this game is a lot to take in so in so apologies if this comes across a bit rambly. it is a truly fascinating gaming experience

shades of dragon's dogma intially. crafting, myriad items, long treks across vast wildlands, random encounters with giant and/or dangerous enemies, packs of roving humanoids, etc. it's great. combat feels and looks closer to bloodborne than dark souls 3. i miss the level design but i also got to play 3 fromsoft games with amazing level design so i'm not really complaining. also there are some bewilderingly vast areas in this game. in this way the scope kind of makes up for the seeming lack of intricately designed discrete levels of the souls series and bloodborne. this game hooked me after i spent maybe 2 hours completely enraptured exlporing a cavern i happened upon. it was a feeling i hadn't experienced in a very long time. completely boggled trying to wrap my head around the combination of scale and rich visuals. it started out as a minor dungeon but just kept going and going. absolutlely mind-bending stuff!

it's interesting to see this team stretch out a bit and embrace gameplay and narrative that is a little more explicit (as opposed to obtuse and implicit.) it's probably a better game for it. they seem to have done a bit of streamlining, consolidation, and repositioning of mechanics and systems:

• "bonfires" all over the place. in the early game you can't go 3 minutes without finding one. almost always you will find one just before a boss gate. this is good for this kind of game in particular and for the series in general. some of the bonfire-to-boss runs in ds1 and ds2 were truly dismal and spirit-breaking

• weapon arts and infusions are now bound to the same slot. you can't have a magic weapon with the kick weapon art for example. also the kick is now a weapon art. this does mean weapon arts are no longer bound to specific weapons. time to move that charged spear stab weapon art to your favorite greatsword!

• consumable weapons (throwing knives, grenades, holy waters, poison darts, etc.) now scale with stats (!!!) i assume they did this to make crafting/consumables play styles viable. (can't wait to see a consumables only speed run!) also you are meant to craft all this stuff instead of buying it

• only one "ring" slot but it seems like they moved those statuses to rare and limited consumables (i.e., paying a one time cost of *000 souls for another spell slot.) maybe you find a merchant later on to buy additional ring slots

• pyromancy got moved into the faith pool of spells, formerly "miracles." i think this is a smart change. makes faith/int builds more approachable for new players. faith needed something more than lighting spear/stab anyway

• you can charge some spells like charged weapon attacks in ds3 and bloodborne. rapid attacks have also been added to some spells, meaning you can cast them in a combo-like fasion like you would weapon swings. this is an amazing change and adds a timing element to what was previously a kind of static play style in previous games.

the fromsoft soulsborne core is still there: combat, character progression, and exploration are meant to be handled with consideration and care. the art design is still elite. boss fights are still wild tests of reflexes and learning tells and animation windups on the fly. the feeling of deslotation as you are exploring is somehow *enhanced* by the vast wilderness before you. in the souls series you meet other npcs all the time. in this game they seem to be somewhat of a rarity. it's almost always you vs the world

one "problem" i am having is that i cannot for the life of me find some decent gear. i know it's early hours but even in souls games you find a cool-looking and/or effective set of armor to wear until you can get your true fashion souls on in the mid-to-late game. i feel like i am exploring a lot but i just am not finding much in the way of weapons or armor. it's a little annoying but the few pieces of gear i have found i had to really work for via exploration or a minor boss encounter. this is a big change from being rewarded by diligently exploring a smaller space or simply progressing through the storyline in the soulsborne games

i think this game is really cool. i was a little hesitant at first because it felt too obvious and comparitively hand-holdy. but after understanding what it is doing it clicked and i fell deep into it

>• pyromancy got moved into the faith pool of spells,
>formerly "miracles." i think this is a smart change. makes
>faith/int builds more approachable for new players. faith
>needed something more than lighting spear/stab anyway
>

You are correct.
I have a faith build going now.
If anyone needs a healer, try finger.

I spent the first 3 hours aimlessly wandering and not progressing. today decided to get serious. I chose an Astrologer build and liking the staff a lot. A lot of is just throw the blue magic and run away from any swords. It has worked pretty decently so far. I didn't go inside the castle yet, seems like a pretty tough defense approaching from the main way, I found a path all around the castle wall and found a Grace that proceeds away from the castle. I don't want to go any further because I don't even know what's going on still. I found the wolf and jellyfish ashes but not sure those will work for me, they use a ton of magic points and I don't have a lot left over to fight. it seems like its meant for sword-wielding fighters. I want to figure out how to get inside the castle.

Its super fun. I chose Astrologer bc I want to be strictly magic, but you really have to get the sword out from time to time. I kept the robes on so I'm a good one or two hit and death so I may put back on the chain mail I bought earlier. like Skyrim, it seems like it pays to be a sword wielding soldier but I'm going to keep trying the Astrologer path.

I don't even know what faith does yet. If you do a faith based build, what do you attack with? I really need more cups than 2 refills if I want to start fighting any bosses at all. the sporadic mini-bosses that are out in the open drain both of my cups entirely right before I kill them.

Graphics, the world... truly remarkable. When you skim around the castle and find the next Grace the view is insane. I guess the only way into the castle is from approaching the heavily guarded door entrance that have fire projectiles coming in hot. getting a tad better with my defense, bought a iron shield and use that with my Astrologer robes and seems to do a good job of protecting me against huge sword foes and keeps me light to dodge quickly.

never played a Fromsoft game prior to this except Sekiro but I got that platinum and am a monster at that game, trying to get there with this.

-----------------------------------------

been hearing too many good things about it the only issue is that I'm still on Xbox One planning to upgrade pretty soon and and the digital version is the equivalent of $20 more expensive right now.

Hopefully it goes on sale soon.

IGN gave this game a damn 10 and called it masterpiece and while I never played Dark Souls I think I could rock with this one.

The offspring :-D

PSN & XBL: LOQuent

Even if you find these games daunting like me (I've had fun with Demon's Souls though I'm not sure it'll join Bloodborne as the only one I've beaten) this game is really forgiving if you just recognize this one bit sucks for you so you may as well go look at this other area you haven't spent much time in or even found a path toward.

I've got about 12 hours without beating a single mainline boss and I've got to say, stumbling onto the Weeping Peninsula when I did was a real salve. This area is sort of the be kind to yourself, good hunter of Elden Ring so far. Simple mobs, lots of nice upgrades and things to find, it's almost designed like the positive emoji laden emails from Death Stranding where you're constantly feeling better about your time spent with this game.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

• head towards the giant golden trees. good stuff near them

• buy any clues from merchants you find, read them, and follow up on them ASAP. there is an important mechanic and item that you can easily miss (i found it 12 hours in!) because you might not wander over there naturally but it's spelled out in the clue

• find a weapon you like using and upgrade it. upgrading your weapon of choice is the #1 thing new players of fromsoft games don't do (myself included) but it's extremely important to get your damage output up quickly so you don't struggle with low level enemies or bosses

• make use of the ability to place markers on the map. it's very easy to forget where you met that one NPC that asked you to do that one thing. merchants aren't always marked on the map for you and generally you want to come back to them to flesh out your crafting repertoire

• you can basically explore the whole map on horseback and not get hit if your riding lines are good. you will get one-shot at some point. but reaching the extremes of the map early — especially the northern parts — can get you a lot of good gear

• another way to get good gear early is to craft the drop rate increase item and farm mobs. almost every enemy drops their full armor set and weapon, eventually. i believe this item and recipe are available very early on, maybe even in the first shop, so if you hate your weapon and look, just pop some drop rate tasty treats and farm some folks

• HAVE FUN. this game is gorgeous and can be harsh but overall it's pretty forgiving if you play with patience. like nodima says above, if you get smoked in one area, explore somewhere else. you can always come back when you are better prepared

I farmed the Lenne's Rise Tower where you got almost 2000 runes for each of the two balls but found out that if you jump off your horse to doge you can get over 9000 runes on each ball.

Trying to get the Night and Flame Sword.

This game is insane.

The offspring :-D

PSN & XBL: LOQuent

...also copped HFW & GT7 but I can't stop playing Elden Ring

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At hour 25 I rode my horse to Caelid, got the meteorite staff and Rock Sling, and then decided to become the Grim Reaper of Limgrave with it. Cleared Weeping Peninsula, Stormveil Castle, the Academy, and from here I stopped progressing. Rennala was a huge wall for me as I just had a magic harpoon as my melee weapon and she was wildly immune to any magic damage. So I rocked Rogiers Rapier for a while. Then I found the Moonveil Katana and good LAWD this thing annihilates people. I kind of wanted to have a melee weapon independent from magic but this Katana is impossible not to love. I have never wielded my staff in my left hand but I am going to start playing around using my staff. I searched and found this type of Mist that emits a damage forcefield and that would be nice to equip when you plan on using the katana.

Anyway, I jokingly call it Community Service bc I spent the next 30 or so hours of my play through just being a co-op Summon to help fight Rennala. She was also really great melee practice for me, to get my dodge down.

Then, I beat Caelid, and needed help for Radhan (who doesn't?) - I did a lot of Community Service for Radhan, and actually won like 5 or so games (this boss is fucking insane).

There are a few more spells I really want, so I am going to start progressing some more. Yesterday it took me all day but I finished Ranni's quest line and got the Dark Moon Greatsword, which I most likely won't even use because the Katana is such a massive beast. We will see though, I am upgrading them both. As much as I told myself I was going to be a pure spell caster, melee is such a blast in this game, and very high stress being a Glass Cannon. I bought Rennala's full outfit after I beat her which was way too expensive, but I am thinking about adding some armor. I tried to get light load for a very long time but the Katana bumps me over the edge to medium load.

Anyway, safe to say this is the best game ever made. Hands down. whether I am doing Community Service or exploring, or progressing, there is never a dull moment. Alright, im off to kill a dragon.

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level 80, ~30 faith and ~52 int. i can use my +9 rennala's staff with int boosting items and talismans. also using a +6 golden order seal. both items have almost 300 scaling which is completely ludicrous

i haven't put any points into vigor or endurance so i am squishy, weak, and fatigable but it kind of doesn't matter because i have comet, loretta's great bow, frenzy beam, and black fireball and can basically one-shot everything i come across. i am 5-and-6-shotting some bosses and minibosses. completely ruined the sentinel guarding the entrance to leyndell. figured i needed a handicap of being one-shot myself since i am so powerful. also i played this build in DS3 (+ invis) and enjoyed it quite a bit. i occasionally run into FP problems in dungeons but other than that the build is busted

Im level 163 still in NG. I farmed Rennala for a very long time being a SunBro, and then moved onto Radhan being a SunBro. I specialize in demolishing Radhan.

Took about 3 full days of playing to kill Malenia. She is such a nightmare.

After playing around with a lot of different things, I've found my favorite set up. Carian Regal Staff (same as you) +10, empty left hand to let these people know they are getting slaughtered with just one hand, and I use the Dark Moon Ranni spell combined with the Carian Phalanx (not the Glintstone - the Carian). Carian Phalanx is fucking AWESOME. I just spam-cast it and run at enemies and dodge. Considering my Dark Moon needs space and time, the Carian is awesome for aggressive enemies. Its pretty damn strong too, but I have 85 INT.

I found the Dark Moon Great Sword, got that +10, but its pretty big. But to charge that sword and use Carian, it looks so damn cool. Also brought Moonveil to +10, but Its a bit too melee'y too me. I prefer to just cast and blow people up with Dark Moons.

Found an awesome outfit, I got the Black Knife Assassin outfit from that town. I still wear the huge Snow Ranni hat (for the extra frost damage), the Black Knife Assassin armor and hands, and then the Ranni Snow legs.

I like progressing in this game but I became obsessed with co-op helping beat bosses. Great way to level up too.

I have some seals, I pumped a bunch of levels into Faith bc there seems to be fun incants, but after I changed from Meteorite to Carian Regal, I went back to pure caster. I am the Carian Dark Moon Winter King, I can't be stabbing people with swords man.

-----------------------------------------

occasionally using the carian knight shield with carian retaliation weapon art and one of +6 sleep sword or +8 sword of night and flame (the int and faith scaling has it at around 450 damage) when i need to melee or don't want to waste FP. sleep sword is super busted fwiw. pretty much an instant stun/guard break on a lot of enemies and completely trivializes a tough mid game demihuman dungeon boss

I had this revelation that I would love to have a FP Heal, so I can 100% allocate my flasks to FP, but it was so much damn Faith just for some super slow healing spells... so I went back to super high INT, Mind, and Vig, and slowly adding to endurance and dex.

I used the seal a bit for the healing spell but never used it for offense. Admittedly, there are some super cool Incants late game, like the dragon lightning. But I just think it looks pretty badass to have the Rennala staff and nothing else. I know when I get summoned people must be like oh here we go a mage to hide in a corner, but im pretty aggressive. I love co-op bc I will take aggro away, and dodge to survive, then when boss aggro's them I pummel with Moons. Rinse and repeat.

Edit: By the way, did you go find the Ranni Dark Moon spell? Since we use the same staff, you should go use that. Its the best spell in the game for this staff. it absolutely obliterates people, one shots everything, even strong guys. I use Talismans for faster casting, so the weakness is really just time, but if you move a lot and create space its not that big of a deal.

-----------------------------------------

black flame sling is flame sling but with dark fire. frenzy beam i found in a village between altus plateau and liurnia of the lakes. it's sick

i generally only put on buffs for boss fights. one is for boosting flame damage + physical attack. the other is AOE buff to damage and defense that i use for summons. of note, bestial sling absolutely got me through the first third of the game. it staggers and stuns extremely effectively (even bosses) and is super fast. i stalled out on the bestial incanations because they seem better suited for a rough-and-tumble faith/vig/str build and not my glass cannon build

>I had this revelation that I would love to have a FP Heal, so
>I can 100% allocate my flasks to FP, but it was so much damn
>Faith just for some super slow healing spells... so I went
>back to super high INT, Mind, and Vig, and slowly adding to
>endurance and dex.

heal incants aren't great, at least the ones i have found. fp heal seems good but with a build like this (i feel like we have very similar builds) but you can get away with 20/80 ratio for HP/FP flasks when dungeoning and exploring and switch it up to 40/60 for boss fights since you likely don't need 1000+ FP for a single boss fight. also there is an invicibility ashes of war for shields and a wondrous physick mixer that give you something like 99% damage reduction for one hit. easy enough to one shot enemies from afar while exploring and kite bosses so i don't find flask heals to be that useful, much less long animation healing spells

>Edit: By the way, did you go find the Ranni Dark Moon spell?
>Since we use the same staff, you should go use that. Its the
>best spell in the game for this staff. it absolutely
>obliterates people, one shots everything, even strong guys. I
>use Talismans for faster casting, so the weakness is really
>just time, but if you move a lot and create space its not that
>big of a deal.

haven't got this yet but i think i am close to where it is located. really want to use rennala's moon but it's too far away stat-wise at the moment. my understanding is that ranni's is better and has lower int requirement. looking forward to getting it and using it

>heal incants aren't great, at least the ones i have found. fp
>heal seems good but with a build like this (i feel like we
>have very similar builds) but you can get away with 20/80
>ratio for HP/FP flasks when dungeoning and exploring and
>switch it up to 40/60 for boss fights since you likely don't
>need 1000+ FP for a single boss fight. also there is an
>invicibility ashes of war for shields and a wondrous physick
>mixer that give you something like 99% damage reduction for
>one hit. easy enough to one shot enemies from afar while
>exploring and kite bosses so i don't find flask heals to be
>that useful, much less long animation healing spells
>

Yeah I currently run a 10 FP 2 HP set up. This caters to my SunBro equipment because your flask count gets halved, so I really only have one 1HP and 5FP in these co-op boss fights, but I manage. I use that phsyick mix of the "free one time hit defense" and the 15 seconds of free FP. I tend to save that flask when phase 2 starts at Radhan or Maliketh.


>haven't got this yet but i think i am close to where it is
>located. really want to use rennala's moon but it's too far
>away stat-wise at the moment. my understanding is that
>ranni's is better and has lower int requirement. looking
>forward to getting it and using it

I should clarify - if you want to use the Dark Moon Ranni spell, it's really only better than Rennal's moon if you wear her Ranni Snow hat with it.- you get an extra 30% frost damage. So the only reason why my Dark Moon is such a huge hit each time is the correlated hat and staff. It takes.... a bit of time.... to adjust to that massive snow sombrero but the damage output is really worth it.

still figuring out which 4 talismans. I recently found a +2 vigor and I equipped that but I noticed my damage output is a bit lower. I prefer to use talismans that increase damage and casting, not necessarily just buffing your levels. I think I'll go back to Graven-Mass, Radagon Icon, the one that reduces FP cost per cast, and I think I'll go back to the +2 talisman that increased my FP bar. being able to get 6 or 7 moons per flask is awesome.

-----------------------------------------

i imagine giant bosses can't dodge it well. i bet it's great for community service. hit them with the moon for big burst damage then pepper them with high dps spells to take advantage of the magic resistance reduction

of note, i cruised through the lake of rot even with my 10 vigor thanks to a poison/rot removal incant and long range spells. died a few times on the bonus boss in the lake bc my dang spirit ashes would get knocked off the platform and couldn't get back up there to tank for me. it is truly a two-way one-shot street with this build, even with high damage reduction due to my high level. i am going back and cleaning up some mines and minor dungeons in altus plateau at lvl ~100 and am legit doing 50% damage to some of the these bosses with one charged comet

>i imagine giant bosses can't dodge it well. i bet it's great
>for community service. hit them with the moon for big burst
>damage then pepper them with high dps spells to take advantage
>of the magic resistance reduction
>
>of note, i cruised through the lake of rot even with my 10
>vigor thanks to a poison/rot removal incant and long range
>spells. died a few times on the bonus boss in the lake bc my
>dang spirit ashes would get knocked off the platform and
>couldn't get back up there to tank for me. it is truly a
>two-way one-shot street with this build, even with high damage
>reduction due to my high level. i am going back and cleaning
>up some mines and minor dungeons in altus plateau at lvl ~100
>and am legit doing 50% damage to some of the these bosses with
>one charged comet

I'm curious if the 'moon tracking' is reliant on INT level. Since I am 85 INT my moon goes *really* far, and tracks really well. I have been doing Community Service on Maliketh for a bit and when he does his batshit insane combo moves my moon hits him about 85% of the time which is pretty solid for how mobile he is.

the lake of rot, I had that incant and LOVED being able to heal myself of the rot, made going back to the lake of rot a second time to grab those high level smithing stones easier.

I am at the final boss, and pretty stuck. The moon is pretty awful for both Radagon and the Elden Beast. As you say, it is an absolute truckload of a co-op weapon but when you are by yourself or with the tiche (better than mimic) it isn't really effective. The moon got me to end game, but yeah the wind up is the glaring weakness of it. but when the moon fully connects I can tell it does bigger damage than dual katana wielding co-ops. I am thinking about incorporating carian slicer for the final boss. speaking of final boss I thought I bought all the healing incants but apparently I have zero incants that reduce holy damage and I don't have any talismans that reduce it either. Reading online, if you go into the final boss without any holy damage reduction its borderline suicidal (can confirm).

-----------------------------------------

no idea where i found it though. some prayerbook in some forgotten location. you can also craft holyproof dried livers at some point

I have less than zero interest in playing, but it actually looks engrossing and fantastic in a way that the DS stuff never did (to me)

--------

these games never appealed to me either, but I traded my buddy NBA2k19 for his Sekiro copy and that became my favorite game of all time, until this one.

I was a Skyrim guy, I think you were too maybe im wrong. This is Insane Skyrim.

-----------------------------------------

--------

commuting and doing repetitive tasks is already my daytime job

--------

freeform. no quest list. just get out there and explore

can't be busting out big words and misspelling them

And again, I'm having a GREAT time with this game (level 70 now, finally found Volcano Manor and cleared most of that while finding a second Great Rune elsewhere as well) and the in-the-moment novelty of "emerge from cave, see girl sitting with wolf" novelty of there not being a quest marker on your map...

But that's still just a quest giver pointing you in a direction, the primary difference being nothing is marked on your map and nothing is noted in any kind of log so it's up to you to decide whether that's interesting or not, which is sort of novel I suppose...

But then just look at your map right now. See those tunnels? Mines to grind for smithing stones with a boss battle at the bottom. See those catacombs? Puzzles to solve with a boss battle at the bottom. See those ruins? Combat arenas to solve with a boss battle at the bottom. See those towers? Puzzles to solve with a specific prize at the end. Towns? Minor dungeons sometimes with key items. Manors and Forts? Medium dungeons with some game changing items. Castles and Cities? Legacy dungeons that are the full Souls experience.

And the maps also got vendors, mini-bosses, places of interest, challenge bosses, fog of war and so on all over it. If you want a reminder of where you want to go (or a couple places you want to go) you'll have blue shafts of light all over the regular map and a compass to guide you, or dozens of monster, sword and treasure icons to remind you of something you didn't finish. It doesn't look or function differently at all other than that Dark Souls feel at its core than a Red Dead II or a Horizon other than those first 15 or 20 hours where you haven't figured out how to read the map yet.

And sometimes even that's not enough - I've been up to Caria Manor three separate times after doing something elsewhere in the world that seemed like they'd trigger something. I found all but a whip my first and second time, sent the dragon away my second time and went back specifically for the whip my third time. And yet the yellow tail hinting I have something to do there is STILL on the map - at this point, I looked at a guide just to see if I was missing anything and I wasn't, yet this thing is just nagging at me to go to the Manor. Why? Who can say! If you don't like open world design to begin with, I would imagine this would be fucking INFURIATING.

So if guy said he doesn't want to do repetitive tasks on a big, wide open map...Elden Ring IS that game, same as any other open world. And just like Breath of the Wild it feels like it's playing this big trick on everyone by convincing them it's doing something it really isn't.

But I'm also a completionist type - I LIKE to know where the backpacks and pigeons are in Spider-Man so I can go and get 'em. Icons on a map have never bothered me, and I guess I'll just never see the novelty in marking the map all on my own - especially considering how much this game is willing to drop markers for you already.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>But that's still just a quest giver pointing you in a
>direction, the primary difference being nothing is marked on
>your map and nothing is noted in any kind of log so it's up to
>you to decide whether that's interesting or not, which is sort
>of novel I suppose...

this is what i mean by antithetical to modern open world design. hud isn't splashed with icons for pickups and destinations, there is no quest log, the only selectable stuff on map markers is save/warp points you found (with a few exceptions), no fetch quests (well, one for one item), only a handful of quest givers that hand out a very small number of vague and sprawling affairs, crafting can be ignored completely, no skill trees gating your progression or basic movement and combat abilities, when do you do uncover the map it's just removing the fog of war and you can keep the fog on if you happen to not figure out where the map is, etc. to me the game feels like you are given the ability from the very beginning to play how you want to and engage with what you want to, discovering stuff naturally rather than being directed to "discover" it with quest markers and logs. maybe that's not the case for everyone who plays this game

>But then just look at your map right now. See those tunnels?
>Mines to grind for smithing stones with a boss battle at the
>bottom. See those catacombs? Puzzles to solve with a boss
>battle at the bottom. See those ruins? Combat arenas to solve
>with a boss battle at the bottom. See those towers? Puzzles to
>solve with a specific prize at the end. Towns? Minor dungeons
>sometimes with key items. Manors and Forts? Medium dungeons
>with some game changing items. Castles and Cities? Legacy
>dungeons that are the full Souls experience.

smithing stones don't respawn after you complete a mine, only the enemies do. all the stuff you are describing is playing the video game and doesn't read as negatively repetetive to me. i will condede that most of that is standard open world fare and don't have a counter argument for it

>And the maps also got vendors, mini-bosses, places of
>interest, challenge bosses, fog of war and so on all over it.
>If you want a reminder of where you want to go (or a couple
>places you want to go) you'll have blue shafts of light all
>over the regular map and a compass to guide you, or dozens of
>monster, sword and treasure icons to remind you of something
>you didn't finish. It doesn't look or function differently at
>all other than that Dark Souls feel at its core than a Red
>Dead II or a Horizon other than those first 15 or 20 hours
>where you haven't figured out how to read the map yet.
>
>And sometimes even that's not enough - I've been up to Caria
>Manor three separate times after doing something elsewhere in
>the world that seemed like they'd trigger something. I found
>all but a whip my first and second time, sent the dragon away
>my second time and went back specifically for the whip my
>third time. And yet the yellow tail hinting I have something
>to do there is STILL on the map - at this point, I looked at a
>guide just to see if I was missing anything and I wasn't, yet
>this thing is just nagging at me to go to the Manor. Why? Who
>can say! If you don't like open world design to begin with, I
>would imagine this would be fucking INFURIATING.

i would say less than half of the vendors are marked for you on the map even after you discover them. the yellow tails seem to persist even after the demigod has been defeated i guess? i am not bothered by it but i can see why it might be irritating

>So if guy said he doesn't want to do repetitive tasks on a
>big, wide open map...Elden Ring IS that game, same as any
>other open world. And just like Breath of the Wild it feels
>like it's playing this big trick on everyone by convincing
>them it's doing something it really isn't.

gaming is repetition and slowly building on that repetition. i will let will speak on it if he wants but my guess is that he isn't referring to engaging in the mechanics and systems of the game when he is talking about not wanting to do repetetive tasks. the commuting is debatable but there are a few options for reducing time spent in the open world just getting from one place to the next

>But I'm also a completionist type - I LIKE to know where the
>backpacks and pigeons are in Spider-Man so I can go and get
>'em. Icons on a map have never bothered me, and I guess I'll
>just never see the novelty in marking the map all on my own -
>especially considering how much this game is willing to drop
>markers for you already.

i can see how this game would be irritating for a completionist but again, the map markers are generated by the player discovering them. i think this creates a great feeling of player agency vs having everything marked on your map for you when you cross an invisible threshhold, climb a tower, or engage a hawk or drone to mark everything for you. the markers are a reminder of the player accomplishing something rather than the game telling the player they need to accomplish something. a subtle distinction but imo an important one

you seem torn on this game, like you get what makes it good and are geninuely enjoying it but also are annoyed by excessive praise it's getting and maybe the dearth of criticisms

Because you could kind of play it this way, Ghost of Tsushima is an easy comparison point. What if they had actually removed the icons from the game, completely guided players by the gusts of the wind, foxes, birds etc. but otherwise all of the content is exactly the same? In every way it's still an open world game, it's just not telling you that this hut triggers a side quest or a main story quest or has a bamboo challenge or whatever.

To me, that's what Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring are. I'm not really torn on the game itself at all, I just get a little wide-eyed when people prop these games up as some kind of shift in game design. They made a choice that suits the vibes they were going for - desolate, lonely, apocalypse-stricken wastelands. And actually, because of all the physics stuff, I get it more with Zelda and can admit I'm just not experimental enough to want to simply goof off with its systems. I think two of the more interesting examples of this style of design are the open levels of Uncharted 4, Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II, though in each case you have NPCs nudging the player in the right direction.

Elden Ring is another From game, just huge as hell. By the end it may overtake Bloodborne as my favorite one of these, it may not, but it's the mystery of the dungeon design, the weird weapons and magic they've dreamt up, the insane enemy designs and everything that is very endemic to the fact this is a game by From Software. They are very good at surprising players, and equally good at making them feel unworthy. But what if that's not what a game's designers are interested in or good at? Would an Assassin's Creed that just dropped a player in Istanbul and let players loose inherently be better by default? Or should they guide people towards the best stuff and heighten the efficiency so players who just want to see the story can do that in a "reasonable" 20-30 hours? And would it actually feel great to get dropped in one of the incredibly dense, vertical towns of Horizon and have to figure out who was a quest giver and who was just flavor? The further you get from the desolate vibe of Elden Ring and towards something not just dense in content but in design like a Red Dead Redemption or GTA, I wonder if it just becomes frustrating.

I'm really just interested in the psychology of it.

And I also think it's important to note that structurally, this is just an open world game that wants all your time and attention the way they all do. When I hear people get interested in the game because it's being represented as this seismic sea change in how these games are designed I feel like it's important to keep in mind just how much of that is owed to what a Soulsborne game feels like in the first place and doesn't have much to do with the actual structure of the game other than you might, like me, start doubling back to locations you've already cleared because you either can't remember if you did everything or the game seems to imply you haven't and grinding away even more hours than you would in a game with more clear sign posting.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

At this point I fully get why some people got so over the top in their praise of this game. I've got nearly 100 waypoints on my map and still can't see 25% of it. I've stumbled into some really interesting scenarios and had a lot of laughs and a lot of sighs dying over, and over, and over.

But I'm also not entirely convinced that the open world is this game at its best. It's almost every ten hours I hit a day where I can't seem to get anything done, whether that's just finding new areas to explore, beating old bosses or even remembering where the bosses I have and have not beaten ARE. People love to point to this game's design as a salve compared to, just because it's recent, Horizon: FW but I just don't see it. At least in that game when I was looking for something to do I always knew where to go to do it. And maybe I knew this was a main quest mission starter here or a hideout there, but I still didn't know what was going to HAPPEN in those missions or what datalogs I might find along the way. For me the action is the juice and it really doesn't bother me to know where the action is.

It's also not charming when core game mechanics are piled on top of you but can take hours to discover. I'd have NEVER gained the ability to summon if I hadn't been listening to a podcast discuss how obtuse that item's location is at the exact moment I was in that area; I JUST paused after receiving the Physick flask and I've got damn near ten items I can mix in it already. Yes, I had the note, but I could never make sense of it. I'm not sure if that flask is as game changing (or in my case, saving) as the summons are but I wouldn't be surprised and I've found that sort of stuff charming in Bloodborne previously, but in that game you always feel like you're on a track. With Elden Ring, you can just get really confused and turned around trying to do some really basic stuff.

I'm really having a good time and I could easily see myself making this the second From game I've seen all the way through, I just don't think it's the revolutionary new road for open world games some would have you believe. I'm still setting and following waypoints on the map to go to points of interest, all that's changed is not knowing what the activity is until you get there (or, perhaps more detrimentally, whether you've already done the activity once you've arrived). At that point, you're usually just playing more Elden Ring, which is not nearly as fun on a purely mechanical level as a lot of other open worlds with more transparent map design. Just my two cents on that.

It's been a bummer seeing just how disinterested Elden Ring's been in my core Bloodborne build of all the HP, STR and DEX I can afford and ignore all the arcane stuff. Turns out, damn near everything interesting in this game needs a shitload of INT or faith and I'm still in single digits on those stats. And unlike Bloodborne, it doesn't feel like there are any fun spots to do a quick level grind, either things are just challenging enough that it takes more time than its worth, so challenging that everything can one shot you or so ludicrously easy that the rune drops are pitiful. That's discouraging, especially when I hit those points where I just can't figure out what to do next.

So far I've mostly avoided guides outside of some small catacombs and ruins, but I feel like I'll be digging into one soon enough here. I've only taken Margit and Godrick down on the critical path so far (I also know where a boss whose become pretty infamous is located though I haven't triggered him yet) while plenty of people are talking endgame and NG+ already so clearly I'm missing something...I've been looking for this glintstone key for damn near 30 hours alone! And I'm having a lot of fun with this game, promise!



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>But I'm also not entirely convinced that the open world is
>this game at its best. It's almost every ten hours I hit a day
>where I can't seem to get anything done, whether that's just
>finding new areas to explore, beating old bosses or even
>remembering where the bosses I have and have not beaten ARE.
>People love to point to this game's design as a salve compared
>to, just because it's recent, Horizon: FW but I just don't see
>it. At least in that game when I was looking for something to
>do I always knew where to go to do it. And maybe I knew this
>was a main quest mission starter here or a hideout there, but
>I still didn't know what was going to HAPPEN in those missions
>or what datalogs I might find along the way. For me the action
>is the juice and it really doesn't bother me to know where the
>action is.

some of the sidequest locations are pretty vague but the graces literally point you in the direction you are supposed to go. also there are 2 separate navigational mechanics in the form of the "laggardly, old codger" and the other statue that points you to a "necessary item" location in a cave. and the map even shows you where evergaols, ruins, and likely cave locations are. i think this more implicit design is better than filling the hud and map with points of interest from the get go

>It's also not charming when core game mechanics are piled on
>top of you but can take hours to discover. I'd have NEVER
>gained the ability to summon if I hadn't been listening to a
>podcast discuss how obtuse that item's location is at the
>exact moment I was in that area; I JUST paused after receiving
>the Physick flask and I've got damn near ten items I can mix
>in it already. Yes, I had the note, but I could never make
>sense of it. I'm not sure if that flask is as game changing
>(or in my case, saving) as the summons are but I wouldn't be
>surprised and I've found that sort of stuff charming in
>Bloodborne previously, but in that game you always feel like
>you're on a track. With Elden Ring, you can just get really
>confused and turned around trying to do some really basic
>stuff.

this can be discouraging. i didn't get the wondrous physick flask until about 12 hours in. to be fair the clue was pretty specific about where it was located, even if it didn't provide the precise location. also it's a total game changer as you can set it to be a damage boost and damage negation potion that will last for most of a boss fight

>I'm really having a good time and I could easily see myself
>making this the second From game I've seen all the way
>through, I just don't think it's the revolutionary new road
>for open world games some would have you believe. I'm still
>setting and following waypoints on the map to go to points of
>interest, all that's changed is not knowing what the activity
>is until you get there (or, perhaps more detrimentally,
>whether you've already done the activity once you've arrived).
>At that point, you're usually just playing more Elden Ring,
>which is not nearly as fun on a purely mechanical level as a
>lot of other open worlds with more transparent map design.
>Just my two cents on that.

i think some people are getting hung on the somewhat 180 that it does with the map and hud compared to most open world games (although breath of the wild also did this iirc.) it is a welcome and refreshing to me but i can see how polarizing it could be for others

>It's been a bummer seeing just how disinterested Elden Ring's
>been in my core Bloodborne build of all the HP, STR and DEX I
>can afford and ignore all the arcane stuff. Turns out, damn
>near everything interesting in this game needs a shitload of
>INT or faith and I'm still in single digits on those stats.
>And unlike Bloodborne, it doesn't feel like there are any fun
>spots to do a quick level grind, either things are just
>challenging enough that it takes more time than its worth, so
>challenging that everything can one shot you or so ludicrously
>easy that the rune drops are pitiful. That's discouraging,
>especially when I hit those points where I just can't figure
>out what to do next.

weapon arts don't require int or faith and are as busted/cool as some of the spells. also respecing is available and easy in this game after a certain point. if you don't know where to go then explore a place you haven't been to yet but mostly just follow the grace pointers to progress the critical path, which will unlock more mechanics. if you get super stuck go to fextralife. i would say try not to get too discouraged because of fromsoft's obtuse quest design as this is what they do. the quests are usually explicitly or implicitly spelled out by NPCs. there is at least one example of a major questline starter being too vague for my preference (i had to look it up) but once you get going it's easy to follow along

>So far I've mostly avoided guides outside of some small
>catacombs and ruins, but I feel like I'll be digging into one
>soon enough here. I've only taken Margit and Godrick down on
>the critical path so far (I also know where a boss whose
>become pretty infamous is located though I haven't triggered
>him yet) while plenty of people are talking endgame and NG+
>already so clearly I'm missing something...I've been looking
>for this glintstone key for damn near 30 hours alone! And I'm
>having a lot of fun with this game, promise!

it took me a long time to find the glintstone key even with the clue. the clue is a little misleading but the key isn't far from the place where you would use it

there is absolutely no fucking chance anyone can do these quests blind.

I had to look up how to co-op summon, how to be a co-op summon, this game doesn't explain much to you, but I respect it. I think its pretty cool it says here is an absolutely massive world, have at it, and die a lot.

a lot of people complain about the late game difficulty, and that's kind of warranted. its pure brutality and I haven't even fought the last boss yet, but I still have fun. I am co-op helping fight a really late guy, Maliketh, and getting better. It is so fun to just throw moons at enemies, while leaving yourself open for attacks. but I've always been a mage guy. I'll probably do more melee/INT in NG+ now that I have Moonveil and DMGS at max.

-----------------------------------------

otherwise I wouldn't understand half the game.

The offspring :-D

PSN & XBL: LOQuent

I guess you have to talk to that dude mage in the other tower, Stellis or something - and you have to give HIM a quest item before Ranni, and if you don't you miss out on a Talisman and you have to NG+ to get it.

I probably should have utilized the markers the game gives you. I made a laughable attempt on my Notepad to track "things I haven't done' and that lasted 3 locations

-----------------------------------------

Most recent: https://imgur.com/a/RnFdjGm

https://imgur.com/a/KlndIw6
https://imgur.com/a/QPt130f

I rocked this for a very long time: https://imgur.com/a/yHPEibB

-----------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------

added anyway

but I fucked up and opened it...money now spent

___________________________________
http://instagram.com/mrellsberry

if so let's co-op sometime. i want to see what it's like outside of boss fights and if/how they will scale me down. they might halve my health to 202 😪

I'll start up over the weekend

___________________________________
http://instagram.com/mrellsberry

It's already super fun to fight alongside myself, two Bloodhound Fang+6's are pretty ruthless with the bleed damage and special attack that hits twice while creating distance between the hits. I finally re-spec'd to play around with Moonveil (which I also had to +6 already) and I don't really get the hype, it seems exactly like my Uchigatana with a little visual flair on the Unsheathe except I have that weapon upgraded to +17 so it hits WAY harder. Little bummed out by that.

At this point I've got a ton of weapons I want to play around with just for the hell of it, and I'm deep enough into Leyndell that it's kind of hilarious how often I'm eclipsing 100,000 runes after spending so much time getting nervous after I cross 30k, but that also means it's hard to think of areas to go play around with the new stuff and I've been using Bloodhound/Uchi/Grafted Blade for so long that it's hard to get used to anything else. Suppose that's what NG+ is for?


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

even with erdtree's favor and godrick's rune my HP caps out at around 520. i use nightmaiden and swordstress puppets spirit ashes and it works pretty well for me

>I finally re-spec'd to play around with
>Moonveil (which I also had to +6 already) and I don't really
>get the hype, it seems exactly like my Uchigatana with a
>little visual flair on the Unsheathe except I have that weapon
>upgraded to +17 so it hits WAY harder. Little bummed out by
>that.

moonveil has higher base damage and great early scaling so it completely crushes early and mid-game but its scaling caps out at B so its late game usefulness is limited unless you are all in on DEX and INT. depending on which whetstones and ashes of war you are using you can probably get uchi to outperform even a fully upgraded moonveil

>At this point I've got a ton of weapons I want to play around
>with just for the hell of it, and I'm deep enough into
>Leyndell that it's kind of hilarious how often I'm eclipsing
>100,000 runes after spending so much time getting nervous
>after I cross 30k, but that also means it's hard to think of
>areas to go play around with the new stuff and I've been using
>Bloodhound/Uchi/Grafted Blade for so long that it's hard to
>get used to anything else. Suppose that's what NG+ is for?

yeah or just plain new game. nothing wrong with finding a weapon you like and sticking with it. i have been exclusively using straight swords for my character and don't feel the need to switch up to great hammers or twinblades. those weapons are for another build and playthrough

want to talk about dumbest move of the year?

I FINALLY beat Radagon and Elden Beast. I'd done Ranni's quest (obviously - I wear her clothes and gave her a RING) - after the fight there's a blue summon sign on the ground. But I had ran straight to the grace to rest... then "engaged" in the ending, completely aloof that the blue Ranni sign was down to engage her "secret" ending.

for the Platinum you need 3 endings - the regular, Ranni's, and some other. Fai I think. so I got the regular ending, after spending a GARGANTUAN amount of time around the world. I am also wanting to hit myself for not tracking down the Talismans, ashes, armaments, and sorceries before I went NG+. So I did a Ranni Quest speed run, beat Elden Beast again with my trusty Mimic and that sweet sweet Radagon cheese (i. do. not. care.) but I didn't progress to NG++. chasing down ashes and talismans and as I type relentlessly sad that the last two talismans are in Haligtree, the worst place imaginable.

5 ashes, 3 armaments, 2 talismans, and 1 more ending for the Plat. and I'm nearing 200 hours but half that is Community Service.

-----------------------------------------

I'm not really enjoying the Mountaintop of the Giants at all from an enemy design OR level design perspective, it honestly even just feels like DLC at all times anyway. I've also taken enough breaks going back to mop things up in Horizon, binge race in Gran Turismo 7 and goof off in the world of GTA 5 for the fourth time that I can't recall what my main or side objectives were when I was last playing heavy, and when I try to play following a guide it just doesn't hit the same at all.


Like I said, might go back to the beginning and see how this game feels with an entirely different build because it did have SUCH a strong first 30 hours or so (I'm also curious how that'll hit when you know what's coming) but I just can't see myself seeing this game to the end unless I have some miraculous session with it where everything clicks back into place again, which to be fair has happened to me like three times already with this damn game.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

DS1 through 3 had this issue. DS1 had the awful dragon butts in lavaland area. DS2 in particular had a great/miserable fakeout in drangleic castle where you thought you were approaching the end of the game but there were like 6 more areas to trudge through. DS3 is just a massive game with a lot of levels. bloodborne kept the momentum until the end but i think it's a more compact and brisk experience than ER or DS series

i think after giant mountain there is only one more non-secret area which is a big legacy dungeon. just have to bang your head against the fire giant and then you're down the home stretch. i just beat the fire giant and immediately went to secret snowland so i am not 100% on this and going off what i skimmed in the wiki while i was trying to figure out where to get a dang somber ancient dragon smithing stone

As well as Capt. Niall in the Sun Fort or however they called it. Apparently the latter has a pretty clean boss run I'm missing but I really don't enjoy how many snipers and big hitter enemies that look the same as people back in Limgrave; I have the same feeling about another fort that seems pretty secondary but is surrounded by those fire priests. It looks like an area I should have fun farming because I first met those enemies 40 hours ago and yet they hit like fuckin' Tyson.


Then Fire Giant, he just doesn't feel like a significant boss, really, but apparently geometry doesn't matter at all to him as I died in both fights by having the high ground...only for his attack to animate straight through the hill and one-shot me despite not even being able to SEE the attack it was starting so deep in the ground. I'd already heard this boss fight was bullshit from people who've cleared the toughest bosses in the game So I was prepared for sooooooomething to be off about it, I just didn't expect that to be rules just don't apply to the big buy. I can only imagine the attacks I haven't yet seen from him that are rude no matter where you are in the playspace.


It's simply a strange boss to have clearly locked something important behind (my "first" fight with him I tried to rush straight to the top of the biggest jar in the world) especially considering Radahn similarly unlocks parts of the world and yet you can just tell that whatever happens after you clear that fight will be important. Fire Giant by comparison just feels like...why wouldn't there be a boss fight here?


You're exactly right about what's so charming about Bloodborne, after your first struggle play with that game it's a VERY straightforward path from Cleric Beast to Rom, from Rom to (I guess we'll still call all this spoilers?) and you're done. In a game so eager to say fuck you that's really appreciated, that at least you always know what you're working toward. At this point in Elden Ring, I feel like I did everything I was supposed to do and I'm getting Mario'd by Toad one more time, like, hey sorry but we did design all this other stuff over here and we'd love for you to do this too!!


At this point I haven't touched the game in a serious way for nearly a week, starting to think I'll have just lost my feel for it if/when I get back.


(for what it's worth, if I were asked for a score I'd say it's a 4.5/5 with a couple dozen small and huge caveats, it's ultimately pretty impressive what they've pulled off here)


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

>Then Fire Giant, he just doesn't feel like a significant boss,
>really, but apparently geometry doesn't matter at all to him
>as I died in both fights by having the high ground...only for
>his attack to animate straight through the hill and one-shot
>me despite not even being able to SEE the attack it was
>starting so deep in the ground. I'd already heard this boss
>fight was bullshit from people who've cleared the toughest
>bosses in the game So I was prepared for sooooooomething to be
>off about it, I just didn't expect that to be rules just don't
>apply to the big buy. I can only imagine the attacks I haven't
>yet seen from him that are rude no matter where you are in the
>playspace.

it's kind of a bullshit boss. took me maybe 12 tries with summons because i would get one-shotted no matter what i got hit by. i would block one of his fireballs with a shield and get poise broken and lose over half of my paltry 500 HP. absolutely insane. i had to have someone run interference and tank while i pelted him with spells. even then the scale of the fight is such that i could rarely gauge the correct distance to cast from so during most of the fights i was doing the spell casting equivalent of flailing. like most bosses in these games, once you get the moveset down you are golden. the fire giant's animations are laborious and unintuitive so the learning process is a little slower. it's a more manageable fight after the first phase. i'm sure this boss is much easier with a tanky bleed build. my glass cannon caster build was not suited for it

>You're exactly right about what's so charming about
>Bloodborne, after your first struggle play with that game it's
>a VERY straightforward path from Cleric Beast to Rom, from Rom
>to (I guess we'll still call all this spoilers?) and you're
>done. In a game so eager to say fuck you that's really
>appreciated, that at least you always know what you're working
>toward. At this point in Elden Ring, I feel like I did
>everything I was supposed to do and I'm getting Mario'd by
>Toad one more time, like, hey sorry but we did design all this
>other stuff over here and we'd love for you to do this too!!

it just keeps going. i would say that fromsoft is likely unconcerned with making sure the player sees everything considering the game has dozens of bosses and only 13 are needed to complete the game. this is the same team that hid an entire area in dark souls and made another secret area very difficult to find without a guide. there is a lot to this game though. they might have front-loaded it to the point where the back end is a bit of a chore. i don't think this is an uncommon phenomenon in games

from my short experience near the end-game it feels like the enemies are a little overtuned. i'm around level 115 with 70 int and 50 faith and some of these enemies in the consecrated snowfield are comfortably tanking all of my best spells and incantations. not enjoying it as much as the beginning of the game. i do have a personal quest to get a holy sword in this area and still need some +8 stones for my staff so i am going to keep at it

>(for what it's worth, if I were asked for a score I'd say it's
>a 4.5/5 with a couple dozen small and huge caveats, it's
>ultimately pretty impressive what they've pulled off here)

i agree. fromsoft games are full of amazing art and game design, world-class gameplay and game feel, and a small-to-moderate amount of bullshit. not insurmountable bullshit but bullshit all the same

my maxed out prince of death (PoD) staff has the highest sorcery scaling of all my staves since it scales off both INT and faith, on my character at 70 and 50, respectively. this is around 375 scaling, which beats rennala's staff and my guess is about even with a maxed out lusat's staff, the advantage going to PoD staff since it doesn't have increased FP consumption. i might try respecing into 60/60 or INT/faith to see what the scaling looks like on PoD staff and the golden order seal. i am hunting the death rite birds to get all the "death" sorceries (PoD staff boosts damage on these) and the death spear. the upgraded slow-moving-homing-death-spirits spell seems kind of busted because you can spam the shit out of it and set up other spells/incants as the spirits are approaching the target. i am cleaning up the secret snow area then it's on to the "last" (?) area after the snowbound molcajete, then NG+ for a bit or for achievements before i run a new tanky str/dex build. the 2nd NG runs on these games are always great because you can go in with a plan since you know the location of all the gear you will need to make your build work

of note: i maxed out on flask count and power but still have 5 golden seeds and a few sacred tears. this is very odd for a souls game as usually they are scarce. i guess i can sell them?

I've had the Golden Order Seal at +10 for quite a while. I was running the Erdtree Heal (also the one that basically refills your entire health bar, but it doesn't have the continuous HP gain - trying to see which I like better. But I am about to go full FP flasks and run that quick-heal incant, that requires 42 faith.)

since Maliketh and I are best friends, I started using Black Blade incant in NG+++. Has a bit of a slow windup but it is a pretty awesome weapon to use. The other 2 spells I use are on the sorcery side, Comet Azure (yeah yeah I know - but man its a boss melter), and then still used the Dark Moon. so 2 incant, 2 sorcery. Since I am such a high level the PoD is the best staff in the game, I just wish I found it when I did Fia's quest bc it should be right around there and I'm nowhere near reaching that area in this run.

going FULL incant/sorcery zero "weapons" on this run has been a serious blast. The one thing keeping me away from the PoD is the Spinning Weapon Rennala's staff has. I neglected it for quite a while but man... this is the best melee weapon I can think of for me. It staggers everyone and everything so you can basically just spam cast it on even the strongest knights in Haligtree and they can't even hit you back. I think I can put it on the PoD so that is what I'll do, if I ever decide to switch off the Carian Regal. I love the look of it.

-----------------------------------------

360 scaling for PoD
374 scaling for Carian Regal

but, the actual deal breaker, is I can't use Spinning Weapon art on PoD with Magic affinity. I have been using Spinning Weapon in a ton of close quarter crunches and without the extra magic + INT buff on it, its super weak.

Back to Carian Regal I go, that was a fun few hours wasted on pumping it to +25.

-----------------------------------------

383 on PoD vs 360 on carian regal. carian regal scaling is a probably mostly accurate estimate based on what it will upgrade to at +10 (it's +9 now.) i can get PoD to 405 if i am feeling particularly masochistic and use marika's soreseal to put me in negative damage absorption (radagon's is permanently fused to talisman slot #1 by necessity). not sure where the discrepancy is between your scaling and mine

i forget about the carian weapon art being so good. i have seen a lot of folks dual wielding staves in co-op. if you ever get to the point where PoD is better you can right hand PoD and left hand carian for the weapon art (two-handed) and moon sorcery bonus

>383 on PoD vs 360 on carian regal. carian regal scaling is a
>probably mostly accurate estimate based on what it will
>upgrade to at +10 (it's +9 now.) i can get PoD to 405 if i am
>feeling particularly masochistic and use marika's soreseal to
>put me in negative damage absorption (radagon's is permanently
>fused to talisman slot #1 by necessity). not sure where the
>discrepancy is between your scaling and mine
>
>i forget about the carian weapon art being so good. i have
>seen a lot of folks dual wielding staves in co-op. if you
>ever get to the point where PoD is better you can right hand
>PoD and left hand carian for the weapon art (two-handed) and
>moon sorcery bonus

but I have 9 higher INT than you, so I figured those would cancel out. Plus there are dozens of YouTube videos saying the PoD is the best staff scaling wise, so I definitely was perplexed sitting here wondering how the hell it wasn't higher. not too mad though. I still like to throw dark moons, and with that doing the 30% magic resistance reduction, plus with a frost build up, it mostly suits my style better to stick with Carian. Spinning Weapon sealed the deal. i wonder what the hosts think when I'm helping them clear Haligtree or Castle Sol and I'm sitting here spinning these super strong knights into the ground - its so much more efficient than throwing dark moons or comet - considering they take so long and the host and other sunbro has already sliced the enemy. I do miss my Carian slicer, but chose S.W. since I don't have to change spells to get it.

I used to dual wield staves, it took me a long time to retire gravity spells, but ill never dual wield staves considering the golden order seal will have my Erdtree heal and my Black Blade incant.

I changed spells and setups for what it seemed like every 15 minutes but this has been an awesome run. just not a fan of the sword life yet.

-----------------------------------------

>but I have 9 higher INT than you, so I figured those would
>cancel out. Plus there are dozens of YouTube videos saying the
>PoD is the best staff scaling wise, so I definitely was
>perplexed sitting here wondering how the hell it wasn't
>higher. not too mad though. I still like to throw dark moons,
>and with that doing the 30% magic resistance reduction, plus
>with a frost build up, it mostly suits my style better to
>stick with Carian. Spinning Weapon sealed the deal. i wonder
>what the hosts think when I'm helping them clear Haligtree or
>Castle Sol and I'm sitting here spinning these super strong
>bosses into the ground - its so much more efficient than
>throwing dark moons or comet - considering they take so long
>and the host and other sunbro has already sliced the enemy. I
>do miss my Carian slicer, but chose S.W. since I don't have to
>change spells to get it.

my guess it's the way softcaps in ER work. looks like there are levels of softcapping now, starting around 55 for INT and faith. maybe my faith at 60 carries more than your INT at 81 due to where INT starts to produce diminishing returns

>I changed spells and setups for what it seemed like every 15
>minutes but this has been an awesome run. just not a fan of
>the sword life yet.

my next NG is most definitely a greatsword and bow STR/DEX build. i would use greatswords with this build since the moonlight greatsword and the golden order greatsword scale very well with INT/faith but you kind of need to be able to take more than one hit for them to be effective. maybe they will get used in NG+ when i finally start to put points into VIG. straight swords (st. trina and sword of night and flame) get the job done for me now. i have +25 cold nagakiba that i bust out every now and again

I am not venturing too far out of the family. deciding to give Blasphemous Blade a run. yeah yeah, its the strongest weapon in the game, and maybe yes I'll just be spamming the weapon art, but hear me out...

no but seriously this sword is so fun. I could never get a Community Service win with my comet azure / Carian Slicer set up for Elden Beast.... decided to give Blasphemous Blade a try and I got 3 wins! I really like the aspect of receiving HP after hits/kills. The weapon art is cool and I like the blade. I was a Frosty guy this entire time but now it is time to be a Flame Boy. I think I'll still keep my Golden Order seal in the left hand, with Erdtree Heal and the Lord Fortification, probably 1 or 2 other helpful incants, and see where Swordlife takes me.

-----------------------------------------

this shit is ludicrous. everything he does kills me in one hit. summons and spirit ashes are worthless because as soon as i hit him with any spell he focuses me. i kind of have the stomp tells down for both phases but i literally can't make one mistake or i will die

i legit might give up on this run and start a new one

i am going to have to pull in black knife tiche into my office for a discussion about why she was dancing around on the other side of the arena while i was getting incessantly pursued and mauled by a giant beast man

>i am going to have to pull in black knife tiche into my
>office for a discussion about why she was dancing around on
>the other side of the arena while i was getting incessantly
>pursued and mauled by a giant beast man

did a lot of Community Service against this guy and had great success just spamming Dark Moon on top of Terra Magika, but when I went Bonk Bonk Blasphy Blade I started realizing why everyone said this guy is an absolute nightmare.

Moon casting is awesome bc you are basically always in the air and it was irrelevant. Now that I went away from Blasphy Blade to a full on Lusat Cultist (I wear his massive blue sphere head and his cape) and I only cast Stars of Ruin - and really struggled dodging that damn foot slam. he is a tough cookie.

I wanted to ask you if you ever summon SunBro's. this fight is rather easy with them... (well, obviously not easy, but I love fighting with people rather than my mimic or black knife Tiche.

-----------------------------------------

>did a lot of Community Service against this guy and had great
>success just spamming Dark Moon on top of Terra Magika, but
>when I went Bonk Bonk Blasphy Blade I started realizing why
>everyone said this guy is an absolute nightmare.
>
>Moon casting is awesome bc you are basically always in the air
>and it was irrelevant. Now that I went away from Blasphy Blade
>to a full on Lusat Cultist (I wear his massive blue sphere
>head and his cape) and I only cast Stars of Ruin - and really
>struggled dodging that damn foot slam. he is a tough cookie.
>
>I wanted to ask you if you ever summon SunBro's. this fight is
>rather easy with them... (well, obviously not easy, but I love
>fighting with people rather than my mimic or black knife
>Tiche.

yeah dark moon is great when you have someone else reliably pulling aggro for you. i tried summoning a few times early on in the process (i think it took me like 40+ tries over the course of a few days) but kept getting one-shotted by his insane AoE attacks, ran out of finger remedies and rune arcs, and didn't feel like grinding mats so i turned intransigent and went with tiche. it really came down to getting a good pattern on both phase 1 and 2 for me to defeat him. i feel like if i had even 15 base vit i would have been able to beat him in fewer than 10 tries. even after the update that boosted HP gains i'm still hovering around 600 HP with godrick rune + radagon's soreseal + erdtree's favor+1 and i don't want to waste a slot on the +20 HP from erdtree's when that could be +15% charged sorcery/incant damage

i am summoning for the final boss though. fight #2 is too much for me without at least one other human player drawing attention away from me

after I went back to mage life, with Lusat's helm and Stars of Ruin with my trusty Prince of Death staff (idk if I told you but I got it to 450 sorcery scaling, lol), I changed around a few of my talisman slots. finally got the magic scorpion talisman which is really hard to get from Seluvis but I wanted it for the extra hit power of Stars of Ruin.

just a quick recommendation before you lose your mind on Radagon/Elden like I did - go find the +2 holy resistance talisman (fairly positive its in Haligtree), and try to find the incantation that provides holy resist. I couldn't beat it without those guys.

Just finished Journey 5 and I made sure to do all the quests I hadn't done. I really like the Golden Order quest with the GoldMask, Seluvis, Sellen, but still haven't done Patches or the dude who wears shit stains.

Oh yeah this is what I wanted to bring up last week - I had never used Bloodhound Step, so I put that ash on Rogiers Rapier at +25 and it is ridiculously fun. I am pretty used to switching from PoD to Golden Order seal in my left hand and basically just replaced Blasphy with the Rapier. Had the time of my life dominating Malenia with it. the Rapier is basically like a toothpick poking a bull late game but I cruised just as easily with this set up as I did with Blasphy (not as easily, but pretty close).

after my GoldMask quest I am pondering a pure Seal run while still using the Rapier with Bloodhound step. but ill probably Community Service at Castle Sol and Radagon for a while before I start another game. I am hovering around level 300 so its tough to get summoned these days.

-----------------------------------------

radagon's soreseal (+5 phys stats)
graven-mass talisman (+8% sorcery damage)
ritual sword talisman (+10% damage at full health)

4th slot is dependent on spell/incant setup but either godfrey icon (+15% charged damage) or flock canvas talisman (+8% faith damage) usually. i missed the magic scorpion charm. will try to pick it up in NG+

damage reduction talismans (pearldrake, spelldrake, etc.) worked fine in the early-to-mid-game but late game i am getting one-shotted no matter my setup so i just go all in on offense and go for fashion souls as my armor setup unless i am desperate for damage and wear ranni's hat (even though it clashes with the rest of my gear 😩)

>radagon's soreseal (+5 phys stats)
>graven-mass talisman (+8% sorcery damage)
>ritual sword talisman (+10% damage at full health)
>
>4th slot is dependent on spell/incant setup but either godfrey
>icon (+15% charged damage) or flock canvas talisman (+8% faith
>damage) usually. i missed the magic scorpion charm. will try
>to pick it up in NG+
>
>damage reduction talismans (pearldrake, spelldrake, etc.)
>worked fine in the early-to-mid-game but late game i am
>getting one-shotted no matter my setup so i just go all in on
>offense and go for fashion souls as my armor setup unless i am
>desperate for damage and wear ranni's hat (even though it
>clashes with the rest of my gear 😩)

Radagon beat my ass constantly but I'd survive a hit before I was down for the count. hopefully you have at least 40. I am pretty sure The Stars Queen's and our wife's hat doesn't affect Raddy/Eldy as they are completely immune to status effects. I don't think armor does much of anything, but maybe if you respec and throw more into vig you can survive. I use Morgott's Great Rune for the HP buff and my HP bar is absolutely massive.

I like the concept of going full offense but the 1 shot kill is brutality. if you don't have the Halidrake Talisman +2, I promise you that it will prevent a 1 shot kill! go grab it. combine that, and then cast the Lords Protection incantation before you enter the fog and you'll be good to go. its an entirely different fight I promise man.

-----------------------------------------

https://youtu.be/FlP1z20C35Q

i made it a point to never put any points into vigor so i'm still on the base HP of the prophet starting class. i continue to wear rennala's hat because it matches the gold accents on the armor and i am used to how it looks on my character. fwiw after i beat godfrey i completely smoked the lord of blood on my second try with this setup. no rune activation either. he was pretty easy to avoid and tiche did a good job of distracting him. the 2nd astel, magma wrym in that tiny arena in some cavern, radhan, and godfrey gave me a lot of trouble. the rest of the bosses were either manageable with spirit ashes or a summon or a pushover by the time i got around to them

really like the setup! I got confused and was thinking you were wearing Ranni's white snow hat that does frost damage. I probably should've used a shield one single time int his game, but glad to see we use the same seal and staff. I really like the chest armor, tbh I don't think if found that.

-----------------------------------------

i didn't use the shield that much but it's still equipped out of habit from my time spent in dark souls 1-3. messed around with parries at the beginning of ER bc they seem easier in this game seem easier than in the other games. after certain point i was never close enough to enemies to have the chance to parry but kept the shield on out of paranoia and/or comfort. it saved me a few times in early-to-mid-game boss battles though

I lost over 4 million runes in the Elden Beast fight, won the second fight and my runes were stuck in his water world... but I don't level up anymore at 294, its hard enough to get summoned in Crumbling.

So I basically just stand on this platform with a view and throw my sign out and wait. I wish I would get summoned at Stormveil or Raya Lucaria, but I'll spend 10 minutes and never get summoned. I find it funny those high level players won't summon in those areas but they'll always summon in Azura. Just shows how freaking hard this area is.

https://imgur.com/7FNzzgL
https://imgur.com/NhLQbRg

I keep forgetting I have bloodhound step, but the amount of times I've survived a Maliketh death slam makes it so worth it. Especially running 0 HP and having to switch to seal and Erdtree, and then find the time to cast it...

-----------------------------------------

and am paying the price for it near the end game, as i should. i brought this upon myself 😎😫

as you play this game (and the souls games in general) you will get better at surviving simply by mastering your character's animation timings (weapon swings, dodge rolls, spell casts, shield blocks, parries) and the attack animations of the enemies. additionally the higher your level the more resistant to damage you become. that's how the game is set up. so unless you are a prideful masochist like myself you will be putting points into stats that increase your survivability and should have an easier go of it than me. and up until this point it's been fine for me, even with my low HP build. this game has a handful of tough bosses but most can be defeated without issue or co-op'd if desired

And when I really fell off of this game was in an area that, while still tied to the main storyline, feels a lot like DLC and essentially a challenge map for veteran Souls players that might've found the rest of the game "too" accessible.


This game has a kind of rough 2 hour onboard depending on where you travel and what you may or may not miss (my primary hint: PLEASE double back to the first church at night after you've died once or twice) but then it has so many 10-15 hour stretches of total gaming, like, truly addiction that's hard to quantify.

Even though I wasn't as enchanted by the aimlessness of it as most seemed to be, there is definitely a magic to exploring this world that feels a bit different from most, and unlike some other Souls games you'll never feel unsure whether you can hang with an area or not. And those areas you can tell aren't for you, you also get a good sense through your own progression that it's time to go back and show it what's what.

More evident than anything is that even with the mystery of the world gone for the most part and my frustration with the last act of the game, I started a new save (with 70+ on the old one) and while I'm not binging it nearly as hard as my initial run I've still got about 12 hours on that new save and have had a PRETTY different experience from my first run. It's a really neat accomplishment.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

the game absolutely requires you to google shit if you want to progress in quests, find some weapons, things like that, but when it throws you into Limgrave (the first area), simply just jog around and explore and get used to everything.

Don't want to spoil anything, but when I say do your own thing for your first 30, kinda figure out what style you want to attach to, and then just go roam. Do not enter Stormveil Castle before you have explored the southern end of the map (its called Weeping Peninsula). I have read a lot of accounts of people just immediately strolling into the castle when they start the game and hating it. If you roam for that long, and find some caves and things like that, you become pretty strong, especially clearing Weeping Peninsula, that Stormveil becomes a fun experience rather than 'how the hell am I going to do this'. the game requires a ton of patience and time but you'll be rewarded.

-----------------------------------------

top 5 game of all time. So much to do so many boss battles.

---
Stoicism and chill.
---
Stay +.
---

I've harped on this a lot so I won't say much but I'm more convinced than ever that Elden Ring didn't "solve" open world design. After taking a break, I've spent most of my time opening guides, fast traveling between checkpoints (there are multiple questlines that are explicitly designed around fast travel, which I can honestly say I've never experienced in an open world game before) and having just done a 50% or so replay of Red Dead Redemption 2 this winter, I can confidently say that game has a much more organic, "discoverable" open world from beginning to end. Elden Ring pulls a convincing trick from Limgrave to the Capital, but the illusion completely falls apart afterward.

If anyone else is struggling, here's three incredible words: "Palace Approach Ledge-Road". Find a weapon you enjoy and hack away for hours and hours, or just one, whatever free time you have. I came back at level 81, 79 hours in. I'm now 84 hours in and level 114, and could be much, much higher if I hadn't used aforementioned guides to progress the Nepheli, Dung Eater, Kenneth Haight, Blind Maiden quests, maybe a few others?

I watched Joseph Anderson's really insightful review into how Elden Ring is both an incredible and terrible game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEyjdc-DIb8) and could really just let that be my full thesis, but I'll summarize since it's 1.5 hours: for all the diversity this game seems to offer, it often feels like it punishes a melee build unless you're a real fucking nut that's gotten off on naked soul level 1 runs for years. The drip feed of weapons, armor, spells, maps, crafting items, spells, key items, spirit ashes, spells, ashes of war, weapon upgrades, talismans, spells, flask upgrades and spells makes it feel like you're constantly discovering things...but ultimately you're likely to use the weapon you started the game with (or some variation of it) for its entirety, same as every From Soft game before.

If you take a break from this game, coming back to THIS - https://www.ginx.tv/respawn-cdn/M04RlFTZGmPHyFiSgBmCp4DubJmu7q9BfmGqkOaEt7k/fill/375/0/no/1/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ2lueC50di91cGxvYWRzMi9FbGRlbl9SaW5nL2Zhc3RfdHJhdmVsL2VsZGVuX3Jpbmdfc2l0ZV9vZl9ncmFjZV9sb2NhdGlvbnNfbGl1cm5pYV9vZl90aGVfbGFrZXNfZmV4dHJhbGlmZS5KUEc.webp - does not feel inviting in the slightest.

I just keep coming back to that feeling I had progressing from Margit to Morgott, it felt like a dense but manageable game with a clear sense of place, lore and character progression. Now I'm the guy discovering "Mohg" in a sewer, panicking that I'd found one of the remaining shardbearers I'm searching for...and then wiping the floor with this boss only to realize through a Google search it's merely a nerfed copy of the story boss with no explanation for its existence at all other than "hey, you found this church and, uh, here's a boss for ya!"

Here's where I say I complain about all these things because, on its face and at its core, Elden Ring is a pretty incredible achievement. I've said that a few times in this thread as well, but it's worth reiterating - none of this stuff devalues the game for me, it just feels diluted and aimless in a way past From Soft games or really most other open world games I've played absolutely do not. I also get that many of these critiques come from a point of view that can't fully crack this game. Bearfield is a great example in this thread, as is reading any Reddit thread about the Fire Giant in which some players are finding him a cake walk at level 72 while others are still getting one-shot at level 180.

Which brings me back around to my main critique - for about 50-60 hours, Elden Ring feels like a complete and pretty magical experience. And then, depending on skill and desire to see quests through, becomes another 30-100 hours of extreme content overload with no clear indication of where and when a given player should do anything at all. From one perspective, that makes Elden Ring a kind of perfect forever game. I can feel like a kid again, wasting away in a single location ripe with XP to upgrade my stats and gear. Or I can feel like an aimless adult, mindlessly watching the numbers go up and praying that one day my work will pay off.

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

Didn't find any other ending possibilities, didn't see the Haligtree at all.

Will probably play at least a NG+ run.

Bad game. Great game. Would co-op. Accidentally dressed for the Met Gala for my victory (hadn't worn this set for a while).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSDARSxXIAAm2Yt?format=jpg&name=4096x4096


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

man you gotta do the Ranni quest! I have done it every single Journey.

not sure if I posted it here, but I did her entire quest to unlock the ending, and after Elden Beast, I didn't see her blue summon sign so I just did the regular Elden lord ending. I was annoyed.

-----------------------------------------

If you're talking Lord of Blood, I, uh...fast traveled back to the overworld after scouring the back of the arena for items I'm pretty sure...looked at IGN's Palace guide just now and it doesn't seem to imply there was anything to do after the fight either.


If you mean BEFORE the other Mohg, Omen, down in the sewers then THAT parkour really sucked. A lot a lot LOL. And in scanning that Palace guide I noticed Nohg had a shackle - just like Father G way back in the day, I missed every single item that would've made a boss infinitely easier, lol.


Likewise, in my mind I HAD finished the Ranni quest, and that kinda goes back to my point that this game is just way too big for anybody to take any kind of prolonged break from it and then come back and feel welcome.

When I was thinking of things to try and wrap up after beating Mohg then getting to Radagon for the first time and realizing Elden Beast was literally in the same fight, all I could remember off hand was - Nephali Loux vividly because I'd given Gideon the potion and then suddenly Seluvis was dead when most guides said he wouldn't be and I had absolutely no idea where she'd run off to (turns out, you'd have to be an absolute crazy person to solve the rest of that quest without a guide) and that I had to see Dung Eater through because I could never figure out where those sewers were in the first place, but when I thought about Ranni I remembered fighting that shadow of Blaidd and her seeming really relieved afterward and thinking that must've been the end of that. Woulda been nice to have some kind of quest log to make me realize I had just a couple steps left! Oh well!


Scanning a guide, I stopped at the Lake of Rot and remember it was because I assumed I'd get some kind of item that made me immune to rot eventually (and thought it was weird that all of a sudden Torrent wouldn't be useful, which I also thought during the Elden Beast fight) and since I never did I just wasn't interested in trying to cross.



This second playthrough is going to be a lot faster paced but also heavily influenced by a guide so I can skip all the side quests and dungeons that quite frankly are a complete waste of time and focus on doing all the stuff I didn't do the first time around. I recall during that Joseph Anderson review that he'd played the game through three or four times and while his first save was 100+ hours his others were all done in about 20 hours, that's how much you can cleave off the game once you know what's actually worth pursuing for your build and the mystery is gone and that's a big reason I'm willing to go track down the stuff I missed, honestly. If I were looking at another 100 hours, ugh...

~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

and you have to parkour down onto these tiny stone pillars... just an absolute fucking joke.

I really liked Mohgs Palace area, but the Mohg Omen, my first time down in the Ash Sewers, I was following two SunBro's so I made it pretty easily. Then, doing Frenzied Flame ending, I tried doing sewers solo, FINALLY found Mohg Omen, then I rolled thru the wall to find the area where you have to jump down onto the stone ledges to reach the bottom, to scar your body. I just really hated how a game with really bad jumping mechanics can make you do that kind of bullshit.

impressive you even did any quests without a guide man. this journey 5 I wanted to knock out Sellens quest, Alexanders, Seluvis, and none of them are remotely capable by just "exploring".

I never even could do Blaidd's quest, I always found him at Radhan's plaza, and then I never was able to find him howling at that evergaol. I tend to align with you on the annoyances of this game. no quest markers, and expecting us to remember one small talk with someone and expect to find them 75 hours later in a remote area with no marker is so hilariously weird.

I did the Gold Mask quest bc I really like the Golden Order Seal, and I wanted the mask... yeah. even reading step by step what to do in a guide it takes hours.

im not even a Guide Hater so to speak, but its a lot more fun to figure shit out on your own. with Sekiro, you could pretty much figure out where you want and need to go, and can look up how to kill bosses, but I was never absolutely stuck in where to go in sekiro more than once or twice.

Elden Ring is probably my favorite game of all time, but its not free of annoyances.

-----------------------------------------

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.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

so we've obviously seen the weird guy at the end of that bridge pointing at the tree and he won't talk to you. after the guy who wears the Charcuterie board as a necklace disappears from the Round Table, you are supposed to know that hes on some random sidewalk in Altus Plateau. You talk to him a few times. then, you are supposed to know he goes to the bridge where gold mask is. then you get a bunch of juicy details. then you are supposed to magically know that he and Gold Mask take the minivan all the way to a remote bridge in Mountaintops of Giants! and you get some more juicy deets. THEN, you are supposed to magically travel BACK to the capital, but before you finish Crumbling Azura, and then skedaddle up to that Coliseum you cant enter, run to the back of it, AND HEY! THEY ARE BOTH CHILLIN! and Charcuterie Dude is begging you to figure out why Gold Mask is moving his fingers the way he is...
So now, you have to magically figure out to run to a certain point in the Capital, use an Incantation I thankfully had bc I was in NG4 but dont even recall remembering where I got it - cast the incantation at some random statue, you get a BIG REVEAL AND THE STATUE CHANGES, then you run back to the guys, they ramble some more, then you go to Crumbling, finish crumbling, then at the Ash capital, find them both spread out with a few more dialogues and its over.
Alexander you have to pop him out of a hole, then you have to find him near the Lakes, pop him out of another hole with an oil pot, then magically figure out you have to find him in volcano manor bathing in a lava waterfall, hes in a spectacular mood... then he ventures to an extremely hard to find area in Crumbling and you fight him and he's easy and you are rewarded with one of the best Talismans in the game.

Millicent quest was actually pretty awesome. there's a nightmare boss fight in this tiny area of scarlet rot in Haligtree you have to kill the big lizard type boss and you get to complete her Questline.

Sellen will always be my favorite quest because of all the fun clothes you get. I have legitimately never even seen this Boc guy you speak of. Not sure who Diallos is.

You should do some NG+ and find the bosses you missed.

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There’s really nothing to him, you get him his needle from a cave then he appears in a room after Godrick. He’ll alter your clothes then.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

running bloodhound fang and one of blood omen cleaver or blood dismounter. did some sequence breaking to get to mohgwyn palace and volcano manor very early. plundered moghwyn palace for endgame rune consumables, swarm of flies, the white mask, and also ended white mask varre and his questline. initially i wanted to just do a big stong tanky build but this is pivoting to an str/arcane build so i can fully abuse the bleed mechanic. powerstancing bleed-procing curved greatswords is wild. most enemies can't deal with powerstanced L1 attack (swinging both weapons at once) and unless they are bleed resistant i can get a blood loss proc in 2 hits, sometimes 1. and this is without using bloodflame blade. i feel like i am doing endgame damage yet i'm still under level 60 and nowhere near any soft caps

currently i'm kind of "stuck" in volcano manor. a little too low level to beat the dual abductor virgins or godskin noble that will let me get out of the manor and into gelmir and altus. i was able to parkour into a site of grace so i'm not trapped but i feel like i'm right on the cusp of being able to complete all the volcano manor assassination quests before i kill rennala or meet ranni

About 6 hours into it, and even with a fresh character it can be funny how much less intimidating the early game is when you're not in a constant state of curiosity and confusion. I think I picked an Astrologer? I'm carrying a basic wand firing Glintstone Pebbles (with the occasional Arc) and getting acclimated to very different weapons than my Samurai (Uchigatana for basically the entire game until I finally found the Moonveil and Bloodhound Fang with some Game of Thrones Greatsword tossed in for variety).

Turns out the basic dagger is INCREDIBLY cathartic fighting the stone imps in catacombs, I can just flail away at them and with its high Crit I'm guaranteed to stagger them. 150 hours of frustration taken out one by one by a thousand cuts. But I also happened onto the Reduvia blood dagger in these early hours (I didn't come across Patches' cave until after I'd lit the Forge of the Giants and was randomly looking up missed quests on Fextralife on my first save) and it's nice to already be back on that su-woo shit. The weapon art is a ton of fun and it's interesting, as someone with again limited From Soft experience outside of multiple Bloodborne plays, to engage in their style of combat mostly from a distance. It's both empowering and very different feeling.

I'm also not shy about Spirit Ashes at all, but it was hours and hours until I realized that icon in the lower left corner meant summons were available - I'm not sure I realized it until I felt helpless in some random open world sequence and frantically Googled why summons were restricted to boss fights only to realize I'd just missed the hint. So I beat Margitt and Godrick on first try which felt a little bizarre but...

Despite using the basic starter Glintstone magic because that's what I've got so far, I'm leaning heavy into Arcane (I haven't looked up or remembered what weapons scale with it or which spells apply so I'm ready to be disappointed, but that's what Rennala's for, right?) so even if I've been cleaning up things I spent hours struggling with the first time around (and in addition to knowing the game far better than back in March, I really do think a distance-based character makes much of the early game far less oppressive) I still feel a sense of pride about it because unlike the STR/DEX/INT build a lot of the early game discoveries are totally moot and I'm having enough success currently I'm not desperate to divert souls from leveling up to spells or weapons.

But more than anything, even in this brief dabble in a different playstyle it's helping to forget how often the last quarter of the game left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The basic foundation of this game is really, really good, and I'm impressed how much fun I've been having without the pure sense of discovery every game only offers once.

It felt clear to me that for all its faults I preferred my time with Forbidden West when I was playing both in alternating sessions, but revisiting this game while being a little surprised the NG+ patch didn't have me scrambling back to Forbidden West has me thinking hard about why that is.

The early part of this alternate reality run is quickly revealing that for all the shit I talked about this game's unique approach to open world exploration and no matter how devoutly I still believe all those talking points...it doesn't change how clever the scenarios you stumble onto usually are in this game, nor how subtly everything about how its mechanics interact with its world design softly draws you into a play session until it's suddenly been two hours and even knowing how most of these quests start and end you have this uneasy feeling that you've either made some very significant progress or done almost nothing of note for your specific build at all.



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

and it kind of sucks. i just want it to be over. enemies and bosses are way too tanky and i am finding it a bit of a slog even when i am abusing the bleed mechanic via dual wield blood curved greatswords (killed godskin duo in 8 or 9 L1 hits) or the incredibly broken fallingstar beast jaw that insta-stuns almost every enemy i come across

Eleanor's Poleblade as a two-hand weapon was one of my favorite playthroughs. Keep the Dragon Communion seal in your back pocket and start out with a Rotten Breath and finish up with the Eleanor's Weapon Art. One of the more fun combat methods I found in the entire game.

But the Dark Moon Greatsword when charged up is too fun for me. It is one of the most looked down upon weapons in the game for PVP but its truly awesome to try and kill elite invaders with this set up bc I know it just kills them to lose to a DMGS Mage.

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Capped this character at level 201. Have done a TON of PVP'ing now - mostly at the First Step and I get summoned to fight invaders. Having a blast.

One of my favorite builds was using a dual Bolt of Gransax at +10. Strongest projectile in the game, and power-stancing has a super strong melee attack that worked great for me. But the itch to be a Mage was too strong. Now I am using the Dark Moon Greatsword with Dark Moon spell, Greatblade phalanx (I find the great blade better than Carian bc it will always stun), and backups of Adulas Moonblade and Stars of Ruin.

Never thought I'd like PVP but its a blast. Most invaders have the same damn set up, some sort of bleed variant - so its fun to be Frost-based and try to win these fights.

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need to hop back on this after vacation.

The offspring :-D

PSN & XBL: LOQuent