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

[NJClaw]

That does indeed look awesome. Not sure why my performance with the thing was so lackluster. I maybe didn't give it enough time. I just respecced, smithed it to +8 and then attacked a few lightning knights. Yeah not only did they not go flying, they didn't take much damage at all. Is it possible to fuck up casting the ash? You say press L2 twice. I must have only been pressing once. I'll give it another go next time I'm messing with respecs and double tap.

By "pressing L2 twice", I only meant "using the ash of war two times". You don't need to double tap, every separate L2 activates it. Also, that was only to showcase the move, otherwise it's a very ineffective way of using the weapon: usually you can use L2, kill all the weaker enemies and send the elite one flying, and then charge R2 on the elite one while he gets up.

Are you sure you were clicking L2? If you satisfied the stat requirements and the damage was lackluster/enemies didn't fly, my only guess is you were using R2 instead.

So another question: You seem pretty familiar with most of the weapons. How would you stat for Death's Poker? I want to try a Necromancer on my next run who uses Death's Poker and the Prince of Death's staff. Both have multiple stats for their scaling. Is this even a feasible combination?

I'm familiar only with the weapons I've tried. Luckily, I've gone through an entire playthrough using Death's Poker, Sword of St Trina, Misericorde with Flame of the Redmanes, and a Pulley Crossbow with Sleepbone Bolts.

Spoiler

How fucking long have I been playing this game?

Death's Poker is an amazing weapon, but its scaling is weird because the regular damage only scales with STR and DEX, while INT only influences the ash of war. How you should distribute your points depends on how you want to use it. If you want to wield it as your main weapon, then you probably want at least STR 30 and DEX 50 (while two-handing it), which will give you around 700 AP. Your regular damage won't be anything crazy, but the ash of war will make up for it: even at INT 11, each mode deals thousands of damage. Going from INT 11 to 40, you can expect roughly a 20% increase in your ash of war base damage: maximizing it can be worth it, but even if you mostly ignore it the ash of war will be amazing. One thing you could do is to just stick to INT 20-30 and then use the Intelligence-knot Crystal Tear and Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear liberally for an insane damage boost (in my playthrough, 3 minutes have been enough for almost every single tough encounter in the game).

So I found the subterranean shunning grounds for the first time. I just never saw that well before. I killed the Loathsome Dung Eater. First NPC I've just straight up murdered but I saw no reason at all to let him free. Like, give me some motivation at all to do this thing, just any reason at all will be fine. Nope. "Let me go and I'll kill and defile everything you hold dear." Sure, sounds like a great deal but here's my counter offer: "Giant hunt, jump attack, giant hunt, jump attack, giant hunt, jump attack." His sword looks pretty cool. Can't take an ash or a blade buff though so it's stuck with 55 bleed. Oh well, at least it looks cool. Might figure out some use for it. Maybe use it as a wand to cast that debuff?

Why would you kill him? Look how cute he is!

One reason to keep him alive is that, once you finish his quest, if you give him Seluvis' Potion, you get the Dung Eater Puppet spirit summon, which is supposed to be quite useful since it should spam his weapon's debuff.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Death's Poker is an amazing weapon, but its scaling is weird because the regular damage only scales with STR and DEX, while INT only influences the ash of war. How you should distribute your points depends on how you want to use it. If you want to wield it as your main weapon, then you probably want at least STR 30 and DEX 50 (while two-handing it), which will give you around 700 AP. Your regular damage won't be anything crazy, but the ash of war will make up for it: even at INT 11, each mode deals thousands of damage. Going from INT 11 to 40, you can expect roughly a 20% increase in your ash of war base damage: maximizing it can be worth it, but even if you mostly ignore it the ash of war will be amazing. One thing you could do is to just stick to INT 20-30 and then use the Intelligence-knot Crystal Tear and Magic-Shrouding Cracked Tear liberally for an insane damage boost (in my playthrough, 3 minutes have been enough for almost every single tough encounter in the game).

One reason to keep him alive is that, once you finish his quest, if you give him Seluvis' Potion, you get the Dung Eater Puppet spirit summon, which is supposed to be quite useful since it should spam his weapon's debuff.

I have not idea how to format replies properly on the new forum. Forgive the mess above. That's good info on Death's Poker, thanks. I definitely want to try it. I'll try to be really stingy with my other stats so I can be as high as I can on the physical while still pumping INT. I don't want to do an INT run without being able to cast the INT spells. I think low endurance and medium low mind will be a must for this one. So my shield won't block much and I won't wear armour but my weapon will wreck everything. Spells will be a powerful but extremely limited resource, reserved for the toughest opponents. Sounds fun.

The shunning grounds are kind of a bitch. I've been left and right, down the bottom and cleared the catacombs. Killed two giant lobsters with a little luck and a lot of cheese (Heavy reliance on blue flasks down here, rotten breath + dragonice on big things softens them up nicely). Every time just to end up back at the start with the blasted door still closed. I'm going to look up a guide tomorrow. I've had it for the day.

As far as Seluvius' quest goes, that fool dropped dead. Every NPC drops dead on me after a time. Blaidd attacked me for no reason other than to give me his gearset. The only questline I've ever finished is Ranni. With everyone else I talk to them a few times then they're dead and I get their gear. Roundtable hold is basically empty. The cleric left, Roger died, D got murdered by the hugging lady who is now sleeping in the depths and I killed dung eater.

I just expediated the process with Dung Eater. I'll need to use a walkthrough for quests in NG+. Either they're all meant to die or I've fucked this up royally lol.

 

[NJClaw]

So my shield won't block much and I won't wear armour but my weapon will wreck everything. Spells will be a powerful but extremely limited resource, reserved for the toughest opponents. Sounds fun.

Drop the shield, embrace virility.

Playing without a shield allows you to either constantly two-hand your Death's Poker or use that and a staff at the same time. It would also make you experience the game in a different way, since you'll have to adapt more to enemies' movesets. Seriously, try it at least. It's easier once you're already familiar with the game.

To boost the ash of war damage, you can use the Spellblade's set (the one dropped by Rogier). It makes you look like a clown, but boosts your damage roughly by 10%.

I just expediated the process with Dung Eater. I'll need to use a walkthrough for quests in NG+. Either they're all meant to die or I've fucked this up royally lol.

They're all meant to die.

 

[Bloodeyes]

Drop the shield, embrace virility.

Playing without a shield allows you to either constantly two-hand your Death's Poker or use that and a staff at the same time. It would also make you experience the game in a different way, since you'll have to adapt more to enemies' movesets. Seriously, try it at least. It's easier once you're already familiar with the game.

To boost the ash of war damage, you can use the Spellblade's set (the one dropped by Rogier). It makes you look like a clown, but boosts your damage roughly by 10%.

I get where you're coming from. In my current playthrough I'm two handing more than 90% of the time, I just have my turtle shell on my back for the stamina regen. It looks pretty cool with the raptor's black feathers. Very anime and quite effective. My strat is to attack like crazy with WA's and jumping heavies and make things dead before they make me dead. It usually works. Still, there are some things I just can't deal with without swapping to a 100% damage negation shield and heavy armour.

Far fewer than there used to be, but I have no goddamn idea how I would have beaten the mature fallingstar beast without a shield in one hand and black flames in the other. I think I was around level 100 when I fought him and he was just demolishing me like I was level 10 with that charging back and forth. I only needed to get caught by 1 and I'd be killed before I stood back up.

I saw what you did to the tree sentinal in your LP... yeah that guy's on my shield list too. I don't fight him before I get 20 vigor and 15 endurance to be able to block a shot and survive when I screw up. Remember I haven't been playing souls games for the last decade, this is my first one. I've come a long way in terms of skill but have a long way to go yet. The shield has gone from an always equipped primary armament to a sometimes used secondary but I'll probably need to be playing Elden Ring 2 before I can do without it entirely.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think i'm almost at the end, or at least feels like it. I'm standing in front of fog guarded by a draconic knight but before i go there there's a whole section i still have to explore plus from what i understand a dragon boss but i'll do that tonight.

 

[Yosharian]

Killing Dung Eater mostly means you can't do his ending, which is a dumb ending anyway so who cares

 

[cruel]

Some cool stuff shown, I wasn't aware of many of those. I'm definitely impressed with the amount of tools given for player's disposal:

 

[Lyric Suite]

So let me get this straight. For the whole game, From decided to put a grace or a statue of Marika nearby the boss, but for this one they decided to make you run five miles back, on a boss with random one shot from goofy hitbox:



At first i couldn't dodge that diving attack without taking damage from the trailing lighting. Not the first one, the other ones where he comes at an angle, but as an experiment i tried to see if i could block it, which didn't help lmao. Then at the last dive he makes i finally figure out how to dodge it, and i felt like the retard i am for not figuring out i had to roll on the side and not into him and right into the lighting smear he leaves on the ground. Big head slap moment.

For the rest it's not a bad boss, less annoying then the dragon you fight in Fia's quest, but the walk back with those ledges where it takes you forever to get moving again after landing onto one was really obnoxious. At least they didn't think of slapping a bunch of birds along the way.

As for the Beastman, i liked how he "reveals" himself he was Maliketh all along, and all i could think was "bitch, who?". Took me five hours to upload the fight with the dragon on youtube and meanwhile i did some co-op runs so i saw the reveal lul. Don't feel like doing it now tomoroww i'll get to it. Almost over, after more than two fucking months hahaha.

 

[Raghar]

Took a large pause after Melania or what's her face and i'm now trying to finally finish this lol.

Killed this faggot who did nothing to reduce my hatred of giant bosses:



So i guess now i gotta burn down the tree and i'm near the end. To say i'm actually looking forward to get it over with is an understatement lmao.

He's easy. You just summon black flame monk and after 40+ attempts you'd get that Fire giant.

 

[Child of Malkav]

 

[Sentinel]

In retrospect, this game was pretty fucking bad and the natural conclusion of every bad habit FromSoft fell into after Dark Souls 1.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Been trying to upload Maliketh video but it's been stuck in "HD" processing for two hours. Just deleted it and i'm now trying again. Fucking fuck.

I think bleed may have been a liability for this one as i played recklessly to get that proc but this guy is so spazzy i got more than a few nose bleeds myself. Won't be able to do that as SL1 that's for sure lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Alright, done:



Ok next...

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, i got five achievements left (one being the Elden Ring one), but there's six endings? Don't they all count?

I'm totally going to back up my save to get them all btw. Fuck this shit. Get it done now so i don't have to think about it ever again.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Don't ask, my friend was with me and dared me to do it:



He kept distracting me at the last one to get me to fail but i still pulled through lul.

I also just killed Gideon by stun locking him with jump attacks and bleed him over and over. I had to look on youtube to see what he even did. I never liked the guy so fuck him, got what he deserved.

 

[NJClaw]

Alright, done:

Obligatory SL1 repost:



Another example in the "I took 1 hit because I'm gay" list.

Also Gideon was p. fun:

BTW, i got five achievements left (one being the Elden Ring one), but there's six endings? Don't they all count?

There are only 3 achievements for the endings. Multiple endings fall under the "Elden Lord" achievement.

 

[cruel]

I like when the game trolls me like that. I was SOO proud of myself when I saw those invisible assassins in Ordina - 'a-ha! I've read the merchant note, I know I need to use a torch, I win'. And then sudden WTF moment when the game tells you basically 'f#% you' - you can't use ANY torch, it needs to be one specific, special torch, only accessible in one specific place. Great. Ordina and Haligtree are the first times when the game world actually gets difficult it seems.

What's the consensus on vigor 40 vs 50 vs 60? In theory, the more HP, the better, but what I start to see is that higher life only gives you the initial advantage, and after that you're still dependent on the amount healed by a flask. At the same time, with vigor 50+, you're constantly missing the potential buffs from all the talismans that grant stuff like 'def boost at full HP'. I'm seriously considering dropping from 50 vigor to 40, and using Ritual Shield Talisman more - it boosts defense A LOT, and the first hit you get sometimes wrecks you a lot. With so much health, it's more difficult to stay at full health to be honest. I'm level 152, running a mix of Radahn / Tree Sentinel / Bull armor (36%+ physical defense); STR 85, VIG 50, END 50, Large Club +25 and Golden Greatshield. I could trade the 10 points of vigor for more endurance and maybe dual wield colossal swords? Decision, decisions...

BTW, true Mohg wrecks me nicely so far. If he keeps this up he will probably be the hardest boss for me up until this point, but few more tries before I can say that. I couldn't believe when he did his NIHIL thing, impressive. I'm wondering why the 'Omen' variant fell so easily in comparison.

BTW2 - 175h and still going with no ending in sight. Amazing amount of content. I could pay $200 for this instead of $60 and would still say I got my money's worth (compared to typical $60 AAA garbage that gives you 20h of playtime).

 

[NJClaw]

What's the consensus on vigor 40 vs 50 vs 60?

60 Vigor, Morgott's Great Rune, Erdtree Favor, and Crimson Amber Medallion. You can add the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman and Ritual Shield Talisman on top of that. Being able to tank ANYTHING in the game is priceless.

With so much health, it's more difficult to stay at full health to be honest.

I think this is just a psychological obstacle. Staying at less than full health and waiting to take a couple more hits before healing doesn't mean you're wasting your Ritual Shield effect, but only that you can take more hits before activating it again. You'll have this problem with any reasonable amount of Vigor, because most hits won't require your full flask.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Obligatory SL1 repost:

Wait how did you stagger him in the second phase? I rewinded the video a bunch of times and i can't tell what you did, all though i'm on my phone now so i can't see shit.

That weapon art is brutal, even though i used bleed i think i can say i went fairly vanilla and ignored a lot of broken shit which i'll definitely exploit in my SL1 run.

 

[NJClaw]

Wait how did you stagger him in the second phase? I rewinded the video a bunch of times and i can't tell what you did, all though i'm on my phone now so i can't see shit.

He can be stance-broken like any other boss, and the poise damage from phase 1 carries to phase 2. I wanted to stance-break him at the end of the first phase, but I missed a couple of opportunities to hit him with jump attacks.

Corpse Piler is so broken that breaking his stance doesn't really matter that much. Every time you can attack him, L2-L2 takes like 4 fingers off of his HP bar.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW i may have to go out of town for the next three days fuuuck i'm SO close. If i can't finish it tonight i'll have to wait thursday.

 

[Bloodeyes]

I came out of the subterranean shunning grounds furious. Just over bullshit in general. I gave up on the platforming at the end. I got the fingerprint shield but quit after that. I don't want the frenzied flame anyway. It will ruin my domestic harmony with my ghost GF.

So I made my way to the mountaintop of the giants. With some difficulty I jump attacked all the ice dudes in the ruin and got the bell bearing 3. Still couldn't really change weapons if I wanted to. My +22 colossal sword is starting to feel like a colossal nerf bat. I'm not going down to a +18. I'm also kind of realizing my plan to take off golden scarab and chill on levels at 154 isn't going to work. I need more damage.

60 STR won't be enough. I'm going to need 80, which means hitting 174. I'm also probably going to need to softcap endurance. Even with the green turtle talisman, the great turtle shell and 42 endurance I'm still running out of stamina rather quickly. My build plan has me getting 45 and the softcap is at 50. So that means level 179. I was hoping to trade golden scarab for the shard of Alexander once I get that. Probably never taking it off though. I just need too many levels.

So I'm generally in a bad mood after ruminating on the above. I decided to talk to Shabriri.

Shabriri: "May chaos take the world! MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD!" Florentin: "Giant hunt, giant hunt, giant hunt. I'll have your gear now psycho."

I think I'll take a day off from this game. The late game is rough and I can only play in short bursts at the moment.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok, so i get to Godfrey, and after several tries i beat his first phase, which is totally bitching, once you get going in the rythmn it feels great one of the best fights i've had in a From game. Then suddenly he just whips his fists and beats the shit out of me with his bare hands lmao and then asks me if i even lift.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Alright, finally youtube managed to finish "processing" this thing (are they fucking me because i uploaded too many videos or something? All day with this crap):



I really liked this one and would have loved to learn the second phase properly but according to the wiki there's two more bosses after this and i gotta move on with my life. So in the second phase i just defaulted to the time honored tactic of just running away like a bitch. I actually made a back up of the save in case i want to learn him properly later on at my leasure lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, i got cocky and decided to try co-op a few times with that talisman that draws enemy attention to you but, first of all, the timing is all wrong what's easy to dodge solo somehow seems hard in multiplayer, which makes me wonder if it's some latency screw up going on. Second, i can't see shit with all the spells and weapon arts the host and the other summon throws at him. So i have to give up my hopes of vowing anymore with my dodge-fu skills. Fucking lame.