Summary
Elden Ringcontinues the tradition of the Dark Souls series of having a maiden help you in your journey, offering guidance and leveling you up. The problem is that, as the game loves to point out, you’re maidenless, so leveling up starts as an issue for you.
The term maidenless might have been used by the developers as an innocent way to allude to your lack of allies, but it ends up feeling like the game is messing with you. While the community reacts like the game calls you maidenless all the time, how many times are you actually called maidenless?
How Many Times Are You Called Maidenless
Meeting White Mask Varré
About 90 percent of the times you are called maidenless are said by White Mask Varré, calling you maidenless three times during his introductory dialogue, at least if you exhaust everything he has to say. Since he is right outside the tutorial area, he is nearly guaranteed to call every player maidenless at least once since the word already appears on his third line of dialogue.
During the network test, Varré also told players to go die in a ditch. He is a bit more polite in the current version of the game.
Veterans of the Dark Souls series will likely talk to Varré as much as possible, meaning that the people that get told maidenless the most are the ones more familiar with these games. New players will likely only talk to Varré once, find him rude, and never talk to him again.
Meeting Melina
The reason you’re called maidenless in Elden Ring is because, quite literally, you don’t have a finger maiden at your side. You do meet a few other characters that serve as maidens for other people, but the one that serves that role for you is Melina, the mysterious ghostly character that gives you your steed, Torrent.
During her introduction, she calls you maidenless only to offer her services as finger maiden, offering guidance and leveling you up. While she’s OK with most of the choices you make, if you attempt to go for the Frenzied Flame ending, she’ll leave you maidenless once more.
Talking To Varré After Entering Roundtable Hold
Not a lot of people will do this, but you may go back to Varré after gaining access to Roundtable Hold, but before earning a Great Rune. He will tell you to earn a seat on the Roundtable, mostly so you can meet the Two Fingers, but you can tell him that you don’t need a seat.
This will make Varré dismissive of you, calling you maidenless once more, but this time with an air of malice; he clearly knows the moniker bothers you. Once you have a Great Rune, Varré moves on from his spot, so this line of dialogue is hard to catch.
Message Left By Varré
Most NPC questlines are hard to follow in Elden Ring, but a few characters are kind enough to leave some form of guidance towards their whereabouts. In the case of White Mask Varré, after he asks you to earn a place in the Roundtable Hold, you’d naturally go to see him where you met him last, although he moved on towards Liurnia.
He does leave a helpful message so you know where to find him, although it had to be a little generic in case you never spoke with the man. So, he leaves you with specific directions on where to find him while taking the chance to call you maidenless one more time.
During Varré’s Questline
For the many times White Mask Varré calls you maidenless, he’s actually been rather helpful. He’s the first one that explains to the player how the sites of grace work, and even sends you towards your main base of operations, Roundtable Hold.
Yet he has a dark secret, since he’s working for the Lord of Blood, and you may evenaid him on his hunt for other Tarnished(rather, other players in PVP). Once you finish that task, you have to make one final sacrifice: that of your maiden.
Here is where Varré calls you maidenless once again, but mostly to point out that you don’t have a maiden to sacrifice, so any random maiden you find will do. This confirms that Melina isn’t an official maiden, or at least not one other characters can interact with, otherwise Varré would tell you to sacrifice her.
Lord Of Blood Favor’s Item Description
For the final step of Varré’s questline, you need to find a maiden to sacrifice, and you have some options to choose from. To prove the deed, you have to soak a piece of cloth in said maiden’s blood, which will allow you into the Lord of Blood’s secret Mausoleum.
There’s a surprise for you if you read the cloth’s description before you soak it, and it is a reminder that you are still maidenless. Few items refer to the player directly, making this small piece of cloth the most rude item in the game.
Killing Varré
This is something you will miss if you complete White Mask Varré’s questline. While his quest ends with you invading him and having a proper duel, you can kill Varré whenever you want, prompting him to say his famous catchphrase one last time.
Now, he will only call you maidenless if you kill him the first time you meet him since once he moves from Limgrave to Liurnia, his phrase changes. This means that you’re unlikely to hear all the times someone calls you maidenless in a single playthrough, even if most of those times come from a single NPC.
Specifically, Varré calls you a “maidenless runt,” adding one final time to the amount of times someone calls you maidenless.
In total, you are called maidenless nine times, with eight of those times coming from Varré and only once by Melina.
