In the Elden Ring, you could once elicit the darkest secrets from NPCs with a drink
FromSoftware games are notorious among fans for spotting a lot of removed content post-release. Because of its size alone, Elden Ring is a treat for modders and dataminers, who will also find a number of things here. This includes an entire quest that has its own game mechanic: “Mother Alcohol”.
What is this quest?
- The well-known dataminer Lance McDonald has discovered a whole quest including NPC and various associated mechanics in the files of Elden Ring.
- In this quest you have to go in search of so-called “Sleep Mist” for the monk Jiko.
- In exchange for this, you will in turn receive “Dreambrew”, which roughly means “Traumbräu” or “Traumgebräu” in German.
- Behind this mechanism is a possibility to elicit further information in new lines of dialogue from other NPCs through the drink.
Lance recovered the data he was able to find and made it work in a previous version of the Elden Ring PS4 version. Here you can watch everything in the video:
Cut quest had its own “dream” mechanic
This is how the quest goes: Interestingly, the NPC is in the hut where you will find the NPC Roderika in the finished game. This is a key character in Elden Ring that allows you to improve ghosts.
In the network test version of Elden Ring, instead of Roderika, the monk Jiko could be found there. Like the other NPCs, this is a weird bird who claims to have been seduced by the “mother of alcohol”.
He then offers the “Dreambrew” drink if you bring him the right ingredients: Sleep Mist.
This is where other NPCs come into play that no longer exist in the Elden Ring. These are creatures like wolves or octopuses that lie dormant in the area. Unlike usual, these don’t wake up when you walk around them.
If the quest is active, you can see the dream mist swirling around their heads. For a drink you need 2 dream mists.
What’s the use of the brew? You can now give such a dream brew to other NPCs. In the video you can see how the dealer Kalé has to serve as an example.
As soon as he downs the dream brew, he falls asleep. However, the game’s subtitles reveal a detail that hints at a dark secret of the NPC. Apparently this worked for many, if not all, of the characters you can talk to.
But the concept of sleep and dreams also play a role in Elden Ring. There is sleep as a status effect, sleeping and dreaming has a direct relation to the demigod Miquella.
Interestingly, this aspect of lore hasn’t been covered much in the main game, while modders and dataminers have been increasing collect edited contentwho are directly or indirectly connected to Miquella. That’s why players already smell a possible topic for a potential DLC.
Mechanics should encourage exploration, still hidden a lot of cut dialogue
This is what the Dataminer says about the quest and its mechanics: According to Lance, the quest was probably intended as a way to reward players for exploring.
After all, with each dream one should uncover more information about the characters of the intermediate land. Elden Ring’s game files still contain a number of lines of dialogue that have been removed from the actual game.
The monk Jiko was originally supposed to have a much larger role in the main story of Elden Ring. Why FromSoftware chose to remove all of this remains speculation.
Lance also suspects that this content may be retained for later use. There has been speculation about possible DLCs since the release and with every further revelation of “Cut Content” by modders and data miners, they are inspired.
fun fact: A mechanic to elicit further story details from NPCs through an alcoholic drink already existed in a FromSoftware game before.
The last title before Elden Ring, Sekiro, had exactly such a mechanic. You could find different varieties of Sake in the game world and give it as a gift to certain NPCs.
This resulted in a further discussion in which the characters gave insights into their thoughts and backgrounds, or even gave useful tips.
If you want to know more about Sekiro, we have already introduced it to you in our special: Having fun with Elden Ring? Here are 2 games from the same creators that you should definitely check out
Reference-mein-mmo.de
