Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I am not writing anything down, and intend to consult guides when I’m done an area to see what I’ve missed

Played co-op with a friend and it was surprisingly easy. She helped me with Godrich, and her help was helpful? but I murdered the guy, got two guard-break into critical during the fight, very rewarding!

@ Trayce: I have discovered but not explored two underground areas incl Siofra and they are not esp difficult and they have amazing upgrade materials, both

They link between each other, map-wise, the underground worlds. Like a Dark World. I’m reeling

What impresses me most about this game weirdly— I mean, the design and the bosses and the landscape yes yes— but it’s the adaptation of all the best elements of previous From games into something that is simultaneously more accessible/easier but still retains its extreme difficulty. I’m taking a particular pleasure in the Ash mechanic, being able to hot-swap your upgrades, compare damage rates between them, it’s ingenious

A weird thing which is so obvious but so good is the No Skill Ash; put it on your shield and you can use the Weapon Art in your RH (via L2) without issue

Re: guides. I’m staying spoiler free as much as I can. I did spoil myself for some suicide run Ash stuff— a fire plug in for my longsword, and the withstand-everything plug-in for my shield

people are really going wild for this game

It’s one of those games that’s going to make everyone else have to confront what’s possible. The people who spend a hundred million dollars making Assassins Creed games will have to look at it and go “oh shit” https://t.co/gEih4YrCs0

— plainclothes goth (@Arr) March 7, 2022

Improving on Margit but he whoops me at last minute every time with combos I just can't seem to get out of. I've got my twinblade and even an advanced ash I found that gives him scarlet rot. I just can't seem to stay alive quite long enough

I just noticed the 'underground' toggle on the map, wild.

I know no one else is doing this, but I've decided invasions are fantastic in this game. I'm addicted to invading in the Academy, in the area before marble madness. The fact that there are no (or very few) true combos means you use all the moves & tools at your disposable, and everything has a place. It's like a microcosm of what they did with the game as a whole.

Also it made me realize that while the katana is fast enough for pve, I needed something faster for pvp (at least for my style, running around unlocked interrupting people's attacks and weaving in and out).

Theres no map mode while in a cave, is there? I got hopelessly lost in one of the smallest caves in the start area full of wolves cos I had no torch.

That Thai ad is fucking bonkers btw

xp you can find cave maps, I got one for Siofra and for another cave/river area I've discovered. Check the icons at the bottom of the map to toggle from underground to overground and vice versa too.

I've now got a magical rapier +10 and have begun to tune my spirits, gitting gud. Agree on the armour thing, presumably sets begin to show up more often deeper into the game, IIRC that was the model for DS3...

Watching that amazing Thai ad (thank you I now vaguely understand the back story after as usual completely blanking out on the game intro) and finding it trying to stick to my no-serious-investigation principle and resist the 'Get Overpowered Early in Elden Ring!' video in the sidebar (especially since I'm working and I'm at the stage where if I can't play it, I want to browse about it. Also its Vaatividya who iirc is reliable and has a pleasant voice).

Anyway, only a few hours logged so just exploring and levelling (cynically doing the usual kill-rest-rekill cycle on manageable groups - is there any downside to that in this one?). Took down a couple of little dungeon minibosses - I'd forgotten the joyous & visceral rush of managing it after repeatedly you-dieding, even if I had a jellyfish to help me this time.

Only minor complaint is, like Trayce, I feel like crafting should level something - nothing serious, just a separate good-at-crafting stat.

RE: crafting, I could sorta see replacing the mechanic of buying recipes with unlocking recipes via leveling up a crafting skill. Though actually leveling up your character via crafting would be kinda wack imo. You get useful items from crafting, don’t think you need more incentive than that.

just met a giant tortoise wearing a mitre!

Oh yes! I met him yesterday and I hope a certain NPC isn’t mad at me any more, too

xp right - I wouldn't want actual levelling, just extra recipes etc. I think it's the ex-WoW player in me that likes having low-stress by-ways to wander along.

I'm addicted to invading in the Academy, in the area before marble madness

Well, now I have to make a beeline to the academy!!

The academy also has tons of spells for the sorcerery-inclined, as you would expect.

I have not met the Bell Bearing Hunters, but I would like to!

Only noticed the "underground" toggle on the map yesterday, it's truly insane to think that there is an equally large world to explore underneath the main one. I've only dipped into Siofra so far.

I made it to Godrick last night, will probably do a bit more exploring before coming back, but I don't expect it to be an epic Margit-like humiliating experience this time around either, ha!

I have not met the Bell Bearing Hunters, but I would like to!

1. Warp to the Weaponmaster's Shack in Stormhill
2. Rest until nightfall
3. Say goodbye to your friend, the weaponmaster
4. Rest at the state of grace again to reset the area
5. Go back to where the weaponmaster normally is
6. Die

Excellent ty.

My friend who rode all over the world before doing anything got to Godrick at lvl 44 and smote him on the first try. Being overleveled is a valid strategy, but I think I'm going to keep following the main story quest to try and stay 'level-appropriate', before going off on too many tangents. It's a constant tension though, so many places to go and things I've missed.

an ashes of war question, sorry. for most of them, when you apply them to a weapon, you can choose either "standard" or the type of ash of war you just selected (blood, sacred, heavy, etc). what is the difference between the two? is it that if you pick standard, your weapon damage/type stays the same but you get access to the ash of war's skill? and if you pick a certain type, instead, like Sacred for example, your weapon's stats will also change, and it would do holy damage instead of the previous type of damage?

hopefully that q makes sense, sorry

I could be wrong but I believe it changes the scaling stats of a weapon, so for a example heavy will make it scale with strength and keen will scale it with dexterity etc

I think that's right, but for scaling (what stats it works well with) as well as damage type

Xp

I was over leveled for Margit to the point where the fight was so short I barely remember anything about it. Godrick was good clean, deranged fun and a challenge but probably not the "oh shit" skill check it was intended to be.

I think I might start fussing less over trying to catch everything in an area, I guess you can always do a second playthrough and use a guide to identify which areas you haven't already found to keep it fresh

Yeah, that's just the scaling. If you found the iron whetblade in Stormveil, you can freely change the scaling. So you can take your standard katana, apply a different skill, and also make it keen (scales better with high dex), heavy (strength), or quality (both). I assume there are other whetblades later on that let you change weapons to scale with int/faith/etc.

xp yep

Apparently there are some hilariously busted weapons in late game pvp right now, related to the madness and 'death' status effects

thanks everyone! that makes sense.

i just picked up the Clayman's Harpoon. I might switch to that after doing a lot of broadsword/claymore for the first...50 hours i've played this? i think i'm around there. anyway, it has both physical and magic damage, seems to cut a wide swath, and i'm assuming it'll do decent armor/piercing damage as well.

the iron whetblade in Stormveil

hmmm...don't think i've found it yet, but I have definitely have more exploring to do in stormveil. i'll keep an eye out for it!

It's behind one of those stone imps that requires a stonesword key, iirc

Another thing about invasions, it makes me actually explore my tools more. I'm starting to actually use incantations, because when a party is passively sitting in a small room, it will be cool to cast a globe of darkness or breathe fire. Or if they're surrounding me, I can cast Rejection.

Also will have to find and start crafting the new healing-preventing pot that some people keep throwing at me.

The different infusions for each Ash are a throwback to earlier Souls games, where you could spend a lot of time/energy/souls/research in infusing a weapon in a certain way. In DS1 it was fairly permanent, by DS3 it was semi-swappable, and with Elden Ring (thank goodness) it's an easy plug-and-play situation.

I have myself found that "scaling" is far less important than people make it out to be... you only really see significant damage increases once the pertinent stat gets past, like 40 (at least). I remember in Demon's Souls, despite having levelled up my Strength to 50, using an A- or S-scaling weapon resulted in STILL comparable damage to, say, a Dragon Scimitar upgraded to the same area

I personally find it more important to figure out situational-solutions. I LOVE having a fire-infused weapon all the way to the late game because it's the easiest way to deal with things at lower levels. (Fire infusions have bad scaling but high output, so they are good early on and less-good later on). Already my game got a lot easier when I got a Fire (TM) Ash in a suicide run in some distant Caelin castle, slapped it on a basic sword, and there it is

In short, I wouldn't put too much worry into infusions (Heavy/Quality/Keen/Sacred/etc.), just see which one works at the time, and maybe think about Whetstone if there is one infusion that you extremely prefer. But this is just me! Some people are scaling nuts, I've just become not-one-of-them

No, that sounds about right! In googling for other elden ring stuff, I ran across someone saying similar about how scaling seems more like a higher level thing, and probably more important for the meta pvp community, which tends to be more advanced players.

My main goal is to beat this fukken game! I feel like I’m on my way this time

Yeah for real. When I was deep into DS3 I was scaling-nuts and it just never really seemed to matter so much in the end. I ended up winning with the weapon that had the moveset that worked for me. (In DS3 it was def the Spiked Club, that weapon was great)

It was so easy to go down the wrong path in DS1 (especially) with levelling up the wrong stat, upgrading the wrong gear, finding no way of fixing it except restarting. It wasn't so much the case in DS3 and it's even less so in this game, so far

I finally figured out what Rune Arcs were and I am shocked! what a spectacular way of retaining the Humanity mechanic from previous games and yet making it more worthwhile

Screw you Margaret!

Oh yeah moveset is waaay more important. Also bleed seems really good in this game against bosses/dragons/giant, not sure about other status effects yet.

I tried a rune arc for the first time and was pleasantly shocked that the Great Rune effects last until you die, I assumed it would have a timer. Although I'm a little disappointed that you can't use them as an invader, since presumably the host can. I've got like 50 furled finger remedies & rune arcs from invading so far.

Beat Margaret earlier on. Tried and failed to make it up the castle (via the back route), but constantly finding new treasure, new secrets etc

what's awesome about elden ring is getting your ass completely kicked the first five times you face a boss, then thinking about how you're actually doing so much better than those other 5-10 bosses that were 10x harder, somehow

i just not hit radahn

*no hit

wait, what is a

no hit? like a flawless victory, without them hitting you, or does it mean you kill them off without directly striking them somehow? signed, hiding n00b

also i like your username, it is very evocative! haha

it means what it sounds like. he threw a no-hitter

*halfway through boss fight*

looks like my Tarnished has got a no-no brewing...

i didn't get hit by the boss, when you get to the radahn fight it'll be less impressive than i feel about it

if i ever no-hit any boss, i will feel incredibly accomplished! i am so bad at this game, but it's nice that i can keep going and gradually make progress. in that way, it reminds me of some roguelite games with permadeath that are punishingly difficult, but also gradually let you improve your base stats over the course of many replays so that you can get a little bit further each time - hades, rogue legacy, those kinds of games.

Congrats! I haven't gotten to that boss yet, but he's the one everyone is complaining about, so that sounds very impressive.

Y'all, I've decided that I am just bad at open world exploration. Even knowing that I should go back and find the Warmaster's Shack on Stormhill and the general area on the map, I just could not find it until I looked up the map location on the wiki, then help my phone up next to my map. I tend to ride around the coasts/edges of an area and look for interesting things, but maybe I need to just make zigzags or concentric circles around the middle? Also I'm terrible at finding those staircases amongst the ruins you encounter, I always miss them.

I'm excellent at killing groups of players, very good at pve, decent at boss fights, pretty ok at finding things in the legacy dungeons (mostly because I know the tricks, like always looking behind you for items), and terrible at exploring the map. I've totally reconciled myself to using google for npc quests, as I always do.

That's awesome KM!

I am now committed to playing with my Rune Arc always equipped and my co-op summon always turned on (to replace my lost Rune Arcs)

No more reckless jumping!

Jordan i feel like our strengths/weaknesses are very complementery! if were one of those duos who drive multiday european endurance races, you would be the driver and i would be a really good navigator. when i was a kid i always wanted to be a cartographer and i liked imagining myself down on the "world" and what it would look like from my perspective. i used to kick ass in my age group at games like RC Pro Am and Super Off-Road because i found it easy to imagine the world flying by from the perspective of the driver.

in ER, the one thing i'm good at is knowing where I am, where I've been before (generally), and methodically combing through it. that's the most fun part of the game, to me! my favorite thing is being on undiscovered land and either crouching and stealthing my way around, if i feel like i'm going to die (which i will, which we all will, praise the sun), or riding in triumphantly on a horse and a buffed up sword if i'm feeling sassy (which, i do on occasion).

but the actual skilled part, the rest of the game. yeah i'm bad at that, haha. but i know exactly where i am as i get my ass kicked!

do you ever use the little map token/icons to mark things? when there's a NPC/fetch quest I usually put a little person token on the map. even if you 7 or 8 of them going at once, it still narrows down the options considerably when you forget.

fgti, you should try a few invasions to see what you think :)

Also, I'm on the hunt for a weapon that I saw someone else using -- it's like a shotel but with a longer handle, sort of like a great shotel or a smaller scythe (but with more of a curved blade)? I can't find it on any videos or lists, let me know if this rings a bell.

xp

Yeah we would make a good co-op team. I keep forgetting to use the markers, must do that more often!

xp fgti i was wondering what a rune arc is, but now i realize it's because i don't have a great rune! great with a capital g. but soon i will, godrick willing