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

[Tyrr]

The difficulty really ramps up in the midgame jesus christ. Some of the later bosses are insane.

I'm going to do ALL THE SIDECONTENT and overlevel myself to kingdom come, because fuck me, Margit is harder than most DS bosses already.

I'm sure the Tree Sentinal is just there to teach veteran Soul players that you can ignore a boss for a time and come back later.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Tomorrow is ELEX2! But no way in hell am I quitting Elden Ring. OHH, ELDEN RING!

 

[cvv]

Has anyone figured out the door right at the start? Immediately to your left when you walk out the Tower of Anticipation? Just yes or no.

 

[Tacgnol]

Tomorrow is ELEX2! But no way in hell am I quitting Elden Ring. OHH, ELDEN RING!

Sounds like ELEX 2 may need a couple of patches anyway judging by some of the reviews coming out.

Then again people said that about the first one and I never had any issues, so who knows.

 

[Silentstorm]

Okay, Stormveil Castle is annoying as hell with the knights, i know you are supposed to roll and backstab them but i can't easily pull that off for some reason, and the checkpoints are really few, like, i am at the Grace Site near the Eagle Bombers, did everything that path as far as i can tell, even fell down and beat that horn knight to get an Aspect Of The Crucible, so i went to the other path jumping around rooftops, and after killing a fire breathing bird, one more asshole knight and dying to the second only to go back all the way back i recalled the one thing i hated about Dark Souls, when checkpoints were really few and too far away because running the same 5 minutes again and again is easily my least favorite part of the series.

It just makes me miss the statues in the open world so much more, also, again, fuck those wind knights, i am close to just giving up and going back to the open world to see if like Magret, there is some anti-wind knight item or art because i really can't get the timing right and they are so far the most annoying shit in the game, i swear i have died more to one or two of them than i died to the freaking Crucible Knight somehow, hate hate hate these guys

 

[Thac0]

Okay, Stormveil Castle is annoying as hell with the knights, i know you are supposed to roll and backstab them but i can't easily pull that off for some reason, and the checkpoints are really few, like, i am at the Grace Site near the Eagle Bombers, did everything that path as far as i can tell, even fell down and beat that horn knight to get an Aspect Of The Crucible, so i went to the other path jumping around rooftops, and after killing a fire breathing bird, one more asshole knight and dying to the second only to go back all the way back i recalled the one thing i hated about Dark Souls, when checkpoints were really few and too far away because running the same 5 minutes again and again is easily my least favorite part of the series.

It just makes me miss the statues in the open world so much more, also, again, fuck those wind knights, i am close to just giving up and going back to the open world to see if like Magret, there is some anti-wind knight item or art because i really can't get the timing right and they are so far the most annoying shit in the game, i swear i have died more to one or two of them than i died to the freaking Crucible Knight somehow, hate hate hate these guys

Tips for how to beat the castle stress free:

Spoiler

Just take the lift down to that butcher hall, and then sprint past the inner area with like 100 soldiers inside. The one with 5 flame cannons and the fatty. In the buildings behind that area there are two more bonfires and the area boss. The castle is really short in that direction, all that stuff on the rooftops is just cool loot and side content. When you run towards those bonfires you need to kill the fatty and his dog, as they follow you into the bonfire room, the rest will not pursue you far.

 

[Kruno]

You wanted a soul % increase talisman? Here it is!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1245620/discussions/0/3183486320474338093/

 

[NJClaw]

midgame

22 vigor

What the hell are you people doing? Starting the game by leveling Vigor until you reach a noticeable soft cap is like modern souls 101. Here it's too soon to say, but in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 there's no reason to invest in other stats before reaching approximately 30 Vigor (Vitality in BB) apart from having to satisfy weapon requirements, and I don't see why it would be different this time around.

 

[Matador]

I want a chalice dungeon DLC.

Would be great to have the option to farm materials in a dangerous environment instead of doing it on the open world.

 

[Cromwell]

Is there a way to farm the first smithing stones? I only found them as loot in caves and outside but not have them drop from miners or other mobs.

 

[Silva]

Tip: turn off music sometimes bros. Silent exploration with only the sound of nature and footsteps evokes that DS1 vibe.

I want a chalice dungeon DLC.

Would be great to have the option to farm materials in a dangerous environment instead of doing it on the open world.

This is already in the game to some degree. See Morne Tunnel for farming smithing stones, for example.

 

[Perkel]

Margit is a cheating HP sponge, but that fucking bear clawing tree bark near the East Limgrave map had me genuinely horrified. Fuck.

That shit just has me worried a bit. How spongy are later bosses gonna be?

After I took that teleporter to that far-off edge of the map, I found some pygmies with spears and I needed about 10-12 hits with 20 STR, 20 DEX and a +7 spear to kill one. If weapons don't cap at 10, this might be fine, but otherwise, good grief... And the enemy was just a common mook in that area, I saw half a dozen more scattered about.

Change weapon damage type.

Good example of this are the miners in starting area. With 1hand attack you attack just bounces of with something like dagger or sword and even if you two hand it you still need like 7-9 hits to bring them down. Or you can use unupgraded hammer and kill them in 2-3 strikes. Or longbow in also 3-4 strikes.

What i noticed is that enemies are much more responsive to different types of damage than in DS games. IT feels like they went back to Demon's Souls system where it also played big role in how much damage you could output.

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

AS for farming items. It is pretty easy to craft those items for increased item discovery. Just kill some birds and you will get quickly 2-3 and it only need some other small item to get those id items. They world for good minutes too instead of like in old DS games minute max.

 

[deem]

Weapons cap at +25. The scope of this game is huge, you really can't analyze it using standard souls metrics.

I wonder what the intended endgame level is. In DS 80-100 would be the recommended level for the average player.

What the hell are you people doing? Starting the game by leveling Vigor until you reach a noticeable soft cap is like modern souls 101. Here it's too soon to say, but in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 there's no reason to invest in other stats before reaching approximately 30 Vigor (Vitality in BB) apart from having to satisfy weapon requirements, and I don't see why it would be different this time around.

I agree with this statement, I think in modern Souls characters are a bit too brittle at the start, and you lose points to get to some reasonable HP, so a boss doesn't do you in in one or two shots.

 

[NJClaw]

I agree with this statement, I think in modern Souls characters are a bit too brittle at the start, and you lose points to get to some reasonable HP, so a boss doesn't do you in in one or two shots.

Not only that: in the early game investing in stats to increase your damage is basically pointless. When your base damage is 100, spending 10 level ups to deal 10 more damage makes no difference whatsoever. On the other hand, those same 10 levels can mean 300 more HP, and that's definitely noticeable.

 

[Riddler]

Okay, Stormveil Castle is annoying as hell with the knights, i know you are supposed to roll and backstab them but i can't easily pull that off for some reason, and the checkpoints are really few, like, i am at the Grace Site near the Eagle Bombers, did everything that path as far as i can tell, even fell down and beat that horn knight to get an Aspect Of The Crucible, so i went to the other path jumping around rooftops, and after killing a fire breathing bird, one more asshole knight and dying to the second only to go back all the way back i recalled the one thing i hated about Dark Souls, when checkpoints were really few and too far away because running the same 5 minutes again and again is easily my least favorite part of the series.

It just makes me miss the statues in the open world so much more, also, again, fuck those wind knights, i am close to just giving up and going back to the open world to see if like Magret, there is some anti-wind knight item or art because i really can't get the timing right and they are so far the most annoying shit in the game, i swear i have died more to one or two of them than i died to the freaking Crucible Knight somehow, hate hate hate these guys

What are you talking about? There are checkpoints every other meter. The most egregious case of this is right before godrick, there is the grace right beside the foggate and then there is an elevator right nearby leading to another grace... Wat

Or maybe the ones right at the gate. You could probably piss from one to the other.

In other news, Godrick was really easy, much easier than Margit. Beat him on first try and didn't use any summons or anything. Somehow the second phase was even easier than the first.

 

[Riddler]

As a side note related to this: changing infusion from standard also appears to suck at low ability and low weapon levels. Standard Lordsworn Greatsword at +5 with 17 str and 17 dex has 10 extra AR compared to a quality infusion

Maybe, but I found the weapon skill on the blood infusion really useful for example, even the infusion slightly lowered damage.

 

[Tyrr]

Is there a way to farm the first smithing stones? I only found them as loot in caves and outside but not have them drop from miners or other mobs.

There are a lot of 'mine' type of dungeons in the first areas. There you can find them on the walls.
After that you can find

Spoiler

an item that makes the vendor in the Lost Grace Table zone sell them. It works like the ashes in DS3.

 

[ferratilis]

 

[Tyrr]

Jokes aside, the different "houses" of Shardbearers look like his creations. All with their unique uniforms and ideas.

 

[Kruno]

What the hell are you people doing? Starting the game by leveling Vigor until you reach a noticeable soft cap is like modern souls 101. Here it's too soon to say, but in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 there's no reason to invest in other stats before reaching approximately 30 Vigor (Vitality in BB) apart from having to satisfy weapon requirements, and I don't see why it would be different this time around.

I hit 30 str and 20 end before putting anything anywhere else, unless it is dex to use my favourite weapon.

BTW: Prosper was involved with the game:

I also forgot you need a talisman to use magic...

 

[Curratum]

Can you put a new weapon art with an ash on a weapon, then remove it if you don't like it, keeping both the weapon art AND the weapon you took it off of?

 

[Riddler]

Maybe, but I found the weapon skill on the blood infusion really useful for example, even the infusion slightly lowered damage.

But can't you also choose to keep the standard? I haven't gotten a blood infusion yet, but the quality and heavy Ashes I have can be selected to be applied as Standard.

Possibly, but part of the deal here is that the skill causes bleed at range.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

After I took that teleporter to that far-off edge of the map, I found some pygmies with spears and I needed about 10-12 hits with 20 STR, 20 DEX and a +7 spear to kill one. If weapons don't cap at 10, this might be fine, but otherwise, good grief... And the enemy was just a common mook in that area, I saw half a dozen more scattered about.

Weapons cap at +25. The scope of this game is huge, you really can't analyze it using standard souls metrics.

The question is do the damage numbers level out around 500 for one-handed weapons and 700 for two-handed at 50/50 scaling like in all the prior games? If so then the normal DS progression has been stretched out, rather than the cap being raised.

 

[Jinn]

Kinda feel bad for the people mindscrewing themselves into thinking this isn't a great game because of muh open-world tropes. 99% of open-world games are indeed shit, this one is not.

There is a hypersensitivity going on here that is creating some very dramatic responses. Just because something might have been mildly inspired by modern open-world design doesn't mean that From hasn't completely flipped it on it's head, improved it nearly beyond recognition and made it a meaningful part of gameplay. This response was pretty predictable, particularly around these parts, partially because of a knee-jerk instinct to reject anything highly talked about or praised. The game has flaws, there's no doubt about it. But saying something like "it's Skyrim with Dark Souls combat mechanics" is just straight hyperbole. Also gotta say, a lot of people seem to be surprised this is an open-world game...which it has clearly been advertised as for a long time.

I don't feel any sense of copy-pasted landscape. You can tell that almost every area on the overworld was crafted with the intention of it being similar in design to a larger area in past From games, and then patched together to create a meaningful and interesting landscape. Even more so for underground areas - and the fact the the game actually has a full underground map is just cool beyond words. The world reaches high into the sky and plummets to the depths of the earth, and you have a great deal of control in traversing these poles in excellent and engaging ways. I would like to once again bring my intimations of Piranha Bytes design to the forefront in regards to the overworld, particularly causing me to think of the verticality found in ELEX. As long as you're not just riding your horse through it as fast as you can, you're going to find a lot of fun and interesting encounter design too. I spend the majority of my time on foot.

I guess my final feeling on the matter is, no one has told you how you need to explore the world or play the game. If you don't want to fight 5 dragons in a row or search every nook and cranny obsessively (like I do, and enjoy, and discover a lot because of), you have a fairly clear path to the main dungeons and objectives of the game laid out in front of you. Yeah, you'll probably miss a lot of cool stuff in the process, but your 40-50 hour Dark Souls experience is right there in the game for you to go get if that's all you want.

better than any newish open world RPG I've played that's not Dragon's Dogma

As a huge Dragon's Dogma fan, I have to say, Elden Ring manages to dethrone it in my eyes in almost every way. Even mentioned to my brother when we did a short co-op session on release day, "this feels like a better, multiplayer Dragon's Dogma right now."

EDIT: Oh yeah, I keep forgetting to mention the stealth. They implemented it horribly and it's easily one of the worst/most gamey aspects, which was a big disappointment for me. When I first saw hints of it in early footage I thought "they're finally implementing a proper stealth system!" Nope. What they should have done is actually tied the stealth to an attribute and make not all the enemies near-sighted and deaf. I understand it could be a difficult thing to balance, but it seems like it would have been worth the effort. Huge missed opportunity on this one.

 

[Bahamut]

At least there are not 2 hours long cutscenes describing his favorite recipe to cook pork.

Somehow i think all those crafting manuals named 'cookbooks' are his idea