I sell all my Elden Ring items, which was fine — until it wasn’t

polygon.com:

I can’t stand clutter, in real life or in my video games. Those people who save up all of their potions and power-ups, not breaking them out even when they’re facing the last boss of a video game? I can’t relate. If I get something in a game, I use it. If I’m not going to use it, I sell it. That’s what I’ve been doing in Elden Ring, and it’s all been going great — up until this past week, when I realized I’d made a serious tactical error.

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Fia’s questline in Elden Ring.]

I’d like to emphasize that I made it quite far in Elden Ring before my penchant for selling items became a problem. At the time of writing this post, I’ve played for 87 hours, and I still keep my inventory as clean as a whistle. I don’t regret my choices — except for one specific moment during Fia’s questline when I did, very strongly, regret my choices.

Fia is an NPC in Elden Ring who offers you a hug every time you visit the Roundtable Hold, a safe area where players can level up their weapons with the blacksmith Hewg, among other administrative in-game chores. Once you’ve gotten far enough in the game, if you accept a hug from Fia, she’ll make an additional request of you: Deliver a dagger to someone for her.

She won’t tell you to whom the dagger belongs, but if you happen to talk to a guy named D, you’ll have the option to give him the dagger. If you do give it to him, though, Fia will use it to murder him, after which you’ll be able to grab the armor off of his corpse.

You can guess what I did next: I sold that whole set. I’ve been wearing Radahn’s set of armor since I beat him, and it’s stronger than D’s armor, which was worth thousands of runes. I often sell armor to the blacksmith while I’m upgrading