Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I've seen a handful of videos of people taking them down sans-summons, consistently the playbook has been to "do something super powerful, repeatedly, once the friend arrives so you can quickly dispatch the first"; Hoarfrost, Bloody Blade, etc. Good luck!

i'll echo the others who said that using the twinblade, particularly in two-handed mode, has really boosted my combat ability. i'm also working on resisting the urge to button-mash, which i've realized fucks with your ability to roll away or block in time.

i'm sure this has been pointed out ad nauseum re this game and the previous souls games but it is funny to think about someone using this fighting style in real life, just somersaulting away over and over like a potato bug.

this game does glitch out occasionally. a couple of times i've summoned torrent while in battle and ended up floating in the air, not able to move or do anything until it eventually says YOU DIED, even if there are no baddies around.

by button-mash, i mean spam the attack button

http://imgix.kotaku.com.au/content/uploads/sites/3/2015/07/2015-07-17-14_03_16.gif

NA it gets better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dIAzbeO8p8

(I hit that horse bug once too, supposedly fixed in the new patch?)

Knocked 2 guys off their horses and finshed them off, then went to try getting on the horse to ride off bcs I forgot I am not in BOTW.

One of my favorite thing about all of these games is that as grim and solemn as they may be, aspects of them are just so silly, not least that everything, from the player to the enemies, gets its own Wilhelm Scream.

Always reminds me a little of "Gauntlet." "Elf is about to die!' "Eeaaaarggggghle ..."

This game is nothing if not the ultimate version of Gauntlet.

Ha, true.

Torrent needs food

Badly

Not once so far have I fed my poor boi any raisinz.

xpost lol

I did it! I mean, it was on my third 1/2 hour session fighting these guys, and I also got a bit lucky with what they were throwing out, but still. Ended up not using the spirit summons, not for the sake of challenge but because they never seem to help me much. The boss gets unpredictable, the spirits die quickly, and then I'm out of fp.

Uploaded it for fun -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie6KGTCMzeQ

Also uploaded a random early invasion that I had recorded, if anyone's curious about that side of things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4j1WGEwq5k

OK, I've got the game installed and ... am tempted to dip a toe in? (I'll be away from the machine for a while in a week, so didn't want to get too far in only to immediately forget what everything is/does.) I've only ever played From games with strength or quality builds, using a bow for ranged stuff. At first I wanted to try to use some sort of magic with this one, at least a little bit, but that was back when I thought Ashes of War and Spirit Summons were cool spells and not just more or less weapon enhancements and, well, summons. So what starting class should I pick? I was thinking Vagabond, which has a nice buffer of strength and endurance with a few stats toward a quality build, but I figured I'd chuck a few extra toward intelligence as desired o get access to at least a few offensive spells. Does that seem like a sound approach?

I think vagabond is the consensus pick for that sort of build, at least among people who want to min/max later on.

nice work on the gargoyles. that's been the hardest boss for me so far and i was even using the mimic tear.

Thanks!

Jordan that was a pleasure to watch, you played so calmly like you knew all the right ways to roll through

Is that Uchigatana? Curious as to why you didn't switch to 2H when you weren't healing up

Anyway wow what a treat

Ty! It only takes dying one million times to learn how to roll all their attacks.

That's the nagakiba, from Yura's quest. The one-handed moveset feels significantly faster to me than two-handing, so I can get in a couple quick slashes that more than make up for having less damage. And then I can keep the left hand open for a parry shield, secondary weapon, or talisman (which I'd been using here to cure the poison, luckily didn't need it that time).

Damn son

apparently some fake walls in Elden Ring take multiple hits to reveal, and oh my god this changes everything
(clip from user teristam on r/eldenring) pic.twitter.com/Jt8MNUDY0j

— Iron Pineapple (@IronPineapple_) March 18, 2022

oh come on that has GOT to be a troll

Thanks I hate it

I read there was nothing in the room. Possibly was at one point going to be a secret but was nixed. Thank god.

I guess instead of putting a proper wall there they just gave it like a ton of hit points lol

I just got to Mountaintop of the Giants. Thank god, cuz I feel like over the past few weeks like 80% of the stuff I looked up that I wanted was listed as being there. First order of business was just to haul ass through the zone and grab some goods.

OK, a couple of hours in and this game rules. I've mostly been taking it easy, learning the mechanics, getting a maiden, getting a magic horse, getting killed several times by the Tree Sentinel before moving on, getting a few more levels, got my first Ash. Can't wait to spend more time with this! So, so, so much more time.

Alright, so I know I'm lagging way behind you all, but: not accidentally dismounting when I'm fighting on Torrent-back, that's just something I have to get used to, right? I already remapped the horse whistle to my pouch, but now I'm still constantly either hopping off the horse when fighting or, worse, waving a gesture when I'm trying to whistle.

I've always been impressed by the English translations of these games, which are so florid and full of personality. Do any of you speak Japanese? I wonder how some of this stuff works in Japanese. For example, "ye" is such a standard-bearer for olde medieval speak (and pirates and whatnot), so is there a Japanese equivalent of, like, "abandon all hope, ye who enter here"? Or is there something lost in translation? Or, I guess, possibly *gained* in translation?

i'm 100 and a bit hours in and i'll still accidentally dismount off torrent during an intense field fight.

and while it doesn't answer your exact question, there is an interesting article on the localization

You can turn off motion controls for gestures in the menu, that helps get rid of accidental gesturing (I don't know who want that on tbh).

xpost Interesting, thanks! So I guess it's not too far removed from translating literature.

Cave Cat ... down!
Beastmaster General ... down!
Tree Sentinel ... grr, all but a sliver down, then it squashed me.

FWIW, have had some disruptive frame issues running it on my PS4 Slim, not surprisingly when there are big pile-on brawls going on. Me vs. an entire village of soldiers, me and my wolf pack v. the Tree Sentinel, that sort of thing.

Maybe it's just because I've come off a couple of open world games, but this one really seems to reward my patient, accumulative play style. The other From games really channel you toward a few choke points, but this one, you know, or suspect, where the choke points (or big challenges) are, but can more or less avoid them as long as you want in favor of exploring, leveling, finding things, fighting things, and so on.

So Ive done all of Morne castle except the last boss, and then I went back to try Stormveil, and I can only get as far as just after all the bloody eagles with bombs (thank fuck for a glintstaff), then I have to get past a knight and he just clobbers me. And I look up the map and I am NOWHERE near done, jesus fuck. I'd kill for the save early/save often style of Elder Scrolls right now.

You can avoid them if you fancy a bit of roof jumping

Miyazaki: George RR Martin, it is a pleasure to meet you. I have read the first novel in your Song of Fire and Ice series and greatly appreciate your love of food description. Please, tell me what similar magic you have conjured for our new project.

Martin: It's about an all-powerful ancient ring that ...

Miyazaki: Stop right there. I love it. You can leave now. (Does whatever he was going to do anyway.)

Totally.

Trayce, just running past the knight is a valid tactic too (he is pretty beastly - I think you may get an ash of war or something from him?).

I'm now fighting the "Knights of the Great Jar" and it's a great pvp simulator. Each time it summons a randomly selected red sign npc (different if you die and come back), and they've really come a long way in terms of simulating player behavior and builds. Pretty fun.

Also the new jar girl in the jar town doesn't like me, and I think it's because I've been invading. :(

I'm having interesting moments where I'm thinking about "other games" and really feeling like wow this is the best game ever made, huh

Leyndell kind of sealed the deal, this game is such an achievement. I was trying to compare this game's geography to real life, like "is this the size of metro NYC? LA and the valley?" It's so huge. I can't imagine how much co-ordination it required of the team to get it all together. It's unbelievable.

My only actual complaint if I had any is that I'm starting to find certain repeating features repetitious but not in a "bad" degree, just in a "I guess this is a feature of a huge game" degree. Maybe one too many imps, one too many Somber (8)s as a reward, one too many Ulcerated Trees, idk. Petty complaints about an unbelievable game

Every time I talk to Patches tho I do find myself missing the exaggerated face-rendering of his speeches in Demon's Souls reboot

it is a great game. i’m obviously moving fairly slowly through it, but having completed Caria Manor, i was having a nose around the edges of the land and came out of a thicket to see an extraordinary entrance to a cliff side palace, with tremendous statues and a long road leading up to them, as the sun was setting. and, yeah it was great tbh. then about five minutes later i lost all my souls falling off a cliff but you know.

Today I unlocked my second map fragment, beat a pumpkinhead dungeon boss, beat a lil boss in a boat, helped out a few NPCs (guy in a jar, knight, some other dude), made my way to a burning church where, after I lost to an NPC invader a couple of times, was whisked away to the roundtable. I was attempting some platforming with my horse when I fell into a valley and died, but before I faded I saw what appeared to be a giant bear fighting a bunch of wolves down there. There is so, so much in this game, to find, to learn, to understand.

beat radahn today after ~10 tries, i have my wolverine claws doing cold damage on top of the bleed damage now, scaling with both int and dex, and once you get those meters full it goes bananas

I haven't even come close to progressing onto any of the real bosses or anything - Magit? - but I did do some more exploring into .. Caelid? The red area? I don't think I'm ready, it was pretty tough, especially all its feral dog beast things. And there was this one archer knight by a castle who kept raining down laser arrows on me.

i met that guy this morning, total jerk

I’ve been playing this regularly while assiduously avoiding battling any bosses or anything big. I’m level 30 and have my main weapon at +4 and haven’t even attempted Margit once lol. I skirted around Stormveil and made my way up north and even got into the magic academy. But I still haven’t beaten the Tree Sentinel (I got pretty close a couple of times but got frustrated and gave up). Wonder how far into the game I can make it continuing this trend.

I levelled up four levels with the Vulgar guys early on around lvl 20, and then did some help-a-friend work with Radahn for about four or five more levels, but otherwise haven't been actively farming, just uh "playing fastidiously", like remembering which ruins I need to loot and which catacombs I need to clear.

As a result, sticking to the beaten path a little longer, I think I might be horrendously overlevelled or something? I'm at 140 and touring the Mountaintop. I'm not finding myself dying that often, usually it's because I fall off something.

Here are some recent deaths I remember

- the perfumers in Leyndell are actually rather punishing when they want to be
- impaled by a very-strong lobster in a deep sewer
- bled to death a couple times by Vulgar losers on a landbridge
- one Erdtree Avatar became two Erdtree Avatars and that didn't work out well for me the first time

And many deaths-by-falling while popping from tree branch to tree branch or rafter to rafter

And many many deaths by instakill chariots

I did kill the Tree Sentinel, so there's that. A lot of early enemies are much easier on horseback so far, and it's tons of fun to just charge into groups like a lunatic. That's one way I knew that Caelid was not really for me just yet, since poor Torrent was either getting easily taken out or I was getting taken off by some strong enemies, like the nightmarish giant dogs.

So the weird thing about Caelid is that the southern part is much more suited to lower levels than the northern part. I don't know if they envisioned you taking a certain path in, or just wanted to scare you with the North, or were happy with both.

Apparently I'm 50 hours in, lvl 70, bopping around doing sidequests and invasions before I continue on. Just found a great big poisonous underground area, very much in character.

Tip on that area: use Flame Cleanse Me (and a talisman to boost your faith if you otherwise can’t). Comestible remedies are not gonna save you