Elden Ring: No Real Rivers

When we go out of the house, we can go anywhere and walk there for a while. And most of us have probably encountered flowing waters like streams, brooks and rivers. But if we try to do the same in Elden Ring, you'll notice something different. Although we often see water there, we rarely see rivers. What's even more surprising is that it took me nearly a year to discover this.

On the Elden Ring subreddit, user Economics_Various made a post about how many swamps, lakes, and ponds you can find in Lands Between. "However, there's no real sense of streams, reed beds, rivers and idyllic riverbanks." When you look at it carefully, these continental watersheds don't really work. Also, the water in these lakes and ponds has nowhere to go. Logically, these waters should either floor or dry up, depending on the weather conditions. But, they just sit there quietly, looking so perfect and unreal.

For this, some readers and many Redditors may ask, "Siofra River and Ainsel River are not rivers?" In fact, neither of these rivers is really a river, even though they have "river" in their names. Judging from the distance to Siofra River, its water pours down from above. Because this is not really a horizontal flow, Siofra River is more like a wetland. And most of the water in Ainsel River flows through waterfalls between giant ant hives, so it's not really a river either.

In Elden Ring, some areas have zero water, such as Caelid, Altus Plateau and Volcano areas. There is a "river" between Weeping Peninsula and Limgrave. In fact, it is an ocean and separates these two continents. There is also a huge knee-high lake called Raya Lucaria. I guess, in Mountaintop of the Giants, there may be a river connecting Consecrated Snowfield and Freezing Lake. However, the river did not flow because it was frozen over. Maybe there will be water down there, but if it can go somewhere else, the ice in the lake will collapse, so it can't go anywhere.

For Limgrave, I think there might be a river somewhere that connects Agheel Lake to the the area of sea. And the area of sea is just south of the Divine Tower of Limgrave. But, at Murkwater Catacombs, there is a huge cliff that divides that river. In addition, from the surface of this area, it looks more like a fjord, with water all settling at the bottom, rather than being formed by a river. So, I think Lands Between may have had huge glaciers previously, or maybe the continents were once torn apart by a powerful force.

Below the same post, some fans suggested that the lack of a river meant Lands Between had been stuck in place. Other fans felt that animation was too difficult for FromSoftware. All in all, in Elden Ring, there are no rivers.

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