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Fextralife Crafting Material Style Guide

This style guide documents the style I've been using for crafting materials pages on the Fextralife wiki, such as Aeonian Butterfly. It's not meant to be authoritative so much as descriptive, although ideally any deviations from this style should be applied consistently to all crafting material pages.

I've gradually standardized more and more elements of the page as I've gone through the crafting materials, so some of the earlier ones (alphabetically) don't fully follow the style guide. I hope to circle back and fix them up once I finish my initial pass.

This style guide focuses specifically on the "Where to find XYZ in Elden Ring" section, since the rest of the pages tend to be in pretty good shape already.

Harvestability

The first sentence in this section tells the reader which of three categories the crafting item falls into:

  1. Some items, like Old Fang, don't appear as harvestable 3D objects in the overworld at all and are only available either as drops from enemies or traditional shiny blue "treasure" items. Omit the first sentence entirely for these items.

  2. Some items, like Mushroom, can be harvested repeatedly from the same spot after resting at a Site of Grace. These items start with the sentence "XYZ found in the overworld respawns after resting at a Site of Grace."

  3. Some items, like Arteria Leaf, can only be harvested once from a given spot per NG+ cycle. These items start with the sentence "XYZ found in the overworld does not respawn after resting at a Site of Grace."

Subsections

There can be up to four subheadings under "Where to find XYZ in Elden Ring". Each of these headings should be the "Heading 5" style. Any of them can be omitted if it doesn't have any relevant entries, and in fact it's rare for a single crafting material to have all four subheadings.

In the world

This lists the places that the item can be found other than enemy drops and shops, which are listed separately below. Similarly, don't list the general environments (like "ruins", "thickets", or "large beasts") where materials are found since those are usually already described in the flavor text and aren't concretely helpful to readers.

For infinitely harvestable items, it's not useful to list every place in the world they spawn, so instead we just say "Grows in" and list the broad regions it spawns. If there are specific places where the item is particularly abundant, that can be listed under the "Farming locations" below. However, anywhere that the item is available as a one-time pickup (that is, a glowing circle) it should be listed individually. One-time spawns should come after general regions.

For finitely harvestable items, all spawns in the worls are one-time so you should list them the same as you list glowing circles.

The format for one-time spawns is "# in LOCATION: DESCRIPTION. [Map Link]" The exact format for locations is listed below. The word "in" can be replaced with "by" as appropriate. The description should not repeat the number or the location, and should use cardinal directions where possible. The number can be omitted if you don't know exactly how many are picked up in a given place, although it's usually safe to assume there's one if it's otherwise unspecified. The map link should only be included if there's a map identifier specifically for this item; don't use it to link to the general location.

Example:

Purchase from

This header lists merchants that sell the material in question. The format is "NAME: Runes#, # available". The name should exactly match the page name of the merchant in question and should link to that page. If the merchant doesn't have a limited stock of the item, replace "# available" with "unlimited". For items that are only sold when specific bell bearings are given to the Twin Maiden Husks, write "(with ITEM)" and link the bell bearing name to its page.

Don't include any further descriptions or map links. The merchants' individual pages should already have all the relevant information about how to find them.

Examples:

Dropped by

List the enemies that are known to drop the material. Use the full singular names of their wiki pages, and link to those pages. If an enemy only drops a material when encountered in a specific location, add "in LOCATION". If the specific drop rate is known, add (#% base), where the percentage is the drop rate with 100 discovery. If the enemy drops multiple of the same item, add (#) (or combine with above to have (DROP#, RATE#% base)).

For example:

Farming locations

List the best known location(s) to stock up on a lot of this item in as little time as possible. Each of these is of the form "LOCATION: DESCRIPTION." The exact format for locations is listed below. The description should be terse and avoid repeating the material name and location if possible, although there's more room for editorializing here than elsewhere.

It's reasonable to have multiple farming locations for the same material if the best locations only become accessible later in the game, but if two locations are equivalently easy to get to only the most productive one should be included.

Location Format

The specific format for a location name is a shared between the "In the world" and "Farming locations" sections. The goal is to tersely provide a general location while also giving readers a link they can follow to get more specific information. There are two different cases:

  • If the most appropriate location has its own wiki page, just use that page's name and link it. For example, "Groveside Cave" is a totally acceptable location.

  • If the most appropriate location is a Site of Grace without its own page, write "NAME Site of Grace in REGION", where "REGION" is a link to the smallest surrounding region that does have a page. Following the wiki-wide convention, always bold the name of a Site of Grace. For example, "Liurnia Tower Bridge Site of Grace in Divine Tower of Liurnia".

@thomenor953
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thomenor953 commented Jan 10, 2024

I love the specific language for respawnable and non-respawnable items. “Revival Mushroom” and “Arteria Monoleaf Stopwatch” are concise and immediately understandable house of hazards. There are no more cryptic clues about whether they "returned from their nap" or not.

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