Elden Ring (From Software RPG)

Domingo said:
Because I was looking up Elden Ring stuff for a few weeks, now my Google feed is full of "how to find [insert weapon]" each time I refresh it. I found most of the things that are showing up, but there are definitely some that I missed. I'm having fun popping back in, hunting down an item I missed, and then moving on. One thing the game didn't fully take advantage of (or did it and we don't realize it?) is the night vs. day concept. Feels like it mainly just unlocked roaming skeletons and maybe a dozen'ish hidden bosses. Was there more to it than that?
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Night Cavalry, Death birds, and Bell-bearing hunters are the only ones I can recall. There’s some great ashes of war from the cavalry. The bell bearing hunters are huge letdowns for loot (and screw you, mr Caelid hunter, in particular).
 
Bullitt said:
Night Cavalry, Death birds, and Bell-bearing hunters are the only ones I can recall. There’s some great ashes of war from the cavalry. The bell bearing hunters are huge letdowns for loot (and screw you, mr Caelid hunter, in particular).
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Those are the only night-specific things I ever encountered. They're only in specific spots at night, and often you'd have to wait until night and then sit down again to get them to show up. Since the game gives you the opportunity to wait for specific times of day, it feels like a mechanic they added and then mostly forgot about.
 
I think I've settled on a Starscourge build for the rest of my playthrough. The ash of war ability is so much fun and it's a colossal weapon so it staggers enemies pretty well. I liked Bloody Slash with Nagakiba but the bleed didn't proc that much for me to like it.
 
I beat Melania last night, finished up every evergaol I missed and did a couple other miscellaneous quests as there really isn't too much left in the game for me to do. Also beat the hidden dragon boss in Farum Azula, but aside from one particularly nasty attack, that fight was honestly a let down. As most dragon fights in this game have been.

I ended up finishing off Melania by using a dual whip build, one of the whips had bleed and cold damage, the other one was Giant's Braid because its ash of war has an absolutely huge, multi-hit AOE that staggers Malenia on every single hit. Which was just what was needed to both stop her combos and give my summoned help enough time to get some hits in. I got really far on her both with an ash of war and then finally beat her with two people, one of which was very obviously using rivers of blood. I don't care, she's dead!

I'll likely finish up the final boss(es) tonight and then put the game away for a bit.
 
I'm nearing the end of my 2nd playthrough, have about 20-30 hours left. I have 480 hours logged in the game. Gonna do a RL1 run after I finish this one up.
This is the most time I've played a game since Dark Souls 3.
 
DFenz said:
I'm nearing the end of my 2nd playthrough, have about 20-30 hours left. I have 480 hours logged in the game. Gonna do a RL1 run after I finish this one up.
This is the most time I've played a game since Dark Souls 3.
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How much more challenging are the late-game foes? I'm sure the first half of the game is a cakewalk, but at some point I imagine leveling up no longer has much of an impact.
 
Domingo said:
How much more challenging are the late-game foes? I'm sure the first half of the game is a cakewalk, but at some point I imagine leveling up no longer has much of an impact.
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On my first play through I felt as if the late game bosses ramped up the difficulty pretty good. I had basically no room for error as 1-2 hits would kill you. So you had to learn their moveset and dodge/roll/parry almost perfectly every time. You also dealt less damage so the fights lasted longer which means even more room for error.
 
cvinh said:
On my first play through I felt as if the late game bosses ramped up the difficulty pretty good. I had basically no room for error as 1-2 hits would kill you. So you had to learn their moveset and dodge/roll/parry almost perfectly every time. You also dealt less damage so the fights lasted longer which means even more room for error.
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I'm mainly thinking about NG+ as I might have misinterpreted what he meant by "2nd Playthrough." I'm curious how rough the end game bosses are the second time around. I still have flashbacks to NG+ and the DLC areas in Dark Souls 2 and 3. They were bad enough on the first pass. On NG+ they nearly made me abandon hope.
 
I did a fresh start, not NG+. I like to have multiple characters for PvP. Will probably do NG+ after my RL1 run.
 
Domingo said:
How much more challenging are the late-game foes? I'm sure the first half of the game is a cakewalk, but at some point I imagine leveling up no longer has much of an impact.
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cvinh said:
On my first play through I felt as if the late game bosses ramped up the difficulty pretty good. I had basically no room for error as 1-2 hits would kill you. So you had to learn their moveset and dodge/roll/parry almost perfectly every time. You also dealt less damage so the fights lasted longer which means even more room for error.
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Late game you have far more options plus access to certain weapons/abilities that can trivialize a fight. Leveling up is far more complex than just simple add damage to X weapon to make me better. Leveling up also unlocks things you normally can't use at low levels. Sometimes even unlocking certain combinations that themselves make you exponentially more deadly.

My first playthrough, I didn't even bother putting points in for better weapon scaling. Once I met the weapon's requirements, I moved on. I found the extra damage pathetic compared to what you can get out of buffing via an incant or sorcery. So I focused on getting access to those buffs early as possible. Also certain talismans synergize well with these buffs. I hit the hard cap on vigor and endurance well before level 100. I found I was rarely ever getting into a situation where I was getting one-shot.

I can see where being a glass cannon would be exciting early game. But I found out very quickly out of the gate the payoff didn't seem worth it. It become diminishing returns by late game, because everything else has caught up to you.
 
FromSoftware always makes their games up to the player how easy/hard they want it. Elden Ring just has the broadest range of difficulty depending how many restrictions you put on yourself.
 
And done.

That final boss was kind of a let down.
spent more time chasing after it than actually fighting or dodging. The arena was too damn big. Radagon was also pretty damn easy after previously beating Malenia.
I did absolutely love Godfrey/Harou Loux though. That fight kicked ass.

Onto the next game till the inevitable expansion comes out.
 
It'll be interesting to see what the DLC ends up being and how long it takes to come out. The DLC for the Souls games = completely brutal. That's why I'm a little scared backing myself into a corner with NG+ in Elden Ring. NG+ took tough bosses and made them over the top hard.
 
While Elden Ring thrives, the PC Souls games have been offline for 103 days

Elden Ring being such a smash hit felt like the deserved culmination of a long and rich action-RPG lineage...its success was only possible because of the rich action-RPG lineage behind it, so it's ironic and unfortunate that in the background of Elden Ring's success, the Souls games on PC feel abandoned—even if ultimately that may only prove temporary

it's hard to shake the sense that either Elden Ring's success has focused too much attention elsewhere, or that this exploit may be an even worse problem (in terms of restoring the games' functionality) than it appears...

https://www.pcgamer.com/while-elden-ring-thrives-the-pc-souls-games-have-been-offline-for-103-days/
 
I think I had more environmental/random kills in Elden Ring vs. all the other Souls games combined. Sometimes boss enemies seem to die for no apparent reason.
 
I really hope in future Fromsoft games they consider putting spawn points in front of every boss door. I don't understand why some boss doors have them but others don't. It's like two opposite minded people worked on this. One who believes in good user experience and the other who is a masochist and believes that the player should be punished with a 30 second run-up to the boss. It's infuriating because there's zero fun in those run-ups. They might as well extend the loading screen by 30 seconds.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
I really hope in future Fromsoft games they consider putting spawn points in front of every boss door. I don't understand why some boss doors have them but others don't. It's like two opposite minded people worked on this. One who believes in good user experience and the other who is a masochist and believes that the player should be punished with a 30 second run-up to the boss. It's infuriating because there's zero fun in those run-ups. They might as well extend the loading screen by 30 seconds.
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They did try and compromise with stakes of Marika.
 
I hope they continue with the stakes in the future games, too. Tough bosses aren't nearly as tedious when you start right in front of the boss door. It makes me more willing to run around during the fight and simply see what the boss can do as well. If I die, it's less of an annoyance. I get the occasional instance where you might want to have the player do something challenging before the boss fight, but that's rare. In some of the older titles I'd "save scam" in front of the boss door just out of convenience. With Elden Ring, I never needed to.
 
Since there aren't a ton of other games I want to play, I've started tinkering around with different specs and "builds" that I saw online. For what it's worth, it seems like a jack-of-all-trades approach isn't much worse than a specialist. You definitely want to be really good in one area (STR, DEX, FTH, INT, etc.) but it's not like you have to pile on the points and and wear nothing but specific gear/talismans to be effective. At least for PvE. Melee builds in particular were all performing about the same vs. the same high-level foes. Specific builds were better, but only barely. We're talking 5 hits instead of 6 to kill an enemy. Or something comparable. The amount of resources they required in specific stats kinda outweighed that, though. The only "build" I saw that felt super OP'd was with crazy high INT. We're talking like 80+, very specific gear, and minimal points in anything else. You can death blast things in an insane way...but you're basically just kiting around, blasting, and refilling your mana. The gear, spells, and stats needed to do that were late, too. Seems like a valid option for NG+, though. Especially if you're looking for something polar opposite from melee.
 
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Co-op question. If the host dies during a boss fight but you end up killing the boss in those 10 seconds before you're returned to your world, does the host get the win?
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Co-op question. If the host dies during a boss fight but you end up killing the boss in those 10 seconds before you're returned to your world, does the host get the win?
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In general, I don't think it does BUT, but I think it's slightly situational. It uses the reward for killing the boss as a trigger. If that shows up - you get the win. In like 95% of situations, if you die you don't get anything. Even if you die after the boss does. Yet I've seen (and been) in weird situations where I got the reward and it counted.
 
Just did a large chunk of Farum Azula and took down Maliketh. I died on the first attempt and dropped 100k runes. Went back in thinking I'd enter the arena and kite to the right to grab them only to immediately fall into a bottomless pit. I tried 10-ish times without summons but his jumps seemed impossible for me to track. So on my last attempt I pulled Mimic out immediately upon entering the arena and Maliketh died about 10 seconds in to Phase 2.

Made my way to the Subterranean Shunning Grounds only to
get surprise fucked by a giant hand on my way to the Dung Eater.
Quit for the night after that one.
 
Related to Farum Azula and Maliketh - I recall a horseman on the way to him being a total sonofobitch. I must've gotten killed by him like 10 times only to beat the bosses in one go. He's another one of those random non-boss enemies that I struggled with way more than actual bosses.
 
Domingo said:
Related to Farum Azula and Maliketh - I recall a horseman on the way to him being a total sonofobitch. I must've gotten killed by him like 10 times only to beat the bosses in one go. He's another one of those random non-boss enemies that I struggled with way more than actual bosses.
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Yeah, he already had me a bit tilted. I had 50 Vigor and heavy armor and he'd still 2 shot me.
 
Bankie said:
Yeah, he already had me a bit tilted. I had 50 Vigor and heavy armor and he'd still 2 shot me.
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What a PITA. Ran into him last night. after 4 or 5 deaths, just ran up to him, Rot-breathed the shit out of him, then spell parried and dodged until he was dead.
 
Bankie said:
Just did a large chunk of Farum Azula and took down Maliketh. I died on the first attempt and dropped 100k runes. Went back in thinking I'd enter the arena and kite to the right to grab them only to immediately fall into a bottomless pit. I tried 10-ish times without summons but his jumps seemed impossible for me to track. So on my last attempt I pulled Mimic out immediately upon entering the arena and Maliketh died about 10 seconds in to Phase 2.
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Maliketh is a weird one. On one hand he's probably the coolest looking boss in the game (so far) but on the other hand he totally sucks to fight as a melee build. He just jumps all over the place and very rarely leaves you with an opportunity to hit him. I had to summon a mimic as well. Also, his health seems lower than other bosses, or maybe I'm just way overleveled at this point.
 
It was the heat of the moment (and I only fought him once), but I could swear Maliketh was just a combination of the Beast Clergyman and Black Blade Kindred back-to-back.
 
If you have the item that allows you to parry Maliketh he's pretty easy, his health is low.

Fun fight though.
 
TheSlySyl said:
If you have the item that allows you to parry Maliketh he's pretty easy, his health is low.

Fun fight though.
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Maliketh was a roadblock for me for sure, but I managed to just edge him out after a few sessions and hours of attempts.

The issue is he's one of those wibly-wobly crackhead bosses that just does. not. stop. moving. and. attacking.

I just had to flask as much as possible, panic roll and heavy attack.

eventually it worked...
 
TheSlySyl said:
If you have the item that allows you to parry Maliketh he's pretty easy, his health is low.

Fun fight though.
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Honestly I would say the entire game is very easy if you allow yourself to look everything up about the game online or participate in online discussion before beating it. Reminds me of Morrowind, in a way. It's a game that can be a lot of fun to figure out yourself, or you can just give up and look up cheese builds and boss-handicap items to make it significantly more straight forward and shallow than it would be otherwise.
 
Just killed radhan and then ran past the sentinels after trying those a few times... I'm prob too low level at only 60 though. Doing a straight sacred battle axe and shield melee build tho so it's tough in your face all the time.
 
t1337duder said:
Honestly I would say the entire game is very easy if you allow yourself to look everything up about the game online or participate in online discussion before beating it. Reminds me of Morrowind, in a way. It's a game that can be a lot of fun to figure out yourself, or you can just give up and look up cheese builds and boss-handicap items to make it significantly more straight forward and shallow than it would be otherwise.
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I didn't look anything up, you get the item right before you fight him and the description literally says "can deflect the power of the black blade." Activating it also a super huge parry window.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Blasphemous+Claw

I fought Maliketh after I fought mogh so I thought the weakness item was a requirement to live throughout the fight. I don't know how you'd beat mogh without that physick.
 
Took out
Gideon
and made my way to the Haligtree. I hate the branches with those doot doots but am down in the lower area now and it's been easygoing (although I see Revenants a floor below me so that's a bit of a drag).
 
Bankie said:
Took out
Gideon
and made my way to the Haligtree. I hate the branches with those doot doots but am down in the lower area now and it's been easygoing (although I see Revenants a floor below me so that's a bit of a drag).
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That’s such a great zone, because if there’s one thing that From does, is a solid precision platformer.
 
Compared to earlier games, I found the platforming in Elden Ring night and day better. There's a jump button and it mostly works as intended. That's not to say there aren't a few annoying parts (the Cathedral of the Forsaken being the main one), but I at least mostly felt in control compared to their other titles. It is always a little peculiar with falls that kill you vs. ones that don't, though. Whatever formula they're using seems a little off. Especially with the horse.
 
Domingo said:
VERY similar. The Bell Hunters were total pains in the ass in general. I ended up cheesing some of them by riding away and then repeatedly doing ride-by slashes. I think the last one (the one in Caelid) was the only one I fought without resorting to lame tactics. That's mainly just because I was finally somewhat powerful.
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I found Square Off does some serious work vs them.
 
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