Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

this is my first ever FromSoftware game and i am truly terrible at it. never really been big on "difficult" games so the combat in this has been a bit of a step up from my usual casual fare.

have been grinding up through the levels but am still getting killed by absolutely everything everywhere. doesn't bother me in the least, frankly. in fact it is pleasingly reminiscent of playing Super Mario Land on Gameboy as a kid or whatever.

finally beat Margit last night but only realised tonight that there is a whole other area to the south of the original starting location (over the bridge) which is completely doable even at lower levels and with cackhanded non-mastery of the combat mechanics. have therefore spent the last few hours exploring / cleaning out Castle Morne

what a joy this game is!

on at least 3 separate occasions i went down what appeared at first glance to be (at best) a speculative punt of a route and at worst a total blind alley and every single time i ended up exactly where i needed to be. i can appreciate the comparisons to BOTW. you can't see the join, every dicey "ok i guess this might work" bit of orienteering has clearly been so carefully designed. played 8 hours last night and 5 hours again tonight, worried this is gonna start taking over my life quite soon

Be careful! it will take over your life. I'm working ten/eleven hour days these days so I just decided start sleeping four hours a night so I could play more Elden Ring. Happy Daylight's Savings everyone!

I BEAT MARGIT FUCKIN FINALLY

+2 ash wolf pack and a +3 staff with glint sigil stabby spell = stand back and let the magic work

Got through Margit yesterday w/ Rog, the Jellyfish & the confessor starting broadsword @ +4 w/ blood slash. Poked around the castle a bit but want to go bash some of the mini bosses that I backed away from - the tree avatar, that evergaol thing, horse sentinel. And I saw a dungeon I haven’t done. SO MUCH STUFF.

Blood slash is so fun!

I played for about an hour last night before bed and had a private administrative meltdown. This always happens with From games! Is my weapon as strong as it should be, by now? Is there a better way to use my statistics? Does this armor make me look fat? etc.

It's so weird to have a well-powered normal longsword and a well-powered Super Halberd. The latter is reliable, but the former is flexible. What am I doing with my life? etc.

I feel like this game would benefit from "hint lines" except instead of telling you where the secrets are, an expert examines your character, assesses your needs, and makes recommendations

Fine, you jerks, I think I'm going to buy this. Happy? Won't be able to start until mid-April, though, which is fine, since I need to finish what's left of HZD first.

And yeah, I'm with you, fgti. I always get character build FOMO - did I pick the right class? am I attributing stats right? - and I have a bad feeling this will be even worse than usual, since I really want to use some of the cool magic I've seen people use, but I've never used magic in a From game before. I will probably as usual focus on a strength build, but this time build up intelligence a bit, too, to use some spells.

I always want to have a flexible build that isn't too reliant upon a bonk or a spell or a breath or a cheese

I'm having this problem right now and constantly. I just made it to the ashes dealer in limgrave and I'm completely overwhelmed, I have no idea what would go well with my weapon and build

I also forget L2 exists in combat anyway though

I assume this game, like the others, more or less limits how many times and how much you can upgrade weapons? Is there a rare, finite upgrade material, like titanium slab or whatever?

Yes.. titty slabs are now Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones and they are limited

I like a versatile build too. For pve it's pretty simple - do I have something fast enough to react and interrupt attacks, something with a wide horizontal sweep for groups of enemies, something with a vertical or thrusting attack for tight spaces (also flying/crawling enemies), something with burst damage? Some kind of ranged attack? They pretty much covers it.

For pvp it's different but also pretty clear once you start getting killed in different ways and need an answer.

(also wtg trace!)

i finally knocked out margit and started castle crashing. damn, stormvale is amazing. there's platforming!

I got hopelessly lost as soon as I went into the castle via that side hole. PIcking off the soliders on the various ramparts was easy enough, being a spellsword is handy for that. I got my ass more handed to me by those bloody eagles with swords in their claws!

But then when I got inside i went up and down and around and back and all I can find is a door that says its locked. Have I missed something? I'd kill for a map when in the darn castle.

i think you’re probably looking for the “rusty key” which is in the area near-ish the locked door?

Ah, I shall keep hunting!

I finally hve ranged weapopns and some rudimentary magic. Definitely switches up the dynamic of the game as I only had melee weapons till now

a bow and arrow is super handy for aerial enemies and spamming tough guys

I was amazed how quickly I was able to kill some minibosses who I'd struggled with till that point. Merked the troll in Limgrave Tunnels within seconds (with the help of some items I found down there). And made short work of that Tibula Ferryman or whatever it's called (who I only stumbled on last night even though he's very obviously there quite near the start of the game).

i got a bow because i wanted to take advantage of the one ashes of war i've found, but so far its main use seems to be baiting enemies to leave a bigger pack and come over to you. it feels too weak and difficult to aim quickly to be an actual effective weapon. but i'm sure it improves as you level it up.

it's interesting how in this early phase of the game there are so many situations where you enter a new space and you see an overwhelming number of baddies but then you realize they are either not very aggressive unless you attack first and/or they're pretty oblivious to you unless you stand right in front of them. i guess this is the game teaching you the utility of sneaking around.

i played this for a while yesterday and then went for a walk after dark. just a block north from my house i could see through a window someone else playing elden ring. hello neighbor.

As part of a walk the other day I went to an old millhouse with rafters and beams (the Coppermill at Walthamstow Wetlands, mill fans) and all I could think about was jumping across the voids to reach an exposed beam, and what treasure I might find on a corpse there.

There was a period when I was playing a lot of GTA3 when it came out, I'd go for a walk and my mind would be naming all the parked cars according to their make/model in GTA world

haha! to be clear: there wasn't actually a corpse on a beam at Walthamstow Wetlands!

Yeah GTA 3 got me thinking about urban architecture embarrassingly more than I had ever before.

finally getting around to stormveil castle at level 48. messing with a dual dagger dex/arcane bleed build. i can't tell if it's super effective or if i'm just wildly overleveled rn.

Both, most definitely. I finally went back and found my way to the basement in Stormveil, pretty cool.

In other news I've just been going around exploring Liurna and Caelid for all the things I've missed before moving on to any new areas, and doing some invasions as I go.

-I found the amazing shield skill that lets you parry spells and turn them into magic daggers that you send back at the caster, so good! You can even break those meteors that people love to spam at you.

-I ran into a semi-hilarious bug when invading in the town of Sellia - every time someone lights one of those torches and the "Somewhere a seal has broken in town" message appears, the invader is preventing from doing anything that requires button input. Can't attack, can't leave, can't do anything but walk until the message goes away.

Officially bought the game! Can't start until second week of April, by which point I'm sure you all will have tons of, well, pointers.

Jealous of your bleed build!

I think I was just feeling overwhelmed by the options and wanted a straightforward blocky/dodgy/rolly/bonky time

I’ve been buying all the spells as I go so I can do a proper respec later, have a magical rebirth

i've been doing that too!

my bleed build could be better--haven't found any good light armor so the dodging, weaving whirlwind of knives in my imagination is kind of creaky and slow. maybe i should just go with it--anyone tried a ridiculous heavy armor dex build?

I've seen people do it with the Bloodhound's Fang sword or dual katanas. The claws and the Reduvia are common for bleed builds too.

I'm still mostly using my starting samurai armor, but I did finally find a cool helm that was worth switching out: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Nox+Mirrorhelm

Finally found this weeping peninsula everyone's been banging on about (It's right there, how did I miss it). Slayed a bunch of Mick Hucknalls and even a couple of Thicc Hucknalls, no real issues that is until I had to face the miniboss, Lionel, who is vicious as anything!

It is crazy to me that I spent a couple days sniffing around Liurnia at the start and today I blew through the Darkroot Depths in 90 minutes. This game is messing with my sense of scale

I just found some area I knew i was underlevelled for and some giant disembodied hands mashed me. Fun.

I feel massively under knowledgeable about builds and stuff. I tend to put my runes into Vigor and Strength, or whatever I need to use a particular weapon. Only just managed to get into magic and it's rudimentary at best for me right now, so trying to throw Faith a few coins too

yeah, I'm getting vigor, endurance & strength up to 20 or so then pushing other stats up a few points for weapons or incantations that I want to try out - I'm slightly messily spread over faith, dex and arcane (wanted to use the reduvia). I'll guess I'll get focused on a build when I have those 20s, but tbh I don't know really what I'm doing and I've probably already screwed up some min-max optimum.

I am finding it quite hard to grind up, I must say. I can spend a good while trying to beat minibosses only to get around 1000 runes (and then inevitably lose them in a stupid accident like falling off a cliff)

i’m assuming there’s some sort of runes redistribution mechanism at some point as in most DS games.

i’m a complete lunk. loads of vigor and strength and decent stamina so i can whack things.

I was pretty ruthless about low-level farming - like if I need 2k I'll clear the gatehouse ruins, for a few hundred clear the demi-humans and knights having a fight near the seaside ruins (rest and repeat if necessary).

I've held back from deliberately making for farming spots I've read about but I've ended up at one naturally now - fgti mentions it upthread, ~1k per very manageable enemy, which takes some pressure off when I need 2/3k for a level. I can't bring myself to do the big cheap dragon-kill jackpot tho'.

I'm loving my twinblade. Does a really satisfying twirly thing which is brilliant for mashing up enemies on my horse

xxxp there is indeed, it's fairly flexible but not entirely so, rebirth involves defeating Rennala then finding and using a Larval Tear ewww icky

xps yes, I believe there is. No idea how far away it is but I'm assuming my current mess of a non-build will do till then.

One of the more annoying elements of DS2 was that enemies stopped respawning after a certain point, which made farming tough. I think the idea was that this was the game's way of making things easier, but given other aspects of DS2 and From in general I wouldn't be surprised if they did it just to make things harder.

ds2 was my first, so my From-memory is always half-expecting that disappearing enemies thing. I remember finding it a huge relief at first & then realising that it was a pain in the arse not being able to farm hollows (but not wanting to use that bonfire item that would respawn everything).

A list of things I think are good ideas:

1. Plan to end the game with your vigor levelled to 50
2. Throwing away points into an otherwise unused stat to "be able to use armament x" is a devil's bargain and should be avoided
3. Don't consider your build to be "a [stat] build" until that stat has reached 50 (more like 60)
4. Don't consider your build to be "a [stat]/[stat] build" until those stats are both at 30
5. Upgrade your endurance to 20 (all playstyles) or 25 (most melee) or 30 (heavy armor intentions) and leave it there and don't upgrade any further

That was another aggravation of DS2, needing to upgrade agility or whatever to get iframes when you roll.

All these games, for PvE it's basically upgrade vigor and endurance to at least their soft caps, more as needed/wanted, and then throw everything else into a couple of secondary stats (like strength or dex or intelligence) that support your playstyle. I think if you're doing PvP then other factors come into play, right?

I feel massively under knowledgeable about builds and stuff. I tend to put my runes into Vigor and Strength, or whatever I need to use a particular weapon. Only just managed to get into magic and it's rudimentary at best for me right now, so trying to throw Faith a few coins too

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 15 March 2022 11:05 (two hours ago) link

I am finding it quite hard to grind up, I must say. I can spend a good while trying to beat minibosses only to get around 1000 runes (and then inevitably lose them in a stupid accident like falling off a cliff)

― Urbandn hope all ye who enter here (dog latin), Tuesday, 15 March 2022 11:20 (two hours ago) link

same, same. i still get most of my runes from crushing glowing skulls and finding the cemetaries where you can walk around and pick up a bunch of them.

i kept reading about going after trolls for "easy" grinding so i tried that yesterday and kept getting killed. i can see how they're "easy" but i just suck lol. i managed to kill one but only by sniping it with arrows from a cliff for a long time, but it used way too many arrows for that to be a good strategy.

I actually don't think "easy grinding" exists in this game. I have found that the easiest way to level your character up is to find the right place to be at any given time. Even when I was like "huh I wish I had about a dozen Smithing (4)s", and I thought about googling where to farm them, I instead just naturally found the tunnel in which they were plentiful

In true From fashion btw I've run into a handful of "how did people figure this out without a walkthrough" moments. "Wear the correct hat and make the correct gesture which you only learn after you do [x]" is kinda wild. "Speak to the NPC who you think is dead not once, not twice, but thrice in order to progress their quest line" is also kinda wild

It's shit like that though that recalls my favourite 80s/90s Roguelikes like Moria and ADOM and what-have-you. Games where you can only actually win the "true ending" if you complete a convoluted series of tasks; this ending was discovered not by in-game discovery but by code-diving