Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Spoiling for Edgar:

A particular sequence of events (that is easily broken) causes Edgar to blame you for his daughter's death, and then his phantom invades you in the Lake District. Kill the phantom and you get a key item for another quest, a larger more important endgame quest. But: it's easy to break this sequence, it seems, and many players are finding themselves un-invaded by Phantom Edgar, and thus locked out of a big endgame quest, as I was. Consensus in the community seems to dictate that it's safest to kill him after clearing Morne, and/or be fastidious about ensuring that this plot line plays out precisely

huh that seems weird. i just finished up castle morne and tried to do what he wanted so we'll see how it pans out down the road. it's annoying that to go back to him after defeating the leonine boss, you have to redo like half the castle.

finally got around to making some attempts at magrit yesterday but couldn't get him down to more than 1/3 of his HP. gonna save up for the shackle before i try again, probably.

i'm so bad at remembering to use all the tools at my disposal. like i'll get into dodging and striking and completely forget to do any blocking. and i have all these extra tools in my inventory (like the various greases) that i never remember to use. i just now started getting in the habit of using the wondrous flask. there are so many things to try.

I'm pretty sure I messed up Edgar's quest too, as I have many of the npc quests, as I usually do.

okay just met the freaky bull/insect thing (which kicked my arse, naturally), definite Bloodborne Elder Gods vibes

Is this the one from the underground poison lake area? That's where I'm at too.

I need to mess around with the wondrous flask more, I haven't even tried out the ruptured tear yet (which makes you explode).

xp no up at Volcano Manor, not as far in as you by the sounds of it

I haven't reached Volcano Manor, so I don't think I'm as far as you, haha. I've just been following Ranni's quest.

are you at "astel, natural born of the void"? got there last night, got wrecked, went to bed.

Yes! Looks like something out of Doom. He clearly doesn't want you hanging out below him, so the usual approach doesn't work. I think he won't be too bad if I can only learn to avoid that instant death grab attack.

Yeah I've not really used the Wondrous Flask thing much yet either although my partner informs me it's great for farming

this game rules

definitely ended up OP (lvl 55? or so?) when i faced godrick because i beat him first try (after losing many times to margit previously)

had initially planned to try this out w/o using guides and what-not, but i know that if i'm actually going to finish it sometime in the next hmmm year i need to get tips/tricks

that said, i've been impressed with the level design, at least w/r/t getting you where you need to go. dungeon-y games can, for me, be unplayable if you're spending all your time wandering around lost and i put off going into stormveil for a long time under the assumption that it was going to be horribly complicated. i did consult a map/walkthrough a few times but actually getting to godrick would've been manageable without i think

I like how getting to Godrick (or the main boss in general in these dungeons) is very straightforward, but finding the multiple secret paths and hidden bosses/items/npcs is not.

Kill the phantom and you get a key item for another quest, a larger more important endgame quest

If you mean the grape, somehow I ended up with one without killing Edgar or pising him off, I dont quite know how!

Oh BTW if you have killed Leonine and not spoken to Edgar just save at a site of grace and pass a day and go back to him then it works.

And btw if you have to go back to him, a tip: you can basically sneak past that pile of bodies/weirdos supplicating on said pile, and sneak past the sleeping pumpkin head and go up the ladder. BUt yeah you still have to fight those irritaing flying things.

A side note: RATS, amirite why are they some of the worst enemies I hate them.

This whole Edgar / Irina plotline is weird. I killed Lionel before even speaking to Edgar. I just went to find him at Castle Morne and he's not where he's meant to be. I went to Bridge of Sacrifice and Irina is dead but according to guides, Edgar is supposed to be there and he's not. Kind of annoying

Oh wait I should have read Trayce's posts

But time has definitely passed since I killed Lionel as I did it ages ago

Ah I'm not fighting those flying Mick Hucknall things again only to find he's still not there

"flying Mick Hucknall things" lol

And btw if you have to go back to him, a tip: you can basically sneak past that pile of bodies/weirdos supplicating on said pile, and sneak past the sleeping pumpkin head and go up the ladder. BUt yeah you still have to fight those irritaing flying things.

A side note: RATS, amirite why are they some of the worst enemies I hate them.

the rats that make you go CRAZY are extra annoying, thanks Miyazaki-san

I found the rat spirit summons, and while I haven't tried it I can only assume it's the most powerful spell in the game (possibly only second to dog spirits, if that exists).

Left Godrick for a while and came back overlevelled with a stronger, better jellyfish and that nice Nepheli person. He went down pretty easily, but I can't really take credit - I just ran up a few times and put in the odd blood slash.

Scoping out Liurnia now & it feels comfortable but not easy, which is where i want to be.

Still poking around corners of Limgrave/WP. Thought I'd seen most things but then DEATHBIRD jumped me.

Got the Carian armour, so finally looking good.

Still feeling awkward about killing dogs in front of my dog.

Haha. I only just found Nepheli, but the creepy wizard guy who wanted me to find her has died of natural causes, so oh well. Probably as a result of finishing Ranni's quest, which was truly a wild ride.

I clipped my fight with Astel, since I thought it went pretty well. It's nice that he actually gives you time to heal, it's pretty chill in comparison to some others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm_XZUUlue4

i guess opening up a new area moves some characters even if you haven't completed the game narrative/beaten bosses. ie i opened up liurnia of the lakes without doing margit or stormveil and now patches is hanging out in liurnia and rodericka has moved to the roundtable hold even though i didn't do the mission she wanted me to do in stormveil.

Oh damn I haven't even found Patches in Liurnia

down by the riverside

Yeah lol I never found Patches until late game and he was dead.

i had to google it - i wanted to buy margit's shackle - but he is in a pretty central location

Btw, re: Edgar...

It seems as if breaking his plot line does make it impossible to complete Hyetta's. You need three grapes (plus a Fingerprint Grape) to have her (extremely depressing!) plot line play out. But: not completing Hyetta does not lock you out of a potential big endgame thing, it just deprives you of a particular seal. So, whatever I guess?

I've whiffed three-and-a-half plot lines at this point. Re: Rya I did not find her at her second location before killing Rykard. Re: Hyetta I messed up the apparent order of discovering who with whom and was not invaded by Edgar at the Revenger's Shack, and thus missed out on my third grape. Re: Gurranq a noted issue with the final Mariner not spawning left me one Deathroot short of completion. Re: Sellen I sided against her and invaded her with Jerren, which resulted in me having an extra Big Smithing Stone but being out a sorcery reward from Sellen herself.

Happily it seems as if "Platinum Status" is not dependent upon whether these side quests play out. I assumed I guess that 100%'ing meant "every incantation" and "every sorcery" and "every talisman" but it doesn't, just certain legendary ones that you can always get (if you put the work in).

I made it to Melania last night, and she instakilled me the first time, so I went back in with a shield and a Physick-induced no-FP-required summon of a +10 assassin, and have always made it to her second stage but got to a "we're trading hits and she's regenerating" kinda stalemate. I've way more levelled than most aspirants at this point, I think. I made it to level 160 and started stocking up on materials with my excess runes, with an idea that I might upgrade my shit for a respec to mage or pure-dexterity. I can totally understand why everybody struggles with Melania, I'm overpowered and experienced with the series and she's still very punishing.

The length and detail of this game is such that I have become unfamiliar with places/things I did at the start of the game, there is just so much information that it feels like ages and ages ago since I was pthubbing Crucible Knights and Cemetery Shades. The sheer beauty and glorious design of some of the later stages is leaving me breathless, like I can't believe this game after 100+ hours still has the ability to leave me agog. I feel like the dev team must've had some kind of a dare pact, like they deliberately made an endless list of bosses and locations and just kept egging each other on for however-many-years until it was all designed and completed.

After seven entire game's worth of content, arriving at late-game area Brace of the Haligtree was such a wonderful throwback to Demon's Souls-style castlecrawling, like this particular mode of Soulsborne that had been until the very late-game mostly absent. I'm having existential kinda thoughts, like, "can I even play games after this?" The engagement I felt back in February with Horizon Zero Dawn feels so past tense. I definitely plan on a long break from games once I beat this one I think

This really is some kind of landmark, this game feels every bit as much of an achievement as any big human cultural artifacts, and I feel profoundly moved that I'm able to experience it before its details and secrets have become ubiquitous

fgti's The End of Game History thesis was controversial from the start, but few dared to dismiss it entirely

Love that fgti, I'm on board. Also, I don't know how yet, but when I reach Melania I'm committed to doing it sans summons. :)

I'm mostly having existential thoughts about the pvp, since I go in and out of having fun with it (because fighting against three people spamming insane spells & skills can be very, very difficult). Once I someday finish the game to my satisfaction, am I going to keep doing invasions for five years like I did with DS3? Unsure, but I hope so, and I'm definitely planning a lvl 40 invader where the damage-to-hp balance keeps things more fun.

In the meantime I did another respec back to pure dex, since the extra blood buildup was not worth doing arcane at the moment (and I can't change the scaling on the Ornamental straight swords, still an important part of my build). I'm going to mess around with some daggers though.

I've been drooling over some of the pure-dex builds for PvP for sure, but blood is really where it's at for PvE afaic. I haven't beat her yet or anything but Malenia is definitely staggering, allowing criticals, taking the bleed bonuses when she deserves them.

Yeah, I've been using double katanas (one of them with a blood affinity) for boss fights lately to get that bleed, but the moveset is just too slow for pvp, at least for how I like to play.

thinking of using my Dex build to use one of the twirly spear/sword things- Godskin Peeler anyone?- though I think it will be difficult to give up my shield

Hm, yeah. I play power stance but keep a shield equipped at all times, I can't deal with imps otherwise!

I started Golden Halberd/Brass Shield STR/FTH, respec'd to Bloodhound Fang/Bloody Omen Cleaver STR/DEX, then switched the two left-to-right once I got Bloodhound Step... I love the weapon art on the Bloodhound Fang but the step Ash is just too useful.

I've been wondering about curved swords, they seem so fast and good! Once I get the smithy bell bearings I'm going to experiment with dual longswords and dual curved swords until I find my ideal setup (although I'll likely just stick with my current setup, it's hilariously powerful imo!)

Christ I feel like I'm playing a different game to the rest of you lol. I have barely any goo weapons, and I cant use them anyway cos I did not bother building STR/DEX at all, so I cant bloody lift or wear anything decent.

Which would be fine, my glintstone staff slays, but it has finite juice!

My partner who's been playing the game a lot less time than me has already mashed up Godrick and beaten all the minibosses in Limgrave, so has pretty much caught up if not surpassed me in just a matter of days (a keeper!). I'm still a bit salty about the Edgar quest but hey ho, at least I have a monkey tailor now who actually makes my clothes WORSE when he alters them, great!

My staff is next to useless, just irritates enemies rather than hurts them

I just don't know how I broke Edgar's plotline so easily... This is one of the few things that frustrate me about these games - I like that they don't handhold you or rely on endless fetch quests, but sometimes it's like you're supposed to have a sixth sense about where you're expected to go and who you're meant to speak to in what order to trigger a particular sequence of events. Is it because I neglected to speak to Edgar before killing Lion-O? Why is Irina dead? If this all happened, then where has Edgar got to and why has he vanished? I feel this is a bit unfair really.

Quests get broken so easily and arbitrarily

I'm endgame now and had to do a convoluted thing to advance a very important quest forward, did the convoluted thing, it had no effect, gave up. It was so irritating. I'm like "this game can render the most complicated beautiful environments imaginable but it can't keep its fucking story straight"

Things like the Plaxi Dragon, like how the fuck are 99% of people ever going to find this (very important) boss without looking at a guide? They must have spent aaaages creating/coding etc and they just leave it somewhere completely obscure and arbitrary for everyone to miss.

I wouldn't have been mad if they made the npc quest system a bit more forgiving and easy to follow in this game, I don't think it would have lost anything.

My wife was out last night so I had awhile to play, but I spent the whole time doing invasions and it was more frustrating than fun. I'm at the level now where player damage is so high that the rule is "don't get hit". If I mess up at all (which usually means trying to swap to my dagger with Bloodhound's Step to get away, except oops my left hand still has a shield, so I parry instead of using the right-hand skill) it's instant death. So I'm going to focus on actually progressing for awhile, imagine that.

I did go back and do the Divine Tower of Caelid (or Carlos, as a friend's phone always corrects to), that was fun.

finally fuckin beat fuckin margit

then got killed by some knifebirds

xp to crisp regarding that dragon, i saw some white spirits doing a ~thing~ which clued me in. they come in handy sometimes!

there really are moments when it feels like you're in a secret area within a secret area within a secret area. i found a hidden spot last night that really surprised me. it just like... kept going.