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

[Hell Swarm]

how blocking works

You hold R1 and face an enemy to block as much damage as your shield blocks. It's not a complex mechanic and lock on makes it auto face the right way.

they're pretty vague about the important shit

None of this is important. You need to know how to use menus, how to move, how to roll and how to attack. Everything else is effectively extra.

Yes, because it's intentionally designed that way, with retarded things like enemies hovering in the air at the last 1/4 of their jump arc or ridiculous tracking that goes from 20 degrees per second to 2000 for 10 frames at some completely arbitrary point in an overly long windup animation.

I've played plenty of other games like this. Nioh, Monster Hunter, Stranger in Paradise, Bayonetta, DMC... these games don't have this problem that is unique to FS games where the attacks are so often nonsensical bullshit. Other games punish you for spamming dodge rolls or holding block; FS games punish you for dodging when it's intuitive because 'haha gotcha!' is their modus operandi and blocking a wimpy skeleton with a torch can be more difficult and deadly than a 20 foot tall iron golem.

I agree but this is only a problem in ER that was started by DkS3. The other FS games don't have this retardation.

Ivory king in Dark souls 2 has a lot of this bullshit too. I want to say Arti does too but he has other dumb issues.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The other FS games don't have this retardation.

For the iframe baiting yeah; it still has lots of dumb 'lulz we killed you because you weren't spoiled' moments. Again, torch hollows, and various other things anyone can think of from the earlier FS games I won't say because it'd be a spoiler. But the basic spirit of it was there.

Everything else is effectively extra.

Doesn't feel so extra when you get bled to death by attacks hitting you for zero damage or try to stagger enemies faster by using a great hammer only to find it does a worse job than a rapier.

 

[Hell Swarm]

The other FS games don't have this retardation.

For the iframe baiting yeah; it still has lots of dumb 'lulz we killed you because you weren't spoiled' moments. Again, torch hollows, and various other things anyone can think of from the earlier FS games I won't say because it'd be a spoiler. But the basic spirit of it was there.

Everything else is effectively extra.

Doesn't feel so extra when you get bled to death by attacks hitting you for zero damage or try to stagger enemies faster by using a great hammer only to find it does a worse job than a rapier.

You get hit by a bleed weapon. You see the blood drop bar go up. You understand what's happening or it teaches you when it procs for the first time. And then you understand bleed exists, it hurts like hell and you should change your strategy for those enemies. Which is the core loop of the from games.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You understand what's happening

Or you don't, manage to kill or avoid the enemy next time, and get fucked over by another enemy dealing status effects you tried to block later on. Seriously, would it have been so hard for them to add 'status effects ignore blocking' in a tip somewhere? Or explain what guard boost is doing, so you could know that the difference between 20 and 30 is half the difference between 60 and 70? Or explain that poise recovers between hits at different, completely arbitrary rates for different enemies, with different, completely arbitrary delays before that recovery begins after the most recent hit?

Did you figure out that kicking in DS1 ignores the poise mechanic entirely, allowing you to stagger havel with a single kick but not a bird demon after hundreds? That seems like something a person would be unlikely to learn on their own. How about how split damage works? Unless you're specifically testing these things, there's no reason you'd arrive at the correct answer. You could just as easily think enemies just got a lot tankier after you found your new cool weapon with elemental damage or they happen to resist that element. You might think a lot of spells are totally useless because you didn't know dex improved casting speed, but only for specific spells in a specific way. I never realized enemies won't dodge the 'invisible' spells because I assumed it was just a silly pvp thing and never tried testing it on the handful of enemies that dodge ranged attacks. I think I tried it on an enemy with a shield and he seemed to block them just fine. Hey, that talisman that improves guard counters... does it help stagger enemies more easily? What about the one that improves counter attacks? Are guard counters counter attacks? Why won't my twin daggers with 80 bleed proc bleed on this enemy after 4 hits even though my bleed spear does? Does that mean bleed buildup is linked to weapon damage?

The game is frankly full of details like this. It doesn't make it terrible, but I certainly wouldn't say learning these things from outside the game ruins the experience. If anything, it helps make more options viable to try, instead of just being too unreliable to bother upgrading a weapon or investing stats to test.

 

[Odoryuk]

I agree but this is only a problem in ER that was started by DkS3. The other FS games don't have this retardation.

I see someone never played Bloodborne

Did you figure out that kicking in DS1 ignores the poise mechanic entirely, allowing you to stagger havel with a single kick but not a bird demon after hundreds? That seems like something a person would be unlikely to learn on their own

In my first playthrough I really quickly realised that there's "player" types of enemies, that are built the same way as the player's character, and they act slightly different in combat.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I see someone never played Bloodborne

Sorry, PC master race here.
In BB the player gets a dash, a gun parry (auto correcting to gun party), a rallying mechanic, all of these to have the player keep up with the overall increase in speed and aggression. Same thing with Sekiro. The player gets unique tools to keep up and eventually outgun the opposition.
In DkS3 you get none of the above.
In ER you get none of the above. Sure, you do get cheesing methods but I don't think they count in this context.

 

[Child of Malkav]

For the iframe baiting yeah; it still has lots of dumb 'lulz we killed you because you weren't spoiled' moments. Again, torch hollows, and various other things anyone can think of from the earlier FS games I won't say because it'd be a spoiler. But the basic spirit of it was there.

I meant that that the other FS games didn't have moments of bosses floating in the air trying to strike you from orbit, AoEs all over the arena, infinite combos, jumping all over the place etc. That's ER's signature and it got here after DkS3 wanted to be BB but without all the good parts, but increased the speed instead.

 

[Odoryuk]

In BB the player gets a dash, a gun parry (auto correcting to gun party), a rallying mechanic, all of these to have the player keep up with the overall increase in speed and aggression. Same thing with Sekiro. The player gets unique tools to keep up and eventually outgun the opposition.
In DkS3 you get none of the above.

In DS3 you can roll, you can parry, you can guard, what are you talking about, just play Bloodborne already, you seem to think that dodging is somewhat different to rolling. You're one of these people who excuse their deaths by saying that in DS3 you have DS1's speed and enemies have Bloodborne's speed?

 

[Child of Malkav]

In DS3 you can roll, you can parry, you can guard, what are you talking about, just play Bloodborne already, you seem to think that dodging is somewhat different to rolling. You're one of these people who excuse their deaths by saying that in DS3 you have DS1's speed and enemies have Bloodborne's speed?

Holy reaching Batman. I didn't say 90% of the shit you're spewing. We're talking about different things here.
I was mentioning the unique things in BB that encourage an aggressive playstyle. You even have a joke shield in that game. Sure, you can roll, parry and block in DkS1/2 as well but the speed is quite different isn't it?
When did I make excuses about anything? Are you well? Probably not.
And yeah, I checked and the dash has the same iframes as the dodge which is 11 but light roll in DkS3 has 13 frames. My mistake there. Not sure about recovery frames which might be lower than the roll.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think I might just not be psychologically suited to enjoying the gameplay flow of these boss fights. I have an anger management problem that is generally triggered by playing games that make me lose my temper, so it isn't really healthy for me to do so. It also means I have to take breaks if I lose a boss fight a couple of times because I get tilted and play like a 3 year old with a tantrum.

Personally, the beauty of FromSoft games is that they are only as frustrating as you make them. I'm not talking about having the option to cheese the game, though that's part of it, but it's also that once you begin to learn about the game and improve your skills, you'll begin to notice that things were only frustrating because you had no idea what was happening. Games that stress your reflexes generally are always frustrating no matter what. Having to press your controller button at the exact millisecond to make that jump or dodge is always going to be stressful no matter how many times you try it.

Contrary to what some of the filthy scrubs here are saying here, Dark Souls doesn't work like that in the slighest. The challenge in Dark Souls lies entirely in seeing through what is happening. That's why once you have "mastered" a particular moveset, that boss literally becomes a cakewalk. In games where the difficutly hinges entirely on your reflexes, this cannot actually happen. The millisecond jump will be as hard after a thousand tries as the first time. In fact, it can actually become harder the more you try as you grow impatient or careless.

To expand of this point, there's also certain underlying mechanics you need to learn each of which plays out in how you are meant to get through a boss attack pattern (what makes Elden Ring harder than past Souls games is just that there's more of those mechanics factored in a boss attack. In Dark Souls 1 all you need is doge rolls, where as Elden Ring is a bit more complicated than that. Especially parry which is almost required on some bosses, where as it never was in past Souls games, with rare exceptions like Gundyr or possibly Gwyn). Understanding those mechanics is also important for the regular enemies, against which eventually you'll develop specific "counters" or strategies that makes most of them relatively managable and stress free.

BTW, as far as relying on cheese to get through the game, there's a few caveats about Elden Ring that makes it different from past FromSoft games, namely, the sheer size of the game and the amount of content that is recycled compared to their older games, which are smaller and more curated (Dark Souls is designed like the dungeon you just did. There's no open areas like in Elden Ring, the whole game is one large metroid-like area with many connected legacy dungeons).

In order to avoid frustation, it's probably not a bad idea to just cheese your way through a lot of the repeated encounters you are going to find in the game, though personally for me it's more important to device the correct counter instead of just banking on summons all the time.

BTW, reguarding your fight with Rennala, it's worth keeping in mind that because of the "open world" nature of the game, a lot of the areas are balanced around the same level (since FromSoft cannot entirely predict which way the player will go) which means it's possible you are going to end up just steam rolling through some bosses merely because you got there at a much higher level than intended. At some point this will no longer be the case though which is where your playthrough is going to come to a screeching halt unless you took care to acquire the correct knowledge and skill set.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, if i may make a little suggestion, i'd recommend getting Night Maiden's Mist. It's a neat low level spell which you can use to just cheese through hordes of mooks. It's even fun to use since you need to get a bit clever on how to deploy it. It's powerful enough i'd consider it a cheat, but hey, if you are sick of fighting bats for like a thousand times pop this thing and have it melt the whole group. Fuck it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yes, because it's intentionally designed that way

No shit. It's also what makes combat in this game great.

 

[Odoryuk]

And yeah, I checked and the dash has the same iframes as the dodge which is 11 but light roll in DkS3 has 13 frames. My mistake there. Not sure about recovery frames which might be lower than the roll.

It's worth mentioning that rolling is in Bloodborne also. You just happen to dash when locked on enemy, and roll when not, that's it, no major difference between the two (sidesteps look way cooler though).

 

[Val Doom]

BTW, if i may make a little suggestion, i'd recommend getting Night Maiden's Mist. It's a neat low level spell which you can use to just cheese through hordes of mooks. It's even fun to use since you need to get a bit clever on how to deploy it. It's powerful enough i'd consider it a cheat, but hey, if you are sick of fighting bats for like a thousand times pop this thing and have it melt the whole group. Fuck it.

Also works on whittling down large enemies that can't pass through narrow hallways and doors. On my first playthrough I used every single 'cheese' I stumbled upon and this spell in particular quite often

 

[Nathir]

never mastering the combat, you might as well not bother.

Honestly, mastering FS's combat (especially souls series) is mostly about memorizing which grunts and twitches every single enemy in the game makes so you can time your parry/dodge perfectly. I'm sure that's satisfying to some people, but it's not something I think is worth pursuing.

Improving general competence, by understanding things like the mechanics of poise, blocking, ailments, counter hits and so forth- sure, that's satisfying and worthwhile, and will make the game more engaging while making it easier as well.

But getting to the point you can no-hit a boss because you've learned it so well is dumb- the combat isn't deep or balanced enough to warrant that, unlike in something like Monster Hunter or a fighting game. Reducing the game to a QTE by memorizing everything the enemies do is retarded. Lategame and most multi enemy bosses in ER in particular absolutely deserve to be gang-banged with summons, and I say this as someone who stubbornly soloed through everything except Malenia. A lot of these fights are just straight up bad- forcing you to backpedal for more than half the fight while waiting for a particular attack to punish, rather than actually engaging with the boss actively. The biggest thing many of them have going for them is spectacle if you let them sit around and use all their coolest moves.

Also note that people that are 'good' at the game (challenge runners and such) generally cheese through the combat anyways- they just do it by stacking so many temporary buffs the fight is over in 10 seconds before the boss can even use 90% of it's moveset. Explain to me how that is any more satisfying than tag teaming a boss you actually have to chip away at and pay attention to for a couple minutes.

It's not about memorization, it's about observing and reacting to enemy movements, or preventing their moves with your own. Every single player game can be "just" about memorization if you want to make that kind of argument, since they are all pre-programmed and the AI behaves in a set way. You don't have to backpedal for half the fight to get a hit in... most bosses allow you to get 1 hit in very frequently, after most attacks or strings they do. The movement goes dodge-attack-dodge-attack. And you keep this up till you get a stagger. People are just too scared or are used to circle strafing around bosses with no risk, like in the first DS games. In ER you have to be more aggressive, unless your general plan is to hide behind a greatshield.

 

[Child of Malkav]

It's worth mentioning that rolling is in Bloodborne also. You just happen to dash when locked on enemy, and roll when not, that's it, no major difference between the two (sidesteps look way cooler though).

I know.

 

[Damned Registrations]

That's true of the easier stuff, but not for the kinds of fights I mentioned. Also, enemy 'strings' have often become 'options selects'- a fighting game term for a combo that you only continue if the enemy stops defending, letting you hit him every time. So you need to wait after those unless you want to trade blows. Morgit is already a perfect example of this-

Margit's Combo Chart

'Just attack after he does'. You can't even use a particular type of move to use that as a rule unless you know (by looking at this chart or having fought him a hundred times to test every possibility) whether or not it has a follow up, because half the moves that end combos can also be in the middle of a combo. So, with extremely limited information, the only thing you can do is wait for one of the three out of a dozen or so moves that never have a follow up. And you won't even know which of those moves are like that without fighting him at least several times and specifically paying attention to that instead of such trivial things like your health, stamina, position relative to the boss or the distance between your feet and the nearest wall or bottomless pit.

*In before LS declares he had this entire chart figured out and memorized on his third attempt because he can 'see the patterns.'

 

[Silverfish]

How about how split damage works? Unless you're specifically testing these things, there's no reason you'd arrive at the correct answer. You could just as easily think enemies just got a lot tankier after you found your new cool weapon with elemental damage or they happen to resist that element.

That's not true at all in DS1. Elemental weapons were busted pre-patch, easily on a par with, and often even surpassing, quality weapons with 40/40. Even after being nerfed, elemental weapons are still preferable to their standard upgrade counterparts because all they require in terms of stat investment is the weapon's minimum requirements, freeing up a ton of soul levels at the cost of slightly lower damage. So you could have 400 damage, or 300 with more health, more stamina and some support spells on top.

just play Bloodborne already

If you don't have a PS4, just ask a friend to run around and flail his arms while you try to dodge.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, if i may make a little suggestion, i'd recommend getting Night Maiden's Mist. It's a neat low level spell which you can use to just cheese through hordes of mooks. It's even fun to use since you need to get a bit clever on how to deploy it. It's powerful enough i'd consider it a cheat, but hey, if you are sick of fighting bats for like a thousand times pop this thing and have it melt the whole group. Fuck it.

Also works on whittling down large enemies that can't pass through narrow hallways and doors. On my first playthrough I used every single 'cheese' I stumbled upon and this spell in particular quite often

I made a video of me using it to clear one of the more cancerous sections in the game:



Notice of course how bounce shield + guard counters wrecks those bugs, because of their low poise. Elden Ring is really like a puzzle, probably more so than past Souls games. I'm guessing after people critisized Dark Souls 3 for being too much of a Bloodborne total conversion Elden Ring tried to return to the RPG roots of Dark Souls 1 (though in places Elden Ring reminds more of Dark Souls 2), where you have lot's of options and strategies you can use. Hell, they even brought back heavy armors, where as in Dark Souls 3 even the heaviest armor felt like wearing paper.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

From are so lazy they can't even animate character's mouths when they talk

My butt hurtey senses are tingling.

On a different note, it's rather funny that Dark Souls 1, as much praise as it gets, is the only Souls game that turns into complete shit in the 2nd half. All of the other games are fairly consistent from start to finish. Dark Souls 2 arguably gets better the further in you get.

 

[Odoryuk]

From are so lazy they can't even animate character's mouths when they talk

My butt hurtey senses are tingling.

On a different note, it's rather funny that Dark Souls 1, as much praise as it gets, is the only Souls game that turns into complete shit in the 2nd half. All of the other games are fairly consistent from start to finish. Dark Souls 2 arguably gets better the further in you get.

You forget that Artorias of the Abyss is technically the latter part of the game and it's some of the best content DS1 has.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

From are so lazy they can't even animate character's mouths when they talk

My butt hurtey senses are tingling.

On a different note, it's rather funny that Dark Souls 1, as much praise as it gets, is the only Souls game that turns into complete shit in the 2nd half. All of the other games are fairly consistent from start to finish. Dark Souls 2 arguably gets better the further in you get.

You forget that Artorias of the Abyss is technically the latter part of the game and it's some of the best content DS1 has.

You have a point but it still doesn't completely make up for the lazy 2nd half. None of the others suffer from such a drastic decline in quality. I'm including all of the Soulsborne games here, not just the DkS trilogy.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Or you don't, manage to kill or avoid the enemy next time, and get fucked over by another enemy dealing status effects you tried to block later on.

if you can't figure out the blood bar is filling up again then you're too retarded to play anything more advance than pong. sorry to tell you you're dumb kid.

In BB the player gets a dash, a gun parry (auto correcting to gun party), a rallying mechanic, all of these to have the player keep up with the overall increase in speed and aggression. Same thing with Sekiro. The player gets unique tools to keep up and eventually outgun the opposition.

BB doesn't play any different to dark souls 3. Don't believe the hype. The dash is basically the roll with a different animation. Pistol and shield parrying are effectively the same mechanic and rally may as well not exist for the most part. There's no way you can force a rally recovery, if an enemy has a window you hit them, if they don't then you don't. It's free health randomly rather than an actual mechanic you can engage with.

That's not true at all in DS1. Elemental weapons were busted pre-patch, easily on a par with, and often even surpassing, quality weapons with 40/40. Even after being nerfed, elemental weapons are still preferable to their standard upgrade counterparts because all they require in terms of stat investment is the weapon's minimum requirements, freeing up a ton of soul levels at the cost of slightly lower damage. So you could have 400 damage, or 300 with more health, more stamina and some support spells on top.

Lightning spear was the meta weapon in pre-DLC dark souls.

Notice of course how bounce shield + guard counters wrecks those bugs, because of their low poise. Elden Ring is really like a puzzle, probably more so than past Souls games.

I love you Lyric, you show such ignorance in your youtube knowledge. Pests regularly dodge guard counters. You can some times hit them but it's not consistent and they will fire their shit at you if you miss it.

Speaking of Guard counter. Arch thrones does it better than From did. It's impressive how modders can take a mechanic and make it superior in every way while a million dollar company can't figure out how a small change adds a massive improvement to gameplay and player feedback.

My butt hurtey senses are tingling.

No one wants to hear about you tickling your asshole Nigger BOY. Go get drink another bottle and piss yourself again.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I love you Lyric, you show such ignorance in your youtube knowledge. Pests regularly dodge guard counters.

No they don't. Your mistake is likely in trying to do it with medium shields.

All great shields in this game have an extra wall effect where most enemy attacks besides the absolute heaviest ones will bounce off it. This will give you the extra second you need to hit them with a guard counter, and if your attack is heavy enough you can actually break their stance right there on the spot and get a critical hit, which is not hard to do because those bugs are designed to fold quickly if you can get your hands on them.

I mean, it's on video.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't think I've ever found the need to guard counter a pest since their poise is so low you can just smack them with whatever anyways and they can't retaliate. The problem with pests is that they often show up in groups of 3+ scattered around a room, firing dozens of shots that curve around any cover you might try to use to avoid getting shot. 1v1 they're no more of a threat than any other mook. That and their weird iframes after being hit which honestly seemed like a fluke the first several times it happened because nothing else in the game does that.