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

[mediocrepoet]

Actually, re: an earlier discussion on Melania's mechanics. I was tooling around trying to see if there was a way to blender her and, honestly, if she didn't have the "cheating" stun cancel leap thing, you could do it pretty easily. I actually blendered her for a significant portion of her health before she did that and then went immediately into point blank waterfowl while I had no stamina left.
It made me laugh, but man, what a way to lose.

Other than that, I'm not sure if it's common knowledge, but in the patch now, if you poise break her and finish her with a critical hit, even if this would drop her to massively negative health, she won't transition. She'll get back up and fight at 0hp and heal off of any hits she does to you. For best results either avoid using a critical attack if you poise break her at low health, or be ready to follow it up with something once she's fully gotten up. If you hit her with something while she's still getting up, it still gets "absorbed" by whatever glitch is making her not die from the critical attack. I assume it's related to the glitch that was blowing up enemies if you bleed them at a phase transition. I don't think it's the same thing though because I'm pretty sure the second phase is actually a different character object. I actually lost from this glitch once too because I was expecting a breather from the cutscene and she hurt me enough before I noticed what was going on that I couldn't recover from it.

 

[Monstrous Bat]

I've reached 100 hours, level 90, and hit a crisis. The boredom got me, too much open world, too much recycling, not enough excitement. The difficulty in this game is fucked. Either you go too early for say Crucible Knight and suffer, or you come back too late to some of the bosses and they go down too easily. In those 100h, the only bosses who were hard for me were Margit (10-15 tries) and Draconic Tree Sentinel (10+). Possibly I may add Shaded Castle boss to this list, as he seems to be designed to screw anyone who is running with a slower weapon (I'm using Large Club), but we'll see. I'm still keeping the weapon at +13, even when I could go to +16, only because I'm afraid that some of the bosses I missed won't be fun :/ Based on what I read here, some of the late game bosses will probably quickly change my mind about the 'easy' part.

Does it make sense to force myself and still explore every nook? Or just skip to main path at this point, if I'm bored? I'm pretty much done with Caelid (most of it), debating between Nokron or Leyndell.

If you're getting bored of the open world the best course to take is stop doing the open world. I had a similiar experience at ~70h where I felt burnt out by the open world, but then I went to Leyndell and my interest was reignited immediately.

I recommend doing Nokron before Leyndell though.

 

[volklore]

I don't doubt that a quick katana might be more damaging. But I don't find colossal swords lacking with their huge Poise damage and enemy stagger.

Just so you know, according to the wiki a fully charged R2 on a colossal sword does 40 poise damage, meanwhile the Unsheate L2->R2 does 30 while being much faster and almost as damaging

I don't think the wiki is very accurate with poise dmg values. Unsheathe is not that great for posture damage. I remember testing a bunch of posture-damaging weapon arts on the omen in capital underground and unsheathe was the only one among them that did not posture break in 2 casts. Comparatively Square off, lion's claw (lion's claw pancakes enemies as well), Flame of the redmanes, impaling thrust, glintstone pebble and many others all poise broke the omen in 2 casts. And I don't even mention the pure damage AoW like sword dance which can be slotted on greataxes or halberds. Unsheathe is fine but I don't think it's as amazing as people make it out to be.

 

[Vibalist]

Other than that, I'm not sure if it's common knowledge, but in the patch now, if you poise break her and finish her with a critical hit, even if this would drop her to massively negative health, she won't transition. She'll get back up and fight at 0hp and heal off of any hits she does to you. For best results either avoid using a critical attack if you poise break her at low health, or be ready to follow it up with something once she's fully gotten up. If you hit her with something while she's still getting up, it still gets "absorbed" by whatever glitch is making her not die from the critical attack.

You sure this is a glitch and not FromSoft adding some more 'difficulty' to the proceedings?

 

[Child of Malkav]

A bit late but who said that shaded castle is the best mini dungeon in the game? Anyway, lol fuck no. That area is the most bullshit area in the game. It's filled with enemies, zombies, zombie enemies standing in a corner waiting to push you off or grab you for an instakill if you have low vig. Plus those page enemies that shoot 3 explosive bolts with their SMG crossbows. And "noble" sorcerers that also hide behind bookshelves and stuff to ambush you with a pebble. Fuck that area. Level design wise it's pretty good, but going through it? Ask Memehackzaky to do that shit.
Edit: forgot the perfumers. Yet another amazingly designed enemy.

 

[NJClaw]

grab you for an instakill if you have low vig

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Took out Radagon and his bedroom pet Elden Breast by maximum amount of cheese. I mean I did it all here people, switched to Fingerprint Shield for max holy damage negation, summoned a mimic tear, applied fire grease to weapon (it does really good things to Elden Breast). For bonus points, watch Porky sit on the throne as he rightfully deserves at the end, after completing yet another difficult game:

Try rolling next time

 

[Caim]

There is an alternate ending to his questline. If you do not know what it is you'll never find out on your own.

Same goes for Dung Eater.

Dung Eater, eh? What's that all about?

It's a massive workaround, but it's possible. It's also intertwined with the quest of another character.

Spoiler

As you start Ranni's questline Preceptor Seluvis (the guy who made Ranni's doll body) will give you a date rape drug and tells you to give this to Nepheli. Instead hold onto this and do not collect the Fingerslayer Blade. Continue all the way to Leyndell, free the Dung Eater from the sewers, fight him in the moat near the crabs north of the city, return to where you found him and give him the date rape drug instead. You can then buy a Dung Eater puppet from Seluvis. Buy his puppets with Starlight Shards, give him the Amber Starlight to receive a talisman, and after that pick up the Fingerslayer Blade and give it to Ranni. Return to Seluvis and get his stuff. Do not continue Seluvis' quest, because this will end Ranni's quest prematurely.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Don't mind me, i'm actually kind of in love with this boss now lol:



Tried to use some buffs not to make the fight be so long.

Few things i noticed, first, that strike damage doesn't actually seem to make much of a difference, so i used my sword instead of the morning star. Second, flame art does more damage than the lighting one, despite everybody mentioning elettricity as one of its "weaknesses".

Flame art also does more damage than occult but that's probably because this thing has so much physical resistance. With Godrick rune i have 30 faith and 50 arcane but flame art is still better.

 

[Andnjord]

I don't doubt that a quick katana might be more damaging. But I don't find colossal swords lacking with their huge Poise damage and enemy stagger.

Just so you know, according to the wiki a fully charged R2 on a colossal sword does 40 poise damage, meanwhile the Unsheate L2->R2 does 30 while being much faster and almost as damaging

I don't think the wiki is very accurate with poise dmg values. Unsheathe is not that great for posture damage. I remember testing a bunch of posture-damaging weapon arts on the omen in capital underground and unsheathe was the only one among them that did not posture break in 2 casts. Comparatively Square off, lion's claw (lion's claw pancakes enemies as well), Flame of the redmanes, impaling thrust, glintstone pebble and many others all poise broke the omen in 2 casts. And I don't even mention the pure damage AoW like sword dance which can be slotted on greataxes or halberds. Unsheathe is fine but I don't think it's as amazing as people make it out to be.

Interesting. When testing stuff against Bell Bearing Hunter, the Colossal Sword would poise break him in two charged R2 and a Lion's Claw, while the Uchigatana did it in two charged R2 and two Unsheathe, suggesting it is indeed 40 and 30 respectively. (or it might have been two hits for the Colossal and three from the Uchi, not sure but same ratio)

Lion's Claw is certainly my favourite though, because of its good range, fast movement and crouched position at the end that makes enemy attacks miss and significant hyperarmour all make it a greatly reliable trading tool.

 

[Efe]

The only reason it did not happen is because all of you fags were too busy trying to see who had the biggest dick. Spoiler alert they are all tiny.

played a 1.5 playthrough with rpgcodex multiplayer tag.
sadly met nobody

 

[mediocrepoet]

rpgcodex multiplayer tag.

What's this?

 

[Nathir]

Godfrey isn't that tanky. In fact for the penultimate boss I'd say he is fairly squishy. Combined with his long power-up animations he can be killed really fast. I think both him and Malekith could actually use additional hp. And I don't think his attacks are that unfair. Everything he does is telegraphed and easy to tell when to dodge. It is true he is very fast and relentless. But then again, most bosses in ER are deliberately designed like this. Combined with the epic, larger than life presentation, it was easily my favourite fight in the game. I never felt he was cheap in any way.

He has no tells in that fucking running embrace he does at the start of 2nd phase. Just runs toward you with arms held up and then takes 3/4ths of your healthbar unless you guess right on the dodge time. And the other shit has such bad tells it might as well not have tells, like when he lifts one leg up, the holds it like a dog for 10 seconds, another time when he drops it right away, it's just complete shit meant to fake people out. Like all the other bosses too. No one except a few select autists beats these bosses on timing.

You are just bad.

 

[Efe]

on multiplayer tab you can set up to 5 tags so text, summons etc from those players show up as circles instead of square and u also get a notification when those players kill shardbearers, gods, etc
talked about it like 200 pages (311) ago but I guess nobody bothered.

 

[mediocrepoet]

on multiplayer tab you can set up to 5 tags so text, summons etc from those players show up as circles instead of square and u also get a notification when those players kill shardbearers, gods, etc
talked about it like 200 pages ago but I guess nobody bothered.

I think a lot of people including myself were playing purely solo games at least at first. I usually try to get a handle on things and then engage with multiplayer if I still feel like playing the game because that's when I start trying to beeline for items and keep my levels around meta, etc.

 

[Efe]

blue hunter ring got me into multiplayer mood and its nice if you can run across someone. if you get into seekers or sseth's group you get spammed with notifications tho.

2nd playthrough I summoned 1 or 2 players every small fight (like catacombs). Felt like rune arc santa.
Pvp multiplayer didnt get me hooked since everyone had inevitable lag and desync. felt bad fighting for minutes to end up disconnecting every time.

 

[Andnjord]

Cross posting from the Sekiro thread since this is relevant here too:

Now that I've played Sekiro for some time, I can see why people have been saying that Malenia looks like a boss fight lifted straight from Sekiro. She has those varied sword combos that would feel right at home there, the gamut of perilous attacks with a sweep attack, a lunge lifted from phase 3 Genichiro, a grab and of course her Waterfowl dance is straight up Spiral Cloud Passage if the little drawings on the skill are anything to go by. It's only the second phase that feels a lot more Souls-like to me. I could really see her being a fun Sekiro boss where all those combos require different responses and give offensive opportunitues to punish her, but further reinforces my feeling that she just feels out of place and unfun in Elden Ring with its Souls-like combat mechanics.


Which brings me to my next point: I really wish From would use Sekiro's combat as the basis for their next games and I am retroactively very disapointed that they didn't do so for Elden Ring. Imagine that combat but with stronger RPG options, shields giving more generous but less effective deflection windows, heavy armour bouncing ligher hits but preventing good side-step/dodging, equip loads determining what combat arts are available to you, spells still here... This, frankly, would be my dream game, ever more so if From would put it in their trademark fevered dream version of some unusual setting like bronze age Mesopotamia. I get that not everyone liked Sekiro's combat, but Elden Ring's has not exactly been unanimous here either.

The typical Souls-like combat feels more and more inadequate the more they push its speed I find. It's still fun overall, but it felt so much more appropiate with the slower speed of Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1. Bloodborne strikes a delicate balance with its ranged parries, rally mechanic and quick side-stepping allowing for a more pro-active gameplay, but the speed and movesets of Elden Ring promotes a much more passive approach where the general tactic is to avoid a boss combo, get one attack in, wait for its next combo to finish, get one attack in, rinse and repeat. Sure, you can trade with a lot of bosses by good usage of defensive consumables, spells and weapon arts, but spamming Lion's Claw and Moonveil gets old quickly. I'll have to echo the sentiment of many other posters in that the speed of the bosses feels mis-matched to your options as a player. I still had fun with it, but it sits right at the edge of the envelope that From has kept on pushing in their last games, and I hope they are aware of it. Malenia for example sat just outside of it, where it was no longer fun to fight her within the parameters of the combat system for me.


That being said, From Soft has made 4 games that I would praise without hesitation since Demon Souls (DeS, DaS, BB and Sekiro) and three others that I still enjoyed greatly despite a fair bit of criticism (DaS 2 and 3 and Elden Ring) so I'll probably end up DAY 1 PURCHASING whatever they do next, but I'm very curious if not a little bit wary of where they'll go next.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Sekiro and Elden cRinge are fundamentally different. Sekiro has the cool factor, the other one is filled with dorky grimdark cringe.

 

[Caim]

Deepest lore time! Why does the Loathsome Dung Eater eat dung?

Spoiler

Because the soul is stored in the anus.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Deepest lore time! Why does the Loathsome Dung Eater eat dung?

Because eating the doodoo and shoving things up his ass is right up the alley of Miyazaki's stated preference for masochism/femdom.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

Deepest lore time! Why does the Loathsome Dung Eater eat dung?

Spoiler

Because the soul is stored in the anus.

He'd be a good match with Amber Heard, who'd leave him snacks in their bed.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i cleared Mt Gelmir and i'm now doing the Volcano Manor dung.

Gotta say, this place looks amazing.

 

[Alter Sack]

So I am new to dark soul games.

What is a good starting character/class for beginners?

It also seems that the starting points that each class has are different.

So should I take the class with the most total points?

And is an allround character a feasible option?

 

[pakoito]

So I am new to dark soul games.

What is a good starting character/class for beginners?

It also seems that the starting points that each class has are different.

So should I take the class with the most total points?

And is an allround character a feasible option?

Everything is viable, nothing is "all-rounded". Some stuff is minmaxable but ignore that for now because you can respec later.

Pick one or two main damage stats and equip any weapon that looks cool and aligns with your stats. STR and DEX for weapons, INT and FAITH for spells, ARC if you're about debuffs. There are secondary interactions like DEX making casting faster, but they're not necessary to progress in the game.

HP and Stamina are dump stats for when you have enough damage. Mana if you're building a caster or feel you don't have enough.

 

[NJClaw]

What is a good starting character/class for beginners?

Your starting class isn't as important as in most other games. It basically only determines your starting equipment and what your lowest ability scores will be. If you don't care about spells, the Vagabond probably is the most balanced option, since it gives you a shield with 100% physical block, an all-around good weapon like the longsword, and a "poke" weapon useful in many situations. If you want to try a "caster", choose between the Astrologer and the Prisoner for a "wizard" or between the Prophet and the Confessor for a "cleric". But I would advise against playing a spellcaster as your first character.

HP and Stamina are dump stats for when you have enough damage.

This is the exact opposite of what you should do. In the early and early-mid game, you gain so little damage from scaling that investing in STR and DEX for damage is basically useless. Getting to 30 Vigor as soon as possible should be a priority for 90% of the characters. I'm going through my first SL1 playthrough right now and you only start to feel like you're dealing less damage than necessary around Leyndell, which means that for the entirety of the first 1/4th of the game you can still deal plenty of damage without ever touching your STR and DEX.