Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

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)

Please leave him alone until later! I've played more hours of these games that I ever want to think about, and I was still getting wrecked by Tree Sentinel at the beginning because I didn't have the feel of this one yet (they're all different), and I was woefully underpowered. Came back later on and it was no problem. I would use less punishing enemies to practice your dodges. :)

I'm different I can fix him

Dodge-roll combat is slightly less failsafe in Elden Ring than previous games, in my estimation, less because of "a reduction in the number of frames in which you are invincible as you roll" and more because bosses/enemies tend to be more mobile, cover more ground. When I dodge-roll I find myself, like, far away from the enemy. (I haven't worked with sidesteps, backsteps in this game)

But shield combat is easy enough here to be almost a cheese, it's a real return-to-DS1 vibe. Guard-counters (keeping your shield up with L1, responding immediately to getting hit with an R2) are parry-lite, there's no timing involved and they're a pretty manageable way of doing combat.

Last night I fought a few Master Hand-alikes in a Manor somewhere, was powering-up my Brass shield with a very-powerful ash that immensely reduces the amount of stamina consumed in a block, fighting back with guard-counters, it was a pleasant and easy excursion

I'm also getting FOMO but if I absolutely sucked at Souls, is there any point in playing this? Also, I can do the remember-their-moves-and-dodge style of combat when it's easy, but I don't find it super fun. Are there other options to fighting in this, like in BOTW?

if you don't do what i'm doing and you have time to grind, it's a much more forgiving game from what i understand. you can overlevel for the hardest story enemies, summoning other players is easy and very encouraged, and magic builds can negate a lot of the twitchiness.

i'm consistently able to get to tree guy's second phase, and have gotten him down to about 30%. but there's still a lot of embarrassing "i should be better than this" failure runs between the good ones. another reason i'm a very bad gamer is i am just extremely impatient and once i can reach a milestone like "able to get past the first phase" i then try to impulsively rush the first phase instead of repeating the methods that worked before. an easier game would just give me a save point after the first phase i guess.

also i'm not sure i'm actually practicing dodge roll/iframe timing, i think a lot of his swings are just too wide to little old me! anyway back to the grind i am going to kill him

This is ridiculous but I salute you all the same

✖ I'd suggest you get in the habit of leaving some people be til later

There are a couple of murderful NPCs/smallbosses in the first section that I was like "no no I'm better than this" and kept dying and dying but I really wasn't, and it was still a challenge when I came back levelled up some 30 more levels and kitted out

Just came upon Academy Town at night, looking up at the main Erd tree in the starry sky was just... man.

I gotta install this on our 4K TV/PS5 combo and see what that looks like

Even Beastman was a challenge till I'd merked a few random smaller enemies and levelled up. Still haven't got anywhere with the Tree Sentinel.

Absolutely love playing Stormveil Castle. Such an incredibly designed map. I'm really getting used to the idea of the messages being left out for me on online mode (even if half of them are telling me to jump off ledges plummeting to nowhere). I especially like the bit where there's a long outdoor staircase leading up to a guard with a vuvuzela. You have to crouch down at the bottom of the staircase and wait till his back's turned before running up the stairs and attacking him before he can sound the alarm. It's a really great dynamic.

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).

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That seems pretty weird, Trayce - are you on pc? I had my own weird thing where I've been playing the PS4 version on PS5, with a PS5 controller...the controller died, so I went back to an old PS4 controller that I've been using to play Dark Souls 3 for years. But all the movement was super jittery and odd, like it was constantly getting bad inputs from the left stick. All of my PS4 controllers eventually stopped working in different ways, but I wonder if it was something about that setup.

Anyway I've got a new wonky build going on. I really liked the dual straight sword moveset with the Ornamental Straight Sword, but I wanted to experiment with status effects. So I was able to make two poison long swords, although I haven't been able to upgrade them to match my other weapons (and the scaling isn't very good with poison affinity).

So now I'm starting with the poison swords, which only take like two hits to poison someone, and then switching to the Ornamental swords for damage. The tricks are 1) being able to tell which one I actually have equipped, because 2) they use opposite buttons. With the Ornamental paired swords, R1 does a cool two-sword moveset and L1 just blocks. With the regular powerstanced swords, L1 does that cool moveset. I've definitely died because I can't tell what I have equipped and blocked instead of attacked, it's a good brain exercise though.

Anyway this is mostly for pvp, but I'm curious to see how well poison works on bosses, giants, and dragons!

Stormveil Castle is second only to Hyrule as my favourite castle design that I've played

Radahn is annoying!!

radahn is super annoying, but also my favourite boss fight i've come across so far in elden ring

xp i gotta try pvp

I watched a guy beat this in about two hours. It's amazing that even this newest FromSoft masterpiece allows you to completely cheese the bosses in stupid ways.

Feature, not a bug

lol i just learned you can sprint

I think I figured out how to do Radahn. I was reading "do it on a horse" and "don't do it on a horse" but I've got him almost-dead a few times with a new hybrid approach. It's just not feasible one way or the other, I think you kinda gotta have one foot in the stirrup and one foot on the ground at all times

That's what I've been trying for a number of boss that are horse-possible...seems like they want you to use the horse to get away from the giant aoe attacks, but then come in and fight on foot?

I'm going through southern Caelid and it's feeling pretty doable, even though I realized I'm lower level than I thought (34). Slowly making my way toward Redmane. Tbh I read that if you talk to Blaidd first he clears the area before you get there, but I'd rather try the minibosses myself?

i started the blaidd/seluvis questline without having a clue what it would lead to only to find a nearly totally empty redmane castle by the time i got there, i guess next playthrough i will have to ignore it until after i've run through first

Yeah the horse seems like a good "run away quickly" tool, at least thats how I am using it. Theres an area where you goad giants into chasing you round a field because when they do they'll smash open a statue full of smithing stones.
Ain't no way I was gonna fight the damn things though so I ran around going nyer nyer at them, grabbed the loot, and noped off in a hurry.

Oh, but today in "trayce cant figure shit out": When I was given the finger-snap emote - and I know what I need to use it for - I cant work out how to use it? It doesnt show up in my emotes list, I feel like Im missing something, does it need to be assigned?

Oh yeah, go to one of the emote slots and there should be a 'switch' option, then you'll get the full list.

ah! Thankyou :)

Oh and re that lag/jitter: im using a PS4, so ... I dont know. This morning we had really slow internet cos someone was downloading ALL THE TV so maybe I'll try again in offline mode and see what happens.

ok i gave in and bought this. i have played a tiny bit of one souls game, don't even remember which one (dark souls 3 maybe?). gonna try and go into this without any tutorials beyond the random things i've read here and there and already forgotten (i only remember how not to accidentally skip the combat tutorial). i'm gonna suck so bad.

Its ok I suck really bad too, I couldnt even beat the tutorial for over an hour so yeah :D

lol I just got served a story that someone already beat the game in under an hour.

Ooh, welcome Nick. I hope you don't hate it.

Playing blind definitely won't make it less frustrating, nothing wrong with looking up mechanics stuff, or even a walkthrough to see what you missed in an area (or anything really, as long as it doesn't take the fun out of it).

Having played all the other From games (and if I can do it, anyone can do it), my opinion is that the value of playing blind is a lot lower than the cost of all the amazing stuff you will absolutely miss. Given the nature of this open world game, if I had to hazard a guess I'd think that even if you followed a guide with this one, or looked up tips or whatever, short of specific enemies and locations there will still be surprises at every turn. Does that sound about right?

i am finding that this game is very large

I just found out about a method of farming for xp, and it involves using a portal that there is NO WAY I would have stumbled on if I'd not known to look for it.

My theory is that the entire From story-thesis (that is, no exposition, but tonnes of lore) predicates community involvement— sharing tricks, locations of items, generally a spoiler is [actually a salient point that they wanted you to share]

For example, I would’ve sailed through the game with only a superficial interest/engagement to Who Ranni Is And Who Hurt Her except for the work of some more fastidious commentators

I gave up on Radahn, I’m at 70 but he’s embarrassing me, doing some easy Caelid exploration instead

I agree that community involvement seems key, and while I have played and enjoyed everything offline, I do feel like I have missed something.

i have left some pretty funny messages and have been appraised some times, it feels good. does getting appraised give you something? other than satisfaction

It refills your hp bar!

oh dang, nice! wow, those messages with 1000+ approvals must kind of break the game for them?!

i've only played this and demon's souls on the PS3 right when the servers were being flipped off (and eventually replaced with a private fan server) - i really loved the online aspect of demon's souls, and i don't so much here. i think the difference is that the player base for demon's was so much smaller that those bits of other players really did make the world less lonely. the other people playing felt real and present, whereas every single person on the planet is playing elden ring so it feels like i'm seeing shadows of an extremely popular MMORPG player base.

the open world has something to do with that too, it just feels inherently less lonely and desolate on its own. it's a very lively game world.

There have been a few times where I’m in some location that feels so remote, so obscure, and I’ve felt the thrill of loneliness and frontierism, only to have the ghost of another player drift by and strike a pose at me