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

[Vibalist]

I assume you have lightning spear? That spell carried me throughout my entire playthrough.

I tried it against Astel, the version in the Consecrated Snowfields. 500 damage fully charged if it's a headshot, ~300 IIRC if it's not. And I rarely had the luxury of charging it fully, so those numbers are even lower. Dude has over 18k HP, would've taken forever. I ultimately beat him with Black Flame, the percentage-based bonus damage seemed much more efficient.

Yeah, the lightning spear works best in tandem with a regular attack. It's basically a magic bow. Go in for the attack on Astel, retreat when she starts doing AoE's, shoot lightning from a distance, get close again, etc. No offensive incant will do the job on its own.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Rotten breath is broken enough as it is what you guys want from incantations lmao.

Faith was always supposed to be about utility, and in DS1 at least i got the distinct impression lighting spears in particular were designed for co-op, not anything else. They are slow to pull off but do a shiton of damage to bosses and can only be aquired through the co-op covenant i always thought people were barking off the wrong tree by bitching so much those spells weren't as good as offensive sorceries.

I'm glad over the years From didn't cave and still made faith be about utility or situational uses instead of just becoming a clone of sorceries with yellow balls instead of blue balls.

 

[NJClaw]

And confusion is what the second phase is like because everything she does looks the fucking same. Every time she jumps in the air i have no idea what she is gonna do.

Each attack has a different starting animation:
- Waterfowl Dance: she jumps in the air with the blade behind her head and the knees slightly up;
- Scarlet Aeonia: she stays two hours in the air and "blossoms";
- Clones attack: while jumping, the air around her turns slighly orange-red.

Eveyrthing else is 99% identical to her phase 1. She has another jump where che comes down and then does her lunge, but that's easy to avoid because it's the only "normal" looking jump.

Clarification on the parry thing: she has that attack where she does two fast swings i can't parry if my life depends on it. I guess my reflexes are just too slow, that's why i'm trying to keep my distance a bit so i can roll out of it and parry the other attacks that are easier.

That attack is unparriable if you don't focus your entire attention on it for the entire fight. I'll quote the "strat" I posted in my LP:

Around the same time I also realized the only way to parry the standing slash of death is to constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY) think about it. I'm not exaggerating: my strategy consists in repeating in my head "now she is going to do that move" after every attack or animation, mentally picturing her moving her right arm up. If I don't do that, I can NEVER react in time to it. During attempts 40 to 60 I just trained with this approach and, believe me, getting used to repeating this every single second of the fight is easier said than done.

Also, notice how i didn't perform a critical attack at the end? Because for some fucked up reason she can survive it, even if her health is near zero i had to default with regular attacks. This game is wierd as shit sometimes.

A patch introduced a bug where killing her with a crit would spawn her in phase 2 already dead. FS decided that making her unkillable by critical hits is somehow fair (??). I think she becomes immortal during her entire animation, because even attacking her with regular R1s can't kill her.

 

[ELEXmakesMeHard]

This Swede is toying with her as though she were a trivial little pleb.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Also, notice how i didn't perform a critical attack at the end? Because for some fucked up reason she can survive it, even if her health is near zero i had to default with regular attacks. This game is wierd as shit sometimes.

She cheats. I watched a dude doing a one shot run and she goes invulnerable at that last bit of HP.. So one shotting her is impossible. Dude had to get creative.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i'm using the mimic to get to phase two quickly so i can practice it and the fucker either makes it worse or almost kills her herself what the shit.

 

[Caim]

So i'm using the mimic to get to phase two quickly so i can practice it and the fucker either makes it worse or almost kills her herself what the shit.

Your mimic switches between Let Me Solo Her and Fuck You Do It Yourself. I think it's bipolar.

 

[mediocrepoet]

So i'm using the mimic to get to phase two quickly so i can practice it and the fucker either makes it worse or almost kills her herself what the shit.

Your mimic switches between Let Me Solo Her and Fuck You Do It Yourself. I think it's bipolar.

That'd be a good video series. Making a co-op character called "Do It Yoself" and get summoned into a boss, get host to engage and then use the lay down emote.

 

[Dhaze]

So i'm using the mimic to get to phase two quickly so i can practice it and the fucker either makes it worse or almost kills her herself what the shit.

Your mimic switches between Let Me Solo Her and Fuck You Do It Yourself. I think it's bipolar.

That'd be a good video series. Making a co-op character called "Do It Yoself" and get summoned into a boss, get host to engage and then use the lay down emote.

In Dark Souls 3, a buddy had created a character named 'I Dont Care', and when summoned for a boss he would slowly walk to a corner of the room (or some crumbling wall or debris) then use the Sleep gesture with his back turned to the action, as if depressed or pouting.

We always wondered about the ratio of people who found that funny vs. people who were annoyed.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

So i'm using the mimic to get to phase two quickly so i can practice it and the fucker either makes it worse or almost kills her herself what the shit.

Your mimic switches between Let Me Solo Her and Fuck You Do It Yourself. I think it's bipolar.

That'd be a good video series. Making a co-op character called "Do It Yoself" and get summoned into a boss, get host to engage and then use the lay down emote.

In Dark Souls 3, a buddy had created a character named 'I Dont Care', and when summoned for a boss he would slowly walk to a corner of the room (or some crumbling wall or debris) then use the Sleep gesture with his back turned to the action, as if depressed or pouting.

We always wondered about the ratio of people who found that funny vs. people who were annoyed.

Back when I played Overwatch I made an account named Combat-Mercy and every game I would play as Mercy and only use her pistol, never bothing to heal my teammates. It was actually a fun challenge.

 

[cruel]

Freaking platforming after Mohg made me die more times in 25min than I did in the last 50h of gameplay, WTF.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[Nathir]

Fucking Malenia. I used a spirit summon on her on my first playthrough, but for my second playthrough I decided to do without it and solo her. I have been wiping for hours and can get her to the second phase semi-reliably. But it's such a slog of a fight, that requires for your every dodge to be perfect. I think I got her to 40% my best try. Then she just did waterfowl, which I dodged but she sent out her spirits imeddiately afterward. It's actually bullshit that waterfowl has no recovery. It should be punishable. She also input reads and can cancel stuff that is usually safe to punish into more attacks if you press a button too early. It's fun in a way, but also really bullshit.

 

[Vibalist]

So for someone who doesn't give the faintest of fucks about glintstone sorceries, is it viable to make an intelligence build nonetheless? I see so many good INT scaling weapons, and magic/frost dmg. is pretty powerful, so I'm thinking yes?

 

[Nathir]

Fucking Malenia. I used a spirit summon on her on my first playthrough, but for my second playthrough I decided to do without it and solo her. I have been wiping for hours and can get her to the second phase semi-reliably. But it's such a slog of a fight, that requires for your every dodge to be perfect. I think I got her to 40% my best try. Then she just did waterfowl, which I dodged but she went sent out her spirits imeddiately afterward. It's actually bullshit that waterfowl has no recovery. It should be punishable. She also input reads and can cancel stuff that is usually safe to punish into more attacks if you press a button too early. It's fun in a way, but also really bullshit.

And of course, after posting about it on the codex and taking a small break, I come back and do her within 5 attempts. Took me around 8-10 ingame hours, spread over the last 3 days but I finally did it. Beat Malenia using no summons. I was dodging everything the last try. Multiple waterfowls, multiple spirits and a random scarlet aeonia she did midfight. Her last desperation attack was the grab, which she never used in phase 2 before. Didn't catch me off guard though.

Spoiler

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, it's finally here, after a lot of sweat and blood:



You can see me fuck up some parries because i was actually excited. Didn't feel that tension for a long time. I could probably do it without such sloppiness if i kept practicing but fuck it, i'm too sick of her to bother lmao (will save that for my SL1 run).

Either way, guess my boomer credentials are finally confirmed once and for all. Imma go mow some lawn now, see you guys later. *sip*

 

[ferratilis]

 

[somerandomdude]

So for someone who doesn't give the faintest of fucks about glintstone sorceries, is it viable to make an intelligence build nonetheless? I see so many good INT scaling weapons, and magic/frost dmg. is pretty powerful, so I'm thinking yes?

You could melee stuff with an Int build, sure. Darkmoon GS is pretty decent for PVE, the buff is relatively FP efficient, and gives you free sword projectiles when it's active. But it's still a good idea to keep that comet azure in your backpack for a rainy day. Darkmoon GS does work good against the last few bosses in the game, including Malenia.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I found this to be pretty interesting and it presents a few details I didn't notice, but then I'm not the most visual person in the world, so...

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Nah, Artorias ruined Dark Souls 3's and Elden Ring's bosses. Fuck that DLC I wish it was never made. Thanks Miyazaki.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, now that i killed Melania the rest of the game feels a bit underwhelming. I'm back to the Mountaintop of Giants and it's like ho giant birds again, how quaint lul.

Hope the remaining bosses won't die in two hits like Morgott did lol.

 

[cruel]

Fire Giant takes takes the honorable place in the list of bosses that can be considered difficult (10+ tries), this makes it 3 at this point (Margit on early level, Draconic Sentinel, Fire Giant). WTF is this fight, so much time spent on hitting his knees with shitty camera, only to get one-hit by firestorm in phase 2, even with 40 vigor, heavy armor and flame protection amulet. The only redeeming quality about all of this was the video before transitioning to the second phase, I will remember that.
But, I must admit, even with all the complaints about this fight, it was actually quite... tactical. You need to learn and remember you need to hit an inside on his left leg. You need to remember to smack him ASAP when he does the transition, to get as many hits as possible. You need to use your horse for efficiency (first fight when it's actually that useful, maybe outside of dragons). Then you need to notice the huge telegraph before he does his 1-hit kill AoE firestorm, and just get as far as possible to avoid and let him spill fire. Horse is useful for avoiding his long range attacks as well, plus it's quite easy to loose his floating fireballs after some horse running. But, I really pity low-vigor characters for this fight.

 

[Raghar]

Lmao, the two ballista guys with the fat Erdree dude behind them and the knight. I totally didn't get rid of the archers with poison arrows or anything.

[EDIT] Ho wait it's four ballista guys. Something tells me i'm supposed to find another way to get in there.

[EDIT #2] Lmao the big knights have giant bows.

WTF. You normally go to the bottom area, find there are nasty enemies down there, try to climb the ladder find some person on ladder who is kicking you down, you are punching the person above, then you ran around and hide in bushes, and then you are thinking why everyone is hating you.

Then you find that ladder behind the guardian, thinking he'd ran away when he'd be outflanked, he doesn't, then you run around somehow get at that ladder where were these nasty cleanrot knights, and use mist to remove guardian. Then you win archery duel with a knight. And then when you jump in you find there is another knight and you are out of potions. So you summon Ancient dragon knight krystof, which would defeat him easily. See? it's easy, I obliterated stuff like a boss.

Or there might be possible some shenanigans with that branch and hand ballista +10 which I still didn't upgrade more, because I don't have enough runes for all stuff.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I've been taking a break from the game by running some co-op in that area, and when i get summoned its either for Melania or 100% of the times it is for PvP.

When i did that area i kept thinking that would have made for a good multiplayer map and point in fact it seems there's a lot of concentrated PvP in there. A bit too big perhaps and i sort of wish you could have more people on either side but it's still pretty fun. In one session all three of us spread out to hunt the invader and i actually had a lot of fun doing it.

 

[Multidirectional]

Back to this after taking long break to play a bunch of other games. I will be probably be the last person on this thread to finish first playthrough at this point. Please tell me that Black Knife Assassin I just killed isn't gonna be repeated many times in game. I did get lucky enough to do him on second try but fuck if this sort of shit doesn't trigger me. I don't need Dark Templar bosses, thank you.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Please tell me that Black Knife Assassin I just killed isn't gonna be repeated many times in game

Hahaha, my sweet summer child...

Spoiler

Not only you gonna fight him over and over but there's going to be invisible kinds and at one point four of them in a row (though mercifully not all at once).

On the upside of things, in most future encounters you'll have more room to fight him so it's not going to be as hard