The latest Elden Ring update appears to have fixed a number of the game's quests that were broken at launch.
Earlier this week, resetera forum user Finale Fireworker outlined the "bizarre state" of a number of "busted" endgame quests. The lengthy post does contain late-game spoilers, so consider this your official warning.
Finale Fireworker highlights the case of Nepheli Loux, an Elden Ring character linked to several of the major figures you encounter throughout the game. Nepheli can eventually be brought to the Roundtable Hold, and depending on what item you give her, her questline can branch in two directions. Choosing the 'positive' option, however, doesn't allow her story to progress, even after the events of the end of the game - Nepheli remains in the hold, parroting the same, static dialogue.
Datamining uncovered a series of actions that were supposed to take place after the positive outcome was reached, featuring an entire dialogue with a different character, but appeared to be accidentally missing, or deliberately cut from the game. Fortunately, today's Elden Ring 1.03 update appears to have solved the issue - FromSoftware confirmed that "new quest phases" had been added for Nepheli, as well as linked NPCs Kenneth Haight and the light- fingered Gatekeeper Gostoc. Elsewhere, in another seemingly-unfinished quest, were new phases for Diallos.
An interesting note is that for some time, players weren't 100% sure that the quests were broken. Finale Fireworker points out that there was always a chance that the progression barrier was so obscure that no-one had found it yet, an idea that other players had also picked up on.
objectively funny that a handful of quest lines in Elden Ring were broken at launch but because of the lack of quest log and general structure of the game most people other than dataminers were just like “hmmm mysterious. Guess it ends here or I’m not triggering something.”March 17, 2022
While the good news is that the patch appears to have fixed the quests, the bad news is that it's nerfed a whole bunch of popular strategies. Most upsetting of those is the nerf to the Mimic Tear summon, which players are already documenting their distress over.
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