Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I stopped playing this game abt a year ago, but not before preparing two characters I hoped to run through the DLC when it arrived. I don’t even remember their builds now. Idk if I’m even pressed! Hardcore gaming is such a lockdown thing for me. I had a pint last night with a friend and the bar’s insouciantly nerdy staff set the bar’s TV to play a TotK playthrough (I crushed BotW but haven’t played TotW at all) and felt a weird allergy, seeing it play out. Don’t cast my mind back to 2020-2022, you know?

That said, given From’s batting average with regards to Good DLC I will surely reboot Elden Ring when it does drop. Pretty sure my character was an RL 127 strength build. I’ve logged days of my life watching ChaseTheBro weapon testing videos

I've played these games so much that the mechanics come back extremely quickly (and I still fire up my low-level invasion character every now and then), but I've forgotten everything about builds and where everything is in the world. Like, I thought it might be fun to make a new build before the dlc came out, but after looking up build ideas the thought of going through everything again did not seem enticing at all.

Still very much looking forward to the dlc though.

Ok I started a new character that's pretty vanilla so far, basically forcing myself to find a strength build I actually like to play, probably with some pyro or madness mixed in? It feels good to play after time away, but I'm also reminded what a huge game it is.

I saw a post on a Playstation forum asking, rhetorically, where people leave their characters at the end of a game. Some people were like, the second the game ends I'm done, and I leave them wherever they are. Others were like, I bring them back to a place where they will be happy, like a home, or their start. And then others were like, I usually leave them wherever, but now I feel guilty and want them to be happy.

Which is a long way of saying, having finished this specific game but not deleted it or anything in the off chance I play my probably (iirc) OP character for the DLC, I have no idea where my character is! Or how to find my way out of that place, in the most mechanical and geographical senses.

Ha. I can't remember where you actually are after beating the final boss, but I did a bunch of pvp after finishing the game so I was definitely able to fast travel out of there.

I was really enjoying coming back to the game, I made it to Liurnia in fairly short order, then got gobbled up by the Abductor so that I could fight my way out of Volcano Manor and fast forward to Altus Plateau to get the weapons I thought I wanted. Currently messing around with some combination of Great Stars (big mace), morning star, and the starting halberd and longsword.

Then I started invading around level ~37 and I had forgotten how silly that can be in this game, you have to accept many more losses involving being rushed down by two phantoms with end game gear and crazy spells/ashes of war. So I guess I'll go back to enjoying pve again, and hopefully figure out a decent build with some tools to deal with those situations. And maybe it'll be nice to have an alt build to try more of the crazy weapons that the DLC will surely bring.

Funnily enough I stopped my last playthrough in that part of Volcano Manor you just described

That was the hardest part so far, lol. It felt like a bit of rng, I got better at dealing with the two of them but also one time my spirit summons lasted more than two seconds for some reason.

Getting the hang of my build, it felt a bit better tonight.

just dived back into this after giving Sekiro another play-through (though I've never been able to beat the final bad guy in that). I've gone for a two-hand Samurai build, thinking of focussing on bleed build-up. I'm a shield guy so it's a learning curve! Guides to builds seem to either be far too specific (Fextralife- Samurai Moonveil build anyone?) or so generic as to be meaningless. Does anyone have recommendations for build guides?

What's the sweet spot for you? I used to be bleed, and this looks basically accurate & not too specific:
https://www.vg247.com/elden-ring-arcane-dex-bleed-build

that looks like a happy medium, thanks. I'll go down that sort of route and then maybe specialise further later on with one of the builds listed here: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Builds

I can't remember what the build I did was, but once I had one that inflicted (I think) something like four different status effects at a time, which was pretty funny. Useless for PVP of course, but kind of hilarious

arcane/bleed is good as well because iirc it massively scales scarlet rot dragon breath attack. i’ve gone in again with a strength build to warm up for the dlc. haven’t completed haligtree yet with my main build either. thinking of respeccing.

Yeah my initial build was a pretty epic Faith/Arcane build - a dragon blood priest if you will, used Mohg's spear and Rivers of Blood as weapons and all the dragon communion spells coupled with that epic Dragon Communion Seal, which scales with arcane insanely well. Was a ridiculously powerful beast of a build.

FWIW I'm now one three fingered Flame of Frenzy ending away from platinuming this game. Holy shit. And I was hesitant to play this at first - I'm now nearly at 200 hours of gameplay wtf

DLC can't come quick enough

I'm not a big fan of fextralife/youtube builds, I say use whatever feels fun and build around that. Moveset is queen. A lot of weapons put out a lot of damage, but are too slow or not versatile enough (I like to have a good selection of horizontal sweeping attacks, pokes, etc). And in this game it's pretty easy to fit in magic and adapt weapons to whatever stats or hybrid build you want.

I wouldn't say my main build was a 'bleed build' exactly, but the katanas do build up bleed naturally, I used Bloodflame Blade as my main buff, and kept some (frozen?) claws on as well for bloodhound's step and extra burst damage.

yeah that’s a good point. the whetstones pretty much allow you to do what you want in terms of effective scaling iirc.

thanks all. I agree on the Fextralife builds, a lot of them seem to be "get this very specific weapon and this Ash of War then spam this one attack through the whole game". Not much fun. That said some of the routes they identify are pretty amazing- the flexibility is astonishing even compared to previous Soulsborne games.

The first trailer for #ELDENRING Shadow of the Erdtree will be revealed in 16 hours. Join us at 15:00 UTC.https://t.co/vdG8dJvcet pic.twitter.com/lBbKJYxW2z

— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) February 20, 2024

(that's in about 45 minutes, fwiw)

i am hoping this is trolly as fuck

lol there was a countdown, and when it reached zero ... another countdown started.

I am going to watch this, how fun!

346k people watching!

Oh shit! June!

YES

687k by the end! Fun seeing all the "Praise The Sun" and "Umbasa" and "finger but hole" in the chat. New environments and weapons look amazing. Kinda wished Miquella wasn't destined to be "another boss" and had a more complicated relationship w Mr. Tarnished but there it is

In From games, *you* are always ultimately the boss.

Ooooh, (Elden Ring) finally! I like June for this, that fits into my 2024 schedule. :)

They sure showed a lot of bosses in that trailer.

Yeah, it kinda makes me wonder if this DLC is gonna be a boss rush. I wouldn't be super into that, but who knows. It looks pretty expansive.

I am particularly excited to unleash some Street Fighter-ass flying kicks in a From game.

ELDEN RING!

I bet it's going to be massive. Souls games had pretty sizeable dlc areas (I forgot that DS2 had *3* separate dlcs with 9 bosses total, DS3 was split into 2 with 6 bosses total, etc) and I imagine this will be comparable, if not much bigger since that seems to be the ER house style.

surprised they've not gone down the "cosy farming sim" route, but apart from that it looks great!

This is the first From DLC I'll be getting in real time. In the past, have the DLCs been hidden? That is, do you have to explore to find them? They seem like they'd be that way, based on where they've been in past games, and its very nature makes "Elden Ring" even more primed for discovery.

Also, I just realized this is $40 and apparently even has a collector's edition. Does not sound like mere DLC.

Oh, and it's 60gb, too, which is the size of the base game. That's crazy.

― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S), Wednesday, February 21, 2024 3:58 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Miquella's Dream Ranch

messmer looks like a asshole

absolutely stoked.

In the past, have the DLCs been hidden? That is, do you have to explore to find them?

Yes, in my limited experience, which is DS1's DLC, which I needed a guide to find. The trailer here seems to indicate that the entry to the DLC is via Miquella's egg in the Moghwyn Palace.

lol, affirming my worst fears, "Miquella's egg in the Moghwyn Palace" doesn't ring any bells for me.

That's Moghwyn's Palace in shot at the v beginning of the trailer, and suggests also that the opening spec for the DLC will be quite high? Mog's Palace is a pita.

Is it in the boss room? Definitely a check on your level/skill/ability to summon friends and hide in a corner.

Finding the entrance to the dlc is always a fun little community game...Dark Souls 1 was very obscure, Bloodborne too (you had to get grabbed by the right invisible Lovecraftian monster iirc), but DS3 was pretty straight-forward (talk to the new npc in a low-level area, and warp from the final boss area respectively?).

I bet that if I put my summon sign down tonight there will be a lot of people trying to beat ol' Mohg.

I have no idea how anyone found the DS1 DLC without a guide

Where are people seeing that his name is Messmer the Impaler?

Well, even so there's an Impaler's Catacombs on the Weeping Peninsula, so that's interesting

Is it in the boss room? Definitely a check on your level/skill/ability to summon friends and hide in a corner.

I am particularly excited to unleash some Street Fighter-ass flying kicks in a From game.

and i take it the full crucible knight move set wasn’t available before? you cd get the tail but don’t recall the winged attack?

Ya that's new for sure.

I had to confirm, but you can get to Moghwyn Palace very early using the medal you get from Varre's quest (which I just did on my new character). So that makes even more sense as a dlc entrance, for masochists who want to do it at low levels (although I'm sure people will be doing this as a way to rush and get crazy dlc weapons on their early game builds).