Because Elden Ring is an open-world game, FromSoftware has had to add many open-world features to accommodate for its sheer scope and scale. Elden Ring's features include an enormous map with details that players themselves are optionally tasked to add, such as individual icon markers and waypoint beacons.
Elden Ring's first substantial patch, 1.03, introduced new labels on the map that indicate where previously encountered NPCs are. This has likely aided players who have had trouble trying to find where NPCs were last seen, such as merchants and other people of interest, but Elden Ring's ordinary markers are still helpful for players who assign their own significance and meaning to them. However, waypoint beacons have the tendency to cause frustration for some players, as one fan has recently lamented.
Redditor u/Rayzersquad has finally found where they had misplaced a waypoint beacon in the past, and its pinpoint is in a funny spot. Lodged directly in the bottom-left corner of the map past Elden Ring's Roundtable Hold, it is no surprise that Rayzersquad was unable to find it for "a whole week." But because players can pin waypoint beacons wherever they choose, and the map itself is so immense, these tiny beacon symbols on the map can easily be lost or overlooked.
Waypoint beacons are nice for when players wish to mark a point of interest, specifically when they want to head toward it at some point with a navigational guide. Once players set them on the over-world map, a tall beacon of blue light will be seen at whatever distance it is placed while they traverse the Lands Between and also on the HUD compass. However, beacons placed in Elden Ring's underground areas will also be seen on the surface, so it can be terribly confusing when a lost beacon appears in-game but seemingly cannot be found while players scan the map.
Thankfully, Redditor u/tokeherb and others point out the fact that players can only have 5 waypoint beacons on the map at a time. Therefore, all players need to do in order to erase obscured beacons is simply add more of them to the map.
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Players hope that an option to remove all beacons at once will be implemented at some point. Still, waypoint beacons can be helpful when players want direction toward a landmark, such as Elden Ring's island of Raya Lucaria Academy in Liurnia, but they can also, unfortunately, be forgotten about and lost if left for a while.
Elden Ring is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.