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

[SumDrunkGuy]

These late game areas truly are ass. I have 50 vigor and one of the best armor sets in the whole game and yet 3-4 hits will kill me.

 

[Talby]

If you want to explore a space that feels lived-in, try going outside and getting a life.

 

[Efe]

yeah, an action game for G N O S T I C S

speaking of, I love how Ofnir is sorta like Anasurimbor Kellhus + Socrates. I wondered why they called him all-knowing when it was clear he wasn't omniscient and was thirsty as fuck for information. His eventual explanation/reveal is pretty dope

what was his reveal? all I saw was a nihilist loser

 

[cvv]

speaking of, I love how Ofnir is sorta like Anasurimbor Kellhus + Socrates. I wondered why they called him all-knowing when it was clear he wasn't omniscient and was thirsty as fuck for information.

Ah fuck now I remember the old fart promised me some unique AoWs if I tell him the locations of the hidden bosses. Oh well, a goal for an NG+.

What does he drop btw?

 

[Wunderbar]

cvv a crafting cookbook, and a bunch of shitty incantations.

 

[Nathir]

Weebs be like:

 

[Lithium Flower]

yeah, an action game for G N O S T I C S

speaking of, I love how Ofnir is sorta like Anasurimbor Kellhus + Socrates. I wondered why they called him all-knowing when it was clear he wasn't omniscient and was thirsty as fuck for information. His eventual explanation/reveal is pretty dope

what was his reveal? all I saw was a nihilist loser

Ofnir tells you that the pursuit of knowledge of endless - thus he calls himself all-knowing despite not knowing all. Since there is more knowledge than he can ever know, he is as close to the goal of knowing everything as he was when he was born. He recognizes this in a sort of "I know that I know nothing" way, and is utterly dedicated to this endless pursuit.

A remarkable trait of Gideon's is his ability to obtain secret knowledge through indirect means. He appears to have studied the Law of Causality (cause-and-effect determinism embedded into the order of the world, mastering which would be like practicing prescience from Dune or Kellhus' probability trance) to the point of being able to synthesize an effect simply from knowing about its cause. This is evidenced not only by him giving you unique information/rewards but by the fact that he is able to use Malenia and Mogh's moves if you tell him about their demise.

Perhaps because of this, he is an extremely callous and Machiavellian man. His agents commit espionage and atrocities, he does not show sympathy for anyone, and he readily discards his adopted daughter Nepheli and servant Ensha after they stop being useful to him. The whole game he spends doing nothing because he does not have to do anything to win - he just needs to encourage you to follow the path to becoming Elden Lord and swoop in the last second. You are merely the cause of his effect.

But when you burn the Erdtree, he doesn't become Lord in spite of beating you to the capital. He fights you, proclaiming that Marika wants to remain eternal and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Yet the description of his set states that when he glimpsed Marika's will, he "shuddered at the end which should not be."

This means that Ofnir is potentially one of the few characters besides yourself, Goldmask, and maybe Ranni to comprehend the fickle duality of Marika/Radagon - that the God simultaneously wants to reign eternal, and reign not at all. And in the former case, that of an Order prolonged and prolonged ceaselessly, would Ofnir not be at a constant advantage?

Where is his endless pursuit accomplished if not in a world without end?

Little wonder, then, that instead of ending and restarting this Order as its Elden Lord he would rather prevent you from doing the same and thus prolong it indefinitely.

A terrific character whose strengths and flaws follow naturally from his motivations.

 

[Efe]

If that was the case he would be searching for rune of death but thats the one rune he seems to not care at all about

 

[Lithium Flower]

Destined Death? While it seems to only have visible effect on the Erdtree and Radagon, the implications of death unbound would only go against his goal, as I understand it, of endlessly prolonging the current order.

If you mean Fia's mending rune of the death prince, then 1. I am of the opinion that it is an end to immortality and a restoration of the natural life/death cycle, unlike how some others interpret it to be undeath on a mass scale 2. even if I am wrong, remember that this rune is an original product of Fia's, not an established part of the shattered Elden Ring. Ofnir wouldn't know about it.

And in any case mending the ring would basically restart the world to some extent, as we see by the Erdtree becoming... unburned, and I get the sense Ofnir wants Marika to remain an eternal God sans consort because that way the world can stay constant in its stagnation and brokeness.

 

[Lutte]

Destined Death? While it seems to only have visible effect on the Erdtree and Radagon, the implications of death unbound would only go against his goal, as I understand it, of endlessly prolonging the current order.

If you mean Fia's mending rune of the death prince, then 1. I am of the opinion that it is an end to immortality and a restoration of the natural life/death cycle, unlike how some others interpret it to be undeath on a mass scale 2. even if I am wrong, remember that this rune is an original product of Fia's, not an established part of the shattered Elden Ring. Ofnir wouldn't know about it.

And in any case mending the ring would basically restart the world to some extent, as we see by the Erdtree becoming... unburned, and I get the sense Ofnir wants Marika to remain an eternal God sans consort because that way the world can stay constant in its stagnation and brokeness.

> The Rune of Death is unbound
> And the Lands Between are shrouded by Death's dark fate
> But the Flames will also burn the impenetrable thorns.

It affects the whole land. Death is already back before you even reform the elden ring. The mending rune of the death prince has nothing to do with it. For the player character, the main reason for doing this is just to gain the ability to burn the tree and slay the elden beast but the moment the rune is unbound everyone, not just the erdtree and beast, can encounter destined death.

The death prince rune isn't some grand conspiracy about bringing back death. It is just as it seems : it's the product of a faction of people Who Live In Death, and just like the dung eater's rune is about cursing everyone to live a cursed existence like his, the death prince rune is about making everyone an undead.

From the mending rune description

>Formed of the two hallowbrand half-wheels combined, it will embed the principle of life within Death into Order.

Some of the simps thought it was a good ending, it's probably only slightly less bad than going with dung eater.

 

[Lutte]

By the way, the ending choices heavily remind me of the SMT series as a whole.

Spoiler

Basic elden ring restoration ending is like the typical neutral "go back to status quo" of humanity in SMT that tends to cause the cycle to happen again in the future
The mending runes are Law (perfected, imposed Golden Order), Neutral (Live in Death), Chaos (Curse, though, it's somewhat edgier than the typical chaos result and feels more like a joke ending than a legitimate choice)
Ranni is the idealized neutral ending of some of the games - Total freedom from established orders
Frenzied Flame is the nihilistic ending, like SMT IV's White Ending where you pick an end to everything, the motives are the same too "Life is suffering".

 

[cretin]

PVP wise this is shaping up to be DS3 all over again but even worse. There is zero build diversity at the moment, while cooping today my friend and I got invaded some 6 or 7 times and all but ONE featured a dual spear bleed spammer. I'm not exaggerating, all the same build aside from one guy who was... another bleed build.

You go reddit and of course cunts are preemptively screeching that bleed ISNT op, and that they know FS is going to nerf it. Of course, if it wasn't op you wouldn't all be using the same identical build and you wouldn't be scared of FS nerfing it into the ground. The biggest problem is these status effect builds using arcane scaling can just fucking proc you EVEN THROUGH IFRAMES. So it literally doesn't matter if you dodge or block, you're getting procced regardless.

Poise also seems pretty fucking useless so far, so heavy builds are getting the shaft yet again in favor of gay nerd builds somersaulting everywhere. One change I am glad to see it seems (?) harder to trigger a backstab and easier to escape from one. However, this also gives you less tools to deal with gay nerds.

 

[Nathir]

Those goddamn gay nerds at it again.

 

[d1r]

PVP wise this is shaping up to be DS3 all over again but even worse. There is zero build diversity at the moment, while cooping today my friend and I got invaded some 6 or 7 times and all but ONE featured a dual spear bleed spammer. I'm not exaggerating, all the same build aside from one guy who was... another bleed build.

You go reddit and of course cunts are preemptively screeching that bleed ISNT op, and that they know FS is going to nerf it. Of course, if it wasn't op you wouldn't all be using the same identical build and you wouldn't be scared of FS nerfing it into the ground. The biggest problem is these status effect builds using arcane scaling can just fucking proc you EVEN THROUGH IFRAMES. So it literally doesn't matter if you dodge or block, you're getting procced regardless.

Poise also seems pretty fucking useless so far, so heavy builds are getting the shaft yet again in favor of gay nerd builds somersaulting everywhere. One change I am glad to see it seems (?) harder to trigger a backstab and easier to escape from one. However, this also gives you less tools to deal with gay nerds.

The game was heavily designed around PvE this time, and it clearly shows.

Overtuned weapon arts, Bleed builds everywhere, meaningless PvP "covenenants", the incredible unstable multiplayer connections (70% of my invasions, and 35% of my coop sessions end up with a connection error), limited crafting materials, and so on.

I for example was going for a low lvl invasion build some days ago making use of certain items, and 10 hours in I realized, that I could only craft like 100 sleeping grenades (which are pretty strong in PvE, but not so much in PvP) before I had to go fucking NG+ to get another bunch.

Multiplayer balancing is a huge dumpster fire at the moment.

 

[Lithium Flower]

Lutte

Citations from memory so feel free to correct but let's be honest ain't no one got enough smegma to read my walls of texts.

Re: Destined Death unbound.

I would also assume it would be indiscriminate, however we do not actually observe that in game outside of the final bosses and Erdtree fully burning down. The player and all other enemies still respawn. Which means one of the following:
1. Gameplay/story dissonance, which could very well be it
2. Destined Death and its "dark fate" is more specific, or taking effect more precisely than we would expect of a truly indescriminate Death. Perhaps guided by Melina's (who is totally the Dusk-Eyed queen that once controlled DD by the way) will to put an end to the stagnant order.

But either way, you are ignoring the fact that once the Elden Ring gets mended, DD is likely getting confined again, because you are to some extent resetting the world's laws back to the way they were prior to the shattering, which excluded the tune of Death. To be an Elden Lord you need to be Maria's consort and the act of you putting her body together as you mend the Ring implies she is returned to some form of life, and recall that "the Golden Order was created by confining Destined Death." You achieve a more absolute version of said order in its ending. Age of Fracture is a bit more ambigious but you are continuing the status quo which has the legacy of Maria's ambition to be endless, hence no rune of Death. And Dung Eater specifically wants to infect the order with the seedbed curse so that people die and are reborn into the curse, implying immortality is restored by default.

Meanwhile in the Age of the Duskborn the gold of life is gone from the tree and sky, and the world is shrouded in an ashen fog and black flies can be seen on the ground - albedo and nigredo, purification and putrefaction.

And, I would like to note, that in spite of the peculiar imagery, its narration and soundtrack are the most peaceful of all the endings.

Re: Rune of the Death-Prince.

First of all, careful, because that's my sex worker's son you are talking to. But your interpretation is a common one but requires an extremely literal and selective reading that throws out all the context.

For instance you draw attention to the principle of life in death but skip over the 3rd paragraph which actually explains what that means:
"The Golden Order was created by confining Destined Death. Thus this new order will be one of Death restored."

Life in Death is currently a pretty sorry state because it, like the rest of the world, is corrupted. Due to the machinations of the Night of the Black Knives, Death did not properly take shape in the world and was effectively split into death of the body and death of the spirit. This is why the undead we encounter are either bodiless spirits or souless zombies/skeletons. Restoring Death would mend this.

Bear in mind the alchemical process that was required to make the Rune. Godwyn's death of the soul is combined with Ranni death of the body. Fia dies gestating the rune - as above, so below. If she wanted to spread undeath as-is, how come she did not become undead herself? How come Godwyn is not exhibiting some active form of unlife, though she said she wanted to give him new life through the process of creating the rune?

And why is it that her blessings suggest that "in Death there is only peace" if she wants to curse everyone with restless undeath?

Because Life in Death means something other than that sort of classic fantasy undeath. I believe it broadly refers to the cycle of life and death outside of the Golden Order. Among ancestral followers we see ancestral spirits, very ancient yet whole in both body and spirit, becoming so after a particularly long lived beast inherits the spirit of an ancestor. They can be called forth through veneration and are established to be a common occurrence outside of the reach of the Erdtree and its laws. Paraphrasing but "life can come from death as well as birth - such is the way of the living."

So Death restored, I believe, is also life in Death restored - not undeath per say, but a spiritual legacy / meaning that transcends one's life, into death, and becomes the life of others. With this context Fia's dialogue becomes completely consistent. She wants to restore Godwyn to his rightful place as first of the dead, while also giving him a "second illustrious life" as in a meaning inherited beyond death just as the rune "will inherit your warmth, too." This, too, is why she dies to give life to something new.

Which forms a coherent character arc as she once was forced to take warmth from the living to lay with the dead chosen for her to ressurect them, and now she lays with Godwyn of her own will to give peace - a Death restored - to the ones unable to live or die. I think that is what it means to "stay the persecution of those who live in death."

 

[Silva]

BTW, i need to clarify something here. I'm talking about realism in the way the world is presented (as an actual functioning reality).

...

Call it a western prejudige but i found this element important in my appreciation of this particular company. But as far as "realism" like having people working fields, NPCs that aren't hostile, shit like radiant AI (lul) etc, i never expected anything like that because this isn't and was never meant to be like a western RPG.

My point was not exactly about realism but plausibility/internal logic. Every game has a fictional setting premise that it tries to back-up through evidences you can see/read about/interact/etc during play. No matter the genre or style, no matter if it's action or strategy or RPGs (see SMAC for an example of great in-setting internal logic). And Elden Ring simply struggles more than previous FROM games to uphold that premise. That's it.

And I think this problem originates in the openworld format. Because the earlier metroidvania format of DS1 allowed it to show you vistas of places you can't reach and say "there, the world". While in ER opeworld this "there, the world" must be actual maps that you walk upon and interact through play. And so the cracks in the facade begin to show, as the player starts to make simple questions like "Wait... where is this WAR the intro told me about? All I see are trolls pulling carts to nowehere and encampaments of soldiers doing nothing?", or if this world still have some vestiges of order and hierarchy as certain NPCs imply (Kenneth Haithe, Godrick, Morne Castle Lord and Dansel) then where are the people in this land living?". THAT's the point. My brain (and I bet a lot of other players') never really questioned DS1 or BB setting facade because it keeps the illusion well, while ER struggles to do so.

But again, this shit is subjective. It won't affect everybody enjoyment of the game. But for those it will, it tarnishes the immersion to some degree.

There's also realism in terms of aesthetic and mood and this is something that i would consider to be important. DS1, while still being very high fantasy, did have a "grounded" aesthetic which i appreciated more than the hyperfantasy found in DS3 and now Elden Ring.

Likewise, i generally prefer the more natural aesthetic of FromSoftware games in general as opposed to the pew pew fantasy of some competing franchises, like Nioh.

I agree 100%. I always apreciated FROM sense of style in avoiding the overt tolkienesque "mainstream fantasy", but this is exactly where they went in Elden Ring.

And not just in aesthetics, but functionally too, as the amount of MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC and POWERS POWERS POWERS makes everything look like a ultramodern D&D edition where everybody must shine like a little diamond (how cutie your Moonveil), and I cant do a fucking thief in dirty clothes and a rusted knife. No, I must use Reduvia the blood PEW PEW dagger, or Rivers of Blood the MAGIC blood sword, and wear some plate armor full of ridiculous appendixes because the game fucks me over for keeping light weight in my bandit garment.

 

[cvv]

yeah, an action game for G N O S T I C S

speaking of, I love how Ofnir is sorta like Anasurimbor Kellhus + Socrates. I wondered why they called him all-knowing when it was clear he wasn't omniscient and was thirsty as fuck for information. His eventual explanation/reveal is pretty dope

what was his reveal? all I saw was a nihilist loser

Ofnir tells you that the pursuit of knowledge of endless - thus he calls himself all-knowing despite not knowing all. Since there is more knowledge than he can ever know, he is as close to the goal of knowing everything as he was when he was born. He recognizes this in a sort of "I know that I know nothing" way, and is utterly dedicated to this endless pursuit.

A remarkable trait of Gideon's is his ability to obtain secret knowledge through indirect means. He appears to have studied the Law of Causality (cause-and-effect determinism embedded into the order of the world, mastering which would be like practicing prescience from Dune or Kellhus' probability trance) to the point of being able to synthesize an effect simply from knowing about its cause. This is evidenced not only by him giving you unique information/rewards but by the fact that he is able to use Malenia and Mogh's moves if you tell him about their demise.

Perhaps because of this, he is an extremely callous and Machiavellian man. His agents commit espionage and atrocities, he does not show sympathy for anyone, and he readily discards his adopted daughter Nepheli and servant Ensha after they stop being useful to him. The whole game he spends doing nothing because he does not have to do anything to win - he just needs to encourage you to follow the path to becoming Elden Lord and swoop in the last second. You are merely the cause of his effect.

But when you burn the Erdtree, he doesn't become Lord in spite of beating you to the capital. He fights you, proclaiming that Marika wants to remain eternal and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Yet the description of his set states that when he glimpsed Marika's will, he "shuddered at the end which should not be."

This means that Ofnir is potentially one of the few characters besides yourself, Goldmask, and maybe Ranni to comprehend the fickle duality of Marika/Radagon - that the God simultaneously wants to reign eternal, and reign not at all. And in the former case, that of an Order prolonged and prolonged ceaselessly, would Ofnir not be at a constant advantage?

Where is his endless pursuit accomplished if not in a world without end?

Little wonder, then, that instead of ending and restarting this Order as its Elden Lord he would rather prevent you from doing the same and thus prolong it indefinitely.

A terrific character whose strengths and flaws follow naturally from his motivations.

Sup Vaati.

 

[Sunri]

Elden Beast on ng+ gives me headache, so much hp.

 

[Efe]

Diablo1_reborn you cant make 100 pots. you have a limited and shared number of cracked pots, ritual pots and perfume bottles. 20 or 30 of one type (and none other) should be max.

Lithium Flower I meant that if gideon wanted to keep the said order forever he would have kept a stronger watch on ranni who did brandish death and ruined something/someone eternal.

Meanwhile in the Age of the Duskborn the gold of life is gone from the tree and sky, and the world is shrouded in an ashen fog and black flies can be seen on the ground - albedo and nigredo, purification and putrefaction

World is just as it was before ending here. Tree is still burned and its ash is on the air. I dont remember seeing any flies or putrefaction. I say this is the order before marika took out death + world got somewhat divested of grace so less gold

 

[d1r]

Diablo1_reborn you cant make 100 pots. you have a limited and shared number of cracked pots, ritual pots and perfume bottles. 20 or 30 of one type (and none other) should be max.

Lithium Flower I meant that if gideon wanted to keep the said order forever he would have kept a stronger watch on ranni who did brandish death and ruined something/someone eternal.

Meanwhile in the Age of the Duskborn the gold of life is gone from the tree and sky, and the world is shrouded in an ashen fog and black flies can be seen on the ground - albedo and nigredo, purification and putrefaction

World is just as it was before ending here. Tree is still burned and its ash is on the air. I dont remember seeing any flies or putrefaction. I say this is the order before marika took out death + world got somewhat divested of grace so less gold

It's about refilling them. I know that I can't have 100 sleeping pots at the same time.

 

[Wunderbar]

Finished Haligtree and beat Malenia.

Haligtree/Elphael is probably my second-favorite legacy dungeon in the entire game (after Leyndel capital). High level of verticality, very good encounter design, and cool secrets with valuable stuff in them. Really made me feel like I'm just a low-level player exploring my first dungeon.

Fuck Malenia though. The fight was extra hard because I'm running a super slow STR build with Prelat's Infernal Crozier, and she just kept dodging away from my slow swings. For the second time I had to use a mimic tear. Not only my mimic attracted her attention and tanked through her bullshit waterflow dancing move, together we were able to keep her in an almost constant stunlock.

 

[Wunderbar]

Melina asks you "are you sure?" before burning the Erdtree, so I assumed it's a point of no return. Is there something I should do before pressing "yes"?

 

[Lithium Flower]

Masturbate. It's the last time you will see Melina-chan UwU

 

[Wunderbar]

It's the last time you will see Melina-chan UwU

eh, who cares.
Melina as another "maiden-in-black-character" is a huge flop. She appears in the game like three times, I almost forgot who she was when she popped out in Leyndell.

 

[Sunri]

Melina asks you "are you sure?" before burning the Erdtree, so I assumed it's a point of no return. Is there something I should do before pressing "yes"?

Explore the capital, that's all, if u didn't you will miss one legendary weapon.