Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

it's time for them to make a new armored core

Man, bummed I’ve got a packed week and probably won’t be able to fire this back up until the weekend. Will have to live vicariously through you all.

Same! I beat Godrick btw, now I have a surfeit of different places to explore.

I think I explored too much. Stomped Goldrick first time because I’m level 46 lol

i have no idea where godrick is, and i'm level 33

I went all over the bloody world last night and I know I haven't even scratched the surface yet. Just kept going and going until I got OP'd by some sneak attackers. Lost a lot of Runes. There are also far fewer waypoints as you get further out. Still stuck on Margaret though - I get him down to second phase and then his glowy hammer just mooshes me. I'm probably around level 19 or something I think. The coolest thing about this game is that grinding doesn't really have to feel like grinding since you're generally exploring the world at the same time as killing random enemies and fauna; feeling the place out, trying not to You Died.

Ha, I have a friend playing this who has dedicated himself to riding about the entire world without actually doing anything yet, just picking things up, getting maps, and seeing the sites. I've toyed around with that approach but feel less overwhelmed when I'm doing the slow, thorough exploration approach (even though I'm clearly missing tons of shit, such as most of those stairways that lead to an underground treasure room from overworld ruins).

So I've been trying to figure out what the boss combat is trying to teach me. It definitely punishes you if try to just stay close to the boss and dodge through attacks, since many bosses have these extremely fast attacks that are basically un-dodgeable. Although maybe that's telling me I should be using a shield, lol. I've had the best luck keeping middle distance and using the big jump attacks or charged attacks/ash of war moves after avoiding a combo. Not to mention coming back later if I'm not getting close to getting them.

In the Souls games it always felt like you could avoid ever getting hit by bosses if you knew their moveset and could read them. Here it doesn't quite feel like that -- I wonder if the fact that you have additional options to approaching bosses (spirit summons, coming back overleveled, etc) means that taking some damage is inevitable, or if I just haven't quite gotten the hang of the new combat systems yet.

(and I'm not saying that I'm actually trying to beat bosses without getting hit or anything, just to play it like Elden Ring and not like Dark Souls)

my dex build is based on running in, jump attack, maybe get off a twinblade combo, then retreat and wait for another opening. supported of course by my good friend Ghostly Jellyfish

Are you lot playing online or offline? I find online a bit off-putting to be honest. Too many messages and the ghosts distract me

bloodstains next to an elevator shaft are too funny to pass up imo

Sorting out the troll vs useful messages is its own metagame.

(but yeah, there are a ton of messages right now, there will probably be fewer later on)

I can’t get the What stains to work for some reason. I wonder if it’s some sort of a glitch specific to my play through

are What stains blood stains? i would call them How stains, haha. :) anyway, if so, i'm having the same problem - i often click on blood stains, and i only see the manner of death maybe 1 out of 10

I feel like that's always been weird in these games, idk why.

Watching Saint Riot's stream where he decided to do his playthrough without using fast travel, got transported to *redacted* very soon after he started playing, and resolved to simply walk back (before even getting the horse!).

Hoosteins

went and said hi to margit, and have decided actually i will pop round later after all if it’s all the same.

v much enjoying the “errant knight” feel to this. esp with the sense of the ruling powers’ soldiers patrolling the land and keeping some semblance of order. sounds odd to say but you get a feel of the politics of the place.

Loved coming across a ruined chapel of Marika through the mist as well, and getting buffeted about up on Stormhill. discovery feels like discovery and as has been pointed out, so nice to not have people giving you bloody quests etc.

on the boss battles agreed that rolling isn’t really working for me - doesn’t just feel like mis-timing. wondering whether it’s expecting a more flexible use of weapon arts, jumps and jump attacks, dodges etc. sekiro was v v good at training you and i don’t really feel i’ve quite got the measure of it yet.

sense of the ruling powers’ soldiers patrolling the land and keeping some semblance of order. sounds odd to say but you get a feel of the politics of the place.

oh this, i definitely feel this too, at least in this early portion of the game. the witcher 3 kind of had that feel too, but there was sooooooo much expository text (and experiential too) that it was unmissable. it's much more subtle here in E.R. (season 1, with george clooney) and the better for it imo

I found some sort of mirror hidden in a bush and it transported me so far away. Also: the elevator. This game is enormous!

My only regret is I am not going to finish nearly the amount of games I wanted to this month :( Goodbye DKC:TP, NSMB:U and MGSV

I like acronyms

Yep I’ve got GT7 arriving tomorrow but fuck knows when I’ll get around to it. After meeting Margit and having similar feelings to Fizzles I went galloping round the castle walls, found an old dead guy and took his grape (which turned out to be an eyeball I need to give to a blind maiden?), then kept riding and somehow ended up in Lake of Liurnia which seems to be absolutely enormous, I’m totally lost and loving it.

Ha, I plan on playing this for years to come.

I like this - I went back and fought the dragon with halfway similar tactics, except I was still attacking his ankles, running away on the horse to avoid firebreathing attacks, running in with the horse, repeat (when I should have been bold enough to attack the head).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_18aBpTIY64

I am going to have to put this on pause so that I don’t fuck up my work. Not happy about this. It’s too good.

Is there any chance this will play on a nearly ten years old non gaming rig? I'm definitely not buying a new console or pc for it and it's not like I have any time to play games or have played any games in the last 6+ years thanks to kids and even if I can play it I will probably resent both the little time I have to play it and the loss of the other things I would be doing if I weren't playing it. But I want to play it.

No. The required minimum specs are quite high (it doesn't run well for people with top of the line PCs at the moment but even if patched you'd not stand much of a chance of getting anything workable. You'd be better off getting a 2nd hand ps4 if it was enough of a draw to play it

god i'm terrible at this game. i have been fighting the Fire Thief for about an hour straight, could have killed him within the first few tries, and many times after that. i guess it doesn't help that i keep getting one-hit killed. might be a little further out than i should be

Oh interesting, did you already beat Godrick? Or did you circumvent Stormveil entirely? I heard that was possible, although I haven't looked for the route.

Circumvented stormveil! it was easy, you can just go right around the back and then down the cliffs. I'm so close to beating this dude, and I would like any fire-based item he has, but my attacks are really weak and i don't have any good counter-magic, so i'm trying to pull off this very long tedious fight with zero mistakes

dark souls style, basically. i should probably switch it up

Oh cool yeah, that's definitely the hardcore approach.

Even after just doing the Weeping Peninsula and Mistwood (along with a few other brief excursions), I feel somewhere between evenly matched and overpowered against anything in Limgrave/Stormveil/early Liurnia.

Also I feel guilty about how good this Bloody Slash ash of war is, I'm trying not to overuse it against bosses because of the ridiculous damage.

fuck yeah! killed the asshole, finally! And got the Flame of the Fell God invitation, which requires...FAITH 41. My Faith is 17, and I started as a Confessor. sigh.

I keep running into this, actually - getting rewarded with items that are just way beyond my stats. which tells me I'm way out beyond where I'm supposed to be for my level, but I'm also still struggling with some basic enemies around storm....veil? I think the reason I don't know the name is that there's also stormgate, the stormfoot catacombs, stormhill, and...i haven't gotten to hte site of grace that's actually inside the castle yet because i still need to kill the boss.

ok, time to carb up in real life and then come back to *looks at camera* take care of some unfinished business

you know one thing i'm glad is not in the game? weapon degradation

Yeah I finished Demon's Souls remake last week and going from weapon degradation and having to constantly manage the weight of your entire inventory to this game where none of that is a thing at all was somewhat akin to waking up in the morning and realising it's a Saturday

Oh btw "cointandplick" is too long for a group keyword, I propose just using "ilg"?

Sure!

for anyone else like me who struggled a bit to find it, it's in Pause>Multiplayer>settings

you know one thing i'm glad is not in the game? weapon degradation

I just got this for early bday gift and even the character creation screen is too much for me haha. Battlemage or standard warrior. I cant decide.

I've beaten Godrick and am well into Liurnia now, I've made my way into the wizardy castle and there is much wizardy bullshit to contend with. I might give Caelid a go instead as [minor spolier] I've found an ice weapon, which would seem to be helpful there. A Dex build with a bow and arrow seems like a good bet for this game, though I'm looking forward to using a mage build at some point. The game is crazy big, comparable to Skyrim, it's astonishing.

Damn I need to bite the bullet and actually go into Stormveil, I've been happily wandering through Limgrave and the adjacent areas since release. Was briefly stuck on the Ancestor Spirit last night but then powered through and beat Agheel and the amusingly hair-raising demihuman chiefs boss fight before chilling with some penguins on the beach

I've ended up abandoning the idea of sorcery and speccing towards faith tank so I can use the tree sentinel's big halberd; I'll probably end up regretting this when I realise its moveset is too slow to fight all the dogs and flying things this game throws at you and also I spent all my magic weapon upgrade stones on the dang crossbow

i usually favour dex builds (introduction to fromsoft was bloodborne) but i’m pleased i switched from my nascent bandit dex build to a strength build. might go back when i’ve got a bit more used to fighting rhythms and tactics, as i was dodging fuck all with my bandit.

xp I did a fair amount of wandering around there too, I still have a few spirit gaols and dungeon bosses to sort out. I managed to stop one of those walking bell isalnds which was wandering around the Weeping Peninsula, really cool if too early in the game to be of any use!

on combat: I'm finding that a dex build with a decent shield and the block riposte mechanism works well, particularly with my favoured rapier enhnanced with the Blood Slash Ashes of War.

nice, yes, i can see that. and it’s a good point on the shield - i was taking too much damage with my buckler for the guard riposte to work well (also needed to up my stamina because i was getting staggered too easily).

Decided not to buy this given I already have four 20-30% completed From games sitting in my library and my dog doesn't really let me get much solid play time.

Cracked, obviously, and jumped in last night, pup be damned. Decided not to read anything & enjoying the mix of souls familiarity and mild confusion.

xp I managed to find an underground area early on (wtf there's a whole beneath-ground set of areas that would seem to some good proportion of the size of the overworld???) for which I was under-levelled but I did find a good shield there...

I've been doing dex sorcerer builds in recent From game first playthroughs but went the opposite approach of prioritising early leveling on getting enough endurance to agile-roll in fairly heavy armour. Dodge through one or two big boss swings, tank the last hit with a 100% shield and guard counter, you're in business. I like how many boss fights fall into place when you remember you can do street fighter-style jump-ins or potentially be allowed to do it mounted

You don't seem to get many runes for the minor bosses but there are so many of those glowing skulls that contain runes dotted round the open world that you end up being able to cash a bunch in towards a level up in one go

getting rewarded with items that are just way beyond my stats.

I saw a good tip somewhere in a spoiler-free post that the game is apparently actually really good at subtly telling you if you're under- or over-leveled at any given point. Let me find it ...

This:

if you need a quick, cheap rule for progression, one thing you can do is look to the Smithing Stones. These are the items you use to upgrade your weaponry at a blacksmith—by the way, pick a weapon and upgrade it whenever you can, later swords won’t be better, just different, and you’ll get a lot of your damage output from a properly upgraded main weapon—and they follow a very simple naming convention, starting with Smithing Stone (1) and ascending from there. As a rule, you’re in roughly the right area, power-wise, if the stones you’re finding in the environment are the ones you can actually use to buff your best weapon; if you’re getting a bunch of (2)s when you need (4)s, you’re probably over-powered for the level, and if you keep getting (7)s when you’re still working to upgrade your staff to a (5), you might be just seconds from getting one-shotted by a measly undead soldier working with a late-game power boost.

I've only come across one smith so far and he was at the Roundtable which I don't really know how to get back to

-You can also upgrade weapons at that first church you find (Church of Elleh)

-It's a little weird, but you just go to your map and zoom out, and you'll see the round table on the lower left (and can fast travel back to it)