Elden Ring Secrets Most Players Miss — And What They Might Mean for a Sequel

I was 90 hours into my first playthrough when I found the Deeproot Depths. Ninety hours. I had beaten Malenia, cleared Crumbling Farum Azula, and was about to fight the final boss when I stumbled into an entire underground region I had completely missed.

Elden Ring doesn't tell you anything. You just wander around and occasionally discover an entire civilization beneath the earth. I love this game. It's kind of absurd how much stuff is hidden in plain sight. tbh, I'm still finding new things on my fourth playthrough.

Anyway, here are the secrets that most people miss, plus some speculation on how the game's unresolved mysteries could point toward a sequel. Some of this is well-known among hardcore fans, some of it I only found because someone on Reddit posted about it three years later.

The Deeproot Depths: The Hidden Region Most Players Skip

This is the biggest missable area in the game. To get there, you need to find a hidden coffin in the Siofra Aqueduct area (which is itself hidden beneath Nokron). Touch the coffin and it takes you to a boss fight against the Valiant Gargoyles. Beat them, rest in the coffin at the back of the arena, and you arrive at Deeproot Depths.

Deeproot Depths has some wild stuff. Godwyn's corpse (enormous, disgusting, crucial to the lore), a rematch against Fia's Champions, and access to one of the game's endings (Age of Duskborn). There's also a teleporter to Leyndell that bypasses the Draconic Tree Sentinel. Though honestly, if you've made it this far, you probably already have access to the capital.

This area matters for sequel speculation because Godwyn's corpse is still growing. The deathroot spreading from his body is corrupting the Lands Between, and we never actually resolve this. Fia's ending doesn't stop it. It just makes Those Who Live in Death a legitimate part of the world order. Godwyn's body and the deathroot plague feel like a setup for something bigger. I'd bet money this gets revisited in some form.

Ranni's Questline and the Age of Stars

Ranni's questline is probably the most involved NPC quest in any FromSoftware game. You have to find her in three different locations, serve her as a vassal, help Blaidd through his existential crisis, kill a Baleful Shadow in a secret area of Nokstella, defeat Astel (one of the most visually stunning bosses in the game, seriously), give Ranni a ring in a cathedral beneath the earth... it goes on.

The Age of Stars ending is the only ending where you leave the Lands Between entirely, traveling with Ranni into space. Or whatever the "dark path of the stars" actually means. This ending raises more questions than it answers. Where are you going? What's out there? The stars in Elden Ring lore are tied to fate itself, so leaving with Ranni implies you're rejecting the Greater Will's influence entirely.

A sequel set after the Age of Stars, exploring what's beyond the Lands Between, would be incredible. Even as a DLC, the concept of outer space in Elden Ring's cosmology is barely touched. There's so much potential there.

Placidusax and the Storm Beyond Time

Crumbling Farum Azula is already a required area, but most people miss the secret boss. Dragonlord Placidusax is hidden behind a platform you have to drop down to from a specific ledge. There's no indication it's there. You just have to know, or stumble onto it, or read a guide like this one.

Placidusax was the Elden Lord before the Age of the Erdtree. His arena exists "beyond time." When you enter, the sky reverses and the storm around Farum Azula freezes. The implications are huge. There was an age before Marika, before the Erdtree, ruled by dragons. The Elden Ring (or some version of it) existed back then.

This almost certainly matters for the future of the IP. A prequel exploring the Age of Dragons, or a sequel where the ancient dragon lords return, has enormous narrative potential. FromSoftware has laid the groundwork. They just haven't used it yet.

The Frenzied Flame Proscription

Deep beneath Leyndell, behind a hidden wall in the Subterranean Shunning-Grounds, you'll find the Three Fingers. Let them embrace you and you're locked into the Frenzied Flame ending. The one where you burn everything to ash.

What's interesting for sequel speculation: the Frenzied Flame is an outer god, like the Greater Will. And outer gods can't really be "defeated." They exist outside the world and can only be sealed or appeased. If you don't take the Frenzied Flame ending, the Three Fingers are still down there. Melina is still out there somewhere, hunting you if you chose Frenzy. These are unresolved threads that a sequel could pick up.

Minor Secrets Worth Knowing

A few other things I've found across multiple playthroughs that most guides don't mention.

The invisible scarab in Consecrated Snowfield. Northeast of the Inner Consecrated Snowfield Site of Grace, there's a scarab that's completely invisible. You can hear it. You have to swing at the air until you hit it. It drops an Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone. I spent like ten minutes swatting at nothing before I got it.

Boc's full questline. Most people find Boc as a tree in Limgrave and never see him again. If you follow his quest through Liurnia, Leyndell, and the Mountaintops, he eventually asks you to help him be "reborn" by Rennala. You can either give him a Larval Tear (which kills him -- don't do this) or use the "You're Beautiful" Prattling Pate near him (which saves him and gives you the "My Beloved" gesture). The Prattling Pate solution is never explained anywhere in the game. I found it by accident.

The teleporter trap chests. There are several chests throughout the world that teleport you to high-level areas. The most infamous is in the Dragon-Burnt Ruins in Limgrave. It sends you to the Sellia Crystal Tunnel in Caelid, and you can't teleport out until you rest at a Site of Grace. Which is past a bunch of enemies that will one-shot a low-level character. Whoever designed this was laughing, I guarantee it.

And honestly, there's dozens more. The walking mausoleums that duplicate boss remembrances. The invisible bridges in the Mountaintops. The fact you can kill merchants and turn in their bell bearings at the Roundtable Hold. I could keep going but you get the idea. The game is packed with stuff like this.

What this means for Elden Ring 2

I don't think FromSoftware put this many unresolved threads in the game by accident. The deathroot plague. The outer gods. The age beyond the stars. The ancient dragons. Miquella's entire story arc in the DLC. These weren't wrapped up. They were teased.

A direct sequel might be years away, but the lore of Elden Ring was clearly designed with expansion in mind. Whether that comes as another DLC, a spin-off, or eventually Elden Ring 2, the threads are there. FromSoftware just needs to decide when to pull on them.

Sort of reassuring, honestly. Even if we're waiting a long time, at least we know the world has more stories to tell.