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

[Lutte]

Is Raya Lucaria the gate that needs to be passed before you can go further north to Mount Gelmir? I don't think I'm going to go further east into Caelid until I'm a bet more beefed.

To the north there is a ravine, that leads to the altus plateau, which is where you need to be to get to Mt Gelmir

 

[perfectslumbers]

My guess would be that poise works the same way as in DS3 since it seems like that's what the game is built upon.

Far as I can tell it uses the DS3 system where it activates only on attacks and unless you have tons of it, it's shit. I'm dual wielding great curved swords and it's ridiculous how even the tiniest dagger staggers me while I'm swinging both at the same time.

Passive poise exists like in DS1 but it's very weak and likely won't work against any bosses. Supposedly it's like ds1 poise if it was divided by 4 by people who tested it heavily

 

[Lutte]

likely won't work against any bosses.

Or mid/late game enemies, they all have weapon art style abilities that deal ton of stagger damage. Which is also why the only usable shields in this game past the tutorial areas are greatshields, which require high STR builds.

 

[Curratum]

Room beyond the doorway has no roof so I doubt you're supposed to get it coming from the opposite way and walking over the roof. I mean, usually when I can at least see it, it takes me 5 minutes to figure out a way to get it, but not this time, unless there's a flying spell later on :D

Spoiler

Peep the Mistwoods in Limgrave, near Fort Haight

Wait, you have got to he kidding me... There's no way those two are connected? This would be too huge... I already have two bonfires in Siofra...

 

[Tyranicon]

I will say, this is the first game where I have to not use certain things on a first playthrough because they're so OP. Mimic Tear will straight up solo bosses, gonna switch back to Oleg just to give them a chance.

Because BB introduced, DaS3 abused it and now it's part of FS design philosophy.

I can't believe 15 year old me played DS3 as a dexfag and thought the infinite Stamina bosses were fun. I refuse to play dex in Elden Ring as an act of protest, for once upon a time I was the kind of player that lead to the great From Soft decline...

Shit, I always forget how long DS3 has been out...

 

[cvv]

My guess would be that poise works the same way as in DS3 since it seems like that's what the game is built upon.

Far as I can tell it uses the DS3 system where it activates only on attacks and unless you have tons of it, it's shit. I'm dual wielding great curved swords and it's ridiculous how even the tiniest dagger staggers me while I'm swinging both at the same time.

Passive poise exists like in DS1 but it's very weak and likely won't work against any bosses. Supposedly it's like ds1 poise if it was divided by 4 by people who tested it heavily

IIRC poise didn´t work at all in DS3, it was switched off in a config. You could actually switch it back on if you knew where to look.

 

[Deadass]

can i do a fisten ring run in this

 

[Tacgnol]

Anybody else finding stats upgrade kinda nonsensic? I mean, I'm only after Raya Lucaria but so far the only meaningful stat to upgrade has been Body (or whatever increases your life bar is called this time). Anything else gives a +1 or +2 to damage or stamina. Bloodborne was already dull in this respect in early stages because it didn't make sense to increase anything else besides Body, but here its even duller. I'm raising Body to almost 30 even if it doesn't fit the character concept I have in mind, because of this.

This is fairly standard Souls levelling. Grab the stat requirements for your weapon of choice early, then just put everything else into HP and stamina until you either reach their soft caps or feel like you have more points in those than you need.

Not exactly. Previous games, by having less granular weapon upgrade progression, gave increased returns on lower levels. In BB for example, I usually see tangible benefits in increasing Dex/Str for damage when my body is around 20. Here its reaching 30 and it's still not making sense to raise Dex or Str except for requirements or LARPing.

TL; DR: yes this was always a trend, but never to the degree ER does it.

I'm getting a lot of extra damage from having 60 strength with my heavy gargoyle greatsword and A strength scaling. More than the weapons base damage.

 

[cvv]

Anybody else finding stats upgrade kinda nonsensic? I mean, I'm only after Raya Lucaria but so far the only meaningful stat to upgrade has been Body (or whatever increases your life bar is called this time). Anything else gives a +1 or +2 to damage or stamina. Bloodborne was already dull in this respect in early stages because it didn't make sense to increase anything else besides Body, but here its even duller. I'm raising Body to almost 30 even if it doesn't fit the character concept I have in mind, because of this.

This is fairly standard Souls levelling. Grab the stat requirements for your weapon of choice early, then just put everything else into HP and stamina until you either reach their soft caps or feel like you have more points in those than you need.

Not exactly. Previous games, by having less granular weapon upgrade progression, gave increased returns on lower levels. In BB for example, I usually see tangible benefits in increasing Dex/Str for damage when my body is around 20. Here its reaching 30 and it's still not making sense to raise Dex or Str except for requirements or LARPing.

TL; DR: yes this was always a trend, but never to the degree ER does it.

I'm getting a lot of extra damage from having 60 strength with my heavy gargoyle greatsword and A strength scaling. More than the weapons base damage.

Yeah, adding str/dex above the reqs is always a good idea. It's just it takes a LOOONG time in ER to notice it since regular weps start getting better scaling (A/S) only at +15 or so.

 

[Lutte]

Fucker's got 25 000 HP.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up some values from DS3. Soul of Cinder had about 11 000 HP both phases combined. Namless had about 7500 in his second phase. Motherfucking Midir himself had about 15800. ER seems to have contracted a serious case of hp bloat.

Bleed working on most things in this game really saved the day.

 

[Shrimp]

Fucker's got 25 000 HP.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up some values from DS3. Soul of Cinder had about 11 000 HP both phases combined. Namless had about 7500 in his second phase. Motherfucking Midir himself had about 15800. ER seems to have contracted a serious case of hp bloat.

You'll have to also look at the player's damage output values at those stages of the game if you want to make a fair comparison. Are those about the same as well?

 

[HeatEXTEND]

the danger of making everything begin to feel generic

At that point you have to take a break

Spoiler

or stop playing like a trawler for a while, it's hard i know

 

[Curratum]

How do you even finish this game? I'm almost at 70 hours and I have one bonfire at the Plateau, never seen the capital or other northward areas, have more stuff to see in Liurnia and tons of unbeaten dungeons in Caelid. I have only half of the underground explored as well.

This is the most content-dense modern game I ever played.

Went back to Raya Lucaria to retrieve the body of Thops and found two secret areas I missed, as well as the area that has the "no fall damage" talisman in it.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

 

[Lutte]

How do you even finish this game? I'm almost at 70 hours and I have one bonfire at the Plateau, never seen the capital or other northward areas, have more stuff to see in Liurnia and tons of unbeaten dungeons in Caelid. I have only half of the underground explored as well.

This is the most content-dense modern game I ever played.

Went back to Raya Lucaria to retrieve the body of Thops and found two secret areas I missed, as well as the area that has the "no fall damage" talisman in it.

Well, I finished the game as in the main story (plus one of the larger sidequest line, the witch's, and also latenna's) but I didn't really do all the open world stuff, mostly focused on mines where upgrade resources were plentiful (if I saw a place wasn't a mine I would just activate the site of grace and get the fuck out). Late game when I wanted to upgrade my ghost spirits I went back to look for catacombs and my character was overpowered enough for these things that completing them took no time. I ignored all hero tombs after I realized that they were like the first one you do in limgrave and have this obnoxious chariot mechanism, it was fine to do that once but I'm not repeating this over and over again.
You don't get kicked into NG+ if you don't want to and can still complete most things after the end btw.
I did all the evergaols though. They're some of the best encounters in the game.

 

[perfectslumbers]

I agree, that would be fair and I don't have that info unless one of the bros who has finished the game already volunteers some concrete numbers. Tho ' some values have been mentioned already it was what got me thinking.

My Katana r1 would deal 600 to 700. Glintstone pebble about 250 to 350. Big spells like comet and rock sling about 700 to 950 (charged.) Heavy weapon art 1100 to 1400. The damage ranges are because of differing resists between bosses.

Compare to this fight against Gael in ds3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2NBCVdyJ4 Each one of his attacks deals 184 damage with a curved sword. Elden Ring has the squishiest bosses and the squishiest player in the series.

 

[Tacgnol]

Yeah, 25,000 isn't really that much in the context of the games damage system.

Probably talking about 25 hits to bring the boss down if some are doing slightly less than a 1000 and others slightly more.

 

[Lutte]

Compare to this fight against Gael in ds3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2NBCVdyJ4 Each one of his attacks deals 184 damage with a curved sword. Elden Ring has the squishiest bosses and the squishiest player in the series.

Numbers are still lower than ER, but this is what a proper build does in DS3 :

352 per hit, on a fast weapon that can let you mash three times in a row at times against gael.

Also, Gael was the tankiest boss along with Midir, in the entire game. Everything else melted away.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Just finished Raya lucaria, it's a bit dissapointing area to be honest. The boss it's just a cheap version of Fool's idol, I can't believe they never made another gimmick boss as good as her and she was one of the first of that kind. That said, the are atmosphere was really good. Now I'm entering a weird ass mannor.

Btw the game got frozen and crashed twice in that area for some reason.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Also, Gael was the tankiest boss along with Midir, in the entire game. Everything else melted away.

That's true. Perhaps my perspective is skewed by killing every boss in ten weapon arts

 

[Shrimp]

I'm exploring Elphael right now. What the fuck is up with the health values of some of the enemies here? Is this what you people were referring to when you were talking about HP sponges in late game areas?

 

[Curratum]

Just finished Raya lucaria, it's a bit dissapointing area to be honest. The boss it's just a cheap version of Fool's idol, I can't believe they never made another gimmick boss as good as her and she was one of the first of that kind. That said, the are atmosphere was really good. Now I'm entering a weird ass mannor.

Btw the game got frozen and crashed twice in that area for some reason.

Crashes seem to be completely random. My old-ass RX 570 is choking hard, I even get occasional gfx artifacts, e.g. the entire floor would flash in a mix of bright purple / pink / yellow for a couple of frames every 30 minutes, but I never had a crash in nearly 70 hours of playtime.

Meanwhile, people on much better PCs are crashing or have invisible enemies or horse, or can't even get into the game, crashing after the initial white splash of EasyAntiCheat.

 

[The Decline]

I have had one crash so far, rode the horse into a no-horsey zone and it CTD just as I jumped off.

 

[toro]

I'm starting to get really annoyed with the upgrade material system.
I've been using a special weapon (the ones that require somber stones) and the only reason I have a +10 is because I happened to stumble upon an optional late game boss and his area that technically is accessible very early on in the game. If it wasn't because of the one upgrade material I found in there that allowed me to upgrade my weapon from +9 to +10 I'd still be using a +9 even though I could go and end the game in a couple of hours if I wanted to. However, I'm currently exploring what I believe is an optional part of a late game map since I like to scour through the maps to uncover as much as possible.
Up until now I hadn't found any of the stones required to upgrade a regular weapon from +24 to +25, but in the final stages of the area I'm currently in I just randomly stumbled across four of those items in the span of like an hour. Similarly I also found a place that give me two Great Ghost Gloveworts (the item needed to upgrade spirit summons from +9 to +10) at once.
In DS1 and DS2 you could get Titanite Slabs during the mid-game if you already knew where to look for them since they were spread out across the game, although obviously a majority of them were placed towards the later stages. While I don't doubt that people eventually will discover more ways to get final upgrade materials in Elden Ring (like how I managed to find the +10 somber stone that I think can be accessed just after Godric) I'm still feeling frustrated that so far the only ones I've found at all were just casually strewn in the final stages of this game. It feels like a cheap way to artificially gate people from getting upgrades early in the game, especially in subsequent playthroughs if you are mad enough to do one of those. The upgrade material scarcity is also a part of the reason why I've reluctantly been using the same tiny pool of weapons throughout the entire game. Ashes of War being fully customisable is great for experimentation, but it feels pointless if you're still stuck with the choice of using an almost fully upgraded weapon vs using a mid-tier weapon solely because the item that unlocks the required upgrade material in the Roundstable Hold isn't even located in an area you can access.

Has anyone else who has beat the game (or is close to) had similar experiences? Again, I won't rule out the possibility that I've missed some final stage materials at some point, but I still feel like the game tries very hard to gatekeep you from actually upgrading your weapon completely.

I've picked up two more Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones (the ones needed to upgrade a regular weapon to +25) since I wrote this post, but somehow I have yet to find any Somber stones outside of the one (1) I found some days ago. I guess they're just placed even further into the game? Feels like they couldn't even be bothered coming with creative ways for players to get materials early.

+8 +9 are found in the royal city basement. only ancient stones are limited per run

 

[toro]

After beating Radahn and just chilling out for a bit, I decided to find the church where you get absolution so I can fix my stuff, because I think I accidentally killed the masked sorceress woman and I don't want to give my special scroll items to that pompous poof Seluvis.

So I was making my merry way to the church when I saw a huge giant guarding a small rotund and went to check it out...

1.5 hours, 2 unexplored potentially large branches and one boss and a massive yet-inaccessible area later (full map for scale):

Spoiler

All is forgiven, Miyazaki. I anger easily, but am also quick to forgive :D

Caelid area is mid game area. You played yourself because the new area is begin area.