What are notes and what do they do in Elden Ring?

The merchants you find in Elden Ring are critical to giving you various items that you can use throughout your adventure. Not only do they sell necessary tools and crafting recipes to you, but some merchants may have notes on them. Unfortunately, the notes are incredibly vague and don’t offer direct guidance. This guide will cover what notes are in Elden Ring and what they do in the game.

You can find the notes on a merchant by investigating their Info tab when looking to buy an item. The item effect will typically say, “Note imparting knowledge in brief,” with little else. These notes provide you with small details about the Elden Ring world, points of interest you’ll want to investigate and give you small leads that you can use to further explore the world with a bit more of a level head.

After purchasing a note, you can find them in the Info tab of your inventory. You’ll need to directly read a note to see what it says from your list. For example, after purchasing the Note: Waypoint Ruins from one of the first merchants and reading it gave us intel about how something was lurking in the waypoint ruins on the roads through Limgrave. While the exact threat or point of interest was not explicitly detailed, it does give us a small idea of what could be further outside of Limgrave and where we had to go.

Whenever picking up notes, make sure to read them in your inventory to learn more about the Elden Ring’s world. Reading these can lead you off the beaten path or prepare you for formidable enemies waiting for you on the road.