How to work around Elden Ring’s lack of pause

From Software is famous for a lot of things. They’re the much celebrated creators of the brutally difficult Souls series of games. They’re also known for their somewhat unwieldy gaming interfaces. Elden Ring is no exception to this rule.

While playing Elden Ring, you can’t pause the game. You use your D-pad to navigate the in-game menus because your stick will still control your character. In a perfect world, this wouldn’t be an issue. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

So, what happens if you’re tooling around in Elden Ring and your hair catches on fire?

Oh no, your hair!

First, don’t panic. That just makes the fire angrier. Then check your in-game surroundings. If your character is in a safe zone, it’s very unlikely that anything is going to happen. That’s not to say that if you put your controller down to douse your head in fish tank that you’ll come back to a living character, but odds are that you’ll be fine.

If you absolutely have to exit the game, you can save and quit at any time. This seems like it should just be the answer, but there’s a catch. As I mentioned earlier, even when you are in the games menus, the game keeps running, and From Software has a … challenging UI. In order to save and quit from the game proper requires seven button presses. On a controller you’ll end up hitting the combination of start – up – A – LB – A – left – A. Easy! Unless you’re in combat or even slightly pressed.

Finally, and this one is kind of iffy, you can suspend the game. On consoles this means hitting the console button to go to the menu, on PC it means going into suspended power mode. This one is more useful on consoles than on PC, where it has a greater chance of affecting the game’s online features.

It’s also worth noting that if your console or PC “accidentally” has a power “incident,” the game has an autosave feature. While it’s nice to know your progress won’t be wholly lost if something like that happens, you will have to sit through From Software’s version of Mr. Resetti yelling at you.

Now, armed with this knowledge, you should be able to douse your hair and not lose much progress in Elden Ring. You’re welcome! Once your hair is out, please check out our review of Elden Ring.