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

[mediocrepoet]

I really need to respec, just nope'd the fuck out of the Death Knight fight after a handful of tries.

Death Knight is the first boss from the DLC that I defeated. Had to try around 20 times. But I honestly don't know what I do with two bosses, what I can do to not be OHKilled by 3 entire arena AoE moon attack?

You mean to tell me you don't like powerful magic being accurately depicted instead of nerfed into the ground if you're on the receiving end of it?

 

[9ted6]

Was it even proven he actually wrote anything? There's no way this guy that writes a couple of pages a year for his novel went into crunch mode and wrote an entire game, even if it doesn't have much story to begin with

All he had to do was write up his flaming twink fantasies and inject his AIDS into what was otherwise a decent story. I bet it only took him an hour or so before his fatass busted a nut. It's super weird how no other FS game up to this point had any gay shit in it and now suddenly their latest game is a fag parade.

While he could and would write retarded gay incest fantasies in his setting I don't think Fatman can be blamed here, this seems like a From problem.

Remember that DS1 had Gwyndolin who was inexplicably raised as a girl. It wasn't explained and made no sense but it was there, though his actual design was more like a tentacle monster than Miquella's literally uwu femboy bussy model. It might be the natural conclusion of what Gwyndo was always meant to be now that everything's gone crazy and gay.

Again while this sort of thing would probably be up George's alley it seems Miyazaki beat him to the punch. Another reason to ditch this rotting hulk of a genre. You'd think by now someone could come along and do Soulslike combat better when From is just giving it their barest minimum effort, not just in the story but in (the more important part) gameplay.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Elden Ring probably has the dullest lore of all Soulsborne games, and that's saying something. Who gives a shit what GRRM wrote.

Still waiting for that challenge. I guess I haven't fought any real bosses yet. There was a jumpy fucker in the jar cave but he went down in a couple tries. The dragon was ultra-weak to Holy magic, lol.

I noticed back when the game was first released the people who really grouched about the difficulty refused to use the tools the game gives you. Not just summons or co op, but refused to use magic, items, shields, ashes of war, physik buffs, or ever switch from their one preferred weapon type. Considering you get so many levels, spell slots are free, there are tons of options for any build, ashes of war can be freely swapped, there are so many status effect and elemental variations you can play around with, etc. I built up a bunch of weapons with different attack speeds, special moves, status damage, one-handed vs two, etc. Swapped frequently throughout the game.

Basically don't play with a self-imposed challenge and then complain about it. I don't know any musician who only has one guitar, a gun nut with only one gun, car collectors with only one car, etc. Develop a multitude of tools and select the best one for the job.

 

[Cryomancer]

You mean to tell me you don't like powerful magic being accurately depicted instead of nerfed into the ground if you're on the receiving end of it?

Nope. I'm trying to find a strategy to deal with that powerful magic attack, instead of trying to dodge, using a mag resistance shield and blocking worked but I still didn't beat him. BTW, the boss is more like a Magical Knight than a pure Mage.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Been playing the DLC so far.
Damage and HP values? Typical adding bunch of 0s at the end of numbers. Nothing new there. For testing, having full bull goat armor and 99 vigor gets you 2 shotted by many attacks, mobs or bosses. Whatever. Expected.
Bosses. Only fought 2, the dancing lion which was very cool and renala or whatever her name is. And it's exactly what I thought. They tripled down on their design from the base game. Nothing but helicopter attacks (meaning 360° degrees), one after another, speed out the ass, positioning and distance have no relevance at all as the bosses can close the gap in sec...instantly, they literally just fly/dash to you. Plus everything I said back when I played the base game so I won't bothee repeating it here, it's the same design and for their foreseeable future projects.
But I also play exclusively with the fingerprint shield and it's easier and safer to learn the attacks plus avoid the bullshit. That chick ranela or some such, she goes into a string of attacks (shocker, I know) and at some point she changes position to get to your side and hits before your character turns around to block with his shield while locked on. This is some new level. But whatever.
The level design is great though. So much to explore. The Ensign castle is very good and probably my favorite location so far. It's like Caria manor but on super steroids. Now got to shadow Altus.
Playing very carefully, drawing enemies with bows, using assassin's gambit and going one by one. Many ambushes and bullshits were prevented this way.
Edit 1: forgot to mention that I'm not using the brightbugs I mean, shadow blessings either. Just NG+1.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Messmer fight sure is a quintessential example of late stage Souls.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Messmer fight sure is a quintessential example of late stage Souls.

All of them are. Can barely see what they're doing due to all the particle effects on screen when flying all over the place.

 

[abija]

positioning and distance have no relevance at all as the bosses can close the gap in sec...instantly, they literally just fly/dash to you.

That's just wrong. If they use a move to close the gap (or if they use a different ability to hit you) positioning and distance automatically have relevance.

 

[Cryomancer]

Nothing new there. For testing, having full bull goat armor and 99 vigor gets you 2 shotted by many attacks, mobs or bosses.

You need blessings to not die extremely fast.

You can get blessing to lv 5 in early area. Is enough for me not be OHKilled while blocking Renalla twin moon from a boss but after I beat the boss I found the spell worthless due the lack of range

Now I fought a bear and he was not 1~2HKilling me, only 3HKilling me after my blessing got to lv 7 and I have only 40 vigor.

 

[processdaemon]

For anyone who's struggling with the bosses and doesn't mind a little cheese most of the bosses I've come across so far are rottable, including Sennessax who was the hardest of the bosses that I've beaten so far. It's not going to win the fight for you on its own but if you can get it to proc around halfway/ 2/3 down it will keep ticking down and can save you having to go in for an awkward final smack when the boss is in full tantrum mode.

Greatshield Soldier Ashes are also OP because they draw aggro so well, so OP that I stopped using them because I curb stomped the Divine Beast Dancing Lion with them first time and missed a lot of the fun of the fight, but if you are underleveled and need a boost they're worth keeping in mind.

Also, if anyone cares about the quests be careful about where you explore and ideally use a guide. If you get near the Shadow Keep something automatically happens that progresses a bunch of questlines, including for NPCs you haven't met yet and I still haven't been able to track them all down.

 

[Child of Malkav]

For anyone who's struggling with the bosses and doesn't mind a little cheese most of the bosses I've come across so far are rottable, including Sennessax who was the hardest of the bosses that I've beaten so far. It's not going to win the fight for you on its own but if you can get it to proc around halfway/ 2/3 down it will keep ticking down and can save you having to go in for an awkward final smack when the boss is in full tantrum mode.

Greatshield Soldier Ashes are also OP because they draw aggro so well, so OP that I stopped using them because I curb stomped the Divine Beast Dancing Lion with them first time and missed a lot of the fun of the fight, but if you are underleveled and need a boost they're worth keeping in mind.

Also, if anyone cares about the quests be careful about where you explore and ideally use a guide. If you get near the Shadow Keep something automatically happens that progresses a bunch of questlines, including for NPCs you haven't met yet and I still haven't been able to track them all down.

Yeah, rot and bleed work well. Especially the ratspur rapier if infused with bleed. Procs it often enough.

 

[Child of Malkav]

That's just wrong. If they use a move to close the gap (or if they use a different ability to hit you) positioning and distance automatically have relevance.

How does it have relevance if they can just will themselves to your position instead of walking/running up to you so that at least it creates the illusion of some kind balance? Distance doesn't matter. Positioning also doesn't matter when the boss spins to win all the time no matter where you are. It's shocking (not really) how many attacks are nothing but variations of spin to win or wide sweeping attacks. Won't even mention combos as we've reached beyond peak boss clown design.
Plus with all the spectacle and explosions and lasers all over the place you can barely distinguish wtf is going on. The insane tracking also doesn't help.

 

[Child of Malkav]

You need blessings to not die extremely fast.

I know. They inflate the numbers and add collectibles so that we can deflate those numbers.....anyway, I wanted to see how bad it was without them.

 

[Suicidal]

Everyone:

"Oh, this DLC is too hard. Everything oneshots you and takes 100 hits to kill".

Me:

"Hey, this is just like playing Team Ninja's DLCs while being under-leveled, I'm used to this"

Example: here is me after fighting a boss for 3+ minutes in Stranger of Paradise

 

[Cryomancer]

For the Divine beast dancing leon, I used Rotten crystal sword in a mimic tear and every time that my mimic was distracting him, I spammed Dark Moon in the beast. Was hard but worked, scarlet rot + frostbite is a amazing combo.

The boss has too much hp? There are stuff which scales with his hp/

 

[Nathir]

I just beat the Dancing Lion boss... Amazing design and visuals all around the DLC. Buffed myself with a +2 blessing so far. Went to the Jar factory and got the great jar helmet. Very cool.

 

[Stoned Ape]

 

[Lyric Suite]

The DLC is far too hard.

Doubt, as people claimed the base game was too hard (it wasn't), but i honestly can't muster the will to play it right now. Still feeling some burn out, so i'm just gonna wait for now. They'll probably nerf all the bosses by the time i play it but whatever, can't get trapped into that either.

 

[Lyric Suite]

it's the same design and for their foreseeable future projects.

Not sure what you expected. It's an Elden Ring DLC, of course it's the same design. What else would it be.

Future projects there's no way of knowing. If they continue to release games with Souls combat, i'd expect them to go even beyond Elden Ring.

 

[Ravielsk]

Develop a multitude of tools and select the best one for the job.

That is very nice and all but here even the best tool is fundamentally several rungs bellow where you really need. Its cool that I can inflict rot on Gaius and then snipe him from distance while mimic tear keeps him busy but when its a 50/50 chance whether I even get to summon the tear before my 1900HP hits 0... well that hardly seems like its working as intended, or working at all.

Its exactly the same issue as with Malenia but dialed up to 11. If she chooses to spam the dance you lose, if not you win. Same for most bosses in the DLC if they take the bait you are golden, if not get ready to reset because they can just warp behind your shield and nuke you.

 

[toro]

Overall Reviews: Mixed (12,820 reviews)

62% Positive reviews

The king is naked.

 

[smaug]

Dude why is this dlc so fucking laggy all my setting are off or on low

 

[Cryomancer]

People complaining about performance, I'm fine with it in a GTX 1050 ti - Debian, sure I had to lower some settings but that is it.

 

[Mortmal]

Overall Reviews: Mixed (12,820 reviews)

62% Positive reviews

The king is naked.

Of course, reviews are mixed. It's likely unplayable for most people and not mentioning technical issues and camera yet. I haven't had much FPS issues yet, but during the Mesmer fight, I experienced a huge FPS drop in the second phase. It's hard to figure out what's going on the screen at that point. On top of that, it's extremely punishing most of the time when dodging, and most boss attacks can one-shot you, making it not the most pleasurable experience. The collectibles you're supposed to use don't make as much of a difference as I expected, either. As Ravielk mentioned above, if your summon gets the aggro and gives you an opening, you will win. Otherwise, I don't see how you can have the patience with those ultra-aggressive, HP-bloated bosses.

 

[Crayll]

Ended up boosting vigor to 55, collecting 9 scadutree blessings, and dropping all my -physical negation talismans and damage is more much manageable now. The +physical negation talisman would probably help a bunch too, but I don't have it to test.
It feels a lot like Limgrave and Margit honestly, if you get walled by a boss there's at least 5 other paths you can take at any given time. At least two progression gating bosses can be outright skipped too.

Overall Reviews: Mixed (12,820 reviews)

62% Positive reviews

The king is naked.

It's all people complaining about performance (probably a real issue though I haven't experienced it) or the difficulty, which always gets ratcheted up in their DLCs. The actual content is great, better than the base game and endless recycled catacombs and caves.