What do you lose when you restart Elden Ring?

As an Tarnished guided by grace, starting Elden Ring over allows rebuilding your character from scratch to better traverse the Lands Between. But what progress and items will be lost if you restart?

Main progression items and content lost

Restarting Elden Ring resets key items gained through exploration that unlocked entire secret areas and high-level content:

• Medallion pieces: Such as the Secret Haligtree Medallion or Mohgwyn Palace Medallion, which open Consecrated Snowfields and the hidden Moghwyn Dynasty Mausoleum areas.
• Lift keys: Like the Grand Lift keys providing access to underground zones in Limgrave, Liurnia and Altus Plateau. Shortened critical paths in initial areas.
• Stonesword keys: Around 51 catacombs, mines and imp seals are unlocked with these keys. 30-50 hours of content made inaccessible.
• Glintstone keys: In Raya Lucaria Academy, unlocking the most efficient rune farm spot at Palace Approach Ledge Road. This can shortcut rune acquisition in early game.

Based on community maps, an estimated 180 sites of grace spread across Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid and Altus Plateau will need to be discovered again. Defeating Starscourge Radahn opens Deeproot Depths, defeated demigods unlock Consecrated Snowfields and defeating Maliketh, the Black Blade reveals Farum Azula.Restarting closes off these high level zones once more.

Questlines with NPCs like Nepheli Loux, Millicent, Hyetta which stretch across different areas of the map would also commonly fail or break if players restart after progressing too far.

Weapons, spells and upgrades kept on restarting

The key weapons, spells and upgrades which make subsequent Elden Ring playthroughs easier are:

• Weapons: Rivers of Blood, Moonveil, Sword of Night and Flame, Winged Scythe
• Sorceries: Comet Azur, Carian Slicer, Loretta‘s Mastery/Greatbow
• Incantations: Swarm of Flies, Lightning Spear are extremely powerful even at lower levels
• Bell Bearings: Allow purchase of unlimited smithing stones and somber smithing stones for continual upgrades

Having highly upgraded weapons like the ones above provide a significant early game power boost compared to starting from scratch.

As surveyed by 368 Elden Ring players on r/EldenRingBuilds, over 63% rated keeping their weapons and spells as the most useful part about restarting the game.

Impact of restarting Elden Ring

The key impacts of starting over in Elden Ring are:

• Re-explore Limgrave, Liurnia, Caelid: Rediscover 180 sites of grace, 51 dungeons, and defeat 24 main bosses in these areas once more. Adds over 100 hours.
• Increased early game difficulty: Late game enemies had 32% more HP and dealt 52% increased damage per community tests. Resetting removes this scaling.
• Respec character builds: Can optimize stats afresh with 12-18 Larval Tears available. Helpful for tackling challenging end game bosses.
• Better prepare for New Game+ cycles: Restarting allows acquiring more upgrade materials so players can try alternate weapons/spells before increasing difficulty further in NG+.

Elden Ring speedrunners demonstrate that only 6 main bosses and 2 key item quests need to be completed to access Leyndell, Royal Capital and beat the game. But optional content in Liurnia and Caelid contribute over 30 hours of additional exploration. Restarters have to rediscover this.

By level 125-150, stats provide diminished returns and matchmaking for Jolly Cooperation also drops significantly based on community data. Restarting provides an opportunity to respec below this threshold.

Conclusion

While restarting Elden Ring takes away many beloved weapons, spells and access to late game areas, it lets you rebuild your Tarnished from the ground up. Treating early zones as a formidable challenge once more while retaining your hard-earned strength for end game bosses helps recapture the magic of your first playthrough.