Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Oh I am 80 hours in and I'm still only level 50something and flailing about, only a couple of big bosses defeated.

...I'm a terribly slow open world gamer. I think I did 200-300 hours of BOTW bwfore I finished it, and Ive been playing Skyrim for like 5 years and Im still not done.

I may have bricked my PS5, the HDMI out simply isn’t putting out

Thank god, I think, maybe I’ll dust and vacuum today

trayce you're still ahead of me, i'm like level 36 and just beat godrick this weekend (though i had already explored a fair amount of liurnia and some of caelid before then)

Ha, RIP fgti :/

I feel sufficiently done with the Capital, including those goddamn sewers - I missed the entrance the first time because I dropped down the correct well, but didn't realize you could open the cell door..

Currently throwing myself against Mohg, Lord of Blood version. The first phase is fun and totally doable, the second phase feels insane. Not sure if I should keep going at it or just come back when I'm a bit stronger, although I'm getting on lvl 110 now so it's not going to be that different. Otherwise it's time to finally move on to Mountaintops of the Giants, where everyone says the game gets hard. :)

There is a physick tear that helps significantly with that boss. But it might be a struggle at that level regardless. That was like the last boss I did and I was around 150.

Mohg has a curse stage, where he lays down one, two, three red rings around you, and then butchers you with them. You can defeat this curse by completing Yura's quest line for a particular tear, using it in your physick, and drinking it when Mohg is about to ruin your life

Also, yeah, I'd say the Mountaintops is an easier time overall than Planet Mohg

One thing I didn't realize is that those awful rune bears you run into drop larval tears when you beat them. I avoided them on my run and missed out, I guess. Anyway. There's one on the Mountaintop who is absolutely the toughest fight imaginable. I never beat him in the end

Yep, I do have that physick tear and have been using it! But I still need to figure out my strats for phase 2 when he's at half health. Mostly it's a matter of not getting psyched (or bled) out by all the flaming blood that causes you to bleed all over the arena. My main damage is coming from using Carian Retaliation against the blood he flings at you.

I also have the Mohg shackle, which apparently only works in phase 1, when I don't really need it. But my plan is to try using it just before he goes into phase 2 and see how low I can get him.

I can't believe how quickly people progress through this game. I've put in over 100 hours in and the last big boss I killed was Godrick.

Admittedly I'm trying to only use guides, online help etc if I get very stuck, and also I'm quite fastidious about making sure I scope every area out for hidden items and rooms before moving on. I'm doing a lot of exploring and only rune farm occasionally.

That said, I spent almost all day yesterday doing little more than exploring the rooftops and crannies of Raya Lucaria. It took me ages to kill that Red Wolf boss. He was OPing me the second I walked in the door, I barely had time to summon spirits, and then for some reason on my 20th go I killed him easily in under a minute. Don't feel like I did anything different - he just seemed to take more damage and went easier on me.

My partner (who admittedly is following a few more guides) said she beat him first go and got through all of Raya Lucaria in a morning, including Renalla which is kind of mindblowing to me. Guess I just need to git gud!

what level is your character DL? I've just reached Mountaintop of the Giants and it is significantly more difficult than what has come before, a real step-change, having just breezed through Volcano Manor.

Trayce, it sounds like you've progressed further than me in the game and I'm level 67. Still dweebing around Lirunia and haven't got to Renalla yet! Need to fight that annoying Knight in Raya Lucaria with the big marble that squashes you before you fight him.

I also found another very tough enemy after negotiating the rooftops there. Luckily there's a shortcut ladder you can trigger but it doesn't help much as there are a ton of scholar-sorcerors and marionettes who come after you before you can get to him.

I reckon I've found almost all the items in RL though. I think my favourite thing about this game is just navigating architecture, looking for hidden rooms, trying to reach items in weird places, getting to a concealed ledge and realising you're looking down on somewhere you were fifteen minutes before etc. The architecture in this is mindblowing

I'm around Level 67. I haven't been able to level up naturally for a while now, so admittedly when I end up with more than about 5000 runes and I know I'm likely to die, I go to the Great Farum runefarm. It's not helping me though. I didn't really understand the concept of "builds" (still find all these stats a bit confusing TBH) when I started playing, so my character is a bit of a shitshow. Started with Vigor and Strength, but then my partner told me about katanas and bleeds, so I've been putting more into INT/DEX. I've got the Moonveil now but I can't seem to upgrade it because I can't seem to find any lower-level smithing stones any more.

I think I need to revisit Raya Lucaria, sounds like there's lots more to explore there. It's worth having a look for some Bearing Bells if you're struggling with Smithing Stones as they can open up the shop options with the crones at the Table of Grace.

I haven't found any of those yet. Don't you get those from killing NPCs?

Like Castle Stormveil, Raya Lucaria is ENORMOUS but I think it's easy to get through if you play linearly. I'm definitely going back to all the big dungeons again once I'm nicely leveled to double check I haven't missed anything else

You might get some from killing merchants, yes, but otherwise they are found in similar ways to other types of loot, i.e. tucked away all over the place.

Is that the same thing when it says "give a bell offering"? hmmm, nope don't think I've found any yet and I scope most places out. I think there's a way for me to get one from Sorcerer Thop now I've given him a key to Raya Lucaria (I checked a guide)

DL it sounds as if it’s possible you may have an odd balance of stats. On a positive note, once you beat Renalla you’ll be able to re-allocate your stats (using the limited item “larval tear”).

Comparatively I flew through the game (all the while playing like a completist) largely because I chose a widely-regarded-as-OP weapon (Bloodhound Fang) and statted my character around it, funnelled my resources into it

It might be wise for you to beat Renalla and then do some guide consulting about building a Moonveil-oriented character? I never used it myself but people seem to love it

I'd played Bloodborne before, but never really paid a huge amount of attention to builds - it's not really a game with lots of magic or ranged weapons. Strength and Vigor seemed to be the most essential stats by far in that game.

So it surprised me that people seemed to be starting out with a fairly good idea of what character they were going to choose and what build they were going to go for (and FFS how all these stats and attributes seem to work with each other), unless of course they were swotting up on guides before they even played the game? I feel like I missed the first day of school sometimes. I only just worked out how the scaling attributes work and that A is better than E (but I don't know what S signifies?? Argh!). Just explain it a tiny bit FromSoft, I'm just a man!

I got an insane mental block on Rennala and just could not get my head round dodging the death ray in the second phase properly at all. It must have taken me at least 20 attempts, dying of embarrassment as all the guides say she's one of the easier big bosses. I probably did Ornstein and Smough faster

S is the only thing better than A scaling, which was weird to me when I started these games, but apparently has to do with the Japanese grading system in schools?

ahhh okay thanks, makes sense

S for Special

is how I break it down to an extent

Now I come to think of it, I think Death Stranding used S as the top tier score for runs

So I gave Thop's bell bearing to the Twin Maiden Husks but all it did was make the original shitty spells he was trying to sell me available from them. What a crock!

There are two kinds - npc bell bearings that let you access the items they sell after they're dead, and smithing stone bell bearings that let you buy upgrade materials (obviously super valuable).

Smithing stone bell bearings are almost always found in a mine, and then usually behind some hidden wall or out of the way place (although I think a few are boss drops).

I looked up the location of a few of them because they seemed so essential, at least if you want to experiment with upgrading different weapons.

ty Jordan for explaining things far better than I did!

two things in this game that seem unreasonably hard in a way that does not seem intentional in the way that other things are unreasonably hard in this game:
* judging how far you can fall without completely dying
* maneuvering torrent down those cliffside gravestone steps without plummeting all the way down and dying

drop a rainbow stone off the ledge. if it breaks so will you. if it glows happily u may jump

There are a couple tricks to the first one:
-Use a rainbow stone, if it shatters then you'll die if you fall that far (the intended way, no doubt)
-Try attacking right at the edge - if it lets the attack move you off of the ledge, then it's a safe fall. If not, it's because it's a lethal fall and there's a guardrail in place so that you don't accidentally fall off because you pressed an attack button.

For those gravestone steps, I can never decide whether to use the horse or not. Torrent can take any fall damage and you have the double jump to possibly save you in case you mess up, but also feels less precise than just doing it sans-horse.

xp

and you have the double jump to possibly save you in case you mess up

lol, the classic way i die is to get the horse jump right on the first try, and then second-guess myself just before i land, using the double-jump, and then being WAY OFF with that and dying

but yeah, i'm always accidentally dying like that. 3D platforming is very hard for me, always has been. 2D platforming used to be my wheelhouse.

also, i call the horse Birdie because Torrent is not a good enough name for the horse imo

i don't think double jumping at the end of a lethal fall diminishes the fall damage

yeah, i don't think so either. my goal with the double-jump is usually to "fix" what i decide at the last moment was a horrible first jump

oh when you go careening off a cliff to your doom? big fan

it's classic

nothing like doing a potato bug roll right off the edge of a big honkin mountain

one move i also like to do, i call it my "taunt", is to accidentally be using a bow when i think i'm holding my shield up, and then to panic and drink a health flask, all as the enemy is slowly walking up and swinging at me

i formally challenge all bad elden rings to a contest to see how slowly we can beat this game

i'm around 90 hours in, godrick is my highest level defeated boss

it's sad, i was thinking of streaming some of my sessions on twitch, but i really am so bad that it crosses over into actively annoying, even without my voice

i haven't really figured out what i want to do after defeating godrick. i started working through carian academy and quickly got overwhelmed by the magic-sucking skeletons.

The initial entry into the Academy might be the hardest part? Or at least the most chaotic (that outdoor area with all the skeletons and dogs).

yeah that's where i got frustrated

No shame in running through

you can also just walk around it and then hit everyone guarding the entrance from behind

unless you're talking about something else, I haven't entered the academy yet