EPTThus far I have:
+ Show Spoiler +
Godrick, Renalla, Radahn, Rykard, Morgott, Mogh. Now I'm trying to get Malenia's. That only leaves, maybe, Renna's, who's supposed have "cast aside" hers, whatever that means.
Elden Ring Thread - Page 3
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streets-ahead
21 Posts
Thus far I have: + Show Spoiler + | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
 Good luck, many people consider her the hardest boss in the game. I personally had little trouble with her but I might've explored a bit too much and gotten too overlevelled. If you're getting desperate, + Show Spoiler + I found that using a shield works wonders, even blocks her big whirly combo completely. | ||
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streets-ahead
21 Posts
While the bosses aren't too hard yet (currently at + Show Spoiler + Clergy Beast | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
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Latham
9555 Posts
Consecrated Snowfield or Farum Azula or Mohgwyn Palace... What is even the point in wearing Heavy Armor and putting points in Endurance to midroll if it does shit-all for protection? I might just go with cloth armor or naked if so much investment in stats pays off so little. Maybe fast rolls are the answer to everything in this game. I guess poise is only good for PvP? Not like you'll be trading hits with giants or dragons or shard bearers... | ||
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Slaughter
United States20254 Posts
I finally got the last shardbearer + Show Spoiler + Melania So all major bosses down and the secret ones Like + Show Spoiler + the dragonlord who was cool af with his freak out lazer phase | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
On your first playthrough you will probably gain ~100 levels between Margit and final boss, and they are tuned appropriately. In NG+ it’ll be more like 10 levels, and yet they both get the same 50% buff. So the predictable result is that the early bosses in NG+ are super easy/boring with your max weapons, max summons, upgraded flask etc in addition to the 100 ish levels. I quit my run after Godrick and started playing another game for now :p | ||
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streets-ahead
21 Posts
On March 24 2022 07:28 Latham wrote: It's actually absolutely ludicrous how much damage trash mobs deal in this game... I'm wearing some of the very best protection this game has to offer (Veterans) and I still get shit on in 3 hits by a normal mob in+ Show Spoiler [place names] + Consecrated Snowfield or Farum Azula or Mohgwyn Palace... What is even the point in wearing Heavy Armor and putting points in Endurance to midroll if it does shit-all for protection? I might just go with cloth armor or naked if so much investment in stats pays off so little. Maybe fast rolls are the answer to everything in this game. Completely agree with everything here. Armor has always been a weak point in the series, in my view. They almost never have interesting stats or effect, you haven't been able to upgrade them since DS1, and it's all kinda pointless. | ||
NonY
8748 Posts
On March 24 2022 07:28 Latham wrote: It's actually absolutely ludicrous how much damage trash mobs deal in this game... I'm wearing some of the very best protection this game has to offer (Veterans) and I still get shit on in 3 hits by a normal mob in+ Show Spoiler [place names] + Consecrated Snowfield or Farum Azula or Mohgwyn Palace... What is even the point in wearing Heavy Armor and putting points in Endurance to midroll if it does shit-all for protection? I might just go with cloth armor or naked if so much investment in stats pays off so little. Maybe fast rolls are the answer to everything in this game. I guess poise is only good for PvP? Not like you'll be trading hits with giants or dragons or shard bearers... True tankiness is achieved with buffs from ashes of war, spells, and/or consumables, as well as the proper talisman. Running around with heavy armor turns 1 shots into 2 shots, or 2 shots into 3 shots, etc, which is pretty valuable, but to be able to really get beat up and survive, you need to be buffing yourself before the fight. The way I played with heavy armor was with the Bloodhound Step ash of war. I was always "heavy load" but I almost never rolled or sprinted during fights -- just Bloodhound Stepped around. Use Golden Vow or Commander's Standard weapon skill (or Golden Vow incantation if you have the FTH for it) + Ironjar Aromatic or Black Flame's Protection incantation (if you have the FTH for it). Those buffs with your best physical dmg negation talisman and veteran's armor, you will be able to take a beating. For mixed physick you can do the poise boost + stance breaker combo, dual wield big heavy weapons and destroy anything while your buffs last. --- General comments on the game: the combat has so much potential but how can you have good combat in a truly open world game? The fights cannot be balanced around what tools the player has because every player has very different tools. So some fights are insanely hard for one player and insanely easy for another. And for me personally, once I got my build together and learned the gist of the game, everything became too easy. But early on, some fights were very hard. Some builds don't even really come together and make sense without one specific weapon or ash of war which a player could very easily never find in this massive world! This was the best open world game I've ever played. Exploration and awe and surprise at things I discovered were A+. Combat is just very hit and miss. I wonder if I'd enjoy the other FromSoftware games more since they're more linear afaik so every fight can be better tuned to the player's power. If I were iterating on this game, I'd make the essential parts of each main playstyle virtually impossible to miss, like have them be rewards after the first main story quest boss, or sitting on a vendor at the round table, etc. I wouldn't make it so expensive to level up weapons or I'd tie less power to upgrading weapons, so that people could more easily experiment with other things. And I wouldn't have such high stat requirements on the different types of weapons -- there's no need when the damage scaling is tied to the stats. Without the stat requirements, people could try everything they get their hands on and decide if they want to invest in a stat to increase the damage of their favorite weapons. The main problem with this game for me was how hard it was to figure things out on my own. Some completionists / optimizers are going to go online, undeterred by spoilers, and soak up all the info they can. But there's SO much value in a game like this to playing without any spoilers, so it really sucks for me to do that. But asking a lone player to figure out everything there is to figure out all by themselves is asking way too much. So it would do well to have a lot more in-game guidance (but in a natural way, not an info dump. have little linear parts of the game where it's clear it's not a dead end and the only way to advance is to figure out and use a thing you don't know about yet, possibly with some tiny hints from a message or nearby npc). And well actually they do also just need better info dumps in the menus / inventory, like what effects different armors have, what buffs can stack and what exactly they do, etc. I don't understand the value in me looking at my stats before I cast a buff, casting the buff, looking at my stats after, and doing math to figure out the effect. And I for sure don't want to stop playing so I can google it. IMO (complete speculation) the number of people saying "it's awesome the game doesn't hold your hand!!" who are going online and having their hands held by streamers, youtubers, forums and wikis is very high. Also a very high number of people who have played other FromSoftware titles and, even though this is an original title and not a sequel, correctly assumed that many core mechanics would be the same as their other unrelated games, and have no idea what it was like to be in this vast open world having no idea how anything worked. I very much look forward to an expansion now that I've got a grip on how the game works. I'm very tempted to do NG+ with some self-imposed limitations to make it harder and also to try different builds (or just a straight up NG with a different build) but there are too many other games I want to play right now so I think I'll just wait for an expansion. | ||
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streets-ahead
21 Posts
On March 25 2022 02:00 NonY wrote: I wonder if I'd enjoy the other FromSoftware games more since they're more linear afaik so every fight can be better tuned to the player's power. Just in that aspect, Bloodborne and Sekiro are your best bets. Those games have the best "balance" because From has a lot more control over the player's stats at a given point. Mostly, as you said, due to their linearity. Dark Souls 1, whilst being the best game overall in my view, is probably the worst in that regard. Especially if you play unspoilered. A player who happens to find a Black Knight Halberd at the start of the game might as well be playing a different game altogether than someone who doesn't. It's ludicrous how OP you can get in the game basically by accident. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
I don't know if I'd do exactly the same thing with Elden Ring, but it's fun to think about that kind of thing. I think to the achievement system in the Starcraft 2 campaign, and how fun it is to hunt down all the achievements, because they all make you think of the basic missions in brand new ways and challenge yourself. I wonder if something similar could be done with a game like this. | ||
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streets-ahead
21 Posts
I talked to an NPC who gave me the impression that I would have to kill her to advance her quest, no big deal I thought, but apparently there's a boss fight connected to her. Now I'm closing in on 50 hours and I have but three bosses left. Final boss, Dragon Lord and M, b of M. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
I'll prob write some criticism later but anyway good game there are definitely aspects where it shines and brings new impressive stuff and some aspects that i think could be improved or etc. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24279 Posts
I'm pretty interested in properly grinding them out, and playing this one specially with only a month left of school and I've set myself a few months of relative chill time before starting a new job. Be a good time to get properly gaming away. One issue I did find is, at least based on the info I've actually seen in the game itself it's quite difficult to build as it's unclear what some stats actually do, what certain effects do etc? Maybe that's less of an issue with the later games, but I kind of set myself a goal of playing Souls games as blind as possible. So yeah sure I could look things up that other folks have figured out but it kind of goes against how I want my early playthroughs to go. That kind of stuff any better with more recent titles, especially Elden Ring? | ||
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Latham
9555 Posts
On March 28 2022 08:26 WombaT wrote: As a combo of a general Souls noob who has enjoyed playing somewhat so far, does Elden Ring make things a bit less opaque than some earlier games? I'm pretty interested in properly grinding them out, and playing this one specially with only a month left of school and I've set myself a few months of relative chill time before starting a new job. Be a good time to get properly gaming away. One issue I did find is, at least based on the info I've actually seen in the game itself it's quite difficult to build as it's unclear what some stats actually do, what certain effects do etc? Maybe that's less of an issue with the later games, but I kind of set myself a goal of playing Souls games as blind as possible. So yeah sure I could look things up that other folks have figured out but it kind of goes against how I want my early playthroughs to go. That kind of stuff any better with more recent titles, especially Elden Ring? Mmmm the plot is just as hard to follow as in previous entries from FromSoftware. You piece it together largely by speaking to NPCs, reading item descriptions and environmental storytelling. As far as systems go, Elden Ring is truly the crown jewel of FromSoft, incorporating and improving past iterations of systems from previous games. I can see Sekiro, DkS1, DkS2, DkS3 in this. I haven't played Demons' Souls and Bloodborne but from what I've heard they've learnt lessons from those too, and incorporated them into this game as well. As far as builds go the general archetypes stay the same, aside from Sekiro where you're locked to only a katana. While the name of the stat can change (Arcane/Luck) they all generally work the same from game to game. What changes is the breakpoints (how effective each stat point you put in the attribute is) and min/maxing to get the absolute most out of your stats (example: making sure you're not fatrolling in your armor of choice) but not a single point more, that could potentially go into damage... There are hidden breakbars on enemies, and resistances to elements/weapons/damage types but I think you'll get the hang of those quickly and intuitvely. You also have those same breakbars and enemies WILL teach you about them, very very happily by killing you with overloading that specific breakbar. Elden Ring improves on previous titles by making the tedious corpse runs usually shorter and that makes the game experience more enjoyable. Also, I feel like "cheap deaths" by gravity or ledges have also been reduced. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
The fear of missing a boss / the urge to be a completionist was too strong. Playing blind on a first run and picking everything up on the 2nd run would have been preferable, would have also prevented me from being overlevelled and finding the game too easy. But I had Horizon waiting for me downstairs so I wanted to be done in 1 run lol. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10633 Posts
Grace placing… Sometimes you get one around every corner, sometimes you get none but then usually a stake. The issue with this is that it doesn’t seem to matter if there is a shortcut you have to open nearby or not. Most «shortcuts» which felt sooo awesome when found in Dark Souls 1 plain don’t matter in this game. You either get a Stake of Marika before the tough part or even just another grace. I’m no big fan of the long ass corpse runs from DS1 but there surely could be some middle ground? The crypts look/feel too similar in my opinion. I didn’t like the first one, i didn’t like the fifth one I entered/completed. Imho this is the only place were i feel a lack of variety truely showing (+apparently too many copy/paste minibosses later, but I only recently met the first few «copypastas»). They just feel too «same» to me. General «issue» with souls games for me: Running/Ignoring enemies too often is just the «best» solution. The «ideal» playstyle seems to be to either «run passt/suicide run to boss/place you search» and «farm runes at the best spot you found to get some levels in». This wasn’t an issue for me in the early game at all but now in the harder areas this way of playing becomes more and more rewarding. General enemy damage seems to high, toning player and enemy damage down a bit a cross the board wouldn't hurt IF Flask numbers also get reduced. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
Finished my first playthrough, after 150 hours or so. Absolutely incredible game. End game bosses are all really cool. Toughest fight for me in particular was Malenia. She probably holds my new record for # of retries. + Show Spoiler + I haven't played Bloodborne, so maybe I'm not as attuned to a combat system that doesn't really have blocking as an option, but it really threw me that she heals on any connection, even if you block, so you have to dance blades with her and get good exchanges every time. Then the Goddess of Rot form, phew. I'm convinced I had a good run of the AI when I beat her, all my other attempts could barely get her below half. Had to get up, take a break, and vent quite a few emotions once I finally beat her. It feels like a legitimate achievement to beat her. And then you're rewarded with the option to get her sword, which I'm loving at the moment. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
On March 30 2022 04:48 NewSunshine wrote: + Show Spoiler + Finished my first playthrough, after 150 hours or so. Absolutely incredible game. End game bosses are all really cool. Toughest fight for me in particular was Malenia. She probably holds my new record for # of retries. + Show Spoiler + I haven't played Bloodborne, so maybe I'm not as attuned to a combat system that doesn't really have blocking as an option, but it really threw me that she heals on any connection, even if you block, so you have to dance blades with her and get good exchanges every time. Then the Goddess of Rot form, phew. I'm convinced I had a good run of the AI when I beat her, all my other attempts could barely get her below half. Had to get up, take a break, and vent quite a few emotions once I finally beat her. It feels like a legitimate achievement to beat her. And then you're rewarded with the option to get her sword, which I'm loving at the moment. + Show Spoiler + Blocking worked fine for me. Even her whirly combo can be fully blocked and the heal she gets from it isn't that big. It might differ depending on your shield upgrade level, mine was +20. With my bloodhound fang she died quite quickly. Regular LMB swings gave her mini stagger. A full 3-hit combo took like 15% of her bar which made her occasional healing inconsequential. Legit just held my shield up and attacked/guard countered/weapon spec'd. Super confused about how easy it was considering a lot of people name her as the hardest boss in the game. I found the final boss harder. Guy's so big you can't see what attack he's doing lmao. As for optional bosses both Alecto and Bell Bearing Hunter (Caelid) were hard for me. Had to come back later with a bunch of extra levels to kill them. Ekzykes and Borealis were also annoying. They both have a one-shot attack where they jump into the air and target you with Scarlet Rot breath/Frost breath and it's an instakill. Hard to read when it's about to happen and even harder to dodge. Not a fan of them. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4536 Posts
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