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

[Dr1f7]

Has anyone tried upgrading their spirit summons yet? Is it good?
I've been holding off from doing it since I figured they'd still do negligible damage and die in 3-4 hits anyway, but maybe I'm terribly wrong and it's secretly extremely useful.
I've acquired a handful of spirits of specific named individuals, but I lack the required FP to even summon them. I have no idea if they are useful.

i kinda like using the shitty sorcerer summon it's funny to have him derping around doing like 5 points of damage every 10 seconds with his shitty poke spell

 

[Mortmal]

The game is massive, dude. Feels miraculous

One reason more to complain about video games, when you see what is possible to get , elden ring, and the shit we usually receive. Sure feel very strange after playing something like this ,it's completely ignoring decades of decline.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Okay, general thoughts and uhhpinions you all have been waiting for.

-This is Dark Souls 4. I don't think it really bears discussion. It's not a spin off or a souls-like, it's Dark Souls 4.

-The game is very comfortable and familiar. Same leveling system, same death system, same stat system, same weapon mechanics, same exact weapons for the most part (just reskinned), same FP/flask mechanics from DS3, same upgrade mechanics, same 'stat scaling' meta, same exact magic systems (pyro is rolled into faith tho), same backstabs/counters/parries (with one new move in the form of the guard-counter), same bonfires, same equipment weight mechanics, same poise, same dodge i-frames, same item mechanics, same storage box, etc. etc. etc.

-In many ways I am shocked at how derivative it is. Sekiro and even Bloodborne were more innovative. The new aspects of the game are the open world and horseback riding. These are really fun and neat but I don't think 'Dark Souls + A Horse' really makes this a new franchise.

-I'm sure series purists will write a 17 page thread on how I'm wrong and They Changed Everything and Now It Sucks. Some minor changes are mostly QoL stuff--there are now checkpoints in addition to bonfires, there is a map, you can fast travel from anywhere, there's no humanity/ember mechanic (that I've seen yet), you can stealth-crouch, you can jump without pressing 15 buttons, they added summons that are not limited to pre-placed NPCs. I see these as streamlining and refinements, not innovations. Feel free to disagree.

-It's the same basic content and progression of DS stretched thinner. Be prepared to explore an entire dungeon for one weapon or one accessory you probably won't use. They kept the paradigm of all weapons being unique, no random drops, not even blood gems, so everything is deterministic. I'm not saying I want a diablo-loot piñata game, Nioh has that covered, but I wonder if these systems make sense when you're going from the dense metroidvania layout to an open world. It worked in Gothic, but in those games almost every new weapon is a straight upgrade. Which brings me to the upgrade system...

-...The upgrade system drives me to despair. This is something I really wish they had changed. It kills the fun of finding new weapons when you have to grind for upgrade materials just to make them worthwhile. In the early game mats are rare enough you can't really spend them frivolously, and even once you have reliable methods of getting them you're looking at a tedious grind just to find out if a weapon is even viable for your build. The stat-scaling mechanics are only vaguely shown to the player so you have no idea if something is going to be competitive long-term or not unless you spend the resources, none of which can be recovered. It pretty much demands a guide. Then in the end everything is like +/-5% difference in the name of 'balance' so it barely matters what weapons you use anyway. I don't really like the idea of using a basic longsword for 50+ hours yet, here we are.

The upgrade system allows the freedom of making any weapon you want viable for the whole game, which is cool IF you really want to be a level 1000 Rusty Hilt Master, but the material grind fucking sucks. I wish they had changed to something else, like a proficiency system (so your upgrades can apply to more than one weapon), or a skill point system like Sekiro, or maybe use the covenant system for weapon upgrades, pray to gods for weapon blessings, etc. Anything is better than digging for titanite shards.

-For bosses, they seem fine so far. Margit is the classic early wall boss but to be fair you can do a shit ton of other content before fighting him. We've come a long way since the Capra demon. Margit straddles the line of a boss that is fun and a stupid bullshit boss, and since he's early I'd imagine they may get worse. It's one thing where a boss has attack patterns you can memorize, counter, and punish; and another thing with a boss has 1 million different move sets and almost all of them do not leave an opening (i.e. Pontiff Sulyvahn). Margit has a couple combos where if he tags you with them you're pretty much toast; this is in contrast to the classic souls boss where each mistake costs you a flask but not necessarily the whole fight. So far I haven't seen anything that comes to the heights of Ornstein and Smough or Ludwig; big fuckers who just thrash and jerk the camera around are not impressive to me. (okay Ludwig does this too but he is awesome and has great music so he gets a pass). It's still early though so its an open question.

Other random thoughts:

-I didn't realize the horse could double jump, so thank you whoever for mentioning that.
-Everything is YUUUUUGE. You really are the furtive pygmy in the land of giants
-I found one of those horse-jumper pads, I thought it would bring me up to a scripted landing place. NOPE. It sends you in whatever direction you are facing, I was looking at a bottomless pit so into the abyss I went. Love it or hate it, the lack of hand-holding in DS is refreshing as always.
-I found a teleportal behind the forest church sending me to the far flung corners of the map, the enemies there kill me in one hit and drop 1000 RuneSoulEchos a pop. So that is a thing for power grinders I guess.
-Spare Patches and you can buy 'father Gascoigne's music box' for Margit. You're welcome.
-The ability to approach enemy camps from multiple directions is different for DS and actually provides a Far Cry feel. Almost every location has at at least one alternate path or approach for dealing with it.
-Be Bold! If you see something scary and think you maybe can't fight it, give it a shot. The giants, the bears, and even the dragon are all beatable sooner than you may think.

 

[Riddler]

Any consensus on the spirit summons? Are they cheating just like phantoms or is the game designed around their usage?

 

[Nikanuur]

I killed first major boss. 30h and explored i think about half the map. So some thoughts without spoilers. Melee greatsword build.

- So far the best aspect of game is actually exploration. Game is absolutely filled with weird stuff and doesn't feel copy paste at all. Yes there are some say dungeons that have similar tile set but all are designed to be very fun to explore and they ramp up in difficulty.

Could you talk some more about it? What is there to explore exactly? I've seen one other reference that talks about "only monsters and loot". I'd not deem that exploration also. The said should generally consist of perception based rewards, hidden areas, riddles, bits of info that give meaning and / or acccess to new areas / loot if pieced together, strange phenomena to understand etc.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

What is there to explore exactly?

Traveling in the south area of the starting zone, I saw a castle, so I went there. It was filled with the knight dudes, I wiped them all out. The knight at the top used a basic greatsword but had these weird blood attacks; when I killed him I got the Ashe of War the lets me use the same blood skill on one of my weapons. So I can turn something into Chikage. Neat. On the way back north, I heard a guy calling for help. I saved him and he said he was the lord of the castle and asked me to clear it. I said it was already cleared and he rewarded me, then said to visit him again, he was going to make peace with the local orc/goblin/things. I went back to the castle and now it was full of hostile orc/goblin/things, the lord guy admitted the plan wasn't working and said I should take out Godric. Not sure if anything else is going to happen there.

Another cool thing: in the forest there is howling, when I spoke with a merchant I could mention it to him, he gave me a gesture (finger snap) to use to 'bring out the howler.' Mysterious! Haven't tried it yet.

 

[Dr1f7]

this boss rocks

 

[Jaedar]

Bruh did you miss the beams of light on the map pointing towards the story bosses? Perhaps you are not in a stage of grace.

Has the codex fallen so far that "dude, just follow the quest compass" counts as proper directions?

 

[Lutte]

- Quests being obtuse is cool and all but why can't you fucking have a journal, at the very least one I can type myself. Fucking pen and paper.

Honestly my problem isn't quests being obtuse but the world being so fucking big that I can't even remember where I met certain NPCs and I'm still not done exploring the parts of the map that aren't closed to someone who only killed the first two bosses (Margit and Godrick). So many bonfires I can't keep track of this shit.

And as a world it's big yet empty and devoid of meaningful content. At first the mini dungeons were alright, but now I see the patterns of construction and react like : oh, another gaol, oh, another catacomb, oh, another cave. Oh, another erdtree to kill. You see, all areas of the game are segmented like this, a set number of extra content of each category will be present in every parts of the map, that's how you know you may have missed optional crap. Locations are all the same in structure so except for how they look visually they're undifferentiated and unmemorable. And the not-core dungeons of the game feel very much like the repetitive formula of the Chalice Dungeons. Except that you would never see a single Chalice Dungeon in a bloodborne run if you didn't want to, while those things are part of Elden Ring normal exploration and you don't know the true value of an area until you've completed it.
Steam says I have 20 hours of play time. I feel like I've done nothing of value in those 20 hours, only killed two real bosses, and most of the bosses I found outside of the main story line were pushover garbage. That cat looking thing that was called a dog gave me a bitch of a time though because his actions are nearly unreadable with the way he moves with almost no animation.

 

[Tyranicon]

So, do I need to get past the first major / castle boss to get the item you need to upgrade how much the flask heals?

Or items for more flasks, for that matter...

You find Tears (increase flask power) in openworld churches. They look like ruins. Glowing trees give golden seeds (increase flask charge).

Has anyone tried upgrading their spirit summons yet? Is it good?
I've been holding off from doing it since I figured they'd still do negligible damage and die in 3-4 hits anyway, but maybe I'm terribly wrong and it's secretly extremely useful.
I've acquired a handful of spirits of specific named individuals, but I lack the required FP to even summon them. I have no idea if they are useful.

Any consensus on the spirit summons? Are they cheating just like phantoms or is the game designed around their usage?

Summons are OP, especially the ranged summons (Jellyfish, noble sorcerer). Keep them alive and they'll melt the early bosses.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Bruh did you miss the beams of light on the map pointing towards the story bosses? Perhaps you are not in a stage of grace.

Has the codex fallen so far that "dude, just follow the quest compass" counts as proper directions?

The game is quite clear on storm castle being your first big objective; aside from the golden tracer thing that is.

Honestly my problem isn't quests being obtuse but the world being so fucking big that I can't even remember where I met certain NPCs

Gotta mark map.

 

[hackncrazy]

- Quests being obtuse is cool and all but why can't you fucking have a journal, at the very least one I can type myself. Fucking pen and paper.

Honestly my problem isn't quests being obtuse but the world being so fucking big that I can't even remember where I met certain NPCs and I'm still not done exploring the parts of the map that aren't closed to someone who only killed the first two bosses (Margit and Godrick). So many bonfires I can't keep track of this shit.

And as a world it's big yet empty and devoid of meaningful content. At first the mini dungeons were alright, but now I see the patterns of construction and react like : oh, another gaol, oh, another catacomb, oh, another cave. Oh, another erdtree to kill. You see, all areas of the game are segmented like this, a set number of extra content of each category will be present in every parts of the map, that's how you know you may have missed optional crap. Locations are all the same in structure so except for how they look visually they're undifferentiated and unmemorable. And the not-core dungeons of the game feel very much like the repetitive formula of the Chalice Dungeons. Except that you would never see a single Chalice Dungeon in a bloodborne run if you didn't want to, while those things are part of Elden Ring normal exploration and you don't know the true value of an area until you've completed it.
Steam says I have 20 hours of play time. I feel like I've done nothing of value in those 20 hours, only killed two real bosses, and most of the bosses I found outside of the main story line were pushover garbage. That cat looking thing that was called a dog gave me a bitch of a time though because his actions are nearly unreadable with the way he moves with almost no animation.

I didn't read everything with fear of spoilers, but about not remembering where NPCs and stuff are located, don't forget you have markers and beacons in the map.

 

[Caim]

Some 20 hours in, defeated Godrick and the boss in the area south of the staring area. Having a blast so far, but leveling up feels kinda slow.

Has anyone tried upgrading their spirit summons yet? Is it good?
I've been holding off from doing it since I figured they'd still do negligible damage and die in 3-4 hits anyway, but maybe I'm terribly wrong and it's secretly extremely useful.
I've acquired a handful of spirits of specific named individuals, but I lack the required FP to even summon them. I have no idea if they are useful.

I've managed to upgrade the Wandering Nobles to +5. They aren't that powerful but they are getting quite good at soaking up damage and letting me pick off stragglers while the main mob of enemies deals with them. Too bad area of effect attacks wipes them out pretty quickly.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

this boss rocks

Oh shit, you reminded me that this guy exists. I tried tackling him at like lvl 12-13 and figured it's best I return later since he raped me about 15 times in a row.

 

[Lutte]

I've managed to upgrade the Wandering Nobles to +5. They aren't that powerful but they are getting quite good at soaking up damage and letting me pick off stragglers while the main mob of enemies deals with them. Too bad area of effect attacks wipes them out pretty quickly.

I think this kind of summon is the reason why From made most bosses do 360 level shit and it's pretty unfortunate.
Because it would make summons too op to live long and distract the bosses, they had no choice but to also make most attacks be 360 and in turn it removes positioning as an element of strategy in fights. Summons compromise boss design. The gaol stuff, where you can't summon stuff, was incidentally better designed than the bosses of say, the catacombs I've seen so far. (that cat dog fucker.. worst garbage From ever put out)

 

[Tyranicon]

Having a blast so far, but leveling up feels kinda slow.

Yeah, its harder to grind, even in later areas. Enemies don't give exponentially more runes as they increase in difficulty.

And as a world it's big yet empty and devoid of meaningful content.

Really? I would say Elden Ring is closer to the theme park end of openworld, where you constantly run into a new interesting thing. I'm pretty far into the game though, maybe it's just Limgrave being boring.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

where you constantly run into a new interesting thing

It feels like an adventure , that's a given, but I personally wish they tried making it more vibrant and reactive to the player's actions.

Spoiler

I like for example, that when you take on the quest of that noble guy to clear out his keep of mobs, he actually makes his way there after and different mobs replace the ones who were there previously. This kind of dynamic change should be the central pillar of open world design, but like you've said, it's mostly a theme park experience.

 

[Lutte]

Really? I would say Elden Ring is closer to the theme park end of openworld, where you constantly run into a new interesting thing. I'm pretty far into the game though, maybe it's just Limgrave being boring.

I have explored a good amount of Liurnia, all of the weeping peninsula (you call Limgrave boring but the weeping peninsula is even worse, don't do what I did, Castle Morne is the only thing worth doing there, do the quest, kill the boss of the area then get the fuck out and never come back), two underground areas. Is this another "it takes 40 hours for the game to become good"?

 

[Shrimp]

this boss rocks

Gonna quote your post since I've been meaning to vent and ramble about this boss's reward and this is the perfect opportunity for it. Up to you if you actually want to read it so I'll spoiler it just in case

Spoiler

I killed this dude and the other crucible knight in Stormveil castle and saw both of them dropped the incantations they use when you fight them. Both of them came with a hefty 27 FTH requirement (I'd consider that to be quite high considering how early in the game you can get them) so I decided to try to commit to FTH spellcasting and levelled it up.
Unfortunately it turns out that their damage is pretty underwhelming. I didn't calculate the exact numbers but I'm fairly sure that throwing regular fireballs will deal somewhere around the same amount of damage on top of having a lower FP cost and being something you can cast at range.
I can definitely see some niche uses for them though - for instance the tail swipe spell seems like it's made for wiping out a large group of mooks, but when I went to some ruins to try it out it failed to actually deal any killing blows to the generic enemies there. At that point I might as well just have swung a two-handed sword twice and achieved the same result without having spent valuable FP. FP management is another issue spellcasters face since they not only have to allocate additional levels into the stat if they want to increase their FP pool, they also have to reduce the amount of healing flasks they carry around. The dual estus system from DS3 was one of the additions I didn't like back then and I'm not really a fan of it in Elden Ring either. It's not a dealbreaker but personally I'd have preferred a static amount of casts like in DS1 and 2.

Based on some of the comments I've seen in this thread it seems that INT spellcasting has a similar issue where the most basic starter spell (pebbles?) is the best spell by far. It's a bit of a disappointment to me since I feel like all the runes I sunk into FTH didn't really bring me anything new. Most of the high level spells seem to be style over substance.

With that being said, I've actually found some uses for some of the generic utility type spells. I don't know how effective the magic/fire damage reducing buffs are, but I feel like I've taken some magic salvos that most likely would've killed me otherwise. It's also nice that the FTH school gets the spell that removes sound effects when walking. I've been using that to sneak around in areas without getting detected in a lot of places.

Maybe I'm just approaching FTH spellcasting the wrong way, but I'm just a bit disappointed that the offensive spells aren't as strong as I had hoped.

 

[Lutte]

don't do what I did, Castle Morne is the only thing worth doing there, do the quest, kill the boss of the area then get the fuck out and never come back),

You do that and you'll come back later to bitch how your estus is a +0 and you only have 5 sips.

True, the way resources are spread out there is the not very interesting conondrum of having to make the choice between only doing content worth doing and missing out on power or doing mind numbing shit that feels like a job.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Has anyone tried upgrading their spirit summons yet? Is it good?

I upgraded my headless summon to +4 and decided to test him out by seeing if he can solo bosses. To my surprise he's solo'd a few mini-dungeon bosses in a row now.

I'm about 25 hours into the game, maybe a third through Liurnia and I'm getting kind of bored. The mechanics and systems are a big step up from Rollspam 3, and the actual major levels and legacy dungeons are on par with the rest of the series. But the mini dungeons and open world content is getting quite samey. So far there's only 3 dungeon tilesets, catacombs, mines, and caves. The mines have had some variance but overall the mini dungeons are very repetitive and linear, often with repeating boss fights. Every open world game I've played has had this issue (which is why games have garbage like level scaling and random loot, so you can skip half of the copy pasted content,) but it's still lame. I guess I can't expect anything else from an open world game though.

I'm also annoyed by how, like DS3, 90% of the game is fighting undead. There's so much undead that even the magical academy has a god damn graveyard filled with zombies. The games lore/world is different from the Souls games but not different enough that I'm not feeling fatigue. Hopefully this changes later on, Caelid seems promising from what I've seen of it at least.

True, the way resources are spread out there is the not very interesting conondrum of having to make the choice between only doing content worth doing and missing out on power or doing mind numbing shit that feels like a job.

Yeah, having this exact issue. The game feels balanced around doing all the repetitive dungeons.

 

[BlackGoat]

Pro-tip. When you kill an enemy they'll explode in blue-ish light if they're dropping an item, so you don't have to wait around and see.

 

[Caim]

I've managed to upgrade the Wandering Nobles to +5. They aren't that powerful but they are getting quite good at soaking up damage and letting me pick off stragglers while the main mob of enemies deals with them. Too bad area of effect attacks wipes them out pretty quickly.

I think this kind of summon is the reason why From made most bosses do 360 level shit and it's pretty unfortunate.
Because it would make summons too op to live long and distract the bosses, they had no choice but to also make most attacks be 360 and in turn it removes positioning as an element of strategy in fights. Summons compromise boss design. The gaol stuff, where you can't summon stuff, was incidentally better designed than the bosses of say, the catacombs I've seen so far. (that cat dog fucker.. worst garbage From ever put out)

Yeah, I ran into that issue with Godardrick where he'd do that wind attack that would hit my summoned NPC and spirit summons in one fell swoop, dealing massive damage.

Having a blast so far, but leveling up feels kinda slow.

Yeah, its harder to grind, even in later areas. Enemies don't give exponentially more runes as they increase in difficulty.

I found a shortcut to a pretty late game area where the basic enemies that walk around in the world can be easily beaten from horseback with hit and run attacks, and they drop 1000 souls each. Even then, I'm currently at a level where I need 10k+ souls for a single level, and it's starting to get a bit annoying. And I don't even buy all that much stuff from the vendors I meet: plenty of them still have loads of the stuff I'd have bought if I had the souls (those daggers for the imp statues, mostly).

 

[Cromwell]

I found a shortcut to a pretty late game area where the basic enemies that walk around in the world can be easily beaten from horseback with hit and run attacks, and they drop 1000 souls each. Even then, I'm currently at a level where I need 10k+ souls for a single level, and it's starting to get a bit annoying.

wouldnt that just mean the game tries to tell you that you are quite ahead level wise? so you are either walking around with the wrong stats or are just shit? Thats how I would interpret it when I am at quest zone x the mobs give me 200 exp a pop and I need 10k for another level so i would have to grind endgame areas.

 

[Dr1f7]

this boss rocks

Oh shit, you reminded me that this guy exists. I tried tackling him at like lvl 12-13 and figured it's best I return later since he raped me about 15 times in a row.

yeah he's tough I had a hard time beating him at lvl 32, the timings are SUPER tight but it makes for a really fun fight

this boss rocks

Gonna quote your post since I've been meaning to vent and ramble about this boss's reward and this is the perfect opportunity for it. Up to you if you actually want to read it so I'll spoiler it just in case

Spoiler

I killed this dude and the other crucible knight in Stormveil castle and saw both of them dropped the incantations they use when you fight them. Both of them came with a hefty 27 FTH requirement (I'd consider that to be quite high considering how early in the game you can get them) so I decided to try to commit to FTH spellcasting and levelled it up.
Unfortunately it turns out that their damage is pretty underwhelming. I didn't calculate the exact numbers but I'm fairly sure that throwing regular fireballs will deal somewhere around the same amount of damage on top of having a lower FP cost and being something you can cast at range.
I can definitely see some niche uses for them though - for instance the tail swipe spell seems like it's made for wiping out a large group of mooks, but when I went to some ruins to try it out it failed to actually deal any killing blows to the generic enemies there. At that point I might as well just have swung a two-handed sword twice and achieved the same result without having spent valuable FP. FP management is another issue spellcasters face since they not only have to allocate additional levels into the stat if they want to increase their FP pool, they also have to reduce the amount of healing flasks they carry around. The dual estus system from DS3 was one of the additions I didn't like back then and I'm not really a fan of it in Elden Ring either. It's not a dealbreaker but personally I'd have preferred a static amount of casts like in DS1 and 2.

Based on some of the comments I've seen in this thread it seems that INT spellcasting has a similar issue where the most basic starter spell (pebbles?) is the best spell by far. It's a bit of a disappointment to me since I feel like all the runes I sunk into FTH didn't really bring me anything new. Most of the high level spells seem to be style over substance.

With that being said, I've actually found some uses for some of the generic utility type spells. I don't know how effective the magic/fire damage reducing buffs are, but I feel like I've taken some magic salvos that most likely would've killed me otherwise. It's also nice that the FTH school gets the spell that removes sound effects when walking. I've been using that to sneak around in areas without getting detected in a lot of places.

Maybe I'm just approaching FTH spellcasting the wrong way, but I'm just a bit disappointed that the offensive spells aren't as strong as I had hoped.

hmm bummer do u have a good/upgraded seal for casting? I'm planning on putting points into faith so I can throw fireballs between twinblade hits hope they didn't make casting too weak