Elden Ring: FromSoftware’s Latest Game (also George R. R. Martin)

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Case

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  • #921
    I also save the golden runes when I'm somewhere where I don't want to port back to a farming spot.

    My favorite mid-game rune farming spot used to be the little dudes outside Bestial Sanctum, but I like the minor Erdtree guardians near Dragonbarrow Fork better. They are dangerous but they give more than 1000 each and they are much closer together than the little guys. If you happen to be a dragon priest you can roast them in bunches with dragonfire :) They are also good to try out new weapons on.

    You can easily farm materials for golden fowl feet if you have the recipe (especially if you have high arcane) but by the time you do that it might have been better just to do more farming for runes. I usually use them in big boss fights where I'm pretty confident I can win and can afford the distraction (I just put it on the bottom pouch button.) There's also a talisman that gives extra runes.

    Later the bird-falling-off-cliff and lots of albanaurics is better, that's in caelid and I'd have to look up how to reach it again. I think you have to be in the Mountaintops/Snowfields and find a portal to Mogh's palace. You can get insane runes from that place.

    I dislike doing the farming but if say I've got 15K runes but need 30 to level up, I like to get to 30 so I don't feel so bad losing them. Or If I want to buy a bunch of serpent arrows or kukri or whatever. And frankly, I suck (though not as much as before!) and being over-leveled a bit makes the game more fun for me. I don't die quite so much :)

    I also get frustrated at those dungeons that make you go do the whole thing again, or most of it. Most don't, but the ones that do I tend to not bother with after the first death unless I really want something inside.
     
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    Xavin

    Xavin

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  • #922
    Ulf said:
    Ok, the game is getting a bit frustrating. It takes me close to 30,000 runes to level and losing 25,000 runes due to dying in a dungeon and then dying again trying to get them back is really aggrivating. I feel like the game is basically encouraging me to to just farm for levels instead, which I can do, but damn if that's not boring.
    Click to expand...
    IMO, it's best to just completely ignore your runes when you are exploring a new place or working on a boss. You basically always get enough runes for a level after a boss (more if you are "behind"), and will just naturally get some runes moving between places. There are so many bosses you can very comfortably just level using runes from bosses if you want. Aside from pushing certain stats to use certain weapons, there's really no need to worry too much about levels.

    If you do feel the need to farm, do yourself a favor and look up the farming places, they are far more efficient than trying to farm in random places and will get you back to what you want to be doing faster.
     
    C

    Case

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  • #924
    I finally found a build that works for my Astrologer. He was one of my first created characters, since as a non-Souls n00b I heard "magic is overpowered!" I found it anything but...squishy, terrible in tight spots or with dodging enemies, running out of fp.

    Nizar on youtube has some fun builds, I am using his "grim reaper" strength/int build with grave scythe as main weapon. It certainly helps that I know now how to go around and get smithing stones/golden seeds etc from higher areas. This build is really fun--the scythe lets you use various AOW and I think I used Sword Dance before going to Loretta's Slash as the build stipulates. It has 50 bleed and I use Cold affinity. Lots of poise damage. I've also come to realize just how handy shields are in the early game, I got a brass shield and it makes enemies like dogs and imps trivial. They bounce off, shwack them.

    Does leveling shields do anything useful? I figured it was probably only for the damage if you are using the shield that way?

    I've done more with incantations, sorcery certainly has a different feel to it. Ie, not just similar spells with different names and requirements.

    Farming the grave scythe is a bit of a PITA with low arcane, especially if you want two like Nizar's build shows.
     
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    AlainDenagai

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  • #927
    Case said:
    I finally found a build that works for my Astrologer. He was one of my first created characters, since as a non-Souls n00b I heard "magic is overpowered!" I found it anything but...squishy, terrible in tight spots or with dodging enemies, running out of fp.

    Nizar on youtube has some fun builds, I am using his "grim reaper" strength/int build with grave scythe as main weapon. It certainly helps that I know now how to go around and get smithing stones/golden seeds etc from higher areas. This build is really fun--the scythe lets you use various AOW and I think I used Sword Dance before going to Loretta's Slash as the build stipulates. It has 50 bleed and I use Cold affinity. Lots of poise damage. I've also come to realize just how handy shields are in the early game, I got a brass shield and it makes enemies like dogs and imps trivial. They bounce off, shwack them.

    Does leveling shields do anything useful? I figured it was probably only for the damage if you are using the shield that way?

    I've done more with incantations, sorcery certainly has a different feel to it. Ie, not just similar spells with different names and requirements.

    Farming the grave scythe is a bit of a PITA with low arcane, especially if you want two like Nizar's build shows.
    Click to expand...

    STR/INT, interesting, tend to gravitate towards DEX/INT for faster spell casting but the latter is not that significant.

    On my side, slowly progressing and while I heard many times that Stormveil was the peak Legacy Dungeon, while it was indeed better that Hogw-Raya Lucaria and Caria manor, I kind of enjoy Leyndell Capital a lot (though I got lost countless times there, but nothing frustrating to date so no "let's peruse Fextralife" yet".

    What I found more useful than initially thought is Poise, feels like it provides more benefits than in Dark Souls 3, allowing to "trade" (blows) without being interrupted with various mobs (or interrupted instead of being knocked down) is not only very beneficial but also great from "convenience/game flow" point of view.
    In that regard, I switched the Arsenal (higher equip load) for the Bullhorn (higher poise) talisman, don't mind taking a little more damage for better combat flow.
     
    Mortus

    Mortus

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  • #928
    Finally dusted off my first character and finished the game. I may have been slightly overleveled (lvl 149). I downed Radagon in 2 attempts and the Elden Beast in 1. I then went into NG+ and basically 4 shot the Tree Sentinel. The question is, should I even continue through NG+ or am I just going to kinda walk through everything? I've been wanting to try making a Dragon Breath build, so I might consider that instead.
     
    C

    Case

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  • #929
    Leyndell Capital is my favorite area of the game, at least as far as looks and atmosphere. Confusing at bit, yes, but I tend to get lost in games fairly easily :)

    And it's followed closely by what is one of my least favorite, which is the foggy area before Mountaintops (or is that part of it?). I sort of got the feeling they spent a lot of energy and inspiration to work on things like "balancing" in the Capital.
     
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    AlainDenagai

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  • #930
    Cleared the Capital (loved not only the design but also the eerie strangely sad soothing music) a little "suddenly" as I suddenly got ambushed by a big guy with a Golden Axe (no, not the SEGA game) and somehow survived him (with the invaluable support of Luthel at +9) and once he fell down and I could take some my attention off "when to dodge" I realized it was Godfrey First Elden Lord, UH?!

    The next boss battle of Magritt redux was much more telegraphed courtesy of the usual Yellow veil (took me two tries, might be overlevelled...) and I am now lost in white fog/snow...

    Might be my build but fighting two Leyndell Knights tends to be a lot more difficult than the Boss battles.

    (addendum, as I got consistently lost in the Capital, I guess that "cleared" is a little off mark, must have missed a good chunk apart from the hellish sewers with heavenly music that I voluntarily half-skipped)
     
    Xavin

    Xavin

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  • #931
    AlainDenagai said:
    I suddenly got ambushed by a big guy with a Golden Axe (no, not the SEGA game) and somehow survived him (with the invaluable support of Luthel at +9) and once he fell down and I could take some my attention off "when to dodge" I realized it was Godfrey First Elden Lord, UH?!
    Click to expand...
    That boss battle is unexplainabley easy for where it is in the game, for most builds at least. It gets harder. Depending on which optional things you have or haven't seen yet, it might get much harder. Then there's the really optional endgame bosses which being conservative are at least twice as hard as any of the required stuff.

    AlainDenagai said:
    must have missed a good chunk apart from the hellish sewers with heavenly music that I voluntarily half-skipped)
    Click to expand...
    The sewers aren't really tuned to be done when you go through the capitol the first time. You can do them then, but there are much easier places to go first.
     
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    Sunner

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  • #933
    Well, it took me sweet fucking time but I got around to playing it and I'm nearly done. It's certainly a journey of incredible highs and absolutely abyssal lows, and holy shit does this game overstay its welcome. The initial technical stuff aside (KBM masterrace), I absolutely loved the first...2/3 I guess. Basically up to and including Leyndell. It's been a long time since I felt that "Fuck why isn't work over so I can get back to playing yet?" at work, but I certainly did during that part of the game.
    Then came the Mountaintops, and it finished off with staring at feet for 10 minutes. Farum Azula certainly looked cool, and I'm sure it has a lot of awesome lore written in the item description for a dishwasher somewhere, but at the end of the day it's just full of the same mobs I've already been fighting except their damage and health has been buffed by 500%. Maliketh was great though, his first phase not so much but it took me like 2-3 tries to figure out I could just trade him down in short order so whatever.
    Gideon can eat shit.
    Godfrey was fucking awesome, warrior guy was annoying.

    Then I realized I hadn't fought Malenia yet, I haven't been 100% blind but I also haven't actively been looking up guides or anything, but it's kinda hard to not hear/read about her on the internet so I figured I'd go find her before finishing the game. The consecrated snowfields can eat all the ass, I hauled ass through it and managed to find the Haligtree.
    And wow, the Haligtree is so fucking gorgeous, but it's also such utter cancer. I would love to explore it more, but I really can't be fucked.
    And Malenia, what a waste, I actually really liked the fight except for waterfowl which just completely ruined it. In hindsight I wish I had just gone in with a mimic tear and saved myself several hours.

    So I'm left with Radagon/Starfish, apparently there's a big dragon fight left in Farum as well but I really can't be bothered at this point.

    In the end I think the game would have been so much better if it would have ended after Leyndell, they could have taken the time not spent on all the crap afterwards and spent it fleshing out Volcano Manor for example, their entire thing is rebelling against the order which sounds interesting, and all we do is just run in there and kill Rykard (cool fight btw)? Honestly I'd rather join them for realsies, Marika seems like a complete bitch and I don't give a shit about the order so why can't I join their rebellion? Or heck kill Rykard and take it over.
    Which ties into my other big complaint, as far as I can tell there is absolutely no character motivation for me. There's lots of genuinely cool background lore and all that, but I have literally no idea why I (The Tarnished that is) should care, or why I would want to become elden lord. Or what it even means to be elden lord for that matter. If I had some kind of actual goal to strive for I imagine I would have been considerably more motivated to go through the end game slog, but I just don't give a shit about the golden order, elden ring, elden lords or any of that.
    Oh and as far as I can tell I'm definitely the bad guy in the story. I don't mind that but for some reason I get the feeling that isn't intentional.

    Still I'll probably buy the expansion some time after it comes out, assuming it gets good reviews and isn't full of jank. I still think the game is really good overall, but it certainly doesn't belong in my personal pantheon of all time greats.

    Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.

    Edit: also just a fun fact, somewhere in the beginning I kinda forgot about the runes you pick up, the "XP pack" ones. Shirtly after I beat Melania I realized I hadn't used any of them since early Limgrave, so I went ahead and used all of them. I ended up getting a bit over 2 million xp. :p

    Oh and in case anyone cares, mods/utlities used:
    Elden Ring FPS Unlocker and more, I set my FPS to 120 and as far as I could tell it didn't cause any issues. I also increased the FOV a bit which reduced eyestrain/headache quite a bit.
    EMU Light, allows customizing the controls kinda like a normal game. Mostly for binding the quickslots to individual keys as well as getting a dedicated roll button.
    Pause mod, being able to pause is pretty great.
    And some custom autohotkey stuff, pretty sure EMU could have done the same but by the time I found out EMU exists I already had my AHK script setup so I just ran them in parallel.
     
    Last edited:
    Badaboom

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  • #934
    I'd subscribe to future TED Talks. I still haven't finished the game. I've beaten a bunch of crap towards the end, but I'm in the middle of snow hell and got stuck on some weird dragon thing in a valley that I should probably just skip. Volcano Manor was a lot of fun for me.

    I haven't touched the game outside of leaving some cave and getting wrecked by that dragon only to turn it off again in the last year. I know it's heresy, but the game is too long. I want to finish, but I don't want to play any more.
     
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    Sunner

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  • #935
    Badaboom said:
    I'd subscribe to future TED Talks. I still haven't finished the game. I've beaten a bunch of crap towards the end, but I'm in the middle of snow hell and got stuck on some weird dragon thing in a valley that I should probably just skip. Volcano Manor was a lot of fun for me.

    I haven't touched the game outside of leaving some cave and getting wrecked by that dragon only to turn it off again in the last year. I know it's heresy, but the game is too long. I want to finish, but I don't want to play any more.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah I'm assuming you mean Borealis or something like that, frost dragon? Dragons really stopped being exciting after the first few ones so I just took to cheesing them on Torrent since they all have the same moveset as far as I can tell, once you've done one of them you can do all the rest in the same way, except for the rotten on in Caelid which required a little added running around to avoid all the crap he spews on the ground.
    Basically just head on charge, dragon will almost always do its breath attack which always starts to his left so sprint to your left towards it, hit its wing/feet 3-5 times, ride away, rinse and repeat. Once in a while they do the flying charge attack, torrent's jump handles that. Not super exciting but very reliable, and with my control scheme I can take a sip of whisky while riding around for another go so that's a way to make them more enjoyable fights.
     
    Ecmaster76

    Ecmaster76

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  • #937
    Badaboom said:
    You made me look it up :D

    It's Great Wyrm Theodorix in the consecrated snowfields. I should probably just skip it. I don't think you can torrent this thing. My motivation to finish is near zero though, so I may get back to it in couple of months.
    Click to expand...
    You can get him to aggro the giant Octopi nearby to level the playing field but yeah he is the toughest of his kind and completely optional
     
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    Sunner

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  • #938
    Well, this little conversation finally motivated me to finish it.
    And since we have someone else around here who's even more late to the party than me:
    Radagon was a pretty great fight, the delay on his grab attack was...excessive, but other than that pretty fucking great.
    Elden Beast can suck all the dick, what a piece of shit fight. Wasn't even hard, took me three tries, but fuck me it was frustrating running around after him. Or it, or whatever.
     
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    AlainDenagai

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  • #939
    Sunner said:
    Well, it took me sweet fucking time but I got around to playing it and I'm nearly done. It's certainly a journey of incredible highs and absolutely abyssal lows, and holy shit does this game overstay its welcome. The initial technical stuff aside (KBM masterrace), I absolutely loved the first...2/3 I guess. Basically up to and including Leyndell. It's been a long time since I felt that "Fuck why isn't work over so I can get back to playing yet?" at work, but I certainly did during that part of the game.
    Then came the Mountaintops, and it finished off with staring at feet for 10 minutes. Farum Azula certainly looked cool, and I'm sure it has a lot of awesome lore written in the item description for a dishwasher somewhere, but at the end of the day it's just full of the same mobs I've already been fighting except their damage and health has been buffed by 500%. Maliketh was great though, his first phase not so much but it took me like 2-3 tries to figure out I could just trade him down in short order so whatever.
    Gideon can eat shit.
    Godfrey was fucking awesome, warrior guy was annoying.

    Then I realized I hadn't fought Malenia yet, I haven't been 100% blind but I also haven't actively been looking up guides or anything, but it's kinda hard to not hear/read about her on the internet so I figured I'd go find her before finishing the game. The consecrated snowfields can eat all the ass, I hauled ass through it and managed to find the Haligtree.
    And wow, the Haligtree is so fucking gorgeous, but it's also such utter cancer. I would love to explore it more, but I really can't be fucked.
    And Malenia, what a waste, I actually really liked the fight except for waterfowl which just completely ruined it. In hindsight I wish I had just gone in with a mimic tear and saved myself several hours.

    So I'm left with Radagon/Starfish, apparently there's a big dragon fight left in Farum as well but I really can't be bothered at this point.

    In the end I think the game would have been so much better if it would have ended after Leyndell, they could have taken the time not spent on all the crap afterwards and spent it fleshing out Volcano Manor for example, their entire thing is rebelling against the order which sounds interesting, and all we do is just run in there and kill Rykard (cool fight btw)? Honestly I'd rather join them for realsies, Marika seems like a complete bitch and I don't give a shit about the order so why can't I join their rebellion? Or heck kill Rykard and take it over.
    Which ties into my other big complaint, as far as I can tell there is absolutely no character motivation for me. There's lots of genuinely cool background lore and all that, but I have literally no idea why I (The Tarnished that is) should care, or why I would want to become elden lord. Or what it even means to be elden lord for that matter. If I had some kind of actual goal to strive for I imagine I would have been considerably more motivated to go through the end game slog, but I just don't give a shit about the golden order, elden ring, elden lords or any of that.
    Oh and as far as I can tell I'm definitely the bad guy in the story. I don't mind that but for some reason I get the feeling that isn't intentional.

    Still I'll probably buy the expansion some time after it comes out, assuming it gets good reviews and isn't full of jank. I still think the game is really good overall, but it certainly doesn't belong in my personal pantheon of all time greats.

    Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.

    Edit: also just a fun fact, somewhere in the beginning I kinda forgot about the runes you pick up, the "XP pack" ones. Shirtly after I beat Melania I realized I hadn't used any of them since early Limgrave, so I went ahead and used all of them. I ended up getting a bit over 2 million xp. :p

    Oh and in case anyone cares, mods/utlities used:
    Elden Ring FPS Unlocker and more, I set my FPS to 120 and as far as I could tell it didn't cause any issues. I also increased the FOV a bit which reduced eyestrain/headache quite a bit.
    EMU Light, allows customizing the controls kinda like a normal game. Mostly for binding the quickslots to individual keys as well as getting a dedicated roll button.
    Pause mod, being able to pause is pretty great.
    And some custom autohotkey stuff, pretty sure EMU could have done the same but by the time I found out EMU exists I already had my AHK script setup so I just ran them in parallel.
    Click to expand...

    Interesting, as can be seen from my just above posts from a year ago (gosh, already ?), I had cleared the capital on a high and then trudged through moutaintops only to peter out at Fire giant, never came back to the game since (but, God, what a game, the way it kind of overstayed its welcome does not diminish its greatness for sure).

    The winding straight line from Mountaintops is such a down coming from Leyndell... hoping for the best regarding the DLC.
     
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    Sunner

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  • #940
    Badaboom said:
    You made me look it up :D

    It's Great Wyrm Theodorix in the consecrated snowfields. I should probably just skip it. I don't think you can torrent this thing. My motivation to finish is near zero though, so I may get back to it in couple of months.
    Click to expand...
    Ah yeah that guy, I was very much in the "Well fuck another one of those?" at that point, so I just let mimic tear handle him for me.
     
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    Sunner

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  • #948
    Mortus said:
    It goes live 6pm EDT today.

    In other news, we have patch notes: https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-version-112

    They added Torrent into the Elden Beast arena.
    Click to expand...
    • A new tab called "Recent Items" has been added to review recently obtained items.
    Click to expand...
    Fucking thank you, maybe now I'll actually look at random shit that drops here and there.
    • Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast the boss battle.
    Click to expand...
    And more thank you, better late than never I guess. One of the worst fights will turn into merely a "meh" fight.

    • New Keyboard/mouse settings:
      • Added "lock-on change threshold" setting of mouse controls.
      • Added a setting to change cursor movement behaviour in the map menu.
      • Added key assignments to open the map in the Key Settings menu.
    Click to expand...
    They acknowledged our existance, praise be! Admittedly I had solved two of those with AHK, but the lock on threshold one is fucking huge. Maybe lockon will actually be usable now.
     
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    Sunner

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  • #954
    crazy_ebot said:
    We all know Elden Ring can hurt... but on PC, I'm getting unresolvable screen tear every now and then (mainly when turning the right stick/camera). I honestly cannot recall the last time I experienced screen tear I couldn't resolve. Well played, FROM software, well played.
    Click to expand...
    I get that sometimes without the FPS unlock. Before running that I think I managed to reolve it by more or less fucking around with every relevant setting in the Nvidia control panel until it went away. :p
     
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    Sunner

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  • #955
    Lt_Storm said:
    On one hand, I want to care. On the other hand, after the twentieth death in the Shaded Castle, I was sorta done. Didn't even beat the bosses needed to start the DLC.
    Click to expand...
    In fairness, Elemer is really fucking hard, like he's way harder than Radahn and depending on your build and playstyle I'd say about equal to Mohg unless you outlevel him pretty good. Or maybe I'm just really bad at Elemer. Also if you beat Radahn you can go pick up the mimic tear which enables the easy difficulty setting.
     
    Lt_Storm

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  • #957
    Sunner said:
    In fairness, Elemer is really fucking hard, like he's way harder than Radahn and depending on your build and playstyle I'd say about equal to Mohg unless you outlevel him pretty good. Or maybe I'm just really bad at Elemer. Also if you beat Radahn you can go pick up the mimic tear which enables the easy difficulty setting.
    Click to expand...
    I would love that to be an excuse, but I never actually saw the inside of the castle. That place, however, is definitely the worst.
     
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