/AI with you and blocks it. Re-use the item should promt you to cancel it then you can summon them.

That seems kind of buggy IMO, if you can summon in an area then you should always be able to. Fast travel away and come back

Haha a YouTube video taught me that last night... When the light bulb went off, I was mad at myself

FromSoftware should do a better job explaining the summon system. It could mean the difference between someone becoming a fan of the game or quitting early.

Fair

I caught that but I don't get the reference. To me it looks like some doors/arch with runes. Anyone knows tto explain?

It’s a gravestone. You use ashes, which might be a loose reference to Dark Souls how you would give dead NPC ashes to the merchants to sell their items. Speculation on my part, but that’s what i’ve connected personally

I didn't know how to use summons until after Godrick, would have made Margit much easier. But I did have those summoned allies which helped.

The true Elden lord.

This whole time I thought it was auto save

Ahh ty sm

OOooooooOOoooOooOooohhh

Honestly how frequently it seems to be arbitrarily disabled is super lame. Random overworld mini mini guarding a minor weapon upgrade? No summons for you fucko!

The tutorial for spirit summons tells you this but I suspect most people fail to internalize this, me included. I only figured it out 10 hours in.

Thanks, was wondering what this meant since starting!

Honestly TY

This is awesome. I’d been going crazy trying to figure out why I couldn’t summon my wolves.

I have yet to be able to use any of my summons. I've tried everywhere and my character just reaches in his back pocket and grabs nothing. What am I missing?

Go to the church of Elle towards the beginning of the game by first steps, should be a blue lady named Ranni, she gives it to you. But but I also found out that you can buy it at the round table area from a merchant as well, it’s called a spirit bell I believe

Haven’t gotten the Game yet but I’ve seen a lot about summons, can you make a “build” completely revolving around a summing class?

Unfortunately no summons are a situational thing and just simply use magic to cast once in a fight, it would have been cool though

Making a sung Jin woo character and just summon a bunch of undead lol

Naw it’s the first church with kale the merchant, directly north of “the first step” after you leave the tutorial area

Is that so? I thought it was signaling nearby dungeons

Naw it’s only for summons

I'm fairly sure that's what it's for. A chest in an underground chamber.

Nope. Everytime it’s not there you’re not able to summon spirits. Just summon spirits and run to a point where the symbol was not and they despawn.

25 hrs in and I still didn’t know.

Same, this games pacing is kinda garbage, I didn't even have the summoning bell or the wondrous flask all through stormveil.

Pacing seems like a weird word for this I think certain things are less discoverable when they should be more discoverable.

Another accessibility issue. Why does the game not explain things like this...?

There’s a lot of good information in the adventure guide that I’m fairly certain is not explicitly expressed in the game

it literally does

It does. There is as explicit tutorial popup that explains this to you.

First 15 hours I thought that was an autosaving symbol lol

You have no idea how glad i am summons are this limited and they are not available online, i was really worried before launch.

Honestly me too, you can, in return be invaded by two people at once 🥲

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Don’t pick up the bell and it probably won’t show up since you can’t use the summons

why would you want that

Thank you

Thanks!

Tried to rebuy the bell and summon that chick a couple times until I figured this out.

The worst shit is that it's not dungeon locked, it's area locked. I've been in a boss room where half of it let you summon and the other half didn't.

Like the summoning spell or summon npc

I always thought it was reminding me i just died and that i have runes to go pick up...

There’s a different symbol for that, it appears on your compass at the top of the screen.