Lurker > HeroDelTiempo17

Man, even if Trump literally dies he'll get a ton of write-in votes just because Q will insist he's not dead and just hanging out with JFK junior to test the true believers.

htaeD posted...

Greatbow has never been stellar to me
Rockslide ftw

It's longer range and the shot fires faster while dealing more damage. The point is you can nuke things from very far away. In the overworld this lets you one-shot (or close to it) individual enemies from a mile away which the rocks can't really do but for Radahn it just lets you get more distance from him while the summons distract him.

(Also there will come a point where you throw the meteorite staff into the trash and then the rocks get a lot worse)

Well yeah obviously if you show up with 60 int and endgame spells you can blow him up but a sorcerer trying to do Radahn early probably already has access to Greatbow.

htaeD posted...

Its just that I feel I am close enough to do it with the help of the summons.
But maybe I am just too stubborn/prideful
My magic is high enough but my vigor is 24
(even then I feel like I will still die in one hit from just one rock or the impossibletotellwherehelands Radahn)

Whoever said Vigor didnt matter to mages (not on this board) must have great reflexes

Oh if you're doing sorcery then I have two words for you: Loretta's Greatbow.

I have been using spellcasting catalyst in off-hand this entire game and...I just figured out you can cast spells on horseback (or equip your off-hand item) by trying to two-hand.

I am 100 hours into the game.

I'm going to scream

swordz9 posted...

Disney has just been having Pixar movies go directly to Disney+ instead ever since Soul I think. If Im not mistaken Onward was their last theater release and even that went to Disney+ fairly quickly.

Right, and they haven't been telling Pixar about this in advance, they've been making decisions on the fly which leads to weird stuff like the Black Widow mess.

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/disney-pixar-same-sex-affection-censorship-dont-say-gay-bill-1235200582/

Well to be honest, given stuff like this I'm almost certain there is a lot of tension between Disney and the Pixar staff we just don't know the details about.

Is there actual controversy? Besides dunking on that one reviewer I haven't seen any.

And I kind of doubt Disney is punishing Pixar for creative decisions - from my limited outsider perspective there's a lot of signs they were trying to line up a critical and commercial hit. They've got an award winning producer, it's hyper-targeted to millennials as well as kids, flashy animation, and big name producers on the soundtrack who I literally did not know about until the credits rolled (Finneas aka Billie Eilish's brother producer and Gorrannson who is Gambino's producer and scores a lot of Disney's blockbusters). And then they just. Decided not to market it for whatever reason.

Just watched it

Very, very easily a top tier Pixar movie. God damn. I can't believe how hard Disney is screwing this movie over.

The animation alone makes it worth the watch. Luca had great animation and this is not only a step up, but it's moving in the direction of something like Spider-Verse or Mitchells vs Machines which have this very expressive cartoony style I absolutely adore.

So the thinking is literally that if foreign governments and companies hurt Russian civilians, they will hate their own government more than those foreign actors?

how dare you ask this question without giving any context

Thinking about it in terms of cars is a trap. I'm sitting in an office chair - there's 5 wheels. But wait! Each individual wheel is actually two wheels put together. If you consider a large building with many doors like an office or hotel, you have to consider like...blinds? Use pulleys. Wheels. Sliding cabinet drawers? They're on wheels.

Unless you are defining wheels solely as vehicular transport, it is easy wheels.

This is an easy wheels when you consider machinery and gears

Yeah, most of Caelid is definitely "supposed" to occur after Altus. With some exceptions: the Town of Sorcery for example is roughly equivalent with late Liurnia or early Altus, which makes sense because there is a sidequest that can be started there that runs through the plateau.

This is basically the Dark Souls 1 graveyard all over again but on a massive scale, and the game itself tricking you into doing this with the lift while hiding the route that's actually in line with a normal level/difficulty curve. In fact, one NPC calls it a "coward" route to intentionally goad you into doing Caelid instead. Unreal amounts of pranksterism on display.

Leafeon13N posted...

I want to bang my head against a wall.

I was literally asking I can understand the reasoning, not so you can passive-aggressively give yourself a concussion.

Lightning Strikes has presented some reasonable takes about the actual mechanics at play here, it's not a ridiculous ask!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

War strategy is a game, but not a fun one. And perhaps part of why I think people feel differently about Advance Wars is a matter of audience. A lot of the people who play shooty shooty bang bang games wouldn't be able to figure out a strategy game like Advance Wars. I don't think those people could figure out war, either.

Respectfully, the people doing actual wars can not figure out wars, so I don't think this factors into the equation at all.

I mean if the answer is legitimately "the goal is to completely and indescriminately cripple Russia's economy" that's fine, it's just that citizens demanding better doesn't have much to do with that at all!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I can agree with this, but it's based on tone. Advance Wars is a game meant to test skills and it also has a more lighthearted tone, so people can appreciate it as a game and not take it as exemplifying the real deal. Duty Calls has a gritty, realistic tone so certain kinds of people think of war in the manner is presents. It's subconscious, and not everyone is like this, but an FPS gets people to think of war as a "game."

I don't think I can take this argument seriously because they are both gamifying different aspects of war despite tone. CoD is gamifying the violent, personal aspect while Advance Wars is gamifying the strategic aspect. Civ is doing the same thing and it's also cartoony, not as much but I wouldn't call it "gritty" or "realistic."

And the strategy of war being gamified is super obvious if you look at all the armchair military strategists that have popped up over the last few weeks. Or like, the fact that our military literally plays war games and that's where strategy gaming originates from in the first place.

......wow I think I got WAY off topic here lmao. I'm not arguing that Advance Wars or other games did this just that our society's understanding of war is already heavily gamified

Undecided but leaning towards "no" because I honestly don't see what this accomplishes other than PR for the companies involved. Certainly not nearly as effective as targeting specific Russian officials and institutions.

To those saying it puts pressure on citizens: how? What is the proposed mechanism here? Normal protesting seems laughable and as mentioned the only ways I see change happening is through a violent revolution or organized labor strike. Sanctions that primarily affect ordinary Russian citizens seem blatantly counterproductive to both of those goals, plus you run the risk of displacing animosity from the Russian government to these companies.

We actually saw this play out in miniature with the Sims 4 gay wedding drama that happened right before this, which was a total political mess that didn't accomplish much of anything. And now EA is back to not selling in Russia for entirely different reasons, which is very ironic.

Ok, I figured it might be that one. I've been doing it but put it on hold when I needed to defeat a boss.

Dumb question: how do you get up on lto the cliff in southwest Liurnia? The one above the Albinauric Village. I couldn't figure it out and was assuming it was tied to a questline or teleporter somewhere but I'm starting to suspect I'm just missing something.

I have just discovered the frost stomp and was coming in here to go "hey what the fuck why is this skill so fucking good"

My dumbass self 70 hours in going like "oh weapon arts are strong huh"

Yeah, unique weapons are almost always like that, but previously normal weapons were competitive with them. I think unique weapons also seem to be much better this time around.

In past games the strat for damage was to pick a physical stat to scale (STR/DEX) and then use your casting stat to apply weapon buffs on it to double-dip on damage. I don't know if that's still the case, it definitely seems less convenient in an open world and I haven't found any particularly great buffs yet.

I think crafting pots is pretty underrated, even as a mage I keep a supply of firebombs to have an idiot ranged attack that doesn't use FP, also I don't have any other access to fire which stuns certain enemy types. Some people have success with the status inducing throwables but I have not.

Also you eventually get the ability to craft consumable weapon buffs which are very good if you are using a type of weapon that can be enchanted.

Xiahou Shake posted...

I definitely agree that the overall boss design has changed a ton since DeS but mixing in stuff like roll catchers, combos, grabs and all the other unique stuff we see in this game makes bosses far more interesting to me personally. It's fun never knowing exactly what a new boss is going to bust out. It's never come close to feeling "unfair" to me personally when you get so much of your own nonsense to throw out - player characters have never been more powerful in this series so it makes perfect sense for bosses to answer in kind.

Oh I agree, I just think we've moved past the point of 1v1ing a dude in a room being the default type of boss. They just can't make a game full of perfect fights like Artorias. I'm still probably only halfway through the game and fought probably less than half the bosses themselves but this is the point I've realized I am expected to be trying to break bosses or using summons more often than not.

Re: the bosses, I feel a similar type of way but it's hard for me to hold it too much against them because I think this is a natural consequences of trying to design fights that are still challenging to series veterans. At this point, we've kind of seen it all.

I played the Demons Souls remaster this year and let me tell you - game's easy for me now! DeS bosses are weird because they do a lot of gimmick fights (which for better or worse have returned in Elden Ring), but every time I got to a classically "Soulslike" boss that used to be a huge roadblock (Flamefucker, Penetrator, Old King) it was just a stomp. That's because these became bread-and-butter souls fights where you are learning and dodging simple attack patterns.

Fights have changed a lot since then - look at how many bosses in this game have weird delays on their attacks, very long combo strings, move erratically, or do multiple of these (hi Margit). We're being challenged in different ways. I think the DS3 DLC really shows this where you have stuff like Gael who is designed this way, or on the other hand you have Freide which I think is also a good fight but the difficulty just comes from it being so long. But then you also have complete bullshit like that dragon, the wolf master, or the duo demon fight. Now in Elden Ring we have a pretty aggressive numerical curve and there's the constant potential of being one or two shot. For all the things they've done to give you better tools for fights like summons and the horse, they've also had to get more creative (or not) with challenges.

See also Bloodborne and Sekiro, which are able to fairly challenge Dark Souls players by changing how fights work on fundamental mechanical levels.

Tldr: I think we have passed a certain threshold for "fair" fights and if we go back then the entrenched players are going to find the game too easy. People were talking about how the game is either too easy or too hard and that sweet spot is probably gone.

ninkendo posted...

just finished all the Ranni stuff and....

THEY MADE A GREAT SWORD AN INT BUILD CAN USE?!

I've already found one of those without completing the quest! There's one on the troll knight dude right in front of the Carian Manor boss.

They seem to have gone really deep on making sure there's at least one basic weapon type available for almost every build. Barring weird stuff like twinblades probably.

I already said zero preparations Hyrule Castle is the best part of the game but Gerudo Village (ft. femboy Link) is a strong #2

Caria Manor is basically just hammering in the "you really do not have to fight everything you see" lesson this game is all about.

Just leave! They can't stop you!

CassandraCain posted...

You can still beat any boss solo even without spirit ashes. There are people, I am one of them, who will not be happy until they beat every boss by themself. Spirits actually make things a bit too easy.

There are also people who do Level 1 builds who refuse to level up. I'm sure there are some people who refuse to fight open world bosses on the horse even though they're clearly designed for it.

The point isnt that it's impossible, it's that you are in challenge run territory.

Yeah I've been finding there are too many bosses against multiple opponents that are designed (or maybe less designed) in a much different way than previous FromSoft games to ignore Spirits. I just found a boss that is two Crucible Knights and there's no way I can deal with that otherwise!

I've been feeling a bit fatigued in general. Especially when I decided to scour Liurnia for goodies for my sorcerer build - I really felt incentivized to do that. Going through every side dungeon I found was getting exhausting. But at soon as I go to a new area, or step into a classic Soulslike dungeon, or find a unique boss in the open world, the magic is back.

I definitely think it's good to break the 100% mindset with this one but also agree that it's hard to do with a Soulsbourne game. All of this side content really reminds me of Chalice Dungeons (and not just the ones that have literal Chalice Dungeon designs). They're semi-challenging and there's a decent reward, but a ton of repeated filler content. Doing all of the main Chalices for the completionism aspect was similarly tiring. That's ok though! In Elden Ring this stuff shines more when I'm just fucking around doing them as a distraction from a story boss I'm stuck on.

Spoilers for General Radahn

https://twitter.com/TracyH_Art/status/1500479040016297985?t=8MWhNT_x1Qk8hCcNlloa0A&s=19

UshiromiyaEva posted...

DS3's is fine its just....a little boring?

How the hell is fighting the reincarnation of all Dark Souls 1 player characters boring to you

Just got access to the General Radhan fight - though I think I am drastically underequipped for it lol.

Got a question though: the NPCs you can summon here don't die for real if they die when you clear the fight, right? I'm confused because Blaidd and Alexander are really here and everyone else was a ghost, but they all have the same phantom message (except Patches who returns to his world).

I got a question about the big beastman cleric and his questline:

I made the mistake of attacking and eating shit to the huge guy outside the church and now the cleric is aggroed at me. I can't request absolution at the church. D is still friendly. Is this just part of his quest? He said something weird after I gave him my fourth or fifth deadroot but didn't attack. Also when I went to give him the root before this, he was gone from the church. I heard what could have been him howling but wasn't sure so I warped back in to the area and he was back. Did I miss something?

I found him a lot earlier but I put in some more attempts on Bell Bearing Hunter.

This guy is Crucible Knight 2.

Happy to report I have finally found a sorcery that is both Cool and Good after over 50 hours.

Meteorite with the Meteorite Staff is good as shit. Dumps your entire FP bar very quickly to haphazardly nuke stuff which is very effective against large groups or big things that get hit multiple times.

MoogleKupo141 posted...

if Sages Cave is what Im thinking of, there was a note outside the boss door that said like wolves needed ahead so I summoned the wolves and it helped a lot

also yeah I've been trying to put in a good number of attempts on each boss before using summons which has been a fun compromise for me but the instant I realized the gimmick I said fuck it and summoned wolves. Still died once or twice!

Oh well no wonder - my highest unique weapon is +4 and normal is +8! Don't think I have the mats for any higher. Just haven't explored much beyond Limgrave and Liurnia - I was planning to hit the major points of interest there and move on but upon investigation found that I really need to scour this place for magical loot.

Build wise I'm rocking the Carian Knight magic straightsword I found that is basically identical to the crystal sword except better magic scaling and a cooler weapon art (that I always forget about). I felt pretty owned for discovering it after investing so much time and energy into the other one, but I have countered this by choosing to power stance both. It rocks.

Spellwise I have STILL not found any magic that outperforms the bread and butter spells. The cool and pretty comet that needs 34 int is still worse than Greater Glintstone spam. I'm making my peace with it - at least my build functions! I have a variety of staves now that each boost a particular type of magic - I'm thinking what could be happening here is you need to specialize in a school of magic and use the appropriate staff. I want to test it but I haven't got the materials to upgrade anything past the Meteorite Staff's raw power.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

OK yeah

Don't make the mistake of thinking Atlas Plateau is going to be high end stuff.

Everything in every underground area is harder than these enemies, at least in the outskirts area around th capital and towards the mountain. I killed an NPC invader in one combo.

I mean what's your level? I'm just under RL60 and while I no longer have much of a problem mopping up Liurnia and didn't struggle too bad with the "coward's path," the beefy enemies up here are significantly beefier.

I did two dungeon bosses around where that puts you up and it's kind of a mixed bag. One had fairly low HP (but was obnoxious), the other was fairly tanky (and was also obnoxious).

Probably still not endgame though considering the game points you here and I've found worse when I was teleported to Farum Azula

swordz9 posted...

Right. Im just going to keep saving currency. Thankfully this event we have is super easy.

Ugh I guess I need to log in and do the event. Both events! I haven't even unlocked the Enkanomiya exploration one - I was exploring the normal map and got to the second act of the story quest with the towers and stopped. Elden Ring has ended my friendship with Genshin.

I put off the first dragon for much longer than I should have and was surprised at how easy it was! I got the wrong impression because doing co-op pools I had been summoned for it multiple times and eaten shit each time. Fighting these things in co-op, on foot, with the multiplayer boss buff, is 100% the wrong strategy. Horse is OP.

Got distracted while clearing out a different area and made it to the plateau last night.

I find it very amusing that the hint NPC presents you with two paths to get there, calls the one I took the "coward's path," and said cowardly path involves going through a medium sized dungeon of singing hell bats, defeating a dragon, and then coming face to face with a second, even tougher dragon.

Yeah it's insane how much of the map is open from the start with no major story progression needed.

I've only explored those two areas, got my second great rune, and was told I can enter the capital now, which is the first story gate I've found - though I'm skeptical there was no other way in! Haven't been over there.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Oh? What's the shortcut to the blue zone from the green? Or is it from red?

From the first area:

On the broken bridge leading there with the hint lady telling you there's a way to use the castle to go forward, you can simply drop down and walk around the edge of the castle.

One day Sara will rerun on a different banner that I actually want so I can get more cons

You don't need to pass any hurdle to get to blue zone!

_stingers_ posted...

I'm playing confessor so hopefully one day I'll find an actual faith based weapon but holy flail will do for now

also lol

Don't worry you will