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

[kites]

In ER base game it was big open areas filled with shitty copypasta content, in DLC it's big open areas filled with no content. I'd say it's still an improvement, at least you can skip to main content faster.

I’m not sure it’s much of an improvement; I spent way too much time picking apart most of the DLC areas thinking “I have to be missing something here”. The vertical scope is nice, but the fact it’s laid out and designed so convolutedly only compounds that issue for me. Sure, you could make the argument it’s not necessary to scour the map, but it’s a From game.. there’s no way to know you aren’t missing out on something important or valuable without doing so.

Overall I still have a lukewarm feeling on the whole package. There’s some great stuff in it, but it often comes off like a modder reconstituting the base content rather than a professional team building on the game’s core.

 

[Max Damage]

From gives you lots of tools then expects you to be smart enough not to completely destroy your game with them.

This is backwards reasoning, if you weren't meant to use some things (together), they wouldn't be allowed in game. I still don't get why people are trying to force the idea that From makes airtight suffering simulators for masochists, you can "break" the game just by playing their games and using the tools you're given, even if it's something as simple as stumbling upon heavy armor and big weapon back in first Dark Souls. Anyone's welcome to do self-imposed runs and not use what they have, but that's not the actual game's difficulty by default.

 

[Hell Swarm]

From gives you lots of tools then expects you to be smart enough not to completely destroy your game with them.

This is backwards reasoning, if you weren't meant to use some things (together), they wouldn't be allowed in game. I still don't get why people are trying to force the idea that From makes airtight suffering simulators for masochists, you can "break" the game just by playing their games and using the tools you're given, even if it's something as simple as stumbling upon heavy armor and big weapon back in first Dark Souls. Anyone's welcome to do self-imposed runs and not use what they have, but that's not the actual game's difficulty by default.

I agree that From let you set your own difficulty and masochist mode is not the default. The discussion here is if "ultra easy mode" is what From intended players to be using. If you stack buffs you can 1 shot every boss in the game, even ones with cut scene triggers if you get the right RNG on some AOE spells. I think we can all agree 1 shotting DLC Radahn was never the intended way to fight him and yet it can be done by players min/maxing. I think it can be done by a SL1 character even.

My argument has always been that From intend you to fight bosses with maybe 1 buff active because most builds simply don't include them (we have poll data to pull from). You're supposed to fight a boss for 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the boss in question. Then you learn the roll timings, hit it enough times and you've gut good and won. It's very very unlikely From expected you to walk in with 10 buffs 1 HP and drop a nuke on a boss even if the allow you to do it. So you have people like Lyric playing on ultra easy mode and saying that's intended and how most people play. While I point out that's an extreme build that demolishes everything with ease and is not how 99.9% of players play. Which I think we can see from the DLC discussions and online discussions in general. People aren't struggling against bosses for hours because they're playing on ultra easy mode and only need to dodge 10 attacks with 12 healing flasks if they fuck up.

 

[Max Damage]

Haven't played the DLC (don't know if I'll finish base game in first place), but out of all Dark Souls DLCs only in 3rd game it took me a while to beat Friede and Gael/Midir. It's only in Sekiro that you can't buff to same magnitude, just saying that From doesn't really care much about how fast you beat anything most of time. Even discarding the buffs together, you can use phantoms, and the theoretical 30 minutes to couple hours actually become win on first try. And things like Pursuer fight can be solved by something From placed inside the arena in under 15 seconds, the actual "git gud" games don't have any of this stuff.

 

[Lyric Suite]

My argument has always been that From intend you to fight bosses with maybe 1 buff active because most builds simply don't include them

That's just something you pulled out of your ass.

So you have people like Lyric playing on ultra easy mode

Absolute zero conception of how this game actually works. You are clearly completely out of your depth here and yet you continue to speak from a position of authority.

 

[abija]

You're supposed to fight a boss for 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on the boss in question. Then you learn the roll timings, hit it enough times and you've gut good and won.

Is that from "game design for dummies" or from "poll data"?

From intends people to have fun with whatever they like from the large amount of tools they provide. You're trying to argue there's only one way to have fun and From failed at balancing for it. That if people killed the bosses in reasonable time they must have been playing on ultra easy mode. And the only fact you base that on is that you didn't.

 

[Odoryuk]

My argument has always been that From intend you to fight bosses with maybe 1 buff active because most builds simply don't include them

There's multiple type of buffs, you can't stack two buffs of the same type, that was not intended by the developers. If you can stack multiple different types of buffs together without using glitches, then it was totally intended by the developers

 

[Hell Swarm]

If there ever was a bad faith argument ultra easy mode being reasonable is it.

My argument has always been that From intend you to fight bosses with maybe 1 buff active because most builds simply don't include them

There's multiple type of buffs, you can't stack two buffs of the same type, that was not intended by the developers. If you can stack multiple different types of buffs together without using glitches, then it was totally intended by the developers

From don't intend you to find all the buffs and all the meta weapons though. We've discussed this before with Golden Vow. It's in an out of the way place fighting an enemy you have no real reason to fight. They expect you to find some of them but not all of them.

Is the concept that "You can do anything, even ruin your game but we hope you're not dumb enough to do it" not one you've seen before? It used to be the philosophy of the entire souls series. If you wanted to kill your entire NPC line up you could. Go into the Nexus and kill everyone but the maiden and you're going to struggle but you can do it. Want to kill Andre in DaS1? Go ahead. Going to get screwed until Anor Londo (I think you can kill the giant but I want to say they disabled combat there?) or you have to go to the skeleton blacksmith with no bonfire. Souls entire identity was freedom to fuck yourself over and it's partly gone in Elden ring because baby mode is on any time an important NPC is present.

 

[Odoryuk]

Is the concept that "You can do anything, even ruin your game but we hope you're not dumb enough to do it" not one you've seen before? It used to be the philosophy of the entire souls series. If you wanted to kill your entire NPC line up you could. Go into the Nexus and kill everyone but the maiden and you're going to struggle but you can do it. Want to kill Andre in DaS1? Go ahead. Going to get screwed until Anor Londo (I think you can kill the giant but I want to say they disabled combat there?) or you have to go to the skeleton blacksmith with no bonfire. Souls entire identity was freedom to fuck yourself over and it's partly gone in Elden ring because baby mode is on any time an important NPC is present.

Being able to finally kill a difficult boss with a help of a buff is not ruining your game

 

[abija]

From don't intend you to find all the buffs and all the meta weapons though. We've discussed this before with Golden Vow. It's in an out of the way place fighting an enemy you have no real reason to fight. They expect you to find some of them but not all of them.

How did you get to the conclusion that everyone played meta builds buffed to the teeth or otherwise they struggled?

I'm average or below since I don't really care to learn the depths of combat in these games (the only one I focused a bit on it was DS2 because I tried some pvp). I picked confessor, played blind and tried to make a build that would fit the template. Didn't use mimic or the other ashes I saw mentioned in this thread. I don't think I used more than 10 rune arcs but I might be wrong (I generally hoard resources that seem scarce and end games without using them). Only other items used in combat were flasks and physick. That's a far cry from meta weapons and all the buffs.

I spent more time on the first crucible knight than most bosses in the game. The only ones that took some time were beast and consort radahn. As someone said before, this is not a git gud game.

 

[Hell Swarm]

I'm average or below

Yea, we know you're retarded.

 

[NJClaw]

If there ever was a bad faith argument ultra easy mode being reasonable is it.

It's just that ER has so much broken stuff that I feel it's almost impossible to decide where to draw the line. Spirit ashes are more broken than any of the available buffs, but claiming you're not intended to use them would be borderline insane. Personally, I prefer playing without summoning, but I can't really blame anyone who does otherwise.

From don't intend you to find all the buffs and all the meta weapons though. We've discussed this before with Golden Vow. It's in an out of the way place fighting an enemy you have no real reason to fight. They expect you to find some of them but not all of them.

I think you're grossly underestimating the number of buffs sources the game throws at you.

For the "aura" slot, you can choose from:
- Golden Vow (ash of war): sure, it's dropped by a random enemy, but you find it very early in Limgrave, while you're still in your honeymoon phase with the game and are eager to fight everything.
- Golden Halberd: I don't think there's a single player who hasn't killed the first tree sentinel in his first playthrough, at least for revenge.
- Uplifting Aromatic: found in a fairly random micro-dungeon, I'd say one out of three players finds it in his first playthrough (you have to go through the ruin-strewn precipice and explore the swampy area).
- Golden Vow (spell): impossible to miss if you enter the Mt. Gelmir area from Altus Plateau. I'd say entering a major area through the most obvious route isn't such a rare occurrence.
- Golden Epitaph: at the very beginning of a nearly unmissable dungeon. It's locked behind a stonesword key, but the room is there in plain view.
- Rallying standard: if you're at least superficially exploring every major area, you can't miss this.
- Shared order: dropped by a Night's Cavalry. You can most definitely miss this, but it's basically a third copy of Golden Vow.
- Stormhawk Deenh: unmissable if you go back to the chapel of anticipation.

There's also an item in the DLC (a fourth Golden Vow), but I won't count that for simplicity.

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume you'll find at the very least a couple of these during your first playthrough. Sure, some of them have some kind of requirements, but you just need to be able to use one.

On a semi-unrelated note, I don't know if anyone has been folowing the adventures of the gamer goldfish, but the little dude actually beat Radahn in around 6 hours:



With the right build, you can trash the entire game randomly smashing keys with your eyes closed.

 

[Hell Swarm]

It's just that ER has so much broken stuff that I feel it's almost impossible to decide where to draw the line. Spirit ashes are more broken than any of the available buffs, but claiming you're not intended to use them would be borderline insane. Personally, I prefer playing without summoning, but I can't really blame anyone who does otherwise.

Elden Ring is clearly balanced around summons. Especially the DLC which improved boss AI across the game to better randomize boss attack targets.

I think you're grossly underestimating the number of buffs sources the game throws at you.

I think you missed the previous discussion because you're right there's loads, faith has a shit load of buffs and weapons that buff exist. The problem is they're mostly faith based and faith is the least popular build of any Souls game. They've always been less popular and were just plain bad in Dark souls 3 except for 1 DLC spell which was broken. Elden ring is especially bad for starting a faith class and doing much of anything early on. And my experience with faith in my recent play through was the best thing you had was black flame spells. Unless a boss was immune to fire there was never a reason to use any of the fancy stuff (most of it sucked any way). So we're back to "The game has lots of options but most players cannot or will not use them". Most people aren't using the buff weapons for example. And outside of a small niche they're not switching standard into gold vow into flame grant me strength.

With the right build, you can trash the entire game randomly smashing keys with your eyes closed.

This is part of the difficulty selection. This is also the exact build Lyric is using and why we laugh at him for thinking this is a 'normal' build. He's using the most broken meta weapon in the game and stacking buffs on top of it then going "isn't this game easy!!! Everyone else must suck!" and can't see he's literally playing goldfish difficulty, except it's goldfish plus buffs so it's like hyper golfish easy mode.

 

[NJClaw]

The problem is they're mostly faith based and faith is the least popular build of any Souls game.

I get that it's not the point, but they're most definitely not "mostly faith based".

Of all the aura buffs I just listed, the only ones with a faith requirement are the Golden Vow spell, the Golden Halberd and the Golden Epitaph sword. And of these three, two have an entirely negligible requirement (14 Faith for the Golden Epitaph, 12 for the Golden Halberd), which means that the only "faith based" aura buff is the Golden Vow spell.

Faith has a lot of body buffs, but there's an equal amount with absolutely no requirement. The best ones are VERY hard to miss (Boiled Prawn from our good friend Big Boggart, Armorer's Cookbook 3 from one of the very first merchants in Limgrave).

For weapon buffs, once again, Faith is a non-issue.

Saying that buffs are "mostly faith based" and that's a problem that prevents your standard player from using them is just plain false. Your standard player doesn't use buffs either because he's not willing to understand how they work or because he doesn't need them since summoning makes everything easy enough.

Most people aren't using the buff weapons for example. And outside of a small niche they're not switching standard into gold vow into flame grant me strength.

Yeah, I 100% agree. The incredibly funny over-buffing routine is something that's only relevant for a very selected fringe of passionate players willing to invest a lot of time into the game.

Elden ring is especially bad for starting a faith class and doing much of anything early on. And my experience with faith in my recent play through was the best thing you had was black flame spells. Unless a boss was immune to fire there was never a reason to use any of the fancy stuff (most of it sucked any way).

Boy oh boy, if this is your take on faith builds we've had VERY different experiences. My last playthrough I only used incantations and I can't really express how wrong I think you are. I can't say I've experienced an easier run. Enemies (even bosses) basically can't attack you while you delete them from afar.

Catch Flame can carry you through the early game (I mean, it can actually carry you through the entirety of the game, but that's another story) and it's incredibly easy to quickly optimize.
Honed Bolt and Lightning Strike are good enough tools to start, but as soon as you pick up Lightning Spear in Liurnia you're set for the rest of the game. There are better spells for specific enemies and situations, but Lightning Spear is an easy win button against 95% of the content if you build around it. I haven't filmed anything, but there isn't a single boss that this thing can't easily delete in a couple of casts.
Lansseax's Glaive, Fortissax's Lightning Spear and Frozen Lightning Spear are all incredibly good at taking care of big groups of enemies.
Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike and Pest Threads deal thousands and thousands of damage to big enemies.
Aspect of the Crucible: Tail and Aspects of the Crucible: Horns can perma-stunlock every character-sized enemy.
Giantsflame Take Thee, Flame, Fall Upon Them and Burn, O Flame! are perfect alternatives against anything resistant to electricity. They're all endgame spells, but Catch Flame is always there.
Darkness isn't easy to use, but it's such a funny weird thing. If you time it correctly, you can basically "stun" almost every dangerous enemy for long enough to charge a big finisher with a long casting time. It's definitely the easiest way to deal with omens and revenant (if you don't want to cheese them with healing spells).

These are the spells I used, but I'm sure there are other good ones. I'm sure Frenzied Burst and The Flame of Frenzy are good, but I can't vouch for them as I haven't used them much.

tl;dr: incantations are broken and they trivialize the entire game. From the very beginning to the last boss (Catch Flame deletes Radagon, Pest Threads kills the Elden Beast so hard it dies IRL).

This is part of the difficulty selection. This is also the exact build Lyric is using and why we laugh at him for thinking this is a 'normal' build. He's using the most broken meta weapon in the game and stacking buffs on top of it then going "isn't this game easy!!! Everyone else must suck!" and can't see he's literally playing goldfish difficulty, except it's goldfish plus buffs so it's like hyper golfish easy mode.

I have seen a lot of people play Elden Ring (both the base game and the DLC) and, even if I wouldn't go as far as saying that these games are easy, people are definitely making it harder than it needs to be by not using basic tools (shields, ashes of war, summons) the game expects you to use.

 

[Silverfish]

Souls entire identity was freedom to fuck yourself over and it's partly gone in Elden ring because baby mode is on any time an important NPC is present.

In fairness, the inability to kill NPCs is limited to Roundtable Hold. Anyone in the field is fair game. It's still shit design overall, and a betrayal of Demon's Souls' ethos, but it's not as bad as it could be.

It's just that ER has so much broken stuff that I feel it's almost impossible to decide where to draw the line.

Unless you have a youtube or twitch channel that leaves you financially dependent upon self-imposed challenges, I wouldn't bother.

Golden Halberd: I don't think there's a single player who hasn't killed the first tree sentinel in his first playthrough, at least for revenge.

That kind of sucks actually. If you killed the sentinel in the 1.0 version, you got the Chad edition of the golden halberd that dealt pure physical damage and had the overpowered charge ash of war (which back on 1.0 consumed no focus).

 

[NJClaw]

Souls entire identity was freedom to fuck yourself over and it's partly gone in Elden ring because baby mode is on any time an important NPC is present.

In fairness, the inability to kill NPCs is limited to Roundtable Hold. Anyone in the field is fair game. It's still shit design overall, and a betrayal of Demon's Souls' ethos, but it's not as bad as it could be.

There are other safe zones (right now I can only think of the arenas where you fight Mohg and Messmer) and you just can't attack certain NPCs (for sure Rya in Liurnia and Roderika in Limgrave, but I'd say Ranny also counts).

 

[Hell Swarm]

Of all the aura buffs I just listed, the only ones with a faith requirement are the Golden Vow spell, the Golden Halberd and the Golden Epitaph sword. And of these three, two have an entirely negligible requirement (14 Faith for the Golden Epitaph, 12 for the Golden Halberd), which means that the only "faith based" aura buff is the Golden Vow spell.

It sounds weird but 14 and 12 faith is actually a lot when you're doing your build. A lot of weapons have stat requirements in 2 stats now, so your "spare" points are going to whatever that is. If you're not specifically building faith you want your 14 intelligence/arcane instead. And the most popular starting class is Samurai which has 9/8/8 for it's magic stats so you're at minumum 5 levels or 6 to hit that fresh hold. If you're not doing faith you're not going to spend 12 levels between 2 support stats are you? Most the popular weapons aren't faith based or they don't need a buff (sword of night and flame pre nerf)

Honed Bolt and Lightning Strike are good enough tools to start, but as soon as you pick up Lightning Spear in Liurnia you're set for the rest of the game. There are better spells for specific enemies and situations, but Lightning Spear is an easy win button against 95% of the content if you build around it. I haven't filmed anything, but there isn't a single boss that this thing can't easily delete in a couple of casts.

If you know where it is then you can get set up, but that's one of the other parts of the discussion. Wiki usage changes the game a lot. You find it by defeating a difficult enemy off the beaten path. So if you find it you're set, but if you don't and you don't know you can skip stormveil you're going through the early game with what you find up until that point which isn't great. Black flame is found in Stormveil and it scales with enemy health so a player is more likely to have already found it and there's a lot of fire damage support too.

Lansseax's Glaive, Fortissax's Lightning Spear and Frozen Lightning Spear are all incredibly good at taking care of big groups of enemies.

How many big groups of enemies did you fight? Most of them you run past on Torrent.

Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike and Pest Threads deal thousands and thousands of damage to big enemies.

Pest Threads is a brilliant spell.. But you have to do Millicents quest to find it and it's not exactly an easy one to follow and you never need to return to Gowry who sells it. ADLS is basically at the end of the game so you aren't using it for the majority of the run.

Giantsflame Take Thee, Flame, Fall Upon Them and Burn, O Flame! are perfect alternatives against anything resistant to electricity. They're all endgame spells, but Catch Flame is always there.

Loved some of these spells but no real targets for them because there's no groups I cared to fight and they did similar damage to black flame toss which came out faster and was safer. Flame fall upon them has targeting issues where it will often throw the main part of the spell into the ground instead of along it. Annoyed me as I really liked that spell but you had to manually aim it to get much out of it.

Faith builds do have some nice toys and can get powerful quickly if you know where to find them. The discussion on how viable buffs and faith is for a normal play through has been assuming someone is playing blind and not using wikis to find stuff. The faith buffing weapons removing the weapon art often makes them worse than other weapons because weapon arts break so much of the game. Using golden vow over flame of the redmane (pre nerf) was like taking a water gun to fight a blitzkrieg, it was just insane to consider.

If I recall Godrick and Margitt both resist holy damage so your first 2 major hurdles are faith resistant and end game are too. Fire giant obviously doesn't care about fire so a lot of your tools randomly get turned on/off when as most melee weapons don't lose their damage to random bosses and especially not end game bosses. You can melt elden beast and radaghon with black flame but if you're wanting to use faith skills.. yea, not a wise choice which pigeon holes your build more than "Katana goes brrrr" which works on everything.

In fairness, the inability to kill NPCs is limited to Roundtable Hold. Anyone in the field is fair game. It's still shit design overall, and a betrayal of Demon's Souls' ethos, but it's not as bad as it could be.

Volcano manor, the 3 finger area. There's loads of them.

 

[NJClaw]

It sounds weird but 14 and 12 faith is actually a lot when you're doing your build. A lot of weapons have stat requirements in 2 stats now, so your "spare" points are going to whatever that is. If you're not specifically building faith you want your 14 intelligence/arcane instead. And the most popular starting class is Samurai which has 9/8/8 for it's magic stats so you're at minumum 5 levels or 6 to hit that fresh hold. If you're not doing faith you're not going to spend 12 levels between 2 support stats are you? Most the popular weapons aren't faith based or they don't need a buff (sword of night and flame pre nerf)

I honestly don't know what to say if you think that 12 faith is a serious investment and requires to be "faith based". It doesn't. And even if it did it wouldn't change the fact that most buffs aren't faith based, contrary to what you said.

If you know where it is then you can get set up, but that's one of the other parts of the discussion. Wiki usage changes the game a lot. You find it by defeating a difficult enemy off the beaten path. So if you find it you're set, but if you don't and you don't know you can skip stormveil you're going through the early game with what you find up until that point which isn't great.

But we weren't talking about a "first" playthrough where you don't know where things are. You said your experience with faith spells in your last playthrough was underwhelming, I'm telling you you must have done something wrong because incantations in this game are absolutely broken.

If you want to play a faith caster, your starting class is the Prophet. With Catch Flame in your pocket, you really don't need to find anything else before Lightning Spear. If your starting class isn't the Prophet, then you aren't playing a main caster and you're using your weapon to hit things.

Also I feel like you're really stretching the meaning of words by calling a run-of-the-mill knight a "difficult enemy". Sure, he's no mere hollow, but it's not something you can't beat the first time you encounter it.

Black flame is found in Stormveil and it scales with enemy health

Black Flame is good, but 2,5% HP means nothing against regular enemies and basically any useful spell already deletes bosses. I'm sure it can be used to great effect, but Lightning Spear is just better in most situations, even just because enemies won't dodge it.

How many big groups of enemies did you fight? Most of them you run past on Torrent.

I fight everything. I'm here to bring death to the lands between.

Pest Threads is a brilliant spell.. But you have to do Millicents quest to find it and it's not exactly an easy one to follow and you never need to return to Gowry who sells it. ADLS is basically at the end of the game so you aren't using it for the majority of the run.

Again, since you talked about your "last playthrough", I thought we were talking from the point of view of a player who has already experienced the game and knows where and how to find things.

The faith buffing weapons removing the weapon art often makes them worse than other weapons because weapon arts break so much of the game. Using golden vow over flame of the redmane (pre nerf) was like taking a water gun to fight a blitzkrieg, it was just insane to consider.

My post was an answer to your "faith is bad", it had nothing to do with the "buffs dumb" discussion. But why would you use Golden Vow OVER Flame of the Redmanes? You put it on a dagger, cast the buff and then go back to your main weapon.

If I recall Godrick and Margitt both resist holy damage so your first 2 major hurdles are faith resistant and end game are too. Fire giant obviously doesn't care about fire so a lot of your tools randomly get turned on/off when as most melee weapons don't lose their damage to random bosses and especially not end game bosses. You can melt elden beast and radaghon with black flame but if you're wanting to use faith skills.. yea, not a wise choice which pigeon holes your build more than "Katana goes brrrr" which works on everything.

Saying that resisting holy damages makes a boss "faith resistant" is just... weird? Catch Flame does fire damage.

And you use Pest Threads on the Fire Giant, why would you care about its fire resistance?

You have dozens of spells, you use the right ones at the right moment. You're obsessed with Black Flame, but I'm almost sure there are better alternatives against most enemies, you just have to be willing to explore the tools the game gives you. Of course, I reiterate, I'm talking about a playthrough where you know your route to almost anything. Only a madman would play a pure caster on a blind playthrough.

 

[Hell Swarm]

You have dozens of spells, you use the right ones at the right moment. You're obsessed with Black Flame, but I'm almost sure there are better alternatives against most enemies, you just have to be willing to explore the tools the game gives you. Of course, I reiterate, I'm talking about a playthrough where you know your route to almost anything. Only a madman would play a pure caster on a blind playthrough.

Yea we got our lines crossed there. If you know where everything is and how to spec you can cake walk the game. I was playing coop where bosses have double health and black flame burning extra health did a massive difference compared to even the bigger spells. Many of which look amazing but completely lack effective ways to hit enemies. Flame fall was what I wanted all play through and never found a use for sadly.

https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/12/30/braid-jonathan-blow-elden-ring-no-game-design He's right.

 

[Silverfish]

and you just can't attack certain NPCs (for sure Rya in Liurnia and Roderika in Limgrave, but I'd say Ranny also counts).

Volcano manor, the 3 finger area. There's loads of them.

Fair's fair. I'm happy to admit when I'm wrong if it means I can laugh at the game some more.

Edit: Those of us who remember have to appreciate the irony of Jonathan Blow saying there ain't no point to the game.

 

[cruel]

Commander Gaius was pretty hard, it took me 10 tries. This gravity AoE in the second phase can be painful. His charge attack was annoying, until you realize it can be easily blocked with a good shield. Fun fight.

Messmer defeated after 13 tries. After all the people complaining about him, I was expecting some total bullshit, but it was actually a very cool fight that ends quickly and doesn't waste your time. Being hyper aggressive and staying close to him was key.

Rellana remains as the only truly difficult part of this DLC so far.

Sent from my KB2005 using Tapatalk

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's irrelevant whether buffs are hard to come by or not. They aren't, but that's really not the crux of the issue here, because Hell Swamp's basic premise is still false and unproven. You are playing into his sophistry by getting side tracked into discussing how easy or how hard it is for the "regular" player to obtain buffs (which is basically a red herring) while ignoring his fundamental lie: that buffs are an automatic "i win" button against bosses.

And don't forget that along with this he is also asking you not to believe your lying eyes when you watch videos of people doing flawless plays against those DLC bosses, buffs or no buffs, either my own videos or those of highly skilled players like Ongbal and others. Remember that this entire discussion started with him claiming the DLC crossed a "threshold" in difficutly with bosses basically being impossible to do with normal means. When confronted with direct evidence of people doing just that, he went on this gigantic and utterly demented tirade on how the only reason the "pros" can beat those bosses without relying on summons is because they "cheat" by going on "wikis" and read about "buffs", asking us not to believe our eyes when we see people like Ongbal actually dancing around all the boss attacks, while also asking us to believe the normal Elden Ring player is both retarded and apparently also too illiterate to check those "wikis" for themselves.

 

[abija]

Yea, we know you're retarded.

Which makes your point that bosses are too hard even more wrong? Oh and it was a blind faith playthrough while you apparently couldn't figure it out after knowing the game. Mr "If I need to spend hours learning a boss plebs won't be able to kill it" top 1% player...

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, who gives a fuck about Jonathan Blow lmao.

 

[Damned Registrations]

All this talk about buff stacking seems to be missing a major point: Why the fuck would you know this works without a fucking guide? I went for a faith build myself on my original playthrough, and came to the conclusion that I could stack regen buffs with a defense buff and an offense buff, but the latter two weren't worth using since they lasted like 30 fucking seconds by the time you're through the fog wall and actually engage the boss, so despite being the build that had access to the most buffs, I barely used them.

What fucking player is collecting 20 buff spells and then systematically combining them and testing their damage dealt and taken to figure out the optimal setup? If you know to combine golden vow with greyoll roar and whatever the fuck else stacks it's because you watched a guide and may as well have downloaded cheat engine while you're at it.