LOL


'Cause we're planning to co-op as best we can later this summer since we don't get to game together too much and I want to hear a pretty casual take on this game and she's up for it. But that was wild, I kept headbutting things and getting bumped away from the platform I needed to hit over and over.


I only really finished quests that came organically to me, other than looking up Nephali and Dung Eater because I knew for sure I was leaving them hanging once I found Radagon. I really couldn't remember what I had or hadn't done. You had me curious so I looked into it, and..

I finished Boc, which seems the most straight forward of all side quests. There's a few I'll skip from here, like Roderika, that also seem pretty focused and easy to follow.

I saw Alexander at one point early on and never spotted him again.

I killed Shadow Blaidd, and summoned him for some fight, but like you never met his actual form outside the Radahn festival.

I guess I did Yura's questline because IGN says it's how you unlock the Frenzy ending I did, but...if you say so, IGN!

Via guide I finished Haight, which annoyed me a bit because I swear I cleared that castle in the first 10 or 15 hours of playing the game but somehow never met the guy. Maybe my memory is wrong - I definitely had the medallion but maybe didn't kill the knight? Anyway, as I said I also did the Nephali lordship quest as part of this.

Patches I didn't find until that final two hours of quest clean up - I was way too strong and I killed him immediately. Oops.

I remember Rogier appearing sick in a chair at some point, apparently there was a pretty decent amount of stuff left on the table there. Definitely didn't do anything with him past getting him to the Roundtable.

Sellen I killed at first glance since I wasn't a magic build and thought Elden Ring might have more to it than saying yes to every single NPC like most open world games because of the review hype. Nope, she's just dead. Revived her at the turtle pope and completely forgot about her.

Varre I melted into a river of blood and really enjoyed it. Subtley one of my favorite antagonists in the game because you spend so much time realizing what a fuck he is. That being said, as a strictly PVE guy I didn't like that there was no strong hint there was an entire goddamn level and one of the cooler boss fights hidden behind using his bloody finger to do three invasions. Really glad I stumbled on that information in my last call push to tidy things up but...that felt a lil' sloppy.

I found the Goldmask, but by the time I had I had no idea what he was about. He stood there forever.

I talked to Diallos once.

Irina was obvious, Edgar was part of that late game guide rush who I'd totally forgotten.

I did Gowry and most of Millicent, but the execution of the quest up to Gowry's death was so poorly done IMO I completely forgot about her later.

The Jarburg stuff was added too late to care. I don't think I killed Hoslow to unlock Rykard's area, but at some point his icon disappeared. Dude was kicking my ass before then though. I loved that Volcano Manor at least marked locations on my map...but was confused why that was one of (I think) just two quests that did so?


Going over all that stuff, I'm actually similarly surprised I did get a lot of things done. One that you mentioned, Seluvis, I accidentally finished early by giving Ranni her blade but I didn't find him dead until several hours in-game and a couple weeks real life later so...that was one of the most confusing moments of the game for me, and partly fueled my big hate for Nephali's thing.


So in some ways this alleviated a little bit of my frustration with how the quests were laid out since I did wind up getting a decent amount of them done (I think I didn't mention all the Albinauric stuff - I did all that, but like I said never found the Haligtree) but it's also kind of weird that in retrospect I remember very little of it in any detail, whereas I can still recall actual dialogue scenes surrounding something as insignificant as returning holiday lanterns to the poet in Las Vegas in Horizon. So then I rekindle that annoyance in a new way because the really important side quests seem to just kind of disappear at a certain point in the game while a bunch of fairly insignificant stuff always felt at least mostly logical. Though I guess that's where the hardest core of fans through up the FromSoft gang signs and tell me I just need to play at least to NG+3 and slow down a little.


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