Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

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

I've switched to online mode but I have to say the ghost outlines of other players really throw me a lot of the time

of all people dog latin i thought you'd be comfortable with "stranding type gameplay" :D

weapon scaling does have an impact but you don't really need to worry about it until maybe the latter half of the game if at all, it doesn't start to have a big impact until your weapons are highly upgraded (which also boosts scaling) and then even then you can probably make it through the game fine with nearly anything. you'll still get much more benefit from just upgrading weapons than anything else, with some rare exceptions. pretty much any sort of build seems to be viable - the only thing i've seen people complain about is some of the flashier later-game magic being very difficult to use due to long cast times & lack of poise, but there's still plenty of cool magic that is very very usable.

anyway the scope of this game is insane, i've played 50 hours and am only maybe a third of the way through it? i've got two great runes but i'm obsessively exploring everything

Bloody hell Stormveil Castle is enormous and not many sites of grace to help out. Had to choose between fighting a knife wielding crab and a double hard knight. And those fucking eagles

Can finally wield the Golden Halberd and oh my I am having fun.
Have been using the Grafted Dragon till now and it has done great things in making me actually play better having the absolute tiny range it does. Going from that short range weapon to the long ranged halberd is like switching from nightmare to easy mode. Feel extra attached to it for all the pain that Tree Sentinel caused me. Having a lot of fun with me Str/Faith build but excited to try the respec option I just unlocked from the Academy boss and shift to Dex/arc or something of the like.

I keep getting tempted to switch from faith to int as a secondary stat, because I keep finding int-scaling weapons. That's probably just because I'm exploring Liurnia though. I'm interested in a status effect build but that'll probably take awhile to put together.

i'm not sure what to focus on, with faith, because you also need mind (more FP) and having decent INT helps too, because there are some incantations that require both FTH and INT. and then, if you do all that, you're extremely weak and squishy, so you need some VIT as well.

however, as soon as i started listening to the advice to focus more on leveling up weapons, i started to get more powerful more quickly. a little frustrated right now because smithing stone [1] are so hard to come by, while i find loads of [2] and [3]s.

In Liurnia you can eventually unlock the ability to buy them (1 and 2) from the roundtable, which helps. I'm constantly running back and forth between the weird vendor twins and the blacksmith.

Also I realized that it's not even worth trying to explore if I just have 1/2 an hour on a weeknight, so I'm just invading and experimenting with builds.

I marvel at how quickly you lot are getting along. I find it hard to put more than an hour or 2 a day into this and I'm just getting nowhere, I'm still not even L20 yet.

it really helps to be retired

with no children

xp jordan oh nice! i won't worry too much about it then, knowing that at some point i'll just be able to buy them, thanks!

so far, the answer to most of my troubles in this game have been "it's ok, just wait a bit"

found liurnia via the shortcut, and then doubled back and did godrick. am being a lot happier to call on co-op for bosses than in previous games. you do miss the rush of defeating them single-handed a bit, but life is short, work is busy and elden ring is loooong.

also been to raya lucaria briefly, via…. a gateway i think? or was it a treasure chest entrapment?

loving liurnia and the way you can unintentionally lose your way off the submerged road and become disorientated by the lamps. in fact trotting through caelid and the rot with its fantastical landscapes and quickly tucking off the main road when a mounted knight appeared in the distance reminded me v much of when characters stray off “the main road” to avoid getting seen only to get in a serious pickle by encountering something that is also off the main road, for other reasons.

the way ER landscape and design naturally lead you to behave in this classic fantasy way is v clever - i guess it’s the way they spatially manage dramatic narrative. the way caelid initially just feels like the lands of limgrave have become a bit sick and unhealthy before ending up in deranged transformation and soldiers fighting beasts is v much the same feeling of “as they travelled on, the lands become increasingly bare and inhospitable”.

i’ve gone through stormveil castle a couple of times now. ridiculous number of interlinking paths and routes round. still don’t think i’ve found everything. classic dark souls thing of packing a lot of exploration and experience into a confined set of routes through a high level of interlinking complexity.

tempted by jordan to try some invading but i know i will be terrible at it.

oh and enjoying the autumnal feel of it - a bit like sekiro political and social structures are still present although substantially decayed. ofc bloodborne is even more spectacular in this respect where all that is left are the religious and warped physical/spiritual symptoms of a long distant decay, and an ancient set of social, spiritual and political ordering principles that have totally lost any reason inherent in their original construction, but i like the variation here.

miyazaki is good on this in relation to the erdtree here

First of all, just as something that's visually striking and enticing on the screen, in the world itself, something that draws your attention, something that stands out, this tree with golden glowing leaves is something that fits my ideal for something that represents the world physically. It's something that burns that image into your mind, but it also stands as something that represents those rules and an order of the world that we talked about earlier.

What can represent these rules and order but also not be absolute? That was the question that ran through my mind when I created this image. And the tree really fits the bill nicely for that because the tree is something that's alive, it's something that grew, it's something that will eventually wither and die. And this really fits the role of something that can then bestow this order, control these rules, and enforce these rules on the world. Because these too are things that will grow and will change and will wither and die as well.

in fact i’m tempted to say miyazaki has got to be considered as one of the best exponents of the fantasy genre ever.

Wow, so this is an open-world game with side quests but no quest log?! That's pretty rough.

I'm about 10 hours in and it's a delight. Only last night that I really got out of my souls mindset - stay tight, go careful, farm/hoard runes to levelling point - after I realised that you can bomb off on Torrent in a new/random direction & gamble on finding a grace, or at least somewhere sane to die if it goes to shit. I'm not needing From's tense, focused you-died cycle right now, so the safety net makes it for me.

Slowly softening my no reading attitude. I'm not really going to have time to muddle through in total ignorance.

I went back to Stormveil last night to pick up an item I missed. And proceeded to come across a ton of stuff that I totally passed by the first time around.

Worth a revisit.

After dumping most of my points into Vigor, Endurance, and some in Strength, I'm slowly ticking up Faith. I normally don't mess with casting much, but I feel like I'd be missing out a bit in this one.

There is so much to explore in Stormveil. So many hidden paths. That said, I felt like I'd come to a dead end last night. Reticent to fight the knight stomping around that sort of library place or the knife wielding giant crab, but not sure where to go next. I've found a ton of items and even found myself back at the front gate but behind those soldiers who shoot you with the mounted crossbows if you try to go in that way.

I could definitely do with a bow or some sort of ranged weapon. Only got a few knives, but I'm using them on the bloody knife eagles

Renala beaten! Minor spoilers Actually a really easy fight once you figure out what's going on. Reminiscent of the giant maggot creature in Bloodborne with less of the annoyance. Probably loads more to find in Reya Lucaria but that's maybe for another time.

tempted by jordan to try some invading but i know i will be terrible at it.

You should! The worst that can happen is that you die, and someone else gets a thrill out of beating an invader with their friends. Although don't invade with too many runes, because you do lose them if you die (and have to pick them up wherever you died in the host's world).

If you want to practice the basics, try playing unlocked and being able to run in one direction with the camera pointing in another (also aiming attacks without locking on). That's like 80% of it tbh.

After dumping most of my points into Vigor, Endurance, and some in Strength, I'm slowly ticking up Faith. I normally don't mess with casting much, but I feel like I'd be missing out a bit in this one.

Same. Using Godrick's great rune to boost my stats let me experiment with some incantations that I can't normally use, that was helpful.

my int/dex build basically became an int build because spells have ended up being way more powerful than any melee for me. I got a couple talisman that boost stats, so that was enough to convince me to put a couple extra points in faith and run some minor incantations. Then again, I just got an incantation that requires like 40 faith where you basically create a big planet above you and throw it at someone so at some point I might respec as a faith build

the only thing i've seen people complain about is some of the flashier later-game magic being very difficult to use due to long cast times & lack of poise

that's dismaying to hear, because even in the early game i've been having trouble pulling off even my low level incantations due to the same thing - long cast times, lack of poise. often, using magic (in the early game, at least, or maybe just for me, because i suck) feels like being a Support character without anyone to support - there's one else to buff, and no Tank standing in the way to distract the enemy, so you end up just barely pulling an incantation as the enemy swaggers up to you and is mid-swing. I've had much better luck when I'm able to summon some wolves or just anything else to distract the enemy, but in a one on one situation (like a boss, often) all the magic sometimes goes out the window.

I had that issue earlier on, but it's really about spacing, timing and what spells you have. When I was having trouble with this stuff I dumped a bunch of points into upping my fp and used a melee weapon with quickstep, so I could quickstep and roll when casting spells (also backstab if I was close enough)

It makes sense to me, giant apocalypse spells shouldn't be fast and have poise, there need to be tradeoffs somewhere. If you're going to cast an "I win" spell, you at least need to pick your moment and make it exciting.

Also I just found out about the wondrous fizzick ingredient that lets you cast for 10 seconds without using any FP, smh.

a melee weapon with quickstep, so I could quickstep and roll when casting spells

oh nice, i haven't thought of doing that! will give that a try soon, because yeah, even just being able to hop/dodge while casting would be a huge help

_tempted by jordan to try some invading but i know i will be terrible at it._

You should! The worst that can happen is that you die, and someone else gets a thrill out of beating an invader with their friends. Although don't invade with too many runes, because you do lose them if you die (and have to pick them up wherever you died in the host's world).

If you want to practice the basics, try playing unlocked and being able to run in one direction with the camera pointing in another (also aiming attacks without locking on). That's like 80% of it tbh.

It'll help with fighting mobs too, I guarantee. Now I feel like White-Faced Varre, sending you out on invasion missions.

My regular co-op partner is into the idea of cheap levelling, we've been talking about the dragon momma and the new videos about jumping ahead to Morg (or some similarly named dude) and some cheap kills there. I definitely enjoyed stalking some easy runes from Vulgar dudes the in Dragonbarrow once I prematurely warped there

But overall I'm finding that, I guess by dint of the fact that I'm taking the time to clear ruins and catacombs and I don't shy away from a fight, that I'm "well-levelled"? There've definitely been some fights I've walked away from (Preceptor Miriam was a big nope) and others I've summoned help for (that Revenant in the ruins near the Manor), but generally I'm finding this game perfectly balanced between challenging/not-challenging, don't feel any desire to superbeef my stats? idk! I'm very satisfied

I'm doing something off-book which is levelling Endurance more than I should because I'm enjoying the heavier armours and heavier weapons

Oh, there is a VERY frustrating bug that I ran into.

If you summon allies at the Summoning Pool prior to Rennala, when you enter into her lair, you'll find she's shieldless and her support staff isn't doing what they're supposed to. I kept entering the lair and having my allies leave without understanding why. Apparently the work-around, if you plan on taking her on with assistance, is to ensure that you enter the lair while one of your allies is still clearing customs.

I left a note that said "be wary of bug, and so try something" because there wasn't any flair text for "check online for why it's not working"

try butt
hole

It's funny

I hate all those sophomoric messages but whenever I see a cranny somewhere I think "fatty" lol

in the other ds' whenever anyone posted "feet" it was pretty funny because it didn't seem like a constant thing, but the messages in this one are unbearable

I think I've improved my messages somewhat by using the group keywords. In addition to 'ilg' and a friend group I'm using 'Guidance', from the Saint Riot/invader youtube community. Obviously there are still joke messages but a lot of actually useful ones too.

Although I also get lots of pop-ups saying "Someone in the II group has become a god" and I'm like O_O

SO, Ive been playing offline all this time and thought I'd log in last night just to see if I'd see any ghost players/notes. But nothing came up - is it cos Im set to friends only and Im ScottNoMates?

Also the LAG. While in online mode everything was stuttering like 90s dialup, I cant keep playing online if its gonna be like that (and ffs I have a 50mbps fibre connection with 5ms ping so its not my internet).

i've decided to take the plunge and buy this, the first AAA game i've bought new in years. the fomo was killing me. i also spent too much time watching playthroughs on twitch so i already know how a lot of stuff goes

i made it out of the tutorial area and like an idiot i keep taking a stab at the tree sentinel. i know you're supposed to wait until you get the horse, but i can't help it. i'm so terrible though, lvl 1 prisoner can't get his health down past 80% but i keep trying. in the beginning i thought it would just be good practice to get dodge timing down but i might just be dumb.

it's so hard to both dodge and get attacks off in your little windows, especially with a small sword. can't stay close enough to him. maybe i should try ditching auto-aim? i see YT videos of people killing him easily and i have no idea how they manage to keep within slashing distance.

reasons i'm terrible at fromsoft games:
-suck at timing dodges
-suck at timing parries (nbd in this one at least)
-suck at memorizing minor differences in attack animations and remembering what they entail (i have no idea how anyone does this)