to create items. To craft a certain item, the player must have the item's crafting recipe. Recipes can be found inside collectibles called Cookbooks, which are scattered throughout the world. Materials can be collected by defeating enemies, exploring the game's world, or by trading with merchant NPCs. Crafted items range from poison darts and exploding pots, to consumables that temporarily increase the player's strength in combat. Similar to the Dark Souls games, the player can summon friendly NPCs called spirits to fight enemies. Each type of summonable spirit requires its equivalent Spirit Ash for summoning; different types of Spirit Ashes can be discovered as the player explores the game world. Spirits can only be summoned near structures called Rebirth Monuments, which are primarily found in large areas and inside boss fight arenas. Elden Ring has a multiplayer system that allows players to be summoned for both cooperative and player versus player (PvP) play over the Internet. Cooperative play involves the placing of a Summon Sign on the ground, which causes the sign to appear in the world of online players who have used a corresponding item. If another player interacts with the sign, whoever placed down the sign is summoned into their world. Cooperative players remain in the same world until the boss of the area is defeated, or until a summoned player dies and is sent back to their home world. PvP combat involves using a Summon Sign to directly challenge another player to a duel, or using additional items to invade the worlds of others. World hosts may also use a "Taunter's Tongue" to increase the likelihood that their world will be invaded by others, as well as decreasing the time between invasions. Synopsis Premise Elden Ring takes place in the Lands Between, a fictional landmass ruled over by several demigods. It was previously ruled over by the immortal Queen Marika, who acted as keeper of the Elden Ring, a powerful force that manifested as the physical concept of order. When Marika eventually shattered the Elden Ring and disappeared, her demigod children began warring over pieces of the Ring in an event called the Shattering. Each demigod possesses a shard of the Ring called a Great Rune, which corrupts them with power. In the game, the player character is a Tarnished, one of a group of exiles from the Lands Between who are summoned back after the Shattering.