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

[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.

 

[Nathir]

Overall Reviews: Mixed (12,820 reviews)

62% Positive reviews

The king is naked.

Most negative reviews are either about the performance drop or crying how the game is too hard and unfun.

 

[jaekl]

Can someone else play this for me and build a character to my specifications and find all the items and do all the boring overworld tasks and then hand me the controller to play the expansion pack?

 

[Alter Sack]

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

Spoiler

By the way: Has the controller support been improved?
Couldn't play it with my no name controller and x360ce controller emulator before.

 

[Puukko]

The complaints about damage intake struck me as a bit odd, making me wonder whether I'm an outlier in how defensive my build is. I went in at lvl 160 with 60 vigor, veteran's set, HP and phys def talismans and golden vow and other defensive miracles. I'm far from getting one shot by anything. The blessings definitely help and they're not too difficult to come by. The second boss' P2 has the highest damage output so far, where a couple elemental buffed swings took about 55-60% of my HP which just told me I had to get more offensive since face tanking was no longer an option. The only moment where I felt too weak was when I took the side route to the plateau before the boss and I could tell I needed a few levels and blessings to be on par with the enemies.

I'm just reminded of when the game came out and tons of people had to learn the hard way that ignoring vigor was a bad idea.

 

[Ravielsk]

I'm an outlier in how defensive my build is.

Yes, even endgame of the base game does not really ask for more than 40 vigor.

I'm just reminded of when the game out and tons of people had to learn the hard way that ignoring vigor was a bad idea.

Vigor softcaps at 60-65 so you are effectively as tanky as a player can get without talismans and additional buffs.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think I sorted out my performance issue, but still think it's bullshit. The short version is, I think it has to do with the EAC update. I normally have two monitors running and have something going while I'm gaming. This used to be no issue with Elden Ring and generally isn't, whatever I'm playing unless the game is super old and just unstable because of the dimensions or tabbing to another window.

Since the update, the second monitor is fine as long as I don't try to manipulate it at all. If I do after the game's booted, it becomes a stuttery lagfest as (I assume) EAC kicks in its active system monitoring crapola. Kinda sucks, but on the other hand, if it actually prevents people

from sending you hacked items that destroy your saves, well, whatever.

 

[ferratilis]

I don't know what toasters you guys are playing on, but it runs well for me, with the exception of some dips when there are a lot of particle effects on screen. And there are a lot of those. Base game was unplayable at launch because of stutters, this is much better, at least for me. But it is rather disappointing that we didn't get 120fps support or DLSS, one would hope that after Armored Core 6 they would understand the importance of good optimization. But these are Japanese developers, after all.

As for the DLC itself, this is explorationfag's dream come true. The verticality is crazy, and there's a lot to see and find. There's quite a bit of recycling going on, but it doesn't disappoint when it comes to finding new and interesting areas and dungeons.

The thing I hate so far is how Miyazaki has doubled down on that shitty DS3 boss design where every boss is spinning like a prick has ten hit combos. It seems like artificial difficulty for the sake of looking flashy. But whatever, the days of gimmick/thematic bosses from DeS/DS1/DS2 are long over. I loved those.

For this reason, I hope they move away from Souls games for a while. Their next game should either be Sekiro 2 or something completely different and new. One can hope, at least.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

What's the early KKK? Worth launch price or hold off?

Tempted to dust off the BHF and go iframing just see what's what.

 

[frajaq]

Miyazaki please nerf this DLC my Twitch Streamers arent being able to beat the bosses of this game!

 

[Barbarian]

Did fedora fatso have any input on the dlc writing?

Or is the reverse pedo gay androgynous teenage boy dream snatcher thing entirely from the mind of Miyazaki san

 

[abija]

Since the update, the second monitor is fine as long as I don't try to manipulate it at all. If I do after the game's booted, it becomes a stuttery lagfest as (I assume) EAC kicks in its active system monitoring crapola. Kinda sucks, but on the other hand, if it actually prevents people View attachment 51499 from sending you hacked items that destroy your saves, well, whatever.

If you can (and not already the case) try this: set both monitors at same refresh, multiple of 60, run the game in borderless window mode. (and if is borderless, try fullscreen, this bug is super random but basically when you have motion on 2nd screen and main screen stutters, that's probably it).

 

[mediocrepoet]

Since the update, the second monitor is fine as long as I don't try to manipulate it at all. If I do after the game's booted, it becomes a stuttery lagfest as (I assume) EAC kicks in its active system monitoring crapola. Kinda sucks, but on the other hand, if it actually prevents people View attachment 51499 from sending you hacked items that destroy your saves, well, whatever.

If you can (and not already the case) try this: set both monitors at same refresh, multiple of 60, run the game in borderless window mode.

Thanks for the suggestions. I had tried that and re-confirmed just now that I had tried with a force matching of the monitor's refresh rates. It's still smooth until I click out and then it starts the stutter fest immediately after. It's just funny because it was working fine the night before the patch, and started up immediately post patch.

Certainly the definition of a first world problem though. But I'd sure like to know wtf they did and whether it's something they can sort out. Most likely when they sort out whatever performance issues others are experiencing, it'll end up getting sorted out then.

 

[Vorark]

Too early to tell but it seems From took the open world criticisms to heart. It's been fun to just roam and explore every nook and cranny looking for these new crystals and equipment.

The normal mob enemies haven't been too bad with a greatshield + greataxe STR build. The only miniboss I fought so far was in a catacomb and unfortunately was of the helicopter type, so I'm expecting the usual or even worse bullshit from the main bosses. May the Mimic crutch help me.

Seems the main strength of the DLC will be exploration. Hopefully the legacy dungeons will be of equal or even higher quality than the ones found in the main game, that's all I wanted more of.

Performance has been okay but dips to low 50s when there are too many particles or fog on screen. In fact there's so much fog that the Land of Shadows might as well be in Silent Hill.

tl;dr - It's more Elden Ring but with a seemingly improved overworld.

 

[Xorazm]

You can definitely tell that this game is going to get some serious pushback from the more normie crowd because the first two bosses people are likely to face (Lion and Moon Knight) are absolute units. I've been trying to help people in co-op, most of them get deleted in a minute or two and after a couple hours only managed to carry one to victory.

Until word gets around that you're supposed to explore and find the seeds instead of banging your head against the wall, the normies will revolt. And somewhere, Joseph Anderson is masturbaring furiously at the thought of complaining yet again about bosses with long combo strings (Moon Knight I didn't mind because finding openings was fun, very challenging to figure out what to dodge under and jump over, problem with Lion is more that the camera goes fucking bananas and you can't tell what's going on).

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Overall Reviews: Mixed (12,820 reviews)

62% Positive reviews

The king is naked.

Has there ever been a Souls game that didn't have a rocky launch on PC? This shouldn't surprise anyone. Buying these on PC day 1 is beyond retarded.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

The complaints about damage intake struck me as a bit odd, making me wonder whether I'm an outlier in how defensive my build is. I went in at lvl 160 with 60 vigor, veteran's set, HP and phys def talismans and golden vow and other defensive miracles. I'm far from getting one shot by anything. The blessings definitely help and they're not too difficult to come by. The second boss' P2 has the highest damage output so far, where a couple elemental buffed swings took about 55-60% of my HP which just told me I had to get more offensive since face tanking was no longer an option. The only moment where I felt too weak was when I took the side route to the plateau before the boss and I could tell I needed a few levels and blessings to be on par with the enemies.

I'm just reminded of when the game came out and tons of people had to learn the hard way that ignoring vigor was a bad idea.

3 hits seems to be the average for me and I'm playing in NG+, level 175. I'm glad I doubled down on HP before going into this. The Solitude set was a nice buff in armor and I still don't have to fatroll.

I'd like to see the stats of people who are getting 1 shotted.

 

[Rhobar121]

The complaints about damage intake struck me as a bit odd, making me wonder whether I'm an outlier in how defensive my build is. I went in at lvl 160 with 60 vigor, veteran's set, HP and phys def talismans and golden vow and other defensive miracles. I'm far from getting one shot by anything. The blessings definitely help and they're not too difficult to come by. The second boss' P2 has the highest damage output so far, where a couple elemental buffed swings took about 55-60% of my HP which just told me I had to get more offensive since face tanking was no longer an option. The only moment where I felt too weak was when I took the side route to the plateau before the boss and I could tell I needed a few levels and blessings to be on par with the enemies.

I'm just reminded of when the game came out and tons of people had to learn the hard way that ignoring vigor was a bad idea.

3 hits seems to be the average for me and I'm playing in NG+, level 175. I'm glad I doubled down on HP before going into this. The Solitude set was a nice buff in armor and I still don't have to fatroll.

I'd like to see the stats of people who are getting 1 shotted.

I bet that it's around 30 or even less, which is low even for the late phase of the basic version of the game.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

I bet that it's around 30 or even less, which is low even for the late phase of the basic version of the game.

30 vigor? Lol, well then they are just asking to get their ass kicked.

 

[Silva]

Loaded an old game while considering to get the DLC but 5 minutes in my will evaporated. When a sale comes up I give it a try.