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

[Hell Swarm]

Never ceases to amaze me. Huge game hasn't even been out for a week yet and people are already finishing it. I'm in full support of hardcore gaming, but goddamn guys. Don't forget to slow down and savor the meal!

My wife has a friend who finished it on her second day of playing

Huh, I guess girls can be no-lifer neckbeards too.

Btw the only way to finish a game like that in two days is to skip 70% of the content and just rush the bosses, ish.

My wife is one of those no-lifer neckbeards just for Souls games. It's interesting as we have completely opposite fighting styles so I breeze through bosses she struggles and vice versa. It makes you appreciate the depth of boss fights when Katana man mauls a boss once try and Hammer man spends an hour trying to find any opening to get a single hit in.

I also don't skip 70% of the content. From games are one of the few games I will invest serious time into at release. I will dedicate every free moment (give or take) to beating a From game the first week it's out because I severely limit my online interactions until I have. By pure accident I got the last boss of the DLC spoiled for me a week or so ago. I like playing From games blind and going into them without knowing anything more than the title and the first reveal trailer. If I don't finish them first week then I will get spoiled and lose some of my enjoyment of the game. So my only option is to knuckle down and explore the game on my own terms. Then when I've finished the game or I'm at the final boss door I will check to see if I've missed any areas and get a hint like "X is accessed through Y" then go exploring to find it. I'm not just rushing to bosses because I don't know where the bosses are. But I'm also intentionally investing 10 or more hours a day into beating the game because I can't engage in my usual online discussions unless I do. I can't check a forum knowing I could be spoiled so 1 week before From release I stop reading video game content and don't pick it up until I finish the game. I unfortunately had to play some of it on Steam deck this time because I had to do some baby sitting and can't do that on my desktop obviously. So I would explore on Torrent on deck and if I encountered a serious boss I'd wait til I was at home on my desktop with a more comfortable controller to grind them out.

I am a no-lifer neckbeard but I'm okay with dedicating a few days of hard grind to beat the game before they patch the difficulty out and to do it as blind as possible. Then I get maximum pleasure out of the exploration and I feel it's -my- victory not the victory of reading the Elden ring thread or watching streams.

used Greatshield Soldiers as much or more than Mimic in the DLC.

They are my favourite summon but the amount of AOE spam made them seem useless for this. They're not tanking half the arena exploding.

 

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

Why is Elden Ring in JRPG area when it was written by Martin?

Because Martin scribbling "incest" on an onigiri wrapper does not qualify as a writing credit.

 

[Ivan]

Just as with Lies of P, the smoothening of difficulty/scaling has begun:
https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-calibration-update-1122

Attack and damage negation curve scaling of the Shadow Realm Blessings have been revised.

• The attack and damage negation has been increased for the first half of the maximum amount of Blessing enhancements, and the second half will now be more gradual.
• The attack and damage negation granted by the final level of Blessing enhancements has been slightly increased.

The calibration update can be applied by logging into the multiplayer server.

TLDR: easier onboarding with more marked noticeability of the scadutree items

 

[Cryomancer]

Got into the final boss of the DLC and only managed to down him to 40% hp so far. This DLC is quite brutal. And I like it. This final boss is imo harder than Manus and Sir Alonne

 

[Ivan]

As always, someone is destroying every boss with ease

that is a smoooth frame rate. great player for sure. I could never.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Just as with Lies of P, the smoothening of difficulty/scaling has begun:
https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-calibration-update-1122

Attack and damage negation curve scaling of the Shadow Realm Blessings have been revised.

• The attack and damage negation has been increased for the first half of the maximum amount of Blessing enhancements, and the second half will now be more gradual.
• The attack and damage negation granted by the final level of Blessing enhancements has been slightly increased.

The calibration update can be applied by logging into the multiplayer server.

TLDR: easier onboarding with more marked noticeability of the scadutree items

~And this is exactly why it's worth putting in the effort to beat the game on release patch. I beat the game when it earned it's reputation. Not when it smoothed off the edges after a week.

 

[Stoned Ape]

Speaking of people who seem unreasonably good at this game, Quoppp has loads of no-damage boss run videos showcasing different builds for the base game and dropped this SotE major boss run video recently. He seems to spend as much time facing his character towards the camera as he does towards the bosses. There's timestamps to miss out the cutscenes if you don't want to watch them (I skipped them, personally).



He takes out the final boss' first form between 11:24 to 11:48 then the second form from 13:12 to 13:45, so less than minute for the fight in total.

 

[Ivan]

What have been people's favorite slices/bits of the DLC? Off the top of my head:
-the new traps in the dungeons

Spoiler

the huge flamemouth golem, the basilisk projectile, I do wish this did heavier damage as it closed in on you

-I loved the vertical design and encounter design of the Specimen Storehouse, all the way to the very top
-

Spoiler

I like that Radahn seems to be the only boss to really punish going for a summon ASAP. He can close the distance so fast and erase you if you try it without care.

-navigating the overworld, as in, reading the map and going, I wonder how I get there, is cool. Still not a fan of invisible walls or easy to miss ladders tho...fuck that got me
-the feeling of finding the Lv3 talismans is just chef's-kiss

 

[Raghar]

Parry is OP, thus it should be avoided in Dark Souls.

 

[Lyric Suite]

"It's not a flaw because From don't fix it" this is why you're retarded.

The argument is that Elden Ring has crossed a kind of threshold and that the combat now has many flaws that weren't there before. Bitching about old things that have been around Souls since the beginning makes me think people are just struggling to inflate what exactly it is supposed to be wrong about Elden Ring specifically. In fact, technical flaws shouldn't even be part of the conversation if the argument is that the mechanics FromSoft introduced to bump the difficutly are somehow bad. The argument isn't that those mechanics are broken or don't work properly, it's that they are bad in and of themselves while working as inteded, so old stuff like camera issues shouldn't count.

 

[Dobkeratops]

As always, someone is destroying every boss with ease

Rellana almost seems like a boss made solely to showcase the new OP deflect flask tear. But I imagine a lot of players were like me and ate 12 tons of unavoidable flaming debris on approach to the first flame golem and just decided to put them off indefinitely (turns out they're actually easier than trolls once you get underneath them.)

 

[Hell Swarm]

The argument is that Elden Ring has crossed a kind of threshold and that the combat now has many flaws that weren't there before.

When you get to the last boss or the super boss let me know. I'd love to know what other enemies in the franchise have multi hit explosions you need to dodge through while not changing the animation. My screen turns GOLD, I dodge the immediate explosion and then without any changing of the animations I have to dodge another explosion from the same attack animation. This is actually a new problem but you wouldn't know that because you haven't got there yet and likely won't. There's also a double boss that has unavoidable damage at times, which was a problem they patched out of Elden ring's double fights and reintroduced with a new mechanic/attack for late game boss.

Old problems are fixed and reintroduced and new problems make any sort of "tough but fair" argument invalid. But you for some reason have to defend From like your life depends on it. Which is just sad.

 

[Elttharion]

Mimic absolutely does trivialize almost everything.

if it's in the game it's to be used.

If Hidetaka Miyazaki din't wanted me to use Mimic, he would't have putted it into the game.

This applies to sorcery, incantations, to eastus, summons, shields, torrent, moonligh greatsword, scarlet rot weapons, scarlet rot weapons in your mimic while you use unlimited mana kahemahema when the boss is distracted, etc. The greatest problem of soulsborn community is that people like to dictate how other people should play their game that they brought.

I like to play this way >


If someone gets their fun picking a broken sword, going SL1 naked, no summons, no torrent, no shield, is their problem.

This "unlimited kamehameha" is not working in the DLC, in fact I'm using much more my Moonlight Greatsword against bosses and melee spells like Adula moonblade instead of using long range spells and even switching from medium to light loadout in some bosses.

Does your game actually look like this? Like 10fps stuttery slide show? It's like one of those old stop motion animations.

Turn based Elden Ring

 

[Tyranicon]

The first time you try it you immediately understand using anything else would be nerfing yourself.

Mimic at launch before patches was cheat-tier. It trivialized the game after you got it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

When you get to the last boss or the super boss let me know.

Will do, though i'm sure the boss will be nerfed by the time i get around playing this so it won't "count" lel.

 

[Crayll]

That's why you have to speed through the game on release now, the huge amount of new players that ER brought in that cry about difficulty has made From too nerf happy.

 

[processdaemon]

What have been people's favorite slices/bits of the DLC? Off the top of my head:
-the new traps in the dungeons

Spoiler

the huge flamemouth golem, the basilisk projectile, I do wish this did heavier damage as it closed in on you

-I loved the vertical design and encounter design of the Specimen Storehouse, all the way to the very top
-

Spoiler

I like that Radahn seems to be the only boss to really punish going for a summon ASAP. He can close the distance so fast and erase you if you try it without care.

-navigating the overworld, as in, reading the map and going, I wonder how I get there, is cool. Still not a fan of invisible walls or easy to miss ladders tho...fuck that got me

My favourite bit is the Dragon Communion questline, two really good fights (Senessax and Bayle) and Igon's VA is great, I still have 'CURSE YOU BAYLE' in my head.

 

[Ivan]

That's why you have to speed through the game on release now, the huge amount of new players that ER brought in that cry about difficulty has made From too nerf happy.

IMO the fact that the nerf is only felt IF the player engages with the playspace and explores and acquires the progression items, is a based way of doing things

 

[Anonona]

Will do, though i'm sure the boss will be nerfed by the time i get around playing this so it won't "count" lel.

You can always play a pirate copy of the game with the base version, if you don't mind not having online unless you use the seamless coop mod, or even install manually the "vanilla" version patch and play offline

 

[Hell Swarm]

That's why you have to speed through the game on release now, the huge amount of new players that ER brought in that cry about difficulty has made From too nerf happy.

IMO the fact that the nerf is only felt IF the player engages with the playspace and explores and acquires the progression items, is a based way of doing things

The upgrades are the same as leveling up in a normal playthrough. It's got to be nearly impossible to beat some of these bosses without doing it. You're losing 80% of your damage and defense if you skip these upgrades. The last boss already one hits you at level 180 with 60 vigor, heavy armour and +19 scatmans.

 

[abija]

IMO the fact that the nerf is only felt IF the player engages with the playspace and explores and acquires the progression items, is a based way of doing things

Why? Aren't the players that explore a lot and play slow going to be auto affected by the nerf?
It is what it is I guess... when retards like azmodan start getting involved it all goes to shit.

 

[Ivan]

IMO the fact that the nerf is only felt IF the player engages with the playspace and explores and acquires the progression items, is a based way of doing things

Why? Aren't the players that explore a lot and play slow going to be auto affected by the nerf?
It is what it is I guess... when retards like azmodan start getting involved it all goes to shit.

Clarification: the nerf is keeping in spirit of encouraging the player to explore the world and net those items. The nerf isn't felt independently. The opportunity for tryhards who want to do level 1 stats, level 1 weapon, naked, no scadutree, is still there. Of course, you could still collect the nerf items and never use them in the bonfire.

TLDR: just saying this was a smart way of doing it versus just slapping a flat nerf on the bosses as is. They opted to adjust the DLC exclusive progression system itself.

 

[Hell Swarm]

They buffed early game power level which is also nice because finding those last 2-3 levels of upgrades is a pain in the arse with a map this big.

I just finished the 1 hit main bosses video and they all have 1 thing in common. He cheeses the bosses to the point where they don't enter phase 2 or don't do their big attacks. It's dodging the basic combo and then bursting them down from weapon arts after stacking a bunch of buffs. This has always been possible in From games (making the game easy mode) but it's not something I personally enjoy and it's not the way most people play. The final boss has an obvious weakness I had known about but refused to use because it trivilizes him and it's not in my play style. If you want to use it then you can bleed him out, skip everything but his basic combo and get a very shallow experience from it. You can always comet azur your way to victory in Elden ring, it's always going to work but that's not what people are complaining about. They're complaining the traditional Roll+melee weapon/shield and using what you enjoy isn't viable compared to spamming weapon arts. You could Flame of the redmane the entire game to death pre-nerf but none of us look at that style of play and think "that's how From intended this to be done!" and trust me, I did that shit and it wasn't nearly as interesting as the Dark soul trilogy where you had to dodge stuff not just infinitely stagger it.

 

[cvv]

It's got to be nearly impossible to beat some of these bosses without doing it.

Queue some nolife streamer finishing a SL1 no-damage run, naked, without the blessings, armed with a modded-in broken laddle from DS2.

 

[Anonona]

Another "good" thing (depending on your side of the debate on the quality of fights) is that none of the bosses patterns or AI has been touch, so mechanically they are just as hard. If anything, this change may also help to aliviate the need to search for bleesings on replays, as the highest increase of power will be early on, so a skilled player going at it a second time can ignore more of the later ones.