Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

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?

God help me I'm thinking of buying both volumes of the strategy guide. Never done anything like that as an adult but… I've already spent 150 hours of my life in this world, so it might be nice to have a physical memento of the good times/you died times.

I know... I want them too. Are they really £40 each though?

Albinauric Farm is the one. Equip a golden scarab and you're good. You can get there early/mid game if you know what to do (although it's not exactly obvious what you're meant to do)

xp yeah, fraid so. fwiw the comparable From guides seem to end up going for a lot more 2nd-hand, but I'm not really thinking of it as an investment, just a nice thing to have.

I'd like to know more about what's in them. Would I garner more from them, or are they just reiterating what's on Fextralife? I'd love it if they were a bit more lore based than just game guides

full list of Elden Ring cheat codes or I'm not interested

Up, Down, Left, Right, circle, triangle, square, cross: completes Ranni's questline

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?

I totally agree. The whole leveling system, while a huge part of these games, makes experimenting with builds and weapons and stuff pretty fraught. If you find, I dunno, a sword that requires 50 strength and 45 magic to wield, there's no way to even try it out without investing all that time into stats you may not even want or need. Though the fact that so many great farming spots come late (at least via regular game progression) may coincidentally coincides with the slight uptick in difficulty (not that I found the end game enemies *that* much harder than earlier enemies, but when I had not much game left I was definitely more inclined to still farm a bit just to try out a few fresh approaches; like I mentioned, I wish I had gotten rotten breath earlier in the game, it's as OP if not more than even the nerfed Mimic or Horefrost Stomp).

There's a really easy early (like, super early) farming spot involving one of those giant balls that tries to kill you in Caelid. You can hoof it there fast to a nearby grace, avoiding all the bullshit/dogs/birds/dragons, then repeatedly get it to spawn and roll off a cliff for I want to say 2000 runes. That's nothing later, but early on that's a great fast way to level up enough to wield a couple of good weapons you can get early whose stats seems irritatingly out of reach.

Speaking of mimics, did anyone else play this with a slight sense of dread every time they opened a chest?

I dunno. Felt there were reasonable farms all the way through:

- Stonetroll at Stormgate who you can double-back and shoot with an arrow from a vantage point
- Stonetroll field in Limgrave near (I think) Artist's Shack
- Vulgar Militia field in Caelid
- Bird farm
- Albinauric farm

You'll come across these as you progress and level-up, and they'll reap more runes as they go along

i was pretty annoyed when i summoned another player for the first time to help me with the draconic tree sentinel, only to find that doing so prevented either of us from using torrent, which is an essential part of that battle. i did finally end up beating it myself a few tries later though, i guess i did just need to level up a bit more.

going back and reading through my posts on this thread has made me realize that since i am not great at the finesse/timing aspects of combat in this game, my most successful approach has been to make sure i'm slightly overpowered for each boss. like if level 50 is the standard to fight a certain dude, i'm better off waiting until i'm at level 60.

I felt the opposite re: levelling. Fully exploring an area before attempting the hardboss would generally leave me feeling overlevelled with the rune payout. I think I farmed outside the Beast Priest for about five levels on my first playthrough but that was the only incident

Regarding respecs, or trying things out, it had for me the same appeal as perusing baseball stats. I found myself equipping four of my favourite weapons and tweaking my stats with Rennala and eyeballing the damage output— it’s administrative pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless

It’s such a far cry from DS1 (or 3) where you were seriously limited by your decisions and options. You couldn’t respec at all in DS1! those resistance points you wasted are a shame you have to live with

What has amazed me even now with Elden Ring is the realization that pretty much every Ash Of War is useful to a degree, once you understand them. I’m playing strength focus right now (mostly duels and invasions around level 80) and it’s so so fun to be quick swapping to different weapons as is context appropriate

Last night I fought the balcony gargoyle before Shade Godwyn with a halberd and flaming strike and felt for the first time like it was a beautiful dance instead of a boxing match

Mm that was reductive toward boxing. Replace “boxing” with “shoving match”

Unless I misunderstood, to respec you need a larval tear, right? And those are rare. I just googled and apparently there are only 18 of them in the game (don't know if they ever drop), so that right there seems to *discourage* respecing, doesn't it? Why not just make them easier to come by? Likewise, the Ashes of War, there are so many, which is cool, yet to level them all up to try them out would take so much time/runes, right? Or items to +10/+25 your weapons; you are outright severely limited in how many weapons you can max short of playing the game over and over again. Rune arcs, on the other hand, are practically infinite, right? And yet I don't think I used them at all on my playthrough.

I keep thinking that I never farmed, which is mostly true, although I did do invasions as I went and that definitely can rack up some runes. I ended the game at 150.

Being higher level (ie being able to do more damage and also take more hits) just means you spend less time in a boss battle, and can make more mistakes. If you don't do much damage and can die in 1-2 hits, then you really need to know all the boss's moves and how to avoid them. And there's nothing wrong with needing a high mistake threshold! I love that the game accommodates different ways to play (ie low level challenge runs and blasting the boss with spells/spirits/summons).

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?

I think all the weapons are actually good! But the really flashy ones and boss weapons are endgame, yeah. Maybe to encourage you to go into new game plus and wreck shop?

Btw it's funny to do invasions and encounter weapon skills you've never seen before, but know how to dodge because they're all boss attacks. Miniature little Malikeths, Radagons, and Elden Beasts running around.

18 respecs is a lot! And if you really want to, you can back up a save and re-download it later.

I do agree about weapon upgrades, it would be so nice if you could downgrade your weapons and get the materials back. They made the Ashes of War so easy to swap around (those don't get levelled up btw), why not everything else.

i need 30 respecs

xpost Whoops, I was thinking of Spirit Ashes.

Between 18 respec opportunities and the very real fact that you can back-up your game and revert after trying out some stuff, I think I have zero complaints about this aspect

I don't know how to backup and revert my game, and tbh, that's more work than I'm willing to do, lol.

but wait...how many times have you respec'd your character?

i haven't reached the endgame level spike bullshit yet but i've been super overleveled since limgrave and i've never intentionally leveled up. combination of doing everything humanly possible in the areas i've been and making use of my golden runes whenever i need to. i would definitely appreciate better early game farming spots if smithing-stone miner's bell bearing 2 and 3 came up earlier in the game though. i've avoided messing around with my build because i don't want to waste smithing stones on weapons i may not like.

by "intentionally leveled up" i mean grinded for levels

but wait...how many times have you respec'd your character?

Twice? Three times max? But I might have done it more were it not limited. I have no idea how many larval tears I even had, but I know it wasn't 18.

yeah, i only have a handful. zero respecs. "i don't get no respec", etc etc

Apparently I respecced while drunk the other night. Honestly slightly surprised when I went in the next day & found myself wearing a silver tear mask with a lot of points dumped into arcane.

lol. Maybe your mimic did it while you were drunk?

tbf he's a lot better at fighting than me.
If that's his decision, I'll go with it.

Me, absolutely twisted, respeccing so I can farm a couple of bandit’s curved swords

Me waking up the next day with hundreds of human bone shards and zero bandit’s curved swords

Once again, I feel like this game has taken my breath away. Super nerdy post incoming.

This past week I've been tooling around with my Level 80 strength build, enjoying some duels and invasions. Considering that it feels as if this game is highly, highly developed, in its environments and its lore and its combat, I guess it kinda felt like the arsenal was a strange blind spot. It felt to me as if there were so many weapons that were less-useful, kinda also-rans, and I'm starting to realize that the opposite is true.

When I first started playing, I gravitated more toward the Somber Stone package-deal weapons... the Bloodhound's Fang is so resolutely powerful that I didn't feel as if I needed much else. But wait: you can power stance with another curved great sword. You can slap an Ash Of War on that other great sword and enjoy some variety.

These large swords hit hard and are powerful. But wait: smaller swords get off more hits quicker, so you can play with proc builds. Play for bleed, play for frostbite, play whatever.

The Ashes Of War seemed pitiful in comparison to the Somber Stone skills, at first, but wait: most of them just require some understanding of their mechanics, at least half of them are as powerful as the Somber skills with a few minutes of practice.

So half the Ashes Of War are essentially useless. But wait: the other half of them are actually just as powerful. I was amazed to realize that the most simple set-up, a Claymore with Storm Stomp, was powerful enough to challenge even the most complex of builds.

The lack of pause function makes changing weapons annoying. But wait: you can do it mid-combat if you're fast enough, swap from one weapon to another if you need range, or another if you need AoE, or another if your opponent has a shield that you need to deal with.

It's received knowledge from Dark Souls that split-damage weapons (across two or three stats) are less useful. But wait: once you pass level 150, split-damage is the way to go. Once three of your stats can get stratospheric, suddenly all these seemingly-mediocre weapons start to really shine.

There are many weapons that you have to fastidiously farm if you want access to them. But wait: these weapons appear unassuming, but are amazing. The Iron Greatsword has unbelievable damage for mid-level Strength builds. The Beastman Cleaver has very high poise break. The Bandit Curved Swords hit harder than their other quick slash cousins. Even the Vulgar Militia Shotel is suddenly a wonderful tool if you're looking for a bleed-y halberd.

There are many weapons that seem like wimpy counterparts to other, stronger weapons; the short spear, the Cleanrot knight sword. But wait: you can happily equip four (or more) of them at once because of their light weight, have different Ashes Of War on each, and be able to be more flexible and capable of keeping an opposing duelist off balance.

This morning I equipped a Cleanrot sword with Flaming Strike (for close combat), another with Piercing Fang (to outpace any of their slow build-ups), another with Vacuum Slice (to hit them from a distance), all on my right hand, like an arsenal of options. On my left hand, the same sword with Hoarah Loux's Earthshaker, for a surprise finisher.

I'm just blown away by how the arsenal of weapons boasts boast so many interesting chemistries, everything is looking viable all of a sudden.

Very cool and interesting post fgti

Out of interest, what do youse lot who play NG+ do? Are you going back through the whole game or skipping parts you already did? I spent 300 hours on my first game and I think I only missed a couple of quests and very little else, really, so I'm wondering if I really need to do, say Kenneth Haight's quest again or find every grace point or do all that mucking about in Nokron etc

i missed a ton despite also taking over 300 hours to beat the game and after trying to avoid it i caved and started a NG (not +) and have been exploring more thouroughly

i fucking despise open world games, why would they do this to me? seems like i won't be playing anything else this year

anyhow between then and now they nerfed the fuck out of the sellia hideaway boss. boo!
it was by far my favourite for coop

I’m addicted to “fun builds” and spent an hour last night using an AR calculator to discover what overlooked weapons were viable for my character

I predict that I’m gonna be spending a significant chunk of my next week off acquiring an exhaustive battery. Maybe I’ll take up archery? We’ll see

Archery is secretly OP, I think, I just haven't wanted to make a build that's reliant on crafting.

I fell in love with the frozen needle for my low level build, it's really fun. You have the fast rapier R1s, the R2 that shoots a ranged frost projectile and doesn't cost fp (!), which is amazing for outspacing people, and the L2 goes through shields.