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

[mediocrepoet]

I forgot who posted this already, but it really was accurate.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Porky, it will be interesting to see how you deal with the last 2 bosses of the game without dodging. But hey, don't let me stop you from becoming the Elden Pork and ushering us into the age of bacon. Ham at them!

 

[Lyric Suite]

Man the Ancient Dragon of Sussex or whats its face.

Wait, did i say Ancient Dragon? Ho no, i'm talking about the fucking SHEEP that keeps rolling in during the fight.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Lyric Suite have you tried fighting the dogs up by the northern isolated merchant shack in Dragonbarrow? Good times.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lyric Suite have you tried fighting the dogs up by the northern isolated merchant shack in Dragonbarrow? Good times.

I just hit them with rotten breath then went on a stroll to fumigate the next dog while the first went ticking away lmao. Too hard to resist with all those sheeps around too. Very satisfying to go back after the dog dies and find all those bodies to loot.

Which reminds me, i'm going to fucking kill every sheep on this fucking hill once i'm done with this dragon.

He now fell into a hole and kept breathing fire at me over and over. So i went down and of course i get killed by a big knight while the dragon keeps spazzing out (but miracolously never hit the knight in question).

Huge bosses are already confusing enough as it is without having to fight them in an area full of random clutter and pitfalls. Not fun particularly since he pretty much one shots me with anything he does. I die instantly if he so much farts while i'm under his dick.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I've had open world dragons bug out more than any other enemy I think. Either they do their flying attacks and land on geometry that make them difficult or impossible to attack or lands them into the middle of a pack of other enemies that are dangerous on their own, or else they rubber band and despawn to respawn at their original location due to leaving their arena because of their own AI attack routines, not me trying to kite them anywhere. There's one area in particular this really started to grind my gears. People who've seen it probably know already.

 

[NJClaw]

Thinking about dragons in this game almost makes me suffer. The first encounter with a dragon in the swamp took my breath away. The choreography was insane, with the beast flying around and landing on an unreachable cliff to breath fire down on me, while I was chasing him down on a horse, jumping to avoid fire and explosions. At the end of the fight, I honestly felt like I had just played one of my favorite boss encounters in any game ever. Then you encounter 20 more identical dragons that behave in the same exact way but in a shittier arena. Moreover, the moment you realize how easy it is to exploit them by just sticking to their feet, something cracks and fighting them becomes exactly like dealing with any other random trash mob. Fortissax and (especially) Placidusax were still good, but all the others are just trash. I can also excuse the one in the foggy ice lake, but all the others have to go.

 

[Haplo]

Since they were all optional, I've skipped them all. Except for that large sleeping/sick one.

Felt like too much work to learn to beat them.. and they usually dealt very heavy damage with all their attacks.

Edit: And except for that lightning spammer in Farrum Azula (with 10% health left).

 

[perfectslumbers]

I wish From Soft would fire Josh Sawyer from his part time job on the balance team

dragonsblahblah

Pretty much exactly my experience. Although Fortissax drops my fps by 40 every time he uses lightning so I have no idea what happens during that fight.

I think the repeating dragons could've been interesting if they were built differently from other enemies. They always do breath attacks in the exact same way and tail swipe at you in the exact same way. I think if they had a more dynamic moveset they could be good.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I kill everything, more or less. I murder hobo in isometric RPGs, you better believe I'm going to murder hobo in a Soulslike.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Jumping attacks = cheating as well

Fighting back is also cheating.

 

[Lyric Suite]

My rule of thumb when it comes to harmstringing yourself is to do just enough to allow you to "experience" the content and make you feel like you have overcome an obstacle through skill rather than cheese.

Anything more is just for the fun if you like the extra challenge.

If you are so overpowered every boss becomes Pinwheel it just seems to defeat the purpose of playing a game like this to me.

 

[Lyric Suite]

One recent example is a boss in Luria, that thing that spews venom and jump around like crazy, which apparently is really susceptible to some incantation (heal i think). I had somebody summon me and then he one shotted the boss with one heal. That's exactly the kind of thing i'm trying to avoid. This guy not only had a way to just kill the boss in one hit but even felt the need to bring a summon lmao.

 

[NJClaw]

If you are so overpowered every boss becomes Pinwheel it just seems to defeat the purpose of playing a game like this to me.

There is still a place for overpowered builds in a game like this after your first playthrough. Seeing how far you can push things after you've already mastered the game can be fun, even if ER doesn't have a builds system as complex as, for example, Nioh 2. Going for a broken build the first time you go through the game will only ruin your experience, though.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If you are so overpowered every boss becomes Pinwheel it just seems to defeat the purpose of playing a game like this to me.

There is still a place for overpowered builds in a game like this after your first playthrough. Seeing how far you can push things after you've already mastered the game can be fun, even if ER doesn't have a builds system as complex as, for example, Nioh 2. Going for a broken build the first time you go through the game will only ruin your experience, though.

The main complaint I have about Elden Ring is something others have identified ITT: the lack of a clear difficulty progression. You can go through an area and be challenged, or even frustrated, overcome it and then find that you're just steamrolling everything after that. I suspect though that this is in large part due to the story critical areas being much more lenient compared to the optional areas. Basically, they tried to provide challenges for players who wanted them but offered people who are struggling a way to get through and still see the end of the game. I think it's why, for example, Caelid and Dragonbarrow are reasonably difficult areas, while Liurnia and Altus Plateau are relatively easy. It's also why the Mountaintop of the Giants or whatever is significantly easier than the path to the Haligtree and beyond.

I don't see a way of having a reasonable progression to avoid this though unless you literally laid everything out in a linear set of levels but let people complete the game after stage 4 of 10 or something like that. I've been tooling around the game with hindsight on a new character trying to give myself a reasonably smooth difficulty curve and even with that I've been feeling some of the spikes.

I think you'd have to do something like:

Spoiler

Limgrave & Weeping Peninsula + Stormveil -> Liurnia + Academy -> Altus Plateau -> Caelid -> Leyndell -> Mount Gelmir -> Mountaintop of the Giants -> Volcano Manor -> Path to the Haligtree and beyond <-> Ashen Capital (could go in either order)

And then mix in the underground areas as appropriate depending on questlines and such and/or the area overhead the entrance you're taking into it, so probably, the underground is fully conquered around the same time as Mount Gelmir, give or take.

 

[Ayreos]

I've been playing Elder Ring on the highest difficulty.
I start NG+ with every item and spell and any desired build, but i have to kill myself and retry every time i fail to have fun with any given area or boss.
I'm currently stuck on Margit.

I almost defeat him every time by having fun parrying him and sidestepping his delayed roll-catch moves, however i cannot easily heal because the input reading makes it look stupid and therefore not fun, figuratively one-shotting me.
Currently i'm trying to find a fun way to end the fight when he starts spazzing out at the end. I tried just parrying, but that makes the fight winnable by a single strategy, which causes me to kill myself immediately as it's not fun anymore. I tried using spells, but he input reads and counters those too, so i kill myself again on the spot. Using a big ancient dragon incantation during one of his rare recovery animations is good, but his combos are so long and his punish gaps so short i have to spend a long time waiting for a good-looking moment, which depletes my internal "fun" bar excessively even though i've been dumping my personality points in patience and expectation management for the last 20 years.
Luckily, the latest patch seems to have increased spell poise. Today i'm going to try to finish the fight with a Scarlet Aeonia or a badass red lightning incantation after hopefully taking at least one of his hits during the casting. I'm excited to do it, but also worried about surviving the Stormveil Castle. I think i might have to summon a friend to manage that, because well... it's pretty fucking awful.
This isn't a satire post, by the way.

 

[Andnjord]

Just curious, when restarting the game how many of you guys do NG+ runs rather than starting a new character?
For those that do, how does the difficulty scale along the game? I've goofed around with my Jumping Jacks character killing Godrick, but it's mostly been piss easy and a way to gawk at silly weapon arts. At the same time I'm feeling like the endgame might be bone crushingly hard (Malenia but harder with essentially the same character? Help.....).

I've never done a NG+ run in a Soulsborne game, always preferring to restart as I like the progression of working slowly towards a build and struggling with half-missing tools, but I'm wondering if I should give it a go this time.

 

[Lutte]

Just curious, when restarting the game how many of you guys do NG+ runs rather than starting a new character?
For those that do, how does the difficulty scale along the game? I've goofed around with my Jumping Jacks character killing Godrick, but it's mostly been piss easy and a way to gawk at silly weapon arts. At the same time I'm feeling like the endgame might be bone crushingly hard (Malenia but harder with essentially the same character? Help.....).

I've never done a NG+ run in a Soulsborne game, always preferring to restart as I like the progression of working slowly towards a build and struggling with half-missing tools, but I'm wondering if I should give it a go this time.

Nope. Enemies do a little more damage and have a little more health but NG+ is really not a big deal. Malenia will still be hard if you found her hard in NG, but she's not twice as hard.
The biggest jump in NG+ is from the first NG+, each NG+ you do after the first one adds very little to the scaling of enemies.

Elden Beast is where I found the added scaling to be most annoying tbh, if you don't burn him quickly enough some of his random possible combos can get really shitty and he was already tanky enough in NG.

Unfortunately, the scaling from NG+ does not really make any of the early game areas interesting on your end game character. You'll be slaughtering enemies like Margit, Godrick, Morgott as if they were pigs.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Grave of Heroes was pretty good. One of the better smaller dungeons i've seen so far.

 

[Raghar]

Unfortunately, the scaling from NG+ does not really make any of the early game areas interesting on your end game character. You'll be slaughtering enemies like Margit, Godrick, Morgott as if they were pigs.

How is it bad thing? You enjoy it right?

 

[NJClaw]

The only reason to go in NG+ is if you want to try out one of the endgame weapons or spells, like the Hand of Malenia or Marika's Hammer. But even in that case, it would be best to just drop those weapons to a friend, start a new character, and get them back to play with them in a regular playthrough. The balance in NG+ is nonexistent, and annihilating everything for 10 hours just to get to a slightly harder Malenia isn't really worth it IMHO.

I still can't understand how they managed to get NG+ so right in DS2 and then so wrong in every other game after that.

 

[Ayreos]

Just curious, when restarting the game how many of you guys do NG+ runs rather than starting a new character?
For those that do, how does the difficulty scale along the game? I've goofed around with my Jumping Jacks character killing Godrick, but it's mostly been piss easy and a way to gawk at silly weapon arts. At the same time I'm feeling like the endgame might be bone crushingly hard (Malenia but harder with essentially the same character? Help.....).

I've never done a NG+ run in a Soulsborne game, always preferring to restart as I like the progression of working slowly towards a build and struggling with half-missing tools, but I'm wondering if I should give it a go this time.

I started NG+ with +0 weapons, but the enemies have higher stats, so i wasn't really doing any damage. Likewise, by upgrading weapons to their NG equivalent levels bosses took longer to kill than NG with a +0 club. So i got out my +25 weapons and it felt more appropriate on bosses, but trivialized normal enemies due to also having 50 VIT from the start. Limgrave was trivial (even with +4 rapiers) and Liurnia and Caelid were easy enough with +25 weapons. However i'm finding late Liurnia content and Dragonbarrow are again forcing me to be careful as i'm wearing light armor, so i think the balance is skewed to rushing and skipping side content like caves and catacombs you don't care about and progressing faster.
I personally abandoned "progressing" for trying to have as much fun as possible, as in my previous post.
As for Malenia, you're already not supposed to get hit in NG, so might as well aim for perfect runs in NG+ and learn to dodge waterfowl every time if you haven't yet.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Some more Fashion Ring:

Full Banished Knight Set (not altered), took forever to farm all the pieces in Castle Sol, but looks very spiffy, I think I will wear it:

Banished Knight Set (altered):

Crucible Knight set (from defeating Ordovis and his sidekick):

Radahn's Lion armor set (minus the headpiece, sold it already ):

 

[mediocrepoet]

With all the talk about Malenia again, try watching this and not feeling terrible at video games.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Meh, that's like seeing Michael Jordan play in the NBA and then feeling bad when you are playing basketball in the park with regular people.

I noticed a lot of players seem not to do some of the harder optional bosses. Only 35% defeated Elemer of the Briar (who is like a weaker bell bearing hunter, at least weaker than the last 2), only 33% defeated regal ancestor moose. My build is getting to a nice place where I am built to wreck the heavy knight types like Elemer. Took him out on the 1st attempt, only drank 1 flask (cause of his grab attack). Can't use his drops though. Hate the fact that they have 4 million greatswords and like 3 shitty one-handers.