In the Lands Between of Elden Ring, you will explore lots of places, but you will also find places that will test your patience.
- Lake of Rot. Take the traditional poison swamp, have it inflict Scarlet Rot (essentially Poison on steroids), and make it so that the only respite from the Rot is various platforms you need to book it towards. It also inflicts Rot the fastest of any of the swamp locations. Unlike the Scarlet Rot swamp in the Caelid Wilds, you cannot use Torrent to avoid the status. And woe to you if you had previously defeated the Dragonkin Soldier boss, as doing so causes another one to spawn right in the middle of the lake where it can be a real pain in the ass.
- The Abandoned Cave is a very short dungeon, but it's almost entirely a miniature Scarlet Rot swamp, complete with rot geysers that can eat your health while you're forced to wade in rot-inducing water. It's also annoying to reach, requiring the player to go to a specific spot in Caelid and cross a fallen tree that is easy to slide off and fall to death. The cave is also populated with Servants of Rot, whose own attacks can inflict poison. You'll have to rush through the cavern before the Rot eats you alive and your healing supplies run out, and you still have to contend with a pair of Cleanrot Knights at the end. And if you ever need to farm runes for any reason, you'll have to resign yourself to doing this cave at least once since the talisman that increases rune acquisition from enemies is the reward for clearing it.
- For players that are new to the game, Sellia Crystal Tunnel is an absolute nightmare to go through. While the dungeon may be optional and is intended for players to attempt around the midway point of the game, it is very easy to end up in there by accident within the first couple hours of gameplay. Specifically, should the player open a rigged chest where Flying Dragon Agheel spawns, which is not helped that it's also conveniently place by a Twinblade, they'll get teleported to the dungeon, where they'll meet with the incredibly durable Miners and the absolutely dangerous Kindred of Rot, both of which can easily One-Hit Kill a low-levelled player. To make matters worse, if players get transported here via the aforementioned boobytrapped chest, they cannot teleport out of the cave until they rest at a site of grace. Making matters worse, despite it having the appearance of a mine, the way to the exit from the spot the teleporter drops you at it is down, rather than up as your instincts would suggest, leading to unaware players dying repeatedly while trying to fight their way deeper in rather than out. Get too turned around and go the wrong way, and you might end up at your first encounter with a Fallingstar Beast, who is highly resistant to almost any form of damage you can dish out early on. The only saving grace is that it contains a decent amount of materials found later in the game which savvy players can get early, but considering the dungeon poses a formidable challenge even to players who have defeated an Elden Lord or two, newer players often opt to bolt from the cave at their first chance and never look back.
- There are four types of mini-dungeons around the world map: mines, caves, catacombs, and hero's graves. Of these four, hero's graves are the most consistently annoying. There are two gimmicks, but the most notorious one involves dodging a mechanical chariot that winds up and down long sloped hallways. You have to duck into cubbyholes to dodge it, since it does incredible amounts of damage on contact even if it so much as scrapes against you while jutting out a bit from a safe spot, all the while dealing with enemies constantly harassing you. The other mini-dungeon types are fairly easy to deal with, but don't be surprised if even skilled players shy away from graves, even despite the overall better loot they contain in comparison to other mini-dungeon types.
- Raya Lucaria can become this if you don't have good ranged options. Most enemies here are sorcerers, making it easy for them to harass you at a distance while you fruitlessly charge forward into them. They're often positioned in difficult or advantageous spots, requiring you to run through an artillery barrage of glintstones. Raya Lucaria is also one of the game's worst offenders of Checkpoint Starvation — sites of grace are spread out quite far apart from one another, and you commonly have to endure hordes of enemies or traps before you get a moment of respite or can reach the area's bosses.
- The hidden passage that leads towards the Frenzied Flame Proscription, the location required for the Lord of the Frenzied Flame ending, is unique because it's not because of the enemies that make it difficult, it's the platforming. Getting down there is a huge challenge, as it involves hopping across tiny platforms, and the slightest mistake is a lethal drop. There's even some good loot on the way down to make things even more tempting. This platforming puzzle has claimed countless lives, and you're likely to see the place painted with bloodstains in online mode.
- If you intend to go to Caelid early, you'll quickly find out that it has one of the most apocalyptic settings in fantasy games, not being helped by the presence of nightmarish enemies. However, most of them are nothing compared to the northern part of Caelid, called Dragonbarrow. Due to wonky scaling shenanigans, Dragonbarrow is much harder compared to all other places in Caelid, because every enemy over there is capable of either one-hitting you if you're only leveled for the other areas of Caelid, and taking a good quarter of your health otherwise if you're properly leveled. Not to mention, D's sidequest has a teleporter you can use to get there much earlier, though thankfully, this only teleports you inside of the Bestial Sanctum.
- Crumbling Farum Azula, the penultimate area explored in the main game. Painful platforming sections between crumbling architecture suspended above a looming Bottomless Pit, droves of some of the toughest (and most annoying) foes the game can throw at you, including beefy versions of the Banished Knights and Warhawks as well as several lightning-spewing dragons (each and every one a Boss in Mook Clothing), no clear path of progression towards the end goal with next to no frame of reference to where you even are half the time, and several painful boss encounters, with the two mandatory ones, the Godskin Duo and Maliketh the Black Blade, up there as some of the most difficult fights in the whole series. You get a Final Dungeon Preview of this area from one of the portals you can take at the Four Belfries, and you'll soon know what's in store for you when you get demolished by the two Beastmen prowling about the area.
- The Haligtree, being the Brutal Bonus Level, is notoriously hard for many reasons as the other levels on this list. Accessing the Haligtree itself is straightforward, but painful due to the invisible Black Knife Assassins and Albinauric Archers that guard the way to access it in the first place. Once you're in the Haligtree proper, you're navigating narrow branches over a Bottomless Pit which makes dodging the projectiles of the Oracle Envoys very difficult. It doesn't get better when you reach Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree, as you encounter beefed-up versions of the toughest enemies in the game who soak up a ton of damage and can easily one-shot even high Vigor players. Worse, many enemies inflict the Scarlet Rot status ailment, which makes traversing the dungeon all the more tedious and painful. This culminates in Malenia, who many consider to be the most difficult boss fight in the game.
