Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Fgti, I truly do love to see it! It's addictive.

I know invasions are a weird mechanic to people not used to From games, but that shouldn't discourage people from summoning help for boss fights. If you go through a whole level with summoned phantoms, then yes, you may get invaded. The idea is to balance out the difficulty, since the game is clearly easier when you have multiple people on your side. The worst that can happen is you'll die, which we should all be used to at this point. :)

Ummm, I did accidentally invade into someone's Fire Giant boss fight yesterday, but that's a rare glitch and I felt bad about it.

My big Elden Ring moment over the weekend was finally beating Mohg, after many many attempts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NguHB1fcf5M

Then the Fire Giant went down in a couple tries.

I also clipped the Niall fight, since apparently people have been having trouble with it. Speaking of parries, that was the key to taking out the shield knight for me, since otherwise I didn't have a great way of dealing with him quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T78ub0afbKw

Great short video on boss mechanics/enemy a.i.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAScBR7Lovo

@ dog latin, small and medium shields (and some daggers, some fists, some claws)) can all parry. With a parry ash of war equipped on your shield, (or just the buckler on its own), you press R2 some 10 frames before an attack is about to make contact and you deflect it and the enemy is immediately staggered, and you can perform a critical.

As far as I can recall there are three parry ashes (maybe more?) Basic parry, then Carian Retaliation (which can parry magic attacks and then gives a phalanx response, and the phalanx hits way harder than normal casts of it), then Golden Parry (which uses FP when you use it but has a very broad range).

Different shields, ashes, and whatever give you shorter or longer grace windows where a parry will work. For example, a buckler offers 12 viable parry-window frames whereas a Caestus offers only 6. (Don't quote me on those numbers, I watched the video a couple days ago).

If you want to experiment with it, try getting Carian Retaliation (my preferred) and put it on a medium shield (one with 100% physical damage reduction). You can still use L1 for guard counter, but L2 becomes your parry. Carian Retaliation doesn't use FP for normal parries (it only uses them when you parry magic attacks). Try it out and see if you like it.

Ironically, certain Tank enemies become rather easy when you're parrying (Crucible Knight isn't "easy" but is much more manageable, and every other big area knight is a pushover). But random flailing soldiers, with their inconsistent attack patterns, they're the ones who start landing hits ha

Considering how frequently invaders/invadees rely upon magic attacks, and how insanely powerful a successful Carian Retaliation phalanx response is, I've upped my success rate on invasions, from "I die 4 out of 5 times" to "I die 3 out of 5 times"

Dumn question - does parrying deflect the attacker's spell/hit back on them or just stun them? I'm thinking a la guardian laser parrying in botw.

If you use carian retaliation on a spell, it effectively sends their spell at them and does damage.

If you use the shield to parry a physical attack, it stuns them and you can do a critical attack with a weapon.

They really need to fix carian retaliation btw - it's so fun and useful, but aside from doing crazy damage (based on how high your shield is upgraded), sometimes the other player can't actually see the blades fire. So they get hit and probably die, but the blades are still hovering over the head of the person who did the spell parry.

Thanks for explaining, fgti

Sounds like Carian Retaliation on my Beast Heater shield is The Way.

I have found that parrying is kinda situational, lots of enemies (Crystallians, i.e.) are easier to stagger with guard-riposte than parry-riposte in PVE, but it's a fun play style, very satisfying when it succeeds

Looking forward to a rematch with Malenia, determined to parry her into dust

You make it sound so easy :P

Me trying to parry: you died (to low level skeleton, ya dweeb!)

My current attributes:

Vigor: 10
Mind: 10
Endurance: 10
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 10
Intelligence: 71
Faith: 10
Arcane: 10

There is nothing scarier to me than a rat or a wolf.

Ha, like fgti said, skeletons are notoriously squirrelly with their attacks and hard to parry. It's actually easiest to practice against a knight type enemy with a big sword (though note that they'll try to shield bash you to mess you up).

The other nice thing about Carian Retaliation is that it has a flashy animation that makes the parry frames easier to visualize.

etaeoe, are you doing a challenge run, why would you do that to yourself

And what does it look like! lots of spells and running away? Can you summon much, with that FP?

My current attributes:

Vigor: 10
Mind: 10
Endurance: 10
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 10
Intelligence: 71
Faith: 10
Arcane: 10

― Allen (etaeoe), Tuesday, 12 April 2022 15:02 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been doing this build too but irl

my stats:

vigor 11
mind 13
endurance 7
strength 2
dexterity 25
intelligence 8
faith 2
arcane 35

also irl, and crossing into D&D, my LCK is either 20 or -204. every time i wake up, a mysterious figure i'm trying to find casts lots to determine which one it will be for me that day

(those are joke stats, right? I was going to chide you about low vigor but the strength and faith are the giveaway.)

those are my irl stats. here are my elden stats:

LVL58

vigor 22
mind 17
endurance 15
strength 21
dexterity 14
intelligence 15
faith 22
arcane 13

Haha. I don't even want to consider my irl stats.

(you should still pump vigor for awhile btw)

i left a comedy message on the stairwell leading up to Rennala, where you have to dodge the giant bowling ball

RENALLA IS FINALLY FELLED FINALLY!

*an elden ring sighs in exhaustion*

Vigor + 2 :)

what should we be pumping vig to?

my long term goal is to keep pumping til it hits 40

right now i'm pumping INT because the moonveil/cold uchigatana combo does stupid hilarious damage, after that's fully pumped ima pump some VIG, maybe pump some MND

I got it to 40 as soon as I could and then focused on damage stats for awhile. Now I'm at level 120-something and I have vigor over 60, and it's finally hit the soft cap where it seems like it's not worth going higher.

yeah I'm up to 115 or so and VIG is definitely suffering from diminishing returns now

I don't feel like I have a good strategy for leveling, I've mostly been alternating boosting Vigor, Mind, Endurance, Strength, and Dexterity. I have some Faith because I am a Confessor but haven't been adding much to it.

I sometimes chuck some runes into a stat I'm not bothered about in general if it offers a boost to core defence stats. I've not re-specced yet but there's always that possibility if things start looking weird

I mean, things in the Lands Between look pretty weird at the best of times but YKWIM

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Elden-Ring/twinsage_glintstone_crown_elden_ring_wiki_guide_200px.png

yeah I'm about to get to the point where I can respec and I prob have to do it because my stats are all over the place

one cool (broken) ash of war is the glintstone pebble. If it hits it staggers enemies, and if you follow it with a heavy attack it does a tracking thrust combo for a shitload of damage

I saw a reddit post about the value of leveling endurance & wearing heavy armor, that damage absorption can make a big difference in this game. But some enemies have different damage types (magic, holy, etc) so I prefer to have more raw hp and not worry about it. Plus light clothing has much better fashion choices than heavy armor.

I've been using glintstone pebble a lot! Great in pvp. I overlooked it at first because I didn't know about the follow-up combo.

My main ashes are that or Thunderbolt, good as a finisher or heal-punish (or just generally good in pve).

xp I've thrown some extra levels at END so I can wear heavy armour while wearing the Havel amulet. I like the Siegmeyer-style armour but that is a bit much as a full set

general question. i have a plain broadsword up to +12. should i be focusing my weapon upgrades on weapons that have unique qualities (eg they also do magic damage in additional to physical)? the thing about a weapon with innate properties is that you can't put grease or apply a incantation buff to it, right? As far as i can tell, the weapon has be in a "neutral" state before you can additional properties to it using items/spells?

just sitting here wondering if i'm throwing all my smith stones away on a boring weapon when i should be pumping up a magic weapon

you can imbue regular degular weapons with magic and other attributes when you find the right whetstones. you can make a boring weapon non-boring with normal smithing stones.

special magicky weapons use somber smithing stones.

that's what i mean, i sort of - i already have the ability to imbue weapons with certain qualities, so i can take my regular Broadsword (Physical damage only) and use ashes of war to add magic, cold, holy, or blood damage on top of the physical. so, i have a broadsword+12 that can be modified into those things pretty easily (and i can also use greases, if needed)

but then, i have some weapons that are unmodified (+0) that already have other effects built it (e.g., Lazuli Glintstone Sword, which is in the same Straight Sword category as a regular Broadsword, but innately does Magic in addition to Physical damage.

Are these innately magical weapons the ones i should be upgrading, in other words?

sorry, i know this is very situational too, probably

or maybe is should just be looking at the attribute scaling and concentrating on the ones that line up with attributes (like FTH and STR)?

if you make your broadsword holy i think it would leverage both STR and FTH, though it may not be like the most mathematically optimized approach, which of course is why we play games

i've got moonveil at +9 and an uchigatana at +15 with "cold" applied and it's stupid cheap fun. easy mode for most mobs and some bosses. which is fine because i am bad at games.

It's good to factor in minimum requirements. Like, you might be able to make a greathammer with 30 Str requirement into magic greathammer, but then those 30 points would be mostly wasted on scaling. Buuut if you really want to use it, why not? It's easy to mess around with the affinities and see what does the best (and sometimes the numbers don't tell the whole story).

btw, I keep the beast-repellent torch off-hand from my shield, helps with dogs and rats, it's a real *cough* game-changer. You buy it from the merchant in Dragonbarrow, just jump the chasm and bear left

Have it equipped and they'll leave you alone, this includes the big dogs in Caelid

oh nice! i'll keep that in mind when i'm getting wailed on in Caelid later. i've explored it just a bit, but currently i'm at the edge of Caria Manor

i don't think i've exhausted Limgrave by any stretch, but it was very nice to visit again, post-Rennala, and kind of clean it out a bit, taking on old dungeon bosses that kicked my ass earlier and beating them, first try (finally OP!).

I'm 98 hours in, LVL 61. I think some of those hours were my console just sitting there as i went to the grocery store and stuff, but generally that seems accurate

Ugh I have had the beat repelent torch for ages and I keep forgetting to use it.