ELDEN RING REBORN

A Scholar of the First Sin-style total conversion mod for Elden Ring. 

- Nova Smith

Elden Ring Reborn, a total conversion mod that switches up item and enemy placements, overhauls progression while adding a slew of quality of life improvements, is like hearing a club mix of your favourite song at a nightclub: the lows are filtered, the pitch and tempo are kicked up a little bit, and it’s structured in such a way that the chorus comes in harder, faster and stronger.

The most immediate change Reborn throws at you is the changed starting position. Beginning life anew on the Weeping Peninsula, your earliest hours will be fraught fending off ambushes and scrounging for smithing stones, readying yourself for a push into a heavily fortified Limgrave, and trying to get a sense of just how much is different.

The most impressive thing about the mod is how much it doesn’t feel like a mod at times – it has the texture of a community driven Scholar of the First Sin, like a brain trust of the Elden Ring community’s best and brightest convened under cover of night, hatching their own black knife plot to carve up FromSoftware’s behemoth opus and remake it in their own image. A real highlight from my opening hour was while dodging the arrows from the greatbow wielding colossus posted up outside of Castle Morne. Halfway through my charge I was ambushed by the Night’s Cavalry, and that moment of pure panic as I saw a black rider barrelling towards me had me grinning ear to ear. Elden Ring Reborn is full of inspired little moments like that.