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

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Anyway, I cleared out that damn forest, and am now torn between exploring the rest of Altus or going straight to Leyndell. Definitely not going to the Volcano region yet.

Mount Gelmir is somewhat easier than Leyndell proper, so if you complete the capital first then you'll probably find the volcano too easy.

 

[Skinwalker]

I need to get to the horrid Leyndell sewers so I can release the Dungeater and turn him into my puppet. Been holding off on a lot of questlines just because of this.

 

[Caim]

Does anyone know what are these little obelisks that appear everywhere? I think there's one in every boss room, but also in other places too, I think. Do they have lore significance? A technical function? Both?

View attachment 46787

Try giant
but hole

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Does anyone know what are these little obelisks that appear everywhere? I think there's one in every boss room, but also in other places too, I think. Do they have lore significance? A technical function? Both?

View attachment 46787

You're meant to smother jelly over it and then attempt to sit down on it. You must remember to unequip pants first or the ritual wont work.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I need to get to the horrid Leyndell sewers so I can release the Dungeater and turn him into my puppet. Been holding off on a lot of questlines just because of this.

The sewers are more difficult than Leyndell proper, which is more difficult than Mount Gelmir / Volcano Manor, which is more difficult than the Altus Plateau.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Yeah sewers were a bitch. Confusing as all hell level design and there was the little bastards who liked to knock you off the pipes. There's other annoying shit I'm forgetting. Fuck the sewers.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

Have you even played a Souls game before? It's called level design.

Sewers is one of those areas that reminded me how great this game could have been if it had been Dark Souls 4 and had none of this open world shit.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

Have you even played a Souls game before? It's called level design.

Sewers is one of those areas that reminded me how great this game could have been if it had been Dark Souls 4 and had none of this open world shit.

Ahem, yes I have. The level design is complex but it's also terrible because everything looks exactly the same. There are no distinguishing features in the maze to make it managable. It's just trial and error bullshit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

Have you even played a Souls game before? It's called level design.

Sewers is one of those areas that reminded me how great this game could have been if it had been Dark Souls 4 and had none of this open world shit.

Ahem, yes I have. The level design is complex but it's also terrible because everything looks exactly the same. There are no distinguishing features in the maze to make it managable. It's just trial and error bullshit.

It's also full of janky shit like enemies falling to their deaths through geometry, the pipe section is incredibly tedious, it has a bunch of 'lol fuck you for not being spoiled' traps, and there's no loot. It's basically just a giant pointless torture section I wish I'd never entered. Easily the worst area in the game. The fact that it has stupid Skyrim style 'Wow you looped back to the start after beating a section!' shortcuts does not make it a good level.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

It's a shame Dungeater is locked behind that turd maze. He's one of the more interesting and mysterious side characters in the game. I guess it's appropriate that you have to crawl through unholy shit to face him.

 

[Lyric Suite]

everything looks exactly the same.

That was by design. All you had to do is use rainbow stones.

Using the environment against you was one of the most interesting aspects of Dark Souls 1 for me and one of the things that made the first game superior to any of the sequels, including Elden Ring. Every area had a particular challenge that made it both interesting and unique. Whether it was the special enemies you had to face, like the necromancers in the Catacombs, or those poison snipers in Blighttown (up to the ghosts in New Londo which were also part of this general design principle, whether you hated them or not), or whether it was some kind of enviormental challenge, there was always something that made each area stand out from the other, but the most misunderstood part for me were the environmental hazards. You had traps (Sen's Fortress above all the others of course), you had altitude to fight against (Great Hollow of course, but also areas like the Crystal Cave where you couldn't even see where you were walking), and sometimes even visibility was your enemy (Tomb of Giants being the most misunderstood area in this respect).

In Elden Ring, there were a few times where certain areas presented such "unique" challenges, and the Sewers was one of them, the enviomental hazard being precisely that everything looked the same which means the challenge was to maintain your sense of orientation.

This idea BTW extends to the combat as well, with FromSoft constantly putting situations where you are compelled to use some of the tools at your disposal, another thing a lot of people seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around.

The Leyndell/Sewers combo legacy dungeon was one of the hightlights of the game for me and i was just disheartened when i discovered there were more open areas after that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

This idea BTW extends to the combat as well, with FromSoft constantly putting situations where you are compelled to use some of the tools at your disposal, another thing a lot of people seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around.

Except it doesn't. The ONLY fucking tool it compels you to use in all of these situations you like is the same fucking one: Fire a projectile to pull targets and fight them somewhere safe. Wow. Waiting for an enemy to walk over to you so you can completely trivialize them in a 1v1 with no hazards. Such excitement!

Is stealth useful? No, there's nowhere to move around on the stupid narrow path. Are buffs useful? No, the area takes a billion years so they'd just wear off. Particular elements? Irrelevant, everything works on everything. Heavy armour? Pointless. Traps are instant death and ignore basically everything you do, so the only move is to not fight near them.

Forcing you to use a wider toolkit is something Fromsoft hasn't been good at since like, PS2 era armored core. Pre-Miyazaki basically.

I didn't mind the gimmick areas of DS1, but implying they forced you to be creative is nonsense. The game simply lacks the enemy variety for that and all the tight spaces render pretty much every option irrelevant.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This idea BTW extends to the combat as well, with FromSoft constantly putting situations where you are compelled to use some of the tools at your disposal, another thing a lot of people seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around.

Except it doesn't. The ONLY fucking tool it compels you to use in all of these situations you like is the same fucking one: Fire a projectile to pull targets and fight them somewhere safe. Wow. Waiting for an enemy to walk over to you so you can completely trivialize them in a 1v1 with no hazards. Such excitement!

Is stealth useful? No, there's nowhere to move around on the stupid narrow path. Are buffs useful? No, the area takes a billion years so they'd just wear off. Particular elements? Irrelevant, everything works on everything. Heavy armour? Pointless. Traps are instant death and ignore basically everything you do, so the only move is to not fight near them.

Forcing you to use a wider toolkit is something Fromsoft hasn't been good at since like, PS2 era armored core. Pre-Miyazaki basically.

I didn't mind the gimmick areas of DS1, but implying they forced you to be creative is nonsense. The game simply lacks the enemy variety for that and all the tight spaces render pretty much every option irrelevant.

I guess you are one of those guys who likes to stick to one weapon, one attack and one build then complain some bosses are bullshit and can only be beaten with cheese and cannot be done legit, right?

It's also not a matter of being "forced" to be creative it's more of a question of understanding the kind of challenge you are bieng presented with and try to appreciate the intention behind it. Visibility being your enemy is one of the things that made Tombs of Giant memorable to me. A lot of people seemed to have found it frustrating but that to me shows an unwillingness to accept the game on its own terms. Yes, the fact you can't see anything makes the area harder than it would otherwise be, but that's the whole point.

The Sewers presented a similar situation. The layout is intentionally confusing, with all the various paths that look the same and holes you can fall into that can throw any sense of direction further astray. Once you understand this is all intentional though it becomes clear what you need to do and you also do get a few tools you can use to help you along the way.

The fact the loot is uninteresting is a legitimate criticism but that has more to do with the game being stretched out because of the open world and it's a critique that applies to pretty much every area of the game.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I wanted to kill Jesus. Yaweh. Odin. Anything with meaning. Instead I killed a parasitic spider from space. What a bummer. "Thanks Miyazaki."

You vill kill ze bug and yu vill eaz it.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Still lame.

Just introduce a new bad guy, one who hid in the shadows the whole time. Or like I said bring Merika back to life. Anything seems better than Miquella.

Morgott seemed better as a final boss, to me. Or Godfrey.

 

[Child of Malkav]

You always gotta kill the right-hand man first. Tale as old as time. I wouldn't be opposed to an "outer god" appearing as the big bad. I imagine they look like insects, like that one alien boss you gotta fight a couple times. It's been a while since I played the game, I forgot over half the names.

Outer gods: Greater Will, Rot God, Frenzied Mother, Blood Star, God of Frenzied Flame, Dark Moon, Dragon God. Probably some I'm forgetting.
But nah brah, Godwyn is where it's at. Oh and Miquella. Oh and Malenia round 2. What I said about the DLC team stands the test of time.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I guess you are one of those guys who likes to stick to one weapon, one attack and one build then complain some bosses are bullshit and can only be beaten with cheese and cannot be done legit, right?

Damned Registrations is right in this matter
This "Simon says" mentally that From has been increasingly fetishising since Bloodborne, for the most part undermines the overall experience and doesn't make for good combat (if this was false then NIOH wouldn't have better combat)

 

[Skinwalker]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

Have you even played a Souls game before? It's called level design.

The Haligtree and Farum Azula are level design. And Leyndell proper.

The sewers are just the vicious hatred that FromSoft harbors for its playerbase.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I guess you are one of those guys who likes to stick to one weapon, one attack and one build then complain some bosses are bullshit and can only be beaten with cheese and cannot be done legit, right?

It's actually the exact opposite. I like to try every vaguely unique weapon I come across, and generally get massively disappointed at the first boss I come across and return to what works, which is pretty much always bleed or stun locking combined with throwing rocks or pointy sticks at enemies near bottomless pits.

What I'd like is a game where almost every enemy or situation is a brick wall to one or two archetypes. Instead what we have is a game where every situation is trivial to the same 3 archetypes and everything else is on the struggle bus. Wanted to kill things with poison? LOL FUCK YOU THAT WORKS ON LIKE 2 ENEMIES. Sleep is really useful... one one whole fucking boss in the entire game. Holy damage works fairly well on skeletons, which is completely irrelevant because the very specific anti-skeleton element instead obliterates them instantly and everything else resists holy. Wanted to try those summoned skull things? They suck. Flails? Garbage, and they don't even have a cool looking ash. Daggers, fists, claws? Have fun swinging at thin air underneath something's nuts, because the exact situation where they should excel, fighting close to an enemy that can't evade, is where they are the worst. Oh, but you can backstab with daggers! On like 20% of enemies! It'll only be slightly less effective than charge attacking with literally any other weapon! Because god forbid we made daggers really good at killing humanoids or something so they have a niche to fill.

Big stick R2 attacks? Stagger a fucking boss every 5 seconds and pancake enemies before they can even react. Bleed spam? Of course that works on fucking dragons better than actual dragonwound grease. Bleed builds are totally a thing that needs to exist in every game and never fail at killing anything.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Swewers were great. One of the best dungeons in the game.

Sure if you like having needles inserted into your dick.

Have you even played a Souls game before? It's called level design.

The Haligtree and Farum Azula are level design. And Leyndell proper.

The sewers are just the vicious hatred that FromSoft harbors for its playerbase.

Just a bunch of slack-jawed scrubs around here.

I for one loved the Sewers.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I have zero clue why I'm doing whatever I'm doing in this game but axing people with mount and blade on the side is pretty fun.

 

[Silva]

1. The ground inside the erdtree where elden beast comes from, and the way it submerges Marika's body into to transform in a sword, suggests this is actually the "crucible", which gives form to life, and the elden beast took control of it like a parasite.

Thinking more about this, and it seems the Elden beast and golden order tried to suppress the crucible. And while Godfrey is permissive of it initially (see crucible knights), later it become an object of shun and prejudice throughout the Lands Between. Even then, other people managed to bypass that control and keep using or manifesting it:

- Godskin nobles and apostles have inhuman physiology. The fatso has a tail and becomes a rolling ball while the skinny one stretches it's body like a snake.

- Crucible Knights grow tails and wings during their fights.

- Misbegotten have multiple animals parts.

- Omen have horns around their bodies.

 

[oldbonebrown]

I am having trouble forcing myself to keep exploring and clearing out the wormface-infested forest ruins in Altus plateau. Is it just this one location, or have I finally had enough of replaying Elder Nig?

When everything is special, nothing is. Exploring Shadow of the Colossus was far more fun than the Elden Ring world.