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

[deem]

Exploring Stormveil Castle, great level, classic Souls.

Played for over 30 hrs, have not been invaded once.

Game keeps crashing, does going offline help?

 

[Tacgnol]

Speaking of Malenia has anybody tried blocking her bullshit combo with an upgraded greatshield + block talisman items? Is it set as an unblockable aoe? Does it delete stamina too fast to survive it? Or can it actually work for str builds?

I just learned to dodge roll it with a high poise med roll build to soak up the stray hits.

From what iv heard it can be blocked with a sufficiently big and enchanted shield. but I'm not sure that keeping the enchantment up and whittling away at her health with a one handed weapon is better strategy than just facerushing with a high dps two-hander and learning the dodge timing.

She still heals on block sadly

I think aggression is best with Malenia. Her poise is so low (in the first phase at least) that you can conceivably keep her stunlocked almost the entire time if you manage your stamina carefully.

 

[Brickfrog]

I'll post my stats and build for other strength players who are struggling with malenia

My stats were something like:
Vig 40
End 20
Str 51 (boosted to 61 with talismans)
Faith 37 (totally unnecessary for this fight unless you want to use the phys dmg reduction incantation you get from gideon, I should have redistributes these points into end or str.)
Dex 14 (minimum req for my halberd)
Everything else minimum

+10 holy tree sentinel halberd (I found UGS to be way too slow for malenia, you need to be able to dodge out after her sidesteps and that's tough with weapons that are too huge)

I had a mix of twinned knght and bloodhound knight armor for high poise and phys resist.

Important talismans were the +5 to all phys stats talisman, stam up +2 talisman, and +5 str talisman. I think in the end I didn't need the arsenal charm for higher equip load so I used the +dmg at full hp talisman.

Radahns rune for the extra stam and hp.

This put me somewhere around 1820 health, 155 stam and 1010 weapon dmg.

The hard part is learning to dodge her sephiroth shit. It absolutely can be dodged on a med roll build but the timing is hyper precise for all of its attacks and you should expect to take some stray hits. With high vig, phys resist and poise they will be pretty negligible though. I found that rolling towards her side as she lunges is best. Dodge spam is guaranteed to get you killed so just relax and practice the timing.

Malenia wasn't easy with this build but it felt doable the whole way through.

 

[Curratum]

I really wish my FPS wasn't such complete ass in at least half the boss fights so I could get a better idea of exactly how bosses play when you can actually dodge how you want, but the way things are, on this unoptimized stuttery heap of garbage running on my dated hardware, this is just not possible. Frames swing from 30 to like 50 constantly, every time something produces a lot of fx and particles on the screen, frames just dip hard and the game eats inputs hard, it's a mess.

I realize I have been particularly whiny and salty, but I'm getting framerates that make all boss fights that require high precision completely impossible without big cheese and it's making me pretty mad, can't lie.

Even in the fucking final boss, where there's NOTHING being rendered in the scene and arena, the game still drops a lot of frames when certain effects happen, it's just not as bad as some fights with more detail and distant geometry on the screen.

 

[deem]

Fucking great. The game crashed, it saved my progress but not the item I looted from a downed enemy.

 

[Curratum]

Fucking great. The game crashed, it saved my progress but not the item I looted from a downed enemy.

Try playing offline, man. I haven't had a single crash in 100 hours, but that's all offline.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Speaking of Malenia has anybody tried blocking her bullshit combo with an upgraded greatshield + block talisman items? Is it set as an unblockable aoe? Does it delete stamina too fast to survive it? Or can it actually work for str builds?

With barricade shield + a greatshield, blocking any attack requires literally 0 stamina. So you can block the entire thing with no stamina loss but it will still heal her.

I feel like dynamic combat music in open world games always sucks. I hate enjoying the games nice atmosphere and then some crab or octopus spots me and suddenly it's generic combat music.

 

[deem]

Apparently once you kill a wandering merchant his stock will be available to buy at Roundtable Hold.

 

[NJClaw]

Speaking of Malenia has anybody tried blocking her bullshit combo with an upgraded greatshield + block talisman items? Is it set as an unblockable aoe? Does it delete stamina too fast to survive it? Or can it actually work for str builds?

With barricade shield + a greatshield, blocking any attack requires literally 0 stamina. So you can block the entire thing with no stamina loss but it will still heal her.

With a fully upgraded Fingerprint Stone Shield and the Greatshield Talisman, you don't even need the barricade weapon art.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Does upgrading shields decrease the stamina cost for blocking beyond the shield's basic value?

 

[NJClaw]

Does upgrading shields decrease the stamina cost for blocking beyond the shield's basic value?

Yes. For example, the Fingerprint Stone Shield (which is love and which is life) goes from 81 boost to 90 at +25.

 

[Curratum]

Does upgrading shields decrease the stamina cost for blocking beyond the shield's basic value?

Yes. For example, the Fingerprint Stone Shield (which is love and which is life) goes from 81 boost to 90 at +25.

Imagine upgrading a non-weapon to +25 in the game's upgrade mat economy :D

 

[Curratum]

Final boss spoilers.

Spoiler

 

[Ramnozack]

Fucking great. The game crashed, it saved my progress but not the item I looted from a downed enemy.

What fixed crashes for me was playing in borderless window mode. I was crashing quite a bit before when I was playing in fullscreen.

 

[Cromwell]

Imagine upgrading a non-weapon to +25 in the game's upgrade mat economy

somber for weapons, normal stones for shields.

 

[Eyestabber]

somber for weapons

This, but not because I love Twinkling Titanite weapons, but rather because it's less of a pain in the ass. Farming regular titanite in this game is terribly boring.

I really wish my FPS wasn't such complete ass

Eh...bad FPS makes every game like 30% worse. In my case, updating Nvidia drivers to the latest "Elden Ring optimized" version did improve things a bit.

Try playing offline, man. I haven't had a single crash in 100 hours, but that's all offline.

I had 0 crashes with my...."demo" version. With the standard edition I had like 3 crashes, all of them MP related. And one time I had the blackscreen bug.

 

[perfectslumbers]

With a fully upgraded Fingerprint Stone Shield and the Greatshield Talisman, you don't even need the barricade weapon art.

Greatshields are the real easy mode, I love it

This, but not because I love Twinkling Titanite weapons, but rather because it's less of a pain in the ass. Farming regular titanite in this game is terribly boring.

Not only that but you can get a +9 somber weapon before stepping a single foot into altus plateau

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

I love how it even has the audacity to warn you to use the quit function next time after it fucking crashes.

And then it bans you for its crashes.

 

[Curratum]

Just beat the game after trying the final boss a good number of times.

Level 126 after eating the 500k runes the boss gives. 102 hours playtime on Steam.

Not a great game, not a terrible game. Definitely didn't impact my imagination and won't stick with me the way DS1 and 2 did. About as uninspired and "by the numbers" fantasy as DS3.

Took away some beautiful screenshots and not much else. The gameplay experience boiled down to exploration which got incredibly stale about halfway into the game, and dealing with unpleasant boss fights that are way too ranged-friendly and overtuned / fast to be enjoyable and worth learning solo, and way too dumb and brainless when done with the powerful summons, which I was sadly forced to do.

There were less memorable and awesome boss fights in this game than there were in DS games, even 3. This is already saying a lot about the game, given the sheer number of bosses. The boss repeats / reuses were nauseating too.

A colossal effort was put into the asset creation and art direction of the game, but everything else about it is on a level that I ultimately find to be lesser than the DS games.

A respectable 7 out of 10.

Now back to playing Tank Mechanic Sim...

 

[Curratum]

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I reached Caria Mansion. The giant hand enemies there literally give you the middle finger when they cast their spells. Given the range and speed of their attacks, this is absolutely intentional.

Take comfort in the thought that Miyazaki doesn't just stroke himself to using the same bosses eleven times in different locations, he also does it with enemies, but just makes them bigger next time around.

Spoiler

 

[Funposter]

Speaking of Malenia has anybody tried blocking her bullshit combo with an upgraded greatshield + block talisman items? Is it set as an unblockable aoe? Does it delete stamina too fast to survive it? Or can it actually work for str builds?

Blocking against her is 100% pointless since her lifesteal effect still activates. She doesn't actually need to deal damage. Better to just pump VIG to 45+, stack Slash resistance armour and attempt to roll through it.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

You can allegedly bait/trick some of the enemies with the input reading, though I never found a situation I could use it to my advantage.

You pretend not wanting to punish by not inputting anything during the wind-down of a could-be-combo-string attack, just wait for the actual recovery animation to kick in AND THEN DO PRESS THE ATTACK BUTTON HARHARHARHAR. Suck it AI

One crash in 120 hours, wouldn't say it's exactly crashy.

 

[Funposter]

How do you craft a balanced experience when the expected power level of the player can vary so dramatically? The answer is that you can't.

I bet if from software implemented level scaling most of their fans would say it's a breakthrough in game design.

Elden Ring has level scaled trash mobs. HP and damage of creature types is not internally consistent. It's just not done algorithmically ala Oblivion, but it also affects more enemy types than the level scaling in that game.

 

[Tyranicon]

So does Fromsoft hate the idea of a boss rush mode? I killed some of the bosses too quickly and don't want to have to re-do entire questlines in NG just to fight them again.

 

[Brickfrog]

That fucking hand scared the shit out of me. Not even mad about it being just a resize, the placement is perfect. One of the best traps in the game.