Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

like botw was fantastic to explore & dense with interesting puzzles, but the end result was always shrines, and the enemy variety was very limited. while here there's a ton of interesting things organically integrated into the game world, and the combat is fantastic as always with from

haven't played this at all but i feel like you could've said the same thing about botw up to a certain point? the game world seems wondrous and varied at first but the further out you go the more you start to notice the repetition

Maybe, but this is definitely not “go to x landmark, get y item” at all so far like BOTW was.

Closer to Red Dead 2’s open world in its uniqueness of encounters.

Oh, uh, I kinda misread that.

Anyway, my friend rebooted his PS and the invasion problem went away. Guess it was a bug, but with something like that you’d just assume…

Huh, that sounds like my kinda bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a designated post-Pontiff Sulvayhn style invasion area where the rules are different.

I guess we’ll find out if that’s a bug or a feature eventually.

I binged the hell out of this, taking a break. Half delirious. It’s kinda insane that what I’ve seen so far is apparently just a small fraction of the total.

I'm a bit stuck at the first Stormveil boss, but i did a ton of extracurricular exploring otherwise, especially in the south peninsula. i managed to find a map for that one, too. finding a map is crucial for me, and it's hilarious because finding a map feels so rando

I was struggling to find the map for that eastern portion, but its location was apparently marked… on the map.

Granted in the grey mass of the map, but it was there.

Looking it up, they’re typically along the main roads.

put in about two hours and got killed all over, found at least four separate solid possibilities for deep exploration. there's too much stuff almost immediately! I need to settle down and follow the storyline so i can get the horse and level up!

good moooooooorning

PRAISE THE SUN!

I’m gonna be back on the grind in a minute. Been doing a lot of texting trying to explain myself to friends who bought this on my recommendation.

It has turned from “wtf, this is impossible” to “i just cleared some caves!” pretty fast though.

I'm gonna restart i think. Doing wretched was a bad idea as I think i want a thief build.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/hidetaka-miyazaki-sees-death-as-a-feature-not-a-bug
^presented unread

i love this anecdote

In Elden Ring, if your game system is connected to the Internet, the ghostly outlines of other players occasionally flicker onscreen while you roam, suggesting that you share the burden of your experiences. It’s even possible to summon another player for help during a taxing encounter. The players can’t readily talk to one another, so the difficulty is leavened by trust; after the challenge is complete, the summoned player dissolves in a shower of light. Miyazaki had the idea for such moments years ago, after his car became trapped in snow on a hill. A group of strangers pushed the vehicle to the top, then disappeared soundlessly into the night.

You guys are going to make me buy this shit
Hoping for a lot of strand type gameplay on the horse

xp That’s an amazing anecdote.

Beautifully rendered anyway.

I’m back on this and have been texting with friends about the pain and the glory. Special kind of game, like it’s very much not always fun. But coming out the other side of a struggle is uniquely, brilliantly rewarding.

I'm trying to remember, but maybe because it is most fore of mind I felt that dark souls 2 played up in-game NPC phantom helpers more than the other installments did, so that those playing offline like I do get a bit more of that experience.

Turns out the kick is now an L2 weapon art connected to certain weapons like the mace you can get in the area to the south of Limgrave

I like how there are so many non-hostile creatures on the map, just sheep running on armadillo code and minding their own business, but what are those jellyfish that hang out near piles of corpses up to you have to wonder

Finding a flail that you swing around wildly made me want to restart as a dex build, but making do squishing people with the regular mace for now

love too inadvertently jump off my spectral steed while trying to make a rapid escape from being You Died.

also i have not yet got the hang of fighting mounted enemies, on my spectral steed or no.

On early thing that seems to work is attaching the hors and knocking them off

I died a bunch of times to the tree sentinel but god it was good

finding a cave with wolves guarding a beastmaster stuck in some forest is kind of a perfect way to get the ball rolling here. roll d10 for initiative.

I want to find the wolf cave. When I stopped I had ridden into bear country.

Yeah I've played all of two hours so far and the Beastman guy is kicking my arse

I need to get used to defending more. I'm used to Bloodborne which I guess has the gun parry, but you don't have to use it all that much

Found the Beastman later than I was perhaps expected to so that was no problem. I think he's supposed to teach you to use your jump attack to get over his sweeps? Very Sekiro-like. In learning that the jump and guard counter mechanics are pretty key.

Now I'm approaching Stormveil.

What happens in the not-fighting-bits? Hard to tell from the streams

Also I’d feel bad stabbing these nice eccentric/looking mythological creatures so I think this game may not be for me

found a third map today! Also, without being spoilery, has anyone else been down the Siofra River Well? on one hand i was definitely underleveled for what i found there, but i kept sneaking and running past everything and completing objectives and finding new sites of grace, so i just kept going for a long time. eventually i had to bail because i was getting one hit killed, but...anyway, very curious about that place

I’m there at the moment. I am also getting one-hit killed by this large being but refuse to leave without beating him. Think I am in for a painful couple of hours

I can get him down to 1/3 of his health fairly consistently with my scythe-jousting strat (the horse is my favourite part of this game), but haven’t broke that barrier in around 25 tries. Feel so close!

Mostly don’t want to give in because I’m not keen on taking that 5hr elevator ride again.

siofra well was a real skullsplitter on that initial elevator descent. i've done the same, a bit of running around avoiding beasties, a bit of being a cooperator to gain a bit of confidence slash learn a bit about the fights down there, but do generally feel well underleveled

Managed to kill Beastman after a small bit of grinding and finding a sword armament. Then tried my hand at Stormveil. I don't know how much this game expects me to kill enemies rather than run past them on my horse. There's that big giant right as you get on the path up there and he's not exactly a cinch to kill. Then there are arrowmen whose ranged weapons are hard to dodge. I ended up just riding as quickly as I could. Then the Magelin (?) boss killed me pretty easily.

Really enjoying this game though. I love the open world feeling and it's a lot less claustro than Bloodborne

Patches!

So is the idea to spend time carefully exploring/being avoidy and levelling up a bit, like I'm used to in Skyrim maybe?

I think so!

I love how we're all having completely different experiences. I keep trying Margit, then going off to do other stuff.

lol, i love that i have found the "Margit Bind" but not Margit! And apparently vice versa.

I have no idea how non-spoilery we want to make this or if sharing stuff we find is in the spirit of the game.

Anyways, fuck the rolling death chariot behind the double-key at the start of the game and FUCK THAT ULCERATED TREE SPIRIT, it's gonna be awhile before i try him for real

there is a cave on the beach, terribly far away from where you start and separated by an ocean from a tantalizing castle on an island. you find the cave because a group of primal cave people are sunning on the rocks nearby. you kill them and then go in and it's pitch black. new chimps flood out and kill you. it's too dark, no way forward. an hour later, you meet a merchant in the ruins of a church and what do you know, he's got the first torch you can find in the game. You travel back to the cave to find maybe a dozen cave people and a handful of wolves stuck inside. with persistence you take them out one at a time: one by leaping off a balcony and splitting his noggin, one with a well placed arrow headshot, a few stuck in a crooked pathway by wildly swinging my sword as i run down the stairs. Eventually, everyone's dead. I find the only route out and it's a fog wall but there's something new this time, a golden summon sign. A knight appears and joins your side. You lope into a room to find another half dozen primal people eeeking and ooking the place up, suddenly joined by a newly awakened giant half wolf zombie thing. Your knight friend is doing good damage so you try to kite the cave people away. Oops. You've awoken the second giant half wolf zombie thing. They gang up on the knight while you try to clean out the little guys, then make short work of you. Lesson learned. Next time, you keep it close and murder them one at a time, easy peasy. The knight disappears and you leave the cave room to go up a series of tunnels. You emerge on an island far out at sea and it doesn't take long to realize it's the island you saw before. It's infested with little crabs and giant, friendly, floating jellyfish. In the center of the island, within the castle, is a fossilized dragon. There is an altar before the dragon that asks you to insert a dragon's heart to receive its power. You have never yet seen a dragon before in this world. The future is terrifying.

ended up at siofra after choosing to explore rather than proceed through stormveil and it's really worth pushing through, the final boss fight down there is beautiful.

have we talked about the rolling goats?

Haha yeah I saw one do that just out the corner of my screen

enjoying this. interesting what jordan said about beastmaster. i hadn’t really been applying sekiro thinking to this - but that combination of leap and dodge thinking, plus guard retaliation sounds exactly right.

i chose the bandit and the light knife, which you can slash away with until a mob enemy dies is *really* poor discipline for fighting. might start again with a different class.

also lol Erdtree Burial Watchdog clearly a v basic level boss but my dark souls/sekiro discipline has completely deserted me (see above) and i made really heavy weather of it. took about five or six goes.

will aim to do beastmaster today. just mainly been exploring Limgrave out beyond the main map fragment found by the guardhouse ruins. need to get better at getting rid of mounted foes who are just wrecking me at the moment. and really want to take out that area to the east with the astronomer/mage perched out on a long pillar throwing magic at anything in a 360 radius. v v enjoyable game.

lovely the way new secrets reveal themselves at night as the erdtree leaves fall, and you get that shimmering buff (no idea what it does yet - no spoilers please)

I am finding mounted combat really hard. Even trying to kill a goat that's right next to me, I seem to just be randomly slashing the air.

Anyone else been transported to the crystal mines and thought they'd broken the game?

it took me a while to realise I could fast-travel out of Table of Lost Grace, I got beaten up by the sorcerer guy who spawns there a fair few times.

That guy is annoying! I got him down to two swings from death and then he chugged an estus. No idea if he provides any benefit in death other than an item which allows you to be invaded at any time which, lol nah cheers

I got kidnapped to the mines yeah, the gross millipede sorcerers are very, very annoying but it's not that hard to suicide run to the upgrade material drops and sprint downhill to the save point. Going outside and seeing the absolute state of the place you're in is a hell of a vibe

Mounted combat is giving me a lot of flashbacks to embarrassing air swings in mount and blade. When fighting mounted enemies I only ever use the horse for a quick first strike, if that, then just dismount and go carefully timed guard counters. The horse does make it feel like you're never really stuck in trouble anywhere when you're outside though

Sometimes, and only sometimes, I slay an enemy and get this kind of red glow about me as though I've drunk a potion - is that health replenishment? It's only happened once or twice. I do miss that mechanic from Bloodborne.

Sometimes if there is a group of similar enemies together on the map and you kill all of them, your stock of healing potions is replenished by x amount

If someone online approves a sign you've written it's just a straight one off health refill (I always get loads when I'm just leaving a bonfire for the first time in a session and rarely ever when I'm actually injured and in combat)

limmy streaming on twitch atm

making me realise mounted combat a *lot* easier when you’re not just armed with a dagger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVE1PZgCgqA
^useful non-spoiler info

great video, thank you! lots of good horse tips in there.

also, i have had very good look in just stumbling onto maps while exploring, but a VERY useful tip in that video is that there's actually a tiny little icon on your map, in the unexplored areas, showing you where you can find the map for that area.

so for anyone struggling to find a map still, take a good look at the map and see what pops out on the unexplored areas.

also, no surprise but holy shit this game must be big. i've warped to a couple places that are waaaaay far away and extend the map out that far to reveal it. *gulp*

god i hope i can beat this game