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

[Lyric Suite]

"Knowing where to find the best weapons & ashes of war and where to acquire flask upgrades won't help struggling players."

If you are missing flask upgrades you are not worth talking to (they are literally in the fucking way), and "best weapons" is a relative thing. One of the absolute best ashes of war in the game can be found two seconds in, from a merchant you can find after 30 seconds exploration from the main starting point:

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Broadsword

This is what Square Off looks like in action:



And this is what it looks like against the Dancing Lion:



From a non-pro no less. If i had used this instead of my Lion's Claw (which i picked becase you know, lion against lion) set up it would have taken me even less to kill the boss, and yet it's basically a starter weapon. Using a strike weapon with slow wind up attacks was a conscious choice on my part NOT to make the fight as easy as i could have made it if i had used a piercing weapon with tons of posture damage, which is what all the "pros" are using. You guys have absolutely zero understanding of what's going on in this game.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, the fact you can do the above is why bosses in Elden Ring are designed the way they are. Because you have unusually powerful ways to break bosses the bosses on their part have ways that make any vanilla Souls approach harder than normal, but then it's your mistake in assuming this is Dark Souls when it clearly says Elden Ring in the name.

And for the record, i'm not saying it is impossible they could go overboard with making the game harder and harder, but the very fact that they keep doing that in the age of popamole and decline it's remarkable in itself. There was NO financial reason for why they had to make this DLC even harder. The fact they are commited to this to this point shows they have a complete dedication to their design principles. For all the screeching about how they went "mainstream" with Elden Ring it's definitely amusing that with this DLC they even managed to enrage the pros.

 

[Silverfish]

Either way, none of those boosts will break the game for anyone.

No, of course not.

 

[Vic]

^ heh

Lyric Suite seems like you still have much to learn, newb

 

[Lyric Suite]

Either way, none of those boosts will break the game for anyone.

No, of course not.

Well, not any of them taken in isolation. All Souls games can be broken (actually, all games can be broken when it comes down to it) that is neither here nor there.

The question is whether a normal combination of buffs and gear is somehow beyond the understanding of the average player, or is against the "rules" somehow, which appears to be part of the argument as well.

For the most part, the game is geared towards maximing a particular approach. Now some approaches work better in different situations. The secret then is to simply find out what works best in what context. In some cases, some counters can even trivialize bosses as an actual intended effect:



The most glaring case in point being the Revenant who can literally be disintegrated with healing spells to the point you doin't even have to fight him. The Revenant in fact exemplifies my argument that the reason bosses in Elden Ring are designed to be so unresonably hard is that you are EXPECTED to use counters. His moveset is among the single most confusing one in the game, but he also happens to have the single strongest counter of any enemy out there. Coincidence? Probably not, right?

Your "normal" player strawman isn't someone who doesn't like stacking up 50 buffs after switching out gear on the fly within the span of seconds like the guy i posted who swatted Malenia out in one hit:



The normal player is someone who will favor a particular approach (sometimes following a rolelaying concept, which is something i do all the time myself) and try to stick with it at all times. He is not so dump as not to understand how to use the right talismans or how to use buffs and any other kind of boosting. The average player isn't someone who doesn't know how to find gear in the world, or is incapable of getting a basic grasp of how things work.

My suspicion is that for the most part the problem with the average player is that they find a way to do things and like to stick with it until the end. This may have worked well in Dark Souls (maybe) but it's not how Elden Ring is set up.

My suggestion to the average player is keep in hand a variety of tactics and to adapt to the situation instead of trying to stick to one way even when it's clearly not working. It is not an unreasonable thing to ask even for a novice for instance to try different damage types if the one you are using isn't working that well. This kind of strategizing is standard fair for an RPG i don't see why it should be so difficult to grasp for anyone.

As for the wiki shit. All those games are designed with multiple playthroughs in mind. If you want to spoil everything you can most certainly read a wiki. The intended way however is to just discover things as you go, which i would hope would involve a bit of trial and error as well along the way. Now, the problem with this DLC is that it's designed with the assumption people already did that in the base game, which is a correct assumption to make meaning your argument people wouldn't know about stuff like Golden Vow THIS fucking late in the process, after two years the base game has been out and with people having presumably done multiple playthroughs is just too absurd to even contemplate.

 

[Ravielsk]

Here we go again with moving the goal posts and blah blah blah bullshit blah blah blah wiki/luck/whatever.
How about you kill your first crucible knight and want to use that awesome tail incantation? Or getting the heart of Agheel and seeing those yummy dragon incantations? Faith is good (or you might say broken) from start to end, noob friendly and extremely versatile.

You keep arguing about normal players but your experiences are those of self limiting souls tryhards while normal players have fun cruising through the game with op cool shit.

First off abija you are talking to two people here. To move the goal post it has to be the person who first set it in place, I cannot move the goal post for Hell Swarm or Lyric Suite or anyone else on the forum.

Second off you are yet again assuming that people, especially when the game launched(because that is the frame of reference I used), were just beating the two most difficult starting bosses and that they had the catalyst to even cast said spells to begin with. On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.
Hence my point that the average player who is not playing with a wiki open would not exactly be incentivized to go into a faith build.


Plus when did I say anything about self-imposed challenge? I never wrote that I CHOOSE to not use miracles. I wrote that my character was stat wise not a faith build because as a samurai I had very good reasons to go into dexterity and later I started investing into INT. Where in that statement did I say anything about refusing or challenging my self to anything?

 

[Hell Swarm]

Faith builds in general were not particularly great in the base game because it took them too long to get the basic bits and pieces of their kit. Hell the basic lightning spell is a drop from some wandering knight in a some corner of Liurnia. So there is very little incentive to focus on faith in the early game and even that requires either luck or wikis. Point being that for the vast majority of players anything faith related is most likely not going to be a part of their base kit because the very much discourages it early on.

Here we go again with moving the goal posts and blah blah blah bullshit blah blah blah wiki/luck/whatever.
How about you kill your first crucible knight and want to use that awesome tail incantation? Or getting the heart of Agheel and seeing those yummy dragon incantations? Faith is good (or you might say broken) from start to end, noob friendly and extremely versatile.

You keep arguing about normal players but your experiences are those of self limiting souls tryhards while normal players have fun cruising through the game with op cool shit.

The goal posts haven't been moved. The most common Elden Ring build was dex/arcane because bleed is an obvious source of high damage and the samurai is basically a knight class which was previously the most popular class to pick for newbies. Human fighter is the generic RPG character of choice and we're seeing the same choice made in Elden ring. So your starting 'bonus' stats are 9/8/8 and that means not a lot of magic is in your future unless you specifically spec for something, which is unlikely to happen when you need to level 4 stats (Health, mana, dex and stamina) to get your character functional. So by the time you have the stats to use magic items you're already deep into the game. And faith is seen as lightning spear + healing, and it's buffs are generally forgotten.

The normal player experience isn't being a tryhard, it's playing an open world game where it's very easy to miss entire locations let alone since items. Dropping from a hard early game enemy you're likely to run past and have no reason to revisit makes something quite hidden. The game having so many useless pick ups and the same item 3 times but slightly different isn't helping either. What sort of res.. I mean grease do you apply? There's different versions and how does a new player know what a boss is weak to? So they're unlikely to use any unless it's blindingly obvious like a wooden boss weak to fire.

You have to remember Elden ring is not an RPG, it's an action game with RPG elements. This isn't final fantasy where obvious menu options say "buff your weapon for a higher attack". Every item has a wall of text attached to it no one should care about and it's often risky to check items when you first time them and it interrupts the gameplay. These things really matter because even as an experienced player I didn't check 99% of the stuff I picked up because I had -my- build and I didn't need to change anything except the weapon when I reached the final boss gauntlet. I might try it on and push R1 a few times but I wasn't going to go collect a bunch of upgrade material (and don't say the mines are obvious because they're on the map. The map doesn't tell you what the red blobs are).

 

[Strange Fellow]

And faith is seen as lightning spear + healing, and it's buffs are generally forgotten.

By the mentally disabled dumbfuck you've made up.

Dropping from a hard early game enemy you're likely to run past and have no reason to revisit makes something quite hidden.

Of course you'd revisit a hard early game enemy. Anyone would, to exact revenge or just see what sort of cool shit he drops.

What sort of res.. I mean grease do you apply? There's different versions and how does a new player know what a boss is weak to?

I assume the process of "apply buff, observe what sort of damage you do" is the realm of autists with guides?

I might try it on and push R1 a few times but I wasn't going to go collect a bunch of upgrade material (and don't say the mines are obvious because they're on the map. The map doesn't tell you what the red blobs are).

By the end of the game you can buy every upgrade material. I have several weapons I found in the DLC that I've barely used yet fully upgraded, which I might come back to. As for "The map doesn't tell you what the red blobs are", it is very easy to observe that mines you've discovered correspond to the map icons. It doesn't have to tell you, basic human pattern recognition takes care of it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The average player according to Hell Swarm:

 

[Reinhardt]

empty swamp of emptiness is so exciting

 

[Hell Swarm]

Of course you'd revisit a hard early game enemy. Anyone would, to exact revenge or just see what sort of cool shit he drops.

Is it hard to revisit? No. Actually yes because Elden Rings maps so fucking huge I'm not going to remember where a generic knight on a horse dropping an item I don't know he has is after 120 hours of playing Elden Ring. Are you going to pretend you never forgot where generic knight number 5 is in a world this fucking big? By the time I beat Elden beast I'd forgotten limgrave even existed and wanted the damn game over.

By the end of the game you can buy every upgrade material. I have several weapons I found in the DLC that I've barely used yet fully upgraded, which I might come back to. As for "The map doesn't tell you what the red blobs are", it is very easy to observe that mines you've discovered correspond to the map icons. It doesn't have to tell you, basic human pattern recognition takes care of it.

If you find the bellbarings and often part of the DLC prep was to go and pick them all up. And we're not talking end game here because by end game your build is basically fixed unless you respect and most people don't respec unless they run into a road block because they like how they're playing and can change their weapon affinity easier than respecing and changing weapons/styles.

The red blobs barely stand out and people aren't running around the world with the map open to discover the connection. I didn't realize until my 2nd play through and I was checking where I got the upgrades.

 

[abija]

Second off you are yet again assuming that people, especially when the game launched(because that is the frame of reference I used), were just beating the two most difficult starting bosses and that they had the catalyst to even cast said spells to begin with. On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.
Hence my point that the average player who is not playing with a wiki open would not exactly be incentivized to go into a faith build.

It just happens that I played exactly like you describe is not possible. And you come with the most inane takes about how that's not how people play.

Neither of those are difficult btw and killing the dragon on the mount as intended is a fun experience. But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

And talking about inane takes here comes HellSwarm:

The most common Elden Ring build was dex/arcane because bleed is an obvious source of high damage and the samurai is basically a knight class which was previously the most popular class to pick for newbies. Human fighter is the generic RPG character of choice and we're seeing the same choice made in Elden ring.

Wtf is this logic even? People start the game picking samurai as a knight/human fighter replacement when the actual knight option is listed first?

Yes knight is an extremely popular choice and paladin is a very common way to build them. But apparently, faith is an unlikely choice for this game for normal people.

You have to remember Elden ring is not an RPG, it's an action game with RPG elements. This isn't final fantasy where obvious menu options say "buff your weapon for a higher attack". Every item has a wall of text attached to it no one should care about and it's often risky to check items when you first time them and it interrupts the gameplay.

Or, the obvious alternative, you are a retard.

 

[Ravielsk]

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

Nothing was moved anywhere. The argument was simply expanded. Its "you are stacking too many buffs to brake buffs and we know this because due to how the game is made it is highly unlikely anyone would naturally make this sort of character anyway". Its called making an argument and presenting supporting evidence. Me agreeing and providing evidence of my own does not move shit.

It just happens that I played exactly like you describe is not possible. And you come with the most inane takes about how that's not how people play.

For one I never typed "impossible" or any variation of the meaning. I argued that it is UNLIKELY as in NOT PROBABLE that a normal player would arrive naturally at such a build. So please start responding to what I wrote and not what you wish I wrote.

But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

Both are equally likely but that is entirely besides my point. My point is that a regular player, on their first playthrough will naturally miss a lot of content(unless he follows the wiki) and therefore its more likely than not that he will not pursue a faith build as that build has a harder time getting all its piece into place than any other build.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm pretty sure most people likely do check wikis for the specific stuff they want. If they start with the idea they want a faith build the first thing they will do is likely google which are the good faith weapons and spoil their locations for themselves. Your definition of the "normal" player is apparently some kind of bumbling fool who just randomly stumbles and fumbles around the game completely oblivious to how anything works. Most people are neither that clueless nor as are they as scrupolous as you believe about not having certain things "spoiled" for them, not if it's something they think they are going to need. Likely they will miss many things but the stuff they want they will get.

 

[Remain Nameless]

Faith has been a stat since Demon's Souls and two starting classes in ER begin with faith spells, but somehow you can't expect normal players to use it.
Arcane is a new stat in ER and no starting class begins with arcane spells or weapons with arcane scaling, but apparently it is the choice stat for normal players.

You people are really grasping at straws here.

 

[Seethe]

Outside of Dragon's Dogma, what action RPG has better combat? Pure action games and action games wearing RPG skins (Nioh) are better on that front of course, but nothing that's a full RPG comes to mind.

What kind of degenerate nonsense is this? Nioh 2 is far more of an RPG game than From shit. You only say this because Nioh also has a fantastic aggressive style combat system that needs to be mastered on top of the RPG elements, and maybe also because it's mission based, neither of these things invalidating or diminishing its status as an RPG. It has more RPG elements/mechanics, builds and modifiers you can toy around with and that's not even close. These are both combatfag games, so you cannot even argue that there's RPG mechanics outside of combat other than From's """"quests"""" (lmao)

I watched a Nioh speedrun where the guy used nothing but high stance axe heavy attacks to kill every enemy in the game.

That's because that weapon is the best weapon for speedrunning.

 

[Ravielsk]

Faith has been a stat since Demon's Souls and two starting classes in ER begin with faith spells, but somehow you can't expect normal players to use it.
Arcane is a new stat in ER and no starting class begins with arcane spells or weapons with arcane scaling, but apparently it is the choice stat for normal players.

You people are really grasping at straws here.

And it has been a fairly difficult spec to get into on your first playthrough since DS1.
In DS1 you had to do Solaires rather not so straightforward quest to get the lightning spell(the only good offensive spell for FAITH builds for the majority of the game).
In DS2 it was OK but as far as I remember the core offensive spells took a while to get(although I could be entirely wrong on that one)
DS3 Faith is just straight so garbage that not even memetubers could dress it up to even look viable.
Bloodborne does not have it, neither does Sekiro.

Demon's Souls is the only game where I would say its good without reservation but that is mostly because the level of healing it provides is kind of busted when you farm up enough grass to have infinite mana. God's Wrath is cool but I would never pick it over soul ray if I had to.

 

[Hell Swarm]

Neither of those are difficult btw and killing the dragon on the mount as intended is a fun experience. But hey, maybe stop and level up a bit in Limgrave, find out how the game works. What do you think is more likely for the quitenessential noob you argue about, to push through stormveil or to explore Limgrave?

Most people don't kill the dragons early because they're fucking boring to fight. They regularly toast you and you're sitting there hitting them on torrent over and over at best. They're obvious strong bosses people think you need to return to since they're so strong.

You are 2 people arguing the exact shit and piling up. The goal post was moved because you started from "used too many buffs to kill boss fast and broken whatever" and moved to "it's unlikely for people to play faith". From dumb to dumber but hey... you're both special cases.

These aren't contradictory statements. Most people don't stack buffs because they don't make faith builds. Arcane is more popular because it's advertised as a bleed proc and rivers of blood is handed to you on a plate towards the later half of the game. It's an obvious upgrade to the uchi when it's starting to fall off compared to later weapons. As have been pointed out even finding decent faith spells is difficult early game and late game faith sucks because of enemy immunity. Magic is every where and really strong so unless you specifically want to do a faith build you're unlikely to be pushed towards it.

This leads us to the simple facts of Elden ring : Most players pick Samurai or some form of magic based mage starting out. This is the same as picking Knight/mage in the previous souls games. It's pretty predictable.

Wtf is this logic even? People start the game picking samurai as a knight/human fighter replacement when the actual knight option is listed first?

Samurai has an uchi and that's cooler than a knight. Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

This conversation is getting really fucking boring. The tryhards will never accept their defective human beings and look at ways to ruin the game and think everyone else is wrong/dumb for not doing it. Soo

What is your favourite main game boss?
Favourite DLC boss?
What was your most used weapon for the base game and did you switch for the DLC?

 

[Anonona]

What is your favourite main game boss?

Probably Godfrey. Fun, well designed, many opportunities to use jump to dodge, amazing second phase. Wish he was the actual final boss even though I do like Radagon (fuck Elden Beast though)

Favourite DLC boss?

Messmer easily. Best one of the DLC, felt like actual care was put into its design to allow for a lot of openings yet was still an exhilarating fight, including its second phase. Has some flaws but I think the fight is the best one of the DLC easily.

What was your most used weapon for the base game and did you switch for the DLC?

Probably my most used weapon type was straight swords, I like the classics and Square Off is great, really strong and looks both cool and down to earth. Changed it for the Backhanded Blades, maybe my favourite new weapon type in the DLC. Great moveset with a lot of moves that either move you foward or let you keep your running momentum, the new AoW Blind Spot is really strong and fun, letting you find new openings to punish the bosses and do decent damage, and it has good stats and damage (at least lighting infused with a pure DEX build as I used them). Only flaw is that some attack like the jumping attack and strong attack felt like the recovery times were a bit longer than expected compared to other weapons. Also wished there were more than 3 and that more of them were swords instead of Chakrams.

 

[abija]

Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

Are you doubling down on retard? DeS, DS1, DS3 and ER have a similarly looking knight class. Even the description in ER is "A knight exiled from their homeland to wander. A solid, armor-clad origin.".
Is that your "normal player"? Someone who comes looking for a knight, looks at that list of classes and chooses samurai as the closest thing?

 

[Anonona]

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Rest are between 4-9%, with bandit being the less popular (4%)

 

[Hell Swarm]

Elden Ring doesn't have a knight class any way, the vagabond is the closest thing and it's nothing like the look of the dark souls knights which is what appealed to people. Samurai is the closest thing.

Are you doubling down on retard? DeS, DS1, DS3 and ER have a similarly looking knight class. Even the description in ER is "A knight exiled from their homeland to wander. A solid, armor-clad origin.".
Is that your "normal player"? Someone who comes looking for a knight, looks at that list of classes and chooses samurai as the closest thing?

The vagabond looks nothing like Dark souls knights.

https://www.pushsquare.com/features/poll-what-elden-ring-starting-class-will-you-choose

According to a poll of 10,421 players, the top 3 choices of classes are

1) Samurai (24% votes)
2) Astrologer and Vagabond (15% votes both, so I included them in the same spot)
3) Wretch (12% votes)

Thank you.

 

[Silverfish]

On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.

During my first run, I ran around Limgrave, beat Margit and made it to Roundtable before finding the summoning bell.

By the mentally disabled dumbfuck you've made up.

Or by anyone with long term memory. Faith has been incredibly inconsistent throughout the series. It offered little beyond pvp / co-op utility in DS, was objectively the best offensive attribute in DS2 and was nerfed into the ground in DS3, only worth raising to meet pyromancy requirements. It was entirely reasonable to ignore faith unless you knew ahead of time how good certain incantations are.

 

[Odoryuk]

O, Flame!
Surge, O Flame!
Whirl, O Flame!
Flame, Protect Me
Flame, You're Kinda Fine
Give Me a Kiss, O Flame!
I Want You So Bad, O Flame!
Oh, Yes, Flame, Yes, Right There
Flame, Cleanse Me

 

[Hell Swarm]

On top of that with the dragon incantations you need to invest into arcane and to get to the altar which is accessible only through a cave dungeon which I, in my first playthrough, simply did not stumble upon until later.

During my first run, I ran around Limgrave, beat Margit and made it to Roundtable before finding the summoning bell.

By the mentally disabled dumbfuck you've made up.

Or by anyone with long term memory. Faith has been incredibly inconsistent throughout the series. It offered little beyond pvp / co-op utility in DS, was objectively the best offensive attribute in DS2 and was nerfed into the ground in DS3, only worth raising to meet pyromancy requirements. It was entirely reasonable to ignore faith unless you knew ahead of time how good certain incantations are.

This is also the first game that really pushes for a second stat for weapons. So you saw a lot of Str/Int builds and Dex/arc. Faith doesn't have a buddy stat and when half the bosses are holy resistant you're discouraged from it.