Elden Ring (From Software RPG)

I finally completed the Haligtree areas and I *think* I'm ready for the end of the line. For the sake of making sure I'm not missing anything big, I checked for things I should do beforehand. As far as I can tell, I'm good to go with NPC stories and whatnot.

For the folks that dual-wield - what kind of advantages are you finding? I've never really messed with it before in prior games, but it seems like a common thing based on the shadows I see running around. Am I missing something? Feels like I'm not attacking any faster and enemies are still armoring through my katanas the same as ever.
 
Domingo said:
I finally completed the Haligtree areas and I *think* I'm ready for the end of the line. For the sake of making sure I'm not missing anything big, I checked for things I should do beforehand. As far as I can tell, I'm good to go with NPC stories and whatnot.

For the folks that dual-wield - what kind of advantages are you finding? I've never really messed with it before in prior games, but it seems like a common thing based on the shadows I see running around. Am I missing something? Feels like I'm not attacking any faster and enemies are still armoring through my katanas the same as ever.
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If you use two of the same weapon you get a "power stance" moveset on your L attack that swings both weapons significantly faster than using a single weapon.

I'm not endgame build as of yet, but my power stance dual colossal blades does like 1200 damage per swing and it actually attacks faster than just a regular swing and has a faster chain attack so I can stunlock most things with it.

Who needs a shield when you can just kill them without them getting a chance to fight back?
Also I have both bleed and fire elements active, which works well for buffs.

Bosses are a little different. But I've still found the extra damage more beneficial than a shield lately, now that I've pumped vigor.
 
Astel's grab move is such bs. I see him coming in for the grab and I roll towards him. By the time my roll animation is finished I'm well under his head and his arms are still fully outstretched. His hands are nowhere near my character. And yet, like some sort of miracle, my character disappears and warps into his hands. And then I die. Thanks George RR Martin.

I documented the unfortunate series of events here
 
TheSlySyl said:
If you use two of the same weapon you get a "power stance" moveset on your L attack that swings both weapons significantly faster than using a single weapon.

I'm not endgame build as of yet, but my power stance dual colossal blades does like 1200 damage per swing and it actually attacks faster than just a regular swing and has a faster chain attack so I can stunlock most things with it.

Who needs a shield when you can just kill them without them getting a chance to fight back?
Also I have both bleed and fire elements active, which works well for buffs.

Bosses are a little different. But I've still found the extra damage more beneficial than a shield lately, now that I've pumped vigor.
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I've tried rocking a pair of maxed out katanas (either the Rivers of Blood, Hand of Malenia, or a keen Uchi) and it just doesn't feel like anything worthwhile. Larger enemies just blow right through my combos and when I roll, the combo attack turns into a different attack that has no follow-up. My baseline for a challenging area is the Zamor ruins, and those guys just clobber me when I'm trying to do much of anything with 2 weapons. The fact that the roll changes my L1 combo into a slow single attack (that large enemies can blow through) kinda sucks.
The special attack for the Rivers of Blood = pretty insane, so I've been double-handing that with some level of success. I swap back to my shield here and there as needed, though. The fact that guard counters crumple enemies so well definitely helps. Still, the Rivers of Blood L2 might be the single best thing I have. Enemies can't tank it, you can spam it 4-5 times in a row, and it does heavy, heavy damage.
 
Well, rivers of blood is considered the best and most OP weapon in the game. So that doesn't surprise me.
Haven't actually acquired it yet myself.
 
I ended up winning the whole chabang a few minutes ago. I actually did miss one optional boss fight that I went back for (it involves Miquella's needle and might be the single most esoteric thing in the whole game), along with finishing up the whole jar subquest.
I have a game saved with all my gear and 6 larval tears, so I might respec into a magic user before rocking NG+. I've never really bothered before, so it might be fun. With as massive as this game was, I'm honestly not sure I want to hop right back in, though. It just seems daunting. Then again, since runes/levels won't really be a thing, I could skip almost anything that isn't plot-related.

EDIT: I re-spec'd into a pretty powerful mage (piles of INT and FP) and I can clearly see how it's powerful...but boring. I tested some things out in the Zamor ruins and it's like playing a different game. Lots of running away and managing FP. I don't feel concerned about getting clobbered, but I don't know how enjoyable this would be long-term.
 
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Domingo said:
EDIT: I re-spec'd into a pretty powerful mage (piles of INT and FP) and I can clearly see how it's powerful...but boring. I tested some things out in the Zamor ruins and it's like playing a different game. Lots of running away and managing FP. I don't feel concerned about getting clobbered, but I don't know how enjoyable this would be long-term.
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Well speaking from a starting mage POV, you are bored instead of frustrated and rage quitting because the "build up" to being a powerful mage was removed since you gained the power from the start. I have more moments of WTF did I put points into FP and INT instead of VIT I am getting 2 shot-ed by everything and 1 shot-ed by bosses, but if I didn't put it in FP and INT how much lower would my damage be because I can't use that higher damage spell. With many "glass cannon" moments of "how slow can they possibly make casting the good spells" when you can barely take 1 hit and only have 2 healing flasks because you have to allocate more FP restoration or do even less damage. And finally moments of feeling "it was worth it" as you begin to one/two shot things, only to get to the next area where your damage barely does anything again and you feel like you are right back where you started at level 1.
 
People sleepin on the Crystal Sword. This thing hits hard and it's special attack stuns pretty well. Also having fun with Blasphemous Blade too.
 
LurkerLito said:
Well speaking from a starting mage POV, you are bored instead of frustrated and rage quitting because the "build up" to being a powerful mage was removed since you gained the power from the start. I have more moments of WTF did I put points into FP and INT instead of VIT I am getting 2 shot-ed by everything and 1 shot-ed by bosses, but if I didn't put it in FP and INT how much lower would my damage be because I can't use that higher damage spell. With many "glass cannon" moments of "how slow can they possibly make casting the good spells" when you can barely take 1 hit and only have 2 healing flasks because you have to allocate more FP restoration or do even less damage. And finally moments of feeling "it was worth it" as you begin to one/two shot things, only to get to the next area where your damage barely does anything again and you feel like you are right back where you started at level 1.
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Make no mistake, I don't think it's easy necessarily. It's just not my style of gameplay. I'd rather go straight after a boss and quickly go out swinging than to spend 10 minutes kiting around an arena pitter-patting them only to die in 1 shot. It's like choosing between Zangief or Dhalsim in the world of fighting games. I did see pretty significant damage being done with pedestrian spells, though. I tried the big spells and they're slow. Elden Ring is also a kiting friendly game, too. I had to "play Dhalsim" with bows in a few situations when I had no more potions and I couldn't risk getting hit. Most boss fights take place in space. In general, that's just not for me, though. If anything, I think I'll probably re-spec into a brute that uses giant weapons but also uses faith buffs.
 
LurkerLito said:
Well speaking from a starting mage POV, you are bored instead of frustrated and rage quitting because the "build up" to being a powerful mage was removed since you gained the power from the start. I have more moments of WTF did I put points into FP and INT instead of VIT I am getting 2 shot-ed by everything and 1 shot-ed by bosses, but if I didn't put it in FP and INT how much lower would my damage be because I can't use that higher damage spell. With many "glass cannon" moments of "how slow can they possibly make casting the good spells" when you can barely take 1 hit and only have 2 healing flasks because you have to allocate more FP restoration or do even less damage. And finally moments of feeling "it was worth it" as you begin to one/two shot things, only to get to the next area where your damage barely does anything again and you feel like you are right back where you started at level 1.
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You got my experience exactly :) Everything one shots me in the Mountiantops of the Giants even at 100+ level since I have vitality at 15. But now I can finally one-two shot back most things, even in Haligtree. It was a hard work getting there, and you have to be perfect in fights, or find new ways to beat enemies than just run them over.
 
I thought all you do as mage is the kamehameha beam and stun lock bosses til they die.
 
Actually, if a boss even looks at you, you fall over and die :) At least those you can not fight on a horse.
 
I'm tinkering around with the early areas of NG+ and it seems like certain enemies do damage like the end-stage versions of themselves. Not all, though. For example, the little stone gremlins can still kill you really, really quickly if you're not paying attention. Basically anything that starts throwing combos = still a threat. I'm able to just walk through most single hits, though.
Bosses do more damage, but you should be doing way, way more. We're talking 5-second kills and such. This might be interesting considering the sheer speed I'm motoring through things. My first run through the game was right at 105 hours. I bet a NG+ run doing all of the same stuff can probably be completed in 1/3 of that if not less.
 
Domingo said:
I bet a NG+ run doing all of the same stuff can probably be completed in 1/3 of that if not less.
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Simply knowing where stuff is, cuts down a lot of time. Also, any "safe" routes you previously worked out, to traverse the openworld.
 
It's not very often that a boss is too scared to fight. I love how he just turns around and walks away. Then proceeds to cheese me by sniping me from an unreachable location.

 
Encountered a weird bug the other night. It was me vs Stray Mimic. Neither of us could parry one another. Spent three minutes doing a circus act waving my shield around and the mimic doing the same.

Whatever was broken for me was broken for the mimic. Probably has something to do with putting the parry ash of war on a shield.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
It's not very often that a boss is too scared to fight. I love how he just turns around and walks away. Then proceeds to cheese me by sniping me from an unreachable location.

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Yeah obviously a bug...happened a few times in my game as well where he didn't jump down to start the fight.
 
I just did a clean install of Windows 11 yesterday because I switched to two 2TB 980 Pro NVME drives (in anticipation of upgrading MB, CPU, RAM this fall). Installed this patch, the game runs really well and I likely don't even have all the shaders compiled yet. So this patch definitely improved the worst of the stutters, I tested the run from the start of the cave of knowledge, up the stairs, past Tree Sentinal, to the church. Then tested again by the Academy Dragon (I still lose a few frames here, but no stutter). Past Tree Sentinal, the stutter isn't nearly as prevalent, it still gives a frametime spike but it wasn't noticeable on my config with G-Sync. Those are the only areas I recall having stutter.
 
polonyc2 said:
Elden Ring Patch 1.04 released

huge patch with a ton of changes/fixes...players are reporting that PC performance is much improved...full patch notes at the link below...

https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-...ficial_post&utm_campaign=Elden_Ring_Patch_104
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At least one of those things affected me. The walking mausoleum to the far, far north was inoperable for me. It's on the ground and I could go inside, but it just wouldn't let me duplicate anything. Seems it's a common issue. Luckily it's not really a big deal. There were only a few of the boss runes that had 2 compelling rewards.
 
I just specced away from dual colossal weapons because it was too easy to punish. Looks like this might bring em back, baby!

Curious how all the spell adjusting is gonna be, I haven't actually used an offensive spell this entire game. I do use them to buff though.
 
A few of the endgame bosses hit really hard with very specific types of damage (like holy, fire, lightning, etc.) so spells that offered protection definitely help. In at least one case, I went from losing 1/2 my life per hit down to about 10-15%. Beyond those, I used Flame Cleanse Me quite a bit. Especially in the lake of rot. I still think the giant in the middle of the lake was probably the single toughest fight I had in the entire game. His damned hitbox is really odd and my hits passed through him constantly.
 
TheSlySyl said:
I just specced away from dual colossal weapons because it was too easy to punish. Looks like this might bring em back, baby!

Curious how all the spell adjusting is gonna be, I haven't actually used an offensive spell this entire game. I do use them to buff though.
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Which colossal swords are you using? I don't have nearly enough STR and END to dual wield but that seems like a strong build.
 
Do many colossal weapons cause a splat/stun effect? One reason I branched away from an STR build early on was because nothing I found seemed to. It sucked having enemies tank through my best shots just like I was using a small weapon.
 
Domingo said:
Do many colossal weapons cause a splat/stun effect? One reason I branched away from an STR build early on was because nothing I found seemed to. It sucked having enemies tank through my best shots just like I was using a small weapon.
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There's a poise mechanism for enemies similar to the player's and in theory the larger weapons should scale into creating staggers and animation cancels.
 
cvinh said:
Which colossal swords are you using? I don't have nearly enough STR and END to dual wield but that seems like a strong build.
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I'm level 120ish now, so I'm sitting at 55str and 30 endurance.
But I was using Bloodhounds Fang and Magma Wyrm Scalesword in power stance. I was doing about 1500 damage a swipe before buffs, but with Flame Grant Me Strength that could easily turn to 2000ish. It was awesome back when one swipe could kill everything, but enemy is reaching a point where it can't one shot em anymore and they animation was too slow to dodge away after attacking if the enemy didn't stagger.
 
Domingo said:
Do many colossal weapons cause a splat/stun effect? One reason I branched away from an STR build early on was because nothing I found seemed to. It sucked having enemies tank through my best shots just like I was using a small weapon.
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Various Strength/Faith scaling weapons do stagger/poise damage, even just regular greatswords.

However if you've aimed for a different type of build try an Ash of War equipped to a weapon that can do large poise damage such as Giant's Hunt (lunge that makes almost any medium sized enemy, even high level ones, launch into the air) or Ground Slam (knocks many enemies on their back).

For stuns specifically the Hoarfrost Stomp Ash of War is decent for (delayed) stuns and puts a bit of distance between you and the enemy. There's also the Roar variety of Ashes which do decent but brief stun (not as much of a fan of these Ashes since you're a bit vulnerable during them and the trade-off is riskier imo). For weapons specifically I've found the Magma type weapons useful since it's possible to catch enemies in a stun repeatedly.
 
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I bought this game the day it came out. I have literally spent hours watching YouTube vids and staring at the character creation screen. I guess its my OCD but I can't choose a character to roll with. I like magic but also like using swords. This will be my first Dark Souls game as I really only played a few hours of DS3. I know people say just pick something and roll with it as u can spec into what u want but I just can't seem to. Also, I try to watch beginners guides as to help with getting started but then I get frustrated as it seems overwhelming. Then I just load God Of War and go enjoy that game for now......
 
Island said:
I bought this game the day it came out. I have literally spent hours watching YouTube vids and staring at the character creation screen. I guess its my OCD but I can't choose a character to roll with. I like magic but also like using swords. This will be my first Dark Souls game as I really only played a few hours of DS3. I know people say just pick something and roll with it as u can spec into what u want but I just can't seem to. Also, I try to watch beginners guides as to help with getting started but then I get frustrated as it seems overwhelming. Then I just load God Of War and go enjoy that game for now......
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There's no reason you can't wield a sword in one hand and a magic staff in the other. It seems overwhelming but just jump in and you'll start to figure it out. I had played all of the previous games but never made it very far (furthest I made it in any of them was ringing the bells in DS1) and I've had a great time in ER.
 
Island said:
I bought this game the day it came out. I have literally spent hours watching YouTube vids and staring at the character creation screen. I guess its my OCD but I can't choose a character to roll with. I like magic but also like using swords. This will be my first Dark Souls game as I really only played a few hours of DS3. I know people say just pick something and roll with it as u can spec into what u want but I just can't seem to. Also, I try to watch beginners guides as to help with getting started but then I get frustrated as it seems overwhelming. Then I just load God Of War and go enjoy that game for now......
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That doesn't sound healthy bro. A game should not be giving you that much anxiety. Try some CBD oil and just relax and go in. Confessor is a good hybrid with swords/spells.
 
People are claiming that the performance improvements are due to lower LoD and noticeably more pop-in. I won't be able to see it for myself, until tonight.
 
Island said:
I bought this game the day it came out. I have literally spent hours watching YouTube vids and staring at the character creation screen. I guess its my OCD but I can't choose a character to roll with. I like magic but also like using swords. This will be my first Dark Souls game as I really only played a few hours of DS3. I know people say just pick something and roll with it as u can spec into what u want but I just can't seem to. Also, I try to watch beginners guides as to help with getting started but then I get frustrated as it seems overwhelming. Then I just load God Of War and go enjoy that game for now......
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Do you like getting up-close and personal (melee) or do you typically like to fight from a distance? You can do both, but IMO you're better off choosing one you mostly want to focus on. Especially for your first playthrough.
Once you make that decision, you're most of the way there. You can flip a coin at that point, since there are great weapons that rely on STR or DEX and Incantations vs. Sorceries. Just choose an approach and go all-in. Worst case, you can respec later. You can mix and match, but if you're OCD you'll find that you'll always have certain stats that handicap you. Jack of all trades = tougher unless you're really diligent about a super specific build. Plus online discussions are notoriously off kilter. You'll have people talking about an "awesome build" that's using a pile of gear you get in the last dungeon. Yeah, that's super awesome for someone 5 hours in. If you stick with a focused approach to your stats, you can rock your starting gear for the entire game if you want.
 
Island said:
I bought this game the day it came out. I have literally spent hours watching YouTube vids and staring at the character creation screen. I guess its my OCD but I can't choose a character to roll with. I like magic but also like using swords. This will be my first Dark Souls game as I really only played a few hours of DS3. I know people say just pick something and roll with it as u can spec into what u want but I just can't seem to. Also, I try to watch beginners guides as to help with getting started but then I get frustrated as it seems overwhelming. Then I just load God Of War and go enjoy that game for now......
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Not to give up to much but you can respec fairly early in the game. I wouldn't worry about it. Do. STR/INT or STR/Fth build if you like both. I always start as the default "knight" class in these games but always weave in some kind of fire/magic/spells into the character anyway.
 
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