Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

god i'm terrible at this game. i have been fighting the Fire Thief for about an hour straight, could have killed him within the first few tries, and many times after that. i guess it doesn't help that i keep getting one-hit killed. might be a little further out than i should be

Oh interesting, did you already beat Godrick? Or did you circumvent Stormveil entirely? I heard that was possible, although I haven't looked for the route.

Circumvented stormveil! it was easy, you can just go right around the back and then down the cliffs. I'm so close to beating this dude, and I would like any fire-based item he has, but my attacks are really weak and i don't have any good counter-magic, so i'm trying to pull off this very long tedious fight with zero mistakes

dark souls style, basically. i should probably switch it up

Oh cool yeah, that's definitely the hardcore approach.

Even after just doing the Weeping Peninsula and Mistwood (along with a few other brief excursions), I feel somewhere between evenly matched and overpowered against anything in Limgrave/Stormveil/early Liurnia.

Also I feel guilty about how good this Bloody Slash ash of war is, I'm trying not to overuse it against bosses because of the ridiculous damage.

fuck yeah! killed the asshole, finally! And got the Flame of the Fell God invitation, which requires...FAITH 41. My Faith is 17, and I started as a Confessor. sigh.

I keep running into this, actually - getting rewarded with items that are just way beyond my stats. which tells me I'm way out beyond where I'm supposed to be for my level, but I'm also still struggling with some basic enemies around storm....veil? I think the reason I don't know the name is that there's also stormgate, the stormfoot catacombs, stormhill, and...i haven't gotten to hte site of grace that's actually inside the castle yet because i still need to kill the boss.

ok, time to carb up in real life and then come back to *looks at camera* take care of some unfinished business

you know one thing i'm glad is not in the game? weapon degradation

Yeah I finished Demon's Souls remake last week and going from weapon degradation and having to constantly manage the weight of your entire inventory to this game where none of that is a thing at all was somewhat akin to waking up in the morning and realising it's a Saturday

Oh btw "cointandplick" is too long for a group keyword, I propose just using "ilg"?

Sure!

for anyone else like me who struggled a bit to find it, it's in Pause>Multiplayer>settings

you know one thing i'm glad is not in the game? weapon degradation

I just got this for early bday gift and even the character creation screen is too much for me haha. Battlemage or standard warrior. I cant decide.

I've beaten Godrick and am well into Liurnia now, I've made my way into the wizardy castle and there is much wizardy bullshit to contend with. I might give Caelid a go instead as [minor spolier] I've found an ice weapon, which would seem to be helpful there. A Dex build with a bow and arrow seems like a good bet for this game, though I'm looking forward to using a mage build at some point. The game is crazy big, comparable to Skyrim, it's astonishing.

Damn I need to bite the bullet and actually go into Stormveil, I've been happily wandering through Limgrave and the adjacent areas since release. Was briefly stuck on the Ancestor Spirit last night but then powered through and beat Agheel and the amusingly hair-raising demihuman chiefs boss fight before chilling with some penguins on the beach

I've ended up abandoning the idea of sorcery and speccing towards faith tank so I can use the tree sentinel's big halberd; I'll probably end up regretting this when I realise its moveset is too slow to fight all the dogs and flying things this game throws at you and also I spent all my magic weapon upgrade stones on the dang crossbow

i usually favour dex builds (introduction to fromsoft was bloodborne) but i’m pleased i switched from my nascent bandit dex build to a strength build. might go back when i’ve got a bit more used to fighting rhythms and tactics, as i was dodging fuck all with my bandit.

xp I did a fair amount of wandering around there too, I still have a few spirit gaols and dungeon bosses to sort out. I managed to stop one of those walking bell isalnds which was wandering around the Weeping Peninsula, really cool if too early in the game to be of any use!

on combat: I'm finding that a dex build with a decent shield and the block riposte mechanism works well, particularly with my favoured rapier enhnanced with the Blood Slash Ashes of War.

nice, yes, i can see that. and it’s a good point on the shield - i was taking too much damage with my buckler for the guard riposte to work well (also needed to up my stamina because i was getting staggered too easily).

Decided not to buy this given I already have four 20-30% completed From games sitting in my library and my dog doesn't really let me get much solid play time.

Cracked, obviously, and jumped in last night, pup be damned. Decided not to read anything & enjoying the mix of souls familiarity and mild confusion.

xp I managed to find an underground area early on (wtf there's a whole beneath-ground set of areas that would seem to some good proportion of the size of the overworld???) for which I was under-levelled but I did find a good shield there...

I've been doing dex sorcerer builds in recent From game first playthroughs but went the opposite approach of prioritising early leveling on getting enough endurance to agile-roll in fairly heavy armour. Dodge through one or two big boss swings, tank the last hit with a 100% shield and guard counter, you're in business. I like how many boss fights fall into place when you remember you can do street fighter-style jump-ins or potentially be allowed to do it mounted

You don't seem to get many runes for the minor bosses but there are so many of those glowing skulls that contain runes dotted round the open world that you end up being able to cash a bunch in towards a level up in one go

getting rewarded with items that are just way beyond my stats.

I saw a good tip somewhere in a spoiler-free post that the game is apparently actually really good at subtly telling you if you're under- or over-leveled at any given point. Let me find it ...

This:

if you need a quick, cheap rule for progression, one thing you can do is look to the Smithing Stones. These are the items you use to upgrade your weaponry at a blacksmith—by the way, pick a weapon and upgrade it whenever you can, later swords won’t be better, just different, and you’ll get a lot of your damage output from a properly upgraded main weapon—and they follow a very simple naming convention, starting with Smithing Stone (1) and ascending from there. As a rule, you’re in roughly the right area, power-wise, if the stones you’re finding in the environment are the ones you can actually use to buff your best weapon; if you’re getting a bunch of (2)s when you need (4)s, you’re probably over-powered for the level, and if you keep getting (7)s when you’re still working to upgrade your staff to a (5), you might be just seconds from getting one-shotted by a measly undead soldier working with a late-game power boost.

I've only come across one smith so far and he was at the Roundtable which I don't really know how to get back to

-You can also upgrade weapons at that first church you find (Church of Elleh)

-It's a little weird, but you just go to your map and zoom out, and you'll see the round table on the lower left (and can fast travel back to it)

found those birds you meet shortly past margit, extremely funny in premise, extremely annoying in practice.

haven't tried any ashes of war yet, i kind of assumed they were permament, but can you take them on and off weapons?

xp Thanks! Still really getting used to the whole mechanics of the menus and how the stats and rules work. I think it's pretty strange that you can fast travel almost anywhere at any time without much of a penalty, but you can only do certain things (like upgrading a weapon etc) in very specific places

Just got into this yesterday and have logged a few hours. Playing a Prisoner build, because spellswords are my fave. So far I've managed to kill the beastman, get my steed & the local map, and I have tried and repeatedly failed to take out the whole Gatefront Ruins camp by stealth. I've already felt a little overwhelmed at points, but it's ok.

i killed those giants that sloooooowly pull the treasure wagon through limgrave (toward the gatefront).

man, the game makes you feel REALLY bad for doing so, especially the second one.

Ah yeah the second one managed to just about kill me. But what happened to the treasure wagon? It disappeared!

Weird, I wonder if it got crushed by the giants or something? You should be able to open the chest on the back.

devvvine, yeah you can freely swap ashes of war between weapons. And somewhere in Stormveil you get a tool that can also change the scaling associated with each one (ie which stat the weapon's damage is based on).

Ive never played any Souls games before and I am getting my arse kicked nine ways til Sunday because I cannot get my head round all the controls. How do I assign things to my hands, like the horse-calling ring? Do I get runes simply by killing enemies? Why was I stupid enough to stumble upon Agheel almost immediately and get mashed by a giant crab.

Any really good complete-newb pages anyone can recommend for never-played-Souls players? I found https://gameplay.tips/guides/elden-ring-beginners-guide.html which seems ok but I am more overwhelmed by things like why cant I pick some stuff up (glowing skulls etc), where do I find spells/make spells, and like... everything ahaha.

it's worth noting we all get mashed by the giant crab

-Soooo if you go into your menu > Equipment, you can select what goes on your quick slots. You can cycle through those with the Down button on the d-pad. HOWEVER, there's also the new pouch, where you can assign things to be used with Triangle + a d-pad direction. I assigned the horse ring to Triangle + Down, so that I never have to cycle through items for it.

-You do get runes by killing enemies, and if you ride around on the horse and stomp on those glowing skulls, you can pick up golden runes that show up in your inventory and can be used later.

-Stumbling on ridiculous enemies early is as it should be, best to just ride around and avoid them, come back later when they'll be no big deal.

I think these are good to start with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLdZ8Zex1cw

Good random mechanic tips, you don't need to worry about all them at first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVE1PZgCgqA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_hveDzzvo

bringing back memories of when i first played bloodborne and i was “how does anyone get beyond the first section ffs?”

on the horse whistle, i’ve put mine in a pouch, activated by (playstation) triangle and relevant arrow button.

generally you’ll assign weapons to hands in the equipped screen, also rings to the relevant slots, and items to your uh… things you can hold slots (ie where you’ve got your health flasks).

you do get runes simply by killing enemies.

this is my users guide to elden ring.

like woof i’m trying to avoid reading anything and am just enjoying wandering around finding stuff and going from waling on mobs with a big sword and getting the shit kicked out of me.

I assigned the horse ring to Triangle + Down, so that I never have to cycle through items for it.

alternatively put it in your items, call your horse, forget to switch to health flasks, so when you’re low on health in the middle of a battle, you can blow your horse whistle instead and make your steed disappear before getting rapidly YOU DIED.

Legend, thanks lads.

I'm prob gonna start afresh soon as I get the hang of things, at present I'm an Astrolger and early-game magic-dealing via staff is not turning out to be as useful as Id've liked.

How do y'all dismount usually? I always use L3 crouch (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally), but maybe there's a better way. Especially for those dragon-type bosses where you want to ride out, and then come in and use an ash of war attack or something.

xp, magic in these games gets pretty powerful, but can be a slow starter. On the other hand, magic ranged combat will give you a lot of breathing room with bosses? In case learning the melee combat feels overwhelming. Maybe prisoner would be better? I haven't messed around with the magic yet tbh.

I feel like some of the button mapping is really unintuitive but that might be me being used to Nintendo. R3 to target is really cumbersome!

i strongly recommend restarting a few times while you're still getting the hang of the game! it's a good way to try out different playstyles.

Usually I'd say starting class doesn't matter that much and you can always shape it into what you want, but they don't exactly shower you with new gear in the beginning, and here I am 20 hours in still mostly using my starting katana and samurai armor. :)

Yeah I think starting class matters way more in this game as you don't really pick up too many new transformative gear/spells/incantations for a while, mid and late-game I'm sure you have way more flexibility

I'm in a weird place with my lvl 30 prisoner character where I can kill some pretty high level things with spells (really one spell in particular) but get wrecked by other things immediately (those spider scorpion things that shoot homing missiles at you) that I think I'm over-leveled for.

So I just wasted my whole 1 hr lunchbreak playing this instead of eating anything, ha ha ha oh dear.

welcome, now you can never leave

alternatively put it in your items, call your horse, forget to switch to health flasks, so when you’re low on health in the middle of a battle, you can blow your horse whistle instead and make your steed disappear before getting rapidly YOU DIED.

Been clearly warned, still 100% going to do this several times in the coming weeks.

oh hi, here's margit

I totally walked past Stormveil and thought I was meant to keep going through Lake Liurnia to get there. Belatedly went back to say hello to Margit and was horrifically over leveled, poor guy

All doing his little speeches as his health bar drains two inches at a time