Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Still feeling awkward about killing dogs in front of my dog.

Haha. I only just found Nepheli, but the creepy wizard guy who wanted me to find her has died of natural causes, so oh well. Probably as a result of finishing Ranni's quest, which was truly a wild ride.

I clipped my fight with Astel, since I thought it went pretty well. It's nice that he actually gives you time to heal, it's pretty chill in comparison to some others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm_XZUUlue4

i guess opening up a new area moves some characters even if you haven't completed the game narrative/beaten bosses. ie i opened up liurnia of the lakes without doing margit or stormveil and now patches is hanging out in liurnia and rodericka has moved to the roundtable hold even though i didn't do the mission she wanted me to do in stormveil.

Oh damn I haven't even found Patches in Liurnia

down by the riverside

Yeah lol I never found Patches until late game and he was dead.

i had to google it - i wanted to buy margit's shackle - but he is in a pretty central location

Btw, re: Edgar...

It seems as if breaking his plot line does make it impossible to complete Hyetta's. You need three grapes (plus a Fingerprint Grape) to have her (extremely depressing!) plot line play out. But: not completing Hyetta does not lock you out of a potential big endgame thing, it just deprives you of a particular seal. So, whatever I guess?

I've whiffed three-and-a-half plot lines at this point. Re: Rya I did not find her at her second location before killing Rykard. Re: Hyetta I messed up the apparent order of discovering who with whom and was not invaded by Edgar at the Revenger's Shack, and thus missed out on my third grape. Re: Gurranq a noted issue with the final Mariner not spawning left me one Deathroot short of completion. Re: Sellen I sided against her and invaded her with Jerren, which resulted in me having an extra Big Smithing Stone but being out a sorcery reward from Sellen herself.

Happily it seems as if "Platinum Status" is not dependent upon whether these side quests play out. I assumed I guess that 100%'ing meant "every incantation" and "every sorcery" and "every talisman" but it doesn't, just certain legendary ones that you can always get (if you put the work in).

I made it to Melania last night, and she instakilled me the first time, so I went back in with a shield and a Physick-induced no-FP-required summon of a +10 assassin, and have always made it to her second stage but got to a "we're trading hits and she's regenerating" kinda stalemate. I've way more levelled than most aspirants at this point, I think. I made it to level 160 and started stocking up on materials with my excess runes, with an idea that I might upgrade my shit for a respec to mage or pure-dexterity. I can totally understand why everybody struggles with Melania, I'm overpowered and experienced with the series and she's still very punishing.

The length and detail of this game is such that I have become unfamiliar with places/things I did at the start of the game, there is just so much information that it feels like ages and ages ago since I was pthubbing Crucible Knights and Cemetery Shades. The sheer beauty and glorious design of some of the later stages is leaving me breathless, like I can't believe this game after 100+ hours still has the ability to leave me agog. I feel like the dev team must've had some kind of a dare pact, like they deliberately made an endless list of bosses and locations and just kept egging each other on for however-many-years until it was all designed and completed.

After seven entire game's worth of content, arriving at late-game area Brace of the Haligtree was such a wonderful throwback to Demon's Souls-style castlecrawling, like this particular mode of Soulsborne that had been until the very late-game mostly absent. I'm having existential kinda thoughts, like, "can I even play games after this?" The engagement I felt back in February with Horizon Zero Dawn feels so past tense. I definitely plan on a long break from games once I beat this one I think

This really is some kind of landmark, this game feels every bit as much of an achievement as any big human cultural artifacts, and I feel profoundly moved that I'm able to experience it before its details and secrets have become ubiquitous

fgti's The End of Game History thesis was controversial from the start, but few dared to dismiss it entirely

Love that fgti, I'm on board. Also, I don't know how yet, but when I reach Melania I'm committed to doing it sans summons. :)

I'm mostly having existential thoughts about the pvp, since I go in and out of having fun with it (because fighting against three people spamming insane spells & skills can be very, very difficult). Once I someday finish the game to my satisfaction, am I going to keep doing invasions for five years like I did with DS3? Unsure, but I hope so, and I'm definitely planning a lvl 40 invader where the damage-to-hp balance keeps things more fun.

In the meantime I did another respec back to pure dex, since the extra blood buildup was not worth doing arcane at the moment (and I can't change the scaling on the Ornamental straight swords, still an important part of my build). I'm going to mess around with some daggers though.

I've been drooling over some of the pure-dex builds for PvP for sure, but blood is really where it's at for PvE afaic. I haven't beat her yet or anything but Malenia is definitely staggering, allowing criticals, taking the bleed bonuses when she deserves them.

Yeah, I've been using double katanas (one of them with a blood affinity) for boss fights lately to get that bleed, but the moveset is just too slow for pvp, at least for how I like to play.

thinking of using my Dex build to use one of the twirly spear/sword things- Godskin Peeler anyone?- though I think it will be difficult to give up my shield

Hm, yeah. I play power stance but keep a shield equipped at all times, I can't deal with imps otherwise!

I started Golden Halberd/Brass Shield STR/FTH, respec'd to Bloodhound Fang/Bloody Omen Cleaver STR/DEX, then switched the two left-to-right once I got Bloodhound Step... I love the weapon art on the Bloodhound Fang but the step Ash is just too useful.

I've been wondering about curved swords, they seem so fast and good! Once I get the smithy bell bearings I'm going to experiment with dual longswords and dual curved swords until I find my ideal setup (although I'll likely just stick with my current setup, it's hilariously powerful imo!)

Christ I feel like I'm playing a different game to the rest of you lol. I have barely any goo weapons, and I cant use them anyway cos I did not bother building STR/DEX at all, so I cant bloody lift or wear anything decent.

Which would be fine, my glintstone staff slays, but it has finite juice!

My partner who's been playing the game a lot less time than me has already mashed up Godrick and beaten all the minibosses in Limgrave, so has pretty much caught up if not surpassed me in just a matter of days (a keeper!). I'm still a bit salty about the Edgar quest but hey ho, at least I have a monkey tailor now who actually makes my clothes WORSE when he alters them, great!

My staff is next to useless, just irritates enemies rather than hurts them

I just don't know how I broke Edgar's plotline so easily... This is one of the few things that frustrate me about these games - I like that they don't handhold you or rely on endless fetch quests, but sometimes it's like you're supposed to have a sixth sense about where you're expected to go and who you're meant to speak to in what order to trigger a particular sequence of events. Is it because I neglected to speak to Edgar before killing Lion-O? Why is Irina dead? If this all happened, then where has Edgar got to and why has he vanished? I feel this is a bit unfair really.

Quests get broken so easily and arbitrarily

I'm endgame now and had to do a convoluted thing to advance a very important quest forward, did the convoluted thing, it had no effect, gave up. It was so irritating. I'm like "this game can render the most complicated beautiful environments imaginable but it can't keep its fucking story straight"

Things like the Plaxi Dragon, like how the fuck are 99% of people ever going to find this (very important) boss without looking at a guide? They must have spent aaaages creating/coding etc and they just leave it somewhere completely obscure and arbitrary for everyone to miss.

I wouldn't have been mad if they made the npc quest system a bit more forgiving and easy to follow in this game, I don't think it would have lost anything.

My wife was out last night so I had awhile to play, but I spent the whole time doing invasions and it was more frustrating than fun. I'm at the level now where player damage is so high that the rule is "don't get hit". If I mess up at all (which usually means trying to swap to my dagger with Bloodhound's Step to get away, except oops my left hand still has a shield, so I parry instead of using the right-hand skill) it's instant death. So I'm going to focus on actually progressing for awhile, imagine that.

I did go back and do the Divine Tower of Caelid (or Carlos, as a friend's phone always corrects to), that was fun.

finally fuckin beat fuckin margit

then got killed by some knifebirds

xp to crisp regarding that dragon, i saw some white spirits doing a ~thing~ which clued me in. they come in handy sometimes!

there really are moments when it feels like you're in a secret area within a secret area within a secret area. i found a hidden spot last night that really surprised me. it just like... kept going.

Nice

xp

i beat this last night. cleared all the major bosses, going by the trophy list. not done though, gonna explore a little more then make the call on New Game + or rolling a new character.

this is the best game, i have a zillion hours in it and i'm still not bored. i hope there's DLC in the works.

also hope they flesh out pvp a bit more, cuz invading doesn't feel terribly exciting at the moment. at least at high level. like Jordan said, most of the time you pop into a world with a dude and three of his buddies just waiting there to smash you into the ground. haven't really messed with pvp since Souls 1 (which had cool things like multiplayer covenants that operated in different ways) and this doesn't have the same excitement or variety.

i imagine doing invasions at lower levels is more fun, you have the chance to surprise people just doing co-op stuff. less of the hangin-out-waiting-for-the-next-sucker gank squad stuff i'm consistently running into at higher levels.

You can beat Elden Ring, but can you ever really finish Elden Ring?

after bouncing off astel a few times i read that he's weak to scarlet rot. so i looked up how to inflict scarlet rot and learned i could get an incantation if i got rid of that cranky decaying dragon in caelid. so i went there, got my ass handed to me repeatedly. so then i was like well maybe i should power up godrick's rune. so then i had to go all the way to stormveil and make my way to the tower and restore the rune. then i went back to the dragon and me and my mimic tear +10 hookclawed it to pieces. then i went to the cathedral of dragon communion and got the incantation, and then was like whoops i need a seal. so i went back to the tutorial dungeon, unlocked the imp door, made my way through a dungeon to kill a dude who dropped the dragon communion seal. then i re-spec'd so i could use the seal, the incantation, and the sword of night and flame and twinned armor just for fun. THEN i went back to astel, armed my mimic tear with ekzyke's decay, and together we ran up on him and levitating rot-puked him to death. real GOAT-game territory here.

Those dragon scarlet rot incantations are way powerful. Absolutely melts dudes, bosses included, if they aren’t resistant. Can really amp them up with the right talismans.

I definitely fell back on scarlet rot to beat a couple of bosses who otherwise seemed unbeatable. I like that it's an option! "Can't melee them? can you poison them and stay hidden instead? good, you pass"

Haha Adam, I love how no two games are the same.

My friend texted me "so this guy's impossible" when he got to Astel. Then five minutes later he beat him with comet magic and tanky spirits. Whatever works (I'm stubbornly going to keep trying to press the dodge button at the right time, that's the only way I know how to play these games).

I got kicked into a pit by Patches . The classics never go out of style

this is me, birdie

https://i.imgur.com/PYWtSxg.jpg

I got an awesome summon that requires FP 100, and i'm supposed to be a Confessor, so i'm currently just kind of farming enemies and leveling up my Mind (whoa dude!)

maybe i should power up godrick's rune.

So, I beat Godrick (!) yesterday with a flailing combination of my wolf ashes and a lot of Great Glintstone spamming. yes, I thought, Ive DONE IT.

...and now I learn I still have to re-battle my way through that fucking courtyar full of assholes , to find some lion I have to beat, so I can do this rune thing because its the main point? ARGH.

we have to find elden ring

I must have spent 6 hours Elden Ringing last night and achieving very very little. Other than finally beating Agheel of course.

I spent a bit of time leveling up in Ogre Paddock but keep changing my mind about where to put points, so my build is just a massive shitshow. I want to level up Arcane so I can use a Dragonheart thing but I'm miles off.

Tried to beat the boss next to the Erdtree on Weeping Peninsula (like a big walking tree trunk that throws horrible yellow sparks that merk me instantly) using fire but ran out of FP and pots. I am enjoying my dragon arm though which has an awesome special move.

Other than that, it's been endlessly exploring Liurnia but hitting a lot of dead ends and circle-rounds without exactly being sure where I'm supposed to be going.

Trying very hard to take my time with this game. I'm not interested in completing it in a hurry or reading up loads of guides (which is what I did with Bloodborne). There is definitely more than one way to play this game

want to level up Arcane so I can use a Dragonheart thing but I'm miles off.

i think i might know what's your referring to! i'm not that far ahead of you (if i am at all), but i wouldn't lean too hard on arcane just for that skill. if it's the one i'm thinking of, it has a very, very long cast time that frequently makes it a burden in battle. every once in a while the starts line up though, and it's fun.

my build is also a shit show. i have no idea what i'm doing, and i have zero long term strategy. i just want to beat the bosses, eventually, and of course, find elden ring

just ran across a very helpful message from an ilxor in Road's End Catacombs, helpfully pointing toward a Rune Arc (which I have never used because I am scared)!

(easiest boss in the game too, nice!)

Heh that might have been me? They saved most of the hidden walls for that dungeon.

Idk if getting the great rune is the main point (unless that's the lore?), it's more of a side benefit. Really nice stat boosts, but you need to activate them with rune arcs, which you can find but mostly get through coop or pvp.

silly question, but - so, i only have one great rune, and i think i used it to get a new weapon at the roundtable. so, do i still "have" that rune, to activate via rune arc, or do i need to get another great rune and save it, rather than converting it to a weapon?

that's a remembrance, the rune is a different thing. once you power it up you can make it "active" at a bonfire, then actually activate it by using a rune arc. say, before a big boss fight. the only one i've used is godrick's and it adds 5 to every state, ie 40 levels.

:-o

that would be helpful! haha

i have about 10 rune arcs or so. they're like the P-wing in SMW - i just can't

or the super+ cure-all in FFVII or whatever. if the item is too good, i cannot use it. need to save it for later

I mean that's why I rarely use consumables, yet keep picking up every crafting item I see. But I have like 80 rune arcs from pvp, so I actually use them for boss fights now.

i'm imagining using a rune arc is similar to the dream of what the Power Glove was like. you're just unstoppable, and steam rises wherever you walk

(but in reality you're like "Shit!")

i got grease in every flavor