‘Elden Ring’ dataminer discovers cut quest and NPC involving dreams

FromSoftware game modder and dataminer Lance McDonald has uncovered a cut non-player character (NPC) questline in Elden Ring.

Spotted by PC Gamer, the NPC was to be located at the Stormhill Shack (formerly known as Scavenger’s Shack), where the player meets NPC Roderika in the final release of the game. However, during the game’s network test late last year, the shack was empty.

McDonald was able to bring back the NPC that was initially intended to live there, someone called Monk Jigo.

According to PC Gamer, Jigo had been “seduced by the good lady alcohol” and requests the player help them in securing the ingredients of the “Dreambrew,” a legendary liquor with magical properties.

McDonald suggests that the Dreambrew was intended to be used by players to unlock additional dialogue with NPCs. For example, he gave a batch of the Dreambrew to Merchant Kalé, which put them to sleep and in turn revealed a set of subtitles that briefly described his nightmare of being tortured by the Frenzied Flame.

McDonald also suggests this is why the game initially had non-combative sleeping animals all over the game world.

The Dreambrew appears to be part of a long-running quest, with distillable Dream Mist supplying the item and providing another collectable across The Lands Between, along with the subsequent NPC dialogue providing more context to Elden Ring’s lore.

“So it’s kind of amazing to me that such an in-depth mechanic was cut from Elden Ring, being able to collect dreams from sleeping creatures, visit an entirely cut NPC character, receive a special drink and get entirely new conversations from otherwise familiar characters,” McDonald wrote in the video description.

Elden Ring has been the big hit of this year so far, with players repeatedly breaking the speedrunning record and finding new and unconventional ways to complete the game.

In other news, Sucker Punch has stopped “actively working” on additional patches and content for Ghost Of Tsushima.