f13.net

Official Gameplay Reveal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Huy2cdih0

Coming January Februrary 22, 2022.

Looks like Dark Souls 4, unsurprisingly, despite being a new setting co-created with George R.R. Martin. Still has From's trademark janky animation work.

Edit: Delayed a month

dat hair tho

This looks much better than I could possibly anticipate.

I wish GRRM weren't involved, and if I had to bet on something that could ruin this I would say it's GRRM and/or more traditional storytelling. But the trailier is incredible, makes me feel pretty sure this is gonna be fantastic. Like every single Miyazaki game.

I could see myself playing this. That world building is quite enticing.

Review embargo has lifted for those invited to the Closed Network test and impressions / previews / gameplay captures / etc. are coming in fast and furious.

It does look like Dark Souls 4 and to me I am totally down with that.  Loved all of the souls games and their different iterations.  Some of the best replayability IMHO of all the recent AAA games.  I hope From fixes magic though.  Its kind of a bummer IMHO that magic wasn't very viable.  I am also not sure that I liked the announcement about invasions not being a thing.   I liked those personally.  It gave the game an edge.

In the Closed Network test magic was apparently OP according to some who played it.

Zero chances this isn't great.

God I hope so, but I also thought that of Cyberpunk 2077.  That being said I preordered this today.

I am still not sure I understand the hate for Cyberpunk. It wasn't Robot Jesus but I had a good time.

Exactly. I suppose a lot of people were really expecting robot Jesus so felt betrayed and grabbed the free pitchfork laying around.

People were expecting it cause CD Projekt RED was promising it. And CDPR kept lying, especially about the previous gen console versions ("We had no idea the previous gen versions were unplayable!"), even after it was revealed they had been lying all along. They lied so badly about the state of the previous gen versions and pissed off Sony so much by promising refunds that were not theirs to promise that Sony pulled the game from its store for *6* months because it was such a trainwreck and handled so badly by CDPR.

Edit: kept

I can sit here and repost every valid complaint I had about Cyberpunk, or you guys could just look back through the thread and remember "oh yeah, there was actually a bunch of stuff that was broken, unfinished, or unbalanced in that game, especially at launch which is why CDPR is still working on fixing it and keeping pushing back their timeline on DLC and current gen console versions".

At this point, CP is way, way, way past the point of redemption. Not even Witcher 3 was this buggy.

Ya, the hype for CP, a lot of which came from CDPR themselves, was stratospheric (they claimed it would be the next generation of open world games), and the delivery did not match.

But to the thread at hand, I am not really a Dark Souls fan, but this first reveal tentatively looks really really promising.

The thing about Elden Ring that I'm liking in the early commentaries is just that I can go where I want. The area transitions in Dark Souls games is what made them feel like world-like and more like action/puzzle.

This is incoming on Friday. I haven't played a game that stuck with me for a long time, actually since HZD. Hope this is worth a long playthru and a lot of swearing at the TV.

Steam preloading is available now. 48.25 GB download.

XBOX was last week... suckers.

Past gen consoles are reporting only ~30gig download and next gen is same as PC ~49gig

Reviews coming up out of embargo now. Lotta folks calling it great, the best, all that, but also saying it's as hard as any Souls game if not harder in the boss fights.

That doesn't sound right. Or more accurately, from what I've read and watched so far, because it's a true open world game, you can make boss fights easier or harder depending on how much you explore because of the gear you can find that don't involve the big boss fights. I.e. those that are complaining the boss fights are harder probably weren't exploring and trying to get through the main story as quickly as possible. Also build diversity was drastically limited in the review copies.

This is what I have heard to date as well. Which is good for me, a Johnny ten thumbs. Or would that aid in a game like this? Maybe a Johnny ten pinkies.

Yeah, I hope so--I am 100% a Bartle-type explorer so I'm often happy just foodling around a big world and avoiding complicated boss fights if I'm allowed.

Anyone getting this on a PS4 Pro? Undecided on whether to play this on the smaller but better PC configuration or enjoy the larger presentation but sacrifice some load times and frames.

XBS here... gave up on Sony.  :oh_i_see:

:hello_thar:

My office is an actual office nowadays 24/7. The PC aint movin'.

3 1/2 more hours until unlock for PC users:

(https://i.imgur.com/VmKWYjV.jpg)

Stream it to your TV?

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-to-stream-video-games-from-your-pc-to-your-main-tv/

You're WFH but haven't set up a dedicated work space for the tax bennies?

Getting it on the PS5. Might double dip on the PC at some point.

Two more hours (for PC) to experience the stuttering frame rate in all it's glory:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2022-02-24-elden-ring-performance-first-impressions

And console isn't really any better since they don't have capped 30 FPS modes.

And…still not available. GJ Valve.

Edit: need quit Steam because, reasons, and now it's patching.

Edit2: Okay either patch 1.02 is humongous or Valve fucked up the preload because it's downloading 50 GB.

Edit3: misread downloader, it's was unpacking and then downloading a small patch

There's no tutorial and am dying on the first mini-boss since I'm way out of practice :awesome_for_real:

No DLSS support so can't run at 4K at 60 FPS on a 3060 Ti which is too bad so currently have it at 1440P. Am seeing the stuttering people are talking about so expected but unfortunate. Bloodstains don't seem to be working or maybe they are disabled cause their backend can't handle it right now. 99% of messages are trolling, at the moment, which is annoying.

Edit: fucked up and hit the wrong button again and lost all my souls to earlier "trash mobs" *sigh* Also no native PS4 controller which isn't unexpected because, shitty FROMSoftware PC ports, but annoying.

Edit2: to be clear I meant the mini-boss that's in the cave near the start. I somehow wandered right past the real (closest) first mini-boss initially.

 :Love_Letters:

I mean there kind of is but it's Demon's Souls style, if you get what I mean.

Only took like 20 tries but I finally did it. God I suck at these games (except Bloodborne).

Not just frame drops and stuttering but outright game freezes* on my system. Think I might wait for this to be patched properly (1.02 apparently made some things worse not better).

Edit: *by freezes I mean the game will "hang" for a few seconds and then resume, either by speeding things up and "playing forward" the game state from those missing few seconds or just resuming from when it paused.

No keyboard/mouse prompts either -- i.e. all UI control symbols are Xbox-only.

This shit runs fucking flawlessly and is a clear 10/10

Sorry your computer hates it trippy

Am watching a video of the start as an Astrologer and there is a tutorial section -- I somehow managed to bypass it.

Well, first launch and it shut off my monitor. Not a great sign.

I did also, and went back because i was like "maybe that was just a dungeon"

and the guy sitting in the chair is literally like "jump and gain knowledge moron"

yeah it's a tutorial

also game is a masterpiece, first souls game since demon's actually worth playing

Yeah and you get a free emote for doing it so might as well. Also one of the moves they teach you which isn't present in all the other games is something I really wish I knew about when fighting that miniboss.

yeah i totally read all the tutorial

(i did not i have no clue what you're talking about)

I am way out of practice for this kind of thing. I probably should have returned it, but I played for 2 and a half hours straight.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah still trying to get used to the controls again and have been playing too much of both Horizons which have much longer dodge roll distances so there you mostly avoid attacks via distance rather than relying on the I-frames whereas in Elden Ring even the Light Roll is pretty short so you need to time the I-frames plus some of the mini bosses have bullshit auto tracking attacks even if you would normally be too far away to be hit.

what's the terminology we're looking for here

ah, yes, get good

man what a game

You mean "git gud".

iirc Demon's Souls predates the colloquial "git gud," so that was a conscious choice of words.

So, I said what I said.

I've never understood the appeal of these games. They seem designed primarily to raise someone's blood pressure and let internet nerds brag about how awesome they are after getting past a boss fight. I really have nothing else to add except "enjoy? I guess?"

I need to upgrade my old wired 360 controller. Any recommendations? I'm guessing just a newer wireless xbox controller would suffice?

god yeah, this is unplayable iwth a 360 controller

just plug in a ps4 sixaxis

How about mouse/keyboard tho?

(DS1 was total dogshit, DS2 was annoying, DS3 was pretty playable, so I am kinda hopeful edit: obv I'm referring to kb/m playability here)

Yes though you'll probably want the Windows wireless adapter if you actually want to use it wirelessly:

https://www.pcgamer.com/xbox-one-controller-on-pc/

And also some sort of rechargeable battery pack as well if you go wireless. I use these in mine since you don't need to take the battery out charge it and it's lighter than the NiMH versions and the Xbox controller is already too heavy for my tastes:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z3P7WCC

Also be aware that the newer Xbox controllers have teeny tiny* joystick "top hats" compared to the Xbox 360 controller or PS4/PS5 controllers. So you might find them easier to slip off of than the 360 controller.

I ordered these to see if that might help:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DY9PBZX

I play other games with that controller without slippage like Forza and Like a Dragon but they don't have me abusing the joysticks like Elden Ring does.


* They are actually only about 2 mm smaller in diameter but it's feels smaller than that on my fat thumbs.

There are no PS4/PS5 icons though -- only Xbox icons -- so if that messes with your brain you might not want to go that route.

Kinda hard to find legit MS battery packs from legit sellers right now. I just replaced my xbox series controller (left thumbstick died) and went with a 3rd party battery pack until stocks come back. That said, those battery packs are basically necessary unless you love changing batteries, and I like having them separate rather than integrated ala PS controllers. Ditto the wireless dongle thingy.

As far as button confusion, the main problem imo is the dern X buttons. I still hit the A button all the time in Madden when I see an open receiver with an X prompt :|

I'm trying to play it keyboard; what's kind of annoying is that all the tutorial popups are like "we assume you are playing this with a controller" so I have to memorize keymaps and try to ignore what I'm seeing on screen.

I'm sure this will get fixed, but also, I think Rasix can sort this out. No MS controller even comes close to a ps4 one.

I just plugged a usb charger into an outlet in my couch and plugged the USB-C cable into my XBOX controller and skipped the batteries. Not like I am going to go roaming the house carrying my controller so I don't mind the cable.

My issue with the Xbox controller button labelling is it's swapped from the Nintendo layout (presumably MS didn't want to get sued). Most of the time I can keep them straight but occasionally the Nintendo button muscle memory will kick in instead of the Xbox one. In Elden Ring that usually means I'll press X instead of Y and drink a flask when I didn't want to then I have to trudge back to camp, rest, and respawn everything and then fight my way back to the miniboss.

Has any game PC ever actually updated this based on what kind of controller you have plugged in? Semi-serious, because I don't think so. I too vastly prefer PS controllers over Xbox, and am just used to the icons being wrong forever.

Yes there are PC games that include icons for both PS and Xbox controllers (not sure about Nintendo/Switch) and will switch between them when detected. Heck even Horizon Zero Dawn for PC has the icons for both (I just checked). FromSoftware, though, is known for their low-effect PC ports and doesn't bother to do these sorts of things. For their other titles like Seikro, which also only came with Xbox icons, it was possible to mod them to add in the appropriate icons but Elden Ring has Easy Anti-Cheat running which will likely make it very difficult to mod the game unlike their earlier titles.

Edit: actually something like Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is probably a better example of a game that has both sets

They're really not at hard as their reputation.

I find them hard and that's not what I like about them.

I guess what I like is the sense of strangeness? I mean, I just played for the first time tonight and I wandered down towards the beach. I met a giant and he fucked me up and I died. Then I found there was a person I should have talked to who explained a few things and a grace I should have saved at. Then I went down and went past the giant. There were some blobby things on the beach. I left  them alone. There was a strange invisible thing making glowy footprints. I investigated, couldn't do anything, left it alone.

There were three strange dudes along the beach. They attacked me. I killed them. There was a cave. There was a grace in it. I saved. There were warnings of something worse in the cave and advice to have fire. I didn't so I didn't go further. I wandered up the beach. There was a dude under a rock overhang. I was feeling aggressive, so I tried to kill him. He was a merchant. I shouldn't have tried. I died. I went back and he's still fucking angry. I decided to start over.

I like the strangeness of the world, the sense of "I have no idea what comes next". Normally I don't like it because it's a world on hidden rails and if I don't do exactly what I'm supposed to do I can't progress. Sooner or later I will start to do what "gits gud" but right now I don't care so much.

All the Souls worlds have a feeling of strangeness about them. That's the best part.

I actually went into this game with a thought that this was going to be harder than it actually is (and yes it is very early in the game for me). But I really thought I'd get smashed right out of the gate but so far so good.

I'm not very gud in any sense but I'm doing ok. I have no idea what I'm doing when I level up really because I'm trying to not look at guides. But I spent most of the day repeatedly killing the soldiers at that ruined fort near the big gate just to get a sense of how to handle combat in real conditions and I finally cleared the area pretty smoothly. I went off across the bridge nearby and actually surprised myself by killing the patrolling guy on the horse pretty easily. I didn't fuck with the two giants. I went under the bridge and some invader killed me, ok, not a problem, I got my runes back and went back to the beach area. I might try a mini-dungeon/mini-boss soon, though one try at the golden horse rider near the church didn't go well.

Rather shocked how good the prisoner is... now that I have played them all, the hero is just maddeningly fun.

I am also avoiding walk-thrus and tips, but man I can feel the need building for some of these things - so many times had a mob on the ropes only to bite it in the end. Normally I like facerolling stuff, but this game is making me time shit rather than mash all the things. I still find myself smashing buttons when I get low on health, but slowly realizing that just won't work here. Nice change of pace.

Yeah, at that ruin I got killed at the last smidgen of health by that stronger spear guy after I murder-hoboed the entire camp about I dunno five times which made me feel really stupid. But ok.

Holy shit this game is great so far.  7 hours registered game time with a level 20 samurai.  Has the exploration feel of Breath of the Wild combined with the terror of enemies who will stab your face off if you screw up.  I am not great at these games by any means, but they do a good job of adding stuff in to make some of the boss fights doable. 

Masterpiece.

Masterpiece. Absolute masterpiece. Almost curious to hear contrarians desperately looking for ways to be wrong about perfect games.

(https://seinfeldmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/1A57F577-F2F8-4A8F-B7D8-FC13EC431B67.gif)

It's pretty great so far at least. Nothing feels repetitive, I don't feel like I'm trapped in a gameplay loop, I keep coming across stuff that surprises me or that I have no idea what's going on with.

The wolves falling from the fucking sky are annoying me a bit. I can *see* the bats and the skeletons on nooses, but there's at least three places where wolves literally rain from open sky and there's absolutely no way to see them ahead of time.

Was very happy with myself for beating the giant who wanders near the starting place. Good practice.

I'm on my third character. Tried the hybrid warrior/priest at the start. It was good for learning and getting some reps in. The dex based fighter just illustrated to me how shit I am at rolling and melee fighting. The mage is fun, but some mobs are too damage spongy (at this point), and I still blow at dodging.

I think this game is fascinating, but how bad I am at it, is a bit off putting. I've done the best with the mage, but that's also the tail end of how much I've played. I've only beat mini-dungeon bosses so far. Real bosses kind of kick my shit in. Dunno if I should try a bit armor tank next or just keep going with the mage at this point. I am getting better, it's just a slow bar inching every so slightly forward.

The stuttering on PC is kind of fucking annoying.

So what are the real bosses? I don't think I've tried one, unless the golden rider guy right at the start counts--he still kicks my ass. Right now I'm feeling increasingly good against most shit in the initial region (but there's always the proviso that if you treat trash like trash, you end up dead.

I haven't been able to beat the invader in the river gully by the bog...I never fully understood invasion/multiplayer mechanics in Souls games. Is that another player who is just, what, waiting for me to trigger the call?

Anything with the full screen health bar is technically a boss but the game has three types of bosses. The "real" bosses are the Demigods or Lords. Then there are the "Field" bosses like the golden rider guy (Tree Sentinel) -- what I was calling a "miniboss" above. And the third type is whatever is not in the other two categories and which generally fall in between the Field and Demigods in terms of difficulty. Fextralife calls them "Greater" bosses" as the game labels them as "greater" enemies" but there isn't really any agreement among the sites I looked at what the boss types are called other than the Field bosses.

If you were where I think you were that's an NPC invader -- not a real player.

So I have played pretyt much all the classes up to 20 now trying to figure out what I like. Unfortunately, I am now mixing stats with some of my favorite types and gathering smithing stones to up my preferred weapon - so I might have to play thru to 20 five more class/stat configurations.

That said, the more I play, the more I learn the mob patterns. The first ruins area with the spear and shield elite? Yeah, I got all those attacks and telegraphs down and even managing to learn the horseback greatsword guys down the road from there. It's all runes and learning for me. I haven't even attempted moving the story forward - though I have fought a few mini-bosses in the dungeons so far with mixed results. Still trying to figure out the best tempo for those guys as some chain 3-4 attacks in quick succession with no real attack windows so I get spanked when I try to fit in an ill-timed attack. Getting better at it, but when the boss is ultra aggressive, my smash-buttons instinct kicks in trying to roll and time the i-frames. I'll dodge 1 or 2, but seem to always get wrecked by the third or fourth attack in the chain as I am out of stamina by the second roll and blocking.

Summons help a bunch in that I can weave attacks in better and only have to dodge an attack or two, but man how folks can not use summons and go in and wreck face whie timing dodges perfectly is a thing to marvel from my perspective. The more I play, the more I learn when and where to dodge, but still haven't worked out how to counter in those moments.

Just keep swimming... keep swimming...

Overall though, this game is amazingly gorgeous and incredibly huge. I cheated a bit and went after the Meteorite staff for my astro and got to the next zone and was shocked how big the game is... even riding on horseback the game is massive.

Summoning ashes are pretty much how I've cheesed through fighting some minibosses in the little dungeons. Anything that takes the heat off me long enough.

I have my obsessions with the Souls games, and since Demon's Souls I force myself to play melee only, no magic, no miracles, no ranged whatsoever, and no summons. Also, starting with the Wretched class from level 1.
Make no mistakes, I am NOT good at this games, but I really enjoy the challenge a lot so I am more than willing to keep trying a boss 4 hours because, as Miyazaki says, the satisfaction of overcoming the difficulty in my own terms is huge. 4 hours it's exactly how long it took me to beat the first story boss, and 3.5 is what took me to beat the Ulcerated Tree, because I also force myself to fight them with whatever I have on my when I meet them (there have been exceptions...).

But this game is in many ways "easier" than most of the other Souls. Not just becasue it's an open world and it is impossible to be cockblocked. But because there are so many different summons to "cheat" almost every encounter. And then, a very generous amount of Stamina compared to previous titles that allows for almost infinite rolling. I am also pretty sure rolling gives more invulnerability frames than any of the previous games.

But this doesn't take any point away from what is a perfect 10/10 game. I would be more bothered by the lower difficulty if it were a more conventional *Souls, but in this context it's just awesome and possibly an improvement as the "difficulty" never hinders the exploration.

I don't have that kind of free time, bro. Yikes.

I'll be cheesing away where possible.

I am the king of fromage, hey? I get no pleasure from needing to be perfect.

I did try the boss up at the castle in the starting zone. Got him about halfway down? I think I probably need to get a bit stronger first.

I can't decide on a weapon. I tried a spear I got off a miniboss, didn't like it--you have to be straight on your enemy every time. So far I'm sticking with the greatsword I got at the camp full of soldiers and a turtle-shell shield.

I thought the spear would be a great weapon out of the box, but it definitely has a learning curve to it. Sticking with 1h sword and board for now and switching to greatsword while on horseback - seems to be a great combo that works for me. Now to try killing that big ass dragon in the swamp by the starting area.

Also turns out the miniboss I got the spear from is somebody I maybe shouldn't have killed. Oh well.

I really hate the imps in dungeons--they're a pain.

uh oh

big demon's souls energy lol

i regret nothing

A miniboss that you were not supposed to kill? Did they attack you first or not? If they did, and you were not supposed to kill them, it's quite fucked up.

Nah, would be totally in line with how the world behaves. Just like how easy it is to remove your spell merchant from the game.

My hero character killed the NPC that gives out the jellyfish summon before I got thru the dialog to get the summon. Major sad face.

The miniboss attacks you, he's behind a yellow veil, but if you start really hammering him he offers to surrender, at which point he apparently becomes a merchant and sells you some dingus that makes it much easier to beat the major boss up in the castle. Oh well.

I may have over done the cheese in beating the Tree Guardian knight guy. Oof.  Some of the open world boss encounters can have a lot of RNG issues due to terrain. That and Carrion Slicer does absurd damage. I'm overleveled by a bit.

Margit seems doable. Getting him to under half consistently, but I'm a bit of a glass cannon.

The amount of weapons is incredible. I know we can't say "starting zone" but I am roughly referring to the very large area south of the first story boss, and I have already found about 25 weapons, most of which unique and very powerful. I can't even imagine how much stuff they crammed into this.

West Limgrave, around Ellah's Church. I feel like there's absolutely a starting zone. Like, it's the area you start in lol.

You are right. I suppose I was including Sweeping Peninsula in it, but that would be a mistake. Anyway, it has weapons for years.

Peninsula is high on weapons and low on everything else, well, besides an annoying spell merchant and goofy bosses.

I am kinda feeling like a hero melee might have been unintended hard mode. Which has been sort of true in other Souls games but feels a bit more that way now.

I haven't played Hero yet except for checking out the starting equipment just now and it does seem like it can be a "trap" class for those who aren't familiar with Soulsbournering mechanics. The starting shield isn't 100% physical block damage (it's 76%) but keeping on all the starting armor puts you at medium encumbrance so it's like a mediocre middle ground where you don't get 100% physical block or light encumbrance without stripping down. In contrast Confessor also starts at medium encumbrance but they also start with a 100% physical block shield.

Since Hero has the highest starting strength it seems like the best way to play it at the start is to ditch the shield, strip off the head and arm pieces to get to light encumbrance and two hand the axe. But that's a more advanced playstyle compared to, say, Vagabond or Confessor who both start with 100% physical block shields.

Edit: middle

I started with a Samurai chick, becuase she got a cool hat.

I got the wireless xbox one controller for playing this. While it felt great to use, it kept disconnecting during gameplay.  I can't put my finger on whether it's steam being weird or the bluetooth connection on the desktop/controller being shit. It would work great for a while and then all of the sudden the only button that would work would be xbox system button. I guess I'll need to grab the dongle afterall.

Some fights are a bit silly with magic. Ranged bosses don't fare well. That eldtree avatar sure f'ing pasted me, however. I got nowhere with that one.

I started two handing the Bloodhand's Fang greatsword for most mobs and then pulling up the turtle shield for bosses that you just have got to block. Working pretty well. Still can't take down the golden knight near the start but I'm close; it's just a matter of technique.

The other Souls games are so relatively linear by comparison that usually by the time you can get to somebody you're capable of killing them, it's a matter of learning the fight and getting better on timing etc. Here you can definitely get into a situation that you're just not ready to deal with. The interesting gameplay challenge is sometimes to figure out which it is.

80 hours in I'm comfortable saying it's the best action and best open world game ever made. It has displaced Demons Souls and firmly rests at #2 in my favorite games of all time. I'm already looking forward to starting a new character.

I have only played a measly 12 hours, but I am inclined to agree.  I just I wasn't so terrible.  I gave Margit a try the other day, and he absolutely packed my shit once I got him halfway down.  But!  The cool thing is that I can just fuck off and go do something else for hours and hours. Amazing.

It is the closest thing I've ever seen to the perfect video game.

It's pretty damn great. It exactly that "if I'm just not able to hack it with one boss, I can go off and do something else" that for me at least saves it from what I didn't like much about the other Souls games. Plus it just feels like the secrets in the landscape and such are more discoverable, more intuitive, than in the other Souls games, where you just pretty much HAD to read a walkthrough to find the strategy that made it possible to get from point A to point B at some junctures.

Yea, it's pretty good. There seems to be a lot more variance in gameplay and combat options (mounted combat in particular feels super fluid and responsive) than the previous souls games, it's definitely the best one when it comes to exploring and finding cool shit randomly in the world... which is absolutely massive, by the way. I'm also curious about what exactly did GRRM do for the game -- just the setting and background, or ingame texts / dialogue as well?

I'm even willing to forgive From's understanding of the mythical concepts of the 'mouse' and the 'keyboard' that seems to have regressed compared to DS3 (and hey, it's perfectly playable... with the right autohotkey scripts :awesome_for_real:).

I've beaten two bosses. That's two more than I thought I'd manage.

Too be fair, the Rennala fight isn't difficult for a mage. You're resistant to most of the damage in the fight, although there are some parts in phase 2 that'll get you if you're not on your toes. It's just long and the runback is less than ideal.

I've yet to hit a brick wall. There always seems to be something else I can do if my squishy ass keeps getting one shot by certain content. I don't see anything else being a better experience this year, and that's a huge surprise for someone that hasn't really gotten into a Souls game since OG Demon's Souls. I never really got that far in that either. This is just such an unexpected success for me. 

Mounted combat is incredibly fluid and I am loving it. The first time I tried it, I just had to--I'd jumped down some of those cliff ledges to a place where a bunch of bats dropped down and there was lightning striking suddenly and there really wasn't a way to jump off the little plateau and live, so I mounted up and I was like "whoa, you can actually fight effectively on horseback and it's actually better against these kinds of mobs". I wasn't actually expecting that. I just did the lake dragon while riding Torrent and it was great.

Somehow I ended up sequence breaking a fight I was stuck on. Didn't do anything logical to bypass it, just fucked off and did some exploring. I advanced the map, but that was something the Roundtable hold said I could do. Come back and the fight is cleared like I won. Bonkers.

To be specific:

Elden Ring showed me that I’m burned out on Souls Bosses. It’s a lot of „more of the same“ and the usual dance of long combo sequences, bad camera, wonky dodge roll inputs and bosses that try to punish every missed input and every heal attempt are just annoying me right now.

My initial reaction at the moment is just „why is there yet another boss?“ and the open world is the only thing keeping me playing right now.

Man all i am doing is out exploring the map. I am not even concerned with the main story quests yet, but getting there. Way too much to see and places to ride off and check out while being terrorized by the crazy ass mobs in this game.

Stormveil Castle is huge.

I‘ve played 30 hours and I haven’t even been to Godrick yet.

I read a quote the other day where they said he was involved early on (setting and background only).

Yeah, I'm a long ways into the castle and it feels like it has a lot more to it.

I rode into Caelid and it felt like a significant increase in challenge level.

I think there's a very small number of mini-bosses and the Tree Sentinel left in Lingrave for me to fight.

I don't know whether to dump points to building FP to summon some of the better spirit ashes I've gotten a hold of in terms of the long haul of the game.

I fucking hate imps in catacombs.

In the early game, I have found many occasions when I was having trouble where summoning the fucking Jellyfish was the solution.  It has proven to be the better option in nearly every boss fight so far, me being a full melee character.  That said, I just got two new ones I have yet to try out, not even sure I have the FP for them.

My experience with ashes as a ranged character:

Fuck horse back fighting.

I miss every second strike, my horse constantly dies and the sudden camera movements make me nauseous

Hoarfrost Stomp got nerfed.

https://www.bandainamcoent.com/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-v1-03

Moon veil as well and Sword of Night and Flame

I don't see any changes to Moonveil listed. I suppose that could be in the "other" category. Biggest change for speed running was probably the Sword of Night and Flame in combination with a weapon art only working for that weapon. With that, a large amount of bosses could be one shot.

Mimic ashes were nerfed. That's fine. They didn't seem much worse from what I used last night. However, I mostly just used them because of how damn tanky they were, not the damage.

That big ball o' snakes guy is a roadblock I still need to get past. May be easier with the 10 extra vigor and few more flask charges I have now.

People are saying Moonveil got nerfed in PvP, at least.

Distortion2, among others, was using Hoarfrost Stomp for his Any% speed runs.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBaHYWh_265k73PxkgaNkrA

I know the All Rememberance runs were using that skill specifically for Godskin Noble since you could just completely lock it in place. The any % runs just aren't that interesting to me; I haven't spent a lot of time watching them. Partially because I don't want the end spoiled, and they're done so fast that you have to duck out really early.

edit: From apparently removed some roots in Caelid to disable certain skips.   :grin:

I'm co-oping with a friend last night, we get the invader! notice, then BOTH of our screens go black, then YOU DIED! (looks like we're underwater), goes to reloading screen and YOU DIED! (underwater), repeat infinitely.

I read on internet someone talking about invaders doing something to brick your save and that certainly is the case for BOTH of us.  Not sure if it's an actual hack or just a weird bug, but the end result is the same, these characters are no longer playable.

Just an FYI - if you have a char you really, really, really don't want to lose, play offline (setting in system) until they get this sorted.

Possible workaround:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tgl6o8/some_pos_host_bricked_my_save_into_a_deathloop/

Thanks Trippy, was trying to get this to work last night, wasn't having luck.  I wasn't doing the alt-f4 thing though, will give that a try and report back.

I'll never understand what it is that motivates people to do this shit (still finding it kind of hard to believe that FROM didn't think of whatever it is people are doing.  I'm also still not convinced that it isn't just a bug)

FROM knows they have a hacker issue in PvP in their games and is why some of their other games' servers have been down. That's why they added Easy Anti-Cheat to Elden Ring. I'm not sure they realized corrupting saves was possible via PvP until now but I've also seen reports of this exact same problem with people not doing PvP so there's something funky with their save system in general.

I can't get it to work, map never loads.  I do kind of get an interface, but death always quickly follows.  Bummer.

Hopefully this is something they can fix relatively quickly.

Edit: there's a small patch today but I can't find anything that describes what's in it.

It does sometimes have the issue that other open-world games have about synchronizing the main questline/plot with players going off and doing whatever the fuck they feel like. I took down Godfrey and then rested and at first I thought the dude in the graveyard was a dangerous new mob that had spawned there now that the boss was gone and it was three hits in before I realized it was the gatekeeper guy, which is one hit too late when it comes to permanent hostility. Then I came out the back and gave grape lady her grape and I realized the game really wanted to think I hadn't been back there already, but of course I had in exploring things. Then I said oh I should go see the Roundtable or whatevs and it was basically as normal, and then I thought oh maybe I need to go see White Mask guy at the starting grace and yeah that's it.

I don't think this shit is that hard to do if you're going to let players do their own thing, but it goes against their design take so I get it.

I wandered through the entire game doing random shit at like level 20. I'm level 70 something now, 100 hours in and I just took at a right turn at Lunaria.

Anything that can break is optional. Anything that can't break is storyline.

This game is as close to flawless as an open world game is gonna get for a while. I really hope Bethsoft delays their bullshit.

Edit: That said, irt Starfield

(https://imgur.com/lRzYkRs.jpg)

(https://imgur.com/0SK26Aj.jpg)

The patch today supposedly fixes the teleport death loop bug:

https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-1032

That seems to address the cause, not the effect.

Bummer.

I wish From Software would invest into a few good AI programmers instead of just blatantly cheating by input reading to dodge or punish attacks/heals. Feels exceptionally cheap. It’s also really aggravating that bosses can animation cancel out of attacks and combos.

It’s sort of ridiculous when a boss animation cancels out of a combo into a different combo the moment you press a button.

It makes actually learning boss patterns that much harder and it is still very easily cheese-able and actually encourages you to trick the boss AI into doing stupid ass stuff instead of actually trying to learn the boss.

It’s also why delayed attacks and spells are so overpowered, like rock sling, because the input reading AI reacts to the start of your spell casting animation and not the actual projectiles.

Yeah, the delayed spells are insanely OP. Rock Sling hard countered almost all of the NPC invaders and humanoid evergaol bosses for me by itself (the only exceptions were the white mask assassins since the cast time is a bit too long and they close distance too fast, but that's why Adula's Moonblade exists), and

It’s also buggy as hell.

Some bosses can animation cancel out of combos due to input read, execute a completely different combo and then revert back to the initial attack sequence and finish that as well.

So you can have cases where a boss does a sequence that would end in a high damage attack, then they cancel out of it when you press e.g. heal to do a different high damage attack sequence. When that finishes they simply continue their original combo right where they left off.

This can lead to ridiculous effects like a boss doing two aoe attacks right after another after your stamina bar is already depleted.

This can’t be intentional but it’s most likely a side effect of their input read mechanic.

On the other hand exploiting that by e.g using delayed attacks can effectively stun lock even late game optional bosses. you can use ranged combat ash summons to make bosses dodge roll themselves to death and you can make enemies dodge roll right into your shots or fall off ledges.

a few examples (https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/tlpp9w/input_reading_be_like/)

edit: this also affects slow attacks on melee weapons which is why strength builds and great weapons are so bad if you don’t want to spam jump attack because jump attack is the only attack the AI doesn’t know how to deal with.

edit2: the mechanic is currently so broken that some bosses can cancel out of backstabs and stagger animations as well

PC (Steam) patching seems a bit wonky. If the latest patch is causing crashes try verifying the game files.

That's hilarious. I especially like the bow/crossbow aiming thing. I'm still on my first play through (having finally finished Forbidden West last weekend) and am doing sword & board mainly right now (Confessor) so as a fast attacking 1h melee character I don't really notice the AI reacting to the start of inputs rather than the actually animations. I do notice the heal reaction stuff but your character brings the flask up so quickly it looks like they are reacting to the flask being used rather than the inventory action button(s) being triggered.

The annoying part of the AI for me right now as a melee character is the "airborne" attacks that auto track your movements. Lots of minibosses have jump attacks which go up high enough to freak out the camera and they will change their trajectory in the air if you move so you basically need to rely on I-frames or dodge rolling "through" them (while they are in the air) so you end up behind them after they land. This isn't new to Elden Ring but it seems more common in this game.

i've had to uninstall and reinstall every time it gets patched.

I haven't done many attempts, but I think I'll try that cheese strat. That boss is brutal. I'm trying to use Moonveil just because she closes too fast and my spells don't hit hard enough to outpace her life steal. Sorcery in general is a bit disappointing once you get the point where mobs and bosses start having giga-HP. At that point, you just hope they give you an opening for Comet Azur and don't have phases. Although it is nice to just kamehameha those tree bosses.

I'm really thinking I chose hard mode by going all melee, but whatever. It's fun.

Yea, my first few attempts basically told me 'you either git gud and dodge all of her bullshit attacks so she can't lifesteal (shield block is no bueno) and then methodically take her down or you try to win the DPS race to melt her before she can melt you, mana efficiency be damned'. My build at the time was 80 int, 40 vig, 40 mind, and I stacked all the damage increases I could: carian scepter +10 with the snow witch hat (the dark moon spell is boosted by both of these), both sorcery damage talismans, the sorcery cast speed talisman (the moon spell casts way too slowly without this), and only used one defensive talisman (dragon greatshield or something, anti-physical damage) and a defensive flask for phase 2 (with the two tears that reduce incoming damage). I didn't use Comet Azur since I wanted to keep applying the debuff and stagger from the dark moon spell, but I think you may be able to use it in her second phase when she's stationary. I'm also preeetty sure I got lucky with her move selection on the kill as well, since my summon kept her attention for like 90% of the fight.

My Chelona's Rise is bugged so I can't get the Ranni version of the spell. womp womp

Same here.  Occasionally I feel a bit over-leveled, but then I spent two hours yesterday getting my ass handed to me by everything.

I'm probably overleveled, but that gold shade Godfrey in the capital just owns me. I just can't quite get the timing of those attacks for some reason. But I will say I went in cold and got wiped and over the next few tries I was learning the timing and had him down to a quarter health each time. This game is pretty amazing in the fact that all you really need is time with some of these fights. Doing them repeatedly, I always have seen improvements until I clear it... just a matter of how much time I can devote to wasting on it.

I think this weekend I am going to really try practicing parrying, since that function fascinates me with the precise timing of it.

Melee sans-shield is definitely the hardest mode for people who aren't intimately familiar with FromSoftware dodge roll mechanics. A 100% block physical resistance shield in the early game, however, makes almost all 1-on-1 non-boss encounters doable, if not trivial (block counter is OP against cannon fodder). Against bosses shields are much less useful (for blocking) but can still save quite a bit of your health.

I mean, kind of. They put enemies that can break block really early into Elden Ring. Moreso than the previous games. But yeah 100% physical always recommended, and you can just run south and grab one of the best in the game (turtle shell) really fuckin early.

Great Turtle Shell shield got nerfed. Stick with Brass for early game.

Edit: double nerfed actually, from 100% physical to 87% and Barricade shield which it comes with was nerfed too (higher cost, shorter duration)

So just a question: I have a PS5. And disposable income. And a curiosity about this genre of game.

However, I will be honest -- I'm also pretty sure I will suck at this genre of game.

So which game in this genre is going to be least likely to make me rage quit?

You can easily spend 40+ hours in Elden Ring without battling any boss. It also has the most options to make life easier. The later bosses get really hard though. Otherwise I’d recommend OG Dark Souls which is probably the easiest and also one of the best.

This one Morat, hands down.

Thanks. I'll pick it up and see what I can do with it. :)

After playing it and learning the basics, if you get stuck, you can check out the "How to get OP fast!" videos on YouTube (find some for your starting class). Those will show you areas you can go to get stuff best suited for your starting class that will make you stronger without needing to fight anything in most cases.

And if you don't mind having your exploration spoiled this map is super handy:

https://mapgenie.io/elden-ring/maps/the-lands-between

E.g. you can select "Hide All" and then turn on things like "Site of Grace" (fast travel, potion refill, and more), "Golden Seed" (carry more potions), "Sacred Tear" (potions are more effective), and "Map Fragment" (turn off "fog" for sections of map) for (generally) easy to find / acquire stuff that will make your journey easier.

Edit: typos

If by genre you mean "Souls Game", this one. I've had mixed feelings about all of them and never really finished most of them, but I love this one.

Man, I knew the Turtle Shield had changed. Time to see what else I've got.

Does all the shit in your inventory count as weight or is it just what you have equipped?

Everything showing up on the equipment screen counts. The stuff that’s listed under inventory but not on the equipment screen doesn’t

Man I wish I hadn't ever seen this genre and could experience Demons Souls again for the first time.

I could go for Demon’s Souls again, but the run backs in that were brutal.

Malenia phase 2 is giving me fits. I fail the initial dodge 50% of the time, which means you’re just going to die. That carian skill you get from the magic dragon works great for phase 1 but it keeps you a bit close and vulnerable to her flurry.

Right now I’m doing an hour of attempts then bolting and advancing the plot.

Demon's Souls is the only souls game I ever finished, and only once.  And I have fond memories.  But....Elden Rings has possibly ruined me for all other souls games.  Not sure why I would play any of them when I can just play this.

They have also really made it hard to top this with any game that is not open world.

It just feels to me like they've finally found a way to make discovery of the world's secrets more intuitive and integrated into the gameplay and yet challenging and surprising still? I'm finding almost every cool thing just by fiddling around and reading messages, whereas figuring some of the hidden shit out in the others absolutely required reading walkthroughs.

I've mostly played strategy and some stwor lately. Is this game boomer friendly?  :why_so_serious: (I'm not quite a boomer but my reflexes are :( ).

Not really. It is the "easiest" of the FromSoftware Soulsbournering* games as we've been discussing but it's still not easy and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination and reflexes to be able to progress. You can play with a friend or three to help you along but that opens you up to PvP invaders.

You might want to wait for a sale (which might be a while) so at least you won't be paying full price for it if you can't get very far. Or wait for the Steam (or equivalent) Spring Sale and pick up Dark Souls III for (relatively) cheap and see if you can get past the tutorial boss there. If so and you are willing to do some grinding in Elden Ring so you are always "over-leveled" you can give Elden Ring a try.

* [Demon's|Dark] Souls [I|II|III], Bloodbourne, Elden Ring

i'm not even gonna coat this, if you have shit reflexes, move on with your life this ain't it

I’ve already played 80 hours and at have barely set a foot into Leyndell.

Nerfed Radahn is a real push over.

Oh and for the record fuck the godskin bosses.

Dear From Soft, just because you struck gold once with Ornstein and Smough doesn’t mean that every second boss has to be a Laurel and Hardy-esque due of annoying as ass bosses.

Double bosses are no bueno. Misbegotten Warrior + Crucible Knight is an epic suckfest. Are any of them actually designed as a set or are they all just one random boss + another boss (possible same type)? I guess Godskin Duo works, but by that time you've fought those bosses indivually and likely more than once.

I've hit yet another brick wall. A full night of getting my ass beat wasn't the best time. That being said, the night previous I beat probably the toughest boss I've ever beat in a video game and I actually did some impressive stuff in the process. It felt good. Not sure if it offset the hours of attempts, but it was something.

Do you have meteorite (plus staff)? That seems to be the go to spell for sorcery builds for that boss.

Edit: link to a specific strat:

Edit2: sorcery not incantation

Duo bosses are usually all very optional, and are mostly meant to make coop more interesting. While still being very killable solo (Misbegotten+Crucible is a good example because by the time you get there you should be able to kill Misbegotten before Crucible shows up, but I am NOT saying this is an easy fight as a solo player).

There's at least one I remember that isn't optional.

That's a totally fair number.

According to my PS5 Trophy list nearly 30 percent of all Elden Ring players beat Morgott and nearly 5 percent platinumed the game.

That would be impressive numbers for any game but they are especially remarkable for a souls game

There's something wrong with the PSN Elden Ring trophy percentages.

I've only been playing for about a week so for so I only have a handful but on mine it says that 71.1% have defeated Margit which is way way too high. In comparison for Demon's Souls (PS5) 70.1% have defeated the very first boss Phalanx who isn't even a real Soulsbourne-style boss fight (it's just a big blob on the ground). There's no way a greater % of people have beaten Margit over Phalanx. In Bloodborne only 48.2% have beaten the first (optional) boss the Cleric Beast and only 45.3% have beaten the first story boss Father Gascoigne. Mine also says that 57.2% have beaten the Elden Ring optional boss in Castle Morne Loenine Misbegotten which seems way too high for an optional side-boss.

Same thing on Steam, 73.5% have beaten Margit and even hard optional endgame bosses have 20+% numbers.

Maybe everyone just got gud.  :awesome_for_real:

Eh, Margit is an early boss.  I would expect most players have done that, and fairly early.

Margot...is something else I think?

Less than half the people who have played Bloodborne have beaten either of the first two bosses and Margit is much harder than both of them. The percentages are broken. I suspect the true percentages at least 1/2 less if not more.

Just to avoid any confusion Morgott is the boss of The Capital Leydell which is an area you probably reach after you’ve played dozens of hours. You’re most likely level 70 - 90 when you reach him and have played this game for 40+ hours.

It’s also not an easy boss.

That’s why I find it so remarkable because less then 50 of players usually finish a game or even reach late game areas .

(Don’t know why From Soft decided that most of the main bosses had to have such similar names with the same starting letter. As if they are a litter of puppies)

And yes, the reason I highlighted the 20% endgame boss thing is because there is a particular boss at the end of a hidden endgame area that's accessible through another hidden endgame area, and also a lot of people think she's one of the hardest From bosses ever. Still, 21.4% steam players have the achievement. Maybe through coop, or something is fucked with achievement tracking? (I never got the red wolf achievement, even though I obv killed it)

e: and I wouldn't discount the possibility that this many people got the achievements legit (maybe via co-op, but still). Game's been out for a while, and the souls community is all about the 'git gud' xhardcorex lifestyle.

Bloodborne numbers on PS might have something to do with the fact that it's free for PS Plus members so not everyone who has tried it has paid for it specifically.

That’s why I also listed the PS5 Demon’s Souls first boss (who isn’t really a boss) numbers.

I do think some of the bosses allow a looser style than in previous Souls games, or at least it feels that way to me. And it feels easier to understand what's going on in a lot of fights. Maybe it's just that I'm overlevelling before I do any of them. So maybe that's letting more people go on where they would have just quit before, and that's leading to higher achievement numbers.

I will say, some of the boss fights are not as difficult to fight as it is to fight the god damn camera while in battle. I understand fighting huge bosses has a mystique to it, but really is a pain in the ass when you are under them and they leap up and send the camera spinning all over - not to mention some bosses are so big you can't really tell from any camera angle wtf they are about to do. (yes, I play melee so I am in the minority that needs to get up close and personal).

I'd imagine melee is likely the most popular build overall, just not the easiest. Dragon fights are mostly trying to find the feet. And then you fight the Mountain Giant.. and hit his feet.  :oh_i_see:

Another night of wiping to a boss over and over again.  :awesome_for_real: Despite how much I love this game, this sort of futility is not fun. A back to back full HP boss fight where the second boss has about a thousand different move combos is a bit too much for my old man hands.

Time to go bully some mini-bosses for a while.

For some of the bosses it may be easier to not use the target lock. You might want to give that a try.

Oh I do use the lock/unlock clicks NOW... but yeah.

I stopped using the target lock for anything that wasn't 100% about using a shield, it's death for melee otherwise.

The camera is a fucking pain in the ass for mounted fights at least and especially on large things--you just have to swipe when you kind of think you're in the hitbox, you never really know for sure. I've been chewing through Great Enemies and field bosses now but Commander O'Neil took me a lot of tries because of camera issues--I'd think I was swiping on his fucking adds but who knows half the time.

Also the fucking bats in Fort Faroth are stronger than most bosses, fuck that shit.

Every achievement in the game is "hidden." Is it possible it's only counting people who beat him vs the total that attempted him and not TOTAL PLAYERS.

If so, those numbers make WAY more sense.

How would that work mechanically? The Steam achievement doc (https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/achievements) has nothing that'd hint at such functionality (basically 'activate' an achievement independently for each user for aggregation), all achievements are active 100% of the time. The only thing hidden status seems to do is to control whether it is visible on your profile (and you see 'friend x got hidden achievement y' in your feed)...

The achievement %s don't line up with this either - if you look at the mandatory bosses in the game in order (ignoring the shardbearers since technically you can kill any 2 of them + their appropriate minibosses, though most players will kill the ones in limgrave and liurnia):
You can only attempt a boss on this list if you killed the previous ones, so by that definition if someone is stuck on boss 3, they shouldn't count for the boss 4 %. Either From has perfect 'critical path' boss balancing in that they're just getting incrementally harder, or achievement %s are absolute values...

e: I still think it's either something broken on From's end that unlocks/unlocked achievements for people early, a lot of players are cheating (why?), or (Occam's razor) Elden Ring players are just better at the game / the game is easier than other soulsbornes, especially with summons / it's easier to cheese (who knows, maybe a lot of this is pre-1.03 mimic tear + hoarfrost stomp spam or something)

On the other hand, it is a pretty good place to grind runes.  And while the bats are bad, the shit on the roof is worse.

Steam achievements are always suspect because there are achievement unlocker hacks and the PC version of Elden Ring allows for cheats. But the other boss achievement %s you listed like Godfrey seem more reasonable. They are still higher than the roughly equivalent Bloodborne boss achievements that I have unlocked (I did 12/17 bosses before I stopped so I can't see the later Bloodborne boss %s) but not as much as the Margit one. So that one may just be weird.

I assume those are the same dudes I was referring to.  I hate them.  The bats are fine, but those assholes seem to cut through my shield and armor and one-shot me.

Leyndell feels a lot like Anor Londo. It’s a brilliant location with a huge drop off in quality once you get to the next sections. Both forbidden lands and Mountaintops of the Giants are really underwhelming compared to what came before.

At least they still have some highlights like

Yes depending on your Vigor they can easily one-shot you and some have weapons with unblockable bleed procs which will also kill you if the bleed proc triggers. But that's what the stealth mechanics are for.

Some actual numbers: The furthest I got in Bloodborne on the mandatory bosses was The One Reborn who is 5 out of 9 with a achievement % of 28.2%. The rough equivalent mandatory boss in Elden Ring would probably be the Fire Giant at 7 out of 13 (depending on how/who you count) who is at 30.3% in your numbers above.

Finished it! This is the most I've done in a FromSoft game ever. I beat a couple bosses in Demon's Souls (too fucking hard) and Dark Souls just never clicked with me (plus hard).

I know recency bias is a thing, but this might be my top game ever. If you don't include JPRGs, it most definitely is. Just an overall amazing experience, if only slightly tarnished (hyuk) by some balance issues.

Some notes on the end boss:

Curious.  Last time I went up there, the stealth did nothing, two spawned right on top of me.  Do gear and stats impact stealth?

The farming area I'm talking about is:
There are spells that increase you stealth. I'm not sure if there is gear that increase or decrease your base stealth.

Gotcha.  And damn, that sword.

the MOMENT you can get to Raya Lucaria and get through the pvp quests, the best rune farm is that hill full of dumb sleeping dudes

I think I've found my first ragequit-level boss which is the Valiant Gargoyle fight in Nokron/Sofia if you're melee. Not going to bother with it for now--it's fucking awful. It's the only unfun thing in the game so far for me.

Gargoyle fight is always shit. Just come back later.

Suicide bird is also accessible then

Also, remapping Dodge to Right Trigger makes it much easier to babysit the camera while you rollspam around. Heavy Attack has no need for such a privileged position, at least with the swords I've been using.

Heavy attack does suck ass.

Well, Castle Sol was a whole lot of bullshit. Those dual wielding phantom knights are harder than most bosses.

I also fucking hate Crucible Knights.

Difficulty is very uneven late game. There‘s WTF bosses like Maliketh or Malenia or normal enemies like the ash crucible knights and then there’s bosses you absolutely curb stomp first try just by mashing L1 and letting your ash summons tank.

It’s Hoi from „oh a boss. This will probably take hours, WTF From Software this shit is impossible“ to „oh a boss… and he’s dead“ often directly after.

I like the ashes. They really have different personalities. Tiche for example is reliable and stoically takes even the hardest hits the mimic tear is just psycho killer jumping around and murdering the shit out of everybody. My Albiauric archer on the other hand is showing bosses why archers have always been bullshit in Souls game. It should have an ult move where she just makes bosses drop off the ledge of Anor Londo, like in a FF7 materia.

It’s so funny seeing enemies get shot, stagger, recover then get shot over and over again. Just like it happens to every player out there.

Lastly even 110 hours in I still  can’t help but laugh uncontrollably when I encounter spider hands. Something about their moveset is just absolutely hilarious to me

As a pure melee using big weapons, the heavy attack (with a jump attack) is often a good alpha strike.  Or sneak attack.  Or maybe I am doing it wrong, that is always a likely possibility.

Not with very heavy weapons.

It depends on the move set and whether or not you are guard countering (the counter is your heavy attack). And jumping heavies is often the best way for melee to deal with the shielded mobs. You’ll likely trade damage but that’s often better than struggling to get past their shield with your non jumping attacks. As a simple example the non-broadsword class straight swords’ heavy is a straight thrust like a rapier or spear and has very good range. That makes it the safest attack against some enemies since you can poke them down without getting hit yourself.

So I am level 65 and just finally looked up guard countering.  Turns out I have probably never done it even once.

If you picked a class that started with a shield it’s in the missable tutorial but otherwise yeah the game doesn’t tell you it’s a thing.

I think I just assumed it was the regular attack after a block, and never understand why people kept talking about it.  Very excited to try it.

Guard counter is immensely powerful if you use a shiel, potentially game-ruining. There's even a talisman who makes it even stronger. Almost a cheat.

Blah blah not all enemies. Of course.

Brace of the Hallig Tree or „what if we placed dozens of every deadly and/or annoying enemy in one cramped level“

I have to finish up the game because I’m slowly getting burned out on all the bosses.

At times it is an exhibition of what makes those games brilliant but right now it’s bullshit fight after bullshit fight and my tolerance for From Software‘s bullshit boss tactics is wearing thin.

Attacks that have reach of half a baseball field, enemies lunging 30 meters forward and hitting you from half way across the map while you drink, combos which require so many dodges that your stamina bar is empty even though you have 40+ endurance. Attacks that take away target lock on so you end up standing with the your back to the enemy. One shot kill attacks that punish that one mistake you made after you’ve been in the fight for the last 15 minutes. Scarlet Rot, lifesteal, instant poise breakers etc.

I wish they had more creativity than just designing twitch bosses which hit like a truck, instant murder you if you make just one mistake at a critical moment and can jump around like Kirby on meth.

I'm way behind most of you (just started exploring Raya Lucaria Academy) so I don't have any specific advice but I would recommend watching the (glitchless) no-hit and/or speed runs for tips and tricks if you haven't been already. That how I managed to get through 12 of 17 bosses in Bloodborne before running out steam despite only getting to the first or second bosses in the other games. Somebody also did a Spirit Ashes only run if you want to cheese the bosses that way.

No hit (not no damage): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK-qC0rnUDU

No hit & no damage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcd0Ne7ke4k

All remembrances (glitchless): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVRSo_6AVs

Spirit Ashes only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEsG-UnVMdI

Yea, Elden Ring seems to have a fair number of cheese builds. Thankfully I played a build (sorcerer) that has a lot of cheese already baked in. :grin:

Still had problems with a few bosses (and some of their bullshit moves, though relatively few of them present a risk at range), but could almost always brute force them by throwing big magic at them from a safe distance before they had a chance to kill me and/or getting lucky with their move selection (while a maxed-out Tiche or Mimic Tear kept their attention -- yea, it's still amazing even post-nerf, just does a bit less damage). One-shot abilities were a problem if my dodge timing was off (and it was, a lot of the time), but there are a few ways that allowed me to ignore them (wondrous flask with the damage reduction shards, Uplifting Aromatic cast by myself and my mimic)

Godskin Duo can go get bent. After beating my head against the wall all morning, decided to use the sleep arrows to make things manageable. Worked for the most part, kill the skinny then reset health and FP and start in on the fat man... until the skinny one repops. Trying to figure out which to off was only a matter of which was close to death, but man that chaos until one drops is frustrating. Luckily, I got off an attack just as my mimic got vaporized which AoE'd both together. Tell ya though, that smithing stone bell ALMOST made it worth it.

The deeper I go, the more the bullshit also aggravates me. They fixed a huge problem with their design fixations with a more open world design, now they need to fix how they think about content/gear chokepoints and what constitutes "difficulty". But that last point is literally one that 95% of existing developers in any company fail on, so no surprise.

Thanks for the info. I’ll keep this bookmarked for when I really hit a wall.

It’s not the difficulty per se though at the moment. I’ve completed Brace of the Hallig Tree (so I can now beat my head against the wall that is Malenia) and I’m also currently at the Fire Giant.

It‘s more that the sort of challenge the boss battles focus on has been very samey for the last few fights and I’m simply a little tired of yet another duo fight and yet another dragon and yet another ulcerated tree spirit and yet another „dodge a seven hit boss combo perfectly or die“ boss fight.

They should do more bosses like Rykart or Radahn and fewer Foreskin nobles

I think part of the problem is that with the Spirit Ashes, they've had to balance the game around almost always having help for boss fights. The problem with that is that spirit AI's are incredibly inconsistent, and you also never know when a boss is going to shift agro from the spirit to you.

Also since they had to generate a lot of content it doesn't feel like any particular boss encounter was crafted to the extent that a Demon's Souls boss encounter was. Almost half of them seem to be "wide open space with nothing in it" and most of the other half is "cramped room with a large boss who moves quickly".

That said, as mentioned there are so many broken builds and crazy farm spots that there were only a few endgame and optional bosses that gave me a somewhat hard time, and I pretty much blew through NG+ (or Journey 2 as it's called) without any sort of problem.

I'm kind of frustrated because I got into Leyndell--killed the golden guy on the horse at the gate--and I've been moving down to explore the city without finding any other grace. It's getting a little annoying--no matter how careful I am sooner or later I make a mistake with all of those various mobs and I have to either rush down to get the runes or methodically work my way back to that point. I feel like there's got to be a grace down there somewhere but I just cannot find it. I may have to look at a walkthrough.

The snowmen with the bubble pipes are pretty fucking weird.

If you’re down in the city past the overturned carts then you already passed two or three graces coming from the entrance next to the  guardian on the horse

Outside the city? Sure. Inside? Not that I can see.

There’s a grace directly behind the door the draconic tree sentinel guards on the eastern ramparts of Leyndell and there’s at least another one down at the plaza (the big avenue with all of the overturned carts and the giant) in one of the buildings. There’s also at least two or three different shortcuts/elevators.

Open World action RPGs must turn balancing your game’s difficulty into an absolute nightmare.

The assassin inside the ringleader’s evergaol was significantly harder than the last three main line story bosses I faced.

Fire giant was a total pushover by comparison.

I think he is one of the if the not hardest bosses in the game.  Basically you need to constantly be dodging until you develop carpal tunnel and then plink in during the one animation that lets you attack.  Also you need to avoid his ridiculous jump from anywhere undodgeable instakill attack.

Or you could do what I did and back him into a corner where his AI bugs out and just auto-attack him to death.

Low poise is the general Achilles heel of hyper aggressive dodgy assassin aasholes (also the invisible jerks in that weird ass village). Adula's Moonblade pretty much destroys them by itself, since every hit staggers them out of their attack animation and will hit them even if they dodge (still need to dodge a lot of their attacks to beat them, though). Are there any equivalent fuckhueg 2h weapons that can hit them as they're coming out of a roll?

She gives you the Black Knife Tiche legendary spirit summon though and using that almost feels like cheating.

That „do a salto, leap thirty miles across the arena and then absolutely murder you with an aoe attack which also causes a bleed dot  which heals“ attack was an absolute bitch though. Even at 40  vigor this one attack basically instant kills you

This was also the fight where I unmapped crouch from L3 because I was gripping the thumb sticks so hard that I accidentally crouched all the time and then couldn’t run away or dodge correctly.

IMHO making analog sticks clickable and assigning controls to the „button“ was a mistake and should have never become a standard.

Yeah I have the same issue too and end up crouching a lot in boss battles because of that. Most FPS/3PS games put run/sprint there, if they don't have a dedicated face button for that, which makes sense, if still awkward at times.

Ya'll need to play with mouse+keyboard, The Way Miyazaki Intended.  :why_so_serious: Shift to run, Ctrl to crouch, space to jump, mouse side button to dodge, sorted.

(I find the entire "if you aren't playing From games with a gamepad, You're Doing It Wrong" meme amusing btw -- yeah, DS1 and DS2 were complete clownshoes, but DS3 was kinda playable, and ER is pretty damn playable as long as you use some autohotkey scripts to get around From's pants-on-head approach to kb+m UX)

Then I’d have to check how to plug KB and mouse into my PS5 and check if my Logitech optical mouse still works on the red fabric of my sofa. Controller is fine and Sega solved the issue thirty years ago on the Genesis, just make controllers with 6 face buttons :why_so_serious:

I'm generally in the "gamepads are overrated" camp, but I tried kb+m for like 30 seconds and found the mouselook bizarrely jerky in exactly the way I remember from Dark Souls 1 (the last From game I played). Maybe I just need to mess with the settings or get used to it though.

Malenia changed my perception of this game. Black Knife Assassins are little puppy dogs compared. Really.

Parrying seems to be the "git gud" strategy du jour against Malenia.

She has a poise issue herself. Her only weak point I'd say. But the health regen is the stuff of nightmares.

Decided to do a Journey 2 rather than a clean playthrough. God, I missed so much shit in this game the first time through. There are entire areas I somehow missed. NPCs that I didn't know had actual questlines.. damn.

Malenia is brutal. I don't know if I could do that fight without a summon. There would be so much relentless dodging you need to do perfectly. Then if you're melee, you need to be really safe to not be close when she does the flurry. Or just dodge it like a god or something.

I was working from the East Ramparts grace but I did finally find one way down so now I feel a bit better about exploring everything from both ends and not being super ultra-cautious all the time.

The quantity of shit in this is astounding. I beat the guardian in front of the capitol but haven't gone in yet. I'm level 118, over 100 hours and I've still got like 6 dungeons to do outside of it.

I’m now level 165 about 130 hours into the game and I’m still missing the latter half of Crumbling Farum Azula, Brace of the Halig Tree and a lot of side stuff.

I don’t even know when was the last time I was so obsessed and had so much fun with a single game.

I just finished the godskin duo fight. I used my spirit summon and an NPC summon and it was almost cathartic watching three people stomp those two motherfuckers into the ground. Good riddance you skin wearing weirdos.

If I can beat Malenia I will platinum this game.

Halig Tree is terrible. I already get vertigo and this place is just a nightmare.

stop playing in VR

If only... fighting on cat-walks is really not my thing in a game where survival is built on dodging.

Im now at Maliketh and this is a prime example of what happens when From has run out of boss ideas and relies on bullshit mechanics to up the difficulty.

The first phase is an absolute joke and basically just there so they can lore dump during the phase 2 cut scene. Phase 2 is only difficult because Maliketh is in infinite combo mode. If I could have healed just once it would have been a first try win. I had him at 10% before he murdered me through a column.

Compared to the Alecto fight in the evergaol or even the Dragon Lord Plasidusax fight also in Farum Azula it’s just bad and arbitrarily difficult without being any good

Getting him stuck on a pillar should let you heal and he's very easy to stagger -- i.e. he's essentially a glass cannon -- so you can't be afraid to get up in his face and whack him. If phase 1 is easy for you maybe use your summon(s) on phase 2, after hiding behind a pillar, to give you enough opportunities to stagger if you are having issues with the dodge timing.

I’m not venting because the boss is hard. I was more pointing out that the boss feels arbitrary like it’s more designed to counter certain player actions than being an engaging boss fight.

I almost killed him first try and if his moveset didn’t completely prevent healing I would have stomped him if I had managed to drink just once. Compared to e.g. Alecto from Ringleaders Evergaol or Margit or Godrick etc. this doesn’t feel like a boss which has to make sense or be engaging as a boss. It feels more like a boss whose moveset is designed to prevent specific player actions to mask that it’s not really difficult. If that makes sense.

For me it feels like a boss that is not designed as a meaningful encounter with an inherent difficulty and more as a set of moves whose only coherent design philosophy it is to remove certain tools from the players arsenal. Almost like a troll boss.

I also feel that removing just one of those troll mechanics would trivialise the encounter completely.

It’s also a contrast because the first phase is just so pointless. Almost like it’s just there so they can show you the transformation cut scene leading into phase 2 of the boss.

It’s grating because I did this directly after the Plasidusax fight which is also hard but feels like a real boss encounter that you can actually learn and get better at but where you can still use flasks and ashes of war and the fight is still challenging.even with those.

Another example for what I mean is the Tree Sentinel which spawns on the staircase outside the boss arena.

It’s still a tree sentinel but now it has a dragon great claw infused with lightning and the horse spews fire and you can’t use Torrent and have to fight it on foot instead of on horse back.

It feels like they needed a field boss there but didn’t have any idea what would be cool or what made thematic sense and so they re used a tree sentinel so they had to “upgrade” it to make it even remotely challenging. So someone said “let’s just take away the horse and give it two elemental attacks”

I hope any of this makes sense

If obnoxious two-phase boss fights annoy you, you're going to love a certain upcoming mandatory boss.  :grin:

I also think Placidusax is one of the better ER bosses btw (and not just because he literally drops the bass a few times)... and since I was a mage, I just straight up cheesed all the outdoor minibosses in that area (including that crucible knight you gotta get past at some point). Loretta's Greatbow and/or Rock Sling solves everything!

I missed this post, but this mod (https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/31?tab=description) is all but mandatory for kb+m IMO.

The only thing that annoyed me about the Placidusax fight was the awkward boss run

The arbitrary character of when attacks can kill you behind something and how close you can be really annoys me a lot.

This game is fun but the devs definitely have some persistent habits that are unnecessary and aggravating--that interrupt the wonder and strangeness of their games, the mood they create. I hate being pushed out into the "what's the mechanic here" thing where I have to reckon with the question of what I'm supposed to do in terms of exploiting the environment and changing up my equipment and learning the pattern. So much of the game play feels organic with patterns that pulse through the game like genetic trees, but in some boss fights, you can really feel the intent to make something hard via fucking bullshit.

They've gotten more ambitious over time since Demon's Souls but that means they've had to compromise quite a bit with balance. Since the old days, they've allowed for a wider variety of viable builds (magic and faith getting built out a lot more since Demons), added a jump button, more save sites, a lot more content, and now summoning spirits (which  themselves have widely varying AI and power levels) and a mount. Speed-runners aside, I could see probably being anywhere from lv. 80 - 160+ by the time they get to the late game stuff on their first playthrough. I can kinda see why they might have felt they needed to add some bullshit move sets in there for the bosses to artificially inflate difficulty a little bit. I understand the sacrifice they made in order to achieve the scope of Elden Ring, but Demon's Souls is always going to remain the high water mark for me.

I've said in Discord a few times (and might have said it earlier in this thread) that pretty much 99.99% of my deaths in Demon's Souls felt like they were my fault, and Elden Ring is... well it's not that anyway.

I'm hitting that Souls point where I lose patience with it and it stops being fun to figure out. I hated the Godskin boss moveset--that felt incredibly timed to my inputs at the ostensible end of the fight. But also just the tedium involved in moving through some places.

I don't quite get the mythos sometimes too. Like, I want to be Elden Lord, but I'm also murdering the fuck out of basically normal human guards and soldiers who give me no chance at all to be cool with them? I know, I know, I'm Tarnished and all that, but the NPCs mostly don't care much about that if they're questgivers except for Gideon who is clearly squaring off against me from the outset. It's kind of the basic Souls thing but maybe with this game opening up the world it needed to open up the mythos/world-building a bit more. I love the weirdness and the feeling of alienation, so I don't want companions or pals or dudes who are like "whoa, Dragonborn, fus ro dah, man" but I do wonder why my only choice on Mt. Gelmir on finding a bunch of soldiers grieving is to murder them before they notice me.

Demons Souls was a tight restricted experience that changed dungeon crawling for me forever.

This is the best open world game ever made, and nothing else even comes close. While a lot has changed since demons souls, none of it feels like it was without point. If the balance was a smooth gradient it wouldn't even feel like a souls game. Also, the swinginess of it makes you explore the world so much more. And sure, some fights are hard for some builds. I'm level 120 and can't kill Alecto, but any main branch content is a walk atm.

Everything they made between the two feels like experimentation.

This game definitely has its flaws, but overall I can't say I have played something better in the genre. I focus on the parts I like such as the exploring and minor dungeons rather than the ball busting bosses that I plan to outlevel in order to give me at least a chance. Outleveling the content affords me my sloppy, ham-fisted play but even then it is not a gimme where I am playing god. I got to the godskin duo in farum and even though I was high enough level to assume I could run thru it with little problem, just fighting the banished knights was still a challenge, since timing dodges is not my strong suite. I might get a few but still get nailed by stuff I really shouldn't at this point. But I have accepted my fate and this game at least allows me to go commit genocide in the other areas of the map to work off the frustration and get back to it when I clear my head.

Can't decide whether to do the Volcano lady's bidding.

Also sort of stuck on the latest part of Ranni's quest--that Baneful Shadow after the murder frogs is pretty fucking tough for me. I might try cheesing it with some giant arrows, I guess.

Only Marika/Elden Beast and Malenia left. 140 hours and Level 165.

They really want me to do two additional play throughs of a 100+ hour game to get the remaining two achievements if I wanted to platinum the game. So I guess there’ll be a lot of save game backup strats by people looking to plat the game.

I don’t really get why From still keeps doing this. In Sekiro you’d have to play and complete until NG+4 to get all achievements. Which is an insane requirement.

Save backup on PS5 was fairly painless at least (although it requires a PS+ sub).

I can already tell that the Elden Beast part of the final fight will manage to royally piss me off to no end.

Biggest enemy in this fight is the camera and that stupid magic glob Dolphin is always fucking off to an area two post codes over after attacking. Which means that I spend most of the fight either dodging attacks and spells I struggle to see because of the camera or I have to go on a twenty mile hike to get back to where the boss is.

Oh, I almost forgot that jumping is now required to evade certain attacks.

At least the music is calming

Am I the only one having troubles with the way they present storyline options?  Haight straight-away asks you to be his knight... ahhh, no dude, imma be Elden Lord.  You'll work for me, eventually.  Or, much much worse, the Queen of Volcano Manor: help me burn everything down (which, at this point, is what I think she means by, 'work against the Erd Tree).  Well, no, actually, I don't want to burn everything down.

Couldn't From have a step prior to that to open up this areas (to get you in the front door/open the area), and after you done a bit in their realm, THEN have the NPC give the, "No, THEY are the evil ones! Fight for us!", speech?

The storytelling is both bad and kind of good in the same way. Everything is sort of mysterious and oblique in part because nobody really explains anything and you can't really interact or ask questions; everybody treats you both as if you are a stranger who knows almost nothing and as a known quantity who knows everything. You're a mythic figure in a world of mythic figures. But that makes weirdly prosaic figures like Haight even more strange--this slightly bumbling, kind of naive but also arrogant aristocrat calling out for help, who then goes back to retake his castle after you clean it out only he doesn't have any soldiers or anything, and he's about as helpless as a newborn, so? None of it really makes any sense. It feels like hunting down other Tarnished for the Volcano people is a momentous choice, but you have no idea what it really means, and if you just say "oh ok burning the Erdtree is a sin" after you talk to the Finger before going up to the Land of Giants, that's pretty much the end of the adventure and you do what at that point instead? Hang around the Table schmoozing with D?

From's games always put you in the position of someone doomed to continue even while people around you tell you that you shouldn't or that you're something degraded, bad or forsaken. Since everyone is equally hopeless, lost or confused, it hardly matters. It almost feels like Moorcock's Eternal Champion only with less personality and warmth--no choice but to struggle, no choice but to murder, no choice but to burn things or betray people.

It throws me out of the world and into a, "for the game to continue you need to do this, regardless of the character journey you might have been attempting".  Which strikes me as extremely at odds with the effort they put into creating multiple endings.

But what I think/hope they are trying to do is something like, "life is ambiguous, and even more so in this world that is horribly dark, where you WILL have to do things that you probably don't want your character to do".  Showing up to a new NPC and having to choose without any background (because that is gated behind accepting service) might be something they decided was necessary... I guess?

It vexes me.  I CAN get to the lower levels via the 'trick' in the lower levels of Raya Lucria (and have), and I'm sure many would argue that is the whole point of that trick, but I don't actually like putting FROM's dick in my mouth (to say a nicer way, I think their story telling is kind of ass, but their atmosphere building it top notch so I, mostly, give them a pass on the story telling/character progression).

Edit: to be clear I don't think I'm right, I suspect I'm obsessing over something I shouldn't, which is entirely why I'm posting here.

Yeah, it interrupts me too at times, and throws me out of the mood.

I think maybe it's because in many RPGs, we either have a really specific model of who the character is that's built into the gameplay or we develop a specific model of what kind of person we think our character is because the gameplay is open to different kinds of character ideas.

E.g., I know who Geralt is in The Witcher, who Joker is in Persona 5 (though there's a teeny bit of room to play Joker as an asshole, just like Geralt can either go Triss or Yennefer).

I know what MY version of a Fallout character or a Bioware character is.

Whereas it doesn't really matter WHAT my idea about my Tarnished is in Elden Ring. The game doesn't care what you think you are, even though it seems once or twice to regard your choice as meaningful. But it also doesn't have a fixed idea about what you are either--you're not a well-defined character who is going to do somethings regardless. It doesn't even create a space for your character to register any feelings about, curiosity about, reaction to choices or events. Some of the NPCs act as if what you've done is meaningful or as if they appreciate you in some way or as if they hate and resent you, but it sometimes--maybe because of translation, but I don't think so--feels like they've got the wrong guy or you can't even tell what the fuck they actually mean.

One small thing that's interesting too is how different this feels if your character design is heavily based around incantations/spells. Then you've got a whole bunch of interactions that at least have that aspect of tangible significance (you're trying to get someone to teach you spells).

Elden Beast is such a let down of a boss for this game. It’s mostly running around, either to whatever area of the level the beast ran to after attacking or away from it to escape one of its many long ass spells or attacks. If you’re not quite literally jumping through golden hoops.

It feels less like a fight and more like a Takeshi‘s castle challenge

It also has really bad hit boxes and half of the time I’m not hitting anything even though I’m right next to it.

edit: also everything in this game instantly breaks your poise regardless of the items you wear. Bad RNG on Radagon and mistimed the dodge and the first attack knocks you on your ass and by the time the game lets you even attempt to stand up he already followed up with two other attacks and you’re dead

You also have to skip two cut scenes every time you attempt it

This is a really unfun slog of a fight

Yeah, I seriously dislike:

a) hitboxes that are 100% violated by the actual animation on screen
b) most items that invite you to maximize this or that being worthless, especially poise
c) in fact, the general degree to which itemization seems so important and yet often isn't beyond really raw categories of "I am using a greatsword" vs. "I'm using something else" etc. in relationship to builds. Or at least that's how it often seems.

NG+ Malenia did not have a fun time. REVENGE.

Mimic tear and a weapon that does a lot of stagger will turn that fight into a beatdown (as long as I don't fail the dodge at the start of phase 2  :awesome_for_real: )

Not looking forward to Mohg. I could spec back into something that one shots him from across the room, but I'd rather see if I can manage it melee. I didn't really fight him per se the first time around, so it's time to learn some patterns.

Has anyone come across this guy yet?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqN2phpMWno

Not even close to her yet (just finished Raya and doing Caria now) but hopefully he’ll still be around if I get stuck on her.

Well, that's pretty amazing to watch.

After about 16 hours of trying Malenia, I can do everything that player does.... except avoid the Waterfowl Dance. As a result, I still can't kill her. Easily the hardest boss ever in a Souls game in my opinion. The only difference compared to some other very hard bosses is that Elden Ring gives you plenty of tools to make her a bit easier if you want, but I still think she is the hardest ever.

I played the entire game with a shield using lots of guard counters, then had to switch to dual wielding and use mimic tear so I could stunlock Malenia to get past the second phase. The rest of the game felt like a cake walk after her (Guard counters are extremely good against Radagon, btw.)


I don't understand why people say they like the "story" in these games. They have a great sense of mood, but the characters are paper thin and the environments never feel like real places people could do anything but kill each-other in. It's not that the castles aren't built like castles, but that there's not even an attempt to imagine or portray what daily life might be like in this universe if the player wasn't there. Sir Gideon just stands there on that desk all the time waiting for me to talk to him. I can't bring myself to care about these people.

I don't use summons, and that's why Malenia is pretty much unkillable so far for me. But I'll get there.

And I adore these games, everything about them. But there is no story. It's all about mood as you say, suggestions, hints. The whole point I believe is to be as vague as a nightmare. To me, this is fantastic and pretty much PERFECT. But there really is no story to be liked (or disliked). Just beautiful fading mirages from a dying world.

People like the lore / worldbuilding not the stories.

That exactly. I love the mood, not the narrative. The narrative is paper-thin and shitty when it isn't. The mood is great.

I kind of like that a lot of the story is more or less hidden in descriptions whether for spells or items (though it would be a pain if more games did it). Now it's just something quaint.

I don't know what y'all are smoking, From has god-tier narrative skillz as documented in their best game ever (2004) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30BFiSOP8JU).  :drill:

I think my favorite part about elden ring so far is going on youtube and reddit channels mad about "teh gayz" in gaming and pointing out that Elden ring is super LGBTQ friendly (you don't actually choose a gender in the beginning, anyone can romance Ranni and the deathbed maiden, one of the main characters is clearly trans) and watching them angrily deny it, which I find weird and sad.

That's a weird thing to be your favorite thing about arguably one of the best games ever made.

I'm a small petty man.  Also the game itself is amazing!

Edit: It is just a pet peeve of mine that for some demographic reason my youtube feed is chock a block full of game/movie reviews by people who are apparently mad all the time about LGBTQ representation in games and movies (critical drinker, clownfish, etc..)  I block them but new ones keep popping up.  Not that I am some great crusader for gay rights but I just find the whole discourse around it tiresome.  There have been a bunch of reviews hailing Elden Ring as "the Great White Savior" of games that promote a "traditional narrative" when, at least in my opinion, it is anything but.  Anyway I have derailed this thread enough.

Journey 2 done. Let's just say level 200 makes some of these fights a bit trivial.  :awesome_for_real:

Next run is either Faith based or some sort of giga-tank. I don't think I have it in my to do a pure str, colossal weapon run. Just too slow.

If you're watching and leaving comments on these videos, the algorithm is going to keep giving you more of them. Even if you block them, you're interacting.

That's what I'm doing on my first run.  :oh_i_see:

I guess it's slow. Sure forces me to learn the fights.

Patch 1.04: https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-104

Ah yes, a metric ton of sorcery buffs - perfect for my strength build  :oh_i_see:

That said, looks to be a perfect opportunity to shift to magic user and test drive the finger wiggling.

Looks like they added some decent QOL for big, slow weapons and cast speed improvements for a number of their weapon arts. That's something.  :|

They buff sorcery and incantations because a lot of the skills just end up redundant or not used due to being slow, wimpy, or a combination of the two. I doubt any of these will take over Glintstone Pebble, Rock Sling, and Comet Azur cheese that you can get through the entire game with.

Do people even use the dragon incantations?

Don't see them discussed much online except for Scarlet Breath (or Ekzykes's Decay) for its cheese potential against bosses that aren't immune to Scarlet Rot, including being able to inflict it through boss doors/fog gates. One reason may be you need a Faith/Arcane build rather than just Faith to get the most out them.

Not specifically called out in the patch notes but they fixed the bleed dog bug and also the 9,999 HP illusionary walls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1onDylSUWGQ

They seem to promise improvement with colossal weapons but not seeing it much so far in my play tonight.

Only some of the moves have significant changes. Here’s a side-by-side comparison: https://youtu.be/pFans4N1tt4

The bird rune farm bird AI did get changed and is much less likely to run off the edge now. It's still possible to get it to do it but you'll probably have to change your firing spot and it'll likely be less consistent.

I respecced into a a fingerprint shield/ fallingstar beast jaw build last night and it completely wrecked face.  I one shot Commander Niall which apparently people had a lot of problems with.  (I am a shit player who uses summons though so maybe that doesn't count).

I've been running a Dragon priest who uses breath attacks heavily, with other incantations for support.  Pretty much pure Faith with just a few points into Arcane to let me use the breath attacks I want.  It's pretty damned powerful.  Scarlet Breath melts bosses and packs of anything.  It also staggers most enemies while they are getting hit by it.  Downside is the long cast time, but I can plink away with lighting until I get range or lose aggro.

Malenia is bugged right now and can self-heal during some of her attacks even if she doesn't hit anybody.

I finally killed her this morning, with 1.04, and I wonder if the bug only shows up online. I am playing offline, and no bug.

Yeah seems like only in coop.

Trying to stop Let Me Solo Her?

Didn't work -- he still is able to do it though it obviously takes a lot longer at ~15 minutes for a single summon vs ~9 minutes for a triple summon (can't find a single summon pre-1.04 video to check that time).

1.04 single summon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8-N-6PbJbQ

1.03 triple summon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqN2phpMWno (age check)

Edit: found one, a little under 6 minutes for a single summon : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_T5fvac7Bc

I think I'm closing in on the endgame--I went back and cleaned up all the bosses I didn't get to before (stick stuck on a few like those two fucking Crucible Knights in the Hero's Grave outside of Leyndell, etc.) and visited a few places I'd missed.

I still can't make up my mind what armor to wear--I have fairly high stamina, lot of strength w/the Greatsword as my usual weapon. I keep fiddling around trying to come up with something that's just right and never feeling very confident about what I settle on.

None of the quests end up very well for the people asking for help from me, do they? I'm trying to decide whether to even bother giving the sorcerer who wanted to get into the Academy the key he wants, because I just feel like it's going to be bad for him. I guess Ranni's quest ends up ok for me and her, not so great for Blaidd and Seluvis though. I get it, though--Souls games are always bleak like this.

Yes things tend to go badly for quest NPCs in Elden Ring, though not always. E.g. I would say that Roderika is better off having meet you, with you (and Hewg) giving her a purpose in life.

As for Thops:

I think Nepheli Loux's storyline concludes with a decent-to-good outcome for multiple people.

I beat Melania! haha, it was pretty exploitative of how powerful the blasphemous blade and Tish are, and felt really lucky, but I did it!  Took forever to get myself to wait till the last second to roll in the beginning of phase 2.

And thank god, I am.  EVERYONE that is likeable that you try to help is dead or worse.  I can't bear to listen the smith talk now, breaks my heart.  I'm happy how Latenna turned out, I feel like I did her a solid.  I don't know that I could do NG+, knowing how bleak this all gets.

Oh man I just told Iji that I'd finished Ranni's quest a

We do know who killed them:

I guess that makes sense.

I can't really see why my Tarnished is especially motivated to do anything though. It does feel rather Moorcock Eternal Champion--you go on because you have to, not because you feel great emotional attachment. Or maybe you do sometimes but it's always betrayed or belayed. You're told you're committing blasphemy or asked to show loyalty and nothing seems especially sacred or worth your loyalty. Certainly the idea of being Elden Lord seems just kind of stupid--lord over what? It's a vast land of emptiness and suffering. Everybody's dead or mindless or has worms coming out their face.

Can't say I've ever tried to figure out my motivation in any of the Souls games.

You are special, though, since you can still see the Guidance of Grace, unlike most of the other Tarnished.

Actually...

I think DS2 was particularly depressive about it, it felt like nothing you (or others) did had any chance of unfucking the world.

But yea, I agree with Trippy, think the motivation is extrinsic. The PC is the only one with agency in a turbofucked world where everyone else has completely lost their shit due to millenia of forced immortality (I guess the other Tarnished are also out there, but the PC is the only one who can do anything about this). And you CAN choose to go against the grace thing with one of the nonstandard endings instead of just becoming Elden Lord (which is an unsatisfying ending IMO).

I think this is the only one where I've wondered about why my character is doing what he's doing because it's an open world. Other Souls games feel more like some version of Saw or something--you go on through the murder maze because what choice do you have? But in this one there are moments where everything is just kind of beautiful and you think I wonder why my guy doesn't just round up some of those rolling sheep and pick a cabin somewhere near a merchant and just chillax, let someone else go do the Elden Ring things.

The world is in a bad state when you (re)enter it with wars everywhere as the demigods fight for the Elden Ring fragments (the Great Runes). There are places of relative peace at the moment but no place is truly safe from the chaos inflicted upon the world by the shattering of the Elden Ring.

One of the demigods is also literally holding the stars frozen/captive, I think that's pretty far on the "shit is fucked" scale.

Well, I finished it. 240 hours, and level 176 at the end. I have done everything that I am aware of. And this game is 10/10, if not 11/10.

Time to reward myself with the unofficial guide to the lore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYDs_Inzkz4

For some reason, the gaol with Vyke in it in Mountaintops really kicks my ass; I have no trouble with any of the others--I got Alecto on first try.

Fire Giant is also a bit of a problem.

I REALLY hate the roving wolfriders with the killer archery in Consecrated Snowfields.

I'm in the lower part of Ephael in the Haligtree now. The loop with guards gets you a lot of runes, but I have made the mistake of getting ambitious and dropping down for the multiarmed fuckers with the poison and all that, who really seem to have some bullshit positioning (they trap you a lot in corners/against trees/in little dark hallways when they come out of their teleports). I think I need to just do some loops multiple times and level before going down there again.

The revenants (multi-armed enemies in the lower portion of Elphael) just didn't seem worth the risk*, whereas the loop is nearly risk-free**, once you know it.

*after the first time, there is a lot of good stuff down there
**especially if you can fight the rot knights from range (cough: blasphemous blade!)

Random Thoughts:
It's funny how the end-game became two distinct activities (for me) - leveling-up and exploring.  If I happen to get to a point while exploring where I have at least half the runes necessary to level, I go to a farm spot and level as soon as I find a grace point I could return to.  Thinking about it for awhile, it seems like the only way to recapture the tension of the first 50 levels is to start anew.  You don't have golden runes saved, and you might not be ready to stomp the vulgar militia yet.

Yeah, I'm not going down for the revenants again, they're fucking bullshit--but the gloveworts they drop on first kill are pretty essential.

why? should they be?

also, no

I kind of agree they shouldn't be less depressing. They almost remind me of Gormenghast, in an odd way--weird and gothic and with almost everybody kind of gross or ruined in some fashion.

jesus i haven't thought about gormenghast in 20+ years

It just feels like the same game again and again (that said, i haven't played the shooter or the samurai/ninja versions).  Mechanically, that's a very good thing, because I love the combat, I'm not asking for that to change.  I was just wondering if they played around with the tone. 

In Elden Ring’s lands between death as we know it doesn’t exist. Marika removed “indiscriminate death” when she established the golden order and she gets to decide if and when you die (destined death)

Only the Fell Omen and the Nightwatch have the power to end a life and they seek out and kill you when Marika acknowledged that it’s time for you to die.

That’s why Melina is on the mission to end destined death and restore the promise that everything must die eventually. Because that fact that no one dies has completely fucked is the lands between.

Then Ranni stole the Rune of death from her brother Mohgwyn to be able to kill herself and escape the hold the golden order and the two fingers had on her. her goal is to ascend to godhood free from the shackles of the two fingers, the golden order and the greater will because only then can she be able to replace the greater will and the golden order with a new order free from the influence of those powers.

This makes actual death a Happy End for the people whose quests you do. They fulfilled their destiny and are therefore allowed to die.

That was why I was going for Ranni's end;

Meanwhile, I am about 70-80 hours into my sorcery dude, level 128, and only just at the snowy giant mountain place.  This is the most impressive thing that has ever been pulled off in gaming, both in relative and absolute terms.  Did someone say they made this in three years?  Fucking how??

Five years. Three years was reveal at E3.

Edit: also they didn't start from scratch. E.g. they are using their same game engine they've used on their other games and many of the model skeletons and animations are borrowed from Dark Souls 3 and other games.

Three years or five years, what they really had was institutional knowledge. These folks know how to make a souls game. Bethsoft , etc starts from square -1 constantly.

Having embraced the open world rather than any of the story (did the same in FFXI) - I have zero idea of what the fuck is going on with any of these NPCs. I will say I am having a blast wiping out camps around the map and having to deal with more challenging areas like Farum but the other end game zone with Malenia can fuck right off. As for endings... I couldn't say one way or another what the hell path I am on.

If you aren't actively working on NPC quest lines you'll get the default ending.

Working through Crumbling after the Godskin Duo. They were kind of a pain but not all that bad, but I have a couple of ashes fully levelled at this point. It really is becoming kind of an extreme thing that certain trash combinations take way way more thought than the bosses, to the point of being a bit deflating.

The path from the site of grace to the Gazebo with the dragon past the flock of giant eagle like creatures and the flashes of lightning is legit harder than some bosses and cost me about an hour worth of tries

lol

I didn't find that section super-hard.  I did find the mob immediately before Maliketh SUPER hard (no horse, no ash's allowed).  I ended up cheesing it with dragon rot breath and the powerful "running and hiding" technology.   :facepalm: :shame!:

Practice dodging now!

I got that guy after a couple of tries. (The lightning dragon was a pain but at this point I'm Pavlovian enough that I knew what to do.)

Maliketh has so far beat me on the first 4-5 tries but I think I've got it soon.

I'm trying to make sure I have all the spirits and weapons levelled because it sort of feels like the Roundtable will be gone soon, judging from the dialogue.

Poor Alexander the Jar, I fucking killed him in three hits without taking any damage. I feel bad.

Yeah it’s hard because the engine and camera  isn’t super great at letting you hit flying enemies and they hit very hard. Then you get past the dragon and head left, fight more giant eagles perched on top of the trees, then jump down several floating rocks, fight a misbegotten, climb up a ladder, fight two more misbegotten, go up in an elevator, get assaulted by more giant eagles and fight misbegotten and a crucible knight and get up another ladder. All without any site of grace in between.

Then you realise that the only prize you got is a talisman, that this wasn’t the path forward and that you should have gone right from the dragon at the gazebo instead.   :why_so_serious:

That whole passage was harder than a lot of bosses.

Wow, that guy for me was harder than Malenia (~5-8 tries, but I had put effort into learn2dodge by that point), and Malekith I did in 2.  The "all by yourself" knight was 20+.  I guess I was seriously dependent on the blasphemous blade at this point, and slash is crap against armor? Maybe? Or maybe I just sucked against that guy.

It's weird that no one seems to talk about it, but from my experience both Malenia and Maliketh were vulnerable to the "do a fuckton of damage" approach.  Maybe I had just significantly out leveled her.  Maliketh with Tich.  Malenia with mimic.

I felt pretty bad about Alexander as well.  For me, he was their best character.  I was hoping maybe he'd retire to Jartown.

Crucible knights still bust my ass--there's one not that far from Maliketh that I found really difficult. I think anything that has untouchable poise is hard for me because I'm 100% about STR with a max-levelled Greatsword, so I just want to hit shit hard enough to rattle it and then burst it down.

Hated that one in the City with the spear/polearm that had a longer range than most incantations... he was rough. The one in the Gaol surprised me and was really the first area Crucible I faced and he promptly sent me packing a few times before I got lucky.

Finished first play and started an NG+1. I was a bit surprised you don't get the chance to respec right there and then--gotta go do the Academy, I guess; if I'd known that I would have gone to talk to Rennala before moving on. Oh well, not a big deal in terms of what it takes to get to her. Did the Age of Stars ending.

I was caught off guard by losing all the ball bearings (bell bearings?).  I'm now getting weapons I missed on the first play through and I can't level them up.  Humph!

Definitely needed to stock up on stones for at least 3 weapons and maybe a few shields before hitting the finale. But then again, I cheated and read ahead.

Doing dual-wield dex build with the Okina Blood Sword and Hand of Malenia and it's fun. Every once in a while I miss the ability to stunlock things with a colossal weapon and getting around a shield takes a bit more thinking.

I'm hopelessly addicted to my shield.  I've tried dual wielding, but my dodge game is still so weak.

Just do it for a NG+. You'll do so much damage that you can forgive the occasional shot to the face.

I thought you meant dual wielding shields at first. And yes you can do that, though it doesn't give you a "power stance" moveset like regular weapons do.

It does make me realize how much I'd gotten used to just fucking brutalizing Leyndell Knights with a couple of swings of the Guts Sword. But I'm also discovering how often I got swarmed by bullshit things like rats because I couldn't swing around fast enough. Bosses and big shit pretty much melt, but shielded things take a ton of thoughtfulness and dodging by comparison.

 :grin:, I did that by accident once; dual wielding shields, I thought it was awesome, ridiculous, and made complete sense that they wouldn't bother coding something to stop you doing that, all at the same time.