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

[Bloodeyes]

Yeah I probably left about half of Caelid unexplored, and not sure I want to return there. I remember trying to grab a part of its map but couldn't figure out how to reach where it's supposed to be and gave up on it. Altus Plateau I did quite a lot of, I think. Siofra River I remember, I tried exploring there but those fucking archers pissed me off so I left. Rest of the areas I have no idea how to access, and there's no way I am bothering with From's retarded quests so I guess that Nokstella area I'll be skipping.

I guess time to retry Siofra River.

The archers seem difficult at first but you can beat them easily. Just don't attack them front on. Their chain attacks don't stop. Run at them diagonally. It's actually really easy to avoid their arrows with sideways movement. Then just use your favorite method of big damage to kill them, be that your L2, a jump attack or a forward roll into R1 to stagger followed by a combo. The Caelid maps are on the road. The part you (probably) don't have yet is too high level for you. You can get there by jumping across the gap near the ruins where you first enter Caelid, but I don't recommend it before level 100 or so unless you're much better than me at this game.

Siofra River should be a cake walk at your level. If for some reason it isn't go to Rennala and respec. You may not have enough vigor or your build may be spread too thin. At your level I'd normally have vigor in the 30s with weapon prereqs done, endurance at 15-20 and be starting to pump my main stat. But there are other ways that work.

As for the open world seeming empty, it really, really isn't. The dungeons are just really well hidden. Try using the wiki map and you'll be amazed at all the cool dungeons you missed. The mini dungeons are my favorite part of the game and some light guide usage is worth it to find them all.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This weird thirst pic is kind of bad enough on its own, but it's worse when you consider that she's literally a spirit inhabiting a doll, with thread stitched joints, etc. Also the doll has no breasts, as far as anything noticeable is concerned.

Good artist though, nice pic.

 

[Mauman]

This weird thirst pic is kind of bad enough on its own, but it's worse when you consider that she's literally a spirit inhabiting a doll, with thread stitched joints, etc. Also the doll has no breasts, as far as anything noticeable is concerned.

Good artist though, nice pic.

https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/806?tab=description (NWS)

You may despair now.

 

[mediocrepoet]

https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/806?tab=description (NWS)

You may despair now.

Modders and other denizens of the internet are horny deviants, news at 11.

 

[Yosharian]

I always beat her pretty easily just using bleed weapon (claws). No summon required. Last time I played was on patch 1.03, so don't know how bleed is now.

Both Tiche and bleed generally are much much weaker against Malenia now

 

[NJClaw]

Both Tiche and bleed generally are much much weaker against Malenia now

Can you argument that "much much"? I haven't perceived anything different regarding bleed.

 

[Yosharian]

Can you argument that "much much"? I haven't perceived anything different regarding bleed.

There's a video on YouTube showing how much different it is, Tiche is just what I've experienced, she gets fucking wrecked, sometimes even in phase 1 - she's still super useful though.

 

[ferratilis]

Now, that's impressive

 

[Dhaze]

Similar thing happened to me, though by happenstance. I was distracted for a few seconds while playing, thus found myself straight into Comet-Radahn's trajectory and thought for sure I was going to get one-shot. But no, for in clutch came the Greatblade Phalanx I had hovering over my head.

Completely unexpected. Very neat.

 

[Nathir]

I don't think Bleed was changed, it's still pretty strong when you build around it.

Anyway, damage is not the problem, I proc Bleed and Frostbite on her easily, I can melt away more than half her HP during my initial salvo (first 20-30 seconds of the fight) if I don't fuck up. The problem is, of course, Waterfowl Dance which I will never learn to dodge properly even if I start playing Elden Ring as a day job. My strategy was get in -> proc Bleed twice and Frostbite once during the first 20-30 seconds to take away more than half her health -> run away as far as possible -> keep sniping her from afar with Frenzied Burst until she uses Waterfowl -> use the fact she has an "internal cooldown" on that ability to get close again and hopefully finish her off.

The strategy works well during the first phase, but she's much, much more aggressive during the second one which makes it impossible to bait her into doing Waterfowl while you're 3/4 of the arena away from her. I might have to replace Sepukku on my Nagakiba with Bloodhound Step. The Bleed game is going to suffer, but hopefully it will keep her from randomly one-shotting me.

Does she even have a cooldown for waterfowl? How long? When I fought her a few days ago, I remember she did two Waterfowls one after another against me, atleast 2 times.

 

[Yosharian]

If you're struggling with Malenia and you're willing to do anything to beat her there is a pretty easy way to do it, no skill required

 

[Multidirectional]

Just spend 20+ minutes riding around Siofra River looking for last couple fires to light that I kept missing. Especially last one seemed to take forever to find. It really pisses me off how much time I waste in this game on boring shit like that.

And of course boss that got unlocked from it died in less than a minute. Ok doesn't seem like I can find anything else here. Found a lift to Caelid which made me happy as I thought I was finally gonna be able to grab that map piece that I cannot figure out how to reach, but nope. All if found there were those annoying golem archers and some red sign summons that completely raped me.

 

[Sacibengala]

It really pisses me off how much time I waste in this game on boring shit like that.

Yeah, this is one of the worst part in the game, but fear not, there are other part that you need to do this all over again. But the boss is a little better moveset wise.

 

[Lambach]

Does she even have a cooldown for waterfowl? How long? When I fought her a few days ago, I remember she did two Waterfowls one after another against me, atleast 2 times.

It's what I've read somewhere, not sure how true it is, but I personally never had a problem with her doing two of those in a row, there's always a decent bit of space between them.

Despite that, however, my Bloodhound Step strategy worked only marginally better than attempting to dodge, which meant that I could get her to phase 2 60-70% of the time, but was completely hopeless against her in phase 2. Because of her vastly increased aggression, I couldn't rely on "spacing out" Waterfowls so sooner or later, she'd get one off while I'm right under her, and then even Bloodhound Step doesn't help.

So after getting repeatedly ass-raped for a cumulative 4-5 hours, and seeing no way in hell I'll be able to perfectly dodge her phase 2 Rot-infused Waterfowls, I concluded Miyazaki is a cunt and decided to go all out on cheese. Summon Mimic Tear -> run far away -> deplete my whole FP bar casting Borealis's Mist to trigger Frostbite -> keep spamming Smarag's Glinstone Breath at Malenia while Mimic is Bleeding her with extra damage from Frostbite-> rinse and repeat during the second phase.

And despite all of that, I still owe my victory to RNG gods, because Mimic died when Malenia was at her last ~30% HP during the second phase, and I managed to take down that last bit of health "properly" because she didn't do the motherfucking Waterfowl once during that time.

 

[Lyric Suite]

In one of my tries with her, she did it six times during the first phase. I don't think there's really a limit, the AI can just do it whenever the algorithm rolls the specific dice that trigger it.

 

[Lambach]

Just spend 20+ minutes riding around Siofra River looking for last couple fires to light that I kept missing. Especially last one seemed to take forever to find. It really pisses me off how much time I waste in this game on boring shit like that.

And of course boss that got unlocked from it died in less than a minute. Ok doesn't seem like I can find anything else here. Found a lift to Caelid which made me happy as I thought I was finally gonna be able to grab that map piece that I cannot figure out how to reach, but nope. All if found there were those annoying golem archers and some red sign summons that completely raped me.

That's why I mentioned to you earlier not to disregard quests and use online guides to get through them if you're not autistic enough to figure them out on your own - there's a lot of good content hidden behind utterly absurd design choices in terms of unlocking it.

I personally don't understand why someone would spend so much time and effort designing and developing pieces of content only to intentionally hide them from 90+ percent of the players, but Miyazaki is gonna Miyazaki and we can all only marvel at his Aspie brain. If you follow the Siofra-related questline, you get a boss fight very similar to the one you're describing, only better. And despite it being rather meh mechanically, it's still one of my favorites in all of Soulsborne, just because of the overall atmosphere, arena design, soundtrack, visual effects etc.

Spoiler, I guess:



Imagine wasting this OST on a Boss the vast majority of players will probably never see and those who do will run through the Boss in like 3 minutes or so:



Miyazaki gonna Miyazaki. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Multidirectional]

That's why I mentioned to you earlier not to disregard quests and use online guides to get through them if you're not autistic enough to figure them out on your own - there's a lot of good content hidden behind utterly absurd design choices in terms of unlocking it.

Yeah maybe I will eventually, problem is there's already WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH content as it is, without even trying to do these quests. Still no clue were to go next now, apart from Leyndell which I am also kinda lost at. Is that well you can climb down the way to go there? Cause I did go up to the tower there, only to find yet another locked door. 75 fucking hours in this game and I'm probably not halfway done. Fuck you FROM. If next game of theirs is gonna be like this again then I will have to skip it I think.

 

[Nathir]

I completed my second playthrough and went with the Ranni ending. Why can't I kill Ranni? You can kill all the other demigods but her. And she is the only demigod you can join for a specific ending, while you can only kill all the others. You can't even tell Malenia about Miquella. Why can't I join up with Rykard or Morgott? There is even a quest where Seluvis wants to turn Ranni into one of his puppets. But it doesn't do anything but backfire. Ranni just knows about it and has the power to instakill you, while you can't do anything back. All of this makes me wonder if From considers Ranni's story to be the cannon version? How hard would it be for them to make it you can give Ranni the potion, and she drinks it. Seluvis then sells her as a puppet and has extra dialouge, and you are locked out of the Ranni path?

This game has so much missed potential as far as the narrative elements go.

 

[Lambach]

Yeah maybe I will eventually, problem is there's already WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH content as it is, without even trying to do these quests. Still no clue were to go next now, apart from Leyndell which I am also kinda lost at. Is that well you can climb down the way to go there? Cause I did go up to the tower there, only to find yet another locked door. 75 fucking hours in this game and I'm probably not halfway done. Fuck you FROM. If next game of theirs is gonna be like this again then I will have to skip it I think.

Online guides, brah. Online guides.

Like I said, I genuinely tried to follow in-game "instructions", such as they are, and explore everything organically with no outside help. I really did. For the first 30-ish hours. Then I figured that I was wasting too much of my free time just randomly stumbling about and doing nothing, spending too much time on the shit parts of the game and trying to decipher FROM's collective schizophrenic hivemind instead of enjoying all the good parts of the game that make it really worth playing (and there are many, many such parts).

So I just took the L and started Googling everything. Most things I did not need too much help with, just some basic pointers and advice in regards to where to fucking start at least, because the fucking game is irrationally cryptic about that too, but some things I followed YT step-by-step guides, because fuck trying to figure out which particular wall in a gigantic dungeon is an illusionary one that you have to attack for it to disappear, where this particular NPC I need for this quest is going to randomly appear on this gigantic map without the game giving me any clue, and stuff like that.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So the patch notes say something was done to the quests anybody knows what?

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah maybe I will eventually, problem is there's already WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH content as it is, without even trying to do these quests. Still no clue were to go next now, apart from Leyndell which I am also kinda lost at. Is that well you can climb down the way to go there? Cause I did go up to the tower there, only to find yet another locked door. 75 fucking hours in this game and I'm probably not halfway done. Fuck you FROM. If next game of theirs is gonna be like this again then I will have to skip it I think.

Online guides, brah. Online guides.

Like I said, I genuinely tried to follow in-game "instructions", such as they are, and explore everything organically with no outside help. I really did. For the first 30-ish hours. Then I figured that I was wasting too much of my free time just randomly stumbling about and doing nothing, spending too much time on the shit parts of the game and trying to decipher FROM's collective schizophrenic hivemind instead of enjoying all the good parts of the game that make it really worth playing (and there are many, many such parts).

So I just took the L and started Googling everything. Most things I did not need too much help with, just some basic pointers and advice in regards to where to fucking start at least, because the fucking game is irrationally cryptic about that too, but some things I followed YT step-by-step guides, because fuck trying to figure out which particular wall in a gigantic dungeon is an illusionary one that you have to attack for it to disappear, where this particular NPC I need for this quest is going to randomly appear on this gigantic map without the game giving me any clue, and stuff like that.

Yeah I will be doing that from now on. Seems you have to have basically zero life to explore this thing on your own.

Great, cannot figure out how to remove my post from the quote. Fucking hate learning new interfaces.

 

[Lambach]

I completed my second playthrough and went with the Ranni ending. Why can't I kill Ranni? You can kill all the other demigods but her. And she is the only demigod you can join for a specific ending, while you can only kill all the others. You can't even tell Malenia about Miquella. Why can't I join up with Rykard or Morgott? There is even a quest where Seluvis wants to turn Ranni into one of his puppets. But it doesn't do anything but backfire. Ranni just knows about it and has the power to instakill you, while you can't do anything back. All of this makes me wonder if From considers Ranni's story to be the cannon version? How hard would it be for them to make it you can give Ranni the potion, and she drinks it. Seluvis then sells her as a puppet and has extra dialouge, and you are locked out of the Ranni path?

This game has so much missed potential as far as the narrative elements go.

Methinks at least some of those things are either fully present in the game files already but only locked until the DLC comes out, or the DLC itself will contain that "missing link", so to speak.

There's already a lot of reasonably well-argued speculation on YT about Miquella's cocoon location being the starting point for the next DLC, as well as several other theories.

But then again, people were similarly speculating regarding Tomoe-related DLC for Sekiro and that never went anywhere.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Just spend 20+ minutes riding around Siofra River looking for last couple fires to light that I kept missing. Especially last one seemed to take forever to find. It really pisses me off how much time I waste in this game on boring shit like that.

And of course boss that got unlocked from it died in less than a minute. Ok doesn't seem like I can find anything else here. Found a lift to Caelid which made me happy as I thought I was finally gonna be able to grab that map piece that I cannot figure out how to reach, but nope. All if found there were those annoying golem archers and some red sign summons that completely raped me.

Yeah maybe I will eventually, problem is there's already WAY TOO FUCKING MUCH content as it is, without even trying to do these quests. Still no clue were to go next now, apart from Leyndell which I am also kinda lost at. Is that well you can climb down the way to go there? Cause I did go up to the tower there, only to find yet another locked door. 75 fucking hours in this game and I'm probably not halfway done. Fuck you FROM. If next game of theirs is gonna be like this again then I will have to skip it I think.

After completing the initial Siofra area, you have two options that I mentioned earlier:

(1) Descend the well-elevator in eastern Liurnia to Ainsel River and explore that area until you reach a boss-fight (Dragonkin Soldier of Nokstella); I completed this in my game much earlier than the initial Siofra area, but I think the intended order is the reverse.
(2) Since you've defeated Radahn, you can descend the newly-created crater in south-eastern Limgrave to reach Nokron, Night's Sacred Ground, and Siofra Aqueduct.

Since you're looking at on-line guides now, I suggest checking Ranni's quest-line and following it.

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah I have just entered Nokron. Absolutely zero chance I would've found that area without looking it up.

 

[Lambach]

(1) Descend the well-elevator in eastern Liurnia to Ainsel River and explore that area until you reach a boss-fight (Dragonkin Soldier of Nokstella); I completed this in my game much earlier than the initial Siofra area, but I think the intended order is the reverse.

Lulz, I also beat the Dragonkin Soldier way before I realized this area was part of some questline. I was just randomly exploring, got in waaaay over my head, but decided "fuck it, the cunts around these parts drop a lot of Runes and aren't too difficult to kill, might as well press on". You can imagine my surprise after defeating the Dragonkin Soldier (after 2 solid hours) in that arena with a very important-looking giant skeleton hanging above us, that literally nothing happens. I got a Great Glovewort or something or another, but that's it, no further progress. Just beat a Boss, got a bunch of Runes, got an item I can't use (because I was lacking Gloveworts from like +6 to +9 to be able to use the +10 one) and that's that. Zero explanation as to why I'm here, what's the significance of what I accomplished, or what the ever-loving fuck I'm doing in this place to begin with.

And that was one of the many reasons I decided not to indulge FROM in their irredeemable autism and just Google everything.