Elden Ring has a total of six different endings, four of which are variations of the ‘standard’ ending, while the other two endings are unique. Based on achievement and trophy data, which have most players seen?
We’re naturally going to run into some spoilers when discussing Elden Ring endings, so consider this your fair warning to nope out now if you’re still working through the Elden Ring achievements and want to avoid having anything ruined. But if you’re done with the game — or simply don’t care — read on for a fairly surprising breakdown of how the three ending types stack up in terms of achievement and trophy unlocks across multiple platforms.
Lord of Frenzied Flame ending
Let’s start with the least common unlock of the three, Lord of Frenzied Flame. It’s not too surprising to see this one at the bottom of the pile — it involves jumping through a ton of hoops, visiting areas that are well off the beaten path, and dealing with riddles and obstacles that very few people would overcome without the aid of a guide. This one has just a 4.4% unlock rate on Xbox (and almost four times that here on TA… good work, you lot), making Lord of Frenzied Flame comfortably the least commonly obtained of the three endings. Part of this will be to do with the non-trivial tasks mentioned above, but another factor will likely be the fact that getting branded with the Frenzied Flame actually locks you out of getting the other two endings. This means that anyone looking to save-scum using cloud saves to get all three endings in one playthrough would need to save this one for last. (edit: apparently it is actually possible to reverse the brand and get other endings after this one, though many guides were written prior to this discovery and recommend saving this ending for last, so I think the point still stands, to some degree…)
Looking over the fence at the PlayStation numbers, unlock rates are much higher than on Xbox, with 9% on PS4 and 12.2% on PS5, but with both still being the lowest rates among the three endings on their respective platforms. Meanwhile, over on Steam, Lord of Frenzied Flame sits at 10.6% and is the rarest achievement on the list besides the platinum-style ‘unlock all achievements’ one. This looks to be common across all versions, in fact.
Elden Lord ending
Interestingly, coming in second is the vanilla ending, which is doubly shocking considering that there are a whopping four different variants of it that can be reached by completing specific questlines for a selection of key Elden Ring NPCs. The basic version of Elden Lord, unlike the other two unique endings, has no specific unlock requirements, so we’d have expected this one to be most common by some margin. The unlock rate on Xbox does leap up to 8.2% (and just over 20% just going on TA numbers), but it’s still unexpected to see by far the simplest ending tracking a good bit behind a far more complicated one.
Once again, the story is the same on PlayStation, with this ending sitting in the middle of the pack. And once again, unlock percentages are greater, sitting at 12.8% on PS4 and 16.1% on PS5. Steam numbers come in almost on par with PS5 at 15.6%… are Xbox players simply worse at Elden Ring than those on other platforms, or could the ever-present distraction of Xbox Game Pass be keeping many Xbox Tarnished from fulfilling their destiny as quickly as others? In fairness, Sony players have had the benefit of more FromSoft experience thanks to the likes of Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls being system exclusives (twice, in the case of Demon’s Souls), while PC players have been able to blast through Elden Ring with all sorts of crazy speedrun strats, so Xbox players were always going to be on the back foot here.
Age of the Stars ending
Finally, we reach Age of the Stars, perhaps the most interesting and elaborate of the three main ending types, but also, surprisingly, by far the most common. Why surprisingly? Well, this ending involves following a lengthy questline that will drag you all over the Lands Between, taking in optional areas and bosses aplenty, and requiring a few steps that most players probably wouldn’t even think to try out. 10% of Xbox players have seen this quest through, though (and more than a quarter of TA players), but why is this complex ending the one most Tarnished have reached? There are a couple of possible reasons here. For one thing, completing Ranni’s quests rewards players with the Dark Moon Greatsword — Elden Ring’s version of the Souls series’ wildly popular Moonlight Greatsword — so some will likely have only completed the mission for the weapon, unaware that there was also an ending related to it. Also, it’s worth noting that a variant of the Elden Lord ending (the one for completing Fia’s questline) and an optional boss with an achievement tied to it both require significant progress in Ranni’s quest to reach, nudging the Tarnished even closer to this ending as they chase other goals.
Again, though, PlayStation players have us beat, with 17.1% on PS4 and 20.7% on PS5 coming to Ranni’s aid to finish Elden Ring maidenless no longer. Steam players seem thirstier still, with 22.1% of players getting the Age of the Stars ending, so once again that’s around double the amount of the player base across these platforms that has reached this particular finale compared to Xbox numbers. Pretty interesting… we’re just going to have to try harder, folks.
Since getting the full completion requires you to see all three endings (any of the four variants of Elden Lord counts for that achievement), the 1,000G rate was always going to be lower than that for the rarest ending achievement, so 4.4% in this case. Actually, it’s a good bit lower — the imaginatively named platinum-style Elden Ring achievement for unlocking all the others sits at just 1.8% on Xbox. For TA alone, it’s 11.8%, compared to Lord of Frenzied Flame’s 16.3%. As before, though, other systems are way out in front when comparing base platform values, with Steam currently at 6.2% with the full completion and PS4 just behind with 5.6%, but PS5 claims the throne with an impressive 8.6% of players rocking the platinum. Considering it has been out for over two months now and the numbers are still this low (especially here on Xbox), it just goes to show what an absolute beast of a game Elden Ring truly is.
Done with Elden Ring? What was your favourite ending, and which gave you most trouble? Let us know down below!
