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

[Alphard]

SL100 and +20 weapon (which puts me in the range of +25) and one summon in Haligtree for half an hour. All summoning pools up to Loretta already unlocked.

I guess 99% of people get here at level 140+ or some shit. Weak.

i don't know how far im into the game , having unlocked the capital and now exploring nokstella, but i'm already lv 86. i think unless you intentionally limit yourself, you' ll end up overleveled by just exploring manically every corner like i do

 

[mediocrepoet]

SL100 and +20 weapon (which puts me in the range of +25) and one summon in Haligtree for half an hour. All summoning pools up to Loretta already unlocked.

I guess 99% of people get here at level 140+ or some shit. Weak.

i don't know how far im into the game , having unlocked the capital and now exploring nokstella, but i'm already lv 86. i think unless you intentionally limit yourself, you' ll end up overleveled by just exploring manically every corner like i do

You pretty much have to stop leveling and either sit on runes or blow them on mats and weapon upgrades, otherwise you go pretty high level. Of course, I don't know that it's "overlevelling", depending on what you do with it. If you keep your vigor and endurance relatively low (depending on your skill level, I guess), it can still be pretty challenging. Damage stats are subject to diminishing returns and only some weapons scale with more than one or two of them. Imo, if you're still having fun with it, it doesn't really matter unless you care about multiplayer and even then, mostly for pvp.

If you want to pvp, I'd just recommend setting up a specific pvp character, grabbing the weapons and spells you want and then park it at the level and upgrade level you're aiming for. No need to complete the game unless you need to NG+ for multiple weapons or something.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Actually on the subject of leveling and overleveling, it's important to remember that they've also nerfed a few things since release. Like duo AI is significantly less aggressive now since 1.04.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Spoiler

It's true. Bloody slash has carried me through almost the entire game. The fact that bloody slash can apply the blood quality to a weapon doesn't matter because the move itself doesn't cause bleed buildup, and I only bother using normal attacks against enemies that aren't worth the HP cost - enemies that would die in 1 or 2 hits anyway. If bleed effects become better somewhere in the final 10% of content then they are pretty easily accessible to me as an arcane build.

I'm very glad there is more to Arcane than just bleed, because I've gone through most of the game and it hasn't shown itself to be OP yet except against Rennala's first phase. Using bleed with spinning chain let me get her to phase 2 the first time I downed her. But it was bloody slash that killed her in her second phase.

If someone were thinking of doing an arcane build for the bleed I'd say don't do it. A faith build with arcane 13 (for dragon spells) using a weapon with around 55 native bleed can buff that weapon with bloodflame blade and get the effect when they need it, and arcane doesn't scale that buff. This gives almost as much buildup as what a character with arcane 50 gets on the same weapon with the occult quality. You get around 20% more if you use the blood quality, but with a big cost to base damage.

It's a lot to invest for something so situationally useful that can be achieved (If you ever need to) without the arcane stat. It likely is a lot better in PvP. I've not done the PvP. Even there the buff would be fine though. It lasts a decent amount of time and adds damage to the weapon as well.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Spoiler

It's true. Bloody slash has carried me through almost the entire game. The fact that bloody slash can apply the blood quality to a weapon doesn't matter because the move itself doesn't cause bleed buildup, and I only bother using normal attacks against enemies that aren't worth the HP cost - enemies that would die in 1 or 2 hits anyway. If bleed effects become better somewhere in the final 10% of content then they are pretty easily accessible to me as an arcane build.

Oh come on, you have to admit that was funny.
We disagree on pretty much everything you're saying but it doesn't really matter. Different approaches and builds are part of what makes these games great.

 

[mediocrepoet]

You can't be serious. Bloody slash is one of the first weapon arts almost everyone finds. Very soon after you're introduced to the smith that can duplicate weapon ash and you've probably already found a blank one. Redding is teh hard.

Have you personally done this? Used a Blood Infusion on an early, barely upgraded weapon and rekt its base damage and scaling for extra Bleed build-up? If so, how many times have you managed to proc Bleed at that point during an average Boss fight?

In the middle of doing so now to prove a point. At starting damage stats for a warrior (levelled up vigor a bit because Margit was giving me a bad time), with +0 bleed scimitars (duped the bloody slash weapon art), Margin bled four times, the Beastman of Farum Azula bled twice, Leonine Misbegotten bled three times. All the battles were well under two minutes which is around how quickly I normally beat them with upgraded weapons (you can have 1 +6 before you fight Margit if you want to and I've never gone in to fight him with less than +2 or +3, even the first time I played). It might actually be a little bit faster than I normally beat them since my fights normally average around two minutes.

If you want, I'll post the videos and you can count them yourself and we could even calculate proportion of regular damage to bleed.

I'm curious if I can get 5 bleeds out of Godrick, I thought I could out of Margit, but either the diminishing returns builds up too hard or I didn't have enough uptime on him when he starts getting spastic.

Either way, what I think is gross is when you layer frost and bleed together on dual weapons and go to town since the bleed will continually proc and frost will also give you burst damage + a 20% damage resistance debuff on the target. If you want, you can keep removing it with fire and reapply it, but unless your build is weird, it's probably better to just leave it up for the armour shred.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Actually on the subject of leveling and overleveling, it's important to remember that they've also nerfed a few things since release. Like duo AI is significantly less aggressive now since 1.04.

Laaaaaame i had no idea.

As far as multiplayer goes, i'm not into PvP all that much. I like 1vs1 duels and had my fill of those in DS2 and DS3, but i don't like being an asshole and never enjoyed that aspect of ruining people's time. I'm lawful good in real life i guess lul.

As i explained early on, this is the first time i bought a From game on release, so what i've been trying to do since the beginning is milk as much co-op as i can get every step of the way, not only to take advantage of the high population pool while the going is sitll good but also to catch all the people who never played the game, which at this stage is probably most of them, as i get a real kick guiding people through an area, pointing to all the secrets etc.

At the sime time, i've also been trying to limit leveling to avoid trivalizing content or raise the challenge in general.

So from the start, the idea has been that of balancing those two goals. Whenever i finish an area, i start doing co-op in that spot and i slowly bump my level until i start getting some decent connections. If the connections are already good i don't actually level at all and move to the next area after i had my fill of co-op for that section of the game.

Since my next charactger is definitely going to be a SL1 run, it's good that i'm getting all the co-op now since i won't be getting any then.

 

[Alphard]

I love tower puzzles in this game. first one i had to kill 3 turtle spirit. then i had to make wisdom gesture. then another 3 turtle spirits to kill. then i find converted fringe tower with the same message than the older one. i do the wisdom gesture in front of the statue and nothing. i try it in every corner of room to no avail. then find a message saying "you need head" and he is doing the gesture. i go outside and following the blue bright flowers i find a lightened eyes skull.
i 'm on the right track! the developer message said the wisdom will light up your way. plus the other message said you need head. it must be skulls representing wisdom that will indicate the way! Then i proceed to try to find a pattern in wich skulls are arranged, maybe following the lightened up ones line will lead me to the next.maybe i have to find all the bright skulls and break them. i spend a hour messing with the skulls and looking for some clue , trying to find the directions the eyes are pointed at. even going backward from them ( maybe they are dead so they are not wise and i must go the opposite direction...
finally i give up and look at the Wiki.

Spoiler

i had to make the wisdom gesture with a hat

FUCK ME AND FUCK THIS GAME

 

[mediocrepoet]

Actually on the subject of leveling and overleveling, it's important to remember that they've also nerfed a few things since release. Like duo AI is significantly less aggressive now since 1.04.

Laaaaaame i had no idea.

Yeah, for sure. I wasn't trying to call you out or anything. Actually, I think the nerf to the duos was actually an improvement in terms of having fun and a reasonably fair challenge.

This whole video is fairly interesting, but I set it for the timestamp where it talks about the change in duos.

 

[Lyric Suite]

No wonder the duo crucible knight fight was so easy. Where as the one with the trio crystallians were a clusterfuck with me running around for half an hour or whatever that was.

[EDIT] I guess the Godskin Duo fight is also nerfed now. At least i'm close to Melenia unless a new patch drops within the next several days lmao.

 

[Bloodeyes]

This game is so addictive. It's got such a simple system I don't really understand why it's so fun to make builds in it. It's the complete opposite to my previous obsession, Pathfinder Kingmaker. Still, now that I'm nearing the end of my second character's journey I'm already thinking I'd like to make a third character that stacks HP and DR to the max possible and uses the 80 ish percent damage negation of colossal weapons. Maybe there is something to be said for less "crunchy" character progression mechanics. Building in this system is about as simple as it gets - attributes, gear, talismans and ashes. You just think of a character and make it, you don't need to figure out how to make it. I thought I liked the figuring out and strongly preferred class-based systems. But I'm loving the freedom of classless. Obviously I've played classless before, I've just never appreciated it as I do now.

This is as rudimentary as RPG mechanics get and yet there's enough here to motivate multiple playthroughs, each running hundreds of hours. I think I have at least two more characters in me TBH. The colossal weapons tank and a pure INT build.

 

[Bloodeyes]

No wonder the duo crucible knight fight was so easy.

What? Easy? I'm in awe. That fight is a fucking nightmare.

 

[Lyric Suite]

No wonder the duo crucible knight fight was so easy.

What? Easy? I'm in awe. That fight is a fucking nightmare.

Compared to all the multiple boss fights i did when i was still on 1.03 it was a talk in the park:



I did notice how passive the other one was but never considered the implications. The fight took a long time only because they are immune to bleed so my damage was really low. Would have took less time if i had used parry but i wanted to display my roll-fu skillz.

The one with the Misbegotten Warrior and Crucible Knight was near impossible for me unless i managed to kill the first before the second joined the fray. I expected this one to be much worse since i knew it would have been impossible to kill one as far as i could kill the Misbegotten Warrior instead it was mostly just a 1vs1 while the second one joined the fight only sporadically. Serious nerf.

 

[Bloodeyes]

The one with the Misbegotten Warrior and Crucible Knight was near impossible for me unless i managed to kill the first before the second joined the fray. I expected this one to be much worse since i knew it would have been impossible to kill one as far as i could kill the Misbegotten Warrior instead it was mostly just a 1vs1 while the second one joined the fight only sporadically. Serious nerf.

Huh, I actually managed to beat the Misbegotten and the Crucible fairly easily this time. I managed it barely last time. Yeah I kill the first guy before the second one spawns. That just makes sense. He doesn't have much HP so killing him only takes a few seconds and I'm not trying to keep him around just to make life more difficult for me. I haven't attempted the Duo Crucibles this time yet, but last time I walked away from it in utter frustration. I was using an OP summon as well (Banished Knight Oleg +10). Hopefully this time goes better. If I could figure out how to record from my PS4 and post it online I'd video the fight.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I assume the PS4 has some native recording capability. You'd have to then copy the file out of it since you said you don't have internet on it (the idea you have to pay for internet on console still buffles me).

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nice, got three summons, three connection errors.

So we are back to this shit are we?

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i tried to switch back to the morning star out of a whim and lmao no way.

Right now i got Craig Blade on the Great Stars with the Jelly Fish Shield, that Talisman that gives you extra damage at max HP and Golden Vow: maximum bonk!

Fuck bleed if it procs it procs.

 

[Alphard]

No wonder the duo crucible knight fight was so easy.

What? Easy? I'm in awe. That fight is a fucking nightmare.

Compared to all the multiple boss fights i did when i was still on 1.03 it was a talk in the park:



I did notice how passive the other one was but never considered the implications. The fight took a long time only because they are immune to bleed so my damage was really low. Would have took less time if i had used parry but i wanted to display my roll-fu skillz.

The one with the Misbegotten Warrior and Crucible Knight was near impossible for me unless i managed to kill the first before the second joined the fray. I expected this one to be much worse since i knew it would have been impossible to kill one as far as i could kill the Misbegotten Warrior instead it was mostly just a 1vs1 while the second one joined the fight only sporadically. Serious nerf.

well i just killed them too and didnt notice that much differrence since last time i had tried them . it was the hardest boss i beated til now. harder than when i did margit at lv 14 or so. they took sonmething like 30 tries to go down . i think you just got better at the game. on the other hand misbegotten + crucible was very easy for me ( patch 1.03) because misbegotten is very frail and you can kill easily before crucible comes in melee range.

 

[Alphard]

btw i respecced from my str -fai build into arc bleed build with dual katana. aside from the fact that i still haven't ROB and using the shitty serpentman katana ( without bleed and impossible to AOW), i like the bleed procs on bosses but i don't like very much the dual kata L1 moveset. maybe i should have gone for the build of the Bloodhound fang, whose moveset i like more

 

[Dhaze]

i don't know how far im into the game , having unlocked the capital and now exploring nokstella, but i'm already lv 86. i think unless you intentionally limit yourself, you' ll end up overleveled by just exploring manically every corner like i do

You pretty much have to stop leveling and either sit on runes or blow them on mats and weapon upgrades, otherwise you go pretty high level.

Yeah, I explored every inch of the game thoroughly and ended at level 163 I think. But then I see people reaching the end while being shy of 100, and I wonder "What happened? What did you do with your runes?"

Even my subsequent playthroughs, that took around thirty hours each, had me reaching 130-140 by the end.

then i find converted fringe tower with the same message than the older one.

The very second I did the gesture there and it didn't work, I knew it had to be some bullshit like that. I just knew. So I tried everything I could think of, including going for a respec. and pumping my Intelligence to 99, then casting Rennala's Full Moon (the highest-requirement sorcery) inside Terra Magica. Surely that proves a modicum of erudition, right? Nope.

Never found the answer by myself. I only searched the wiki after the end of my first playthrough—and I hope whoever came with that idiotic enigma will get brain cancer in their ass.

That's what I call 'Developer's Logic'. It's when the solution to an ambiguous puzzle or enigma only makes sense in the developer's mind (or a likewise diseased one); and despite other solutions being demonstrably equally appropriate as the intended one, none of them will work, because of course they won't—can't let player creativity be a solution.

In a way it harkens back to the point-and-click games of the 90's, in which you'd end up clicking with every item you've collected over every pixel on the screen, to then mutter, "That's what I was supposed to do? Holy shit devs, what were you smoking?"

Oh but the three turtles necessary to open Chelona's Rise? Yeah, arguably even worse, and that one confused me for a solid hour. Because there is no indication whatsoever that the turtles might well be at the other side of the fucking promontory.
On top of that, if you die while searching for the turtles (at, say, the paws of a nearby house-sized spastic red wolf), the turtles disappear and you have to re-read the placard near the tower to make them reappear. I searched for half an hour after dying, before coming back to re-read the placard, then noticed the turtle hanging on the cliff that I was sure had not been there a minute earlier.
And on top of that yet, I had found the turtle hanging on the cliff, as well as the one on the other side of the area, and had been desperately searching for the third one for about twenty minutes when all of a sudden popped the message that the seal had been opened. But I hadn't found the third one... Because the one at the top of the Spirit Spring hadn't spawned for me, yet died on its own, somehow. The same thing happened to a friend.

I can't believe I'm saying this but Owlcat's devs, who created Nenio's puzzles in Wrath Of The Righteous, have been put to shame by FromSoft's devs when it comes to worst puzzle design. It's awful. Just awful.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's phenomenal. Power went out while i was being summoned in co-op, and now it tells me the save is corrupted. Following a guide to see if i can fix it. If i can't, game over, for who has the will to start the fuck over.

I mean i made a manual back up but it was 10 days ago. I think it was in the Capital.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Checked the back up save, it was even before i killed Rykard. Fuck my life.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Shit man that's really fucked up ...

 

[Lyric Suite]

Tried both of these:

https://steamlists.com/elden-ring-how-to-fix-corrupted-save-data/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782187284

Neither worked. Gonna try again and look for more fixes, but i have a feeling it's caput.

 

[Bloodeyes]

I finally beat those bastard Crucible twins. I went in with full heavy armour + DR charm and DR physick. Got them both to aggro on the mimic tear, then hosed them down with rotten breath. Then I just slashed at them for a bit healing the small amount of damage they were doing when I dropped below 1/3 health. They went for the tear again and I finished them with another rotten breath. Fuck it. I'll take it. A win is a win.