Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

This is ridiculous but I salute you all the same

✖ I'd suggest you get in the habit of leaving some people be til later

There are a couple of murderful NPCs/smallbosses in the first section that I was like "no no I'm better than this" and kept dying and dying but I really wasn't, and it was still a challenge when I came back levelled up some 30 more levels and kitted out

Just came upon Academy Town at night, looking up at the main Erd tree in the starry sky was just... man.

I gotta install this on our 4K TV/PS5 combo and see what that looks like

Even Beastman was a challenge till I'd merked a few random smaller enemies and levelled up. Still haven't got anywhere with the Tree Sentinel.

Absolutely love playing Stormveil Castle. Such an incredibly designed map. I'm really getting used to the idea of the messages being left out for me on online mode (even if half of them are telling me to jump off ledges plummeting to nowhere). I especially like the bit where there's a long outdoor staircase leading up to a guard with a vuvuzela. You have to crouch down at the bottom of the staircase and wait till his back's turned before running up the stairs and attacking him before he can sound the alarm. It's a really great dynamic.

Also the LAG. While in online mode everything was stuttering like 90s dialup, I cant keep playing online if its gonna be like that (and ffs I have a 50mbps fibre connection with 5ms ping so its not my internet).

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

That seems pretty weird, Trayce - are you on pc? I had my own weird thing where I've been playing the PS4 version on PS5, with a PS5 controller...the controller died, so I went back to an old PS4 controller that I've been using to play Dark Souls 3 for years. But all the movement was super jittery and odd, like it was constantly getting bad inputs from the left stick. All of my PS4 controllers eventually stopped working in different ways, but I wonder if it was something about that setup.

Anyway I've got a new wonky build going on. I really liked the dual straight sword moveset with the Ornamental Straight Sword, but I wanted to experiment with status effects. So I was able to make two poison long swords, although I haven't been able to upgrade them to match my other weapons (and the scaling isn't very good with poison affinity).

So now I'm starting with the poison swords, which only take like two hits to poison someone, and then switching to the Ornamental swords for damage. The tricks are 1) being able to tell which one I actually have equipped, because 2) they use opposite buttons. With the Ornamental paired swords, R1 does a cool two-sword moveset and L1 just blocks. With the regular powerstanced swords, L1 does that cool moveset. I've definitely died because I can't tell what I have equipped and blocked instead of attacked, it's a good brain exercise though.

Anyway this is mostly for pvp, but I'm curious to see how well poison works on bosses, giants, and dragons!

Stormveil Castle is second only to Hyrule as my favourite castle design that I've played

Radahn is annoying!!

radahn is super annoying, but also my favourite boss fight i've come across so far in elden ring

xp i gotta try pvp

I watched a guy beat this in about two hours. It's amazing that even this newest FromSoft masterpiece allows you to completely cheese the bosses in stupid ways.

Feature, not a bug

lol i just learned you can sprint

I think I figured out how to do Radahn. I was reading "do it on a horse" and "don't do it on a horse" but I've got him almost-dead a few times with a new hybrid approach. It's just not feasible one way or the other, I think you kinda gotta have one foot in the stirrup and one foot on the ground at all times

That's what I've been trying for a number of boss that are horse-possible...seems like they want you to use the horse to get away from the giant aoe attacks, but then come in and fight on foot?

I'm going through southern Caelid and it's feeling pretty doable, even though I realized I'm lower level than I thought (34). Slowly making my way toward Redmane. Tbh I read that if you talk to Blaidd first he clears the area before you get there, but I'd rather try the minibosses myself?

i started the blaidd/seluvis questline without having a clue what it would lead to only to find a nearly totally empty redmane castle by the time i got there, i guess next playthrough i will have to ignore it until after i've run through first

Yeah the horse seems like a good "run away quickly" tool, at least thats how I am using it. Theres an area where you goad giants into chasing you round a field because when they do they'll smash open a statue full of smithing stones.
Ain't no way I was gonna fight the damn things though so I ran around going nyer nyer at them, grabbed the loot, and noped off in a hurry.

Oh, but today in "trayce cant figure shit out": When I was given the finger-snap emote - and I know what I need to use it for - I cant work out how to use it? It doesnt show up in my emotes list, I feel like Im missing something, does it need to be assigned?

Oh yeah, go to one of the emote slots and there should be a 'switch' option, then you'll get the full list.

ah! Thankyou :)

Oh and re that lag/jitter: im using a PS4, so ... I dont know. This morning we had really slow internet cos someone was downloading ALL THE TV so maybe I'll try again in offline mode and see what happens.

ok i gave in and bought this. i have played a tiny bit of one souls game, don't even remember which one (dark souls 3 maybe?). gonna try and go into this without any tutorials beyond the random things i've read here and there and already forgotten (i only remember how not to accidentally skip the combat tutorial). i'm gonna suck so bad.

Its ok I suck really bad too, I couldnt even beat the tutorial for over an hour so yeah :D

lol I just got served a story that someone already beat the game in under an hour.

Ooh, welcome Nick. I hope you don't hate it.

Playing blind definitely won't make it less frustrating, nothing wrong with looking up mechanics stuff, or even a walkthrough to see what you missed in an area (or anything really, as long as it doesn't take the fun out of it).

Having played all the other From games (and if I can do it, anyone can do it), my opinion is that the value of playing blind is a lot lower than the cost of all the amazing stuff you will absolutely miss. Given the nature of this open world game, if I had to hazard a guess I'd think that even if you followed a guide with this one, or looked up tips or whatever, short of specific enemies and locations there will still be surprises at every turn. Does that sound about right?

i am finding that this game is very large

I just found out about a method of farming for xp, and it involves using a portal that there is NO WAY I would have stumbled on if I'd not known to look for it.

My theory is that the entire From story-thesis (that is, no exposition, but tonnes of lore) predicates community involvement— sharing tricks, locations of items, generally a spoiler is [actually a salient point that they wanted you to share]

For example, I would’ve sailed through the game with only a superficial interest/engagement to Who Ranni Is And Who Hurt Her except for the work of some more fastidious commentators

I gave up on Radahn, I’m at 70 but he’s embarrassing me, doing some easy Caelid exploration instead

I agree that community involvement seems key, and while I have played and enjoyed everything offline, I do feel like I have missed something.

i have left some pretty funny messages and have been appraised some times, it feels good. does getting appraised give you something? other than satisfaction

It refills your hp bar!

oh dang, nice! wow, those messages with 1000+ approvals must kind of break the game for them?!

i've only played this and demon's souls on the PS3 right when the servers were being flipped off (and eventually replaced with a private fan server) - i really loved the online aspect of demon's souls, and i don't so much here. i think the difference is that the player base for demon's was so much smaller that those bits of other players really did make the world less lonely. the other people playing felt real and present, whereas every single person on the planet is playing elden ring so it feels like i'm seeing shadows of an extremely popular MMORPG player base.

the open world has something to do with that too, it just feels inherently less lonely and desolate on its own. it's a very lively game world.

There have been a few times where I’m in some location that feels so remote, so obscure, and I’ve felt the thrill of loneliness and frontierism, only to have the ghost of another player drift by and strike a pose at me

I'm playing offline, am I missing out? Probably more Breath of the Wild vibes this way!

If I wanted to play co-op style with a friend, is that possible? Or is this a very solo-mish kind of game

I literally followed an online YouTube guide for noobs when I played Bloodborne and I still enjoyed it

xps to X: using group passwords is a good way to regain the community feel of online. You still see a lot of randos messages/ghosts/bloodstains, but it will prioritize the in-group ones, which will also be visually distinctive. BTW, 'ilg' is the password for this thread, right? I've had it set up for a while, but I haven't seen anything from any of y'all. Whereas I added the password for a medium-sized Discord I'm in the other day and I'm seeing lots from them. Might just be because this is a small group, but I just want to double-check!

Finally defeated Margit after many tries with summoning Rogier & my jellyfish and spamming lots of magic bolts. It felt a little cheap, but I think using the tools the devs intend you to use is always fair game. Now I'm stuck on Godrick, which is in a way more frustrating because he's clearly so much more manageable. Ah, well.

FINE I'll read some getting started guides at least. I'm playing as a confessor because I wanted a shield. Right now I'm in some catacombs fighting gremlins.

I'm playing offline for now too, I haven't been playing enough PS games to justify paying for the online services.

Ha, reading guides is making me more overwhelmed.

it's a bit like working out the rules of a Warhammer game

I agree that the abundance of messages in this one due to its popularity does remove the “specialness” that they had in the old ones. The old games seemed like spectacularly lonely experiences most of the time and seeing a message in some remote corner of the fifth layer of hell was usually welcome, even if it was useless. It’s kinda become graffiti in this one.

THAT SAID. I have found a lot of super helpful messages in this one that have saved my life or shown me something I would have missed. You kinda develop a sense for what’s junk and what’s not after a while by their placement.

I'm a little bit a bit sick of try finger but hole ngl

If I wanted to play co-op style with a friend, is that possible? Or is this a very solo-mish kind of game

Yes and no. You can set up a matchmaking password with your friend and you'll only see their sign, and you can summon them in the overworld and inside castles/dungeons/etc. However:

-Can't use horse travel when have co-op, so it won't be great for pure exploration
-They'll leave your world and need to be re-summoned after beating a boss, including in the overworld
-If they help you beat a boss in your world, that doesn't affect theirs, so you'll need to be summoned by them if you want to progress together at the same rate (ie you'll need to beat all the areas twice, assuming you want to do them together)

I was trying to take on Radahn before work, I can get him down to 1/4 health but keep getting one-shot by the meteors every single time. :(

Maybe it’s me, but it seems like there are the EXACT number of Smithing Stone [3]’s in the world to get your weapon to +9. Unless maybe you travel way out into higher level zones. I know you can get an item that lets you buy them at some point, but I’m not there yet.

Had a hell of a time tracking down the very last one last night, even with online resources. Once I got over that hump, was able to upgrade several more times cuz I had a pile of the [4]’s.

had a terrible time finding smithing stones +2. also uh haven’t been using them wisely. i always do this. my levelling up and weapon strengthening tactics are always so terrible which is why i have to start again.

i'm back in the celestial torrent saddle today, after a couple days off. i'm taking on the ancestor spirit in the underworld - think i've got a good handle on this one since it seems really susceptible to fire damage. good times!

and also, something that might help out my fellow noobs - i always forget that your equipment load counts the 2nd and 3rd slots for both hands. so, if you're not going to be using a certain weapon or shield or whatever for the next area/boss, you should remove it from those slots so that you'll be lighter and faster.

mentioning that because i realized i'm carrying a giant ass shield for this boss fight when i don't even want one at all. now i will be super fast guy

I have no shame about looking up the location of essential gameplay items like the smithing miner's bell bearings (that let you buy smithing stones) or the invasion item.