Board 8 > Elden Ring Discussion Zone 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

hello here is a hot tip for you and yours

you know those invisible assassin guys who are a boss one time and also in that town outside the Haligtree and maybe elsewhere?

theres a torch you can buy from the hermit merchant shack merchant that makes them visible

other hot tip: I dont remember where I got them, but the Bloodhound Claws are super useful because they have a extra good version of Quickstep that maybe is actually faster than running always (not sure), but is definitely faster than running or backstepping when youre in lava or a swamp or whatever that impedes your ability to run

it was super helpful in a couple of the super annoying Heros Graves

Front Gate Watchmen dude was legit you untrustworthy fiends only have yourself to blame.

Now the guy who tells you that you ain't got no bitches, he's the one you need to slap some sense into.

Tagging for now

Explored a bunch, but haven't done a whole lot of actual progression (killed Margit but haven't continued exploring the castle yet). Found some caves, killed a ginormous bear in one of them.

Gonna throw myself at Radahn some more in an hour or so when I get off work.

LV66 but I have no idea where I should be for this fight.

I think Radahn was significantly more difficult than any of the bosses in the Atlus Plateau.

I did it first but I regret that.

I only did it out of paranoia to finish Ranni's quest stuff before anything could happen to put it in jeopardy.

I should probably go do more Altus instead of this but I'm stubborn.

I'm at my wits' end with Malenia. Nothing I do comes any close to working - it's all one immense RNG fest.

Tried solo at first and could barely take a third off her first health bar, once in about 10 tries. Said fuck it and Mimic'd, and then everything after that was pure RNG. Sometimes she wrecks me in phase 1, sometimes I make it to Phase 2 and my Mimic dies immediately to the rot, a couple times I made it to Phase 2 with a lot of flasks and a good chunk of health on the Mimic, but then it's a countdown until she OHKOs me with Waterfowl Dance. There's nothing I can do.

Technically topic 3!

I'm just about to finish the Ranni stuff and make my way to Atlus Plateau

Based on my progress these past two weekends in hoping to finish the platinum this weekend, but we'll see

I wasted a ton of time going through an area over and over only for it to have a boss at the end I am nowhere near able to do

ctesjbuvf posted...

Technically topic 3!

but its Discussion Zone 2

the other one was a Review Zone. Totally different.

Fastbreak posted...

I wasted a ton of time going through an area over and over only for it to have a boss at the end I am nowhere near able to do

This has been my experience as well...over and over again.

Also, the fact that Liurnia is still the southern part of the map is crazy! Now I've really got to go see how far north I can go...

Fastbreak posted...

I wasted a ton of time going through an area over and over only for it to have a boss at the end I am nowhere near able to do

Yeah. This was how I started the game! I spent a few hours doing suicide runs in the first grave area before ever even going outside...

Finally finished doing everything in Limgrave and the Weeping Peninsula. Might finally go to Stormveil Castle after 20 hours.

Yea I uh went against Radahn at level 45 because I really wanted to get Blaidd's quest going....it took many attempts

I think I completely missed Blaidd at this point. Whatever

OKAY what is the deal with this Miriem who instanty teleports away every time I try to hit her and then she oneshots me with the magic arrow bullshit

I had to chase her down with magic bullets of my own

I guess if you are a melee build you're expected to drop down on her from the rafters? But I had to glint missile her to death

I have found the giant ants
I repeat
I have found the giant ants

htaeD posted...

I guess if you are a melee build you're expected to drop down on her from the rafters? But I had to glint missile her to death

Yeah that's what I did. Getting to that point definitely wasn't easy though!

I had a really nice run on the first Haligtree boss and we had a power outage.

I used scarlet rot on Radahn and he ended up being a super easy gimmick fight, so it's kind of funny to see everyone talking about him like a super boss. Might have to try throwing hands with him more "fairly" next time around!

How'd you inflict him with scarlet rot?

so many glintstone dragons on this plateau

the boss giving 120K runes was nice thank you

I think Im gonna explore Altus before Caelid, unless I can mess up Rannis quest somehow by going Altus first

I think just as long as you don't step foot in the capital you're good

edit: looking at the steps for the platinum again I guess it's when you talk to Melina at the Giant Forge

For me, something weird happened and Ranni wasnt where she was supposed to be when I initially went there. I think maybe it was because I had gone to Radahns castle first and made Blaidd show up there, but I dont know.

but beating Radahn solved the issue and she showed up. I had definitely beeen to the capital at this point, so its not a problem

just finished all the Ranni stuff and....

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

MoogleKupo141 posted...

For me, something weird happened and Ranni wasnt where she was supposed to be when I initially went there. I think maybe it was because I had gone to Radahns castle first and made Blaidd show up there, but I dont know.

This exact same thing happened to me.

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.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

There's one on the troll knight dude right in front of the Carian Manor boss.

Yeah, I started trying to use this but already had the lordsworn gs with a cold weapon art, which I've been using any time my bleed isn't doing it for me.

More than any other From game, I think this one has the most build options by far. Making it easy to change up a weapon's base and scaling adds a ton of flexibility.

I bet the speedruns for this game are going to get crazy

On the whole the bosses are pretty disappointing. I'm on what I'm certain is supposed to be this games secret super boss and it just isn't fun to deal with these mechanics. Same can be said for basically every boss that has been a challenge. So much of what makes then hard are limited windows and one-shot potential. I get that the new Summon mechanic allows for more accessible fighting, though they went a bit too far to balance it out with these types of fights. The last few unique bosses I've fought have all been more annoying than anything.

To note, I don't think anything so far has been necessarily unfair besides Crucible Knight, but they just haven't been fun. When I look back on the franchise's best fights like Artorias, Fume Knight, Gael, etc. none of them have that one-shot potential, and it really feels like that's the only way they figured they could balance these fights out with the summoning.

Just my two cents. Still love the game, but as I get closer to the end, this has just been irking me. Regardless, these are some of the best individual levels From has created.

https://twitter.com/shineget64/status/1501266833177034755

asking the important questions

https://twitter.com/VIDEO199X/status/1500958372933169153

Man Caelid really is 'I have no time for this nonsense' territory

IMO they should have treated the summoned spirits like they have NPC/co-op - buff the HP or the stat of the boss, or give them some other buff to compensate, and then playtest and balance the fight under the assumption that the players is going at it without a summon.

I know that Mimic breaks the game wide open, but the solution to that is to nerf Mimic, not set up a whole bunch of even more broken bosses in its wake.

FWIW, I think I'm on the exact same fight as you are, tazzy, and I am having just as miserable a time.

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.

Demon's Souls is an absolute cakewalk nowadays. I don't die in it unless I fuck up a jump and fall off the world map, the game is so easy to destroy. 2 of my remaster runs were me waking up, starting a new game, and then beating it before dinner.

i haven't gotten to the endgame, but to those of you getting one-shot... how much vigor and endurance u got?

i've been matching my primary offensive stat with vigor and endurance and that seems to be working okay

the hard boss fights are where I kind of regret playing on PS4. The load times are just long enough to be irritating

Solfadore posted...

IMO they should have treated the summoned spirits like they have NPC/co-op - buff the HP or the stat of the boss, or give them some other buff to compensate, and then playtest and balance the fight under the assumption that the players is going at it without a summon.

I know that Mimic breaks the game wide open, but the solution to that is to nerf Mimic, not set up a whole bunch of even more broken bosses in its wake.

FWIW, I think I'm on the exact same fight as you are, tazzy, and I am having just as miserable a time.

I mean. They give you summons for a reason. If anything they should have buffed the crappy ones that die in one hit

Bosses feel pretty good to me if not a smidge easy overall (with a few exceptions) just due to both having so much experience with these games overall and there being so many different ways to crack this game wide open now. Overall I think it's a good thing that build diversity is so great and these are probably still balls hard if this is your first Souls game, I'd wager.

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.

Xiahou Shake posted...

Overall I think it's a good thing that build diversity is so great and these are probably still balls hard if this is your first Souls game, I'd wager.

You don't have to wager. Almost everything with a life bar at the bottom of the screen destroys me over and over again.

Let me ask a general question about merchants. Is there anything "must buy" from them? I've got the crafting kit (haven't actually crafted anything yet..), some cracked pots (again, haven't used), and the lantern (very useful). I'd imagine you don't need to buy any of the weapons and armor. Should you buy the notes, crafting books, etc. or is that all findable in the world?

Any cookbook or note, and I think a lot of the equipment, you find at a merchant is only going to be available from that merchant. You have to buy them if you want them.

some have stonesword keys, not sure if theres enough in the wild to open everything without buying them though

I bet theres more keys in the game than you actually ever need just based on there definitely being more Golden Seeds in the game than youre ever going to need.

I have a big key surplus right now because I was buying them whenever I saw them