Elden Ring mod turns the game's first merchant into a one-stop shop

(Image credit: Fromsoftware)

Merchant Kale is the first NPC you meet in Elden Ring that sells stuff: he's the dude you find just north of the Limgrave site of grace. Kale obviously sells low-level items, and you can later learn a gesture for him, and there's not all that much reason to return to him later—until now, that is.

A minor frustration I had with Elden Ring was reaching a relatively lategame stage without a bunch of low-level crafting and weapon upgrade items. It meant I had to look up either how to grind these things or how to get the appropriate bell bearing so that merchants would sell them.

Clearly something along these lines happened to modder Vawser, who has had enough of Elden Ring's parsimonious ways, and has now released the Grand Merchant mod. This "grants easy access to all items via Merchant Kale, similar to Honest Merchant from DS3. Everything is craftable for free." It will also let you get hold of spells and gestures from Kale.

The Elden Ring mod scene is slowly cranking into gear, with the projects becoming more ambitious (like one for seamless co-op through the Lands Between), chaotic (enemy randomiser mod) and in some cases plain funny (Tarnished with cat ears). Most will require a bit of fiddling with the game's anti-cheat software and some caution about online use, all of which we walk you through in our best Elden Ring mods guide.

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."