When playing Elden Ring on the PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, the game may crash or freeze. You can take a look at this troubleshooting guide at Seeking Tech to see what actions you can take in order to potentially fix this problem.
1. If the game is completely frozen, then the first step we recommend taking is to try closing it from the system menu by taking the following steps:
- Press and hold the PS button on your DualSense controller in order to bring up the home screen.
- On the home screen, scroll over to the Elden Ring icon.
- With the Elden Ring icon highlighted, press the Options button on your controller.
- In the pop-up menu, select Close Game.
2. If your system isn’t responding to your controller inputs, then you need to force it to shut down. In order to do so, you can take a look at this tutorial.
3. If you haven’t done so already, make sure that Elden Ring has been updated to the latest available software version as doing so may help resolve the crashing issues.
To update the game manually, you can do the following:
- Make sure that your system is connected to the internet
- Scroll over to the Elden Ring icon on the home screen.
- With the game’s icon highlighted, press the Options button on the DualSense.
- In the pop-up menu, select Check for Update.
4. You should also check to see if there is a new firmware available for your PlayStation 5 as the new version may improve the console’s stability.
To update manually, you need to take the following steps:
- Make sure that your system is connected to the internet.
- Head to Settings from the home screen.
- In the Settings menu, select System.
- From the System menu, select System Software on the left column and then System Software Update and Settings on the right side.
- In the System Software Update and Settings, select Update System Software.
- Finally, select Update Using Internet.
5. Deleting any temporary files by clearing the cache on your PS5 or PS5 Digital Edition system may also help with fixing the Elden Ring crashes.
To see how you can clear the cache on your console, you can take a look at this step-by-step tutorial.
6. Furthermore, you can also rebuild the database on the system by doing the following:
- Make sure that your system has been completely turned on.
- Next, you need to press and hold the power button on your system until you hear two beeps. If done correctly, you should arrive at the Safe Mode menu.
- In Safe Mode, you need to first connect your DualSense to the PS5 system via a USB cable and then press the PS button on the controller to be able to use it to navigate the menu.
- Once you are able to navigate the Safe Mode menu with your gamepad, head over to Rebuild Database.
- Select OK to start the database rebuilding process, which make take some time to complete.
7. The next step you can take is to put your hands next to the vents. If you feel that the air coming out of your PlayStation 5 feels very warm, then you may want to consider turning off your console completely to let it cool down before trying to play Elden Ring again.
To find out more about how you can prevent your Sony gaming system from overheating, you can check out this article.
8. If you are suspending Elden Ring and putting your system in Rest Mode, then it may be causing the game to crashed.
To prevent this from happening, we recommend quitting from the in-game menu of Elden Ring so that your progress will be saved. You can then completely turn off your PS5 or PS5 Digital Edition.
9. The crashing or freezing issues may also lead to a loss of your save file. Since Elden Ring is an extremely long and challenging game, losing your progress can be extremely frustrating.
To prevent the loss of data, we recommend backing up your Elden Ring saved data to the cloud storage every time you closed the game. To use this feature, you will need to subscribe to the PlayStation Plus subscription service.
To see how you can upload and download save files for PlayStation 5 games, you can take a look at this tutorial.
11. If you have Elden Ring stored on a M.2 solid state drive, then you might want to consider moving the game data over to the internal SSD storage of the console.
12. If the M.2 SSD or internal PS5 SSD where you have Elden Ring installed gets too full, then you may experience crashing issues with the game.
In order to prevent this from happening, we recommend leaving around 25% of free space on the storage. To get more space, you need to delete or transfer any screenshots, videos and other games on the solid state drive.
13. If none of the aforementioned potential solutions worked with prevent Elden Ring from crashing, then we recommend that you take a short break after every hour of continuously playing Elden Ring. This is because a memory leak may be causing the game to crash.
When taking a break, we suggest closing the game from the in-game menu to save your progress. Afterwards, you can upload your saved file to the cloud to back it up to prevent loss of data in the event of a future crash. Finally, we suggest shutting down your PlayStation 5 to let it cool down.
You should take these precautions until you get a new patch for the game and/or firmware update on the PS5 that may fix the crashing issues.
14. We also recommend testing out other games on your PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition.
If all the other videogames you have installed are working without any issues, then the crashes are isolated to Elden Ring.
If other games are also crashing, then you may have a hardware issue with your console. If you believe that your system is having a hardware problem, then you might want to consider contacting Sony about potentially getting it fix or replace.