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Elden Ring mod is about to make it the best survival game on PC

FromSoftware’s brutal RPG is set to get even harder, as new mod Elden Ring Survival Mode adds hunger, thirst, and more sad ways to die in the Lands Between

Elden Ring Survival Mode: A Tarnished warrior in chain mail carries a claymore over his shoulder as the sun begins to set over the Lands Between
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Elden Ring 

So, you’ve beaten Elden Ring. And you’ve beaten new game plus. And you’ve done it in 20 hours, with no armour, and without taking any damage from Malenia. Yeah, well, now you’re going to have to do it all again, only this time you’ll be thirsty. And starving. And slowly dying from the plague. That’s right: Elden Ring is a survival game now.

Scott Mooney, better known as Grimrukh, the Soulsborne modder responsible for the upcoming (and unofficial) Dark Souls sequel Nightfall, has just completed his latest project Elden Ring: Survival Mode, which releases June 6.

Survival Mode brings a range of extra features to FromSoftware’s latest masterpiece, including new materials for crafting and additional means for upgrading weapons. The most significant addition however is the introduction of Fallout: New Vegas-style thirst, hunger and disease mechanics, which challenge you to consistently eat and drink to maintain your health, and hunt down cures for region-specific illnesses. Roaming too long in the Altus Plateau for example will set your stomach rumbling and demand you cook something to eat, whereas the dizzying heat in Caelid brings dehydration, fatigue, and blood-sucking parasites, a bit like sitting in a beer garden at the end of July.

Perhaps the most difficult change is to the lighting system. Nighttime in the Lands Between is now truly dark – without a torch or other light source, you’ll struggle to see the path two feet in front of you, let alone a pack of Runebears waiting in ambush. It adds an extra but – if you like a challenge – welcome dimension to Elden Ring’s already demanding combat. If you want to push on to a new area but don’t have anything to light your way, perhaps it’s best boiling up a steak to sate your hunger and waiting until the morning. But if it all sounds too much – hunger, thirst, disease, and now you can’t even see! – Survival Mode lets you activate and deactivate its features to suit your preferences, so you can give yourself the added challenge of darkness without having to worry about finding a drink.

To mark the launch of Elden Ring: Survival Mode, Lobosjr – famous for his challenge runs of the Soulsborne series, including completing the original Dark Souls with only 1 HP – will be streaming it live on Twitch. The mod itself will be free to download on Grimrukh’s website. Check out our guide to all the best Elden Ring mods to see what else you can add to the already huge game.

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Previously of Edge, Vice, Polygon, and the BBC, Ed is symbiotically connected to the gaming news matrix, covering everything from Cities Skylines 2 road tools, to Half-Life mods, and classic boomer shooters. Between Counter-Strike 2, Starfield, and Resident Evil - as well as everything and anything related to GTA 6 - he has a close eye on the heady world of videogames, and can often be found lamenting the tragedy that IO Interactive’s Freedom Fighters never got a sequel. He was once in the top ten for speedrunning the original Resident Evil 2 and has a weird knowledge of how RNG works in Doom.