From Software Elden Ring - From Software's new game with writing by GRRM

[Bloodeyes]

I was watching this video before, and i never knew if you summon Patches he just runs away lmao:

I missed the summons entirely. No wonder I felt underpowered in that fight. I beat him by moving forwards diagonally with my shield up, then hitting him in the back. Having a ton of flasks and a big health bar helped.

In spite of your self proclaimed status as an Elden Ring noob, you're probably one of the best Elden Ring players in this entire thread on account of having beat that bastard on your own.

I'd like to accept that, but I was over levelled for the area. Level 82. I'm usually horrible but sometimes I enter in a flow state in games like this. Completely calm and focused, not even thinking just doing stuff automatically. I can't force it to happen, or I really would be good. I can take on crazy hard enemies without getting hit, or get killed by trash mobs. Too inconsistent to actually be a good player yet. But I'm getting better.

Tactics wise the way to solo him is to have a shield, a big health bar, and try to get around the back of him. Light taps with sacred blade active still do ok damage. I like a fast weapon. I was using a sacred morningstar +12. My straight sword probably would have been better. Also wear the heaviest gear. I ditched my shitty light armor for this fight. Had something like 33% physical DR and poise around 50 I think. You'll need a lot of health flasks, your consumables and to burn a rune arc.

Shield fighting is all about timing dropping your shield to recover stamina. You either get a rhythm for doing that or you get guard broken and die trying to recover your composure. When your guard is going to break you have to dodge roll with the last of your stamina and try to get out of the danger zone. A single guard break isn't instant death but you usually get into a cycle of being staggered in front of them trying to get your shield back up until they finally smash you.

Hit him in the back with quick attacks. Against big, aggressive dudes moving forwards diagonally is a good general strategy. Dodge rolling back is usually death. Forwards diagonal often puts you behind them. Time drinking flasks just like you would time attacking. Set up the attack then drink the flask instead.

Mount up the horse and run when he disappears. The explosion that killed me the first time was a meteor and it's unblockable but you can outrun it. You can dodge his ranged blasts on your horse with luck, the right angle and timing. It's very precise and you either get the flow for it or get hit every time. Other than that it's just patience like every fight. Get in a rhythm and don't look at the boss' health bar. Fight the same when they're one hit left and at the beginning or you'll expose yourself going for the finish.

Edit: My number 1 lesson learned about flow stats is that while you can't force them, you can prevent them. If you're angry you can't enter a flow state. You'll just get angrier and stupider the longer you play. Time to take a break once that cycle is identified. Like with this fight I got some sleep and beat him the next day because I was too demoralized after my first couple attempts.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'm trying to leave this relatively spoiler free for purists who are still playing through the game.

I wanted to fight Malenia again with no cheese (no bleed, no weapon art spam, no stagger chains, parrying, etc.) so I could comment fully. I was messing around with a save back up and have fought (but not beaten, let's not be dumb) Malenia with every weapon class in the game including fists. I think it's a really enjoyable fight. The main issue with it is that there are very few safe windows even for a chug and even the choice between dual wielding and single wielding can make the difference between an attack type over-committing you whether it connects or not. I also think that once you have her timing down, parrying her is probably relatively easy. I say probably because although I could parry her more often than not, I didn't spend much time trying it because it's not my favoured playstyle and I'm not great at it anyway.

One of the other things is that some of her moves look scarier than they are in terms of avoidance and even with my shitty reflexes, I could perfect dodge everything she had at least a reasonable proportion of the time even if I was caught in a bad position.

I think she is the apex of the game and one of the best Souls bosses. Even though she kicked my ass more times than I can count when I didn't try and lock her down, she was able to be dealt with without cheese, using the basic moveset of the game and I learned a lot while fighting her, not just about her moveset, but also about some of the weird differences between weapons like how long your recovery window or windup time is with doing different sorts of attacks with different weapon types - because with her it can make a huge difference between whether you get up and get to react or if you're just eating shit while still committed to whatever you tried to do. The interesting thing is I'd say I spent more time messing with her than I did the Orphan of Kos or Gael, but I found the fight more enjoyable, intelligible and less rage inducing than those two. Obviously YMMV with all Souls bosses, but that's my take. Great boss, loved it even while eating dirt at the bottom of the Haligtree.

Video to follow later.

 

[toro]

I think she is the apex of the game and one of the best Souls bosses.

She is the apex of bad design for a boss encounter.

The fight is trivial with summons, heavy weapons or poison/rot/bleed builds. The fight is absurd with low vigor, low damage and no summons. There is no middle ground in the fight: it's either easy or hard.

I don't think you've learned shit while fighting her. At best you learned how to avoid her attacks but whatever shit you think you've learned it's completely inconsequential to the rest of the boss fights.

Sekiro was not perfect but at least you were engaged in a duel with the bosses (most of the time). Without learning to parry Malenia is a cartoon fight were she chases you for several minutes. Complete garbage.

 

[NJClaw]

The fight is absurd with low vigor, low damage and no summons.

Are you complaining that the fight is hard if your character can do absolutely nothing? A secret endgame boss being borderline impossible if you face it without leveling up, improving your weapons, or using any mechanic offered by the game sounds right.

 

[Haplo]

I think she is the apex of the game and one of the best Souls bosses.

The fight is trivial with summons, heavy weapons or poison/rot/bleed builds.

Okay, than I must really suck, as I use heavy weapons and I have struggled. In fact, I have struggled even with summons, but then its admittedly much easier.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think she is the apex of the game and one of the best Souls bosses.

She is the apex of bad design for a boss encounter.

The fight is trivial with summons, heavy weapons or poison/rot/bleed builds. The fight is absurd with low vigor, low damage and no summons. There is no middle ground in the fight: it's either easy or hard.

I don't think you've learned shit while fighting her. At best you learned how to avoid her attacks but whatever shit you think you've learned it's completely inconsequential to the rest of the boss fights.

Sekiro was not perfect but at least you were engaged in a duel with the bosses (most of the time). Without learning to parry Malenia is a cartoon fight were she chases you for several minutes. Complete garbage.

Pro-tip: Vaseline helps soothe butthurt.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think she is the apex of the game and one of the best Souls bosses.

The fight is trivial with summons, heavy weapons or poison/rot/bleed builds.

Okay, than I must really suck, as I use heavy weapons and I have struggled. In fact, I have struggled even with summons, but then its admittedly much easier.

Heavy weapons you either have to double down on trying to stagger lock her or play really conservatively, because she'll punish the everliving shit out of you for pretty much everything. The most fun I had with her was fighting her with a single iron greatsword. It was heavy enough to stagger her, long enough to not whiff all the time, did reasonable damage, and didn't overcommit me. It really felt like a fight.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Iron+Greatsword

I wouldn't say you suck. She's, by far, the hardest fight in the game. Fortunately, the stuff you get from her sucks ass and she doesn't gate anything behind her really, so you can easily bounce off her or cheese her or whatever. Or just spend days fighting her with breaks to do other stuff or do different things in the game.

 

[NJClaw]

The most fun I had with her was fighting her with a single iron greatsword

A regular (non ultra) greatsword is the best way to experience the fight for me too. You can deal respectable chunks of damage during each window thanks to her being easily staggered, but you don't risk trivializing everything like with a bleed build. If you wear heavy armor and equip the dragon talisman, you can also favorably trade against some of her combos. The Iron Greatsword is perfect, but the Gargoyle Greatsword has like 1 more point of AR with STR 99 and is therefore the only acceptable option.

 

[mediocrepoet]

The most fun I had with her was fighting her with a single iron greatsword

A regular (non ultra) greatsword is the best way to experience the fight for me too. You can deal respectable chunks of damage during each window thanks to her being easily staggered, but you don't risk trivializing everything like with a bleed build. If you wear heavy armor and equip the dragon talisman, you can also favorably trade against some of her combos. The Iron Greatsword is perfect, but the Gargoyle Greatsword has like 1 more point of AR with STR 99 and is therefore the only acceptable option.

I'll probably go back to my earlier save roll back at some point to keep fighting her with the iron greatsword. I basically ended up going back to my dual wielded flame curved swords and blew her up from massive damage. It amused me, but was WAY less satisfying. I might try again at a lower RL. The playthrough I just finished that I'd been posting videos of was one where I didn't use any summons or status effects other than when I was grinding guys with the pizza cutter because I thought it was funny. Beat the entire game at RL 150 or lower, except for Malenia because I liked where my stats were but wanted some more hp, so I boosted to RL 160. Stats in the spoiler.

Spoiler

Stats were:

VIG 40 (50)
MND 20
END 25
STR 50
DEX 25
INT 10
FTH 50
ARC 9

 

[mediocrepoet]

Without learning to parry Malenia is a cartoon fight were she chases you for several minutes. Complete garbage.

I actually didn't notice this before. So uh... I killed her without bleed, frost, etc. or summons in about 2 minutes, including buffing and running in to the arena, etc. What were you fighting her with? Your mom's fist shaped dildo?

 

[Andnjord]

Warning, elderly lady being abused in the spoiler

Spoiler

Dat first phase

 

[mediocrepoet]

Warning, elderly lady being abused in the spoiler

Spoiler

Dat first phase

This must be fake, I just read somewhere...

The fight is absurd with low vigor, low damage and no summons.

Without learning to parry Malenia is a cartoon fight were she chases you for several minutes. Complete garbage.

Well, this aged poorly.

 

[Lutte]

Wow, an autist posted a video on youtube of a perfect, flawless run that is the product of literally hundred of hours of playing this shit and the video itself is obviously a selected run out of many he probably did for this crucible cosplay ----> Malenia is totally a reasonable boss!

I don't know if Ongbal does streams live of his attempts at this kind of thing, but if you knew anything about this kind of challenge run you know this video didn't exactly come on first try, no matter how good he is btw. You should watch some livestreams of challenge runners, this will demystify these videos for you and remind you that these short videos of perfected fights are not the natural state of godlike gamers, they are the product of insane autism where people spend days after days resetting a fight over and over again. They're certainly not the gold standard for judging how reasonable a piece of content is for the target audience. Normal people don't want to do the same boss for 30 hours before feeling like they truly mastered said boss.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Based on this sort of logic, normal people won't even find the Haligtree so bfd, right?

 

[Lutte]

You get clued in about this shit in one of the first areas of Liurnia. I don't get people who act like this is some dense mystery zone, it is less esoteric to learn about it and find it than Archdragon Peak or DS1 Painted World.

Totally the same thing as shit enemy design.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lol, the Evergaol in Dragonbarrow, with an easy mook in an area that's rated for such an high level.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'm surprised you're this butthurt about optional content that some people like and some people hate when you're pretty clear about being on NG+99 or whatever.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Malenia video + tips video for people who might want them.

Spoiler

 

[Lutte]

Lol, the Evergaol in Dragonbarrow, with an easy mook in an area that's rated for such an high level.

Tbh, you'll never find an evergaol that will evoke the same feeling as Crucible and the Black Knife did at this point in the game. This game doesn't have a properly designed progression route.

 

[NJClaw]

Normal people don't want to do the same boss for 30 hours before feeling like they truly mastered said boss.

There's no way anyone with any moderate experience with previous souls would need anything near to 30 hours to master Malenia. Unless by "master" you mean "reliably beat her without getting hit", but that's an unreasonable goal and achieving it should require an unreasonable amount of time. I have friends that have never played any souls before and still beat her after 2-3 hours. I can only explain needing much more time than that if the character is severely under-leveled and underpowered, the player is undertaking some kind of self-imposed challenge, he still hasn't learnt enough about the game, or he refuses to study her moves and adapt. And, for me, these are all acceptable conditions for a boss to be nearly unbeatable.

Stats were:
VIG 40 (50)
MND 20
END 25
STR 50
DEX 25
INT 10
FTH 50
ARC 9

I beat her for the first time at RL 178:

Vigor 60
Mind 10
Endurance 50
Strength 99
Dexterity 13
Intelligence 9
Faith 9
Arcane 7

 

[Lutte]

Unless by "master" you mean "reliably beat her without getting hit", but that's an unreasonable goal and achieving it should require an unreasonable amount of time.

I was talking about how specific videos are not representative of anything. So yes, I mean those no hit videos, captain obvious.

 

[NJClaw]

Unless by "master" you mean "reliably beat her without getting hit", but that's an unreasonable goal and achieving it should require an unreasonable amount of time.

I was talking about how specific videos are not representative of anything. So yes, I mean those no hit videos, captain obvious.

Then your post makes no sense:

Wow, an autist posted a video on youtube of a perfect, flawless run that is the product of literally hundred of hours of playing this shit and the video itself is obviously a selected run out of many he probably did for this crucible cosplay ----> Malenia is totally a reasonable boss!

Malenia isn't reasonable because an autist can beat her flawlessly after hundred of hours, she is reasonable because anyone can do it in 2-3 hours unless he willingly handicaps himself.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Unless by "master" you mean "reliably beat her without getting hit", but that's an unreasonable goal and achieving it should require an unreasonable amount of time.

I was talking about how specific videos are not representative of anything. So yes, I mean those no hit videos, captain obvious.

Sure, but then who is that directed at exactly? Like who is mystified that you need to practice more than the average player in order to achieve a no hit run or even no hit encounter?

You're creating strawmen in your head and then fighting with them. Is it fun?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

You're creating strawmen in your head and then fighting with them. Is it fun?

Only if you want a no hit run.

 

[mediocrepoet]

she is reasonable because anyone can do it in 2-3 hours unless he willingly handicaps himself.

And this is why it was funny when Porky kept running his mouth after needing the mimic to finish the game but skipped Malenia. She's not too bad with the summon and whatever else you might want to use.