Elden Ring has spawned enough surrounding work that the ordering question comes up constantly.
Short answer
Treat it as supplementary. Enjoyable on its own, and richer if you have played first.
Assets circulated online are often ripped rather than released, which affects what you can legally do with them. Adaptations take liberties, and the interesting ones take them deliberately. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration.
What is fan-made
Official art books contain material that never appears in the game itself. Canon status is decided by the developers rather than by the adaptation's writers. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on. Fan work is frequently better than official work and is not the same thing.
Release order and chronological order are different, and both have their advocates. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. Licensed soundtracks are the most likely part to be missing from a re-release.
Where to find it legitimately
A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice.
- Credit fan artists if you reuse their work.
- Buy from the publisher's own store where one exists.
- Read the whole sequence once before doing the first step.
- Look for an official assets page before downloading anything.
- Expect licensed music to be missing from re-releases.
- If a menu path does not exist for you, your build is older or newer than the one described.
Whether it is worth your time
Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time.
Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.
What exists officially
None of this needs a paid tool, a third-party launcher or an account on a site you have never heard of. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.
Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. Elden Ring is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over.
Where it fits with the game
Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first.
Where people go wrong
- Skipping the prerequisite because it looked optional in someone else's summary.
- Downloading a helper tool for something the game already does in its own menu.
- Trusting a video thumbnail that promises a result the video never actually shows.
- Assuming a guide from an older season still describes the current version.
Elden Ring FAQ
Is it canon?
Where the developers have said so, yes. Adaptations produced under licence are frequently their own continuity.
What if none of this works for me?
Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.
How long does this take?
Minutes if it goes cleanly, an evening if you hit the edge case in the caveats list. Neither is unusual.
Do I need any mods or third-party tools for this?
No. Everything described here works with the base game on any supported platform.
Work through it in the order above and radagon icon stops being a question you have to look up again.