Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

what i'm saying is, there is no main path up to the Manor as far as I know. It's up a cliff. If you go directly from the grace point, you get to Kingsrealm Ruins which look like a total dead end because of the wall. So I'm guessing youse must have hit the wall or rolled into it or something. I'd be interested to see if the wall is still there for you (if you go to the site of grace near Iji, it is directly behind you)

update, I had a little poke about, and there is another section to get round the wall on the other side, but you still need to jump with Torrent - it is a bit more obvious. I'm gonna shut up about it now :-)

re: if Ranni's quest is foolproof, then I'm a fool. Blaidd is kind enough to reintroduce himself, and I'm grateful for that even though he's easy to remember. He tells me to meet him in Murkwood where I originally found him so we can go down to Selia. But looks like he's disappeared off somewhere too.

nah he wants you to meet him way down in the hole

I thought as much. Typical that he's one of the few charcters who tells you where he hangs out but he's not even there

Haha, DL I’m curious as to what you’re seeing with the Ilj and Caria Manor issues. Don’t recall any obstacles keeping me from them, but it’s been a minute since I was there.

Not sure if it’s relevant in this case, but in ruins, particularly ones with higher walls, it’s generally a good idea to hop around on Torrent. There are some cases where there are goodies stashed away that are difficult to see or even get to on foot.

Unrelated, but I recently found you can get on top of those big mechanical flame head dudes and attack them for a more/less instant kill. Looks tricky to get up there, but I’ve seen vids of people launching themselves off torrent onto them. Wish I knew that earlier!

"Seek the Lasklyar Ruins in the west of Lake Liurnia". Okay, fine, thanks for being fairly specific. Head west, no ruins. Anywhere. Concede and look it up. They're int he South East. Come on Elden Ring, you're reaching now

Thi si the video of the wall I'm talking about from the North Lirunia Gracepoint https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOUzt5dXrAs

Do yous know there is also a nasty rabid poisonous boss hidden in a hole in the west side of those ruins by Iji? You have to roll on it to reveal the staircase.

It's a huge pain in the ass unless you have access to Holy damage in which case it's lol

Yeah I found that boss while messing about in the ruins for ages trying to work out why they were there. So I'm quite surprised I found that, but couldn't get past the wall which is stupid and I hate so much

Unrelated, but I recently found you can get on top of those big mechanical flame head dudes and attack them for a more/less instant kill. Looks tricky to get up there, but I’ve seen vids of people launching themselves off torrent onto them. Wish I knew that earlier!

It took me an embarassingly long time to realize that they're being driven by a normal dude in the back, and taking him out kills the whole caboodle.

I was having a good time going through the northern Mountaintops of the Giants last night with the Taunter's Tongue on. It was much more chill meeting invaders, exchanging greetings, and having fights as I went than dealing with a host and their two level 200 friends.

Lost 80k runes because I forgot to pick them up while doing a Volcano Manor quest, oops.

So far I haven't felt a difficulty spike, except for when I wandered into a graveyard with a giant OP deathbird and a respawning giant skeleton, ran out of there as fast as I could.

Haha, now I'm bumping into lots of NPCs who are telling me things I already worked out few pure flukes and guesswork ages ago. Better late than never I guess, but it might answer a lot of my "How would I even know to do this?" questions :-)

Yeah, I admit to only half paying attention to what NPC's are telling me and basically looking up quests, so I imagine going strictly by in-world direction would be more than a little maddening.

It's nigh impossible to grasp the majority of the stuff in these games on your own. Willfully designed for a kind of community participation in figuring things out. Most directly evidenced by the player message system. Irritating to some, but I kinda love that shit. I have group texts going with friends about this game, sharing tips/secrets, and it very much reminds me of some the conversations I had as a kid about the games we were playing.

Also I either bypassed that wall or it had a bunch of signs on the ground in front of it so I plowed through without even clocking it.

Yup yup. It is a very much online game and that's part of the fun of it I suppose

Elden Ring confessions:

-I can never tell the "replenish your flasks" scarabs from the "give you a cool ash of war" scarabs. I assume there's some sort of visual indicator?

-When I pick up an item I just google it to read the description, rather than bother to find it in my inventory.

*whispers*

Elden Ring Confessions!

i have never summoned a real person or been invaded or invaded someone else or helped anyone else

i am too afraid

confessions!

The flask ones are red or blue, and the ash ones are white. The colors are pale though, so I have definitely mistaken the blue & white ones.

I'm stuck on the Magma Wyrm fight at Volcano Manor now. My go-to weapon is usually Moonveil, but since dragons have resistance to slash & pierce damage, I've been trying to use a mace with dragonwound grease on it, with very little success.

Co-op is so much fun, KM! You should do it!

I've never played MMOS or anything like that, so the whole experience is pretty novel to me of being able to just bonk on monsters with a bunch of randos.

Yeah! Maybe I posted this already but at the dungeon you find in the Capital sewers, I was so exhausted by exploring the huge area that I decided to summon a random person to go through it. I couldn't believe what a perfect guide they were -- they had clearly been through it themselves, they showed me every secret in the place, stopped to let me get items, used gestures appropriately, and were generally a delight.

Not how I would want to play through the entire game, but it was a nice break from painstaking solo exploration.

and the ash ones are white

Ah, ty! I'll have to pay more attention.

TIL some of the scarabs drop ashes of war :|

Dammit Donnie now I gotta go back and find them.

so i rerolled a new character, because of course, and the second playthrough is going much quicker. 8 hours in i defeated godrick, which i think is about 42 hours quicker than my first run. i was putting down a sign afterwards to coop with people on godrick and was summoned by someone called A Nice Guy who drops 99 hero's rune 5's which is what, 3.5 million runes? who then waves and severs me back

Haha wow, they must have used a dupe glitch

So, the fact Ive visited a lot of spots without killing anyone much seems to be biting me in the arse.

I have defeated the Knight at Carian Manor, but when I went up the hill Ranni was not in her seat in the tower. Ive read some things that say it happened if you didnt meet her at the start but I did of course. I also spoke to Blaidd... i dont know what Ive done or not done here :/ Ive been to Redmane castle, Blaidd's spot in mistwood, but not fought any of those bad guys. Please dont tell me I have to beat Radahn before it will progress cos I swear I will off myself.

Hmmm, did you end up beating Loretta?

Yes thats who I meant by Knight, soz. Ive beat Loretta, gone thry the new wall up to Rannis rise, up to the top room and shes not there.

Some reddit threads suggest this happens if you killed her or Blaidd on accident, which I didnt. but I have been to redmane castle and done nothing in it so I dunno if that did something?

Oh weird. Are you sure you're not in, uh, Renna's Rise?

Oh man, the internet does seem to indicate killing Radahn, but you would hence to do that anyway to continue in her quest. Maybe use the fgti scarlet rot & run away method?

Ive only got scarlet rot in pots! Ha I guess I can see how I go.

Oh well in that case you might want to try some other methods first. He's really not that bad, aside from the meteors. :) And it comes with summoning included.

Ooh i saw a youtube wth a good trick for the metor bit. I wonder if i can make it work.

Radahn got nerfed in the last big patch, much less of a major roadblock than he was. I got him in a few tries with my second character. Was definitely not a few tries the first time around.

Just hauling around on Torrent and hitting every summon sign did most of the work.

Radahn got nerfed in the last big patch, much less of a major roadblock than he was. I got him in a few tries with my second character. Was definitely not a few tries the first time around.

Trayce, I only recently did the Manor / Rennna thing you're trying to do and had no probs. I haven't even found Radahn yet. That's so odd. I don't know why it's so easy to break a quest. Can you get into the other towers in that area?

oh i messed up the renna quest. apparently if you’ve already entered redmayne castle she disappears from the rise until you’ve killed radahn. if you haven’t already entered the castle she’ll be there.

Ah, I don't know where Redmayne Castle is, so maybe it's that. I don't know where Radahn even is - assumed he's a later stage boss

I'm surprised to hear so many people go looking for Radahn before attempting Liurnia / Altus Plateau - the game strongly suggests you do the latter first and Caelid is intimidating enough to put me off from hacking through too much of it early on

I helped people co-op Radahn a lot after beating him. You really need a way of doing the damage, whether it's "I've upped my faith and arcane (artificially is fine) and intend to inflict scarlet rot on him, twice" or "rock sling" or "my melee is totally viable at this point thanks"

But in general I wouldn't advise co-oping the guy. Torrent is too useful in this fight to make co-op viable, that arrow rain is just too difficult to avoid otherwise

I only beat him pre-patch before he was nerfed, I didn't attempt him in NG+ and haven't gotten to him in my current less-obsessive PS4 battlemage playthrough

I've banked six hours on this playthrough and I'm already at level 50 (I killed the lazy dragon with a silver foot activated). Godrick is dead, crucible knights are still the bane

One thing I've picked up on from a design perspective that I really like is the distinction between availability/usability of somber smithing stones vs. normal smithing stones. The availability, and scarcity (and one-per-upgrade) nature of somber stones kinda locks you in, early-to-mid game, into upgrading max three different special weapons, which are tailored toward a build... it's like the game is forcing you to somewhat commit to an approach. Meanwhile, the vast availability (and 12-per-3-upgrades) nature of normal smithing stones lets you keep a whole arsenal of viable weapons on hand to swap out ashes of war and Try New Things. Special weapons reward commitment while normal weapons offer flexibility

It's such a far cry from the weapon upgrade methodology of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 where "your weapon upgrade plan" resembled applying to a college, enrolling in a program, selecting your courses and doing your homework

but then he got buffed again in the last small one!

oh man, didn't know that, i got in under the wire the second run! honestly, it did feel they went too hard in the other direction with the nerf, he's supposed to be kind of a badass linchpin boss.

He was def the hardest boss in the game, for me, pre-nerf (I used Tiche’s help with Malenia)

Spoilers for Rykard: I really didn't like that fight with the Serpent Hunter weapon, it felt like I was just in a dps race with him spamming R1 and healing every so often. Maybe I didn't do it as intended, in phase 2 I just stayed underneath him to avoid the flying red skulls, so I couldn't see what was going on anyway.

Maybe it would be better if R1s didn't have the super long-range serpent hunter attack too, and you had to charge up the skill to use it (like the Storm Ruler fights in Demon's Souls or DS3). That way you'd have to use it more judiciously so that you wouldn't be stunned out of the attack.

Did y'all go back to the boss arena after beating him though? Gruesome.

Damn I keep messing up that hidden text (apparently doesn't work for multiple paragraphs).