Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Currently: underground doing a job for tiny little ranni doll; meeting Mogh, but thinking I might explore the whole dirty bloody area before I head back and beat him up; touring the beautiful capital city of Leyndell.

oh and at first grace in VM dungeon, just waiting before pressing on.

Yeah, the wall is just in one of the rooms in the manor, Trayce, I believe behind a dead body they've nicely left out for you

Volcano Manor environs is definitely my favourite part of the game so far

https://y.yarn.co/35e41b21-67f4-40ee-bdbe-ffc556cd2327_text.gif

Me purposefully striding into the fields beyond the Farum Greatbridge site of grace for the fifteenth time today

Oh god farming that field with its hideous keening background noise and sheeting rain gives me nightmares.

But, I can net 7k per go round, more if I eat a gold fowlfoot, so its been handy.

It took me a minute to discover where that field was. Glintstones are great for it. Basically from the Greatbridge you go north then turn east, kill the wee man just to your right; continue and I think there's another one just a bit further up. Then you turn back a little and continue north east and there should be about three or four more. There's one more lad snuck behind a fallen tree if you turn back round again. Should be about 7 in total, then fast travel back to where you were and repeat.

Good for a while, but if you like farming, nothing beats the Mogh bird + Albinauric slaughter farm though

I have grown fond of the Farum Greatbridge Vulgar Militia through my time ruthlessly farming them, they are kind of the successors to the Dark Souls 3 Undead Settlement gremlin men with their silly hats, high pitched gibbering and propensity to take hilarious flying bumps when staggered with magic

There is also the minor layer of intrigue added by "hold up is that one just...a goat?"

apparently there's a marble you can farm near the greatbridge area too, but i've never seen it. I tend to just run through Caelid when I'm there, and I rarely stop to smell the poison flowers.

There's so much stuff you can miss in this game. Even when I feel like I'm following quests properly, there are details that somehow get skipped. I realised today that I didn't really understand Sellen's quest even though I liked her as a character - why is her body in more than one place? What is going on? And what about Seluvis - I kept hearing reference to his puppets from various NPCs like Pidia but don't think I ever actually saw any?! Reading back, apparenlty the puppets just look like normal people but slumped in different positions (so they just look like all the other dead bodies in the game). Maybe they could have made them more puppety!

probably rhetorical questions but in any case: sellen's body only comes into play after you've found lusat's, which she only asks you to after you find azur on your own, and seluvis' puppets are in the cellar of the ruins to the north of caria manor, near ranni's rise. there's a note you can buy at some merchant talking about it

Yes I worked it all out and finished it off last night. Now I have a sporty glinty pointy crystal crown!

But I'm still too underpowered to use my new tools :( I'd like to start using night comet and stars of ruin but my INT still isnt high enough even after respeccing. I should prob stop hedging my bets and having just enough in DEX/STR/FAI as well lol

I have grown fond of the Farum Greatbridge Vulgar Militia through my time ruthlessly farming them[…]

I feel like I have a real personal relationship with the whole Gatefront crew - Sentry Backstab, Mr Toot Toot, the hard man, Static Home Spear Guards One and Two, etc. Nightmarish existence for them… yesterday I got them to gather round to see if an upgraded seal made much difference to Rotten Breath. Makes a change from being jump-R2ed with a colossal weapon I guess.

I never farmed souls, but I've definitely farmed weapons for trading online. I respec'd for a high Arcane (bleed and item discovery) and netted myself a pile of Magma Swords and Bandit Curved Swords and Noble's Slender Swords and Haligtree Knight Sets and other farmable items that people seem to desire so strongly

I have grown fond of the Farum Greatbridge Vulgar Militia through my time ruthlessly farming them

there is a poem to be written or a hard-hitting documentary to be made about the miserable existence these poor fuckers lead. sometimes i will approach and deliberately antagonise the three little creeps looking out over the cliffs on that lower level immediately to the east of that site of grace, just cuz i feel so guilty about the whole thing and think they deserve to get a few licks in

also idk what this 7k runes, takes too long, where else can i farm stuff is

you can collect c.20k in about 15 mins doing a full circuit of that part of the map and then you just rest at the site of grace or let them kill you and go round again.

assuming of course that you are a miserable coward with shite reflexes and are not very good at video games generally

otherwise you might like to play the game as its creators probably intended

I am at like level 80 rn and I've only now realized how elden ring is way more open ended in terms of builds than other fromsoft games, like I have a character that's almost all intelligence and I'm able to be an extremely effective melee guy with weapons leveled up and cold infused

This speed run is pretty crazy, especially the late game boss strats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3Ffchik4BA

I'm having a surprising amount of fun dueling at Raya Lucaria Main Gate, considering that I'm not a big fan of honorable no-heal duels. And while there are builds and players that are not fun to fight against, I've also had a lot of good ones. And since I wasn't having a lot of fun in invasions lately, it makes sense to go back to basics since you have to be able to win a 1v1 before you can win a 3v1, and it's a good way to learn the different weapons & builds you come across.

I did it! 180+ hours and 161 levels in, I beat the Elden Beast & got the Ranni ending.

I kinda don't get the point of new game+ but that might just be because I am pretty close to total burnout with this game.

Around 250 hrs here and I'm at the Haligtree / Crumbling Cheesecake Azula.

Nice. The Sentinel outside the Farum Azula boss room is the only enemy in the game I legit could not get past without cheesing. And when I say "cheesing" I don't just mean using OP spells and such; I legit had to game his AI by positioning myself in weird places, etc.

Congrats zchyrs!

^^ you provide me hope! i'm gonna find elden ring

Thanks Jordan! You can do it, KM! I have found that, at least with this game, my stubbornness was an adequate substitute for pr0 g4m3r sk1llz

115 hours in and still haven't made it through raya lucaria. just finished radagon's wolf. though i also spent a few hours in gelmir/volcano manor after doing the abductor virgin shortcut. and then bailed because i didn't want to do things out of order.

the abductor virgin boss fight in the manor is one that i was proud to cheese. so annoying those two.

Just started poking around the flaming madness tower which I'd somehow missed before. I think because I ignored Varre's request, because why should I have to invade 3 ppl to finish a quest? :/ Anyway Ive put out the tower flame (handy tip: use beast repellent torch and you dont even have to deal with the rats), ran up to the church, but havent fought the invader yet because I've skipped the "do 3 invasions and let Varee cut yr finger off" bit.

I guess I dont have to do EVERYthing. I've got Skyrim syndrome here - loads of side quests and wandering about, no getting on with it.

I've been listening to the Bonfireside Chat podcast (very good btw) and they're at Weeping Peninsula right now, mentioning there is a whole lot of stuff to do with the Frenzied Flame over there which I must have missed. I feel like Madness is an underused mechanic in this game really, and the Frenzied Flame (considering how important the lore around it is) doesn't really get much airspace. Or maybe I'm wrong? I think the only time I've really come across it is at that tower Trayce mentioned (and of course below Leyndell sewers)

I still don't understand what Madness even does tbh

Bleed builds up quickly and does significant damage once the status bar is filled
Frostbite builds up less quickly and does significant damage once filled, then leaves you extra vulnerable to damage afterward
Madness builds up even less quickly but does enormous huge damage once filled, usually enough to kill you if you're not super-highly invigorated
And death blight builds up and just kills you instantly if it maxes out

The first time I played through Weeping Peninsula, I stumbled into the Ailing Town, noticed a new status bar that I didn't recognize, saw a bunch of scary people, murdered looted and left

The second time I was like "oh damn I know what's going on here" and I noticed the flame logo wooden great shield lying somewhere and thought "aha"

There does seem to be a connection between the merchants and the Frenzied Flame. They use madness spells when attacked, they say things like "burn away like the rest of them" when murdered. I think the wide assumption is that once the merchants were shut away to the Shunning Ground to effectively be genocided, they made contact with the Three Fingers there and came to accept the Frenzied Flame both as saviours and as a logical response to how they'd been treated

In all my hours of playing I don't think I ever encountered the sleep mechanic, not once, didn't fool around with any sleepy stuff either

I think I must have missed the Ailing Town somehow because that's what they were talking about in the podcast.

I assumed the Merchants were shut down there by the Golden Order because they worshipped the Frenzied Flame but you could be right

Been very much enjoying the lore videos by Smoughtown by the way

Yeah the Ailing Town (and the Demi-God Queen) are kinda easy to overlook, I just was fastidious about that particular area.

I had to jump up a rock a bunch of times to get there like the roof in ds3 lol

I stumbled on the demigod queen early on, which was very lucky as her staff has been excellent for my battlemage build.Still the only one I use, even though Ive got the meteor staff, lusat staff, etc.

there's a sleep sword laying around in a cellar in one of the caelid ruins. apparently sleep works on some bosses though i haven't played around with it much.

it's very funny to have mooks fall asleep in front of you then get skewered on the ground, vulgar militia-style. the sound effects are on point, too (as usual)

also, st trina is the biggest mystery to me right now, who the fuck were they

Sleep works on the godskin guys from videos ive seen. Ive only tried it once and it did work but I got hammered anyway.

I've got the sleep sword, but I'm too dumb to use it. I've used sleep arrows in the past and they seemed effective. I may make up some of the grease to play with it.

Currently: underground doing a job for tiny little ranni doll; meeting Mogh, but thinking I might explore the whole dirty bloody area before I head back and beat him up; touring the beautiful capital city of Leyndell.

Turns out Mogh did not want to be beaten up by me and continues to put up a stiff fight. Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy, went down quickly though (lol mimic tear and +4ing the serpent hunter), so now I have a blasphemous blade. Enjoyed a test run with that.

The size of Leyndell is slightly doing my head in. I can't accidentally panic-roll off a roof without finding a whole new area.

ST TRINA IS MIQUELLA

At an early point my bf asked “what’s this game about” and I said “I don’t actually know.. yet”

Three weeks later I gave him the full explanation of all the gods and their lore and everything, feeling quite pleased with myself

Yesterday morning he put on Hairspray (the reboot movie) and it was 9am and he was watching on his laptop and the small speakers made it even more shrill and awful as ambient sound

And I said “ok maybe we need to have a permission slip situation when it comes to ‘musical theatre at 9am’ in this residence” and he bristled and said “I have listened to you go on for HOURS about fucking Marika and Radagon so suck it up” and he turned the volume up

Oh god, that is harsh but oh so very fair!

> ST TRINA IS MIQUELLA

why? what have i missed?

Oh no I was riffing off a particularly ham-fisted revelatory plot point in the game

I'm still theoretically working on my level 40 sleep build but haven't felt like playing through the early game again (yet). Also haven't been able to coordinate with anyone to drop a second St. Trina sword from my first character the second -- if anyone plays on Playstation around 6 - 7pm CST, let me know!

xp lol ok then, you got me because iirc the text is ambigous re miquella's gender, if im not mistaken some item descriptions call them malenia's brother and others sister so i wouldn't be shocked if they pulled that one a second time

Reddit ppl have said that re St Trina too fwiw

So not only did I miss the Ailing Village, but I've only just happened upon the Frenzied Flame Village in Liurnia. Seriously, that whole area with the Mausoleum Compound and the Minor Erdtree etc is so hard to navigate - so many cliffs and dead ends. But no wonder I'd been thinking the Frenzied Flame was undermentioned in the game

Yeah you kinda have to go up and around. I'd tried to get to it via the path up thru the aboveground bit of Urd Ruins and kept running into dead ends, looking at the map and scratching my head. There *is* one spot you can squeeze up in thru o Torrent that gets you to a lake with a jumping (!) mausoleum. But otherwise I guess you were meant to come down from above.

Uhl Palace ruins I meant. Blargh. Too many placemnames.