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

[Ghulgothas]

I can't play souls games without rebinding attacks and item usages to opposite buttons. Circle buttons are for attacks, the bumpers are for items and interactions, simply as.

I'm surprised by how much worldspace is open right at the very beginning. Limgrave, The Weeping Peninsula and Caelid are all open from the start, and you can hoover up all the seeds and tears for estus reinforcement right away. And I think the only progress blockers to the north are Godrick and the Magma Wyrm. Should be good for veteran playthroughs where you want to get all the crap necessary for your build as soon as possible.

Anyone find 5-level Somber Smithing Stones anywhere? I wanna see if I can't get the bloodhound fang to +5 before getting into Raya Lucaria.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Godrick

U can skip him and go straight to Liurnia

Anyone find 5-level Somber Smithing Stones anywhere?

If you did Siofra well and got the elevator at the end that takes you to Caelid, there's a ball of faces down a drop straight south of the site of grace. That's the earliest +5 somber shard I can think of. (You don't actually need to do Siofra to get the shard, but it's south of the site of grace.) There's also one in the swamp of Aeonia somewhere

 

[Multidirectional]

Biggest annoyance with this game: the fact that pushing down on the left joy stick makes you crouch. I'll be running away from some enemy, and accidentally push it and go into stealth, which makes me run slower. The crouch animation isn't that different than the run animation too, so sometimes it's hard to tell if you are crouching or not. Plus, if you push it while you are on your horse, you dismount.

I looked for another key to bind it to, but there really wasn't anything convenient. They should at least disable having it dismount you from your horse. I poppped off my horse like 4 times during that big dragon fight.

Just remove the binding and press x on the keyboard when you need to sneak (which is almost never).

My QOL improved significantly.

I remember that shit already annoyed me in Sekiro so I ended up switching "crouch" and "eavesdrop" buttons with each other. Seems like I'll have to figure out where to put that button again when I get to play this.

 

[Jermu]

Finished the game, took 85 hours. After doing around 60% of whole map visiting all places I kinda burned out with how similar minor areas and bosses were so I just skipped pretty much all optional content final 33~% of game. Seems like I missed 1 or 2 "main" bosses did not want to use walkthrough too much. I used online map for checking if I missed some areas first 50% of game but did not bother for late game.

I enjoyed early game more than end game and the main quest areas were good and different enough from each other. First castle + academy were my favorite places. I would say this game is just too large I would prefer that there would be 50% less catacombs and similar places and only having unique bosses.

This was my first "souls" game I fully completed besides Demon Souls but the combat felt quite annoying / cheap very often with bosses bullshit combos and area attacks. I might be an old fag for enjoying slower combat more than this adhd dodge dance rhythm game.

Story was indeed quite confusing but that might be because there was 10-20 hour breaks with main story when doing optional content so I might have forgot some key aspects.

Combat was mainly enjoyable played faith+dex early/mid game and int+dex end game. Early game faith spells were doing good dmg but end game spell dmg feels lackluster compared to weapon arts. Halo Scythe was the strongest weapon I used weapon art was very good. Finished the game with Moonveil that is indeed probably too strong of an weapon but end game enemies are kinda bullshit so I dont mind. I would guess doing some bosses with only melee (especially with slower weapons) would be quite annoying.

Overall I would say its around 8/10 game for me did not have any problems with my pc playthrough. Never finished DS1-3 so I guess I start DS1 or Elex 2 next.

 

[Lord of Riva]

Okay I'm kinda retardred here.

How do I reach the last Boss area?

I have spawned in the City of Ash and the only way I have found was out of the city. I have managed the whole game as of now and I am unable to find the damn way right at the end.

 

[Lutte]

Okay I'm kinda retardred here.

How do I reach the last Boss area?

I have spawned in the City of Ash and the only way I have found was out of the city. I have managed the whole game as of now and I am unable to find the damn way right at the end.

Look up your map, your destination goal is where the Queen's Chamber site of grace was (and still is because you can activate it once again), I don't remember the full path but I think I just had to jump onto a tree branch along the way and make my way up.
From there, the elden throne area and the pre-final battle.

 

[Nathir]

After beating Radahn a bunch of NPC questlines open up. Blaidd says he will go to Nokron. I go there, he's not there. Gerran says he will go on an errand and doesn't say anything at all as to where. And you get no clue like the one for the knifeprint. The commander of castle Morne goes after his daughters killer and tells you nothing about where he will go. Seluvis gives you a potion and tells you to give it to Nephelli. No clue as to where she is. In fact, you can get the potion and find her at the village of the Albinaurics but can't give it to her yet (I assume a different encounter gives the prompt).

The NPC questlines are so obtuse in this game. And the world is huge. Am I just supposed to travel the whole world looking for NPCs? I am seriously tempted to just google it, despite being my first playthrough.

 

[Brickfrog]

If you want any hope of completing all the quests on the first (or likely any) run you are going to have to Google.

 

[NJClaw]

Honestly, I'm all over wikis and guides. Multiple steps in Ranni's quest is fucking unintelligible without those and I'd much rather enjoy all those cool places and bosses and gameplay than fuck myself over my "gamer pride" and skip half the game.

Which steps? I think I reached the end of the quest and everything seemed pretty clear. NPCs explicitly tell you what to do.

I'd say that's the only quest in the entire series where someone actually tells you what to do.

 

[Lutte]

AFAIK you go find the fingerslayer blade on your own, despite Blaidd talking about it as if he's going to explore with you. I don't recall meeting him there, but the Ranni questline continued and I ended up meeting Blaidd again later, I won't spoil what happens though.

Seluvis gives you a potion and tells you to give it to Nephelli. No clue as to where she is. In fact, you can get the potion and find her at the village of the Albinaurics but can't give it to her yet (I assume a different encounter gives the prompt).

You're actually on track here. Neph will turn up in the roundtable after meeting her there, and you need to talk to Gideon first to progress this. This one is one of the few npc quests where I was just lucky enough that I met them at the right time like you and progressed their movement.

I still don't know wtf is going on with the roundtable incantation guy after he leaves the table. I don't even remember the fucker's name, it's been so long since I've seen him.

 

[NJClaw]

I still don't know wtf is going on with the roundtable incantation guy after he leaves the table. I don't even remember the fucker's name, it's been so long since I've seen him.

His location is not a big spoiler, but still:

Spoiler

You can find him while riding along the main road in Altus Plateau, going north from Altus Highway Junction, IIRC

 

[Lord of Riva]

I believe you can not "fail" the quests, you can however skip a lot of steps without any negative effect. I never once interacted with Blaidd until what happens at the end of the quest line ( formulated like this to skip using the spoiler tag.)

 

[Filthy Sauce]

I don't know if anyone watches LobosJr streams, but he was stuck on Malenia for 8 hours.... I am not kidding.

 

[Curratum]

I think I broke the game. Apostle went down the first time I put on the mimic summon.

I never even hit him with my sword and I'm a melee build... Double ice fans of death...

STOMPY STOMP!

Spoiler

 

[Lord of Riva]

What Spirit Ashes did you guys use? So far I've upgraded the Jellyfish up to +5 now since it's pretty tanky and I've been using it in gank fights. I also have the ashes for some knight dude but I still need to increase my FP to summon him.

Godwyn soldiers first, then Mimic. Mimic is a beast.

 

[d1r]

What Spirit Ashes did you guys use? So far I've upgraded the Jellyfish up to +5 now since it's pretty tanky and I've been using it in gank fights. I also have the ashes for some knight dude but I still need to increase my FP to summon him.

NONE.

 

[Lutte]

I don't know if anyone watches LobosJr streams, but he was stuck on Malenia for 8 hours.... I am not kidding.

Malenia is, IMHO, the closest to a "from jumped the shark moment" where they listened a little too closely to the calls of people who are into CBT.

 

[Lord of Riva]

What Spirit Ashes did you guys use? So far I've upgraded the Jellyfish up to +5 now since it's pretty tanky and I've been using it in gank fights. I also have the ashes for some knight dude but I still need to increase my FP to summon him.

NONE.

Next time start as a Wretch and say no to Melinas accord, then we are talking

 

[Olinser]

 

[Lutte]

What Spirit Ashes did you guys use? So far I've upgraded the Jellyfish up to +5 now since it's pretty tanky and I've been using it in gank fights. I also have the ashes for some knight dude but I still need to increase my FP to summon him.

All of them are pretty similar in usefulness I find, it's Mimic that is different from the rest - and overpowered.
As long as you don't have the means to buy upgrade materials for your ashes, don't bother upgrading other ashes, just make sure to take the one you use the most to the highest level. Even mimic isn't that useful in the end game if it's not upgraded. I had mostly skipped midpoint/late catacombs when I rushed to the ending and mimic only got useful against Malenia when I brought it to +10.

 

[Curratum]

My poor mimic is just at +4, wasted the +5 material on Oleg while still pumping up mana to summon him, before I found the mimic. At least now I can hoarfrost stomp pretty much anything I've encountered so far to death with all that mana.

I don't see why people keep moaning about overall difficulty in the game. It seems there's SO much super-powerful stuff you can get for all sorts of builds.

I'm just surprised, because I never had it easy in previous Souls games. I never learned any broken meme builds and just used a sword and shield and then eventually 2H spears and greatswords and it was never broken-easy. Here, though, it seems like if you have many more options to make things a lot easier if you want.

 

[Shrimp]

What Spirit Ashes did you guys use? So far I've upgraded the Jellyfish up to +5 now since it's pretty tanky and I've been using it in gank fights. I also have the ashes for some knight dude but I still need to increase my FP to summon him.

Early game I used a mix of the jellyfish and the wolf pack depending on whether I believed I'd get more value from the poison and slightly tankier summon or the staggering caused by the wolves whenever they didn't get one shot by a boss cleave.
Mid game I used some skeletons since I liked how they kept respawning after getting killed. The enemies wouldn't always finish them off after downing them so I felt I'd often get more value out of the skeletons since they'd technically last longer.
Then I ended up picking up the mimic. At first I used it because it seemed like a fun and novel idea to have a clone of yourself fighting alongside you. Then it turned out to be utterly broken and ended up carrying me through a ton of bosses. I genuinely don't think I'd have been able to defeat Malenia without it.

 

[Lutte]

My poor mimic is just at +4, wasted the +5 material on Oleg while still pumping up mana to summon him, before I found the mimic.

I did the same sort of thing, but with that item throwing puppet ghost. Then later when I realized Mimic's usefulness I didn't continue upgrading the puppet, but I never stumbled upon more upgrade materials for the mimic, it seems like they're all in the catacombs. If there's any thing that shouldn't be skipped in the open world content it's : catacombs and mines.

 

[toro]

I don't know if anyone watches LobosJr streams, but he was stuck on Malenia for 8 hours.... I am not kidding.

He was practicing for SL1 runs which he just started.

 

[Curratum]

I don't know if anyone watches LobosJr streams, but he was stuck on Malenia for 8 hours.... I am not kidding.

He was practicing for SL1 runs which he just started.

So, was he stuck because he was attempting her at SL1?