Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

but wait...how many times have you respec'd your character?

Twice? Three times max? But I might have done it more were it not limited. I have no idea how many larval tears I even had, but I know it wasn't 18.

yeah, i only have a handful. zero respecs. "i don't get no respec", etc etc

Apparently I respecced while drunk the other night. Honestly slightly surprised when I went in the next day & found myself wearing a silver tear mask with a lot of points dumped into arcane.

lol. Maybe your mimic did it while you were drunk?

tbf he's a lot better at fighting than me.
If that's his decision, I'll go with it.

Me, absolutely twisted, respeccing so I can farm a couple of bandit’s curved swords

Me waking up the next day with hundreds of human bone shards and zero bandit’s curved swords

Once again, I feel like this game has taken my breath away. Super nerdy post incoming.

This past week I've been tooling around with my Level 80 strength build, enjoying some duels and invasions. Considering that it feels as if this game is highly, highly developed, in its environments and its lore and its combat, I guess it kinda felt like the arsenal was a strange blind spot. It felt to me as if there were so many weapons that were less-useful, kinda also-rans, and I'm starting to realize that the opposite is true.

When I first started playing, I gravitated more toward the Somber Stone package-deal weapons... the Bloodhound's Fang is so resolutely powerful that I didn't feel as if I needed much else. But wait: you can power stance with another curved great sword. You can slap an Ash Of War on that other great sword and enjoy some variety.

These large swords hit hard and are powerful. But wait: smaller swords get off more hits quicker, so you can play with proc builds. Play for bleed, play for frostbite, play whatever.

The Ashes Of War seemed pitiful in comparison to the Somber Stone skills, at first, but wait: most of them just require some understanding of their mechanics, at least half of them are as powerful as the Somber skills with a few minutes of practice.

So half the Ashes Of War are essentially useless. But wait: the other half of them are actually just as powerful. I was amazed to realize that the most simple set-up, a Claymore with Storm Stomp, was powerful enough to challenge even the most complex of builds.

The lack of pause function makes changing weapons annoying. But wait: you can do it mid-combat if you're fast enough, swap from one weapon to another if you need range, or another if you need AoE, or another if your opponent has a shield that you need to deal with.

It's received knowledge from Dark Souls that split-damage weapons (across two or three stats) are less useful. But wait: once you pass level 150, split-damage is the way to go. Once three of your stats can get stratospheric, suddenly all these seemingly-mediocre weapons start to really shine.

There are many weapons that you have to fastidiously farm if you want access to them. But wait: these weapons appear unassuming, but are amazing. The Iron Greatsword has unbelievable damage for mid-level Strength builds. The Beastman Cleaver has very high poise break. The Bandit Curved Swords hit harder than their other quick slash cousins. Even the Vulgar Militia Shotel is suddenly a wonderful tool if you're looking for a bleed-y halberd.

There are many weapons that seem like wimpy counterparts to other, stronger weapons; the short spear, the Cleanrot knight sword. But wait: you can happily equip four (or more) of them at once because of their light weight, have different Ashes Of War on each, and be able to be more flexible and capable of keeping an opposing duelist off balance.

This morning I equipped a Cleanrot sword with Flaming Strike (for close combat), another with Piercing Fang (to outpace any of their slow build-ups), another with Vacuum Slice (to hit them from a distance), all on my right hand, like an arsenal of options. On my left hand, the same sword with Hoarah Loux's Earthshaker, for a surprise finisher.

I'm just blown away by how the arsenal of weapons boasts boast so many interesting chemistries, everything is looking viable all of a sudden.

Very cool and interesting post fgti

Out of interest, what do youse lot who play NG+ do? Are you going back through the whole game or skipping parts you already did? I spent 300 hours on my first game and I think I only missed a couple of quests and very little else, really, so I'm wondering if I really need to do, say Kenneth Haight's quest again or find every grace point or do all that mucking about in Nokron etc

i missed a ton despite also taking over 300 hours to beat the game and after trying to avoid it i caved and started a NG (not +) and have been exploring more thouroughly

i fucking despise open world games, why would they do this to me? seems like i won't be playing anything else this year

anyhow between then and now they nerfed the fuck out of the sellia hideaway boss. boo!
it was by far my favourite for coop

I’m addicted to “fun builds” and spent an hour last night using an AR calculator to discover what overlooked weapons were viable for my character

I predict that I’m gonna be spending a significant chunk of my next week off acquiring an exhaustive battery. Maybe I’ll take up archery? We’ll see

Archery is secretly OP, I think, I just haven't wanted to make a build that's reliant on crafting.

I fell in love with the frozen needle for my low level build, it's really fun. You have the fast rapier R1s, the R2 that shoots a ranged frost projectile and doesn't cost fp (!), which is amazing for outspacing people, and the L2 goes through shields.

i need to get to the shaded castle already for powerstancing the needle with the rot rapier

Rapiers are so fun. One of my go-to player-murdering setups is four heavy Cleanrot swords powerstanced (3 in the R, one in the L) on a strength build. I rotate the sword for a fast Ash swap, but the opponent never knows which I have equipped. I love Endure followed by Piercing Fang i.e.

Commander Niall is kicking my arse. I tried the trick of siccing them on each other with the bewitching twigs. but Ive wasted 3 this way, dying before I'm done - they work, but th effect is breif and there's only 8 twigs in the world if you dont have the recipe (which of course I dont because its at Moghwyns and Ive never got to that part).

fgti that rules...there was a lot of talk before the game came out about the potential of having multiple copies of the same weapon with different skills, but I've seen very few people actually do it.

Trayce, try taking out the one on the right (with the two swords) first? That one's the most aggressive. Then it's easier to take out the second one (or I guess you could use the branch on him so he attacks Niall?).

Yeah Frozen Needle + Antspur Rapier with bleed on it is such a fun melee weapon. You can jab enemies really fast, inflicting rot, bleed and frost all at once

re: post above. I've been doing NG+ mostly powerstancing Rykard's Blasphemous Blade and the Elden Beat sword you get at the end. They're perfect for just clearing areas of scrubs and getting to where you need to. As such, I'm tearing fairly quickly through the main story this time round, save for a few detours to places I didn't get round to or explore the first time. Easy peasy, until I got to the Fire Giant who proved to be just as tough as the first time round. That is, until I decided to swap to my Frozen Needle / Antspur combo. Run up to him, tap L1 really fast, huge amounts of HP just fall off him. In the second phase I combined these fast jabs with some Bestial Sling incantations and he was toast!

letting you look down and basically see all of leyndell as you enter it is such a flex. however, all these big armor-y dudes are making me wish i had leveled up at least one strike-based weapon along the way.

going back up the thread, i see people saying they did mt. gelmir and volcano manor before leyndell, and i don't even know how to get to those places.

They're easily missed! There are a few ways to teleport there, but I think the main way is just to cross a bridge in the north west part of Altus Plateau?

It was one of my favorite parts of the overworld exploration, just seeing the bridge on the map and thinking "let's see what's over there" and then before you know it you're on this winding journey that I found very satisfying.

xp yes I have I think ~seven~ sets of four identical weapons so I can quick swap ashes and confuse opponents. They think I’m running storm stomp on my GSS and then whoops I bang them with a storm assault, game over

Tbf I came up against an opponent who was doing this and said “aha” and started doing it myself. Not a lot of hellish AoE stuff available with this method (Earthshaker is really it) but I can hold my own

I’m HATING people playing with Marika’s Hammer, it explodes me every time

ok turns out i technically had gotten to the very beginning of mt. gelmir but did not see the way to go up the mountain and kept getting killed by an invader at the shack so i had given up on that route

Both with Leyndell and Volcano Manor I ended up going a strange way.

Thinking tried getting into Leyndell the regular way, but the obvious route is blocked. You're meant to go around and defeat a Draconic Tree Sentinel. I ended up teleporting in via Fia's quest instead, so it wasn't till ages after I happened upon that enemy.

Same with VM, I did Patches' trick quest first (where you end up in a small section of it), and then got teleported by Rya. Took me a while to find out there was much more to VM and Gelmir than I'd first thought

i'm trying to figure out what i would do irl if i was suddenly in physical combat with a celestial creature, and they have this big scimitar with flames on it or whatever, and then they back away from me, put away the big scimitar with flames, only to bust out a second big scimitar with flames on it. and then they kick me

it's easy to see why the inhabitants of the elden ring area are generally really cynical about things. they have seen some crazy shit go down

So the kids in the household have suddenly decided they want to play the entire Devil May Cry back catalogue and I cant get to use the PS4 at all, which blows.

Whats the PC version like at this point, anyone playing on PC? I know it was bad when it came out but theres been loads of patches since so...

My maths might be off here, but I worked out that since this game came out I've been playing it 14% of my waking and sleeping life :-O

pic.twitter.com/GSVPgsp5n8

— berserksouls (@berserksouls) May 14, 2022

https://www.engadget.com/fromsoftware-next-game-final-stages-of-development-193259546.html

Omg

Bit the bullet and repurchased the game on Steam, I have a beefy games laptop with an RTX card, and it runs like a DREAM and looks way better than on my PS4, I dont know what all the fuss was about re the PC version. Perhaps its since been patched?

I'm already doing way better after like 2 hours new play than after 40 on my first run (which I havent finished, I've only just done mountaintops and finally Deeproot Depths)

So looking like that new From game is almost certainly a new Armored Core. I've never played any of that series, but a mech game from From sounds great to me.

Huh. I don't know anything about Armored Core. I'm not a fan of anime, which has always seemed to me very mech-suit centric, so don't know how excited to be, but given From's recent winning streak I'm definitely curious.

it's not really anime flavored as far as i can tell

Didn't From have a game where you play as the President of the US in a mech suit?

Lol, you mean pre-Demon's Souls?

I would be in, I've enjoyed some of the BattleTech/MechWarrior + related games in the past (which are not anime at all), but I don't know if any mech game has ever really nailed it. I'm sure From could do it.

I guess I meant that it was an anime trope, not anime, per se. A la:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mecha_anime

Oh, and re: the batshit President game, inevitably I think I saw it in a Dunkey video. "Metal Wolf Chaos:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30BFiSOP8JU

I mean, it's much more plausible that it was in '04

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Wolf_Chaos#Plot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr7yuuaLmR8

Lol, pretty good.

I've been finding my groove with low-level invasions, it's feeling pretty fun now.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrkNL8wY5JA

This 2nd playthtrough on the PC has been a breeze. I knocked over Morgitt, Godrick and Renalla with relative ease. In fact I belted my way straight to the bossfight for Raya Lucaria, and then did a casual stroll around AFTERWARD to clean up/get all the goodies.

I'm finding my run smash n grab approach is working well for me. Sure, I might not make as many runes avoiding all these enemies, but they are almost all out-runnable and I dont die anywhere near as much.

I also took time to PAY ATTENTION to each NPC I spoke to and followed their quests, and this time I didnt BREAK any of them, so Ive been able to properly follow the quest/NPC movements for Blaidd, D, Renna, Seluvis, Sellen and Alexander, and properly complete the Edgar and Kenneth Haight quests too.
All in only 20 hours or so! Sweet.

Mind you I've yet to get to Haligtree/Melania on anything Ive done, so there is still that...

Fun!

@ Jordan I don’t know what level that invasion was at (50? 80?) but I think anybody dual wielding Fangs should also have a backup plan

Also did he use the WA once idk I didn’t see it

Well played on your end :)

After an hour a day or more of dueling for a while now think I’ve adopted the contentious opinion that “bleed isn’t broken” (but Rivers Of Blood decisively is)

I don’t use bleed (except in low-level aspirant PvE) but I don’t generally find it to be a problem in dueling? mind you I wear Mottled Charm +1 to the duel and swap to the magic negating charm if I see a Moonveil or a staff)

My new Funtime these days is pairing two weapons with vastly different rhythms to mess up the opponent’s timing. Lance goes into axe. Heavy thrusting goes into rapier. Great spear goes into fist. It’s fun

The only weapon I’m pretty sure has no place in PvP is the curved Greatsword, but I am TRYING SO HARD to make a Dismounter build have a run of wins

I'm yet to give PvP a go. Reddit and such makes it all look so toxic :(

NG+ was a huuuge breeze for me except for Elden Beast who I can barely get down to half health.

I regret having done quite so much on my first playthrough (I did nearly all the quests and found almost all the sites of grace) as now in order to get the platinum I'm just having to repeat quests I already went through. Should have left some stuff for the next round