Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Age of Stars means you don't become Elden Lord. I believe the idea is that you leave the Lands Between with Ranni as her consort. I don't know what this means for the Lands Between though. As far as I understand, there is no ending that leaves the Lands Between ungoverned by a higher power

I've never got the hang of guard counters either and basically stopped using shields altogether as soon as I learnt how to dual wield. I'm also seriously terrible at jump attacks, despite having a build which is geared towards them (dual wielding greatswords). For some reason I always end up missing the attack and then getting stabbed in the back.

I'm not sure if it actually matters, but for some weapons it seems to work better if you trigger the attack closer to when you hit the ground (as opposed to earlier in the jump)?

Valiant Gargoyles was maybe my fave boss fight tbh. The other duo bosses (Godskin, Abductors) felt unfair

I love guard counters. I’m in love with my lance and am currently enjoying assisting others with the final bosses in a full Haligtree Knight cosplay. Lance+shield makes tough enemies (knights, revenants, Crystallians) a breeze

I installed DS2 again, it’s the one From main game I haven’t spent time on. I previously found it janky and poorly designed but after 300+ hours of Elden Ring these deficiencies have become charming in relief

I didn't have that much trouble with the other two duo fights, since I was pretty leveled up by then, but the gargoyle fight was a real pain. I *think* I only prevailed after one fell off a cliff?

I didn't deal with guard counters either, they were as unreliable/unpredictable as parrying. As with most of the other games, as applicable, best strategy for me was always to be strong enough to beat an enemy down, which may be why I struggled the most with high-poise enemies.

Loved that Valiant Gargoyles story but they were probably my least favorite duo, in that I had to kill one before the other spawned and reached me in order to do it. For the others, it felt more reasonable to fight them both, as long as I kited them around. I just did the Abductors on my level 35 character recently and it was a fun challenge.

Godskin Duo melted like butter for me, and I hardly remember Valiant Gargoyles. Maliketh was a piece of piss. But the Tree Sentinel before him was SO FUCKING HARD. Malina was the toughest ever.

I definitely died more frequently to the Draconic Tree Sentinel in Farum Azula (and the Crucible Knight! wow!) than I did to Maliketh (who I'm pretty sure I beat on my first try).

Yep. Meanwhile my friend slaughtered that Tree Sentinel but had terrible trouble with Maliketh

i fought the draconic tree sentinel with honor by cheesing it with scarlet rot and then running away 3 times

i kind of stalled out on this game. partially bc i haven't had as much time to play. but mostly bc i couldn't beat the knight protecting the entrance to leyndell, so i decided i probably needed to level up more, but i'm just not doing great at accumulating enough runes to level up. i guess i need to research some rune farming tactics, though playing the same area over and over again does not sound very fun.

I got stuck at the same place, took a breather. I came back a bit later and found a different entrance to Leyndell (which I call Washington DC), but what really helped was exploring older areas a bit more - not just farming runes in well-known places, but finding a couple more caves, leveling up weapons and summons a bit more.

Now I’m at a similar punch point in the mountain tops, but at least I know I’m running out of New Huge Areas to find, so I’m trying to push through

With PS4 fog/draw distance + mountaintops of the gods fog, plus getting caught in a snowstorm up there, I have no idea how I managed to find a cave there last night! If the storm ever dies down or my ps4 learns to have better graphics, I’ll probably discover that this cave entrance was obvious and unmissable in the middle of a sunshiny field. In the moment, though, it was much more like “whoa! Cave!”

Still taking through post-game. There is so much stuff I missed in Caelid which would have really helped me earlier in the game. Currently trying to grab all the Physick knot tear things

Raking

Karl, did you find that Rise in the Mountaintop which you can only access via an invisible path demarcated by very thin wispy white cloud outlines which you can't see because everything around there is white?

For the entrance to Leyendell, if you used a furled finger I think there's an NPC summon there to help with the tree sentinel.

xpost dog latin, maybe i did? there was an invisible path, like a bridge (marked by blood stains and a couple messages, including one from an ilxor that said something like "NOT DOWN!"), and i followed it straight up to the edge of a tall building (the rise?), at which point i could not figure out how to get in, and turned back, shamefully

also, you know those winged/bat creatures that are in the mountaintops (and also other areas...maybe these are the cold weather variants)? the ones that stay high up in the air, dart in close to hit you, then fly back up again?

i *HATE* those

i would and could and will take down 10 giants in a row before approaching a group of 4 to 5 little wingdings

I’ve been playing this game so long and only just found the extra pots in Azealia’s Grave (the warpy warp puzzle dungeon)

Still missing one cracked, one ritual

i have never, ever crafted a pot (cracked or ritual)

i should probably check that out, but with my (horrible) faith build, it always seemed like pots were the replacement for incantations, for players who aren't focusing on magic?

I would call them a poor substitute for spells or incantations, but they can be handy for proc-ing certain kinds of damage/status effects (Rot Pot is a particular favorite)

i fought the draconic tree sentinel with honor by cheesing it with scarlet rot and then running away 3 times

This was me. The way I see it is, in almost every battle the bosses, if not all enemies, have the upper hand. Limitless stamina, stupid hit boxes, crazy moves/powers/weapons, and so on. So I figure if there's anything the game allows me to do to make it easier, that means the developers are OK with that. For example, my aforementioned gargoyle over the cliff. There is a cliff there, *I* can certainly fall off the cliff (and did, often), so why not the gargoyles? They have wings, if the devs didn't want them to fall off the cliff they wouldn't.

Mountaintops, I think the storm dies down if you kill the dragon (which I never did). The invisible bridge, it's a PIA that really requires using those magic glow stones.

I'm not sure I ever crafted anything or used pots or perfumes. I think I did craft some poison darts once or twice, which were useful. Maybe anti poison/rot stuff? I found the places where I was most likely to get rotted or poisoned, it happened so often and so fast that using the boluses was pointless, since I was just going to get rotted/poisoned again. Better to just heal through it and get where I needed to go.

kind of annoyed i can't do the varre quest without having an online membership

do you all feel like the online aspects of this game make it worth a PS+ membership alone? now that you can get the cheap essential membership i'll probably try it out at least for a few months. but i'm not really interested in invading/dueling/etc, at least i don't think i am. but even that brief morning where i could see the messages and had the option to summon help was pretty enticing.

hard to say... i never did PvP but i find the messages feature in souls games when there are a large number of players to be something special

tim rogers said that the message system is a callback to japanese arcades where there would be a clipboard on the cabinets for people to share tips asynchronously. thought that was super cool

I can't imagine playing any of the ds games or elden ring without the online component, it's such a big and funny part of the games to me

thanks, i signed up for it

yeah I don't really play any of the online stuff, but going through these games with the messages, calling for help, and and seeing ghosts of people running around makes the games feel so alive. I'm relatively new to the ds series, but when I played the first one it was during a big 10 year anniversary event that the community had and there was tons of online activity everywhere in the game. Really confusing at first because I didn't know what all the blood stains were, etc, but it gave the games a unique feel.

I'm honestly impressed how well all of these games work in single player mode, though I can always tell I am missing out.

xp agree - I don't invade or duel etc but when I have to play in offline mode it does feel too empty - I miss all the messages and bloodstains and fleeting ghosts.

Apparently the latest patch actually assigns a value to the various Golden Runes etc. I would have liked that at the time, to know how much each was worth.

That’s easy - they’re worth some, many, a great, and a great many!

Ive used pots a bit. Best use for pots and warming stones is to have them loaded for use when you summon your mimic tear, because they will also use them, and they seem to have unlimited supplies (i havent checked this but it seems so?)

Was VERY helpful fighting Morgott, my tear mans kept popping down warming stones so he would self heal.

And those Redmane Fire pots are great, they have a really massive firebomb kick.

I finished collecting all the crystal tears just for the craic today.. looking forward to NG+ while feeling daunted about starting all over again

after about 1000 tries, i finally beat malenia. the winning strat ended up being me and mimic me brutally beating her down with two handed greatswords

the waterfowl dance counter ended up being "hoping she's targeting my mimic"

jordan just watched your malenia fight and holy shit! popping open the inventory menu and using a rune arc! well done, i can barely manage to juggle my dpad slots mid-battle.

my aggro strat involved using the moonlight greatsword projectile to position her against a wall and stun-lock her, so just slightly more finesse than brute forcing it. i ended up going this route because it ended up being the quickest way to get to practice the second phase. spending 5+ minutes carefully whittling her down only to be annihilated by her first attack in phase 2 was not super fun

one thing i did learn is that you can bait her into making a move during the "standoff" periods during phase 1 with the moonlight projectile. she usually counters with the kick which is easily dodged and punishable

having the online options was enough to get me back in the saddle. i ran through varre's quest and the medal he gives you lets you transport to a part of the underworld that has some great rune farming options - lots of easy baddies worth 2.5k each

Thanks dave! Yeah, I still regret using the mimic in phase 2, but similarly it was taking me so long to get a clean phase 1 that I was getting psyched out by phase 2, and wanted to move on with the game. I've seen so many people do it by now that I think I could do it legit -- really the only difference in phase 2 are the added non-waterfowl jump attacks, and circling around behind her to avoid the scarlet rot blasts after she hits the ground. I don't know if I'll ever do another full playthrough though (but I'm still having fun with my low-level invader).

That makes sense about the moonlight blade during her idles, I've seen others use throwing knives etc to get her to make a move. I found that I could walk up to her and get in a quick R1 with the nagakiba (which is both fast and long) and still dodge her counterattack.

Lol, youtube just served me a video of a mod where every enemy and boss has been replaced with Malenia.

part of the underworld that has some great rune farming options

i never had the proper area-of-effect spells to use this place to farm effectively. my mid-game farming spot was the war-dead catacombs where i just let the enemies kill eachother. late game was the elphael area after the prayer room, where i could just backstab every enemy

Fwiw the best farming spot I found was in The Nameless Eternal City, where right by a site of grace is one of those living statues that spits fire. This one is mounted on a felled tree and, oddly, is facing away from you. It can't turn around, it's fixed in place, there are no other enemies, so it's just a sitting target, and if you have the golden scarab equipped it nets you something like 4000 runes a pop. Just go back to the grace and repeat. I kind of assume that's why this enemy is there at all.

the area described at the beginning of this article is where i've been farming - no spells needed. most of the enemies are asleep and don't attack until you attack. the hard part is getting to that area, but once you're there, it's pretty easy to rack up runes.

ahhh ok yeah i found that area after i'd already found the elphael spot where i could rack up 100k runes in 5 minutes

You can also bait a monster chicken in the distance into running off a cliff there, netting you something like 20K runes a pop.

Just started NG+. It's amazing how much gobbledegook I now understand. I feel like I've come back from a foreign language course

I fucking hate how the answer to every good farming spot and/or weapon is "oh you have to complete this end-game vast and complex area first". Whats the point of only having all the good shit once you're basically done?