Welcome to Elderfield Mall Guide

Last updated: 2026-09-27 · 8 min read

The Mall is not a shopping trip. It is the first dungeon, it is the area the developers put in the demo, and it hides two things most players walk past: a free teleport-home skill in the very first store, and the entrance to a mine that runs three floors deep underneath the shops. Walk it in the right order and the building hands over a permanent skill, a fast-travel stop and a mine that gets better the further down you go.

Quick answer

On your first visit, go into Ultra Video — the first store on Mall F1 — and talk to the Shopper on the far right, next to the SALE/camera poster to learn Warp for free; it teleports you home from almost anywhere on the map. Then note the Mall Bus Stop outside the food court on F1, which unlocks with a Light Sandwich. The Mall Mines descend through F1, F2 and F3, and the deep floors are where the God Forge rooms and the good ore are. Buy your Small Mine Keys from the Mall Rat, and check the Vending Machine for ritual and skill tomes before you leave.

Why the Mall Matters

The Mall's exterior sign in Welcome to Elderfield
FIG. 01 — The Mall's own sign over the entrance, on the eastern side of town. This is the shop front the game's first dungeon hides behind.

The Mall is the game's first dungeon, and the closest thing to a deliberate difficulty step in the opening hours. It is where the main quest sends you, and it is also the area the developers chose to include in the Steam demo alongside the town, the farm and the ranch.

Two consequences follow. First, the Mall is not a late-game location — some players hold off because the quests that point at it feel like a milestone, and then find themselves under-equipped for the storeys underneath it. Go when you are sent, and clear it properly.

The other consequence is that some of the most useful things in the Mall are optional, and the game does not announce them. The teleport skill below is the clearest example: it is free, it is permanent, and nothing tells you to look for it.

Once you have done the required route, the Mall stays useful as a mine and as a shop. It is a place you revisit, not a place you finish.

Getting There

The Mall sits on the eastern side of town, and it has its own bus stop. It is one of the stops that is paid for with an item rather than gold:

StopWhere it isUnlock cost
Mall Bus StopOutside the food court area on Mall F1One Light Sandwich

The sandwich is the noteworthy part: you need to be able to cook a Light Sandwich before the Mall stop will activate, which quietly links the fast-travel network to your cooking progress. If the stop is refusing to open, that is the reason — not a bug. The cooking guide covers where recipes come from.

If you do not have the stop yet, the walk is fine. The Mall exterior is also its own navigation landmark, and the mine entrances around the food court are the reference points players use to describe where things are.

The F1 Store Directory

The Mall has an outside, a first floor, and a hallway off F1. The named units are:

AreaUnitWorth knowing
Mall F1Ultra VideoFirst store you reach. Where Warp is learned — talk to the Shopper on the far right
Sports PlanetA sports store unit off the main floor
Empty StoreExactly what it says — worth a look, nothing to buy
Music StoreAnother F1 unit on the main run
Food CourtAlso the location of the Mall Bus Stop
Mall MinesThe entrance down to the mine floors under the building
Mall F1 HallwayOfficesBack-of-house rooms off the F1 hallway
Administrator's PoolThe far end of the F1 hallway
Mall Outside—The exterior approach and grounds

Treat the F1 store run as a single sweep: come in, hit Ultra Video for Warp, walk the rest of the floor for anything interactive, and end at the food court where both the bus stop and the mine entrance are. That is the whole floor in one pass.

Get Warp on Your First Visit

Warp teleports you home from anywhere on the map without spending coins. It is the single highest-value thing in the Mall and it costs nothing.

  • Where: Ultra Video, the first store after you enter Mall F1.
  • Who: the Shopper standing on the extreme right, next to the SALE/camera poster.
  • Cost: nothing. You do not pay for the book.
  • Limit: it is active while you are within roughly five minutes of your home — which, on Elderfield's map, is most of the useful world.
★ Do this before you go into the mines

Warp is what makes a failed mine run survivable: it turns "walk back across the map with low HP" into a single action. Learning it after the first wipe is the most common regret about the Mall. Ultra Video is the first door on the floor — there is no reason to postpone it.

The Vending Machine and Mall Rat

Two shops sit inside the Mall, and both sell things you cannot reliably get elsewhere. The Vending Machine is the ritual and skill tome vendor; the Mall Rat is the mining-supply vendor.

Vending MachinePriceMall RatPrice
Ritual Tome: Lesser Mending25gBasic Pickaxe (Mining Lv 2)150g
Ritual Tome: Cosmic Premonition50gSmall Mine Key100g
Ritual Tome: Torrent of Darkness100gPerfect Opal200g
Skill Tome: All or Nothing25gWhetstone500g
Skill Tome: Heavy Blow75g——
Toy Heart25g——

Three of these deserve a note. The Small Mine Key opens small mine doors and is consumed when used, so it is a consumable rather than a tool — buy them when you plan a deep run rather than one at a time. The Basic Pickaxe comes with a real level requirement (Mining Lv 2) and is the upgrade that lets you break the tougher nodes underground. And Heavy Blow is a combat skill rather than a ritual, so it is worth checking against the combat guide before you spend 75g on it.

The Mall Rat's opal and whetstone are both crafting ingredients rather than gear, and the same two items are also sold at the Forge Shop in the western outskirts. If you are already going to the Forge for ore, price them there first — see shops and money for the comparison and the 50% resale spread that applies to both.

Alice in dialogue inside the Mall, with a Vending Machine on the wall behind her
FIG. 02 — Alice in dialogue inside the Mall, with a Vending Machine visible on the wall behind her. The Vending Machine is where the ritual and skill tomes come from.

The Mall Mines: F1 to F3

The mine under the Mall is entered from F1 and descends through three floors. Treat them as a difficulty ladder rather than three equal areas:

FloorWhat it isWhy you go
Mall Mines F1The first mine level, directly under the MallYour introduction to mining; the safest place to learn node types
Mall Mines F2The second level downBetter ore density and one of the God Forge room locations
Mall Mines F3The deepest level, with several layout variantsThe rare ore, the unique God Forge visitors, and the deepest loot

The F3 point is the one that catches people out: F3 does not always look the same. It has multiple layouts, and which one you get decides which God Forge and which divine visitor is present. Three named variants exist — a Worm Room, a big-tree layout, and an Ancient Statue Room — and the interior can rotate between runs. If you are hunting a specific visitor, you are hunting a layout, not a floor.

The mine is also the practical reason to go early: Copper and Iron Ore are needed in quantity for tool and equipment upgrades, and gathering them before quests ask for them saves a lot of backtracking. The Forge Shop sells both if you are impatient, but at 45g per copper ore and 60g per iron ore, mining your own is the cheaper route.

God Forge Rooms Inside the Mines

Three of the seven Old God visitors are found in the Mall Mines, and each is tied to one F3 layout. This is the detail that makes the layout rotation matter:

VisitorLocated in
KaalMall Mines F3 — Worm Room variant
HagrothMall Mines F3 — big-tree layout
ValtrisMall Mines F3 — Ancient Statue Room variant

God Forge rooms also appear on Mall Mines F2, so a floor-2 sweep is worth doing even when you have already cleared floor 3. Pledging to a god and what each visit unlocks is covered in the Old Gods and treasure rooms guide; the short version is that the Forge recipes behind each visitor are the reason these rooms are worth the trip, and Small Mine Keys and Skeleton Keys can be worth more than the stat bonuses because they permanently open routes.

What to Gather While You Are Down There

  • Copper and Iron Ore. The two materials the whole upgrade ladder is built on. Take every node you can break.
  • Small Mine Keys from the Mall Rat, before you descend — they are consumed on use.
  • Your camera-poster detour done. Warp before mining, not after.
  • A way to heal. Food is the cheap option; the trip back up is longer than it looks, and Warp only helps you get home, not survive the way down.
  • Note which F3 layout you got. It determines whether the visit was worth repeating for a specific visitor.

Troubleshooting

Almost every Mall problem is a missing unlock rather than a bug, and each one has a single cause.

ProblemCauseFix
Mall bus stop will not unlockIt costs one Light Sandwich rather than goldCook one first — the cooking guide covers where recipes come from
Cannot find the bus stopIt is outside the food court on F1, not in the entrance hallWalk the food court end of F1, where the mine entrance also is
Cannot find WarpNothing in the game points at it, and no shop sells itUltra Video on Mall F1, from the Shopper on the far right next to the SALE/camera poster. Free
Worried Warp is missableIt does not expireCollect it anyway — it is easy to walk past, and it is the first thing worth doing in the Mall
The mines look different from last timeF3 has multiple layout variants, and the interior can rotate between runsIdentify the layout before you start hunting a specific God Forge visitor
Hunting a specific God ForgeThe rooms sit on more than one mine floorF2 has one, and F3 has three more tied to its layout variants
The starter pickaxe will not break a nodeTougher nodes need Mining Lv 2The starting pickaxe covers F1. Buy the Basic Pickaxe (150g, Mining Lv 2) before a deep run

Did this answer your question?

Images on this page are from the Welcome to Elderfield Wiki, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Related Guides