What about online in Elden Ring?

[Nicky Snowy]

Tell me, in the Elden Ring there are no covenants and rewards in the usual sense?
That is, there is no point in farming rewards for invading players, or protecting locations from random travelers?

I'm used to the fact that Dark souls separately builds the ability to invade and fight hosts, both ideologically in the lore of the world and receiving real rewards for my character.

After googling, I didn't find much. We are only talking about the plot of the characters, but nothing more.

While my character is not the highest level, I want not to lose the opportunity and taste the fruits of early online. But I'm afraid that if I continue to explore on my own now, I'll just beat the game and miss the opportunity for invasions

I'm interested in content similar to covenants:
Rosaria's Fingers,
Watchdogs of Farron,
Warrior of Sunlight

p.s.
I'm so sad that there are no Covenant ideologies like mine that I'm ready to create my own on Reddit.

[Old Captain Yon]

Thank god they got rid of covenants like in DS3. Those ears still haunt me in my nightmares. There are 3 ways to do PvP. 1st is Duelling finger or Effigy. It lets other players see your summon sign and summon you to fight you. This is kinda trash, better do arena instead. Blue circlet lets you invade to assist other players vs invaders (like Darkmoon blades from DS3), you pretty much always have it on unless you do some lengthy overworld cheeses. And there is invasions, done by using 2 fingers (Bloody is good and finds invasions fast, Recusant is bad and invasions take ages to find). YOU CAN ONLY INVADE IF THERE ARE COOPERATORS IN HOST'S WORLD (or if he used a special item to deliberately lure invaders in).

There is sadly no such thing as territorial invasions and it sucks. There is also no reward except Rune Arcs for winning a PvP fight, so that's it. I personally find invasions necessary for low-level characters because they 1) net you a good amount of rune arcs which you NEED and 2) are required for a quest that lets you acess Mohg's palace early (and with it, the DLC).

You can also opt for coop, it is less likely to give you arcs (since you actually need to kill a boss with host for it) but it is good for runes and jolly cooperation feeling. You get summoned as a golden phantom to help host, and make host's world a target for invasions. You also cannot harm host except few select methods as gold or blue (hunter) phantom, just as in DS3

[patrol]

No covenants at all, no rules, sole objective is to kill the host. It's a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tbh with you either wrecking the other player or getting wrecked yourself.

Invading at low level, especialy in limgrave might get you into sitiuations where hosts sit in unreachable by you places. Or gank squads with the host being level 20 and phantoms 5-20 times that level and the entire area cleared of any mobs that would be useful.
Roleplaying as a guardian of an area will get you killed quickly anyway by usually getting spammed by either projectiles or melee attacks, maybe both.

There isn't much of a point in invading other than getting some runes and a rune arc if you're low on those, you often have to behave like a rat to win. It's more berable at around 175 , but at lets say lvl 50-100 you'll face mostly meta fine-tuned builds from experienced players.

It's very heavly stacked against you and some players consider you to be a spawn of satan himself who eats babies for breakfest if you invade

[Nicky Snowy]

Thank you very much for your answers.

It’s a shame that in the end the mechanics of their DS3 were cut off in the Elden Ring

[Northstrider]

Invasions in Elden Ring have no purpose aside from you bullying the host. That's really it. You're not suposed to kill them, alltough you can if good enough, but your role in this game is ruining the host's day for as long as you can.

[Nihrahk]

I wish covenants were still in ER. They made not only invasions, but also co-op more rewarding. Now, the only reason to do co-op and to invade is for rune arcs and some runes... it's kinda pointless. You can still easily just farm rune arcs from freaking rats, and if you got all the farming gear and consumables on, you get them fairly consistently. Especially if you run an arcane build.

[UrbanNoodles]

Covenants would have been great in Elden Ring. I also feel like activating a Rune Arc should have been what makes you available for solo invasion, so that invaders can have a better chance at not spawning into a 3 squad every single time. Because even though some people use the Taunter's Tongue, no where near enough of them do. 99% of my invasions is against a 3 squad that are all rocking high poise bleed and heavy projectile spam builds. You almost have to go with the super unfair quick death builds that most invaders are running these days.