Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

*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).

apparently if you’ve already entered redmayne castle she disappears from the rise until you’ve killed radahn.
This is what I did. Not intentionally. I hadn't DONE anything in Redmane or Caelid, just run around real fast, which apparently was enough. Heck Ive even ducked into Leyndell, and Ive done none of the other quests - I just managed to find the other tower where the 2nd crest was kept, and was quick enough to distract the mobs guarding it and grab it.

Apparetly sneaking-in-without-passing-the-bouncer is Not the Way.

Anywho, so last night was a fucking comedy of errors as a result. Enraged at this pickle I was in after beating Loretta, and too over-focussed on Ranni, I thought "fuckit I will just try Radaghan anyway". Completely forgetting I'd just won 10k runes and not spent them.

I promptly lost those, didn't I?

Then, in an effort to farm some replacements I managed to eat my last 2 gold pickled fowl foots one after another, effectively wasting one.

And I'm at a point where I'm Level 60, but my INT is only 23, and I need it to be WAY higher to use some of the decent glintblade sourceries. But levelling up is around the 20k mark now and I just dont have the patience to monotonously spend 30 mins farming, it'll give me bad dreams.

Mutter.

you've beaten rennala right? why not re-spec?

I meant fight Radan above btw not Radagan what the shit is with these names.

LOL no i havent beat Rennala. I thought it was Ranni who did the respeccing. God.

lol i low key love the way you can fuck up your “life” in souls games. obv it gives you a number of outs and safety nets but ultimately, if you miss something it’s missed until you play again.

also i really like the fact that there are entire dimensions to the game that you can miss - it doesn’t promote them despite the enormous amount of work that will have gone into them. they have to be found often by quite recondite or serendipitous routes. this is charming in a person and, i think, in a game.

Ohhh Trayce beat Rennala. Satisfying fight and easily co-op’d.

I have casually been poking around a battlemage build and it is concerning at how basically all “non-bleed builds based on stats” only flower around level 90-100. My spells are a joke

I fought Moongrum yesterday and was so delighted by his armour and fighting style that I decided to cosplay as him for a bit.

wondering whether to respec my STR build with some minimum requirements for INT and FAI into a hardcore STR and ARC bleed build.

bored w my dragon puke/bleed build, considering STR/INT dark moon greatsword and wild sorcery approach. suggestions welcome. level 89 rn.

Fire guy build looks pretty fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3fgZxZvB8E

it does! i gotta make my way to the mountaintop for some of that, long term goals. in the meantime maybe i'll hop on the moonveil rocket

I have a new build I'm planning on being a mostly fire-based Faith/dex build, fire spells/bleed swords. Surprised at how much easier a new guy feels now, maybe because after 100 hours I get how this game works more. I'm not sure wether to keep my prisoner glintstone build going - hes at Lv60ish and Ive done all of stormveil but I am SO stuck on Radan/Renalla, and Ive broken the Ranni/Blaidd line a bit, so I dont know. Levelling up's becoming a chore at this level, maybe I'm not taking on enough bigger mobs/bosses.

But one think I like about staffs vs incantations - the staffs seem to have a much further hit distance than my flame sling does? Maybe I'm imaginging it I dunno.

Rennala is definitely more challenging as a caster, but if you beat her and get your hands on a Larval Tear you can always re-spec that character if you’re unhappy with the build.

Actually I think I already have one or 2 larval tear from elsewhere but yeah without beating her, no dice. I'll keep plugging away.

summon two people for rennala, i did it by accident for that fight and it was a piece of cake

yeah Ive not tried any co op/online yet. All the stories Im hearing about aggro invasions, and me not being a great player, is putting me off.

Invasions aren’t really a big deal tbh. Especially if you’re summoning for a boss fight cuz you’re generally right next to a boss door and invaders can’t enter your world when a boss encounter begins. And if they happen to be in your world they’re immediately sent home.

New players shouldn’t be afraid of summoning! It’s a core mechanic and it will make your life a lot easier for most bosses.

yeah, i’ve summoned a fair bit just to keep the game moving. i can’t have it swallow my *whole* life. like c1916 says, there’s no window for invasion on the big mist bound bosses.

rennala i found oddly easy, or maybe i was just a bit OP.