How to save your game progress in Elden Ring

Among the critical acclaim received from media outlets and reviewers, Elden Ring comes with a handful of design choices that most of us would consider absurd? The fact that after 2-3 hours in the game you will start wondering whether your progress has been saved automatically, or you have to do it manually might be alarming to some new players.

Especially, accompanied by these two screens in the settings, at which point you may wonder “what if I had used ALT+F4?”:

Elden Ring's autosave mechanism on every significant game Action

Well, rest assured! Just like other Soulsborne games, Elden Ring saves your progress any time you perform a significant action like resting, killing a boss, activating a Site of Grace, purchasing an item, and more. The manual save as you quit the game is just another aspect of all these actions.

No going back

This of course raises another question. If the game controls all the saves, even the manual one, is it possible to create your own save and reload it in case you want to back? The answer here is no and it's one of Elden Ring's charms. Your actions stay with you until the end of your playthrough and you cannot revert them in any way.

No pauses

Ok, this one is a bit too “you live in the game” for me Since its launch it has not been possible to pause the game in Elden Ring, as it would be(?) an opportunity to collect yourself and strategize during the game. Thankfully, a pause game mod by Techiew has appeared on ModNexus that adds the much-needed pause functionality to the game.

Note that to be able to use the mod you will have to disable the anti-cheat mechanism of the game. I hope this clears the air regarding saving your progress and pausing the game. For more Elden Ring guides make sure to visit our Elden Ring hub!