Elden Ring

[D.A. d. nial]

I hardly played any of the older Fromsoft games but Elden Ring genuinely impressed me by how retarded a lot of gamers are at problem solving and metagaming. It feels like the franchise has attracted too many "action game" players instead of "strategy/rpg game" players while much of the difficulty comes from not engaging with the RPG side of the game. Too much of the community has focused on the "bash your head against a wall for a dozen hours to eventually beat the boss" instead of adapting gear and tactics for a specific boss. I'm not even advocating for using spirit summons, I'm just saying that retards haven't figured out if a boss has -20 holy negation but +20 negation to your weapon's damage, then holy damage will do 50% more damage to the boss and they should consider swapping to a weapon with holy damage or changing the affinity of the weapon.

Not gonna lie, I caved on looking anything up and watched a few vids and just then realized jumping has i-frames, and had already slowly started realizing how much some things matter so much more here than they did for BB, DS3/2 and even 1. I don't think I was forced to have a circumstantial load-oat since Demon's Souls. I've been jiving with the character-action style of play for so long, rolling around at the speed of sound and doing sick combos like I'm playing Revengeance like I have since I got good at DS1 that I'm at the foot of Leyndell Capital and only then realized "Oh, poise means something. Elemental damage is signifigant and not just 'pick your flavor of alt. damage'". It got me to start a new character to both try a STR/INT build (as opposed to the DEX-leaning FAI Alloyo is) and actually taking advantage of the 6 slots to see how making a Weapon for Every Season works. Because that's how I played Demon's Souls: Getting stopped at a point, going a different direction, getting an item or element that helped me progress on the other world. I.e. I would go to 2-2 and get what IIRC was a Flame Shortsword, upgrade it and ise that to push 5-1 to 5-3, etc.
It actually makes sense now how there's a ton of default basic weapons in all those carts, and all the merchants have standard weapons for sale. So you can have a low-req assortment of normal weapons to upgrade in different directions.
The story is still trash, but the game just intrigued me a lot more.

 

[Xerxes IX]

I like the fan theory that all of the zombies and shit you run into are other people thrust into it but they all went skitzo because they couldn't die and were forced to deal with horrors constantly as well as brutal death over and over just being reborn each time. Driving them insane.

It's a good example of how to weave gameplay and story together, too. If you stop playing the game and give up your character's essentially gone hollow.

Too much of the community has focused on the "bash your head against a wall for a dozen hours to eventually beat the boss" instead of adapting gear and tactics for a specific boss.

The game boss design's going to go even more to shit because of the hundreds of hours of big name streamers doing this with Radahn, isn't it? The base gamr already had a ton of flashy streamerbait attacks that mainly exist to make people watchinng the game soyjak. It's not that the bosses are unfun and designed to be full of actively hostile to the player bullshit, you need to git gud by spending more hours bashing your head into the wall.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

The game boss design's going to go even more to shit because of the hundreds of hours of big name streamers doing this with Radahn, isn't it? The base gamr already had a ton of flashy streamerbait attacks that mainly exist to make people watchinng the game soyjak.

The obsession with claiming a boss is cool because of the spectacle despite it having shit design is going to be a problem going forward. We hit the limit with this in the base game and saw how out of control it could get with Radahn. Hopefully their next game is something like Sekiro where they give the player the tools to actually deal with the flashy anime bullshit moves but I'm still worried about basic design fuckups like Radahn's light beams being positioned where they blind your camera or Miquella's hair completely obscuring what attack Radahn is winding up when he has his back turned.

 

[D.A. d. nial]

claiming a boss is cool because of the spectacle despite it having shit design

Weird how the only feedback that seems to matter are from people who only managed to beat Dark Souls with a guide, used phantoms and wikis to beat O&S, Gwyn & Artorias without appreciating or understanding the fights. Immediately watched 10 hour long video essays by the british about how its so emotional and tragic and came together and agreed that's what everything should be.

Tower Knight, Fool's Idol, Yellow Monk. Fucking Moonlight Butterfly and Dark Sun Gwyndolin. Even Executioner's Chariot from DS2 and that giant necromancer skeleton from DS3. Chasing Micolash around in circles. The best fights IMO have always been the ones with weird stages and gimmicks. And it's telling because I have a very limited memory of most of the NPCs and Bosses of the past games despite having played them all to death years ago so cross-referencing can be hard but I rmemeber the core of things.

I've cleaned out pretty much probably 99% of Limgrave, Weeping & Raya Layurna and a large chunk of Caelid and the I can't even remember any of the cave bosses except Patches, Spirit Summoner Snail and the Two Stone Cats, and I can't remember which caves they're in. Morgit the Omen & Godrick are basically two versions of the same enemy. Tree Sentinel is only memorable because he's directly in front of the entrance to the overworld. That being said, Rennalla was actually fun and hype - even if her most dangerous attack was chandoliers falling on my head. Makes me wish they kept that thing from DS2 where you could reset the boss in an area. Weeping Peninsuala is basically a giant void unless there's a specific item to get there. And Castle Morne, while having a solid presentation was extremely short and had an extremely lackluster boss. The entire zone feels like an extra asset dump.

My blind magic muscle mommy Zylynzydyl. I'm using the group tags: kiwi, erg & kindred
I know it's antithetical to what this website is, but if anybody wants to enagage in jolly cooperation, PM me and I'll give you my steam friend code / join any disco servers.

 

[ShitLurker]

On scadutree shards. Good idea, bad implementation. Remembrance bosses should have definitely dropped a few shards and not everything from exploring. I am fine with exploration rewarding with a few shards, but if someone wants to beeline to the bosses, he should be able to keep up even if it means a harder time than those that take the time to explore.

I liked my time with Elden Ring, but like I've said in other posts, I have zero desire for another open world game. I want a focused game like Bloodborne or Sekiro with a completely new theme and I definitely want the mechanics to be less free and design the bosses around those mechanics.

A lot of Ekden Ring is losey goosey thanks to how a player can come from so many angles (lvl 1 no hit to full party summom and 26 buffs on top). I loved Sekiro due to how focused it was even if there weren't any builds and Bloodborne I think hit the sweetspot between build variety and it not getting too much out of hand

 

[TJT]

Elden Ring also suffers a little bit from Western gamers being conditioned to "need" to hit every single possible point of interest in the game.

While you are of course free to do this it really isn't necessary and doesn't really benefit you. Once you find some weapon you like and stick to it for awhile. You don't generally need to try out and use every single weapon there is. As playstyles are varied.

I played through with the Nagakiba for most of the game after getting it accidentally from killing that guy who had it. Haven't hit up the DLC yet but since I read they have Great Katana I'll prob stick with that. Maybe adjust my build slightly or try magic this time. Just for fun.

Like you don't need to hit up every single catacomb there is. Just 1 per area is enough to keep your spirit ash upgraded if you're even using it and getting ashes of war skills you never even use isn't very fulfilling.

 

[Coldgrip]

I think Elden Ring really would of benefitted from some sort of reset/limited randomize option for new game+. Being able to set your flasks back to level one, and have the trees where you could find the golden seeds at be moved to another location I think would of helped keep things a bit fresh. Or perhaps the option to keep only a few pieces of equipment at the start of each new game cycle.

 

[ShitLurker]

I think Elden Ring really would of benefitted from some sort of reset/limited randomize option for new game+. Being able to set your flasks back to level one, and have the trees where you could find the golden seeds at be moved to another location I think would of helped keep things a bit fresh. Or perhaps the option to keep only a few pieces of equipment at the start of each new game cycle.

I did like that they remembered power stancing from DS2, but fuck would I love Ascetics and NG+ differences...

 

[YumeNoHero]

Another fanfiction by Vaati, especially terrible after his last video where he got a writer to tell an in-game story almost 1:1, and an editor to present it as a samuai movie. Now it's back to 10% actual game lore, 90% of his usual "I think"/"It can be said"/"probably" and slowed down game footage.

The frustrating thing about this is that while I do watch some ER video, mainly invasion focus channels like JeeNine and Lost, this nigger's video is still somehow showing up in my recommendation, the very first video no less, even after I enabled "Do not recommend this channel."

I hardly played any of the older Fromsoft games but Elden Ring genuinely impressed me by how retarded a lot of gamers are at problem solving and metagaming. It feels like the franchise has attracted too many "action game" players instead of "strategy/rpg game" players while much of the difficulty comes from not engaging with the RPG side of the game. Too much of the community has focused on the "bash your head against a wall for a dozen hours to eventually beat the boss" instead of adapting gear and tactics for a specific boss. I'm not even advocating for using spirit summons, I'm just saying that retards haven't figured out if a boss has -20 holy negation but +20 negation to your weapon's damage, then holy damage will do 50% more damage to the boss and they should consider swapping to a weapon with holy damage or changing the affinity of the weapon.

It doesn't help that those who do play "RPG" are just playing slops like nu Goy of War that has shallow "RPG" stats, perks and upgrades because that's all they know. Throw them into Daggerfall and watch them bitch and moan about why everything is so obtuse when your primary objective is already spelled out in the opening FMV and stats actually has effect on gameplay and not generic do % more damage. But, to be fair to them, the thing that allows you to adapt your build, the Larval Tears, are few and far in between so let's say a boss is weak to Holy damage specifically, you aren't go to do much damage with a meager 25 FTH for that Golden Vow and a Sacred infused weapon or weapon buff, the bonus is fairly negligible. This isn't Armored Core where you can always adapt your build depending on each mission.

Elden Ring also suffers a little bit from Western gamers being conditioned to "need" to hit every single possible point of interest in the game.

This is why I hate Ubisoft open world design. Exploring their world feels like a fucking chore with checklists and inducing OCD like no end. Although if we do really want to go way back, things like Achievements that basically tells you "Hey, this trophy is specifically unlocked when you 100% the game. Sounds good right?" is the starting point of this mindset.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

But, to be fair to them, the thing that allows you to adapt your build, the Larval Tears, are few and far in between so let's say a boss is weak to Holy damage specifically, you aren't go to do much damage with a meager 25 FTH for that Golden Vow and a Sacred infused weapon or weapon buff, the bonus is fairly negligible. This isn't Armored Core where you can always adapt your build depending on each mission.

Yeah, the limited respecs with larval tears is pretty shit and ruins flexibility but in regards to weapon swapping, I just respecc'd my character to look at the basics:
Str 60
Dex 13 (base for bandit)
Fth 25

Heavy Giant-Crusher +25 has a S scaling in STR while the Sacred version has only a C scaling in STR but has a B scaling in FTH.

Heavy Giant-Crusher +25 does 911 in 2H while Sacred Giant-Crusher +25 does 902 damage in 2H. If you look at Gaius, who takes 80% strike damage but 120% holy damage, that 9 damage gap is really only 7.2 damage and the Sacred version needs only 36 of its 902 damage to be holy to equal the Heavy version. However the Sacred version is 432 holy damage, so it ends up doing 79.2 more damage. Again, this is with a Heavy Giant-Crusher +25 that has a S scaling to STR, which it gains that 150% bonus to STR scaling in 2H mode.

For the sake of argument, I went to the most extreme end and respecc'd again so I would have 99 STR and 25 FTH:
Sacred hits for 932 while Heavy hits for 1015. That's a 83 damage gap, which is 66.4 damage against Gaius. The Sacred needs 332 Holy damage to match it but it has 432 holy damage, so it beats it, granted its only 20 damage. So even at the most extreme late game version, adjusting for the boss's weakness is still more damage.

 

[ShitLurker]

I started the DLC with a Strength faith build with some dex and 60 vigor. Did a respec keeping the vigor but adding more FP to be able to use the new spirit summons here and there and started using my runes to level and ended up with 35 dex, 30 int, 30 faith, 30 arcane and so on. With stats like that you can wield pretty much anything. You won't get the highest numbers either but it allowed me to fuck around with most of the weapons in the game. Miracles and Sorceries is another story, but I care more about the weapons than about those.

 

[ShiftyBoi]

Boys I made it to the end of the dlc, did all the bosses except Boiwife radahn. Is it even worth it? I've heard terrible things about the fight and I can only ever get about a fifth of his health down. I've resorted to guard countering because I don't have to dodge as much and my main weapons are great spears anyway.

From what I've seen there's fucking nothing satisfying waiting for me after I do it, should I just call it quits here?

 

[YumeNoHero]

Boys I made it to the end of the dlc, did all the bosses except Boiwife radahn. Is it even worth it? I've heard terrible things about the fight and I can only ever get about a fifth of his health down. I've resorted to guard countering because I don't have to dodge as much and my main weapons are great spears anyway.

From what I've seen there's fucking nothing satisfying waiting for me after I do it, should I just call it quits here?

Deflecting Hardtear + Royal Knight Resolve on a ultra greatsword or Giant Crusher will do the trick, although you need to do 3 or 4 timed blocks to get the maximum guard countering damage boost.
Heavy rolling actually helps here if you keep staying close to him since the longer rolling duration keeps you low on the ground long enough so his follow up attacks aren't going to touch you. Verdigris Discus on Heavy Load + Dragoncrest should help you surviving any hit he throws at you.
The good old Bleed Blade ash on an arcane Nagakiba + Frost pots to reset his resistance also works really well on him once you found his attack recovery window.
Play keep away with Claws of Nights and light load tear while you hit him with the weapon arts from a distance, or jumping power attack which does the same thing with less projectiles when out of FP.
Call in only 1 phantom to help taking the attention away from you if you are a full mage, the increased boss HP isn't as crazy when you have 2 phantoms.
Carry a few rot pots or use Rotten Breath if you have them, he is vulnerable to rot in both phases, but the second phase it's harder to trigger rot proc.
Most reliable way to dodge his rock meatballs is to run sideway while locked onto him and jump when the last 3 rocks are about to hit.
When second phase, he is almost guaranteed to start with the light beam nuke, if you see him hovering upward and a light beam is casted at your position, continue to sprint away from the center as you have just enough time to get out of the blast radius.
In his second phase, the most consistent way to dodge his attacks and the follow up pillar is to dodge forward to his right side and continue to strafe around him toward his back if you're about 30 degree behind him.
Always dodge when he does his ground slam followed by a pull up, the light beams coming out afterward really hurts you.

 

[Edgy But Dull]

Boys I made it to the end of the dlc, did all the bosses except Boiwife radahn. Is it even worth it? I've heard terrible things about the fight and I can only ever get about a fifth of his health down. I've resorted to guard countering because I don't have to dodge as much and my main weapons are great spears anyway.

From what I've seen there's fucking nothing satisfying waiting for me after I do it, should I just call it quits here?

It just sorta ends, so it's your decision.
If you want, you could replace your main hand weapon with antspur rapier with blood affinity and just spam R1 attack the retard to death from behind a greatshield.

If you want to feel like you actually beat the shit out of him, just go full max defensive items (Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman+Golden Braid Talisman+Moore Armor+Golden Vow+Opaline Hardtear+Boiled Crab) and then run up to his face when you get him to Phase 2. Then drink an ironjar aromatic and spam prayerful strike with something like a giant-crusher in his face. Even if he outdamages your healing from prayerful strike, he'll likely stagger before he kills you, allowing you to ripose and then drink flasks.

 

[Spirelord: Downfall]

Boys I made it to the end of the dlc, did all the bosses except Boiwife radahn. Is it even worth it? I've heard terrible things about the fight and I can only ever get about a fifth of his health down. I've resorted to guard countering because I don't have to dodge as much and my main weapons are great spears anyway.

From what I've seen there's fucking nothing satisfying waiting for me after I do it, should I just call it quits here?

Yeah, the most you get from the fight is the only source of non-spell int scaling holy damage in the entire game and it's not even on the reused weapon's base damage, only on the skill, or a faith nuke primarily for dunking on bosses or PvP. That and the best poise-to-weight ratio helmet with free stats but I doubt you care about either of those so your call.

If you're considering swapping to spells or using ashes, what I did was use Crystallian ashes while stealing a no-hit video's idea of (outside of my HFA/Golden Vow/Blessing of the Erdtree) only Glintstone Icecrag w/ cast speed stuff for frost procs and to abuse Radahn's lack of dodges (except the lion's claw). The ash's very shit if it gets shredded by the meteor attack but in my winning run it died without ever getting stance broken even with eating half of a meteor attack, and considering they fixed the ash scaling in the DLC if it was untouched it only got better. I healed and buffed it with Blessing once each and it lasted until the last like 15th or so of the health bar and it barely missed the last frost proc. I also tested quite a few spells and for some reason Putrescent Vortex was one of the better spells because of how it proc'd frost very fast, the very rare and unreliable double hit, the AoE catching the boss if he rushes forward instead of using the gravity roar/lion's claw and the ability to cast while walking. Glintstone Nails is also pretty good but needing to charge made it worse than Icecrag in my experience ash or no ash.

Other than that consider how a single hefty rot pot can get him rotted and you can cower behind a greatshield until phase two. Rolling forward and left is good enough for the combos, especially the one where he upends the ground and sends out shockwaves. If you don't wanna upgrade a shield then the Golden Lion shield from Freja is great for phase one combos while still learning dodges and panic blocking the end of combos for phase two. For phase two, if you see a glowing light to your right and in the boss while his swords go left but not into the ground then for the love of god roll to the right or run into the afterimage and be quick to pick one because the rape train is half a second to instant death and it will piss you off. Run as far as you can get from the meteors and then dodge after ~the fourth sound made. If you see after images near you you didn't run far enough. The grab is easy to avoid, do not try to undo the charm if you do get caught the rune's use time is too slow and you will be punished unless you give up like a full attack cycle. If you see the man jump, run in the direction with the most distance available and don't look back until you hear a loud noise, then delay the roll until just after the third one. Oh and don't jump, it doesn't work unlike most other bosses and it's the worst dodge option for this fight, that's the main reason I kept dying to phase one.

 

[SpellforceFan]

I do watch some ER video, mainly invasion focus channels like JeeNine and Lost

Look up https://youtube.com/@chasethebro if you haven't already then, the guy is just a bundle of positivity.

 

[ShitLurker]

It just sorta ends, so it's your decision.
If you want, you could replace your main hand weapon with antspur rapier with blood affinity and just spam R1 attack the retard to death from behind a greatshield.

Can confirm, I did the "retard behind tower shield" strat and killed the fucker, though it still took me a good number of tries. Good thing about this one is that you don't need to learn any timings except for his fucking grab in phase 2 and his weird light dash which I never understood the hit box. Bad thing is that you don't learn shit about the boss and it can feel cheap to betray your build.

Boys I made it to the end of the dlc, did all the bosses except Boiwife radahn. Is it even worth it? I've heard terrible things about the fight and I can only ever get about a fifth of his health down. I've resorted to guard countering because I don't have to dodge as much and my main weapons are great spears anyway.

From what I've seen there's fucking nothing satisfying waiting for me after I do it, should I just call it quits here?

I was at 13 Scaby shards, so another option is to go max them out. Other suggestion, if you are willing to smash your head into the ordeal a lot, try jumping, jumping has a surprising amount of immunity, thanks to jumping I avoided half of what Rellana was throwing. I have 0 idea what attacks you are better off jumping and which are better dodging but I can assure you that just dodging won't be the way to get through all the shit heading your way. Also, if at a certain point Radhan just leaps and banishes? run in the opposite direction never looking back, you are welcome.

 

[Estate]

>pre-order DLC
>once it's out, randomly play another game for a month ignoring the DLC
>go back to game
>started like 5-6 characters from lvl 1 (only play wretch), but deleted all
>didn't like the build
>could re-spec, but autism
>finally settled on something I like
>'ah, it's gaming time!'
>too fucking bad, because indians are shit, i have extra work whole August

Thanks for listening to my rant, here's some shitpost from /v/

 

[Zertes]

Dark Souls basically debunks any of the old "gaming increases your reflexes and makes you smarter" memes by outing 95% of players as being drooling retards who don't pay attention and can't read. I've only found certain swathes of the games to be hard, and none of the story to be particularly deep or complicated. Even Elden Ring's "Difficulty & Depth" is clearly a function of intermittent Stat Walls & "Industrial Standard High Fantasy Skitzobabble".

This is literally the lore of Elden Ring:

Great Lord Ziploc of the Slip-slop went to the archaeic eldritch ancient old interior of the Flip-Flop, birthing place of Tip-Top to Skip-Skop, where the Ooh Eee Ooh Ah Ah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang. Thus, thoust, thine great grand doctorate of witchenkindred doth statenheimer: "OOH EEE OOH AH AH TING TANG WALLA WALLA BING BANG". And the Dragons were no more.

If this game wasn't so much fun to play, it'd have nauseated me to extincton.

I think fantasy just isn't for you or RPGs in general really. Both this things are stuff people like in their medieval fantasy RPG. Some of the all time classic RPGs put Elden Ring High Fantasy lore/world and RPG progression to shame in complexity

 

[D.A. d. nial]

I think fantasy just isn't for you or RPGs in general really. Both this things are stuff people like in their medieval fantasy RPG. Some of the all time classic RPGs put Elden Ring High Fantasy lore/world and RPG progression to shame in complexity

Oh, 100%. It's few and far between I find non-videogame fantasy fiction I enjoy. But my brain always likes to cite The Lord of The Rings as the thing everything copies poorly. The intro to LOTR has fantasy names, and events, but it isn't convoluted nonsense. It's simple, straightforward, tells the audience everything they need to know and nothing they don't, or at least not that. It's not an infant throwing up onto the page.

Even DeS/DS1/3 did it right. Here's the plot, backstory, why we're here and here's the bad-ass dudes you're gonna fight along the way. (I have no working memory of the intros for DS2/BB, and I'm confident DS2 didn't have an intro much less a story beyond being a warped allegory for being a single white woman entering her 30s and God is telling you to sit inside the Igloo)

Fact is, High Fantasy (see: LOTR ripoffs) sucks. It needs to be abandoned en masse to make way for a resurgence of Sword & Sorcery and Fairy Tales with optional levels of edge. Tolkein & Campbell ruined fantasy fiction.