Elden Ring has quickly become infamous for its brutally hard difficulty, but players have found at least one glitch that may help make the insanity more bearable during harrowing moments. As the stewards behind an internet-connected game, Elden Ring’s developers at FromSoftware made the controversial decision to not include a pause button, but what if we told you there’s a workaround? As it turns out, a few clever players have discovered one.
How to pause Elden Ring with a menu glitch
The Elden Ring pause functionality — which you might as well describe as a glitch — gained most of its traction courtesy of a short video tutorial published by Dark Souls YouTuber Iron Pineapple on Twitter. You can watch the steps below, but we’ll describe the process in more detail for those who need it.
- Bring up your inventory and enter the menu.
- Press the menu/help button.
- Select the “menu explanation” option.
Once you enter this menu, all enemies in the game will stop moving. Because it requires a couple of button presses to accomplish it’s probably hard to do during a difficult boss battle, but it can definitely be leveraged quite easily while exploring the open world. This does appear to be a kind of glitch we imagine FromSoftware may patch it out in a future update, but, for now, you’re able to pause to your heart’s content.
How to pause Elden Ring via a PC mod
Given how obviously frustrating the official omission of a pause button is, PC modders were also quick to use their own means to remedy the problem. Crafted by Nexus Mods user TechieW, Elden Ring’s “Pause the Game” mod lets players stop the game simply by pressing “P” on the keyboard. This key can be remapped as necessary by editing a text file.
For those who’ve installed PC mods before the process will be fairly familiar. It just requires pasting two bespoke folders and a single .dll file into the game’s installation directory.
The fix may be easy to install, but it’s worth noting that it will be flagged as cheating via the Easy Anti-Cheat software embedded in the game. With this in mind, the mod maker directs users toward an additional tool designed to disable anti-cheat for as long as you need it turned off.
If you’re playing Elden Ring on PC, the “Pause the Game” mod seems like a slightly better solution given that it will likely remain functional even after FromSoftware patches the inventory glitch described above. We suspect TechieW will ensure their mod functions after major updates, allowing the fix to remain relevant for longer. That’s all you need to know about pausing Elden Ring.
