Board 8 > Elden Ring Discussion Zone 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

ctesjbuvf posted...

I remember beating Margit right away too and then went on to lose like four times to some knight in a room where you had to grab a key like 10 minutes later. It be like that sometimes.

That knight was an asshole, to be fair

Btw fire?
Seems fucking useless against the hands since they snap out of their frenzy by the time you catch up to them rolling around

And then they just become utterly unphased by further fire attacks for no reason

Slowly but surely wrapping up a few remaining loose ends. Other than an optional fight in (endgame area spoiler) Farum Azula, I'm in the final stretch. To my shame, I've fully embraced the dark side and am now summoning Mimic anywhere and everywhere, even for fights that honestly are probably doable without (e.g. 1v1 boss at the end of the above spoilered area).

With how relentlessly aggressive and hard the endgame bosses are, I am now convinced they were balanced around the player using a weaker spirit summon - i.e. one that would survive for maybe a third of a lifebar, making it up to the player to choose what stage of the fight they want help for. But I can't be bothered to find that good-but-not-too-good summon, and if the choice is between no summon at all and suffering through bosses that can kill you in 2 hits while having mountains of HP and very small punish windows, or facerolling with the Mimic, I went with the latter. Still feel dirty doing so, but fuck it.

The above spoilered area was pretty good, though. Reminded me a lot of DS3 Ringed City in terms of difficulty, with the knight enemies in particular being very tough nuts to crack. I could have done without the Godskin gank, but Mimic trivialized it as always. Really shows how impossibly hard the Elphael boss is, that Mimic can faceroll everything else with no problem, and yet that fight is such an incredible struggle even with it.

Peace___Frog posted...

That knight was an asshole, to be fair

Yeah, lack of space and light was probably also part of it.

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.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

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.

Correct, it's tied to a questline. You can't access that just yet.

If you haven't done so already, go to NW Liurnia and complete the area there to start things off. And be patient - there are many steps involved.

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.

The Gaol boss in that area is suffering.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

The Gaol boss in that area is suffering.

100%. Fight lasted 10 minutes for me, I think? I realized it has no way to hit you if you just keep running and don't stop until it whiffs a jump attack. The cheese strategy works, but is so boring.

Huh, I think I activated the Redmane festival without doing either the grand lift stuff or the Ranni questline

Started a new game.

In 1 hour I have 40 Int and 20 mind with an S Int scaling Catalyst and I haven't fought any enemies yet.

The optimized early game rush potential is insane in this game.

htaeD posted...

Huh, I think I activated the Redmane festival without doing either the grand lift stuff or the Ranni questline

Yeah, that happened to me too. I don't know what triggers it. I assume going to Altus or maybe Mt. Gelmir.
I kind of regret trying to sequence-break this game. Stormveil and Liurnia were pitifully easy since I was way overlevelled when I did them, and I feel like I missed a lot of NPC interactions and/or broke some NPC quests

I did visit Atlus briefly yeah

Speaking of sequence breaking is it just me or does like, everything about Caelid feel like it's supposed to come after Altus, if not for the fact that you "need" part of the elevator key from there? I guess it makes some sense seeing as if I'm understanding the critical path correctly you can potentially completely ignore Caelid? Actually I'm still trying to figure out what you need to do in this game to get some kind of ending - it doesn't seem like much, funny enough!

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.

Leyndell is too big. I finally gave up trying to scout the area in an organized way not to miss anything. I just started wandering and ended up at the boss.

I also found out that beating the volcano manner boss locked me out of a side quest there, so thats exciting

UshiromiyaEva posted...

In 1 hour I have 40 Int and 20 mind with an S Int scaling Catalyst and I haven't fought any enemies yet.

Aside from the zombie dragon was there somewhere else you got a lot of souls?

Xiahou Shake posted...

Speaking of sequence breaking is it just me or does like, everything about Caelid feel like it's supposed to come after Altus, if not for the fact that you "need" part of the elevator key from there? I guess it makes some sense seeing as if I'm understanding the critical path correctly you can potentially completely ignore Caelid? Actually I'm still trying to figure out what you need to do in this game to get some kind of ending - it doesn't seem like much, funny enough!

I found the ravine route before even discovering the lift!

CassandraCain posted...

Aside from the zombie dragon was there somewhere else you got a lot of souls?

No, that's enough souls to get Astrologer to those stats all on its own if you have the gold foot activated to get the 1.25x modifier when you kill the dragon.

I DESPERATELY tried to figure out if there was a way to get the gold scarab first but just doesn't seem possible with a raw starter character.

giving myself enough str and dex to at least try out dark moon greatsword and moonveil

although I expect I'll just reroll after that and redistribute those points back into my main stats after I try them

Mac Arrowny posted...

I found the ravine route before even discovering the lift!

Wait, there's another way up to the plateau?

Peace___Frog posted...

Wait, there's another way up to the plateau?

Yep! The elevator is completely optional. Just like Mac, I stumbled on the other way up long before doing the Academy or finding the "proper" way up.

Just as a note, there's a certain quest that doesn't proceed until you go up the lift, so you should do that anyway.

There are 3? Ways up there I can think of. Maybe more

Game beaten! Last couple of fights were better and closer to traditional Souls gameplay, though I'm torn on the final boss. First phase is great (though not always super intuitive which direction you should dodge), with good music; second phase is a mess.

MAJOR ENDING/PLOT SPOILERS Plus lorewise, I'm just... not excited by Elden Beast? The implications of the statue in Leyndell and the name of the Site of Grace in the final room is that Marika and Radagon were different sides of a same fractured psyche, I think? If so, huge missed opportunity to have Radagon as phase 1 and Marika as phase 2. Or even flip between both on a dime like Dark Souls 3 final boss! Elden Beast is just a generic monster out of nowhere and not overly compelling to me.

I'll have to stew on it for a bit, but overall impressions is that the game takes a major turn for the worse in the endgame, where they ramp up the difficulty and aggression too much. Pretty much every endgame boss (bar a few exceptions) is harder than Gael or Midir, and roughly on par with Orphan of Kos. This is a problem.

...or you use spirit summons and just sort of hang there while they do all the work and you coast to an easy victory within 2-3 tries.

Before that last 10% though, what an achievement in game design! Loved the game to bits, and the areas in particular are the best they've ever been. Stormveil and Liurnia were highlights for me, but all the legacy dungeons are excellent except maybe Redmane.

Bosses... are a bit iffy. The great ones are kinda few and far between, and the rest are either a bit forgettable, way too aggressive, a lazy gank, or with patterns that are unintuitive to dodge - "oh apparently this one must be dodged by rolling forward and to the left. Ok." And then of course there's *that* fight, which is so monstrously hard it's not fun at all - desperately needing some sort of balance patch.

Not sure where this sits overall. I'm tempted to say higher than Dark Souls 2 and Sekiro. Maybe roughly even with Dark Souls 3 in terms of enjoyment, but with a slight edge in terms of its ambition. Still consider Dark Souls and BB to be better, but that's a high bar to clear.

Xiahou Shake posted...

Yep! The elevator is completely optional. Just like Mac, I stumbled on the other way up long before doing the Academy or finding the "proper" way up.

Wild. Looking at the map I can thing of one other place it could connect to... and I think there was a cave somewhere that led up because I remember finding the top of it and all the I did it signs. Never could find the start of that cave, though!

Man, my time with this game flew by tonight. Thank god I looked at my phone; I need my sleep!

Found 2 boss fights in the Mage Cave, neither of which looked doable, so got out of there. Wandered around the Altus Plateau for a bit and killed another of those boat bosses. Found the Dectus Lift but decided not to use it yet, even though I've got both medallion pieces, as I'm scared where it's going to take me... Don't even ask me how I managed to find both of those despite running and avoiding every difficult fight. Got the map for Leyndell and was going to wander around some more but then time ran out.

BTW, when you guys are talking about the plateau, I'm assuming you're talking about Altus? I got there without going through the magic school or whatever it is in Liurnia. I found the (a?) glintstone key but never used it. To the west was the cave I talked about yesterday with the poison goblins, the singing bats, and the magma lizard boss that got me up there. It kind of seemed like a backdoor but this game is pretty open so I didn't think too much about it.

After six hours I finally beat The Boss. O I want to go home

Aw man, it seems like some extra story content related to Alexander got cut from the game. Datamining found some stuff (Alexander quest spoilers:)

you were supposed to be able to talk to NPCs in Jarburg and maybe give Alexanders innards to one of the jar kids there to do some other stuff

also just generally it seems like theres npc stuff that isnt totally implemented... Ive hit a dead end with a couple characters that just seems to have no follow up anyone has figured out yet

Just beat the game and got the Frenzied Flame ending. What a ride. Now to do it again

https://youtu.be/QdW6Bvc14BI

What are some good spots for farming a few runes? I just need some to buy upgrade materials, so I dont need like 1 million runes in 5 minutes. Just some place where I can easily get a few.

Shine its already sub 50
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PO33S2p-L9k

GANON1025 posted...

What are some good spots for farming a few runes? I just need some to buy upgrade materials, so I dont need like 1 million runes in 5 minutes. Just some place where I can easily get a few.

Where are you in the game? Early to midgame, there's the super easy Lenne's Rise boulder farm, I think you can do the run 3-4 times a minute for 1950 runes each and you don't really have to do much except ride the horse for 15 seconds.

If it's later and you've made it to the Palace Approach Ledge waypoint in the underground, there's a bigger one that gives 11k-50k depending on what skills/equipment you have.

GANON1025 posted...

What are some good spots for farming a few runes? I just need some to buy upgrade materials, so I dont need like 1 million runes in 5 minutes. Just some place where I can easily get a few.

The enemies outside Bestial Sanctum aren't bad. They give over 1000 and die pretty fast, and there's a lot of them.

Mac Arrowny posted...

The enemies outside Bestial Sanctum aren't bad. They give over 1000 and die pretty fast, and there's a lot of them.

This, at least early game where you can find a portal to the place right away. They're also spread out a lot, so you'll basically never have to deal with two and they're very easy sneaking up on.

https://twitter.com/shineget64/status/1501926291213275137

neonreaper posted...

there's a bigger one that gives 11k-50k depending on what skills/equipment you have.

How do you squeeze out 50k from that bird? I only know of the item and talisman that raises soul acquisition, what else increases the gains

Killing all the sleeping enemies. Especially if you have the Radahn sword.

Wait, I went through all this effort to get half of the haligtree medallion and then my ghost lady just gave me the whole thing?

Ill check some of those out. Also I wanted to ask, I found the ball bearing that lets you buy smithing stones 1 and 2 from a mine in Liurnia. Am I right in guess that the ball that lets to buy 3/4 tier stones is somewhere in the Altus Plateau?

yes

neonreaper posted...

Killing all the sleeping enemies. Especially if you have the Radahn sword.

Oh sweet, adds some fun to the farming method too. Said weapon art used on multiple enemies is glorious

I'm at level 140 and still don't think I'm *that* close to beating the game >_>

I mainlined the last map area without doing much if any of the side stuff and ended up...157 I think?

I did do the entire major optional superboss area though.

Im 120 and I think Im heading to end game

Boy is Forth Faroth filled with jerks

The whole game is filled with jerks and I feel like my whole mission is to be king of the jerks so they kill someone else instead

it has the classic Souls vibe of is this world even worth saving

oh boy, Im the lord of a total hellscape

Also Fallingstar Beast can fuck off until I am overleveled
Ridiculously unfun boss indeed
Between the cheapshot as soon as you enter the area, the near unavoidable fieldwide gravity explosion and the unpredictable attack where he corners you until you die. The goddamn hitbox on his feet
Ughh