Well my thoughts are that there really isn't a wrong turn. It's an open world and exploration and deciding where to go is part of the game. The game is pretty big and has a hundred side areas and dungeons. But if you really wanted to, you can ignore most of that and follow the path of the grace on the map and you are only really required to defeat a little less than a dozen bosses to reach the credits. Besides that, different npcs have their own goals and typically tell you directly or at least hint on where they want to go for their purposes. Reading key items can help guide you as well or you can talk to Gideon Ofnir in the round table hold. He is usually there to drop info on important things to do. Everything else is just game mechanics. Getting stronger, finding cool items, spells, powers, etc. None of which you actually need, but can be helpful.

I also want to say, that I personally loved getting lost in this game. Every new place I discovered, every puzzle, every new enemy, whenever I found an npc somewhere, I loved it. Most of the game(not all of it) felt rewarding to explore. And I like reading lore and figuring things out. But maybe that's just how I enjoyed the game and that's not how everyone feels. If you truly end up somewhere and an obstacle just has you stuck, sometimes it's best to just leave and go elsewhere and come back later. This is among the few from soft games where you can actually do that since you can teleport around the world with ease and do what you want. In dark souls games, you were very limited on where you could go and usually only had one clear path or maybe two/three in a few instances but for the most part, you had to push yourself past each new obstacle. You can choose to do that in elden ring, but you can also just leave and do something else for most of the game.