3 Ways to Pause Elden Ring

This is a ‘Git Gud’ Safe Zone

Prepared by Joe

We’ve all been there when you are untethered by Radahn area attacks in phase II and you are completely telegraphed into his move set, torch in hand, ready to pounce once your 1-2 second attack window is achieved and suddenly the cries of the real world have set in and your baby just woke up from their nap.

You listen in fear, and agony, and verbally go “awwwwhhhhhhHHHHHHHH!” as you stroll to the crib with the sound of your Tarnished makes the same hideous death growl you’ve heard over 100 times at this point.

You don’t blame the baby, they don’t understand that “The game is online and I can’t pause it!”, but you’ve come to the realization that your time isn’t infinite, and entropy has set in. The games you’ve once sat and enjoyed, undisturbed, and immersed in can easily be broken at a second’s notice.

Dog

Our favorite GOTY winner Elden Ring showed the world that we can have games that exist without patronizing the player and having a truly “Mature” game experience that requires you to not rely on Atreus and Aloy spoiling every puzzle.

This is a game built on being attentive to your surroundings, doing your own leg work to figure out enemy weaknesses, and challenging the player to “earn the right” to exist in its world.

It’s truly a phenomenal title, but is plagued by one aspect that has hindered every mainline Souls game since its inception: The lack of a pause button. People get VERY angry when this is brought up… Anyways, here are three fun and effective ways to pause Elden Ring. 

1: The Obvious One

The menu looks like this. Behold!

If you are even somewhat familiar with the subject, You have seen comments stating that you can actually pause the game already by going to a menu (following or proceeding with a smug remark about being bad at the game for some reason). It is literally just the menu explanation in the map and you can achieve this on any console just by going into any menu, or even the map, Go into a help menu, and then go to menu explanation.

• Consoles: All
• Method: Menu
• Mode: Offline
• Set up time: 0 (Unintended game function)
• Pros: Accessible without modding
• Cons: Time taken for multiple button presses

There you go, game paused. This will work in any console as long as you play offline. However, the issue with this is that it’s not as instantaneous as one would prefer, and is best done in a safe zone anyway, where you might not even need to pause the game. 

2: Pause Elden Ring Through Decky Loader

Step 1: Download Pause the Game

I will do you one better, Why not just press one button and pause literally everything instantaneously? And what if I told you you might already have what you need to be downloaded? EmuDeck users May have already come across the tool Decky Loader that applies on-the-go modifications to your steam deck on the fly through plugins and is easily accessed through the UI.

There’s a delightful little plug-in in the store that is simply called “Pause the game” That does just that. Pause the game. Once installed you will notice that you can enter a menu and then select pause OR You can set it up so that you can effectively pause any title just by pressing the Steam button.

• Consoles: Steam Deck
• Method: UI mod
• Mode: Offline
• Set up time: 5min (with Decky) 10min (without Decky)
• Pros: Instant pausing system-wide, quick setup
• Cons: Steam Deck only, dependant on Decky functioning

This requires very minimal setup and is a game changer for any title that has un-pausable cutscenes. I can’t recommend this enough for any Steam Deck user, so just do it. 

3: Straight up Modding the Game

Okay, I’ll do you one worse: How about applying mods directly to the game itself? Yes, people have spent blood, sweat, tears, and sugar-free Monster Energy painstakingly coding the function to pause the game through the use of a mod loader. Anyone with experience modding Dark Souls III or Skyrim knows that mod loaders provide a bridge between the game and your hubris (mods), and anyone who didn’t before knows now. This is usually PC only, but you can pull this off on Steam Deck!

Downloading and setting up the mod loader takes time, but it’s straightforward and only requires your PC of choice. Downloading the mod is even easier. What will mess with your noggin is troubleshooting if it doesn’t work right away, but other than that you can pick your favorite button combo and pause instantly for optimal bathroom breaks.

• Consoles: PC, Steam Deck
• Method: Game mod
• Mode: Offline (duh)
• Set up time: 15-20min (hopefully)
• Pros: Game-level pausing with the ability to layer on more mods.
• Cons: Setup is more involved and less beginner-friendly

While Retro Handhelds doesn’t have an official modding tutorial for Elden Ring, please check out this video by Whitehawkx for an easy-to-follow breakdown. You can find the mod here!

Conclusion of Some Sort

Dark Souls – Praise the Sun!

Thanks for not clicking off! However, there is no useful information beyond this point. If you are going for a 100% article run, here’s a tidbit on why Souls-like games ACTUALLY don’t let you pause, and the answer will shock you. I can’t find one.

Literally article after article, forum after forum, complete with bible verse quotes and all-caps rants, I cannot find an actual confirmed reason that makes rational sense other than silly elitist and mean-spirited riffraff about making the game arbitrarily harder and making groundbreaking innovations that transcend contemporary game design.

My opinion? The simplest one you can have. The online is made out of literal sticks and duct tape. With the game intended to be always online, Fromsoftware never bothered to code it into offline mode, or deliberately to have parity between the two modes.

Pure salt feat. a Legend of Zelda ad.

Japanese developers have a tendency to simplify how they handle online in their titles, and I believe that the engine configuration and net code that Souls titles use just don’t deal with syncing and desyncing from the server while in game. If your Internet blips even slightly, you get kicked to the title screen regardless.

Monster Hunter has a similar situation, but even that has a pause baked into the UI in solo mode AND the ability to choose which mode you want while in the game (through the hub only, but you get what I mean). It’s really not a big deal, and Souls titles have it already baked in if you force it. Maybe you just don’t want to get raided and just want to flick online off for a bit, that will cost you an entire reboot.

If you aren’t convinced that their online system is goofy, take the base game post-DLC for instance. I didn’t buy the DLC, but the game won’t connect me to the servers because their infrastructure kicks me out for not having one particular file saved locally. It’s been broken since the DLC was released on Steam Deck to this day.

Literally just because I didn’t buy the DLC

As a staunch Famito Ueda and Kingdom Come Deliverance fan, this jank doesn’t make me dislike the game.  You will often see the most compelling artistic and gameplay innovation in some of the most janky and unoptimized settings.

That being said, once those settings become optimized, you might find it hard to go back. Until then, I use the Decky plug-in to pause Elden Ring and log off the “Pausing in Souls Games” side of the internet to save my sanity.

What did you think of this article? Let us know in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!

This page may contain affiliate links, by purchasing something through a link, Retro Handhelds may earn a small commission on the sale at no additional cost to you.