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Elden Ring is finally real
Having beat Margit, I’m working on Stormveil Castle. I took the side path, I think I’ve reached the end (got the yellow fog door, haven’t taken it yet), but I’ve been going back trying to find everything. This part of the game feels very dark souls to me. I mean, I would have said Elden Ring feels very dark souls before, but this big twisty dungeon is even more so.
I’ve been mixing up my weapons a bit. I hardly used my bow before getting here, but I’m using it a lot now, to the point where several times I’ve warped out to buy arrows. I’ve also been using the claws I found in the castle instead of my flail - another dexterity weapon, but a different damage type, faster hits, less stamina consumption, bleed will actually kick in sometimes, and I have no range whatsoever.
I have been trying to mostly play the game without spoilers, but I’m definitely at the point where I’ll just look stuff up sometimes. I noticed I was getting back fewer runes at recovery than I’d been carrying on death, so I looked up the cause online and killed the NPC responsible. Not sure I’d have ever figured that out alone.
I’ve been mixing up my weapons a bit. I hardly used my bow before getting here, but I’m using it a lot now, to the point where several times I’ve warped out to buy arrows. I’ve also been using the claws I found in the castle instead of my flail - another dexterity weapon, but a different damage type, faster hits, less stamina consumption, bleed will actually kick in sometimes, and I have no range whatsoever.
I have been trying to mostly play the game without spoilers, but I’m definitely at the point where I’ll just look stuff up sometimes. I noticed I was getting back fewer runes at recovery than I’d been carrying on death, so I looked up the cause online and killed the NPC responsible. Not sure I’d have ever figured that out alone.
There are a handful of optional things to do in Stormveil Castle, a few of which are going to be very touch-and-go at your current power level. One of the side branches will even take you to a place you can't access without an item given by the Castle's boss. If you get frustrated with any of them, it might be worth fighting him - you'll get a couple additional levels out of it, and it doesn't have any impact of the rest of the castle.*
*On that note, in all of Elden Ring, there's only one second-half area that ever actually becomes inaccessible, and then only after 90% of the game. There are some annoying timeline requirements around some character sidequests, but as in most other Soulsy games, nothing missable is crucial.
*On that note, in all of Elden Ring, there's only one second-half area that ever actually becomes inaccessible, and then only after 90% of the game. There are some annoying timeline requirements around some character sidequests, but as in most other Soulsy games, nothing missable is crucial.
FWIW, leaving him alive gets you access to a rare upgrade material later on down the line, but it's the kind you'll probably have a few more of than you'll need so it's not a huge loss. The other unique thing he sells is the Buckler, but unless you decide you want to go all-in on parrying, that's not a great loss either.
cleaned out a little of altus and a ton of caelid last night; found a few things whose use is currently unclear and a couple things i'm really excited about, like bell bearings that let me buy smithing stone 3 and 4 (and somber 1 and 2...though i have a ton of 2s for some reason already and they don't seem as useful overall. not that i can use a ton of 3 and 4s till i find the one for 1 and 2, lol...but at least it broke me past being stuck at godslayer seal +7 to like +14) from roundtable, and the dragon church. i solved the puzzle in sellia and then found the thing the guy nearby wanted...which told me about the puzzle. and in my previous sessions i killed a couple of huge dragons around caelid, so i have like 1300 hp now and have stopped getting instant killed by stuff that i would've assumed would do even more damage than that, lol. like the asteroid jump and hero's grave chariots.
although those remain the places i keep noping the fuck out of. terrible. i'll have to finish one sometime to find out if there's actually something super sick inside, but right now, i really do not want to. and nothing will match the mixture of amazement and disappointment of how long i spent trying to figure out how to get to that weird peninsula, feeling like a genius when it all clicked, and then finding out it was just a colosseum with no character progression reward whatsoever. i laughed. nobody else does it like this
although those remain the places i keep noping the fuck out of. terrible. i'll have to finish one sometime to find out if there's actually something super sick inside, but right now, i really do not want to. and nothing will match the mixture of amazement and disappointment of how long i spent trying to figure out how to get to that weird peninsula, feeling like a genius when it all clicked, and then finding out it was just a colosseum with no character progression reward whatsoever. i laughed. nobody else does it like this
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The best part is that they only opened the PvP colosseums like a month or two ago, so for most of us we just got there and had to turn around.
went to siofra and finished lighting torches and found a merchant. then i went to nokron above that and found out that...you get to do it again?? well at first i didn't i found the path down to the aqueduct and bashed my head into the worst boss fight in the game so far for like two hours. honestly...it's mostly because the fist doesn't reach very far and there were many situations where even if i dodged i would get pushed so far away by the collision boxes that i couldn't hit them unless i went in a very specific direction based on which attack it was. the fact there were two of them was annoying but mostly bc i had to learn a different moveset for the second one, since they're honestly really slow for the most part and you don't really get that ganged up on very often, they just have an annoying combination of being willing to hang back + having huge reach + weird hurtboxes that made even fighting one alone pretty painful
i was doing the complaining buff stacking in discord and i said "there's no way this is worth it if the boss doesn't drop like half a million runes"
which it obviously doesn't
but a while later after going through the other parts of the upper ruins area, i found the area that the aqueduct leads to, and i fought a miniboss and got a new giant weapon i am really excited to use. it weighs so much that i get put into heavy burden by wearing basically any armor, so i've gotta fix that. but i can crank it up to +6 really quickly, and after i get over those hurdles...i think it's going to be really good. i played with it a bit to check it out already so i know i like it, unlike the giant swords i've found previously...
i was doing the complaining buff stacking in discord and i said "there's no way this is worth it if the boss doesn't drop like half a million runes"
which it obviously doesn't
but a while later after going through the other parts of the upper ruins area, i found the area that the aqueduct leads to, and i fought a miniboss and got a new giant weapon i am really excited to use. it weighs so much that i get put into heavy burden by wearing basically any armor, so i've gotta fix that. but i can crank it up to +6 really quickly, and after i get over those hurdles...i think it's going to be really good. i played with it a bit to check it out already so i know i like it, unlike the giant swords i've found previously...
That peninsula has a pretty amazing talisman, actually. Talk to the giant jar, and three red duel summon signs will appear. Summon and defeat all three of the (NPC, not pvp) invaders and you get the highest rank of the +equip weight talisman.
Chariots: If you focus on just running from alcove to alcove the timing really isn't that tricky for most of the chariots, but also, in the hero's grave by the starting area and the the hero's grave in Altus can be killed with environmental trickery. Oh, and they stay dead forever once you crash them. The Fringefolk grave, you don't have to go too far, just do the falls to lower levels in a couple particular areas, and then time a bow-shot to drop one of the big things on top of the chariot. The timing can be tricky but you have 3 pots before you have to reload.
The Auriza one in particular has some extra-tricksy-fuckery you can do to kill it almost right away: Did you know that Margit's Shackle can be used to trigger all environmental interactions, like illusory walls and fire pillar hazards, in a very wide radious around you? In the Auriza Hero's Grave in Altus, you can kill the chariots by getting through the dungeon and activating a certain tower so that multiple chariots spawn along the doublewide path and crash into each other. But with Margit's shackle, all you have to do is get around the corner to the doublewide path, use the shackle, and it'll trigger the pillar so you kill the chariots right away. You get an Ash of War and a set of heavy armor for this, so it's worth poking your head in there eventually anyway. The boss fight for that hero's grave is a huge PITA but just summon liberally and you should be OK. You get another excellent set of armor and a cool greatsword from that as well.
That really is one of the worst boss fights in the entire game. Did you check the far end of the cavern by the waterfall after you beat it?
I think I've lost the plot of your descriptions. Which weapon?[/ISPOILER][/ISPOILER]
it took me a little bit to find the grace in the gargoyle cavern, and then only when i came back (after defeating the regal ancestor) did i see/consider the trail, which points basically straight at the coffin. i took the coffin and fought an avatar (without a nameplate) that dropped the staff of the avatar, which is the weapon i'm talking about
Niiiice
I finally beat the tree guardian, or whatever the big guy on the horse at the start of the game is called. Then I tried the dragon on the lake and got it down to just a tiny sliver of health before dying, after which several attempts ended in immediate death. Oh well.
I also took out the boss of stormveil castle, who I found a lot easier than the guardian of the entrance to the castle. Actually the NPC ally struck the killing blow, though when I saw her later she talked up me having done it. And then I guess I met god. The two fingers thing is pretty literal.
I also took out the boss of stormveil castle, who I found a lot easier than the guardian of the entrance to the castle. Actually the NPC ally struck the killing blow, though when I saw her later she talked up me having done it. And then I guess I met god. The two fingers thing is pretty literal.
well, things are getting back to the point where bosses almost 2-shot me from full health, which given the way their combo chains work means i can die in like 1 second if i'm not already full, and almost everything i fought last night up around altus was super fast and aggressive or had giant quick ranged attacks to use, so i was getting pretty annoyed by the fact it was really hard to even back up and heal in most of those fights. i'll have to get back to putting points in vitality again soon, but right now i'm pumping strength so i don't have to constantly stance switch in fights...not that it's that bad, i actually think that thing is kind of fun, but i feel like it reduces my options a bit to have to do it so much. being able to 1-hand the staff and use dragon roars or fireballs more freely will hopefully make a few things a bit easier; right now a lot of stuff is more one or the other, or having to back off or pull to specifically switch
still, i finished some caves and the terrible shaded castle (though there was a section i couldn't figure out how to reach yet, i decided to come back later or never because i was Done after the boss took me like 20 tries just because i would lose as soon as i messed up one time) and found a bunch of junk i probably won't use before finally finding the arch that leads to the skybridge into leyndell. which, thanks to the staff, has been a very sekiro experience so far. see two guys, rush the first one as fast as possible so that it's a 1v1 i can easily overpower again. the only time i've died so far was when i wandered into a weird spot climbing over stuff and got rushed by 3 short enemies i didn't see until they had me surrounded...i don't want to say it's feeling predictable but i did totally go "this seems like the place a boss would ambush you" about 2 steps before another no-nameplate tree avatar jumped down onto the street. i did not see the purple tree thing popping out of the ground coming, although in retrospect it's the same thing that happens at the bottom of stormveil castle so i could've there too, i think. i still need to go back and kill that one, especially if it drops a seed too. anyway, i spent a while in the lower part of the city and found the church grace before calling it and trying to mark the bell tower with a ladder on my map, so i'm going to go back up to the main area where the avatar was and see if there's an actual way forward back on the road above that, since it seems like the lower city is a very elaborate dead end...i cleared out almost everything i could find one time last night, but i'm sure that somewhere in all those paths between buildings on the main level is something i didn't take because i didn't have a ton of healing resources at the time
still, i finished some caves and the terrible shaded castle (though there was a section i couldn't figure out how to reach yet, i decided to come back later or never because i was Done after the boss took me like 20 tries just because i would lose as soon as i messed up one time) and found a bunch of junk i probably won't use before finally finding the arch that leads to the skybridge into leyndell. which, thanks to the staff, has been a very sekiro experience so far. see two guys, rush the first one as fast as possible so that it's a 1v1 i can easily overpower again. the only time i've died so far was when i wandered into a weird spot climbing over stuff and got rushed by 3 short enemies i didn't see until they had me surrounded...i don't want to say it's feeling predictable but i did totally go "this seems like the place a boss would ambush you" about 2 steps before another no-nameplate tree avatar jumped down onto the street. i did not see the purple tree thing popping out of the ground coming, although in retrospect it's the same thing that happens at the bottom of stormveil castle so i could've there too, i think. i still need to go back and kill that one, especially if it drops a seed too. anyway, i spent a while in the lower part of the city and found the church grace before calling it and trying to mark the bell tower with a ladder on my map, so i'm going to go back up to the main area where the avatar was and see if there's an actual way forward back on the road above that, since it seems like the lower city is a very elaborate dead end...i cleared out almost everything i could find one time last night, but i'm sure that somewhere in all those paths between buildings on the main level is something i didn't take because i didn't have a ton of healing resources at the time
last night was mostly way funnier, probably the best time i've had in this game so far. i went through the upper parts of the city and beat the two bosses, both of which felt pretty reasonable for the most part. still took me a bunch of tries, though i almost got the last one on my first before choking on the last hit and had to spend like 20 more minutes on it, but he was a mostly an upgrade to stuff i already spent a while learning and the one before him felt pretty reactable...then i went back to looking for maps and caves and stuff in areas i'd been to before, so i did stuff like carian study hall, which was wild and made me laugh (although i was kind of shocked how hard it was given where it is?), defeating the nasty root in stormveil (i'd killed a bunch by now, so it seemed like i should've done it a while ago...i just ran away the first time), and the deeproot depths, since i'd gained like 25 levels since the last time i was down there. which was a cool area mostly, although the champions fight was kind of evil...it's funny how the random parts vary so heavily between extremely weak and "superpowered guys who will rot you instantly or inflict 3 status at once with giant attacks" though the biggest threat was the npcs...rogier was annoying as hell with his fast pokes and constant rolling and lionel wasn't any easier, casting a bunch of that skull spell and then chasing forever even with his super heavy armor
i laughed for like five minutes after taking the portal. i realize now that going to another other place was never the point anyway, but hahahahaha. from moment
i also hit up most of the npcs again, found the incantations trainer who was in the hold again, and got more smithing stone bells. so i can +18 normal weapons just with souls now, and have a +19 godslayer seal and both of my main melee weapons are +7 from sombers, and i'm level 101 with 1600 hp now, so i'm excited to keep climbing and find out how far out of my depth i am again...maybe after i try and find a few more things in liurnia and caelid, as well as how to get to the high side of the broken bridge in northwest altus. there's an area in liurnia specifically haven't been able to find out how to reach and i feel like i must have still missed a lot in the latter since i haven't specifically wandered around much after the first time, when i really couldn't fight anything straight up.
i laughed for like five minutes after taking the portal. i realize now that going to another other place was never the point anyway, but hahahahaha. from moment
i also hit up most of the npcs again, found the incantations trainer who was in the hold again, and got more smithing stone bells. so i can +18 normal weapons just with souls now, and have a +19 godslayer seal and both of my main melee weapons are +7 from sombers, and i'm level 101 with 1600 hp now, so i'm excited to keep climbing and find out how far out of my depth i am again...maybe after i try and find a few more things in liurnia and caelid, as well as how to get to the high side of the broken bridge in northwest altus. there's an area in liurnia specifically haven't been able to find out how to reach and i feel like i must have still missed a lot in the latter since i haven't specifically wandered around much after the first time, when i really couldn't fight anything straight up.
I’ve been looking up a lot more stuff lately - if a boss is giving me trouble I’ll check its weaknesses, and I’ve looked a bit at build advice (short version: my build is terrible). I also found out how shields scale, since there seemed to be no point upgrading them unless you’re attacking with them which I am not except for when I accidentally two hand one. Bizarre that you don’t get a guard boost upgrade until the third shield upgrade. If you got it at the first upgrade you’d know there was a reason to upgrade them.
I was looking at Caelid and Liurnia (which in my mind is called Lemuria), made a little progress in Caelid (opened a door for a jar) before my brother suggested going the other way because of how fun poison swamps aren’t. So far in Liurnia I’ve explored one cave full of poison and just reached a poison swamp, so hooray. I’ve also been trying to find a path to reach the tall island off to the west of where you enter the area, but no luck so far.
I was looking at Caelid and Liurnia (which in my mind is called Lemuria), made a little progress in Caelid (opened a door for a jar) before my brother suggested going the other way because of how fun poison swamps aren’t. So far in Liurnia I’ve explored one cave full of poison and just reached a poison swamp, so hooray. I’ve also been trying to find a path to reach the tall island off to the west of where you enter the area, but no luck so far.
getting close to the point of trying to critical path the rest of the game i think, lol, i think there's a sort of tilt effect in general where if i have a bad time with something my fuse for the rest of a session gets a lot shorter but also *jeez* a lot of the things i'm finding at this point are unduly annoying for my power level, like caves with obnoxious runbacks and bosses who can still kill me in like two seconds with something i didn't see coming. and only give some item i'm assuming i'm not gonna use + like half a level of runes.
hero's graves are worse than caves but i finally finished one, and i'll probably at least do the two others i found previously now that i'm pretty strong, just to know that i did. and catacombs are also usually annoying but at least have the format of like a joke, where i get to laugh at the end because i realize i got tricked or there's some kind of actually bizarre concept at play, which carries over into making me question reality in the rest of the game.
it says a lot though that i almost didn't even try lake of rot when i found it and yet it ended up being one of the least annoying things that happened all of yesterday. not just because the boss wasn't hard, either, because other bosses i've one shot (like the guy at the bottom of nokstella) were much more upsetting, too...like "i won but that still seemed pretty bullshit." it was actually just pretty fine.
on the other hand, i finally reached volcano manor (by going around in a way that seems like it was apparently still backwards??? i need to run the rest of the way down the hill to see what the way you're actually supposed to get up there is...), and while i did the questline there and thought it was interesting (led to me wandering way further across the mountaintops than i'd been, too, i know that's my next destination in general), the boss was terrible. not the absolute hardest, but easily my least favorite in the whole game so far, even over the aqueduct gargoyles or any other deeply obnoxious multi-target fight. the bitter taste of a super gimmicky fight which has very little to do with whatever you've been doing in the rest of the game, except he also has attacks with weird staggered dodge timing (normal in this game, but still), a grab he can land pretty fast even from incredibly far away, horrendous camera angles and his moving lava pool that constantly hitstuns you if you're anywhere near him. of course i've heard plenty about how brutal the last stretch of the game is and i know my suffering isn't over. but at least i'm pretty sure this won't happen again this playthrough??
hero's graves are worse than caves but i finally finished one, and i'll probably at least do the two others i found previously now that i'm pretty strong, just to know that i did. and catacombs are also usually annoying but at least have the format of like a joke, where i get to laugh at the end because i realize i got tricked or there's some kind of actually bizarre concept at play, which carries over into making me question reality in the rest of the game.
it says a lot though that i almost didn't even try lake of rot when i found it and yet it ended up being one of the least annoying things that happened all of yesterday. not just because the boss wasn't hard, either, because other bosses i've one shot (like the guy at the bottom of nokstella) were much more upsetting, too...like "i won but that still seemed pretty bullshit." it was actually just pretty fine.
on the other hand, i finally reached volcano manor (by going around in a way that seems like it was apparently still backwards??? i need to run the rest of the way down the hill to see what the way you're actually supposed to get up there is...), and while i did the questline there and thought it was interesting (led to me wandering way further across the mountaintops than i'd been, too, i know that's my next destination in general), the boss was terrible. not the absolute hardest, but easily my least favorite in the whole game so far, even over the aqueduct gargoyles or any other deeply obnoxious multi-target fight. the bitter taste of a super gimmicky fight which has very little to do with whatever you've been doing in the rest of the game, except he also has attacks with weird staggered dodge timing (normal in this game, but still), a grab he can land pretty fast even from incredibly far away, horrendous camera angles and his moving lava pool that constantly hitstuns you if you're anywhere near him. of course i've heard plenty about how brutal the last stretch of the game is and i know my suffering isn't over. but at least i'm pretty sure this won't happen again this playthrough??
I got attacked in the nexus! Outrageous! Anyway, I survived it. I’ve been trying to find the way to the western edge of Liurnia, getting very confused by the verticality of the area. Also I keep going back into the lake to try more stuff. I found the bell bearing that lets me buy +1 and +2 smithstones, which opens my equipment options up again. I’ve been using the claws for quite a while, currently giving a katana a go. It’s nice to have a little reach again, though I miss basically not having to worry about stamina at all while attacking.
Certain parts of Liurnia are just tricky to navigate, but others only accessible near the end of one of the game's longest sidequests.
With estragon’s advice in mind I’ve been less focused on the west side of Liurnia and started looking at the east, but today I got it in mind to go back to some things I couldn’t beat before, so I cleared out the grafted spinny thingos and the ulcerated tree spirit in the fringe folk heroes grave, the latter of which gave me I think my biggest rune drop so far, then finally beat the dragon on the lake, which was actually kind of easy once I started just running around it on horseback using ranged attacks, went and beat the like dragon lizard thing in the tunnel between Limgrave and Caelid, and then went and explored Siofra river a bit, clearing out all the enemies and I think all the items between the site of grace at the entrance and the next one. The skeletal militiaman summons have been a big help - they aren’t all that strong but I like that they keep coming back to life.
i've gotten to maliketh. this area's been basically really good, and there's some paths i need to check out because i glanced over them (or noped out in the case of the spot with undead). and i liked the fire giant fight as well...which i think is because it actually felt different from a lot of bosses in the game. but the contrast of my progress last night really hit home when i ran into the draconic tree sentinel, because i feel like that really nailed down why i find myself frustrated by bosses so often: it feels like they came up with a list of stuff that "makes bosses hard" and then gave most of those things to a lot of the recurring miniboss type enemies, on top of the main bosses, where it'd be obviously expected. which seems obviously targeted at preventing large scale first-level cheese, stuff like enemies having fast gap closers or long range attacks so you can't trivially kite them forever, but it also means that every time you meet anything there's going to be an enormous demand to learn their convoluted attack chains, which things are actual openings you can hit instead of just having them back off or switch into something else, the rare chances to back off and actually heal without getting instantly tagged again...obviously it's hardly driven me to not wanting to play, but it's sort of spiritually exhausting to see some guy and just know it's just another guy you have to dodge through like 5 things to attack him once and learn a few really similar looking tells because one of them is deceptively ultra slow or fast, or mega dangerous. just...everything above avatars and watchdogs is like this, and even with the reused ones it's like "the last time i fought this guy was like 20 hours ago so i don't really remember..." or easier guys are paired up together or with something else to cover weaknesses, so it just feels like every cave is going to end up with some fight where i can die in like 3 seconds even now that i have 2000 hp. i've rarely cast offensive spells lately just because if i actually get that kind of time i could be hitting the boss with the staff for a knockdown instead, which more than makes up for doing less damage on the individual hits. and obviously there's more i could do about that too, but i'm kind of feeling set on this path till the credits roll. still now that i've gotten all these incantations i basically haven't touched in favor of my str/faith weapons i'll probably eventually try and respec to be able to learn how to use them from the basics again on a new game +; it may feel kind of late to figure all that out now, but there's always another chance...
for all my complaints, and my constant feeling like the pace and feeling of sekiro is still way better, i'm definitely still kind of getting that saga feeling like there's a ton of ideas i want to check out and learn more about, especially now that i'm feeling more willing to look stuff up and critical path in the future...i'm feeling taunted by all these high-end magics i started getting hypothetical access to like 50 hours ago, but what i kind of really want to do is something more focused on crits. like, i'm assuming if you parry the second hit of a chain the boss doesn't just get to keep going, right, even though things don't instantly become vulnerable like in bloodborne and earlier...
fire giant i really did like though. his spell set and overall size, combined with being able to use torrent, actually made it feel really sweeping and unique as i try to watch out for his space control while finding opportunities to move out and in against his giant hits and movement. obviously timing and recognition are still huge factors, but it sure didn't feel like the 100th in-your-face duel/slugfest in the game, so i appreciated that a lot. on the other hand i eventually gave up on fortissax due to the camera and obnoxiously specific timings to hit the head while doing final fantasy x thunder plains and just breathed rot on to deal 3/4 of its health so i only had to hit it a few more times. (when a similar looking dragon whose legs i couldn't lock onto landed on a bridge in CFA i just ran past it. i killed the later one that started with low health...with rot again.) i also summoned a guy (who apparently wasn't always there) against godskin duo after a few tries. there are some things i just don't want to bother to get good at right now. and like, right now i don't hate maliketh but i can't really figure out when you get to hit him in the second part, so if i get too annoyed...i have a +10 tiche here. lol
for all my complaints, and my constant feeling like the pace and feeling of sekiro is still way better, i'm definitely still kind of getting that saga feeling like there's a ton of ideas i want to check out and learn more about, especially now that i'm feeling more willing to look stuff up and critical path in the future...i'm feeling taunted by all these high-end magics i started getting hypothetical access to like 50 hours ago, but what i kind of really want to do is something more focused on crits. like, i'm assuming if you parry the second hit of a chain the boss doesn't just get to keep going, right, even though things don't instantly become vulnerable like in bloodborne and earlier...
I cannot execute Elden Ring parries, but from watching videos I believe that a successful parry always at least creates a recoil (and potentially an opportunity to punish with a regular attack, although obviously timing varies boss to boss and based on how big your windup is), even if it doesn't send them into full stagger mode.
If you can do them, it still seems to be a very powerful defensive move, even if it takes multiple parries on some bosses to setup the big stagger punish.
ok yeah popping out a shield next time in some capacity seems like it'll be pretty enjoyable then after 70 hours of rolling hahaa
i did parry chumps at the start of stormveil castle a bit but i can't remember what caused that to completely fall by the wayside afterward
i did parry chumps at the start of stormveil castle a bit but i can't remember what caused that to completely fall by the wayside afterward
If you really want to get into them, there's a Golden Parry Ash of War found outside the capital that only costs 4 FP/use to give the biggest successful parry window (both timing and distance) in the game. That being said, if you're good at them, I don't think it's that much better than a Buckler, which is easier to fit into any build.
Golden Parry is better than a buckler by I think 1-2 frames or something? But more than the frames, it has a huge arc it parries across, bigger than any other normal parry's area (including the buckler's). It does cost some FP though. FWIW shields and especially greatshields are very good in Elden Ring, especially with the new guard counter mechanics!
Taking a page from Sekiro, you can parry->crit bosses, but most bosses that you can parry will stagger into a critical hit opening animation after 2-3 parries I think, instead of each individual parry. And I can't remember how universally they allow that parrying.
Taking a page from Sekiro, you can parry->crit bosses, but most bosses that you can parry will stagger into a critical hit opening animation after 2-3 parries I think, instead of each individual parry. And I can't remember how universally they allow that parrying.
so first of all, i beat all the last bosses. mostly by summoning tiche after i felt like i'd gotten my fill of dodging gameplay, which was really exacerbated by how feast or famine the colossal weapon stun action is. on maliketh, gideon, and hoarah i got like, 90% perfect runs that fell apart at the end bc every boss can just combo you to death as soon as you misstep, so i felt more than fine taking the last bit easy after that. not because i'm a getgood player but just because i like to feel like i have some idea what's going on. i'm glad that the final interact doesn't force you into ng+, i feel primed to check out some more stuff now that it's over. this is how it always works with nonlinear games for me i feel like, eventually it's like i just want to see the end to feel like the burden of finishing it is over with. and the last boss is good, so i don't hate this game, and actually think i like it close to bloodborne, which is wild because a huge part of the reason i loved bloodborne is because it took me like 30 hours to play once
this is a longer and more annoying game but it definitely has so much of what they learned over 12 years. and not all of that is good, but at the end of the day this is a hilarious and bizarre game that's willing to let you get lost and fail, but also absolutely destroy it, and i respect and love that. legacy dungeons >> catacombs >>>>>> caves >> hero graves, but the best and most memorable moments are the absolutely inexplicable parts. like the ensha invasion, which happened for me so far into the game the actual fight part was far less than trivial, but that just made GREAT ENEMY FELLED and everything else about it (there's no fighting in the war room!) that much more surreal and hilarious
the final boss weapon unlock being more shit i can just use in my existing build makes the prospect of continuing on and doing ng+ all the more exciting. i don't usually ng+ either, since i like that feeling of starting from scratch too, but i feel like so much stuff opened after i committed to a build that i still want to see that it feels like an inevitability. but,
this is a longer and more annoying game but it definitely has so much of what they learned over 12 years. and not all of that is good, but at the end of the day this is a hilarious and bizarre game that's willing to let you get lost and fail, but also absolutely destroy it, and i respect and love that. legacy dungeons >> catacombs >>>>>> caves >> hero graves, but the best and most memorable moments are the absolutely inexplicable parts. like the ensha invasion, which happened for me so far into the game the actual fight part was far less than trivial, but that just made GREAT ENEMY FELLED and everything else about it (there's no fighting in the war room!) that much more surreal and hilarious
the final boss weapon unlock being more shit i can just use in my existing build makes the prospect of continuing on and doing ng+ all the more exciting. i don't usually ng+ either, since i like that feeling of starting from scratch too, but i feel like so much stuff opened after i committed to a build that i still want to see that it feels like an inevitability. but,
i am absolutely not a parry god. in dark 1 and 2 and demon's souls i didn't learn how to do them till future runs, and in bloodborne i only learned them first run because they're easier (because you win trades in a certain window) and work on virtually everything. but once the goal stops being "finish the game" for me and moves to like "check out this thing" then..."this thing" can become parries and i can eat shit on the same guy 50 times trying to learn the reactions. it's weird like that. and the thought of stuffing so many of the combos that frustrated the shit out of me this playthrough is way too enticing, even if i die 1000 times on the way
i started up a bandit and have played through a lot of the stuff i meant to do (mostly critical path through leyndell and a few of the quests i missed huge parts of, if not outright failed, before), and am just preparing a bit more for the last leg of the game now. this has been a pretty huge contrast to the faith stuff last time: with black flame i felt like i could take on mid-tier bosses i'd ordinarily be far underleveled for, and the faith heals could stretch through combat heavy slogs of areas, but the knives and dexterity swords don't offer the same kinds of advantages in the former (especially bleed-resistant and immune enemies like avatars) and while my better skills can handle most areas fine, it's a little tedious to fish for parries constantly on mooks, so there's been a lot of running past with the occasional gank of opportunity. this would be a painful or lousy way to do a first run, but it's been great for a much quicker replay where my focus is on learning bosses better and trying new weapons that sounded cool on my first run but i wasn't really spec'd for.
a striking thing about going through godrick and rennala again is how actually easy they are next to late-game bosses, especially since there's some obvious moveset similarities to specific ones who can move faster and do way more damage relatively. the game's difficulty climbs so high over time that i never really felt strongly like i'd actually improved, but in retrospect that's clearly not the case. i also tried the redmane castle dungeon trip since i kind of gave up on it after getting killed by the giant at the front gate a couple times. which was cool, if also a shockingly brutal graceless stretch. although when i got to the boss i spent a while learning the first part of the battle only to find out that the crucible knights are also extremely resistant to stabs and i would've had to land way too many parries without failing more than a few times, all to gain about 1 level. not worth
and trying to run more properly through volcano manor was certainly an experience (since last time i fought rykard at the end of the recusant questline and never investigated the other route), i still haven't checked out everything since there was a bit near the omenkiller that was just way too much for me to handle straight up and i ended up doing a really scuffed quickstep run to open the bridge to the second half. godskin noble was one of the first true tests of parrying, and i never was able to react to his rapid stab fast enough (if parrying that even works). i just gave up and rolled it because i died every time i failed, lol. his roll attack is the other really dangerous one, mostly because the timing becomes super random from him bumping into pillars and walls (and occasionally causing frameskips from destroying 3 physics objects at once, which the engine isn't a fan of), but i got way better at dealing with it eventually. skipped rykard for now, might just not bother this playthrough since i don't want the stuff and kind of just hate him. i guess that's the accursed fate i'm delivering to enemies i really don't like fighting (and don't have to) on this run: "i hope you live"
relatedly since i was talking to my brother about this tonight, i think it's funny as hell that the recusant questline represents like half of the times in the game that there are quest markers on the map (that i know of, anyway). these people oppose the order of the world and basically consider themselves evil for you, and they will let you know exactly who they want you to kill and where to find them
and eventually i looked up and found out i was trying to do commander o'neil backwards the first time i tried, he *is* parryable and *isn't* bleedable, not the other way around, so when i tried to swing the bloodhound fang at the spirits and couldn't kill them i was just doing it totally wrong. i got to truly live the hit and run pickoff gameplan at least one time (which i've usually just balked at because it takes so long), and correctly stomping this guy was really great after how many times his endgame counterpart thrashed me last playthrough. looking forward to that runback now too
so after those tasks it was on to try and get onto the stuff i was really excited for, but first i had to fight the draconic sentinel at the end of altus. i hate this fight, and i think it highlights the major downsides of focusing so much on "difficulty"-the boss has such a ruthlessly efficient script that it borders on being predictable and stupid, but also such an overwhelmingly powerful moveset with huge hitboxes and powerful ranged attacks, that i find it totally joyless. also he's just kind of standing on the road in two spots blocking actual climatic moments in the game, and not actually some kind of superpowered god in theory, so i really don't get the point. and my daggers did almost no damage and he's basically unbleedable, so i pretty quickly gave in, grabbed the rot dog, and then landed the status and ran completely away to wait for his death. justified
golden god is a genuinely fun fight with fast weapons, i had this experience on my first run and even though this played out the same i genuinely enjoy the flow of going for 1-2 quick hits between each dodge of his own huge swings a lot. it's sort of funny how the stomp is his main starter, i think that's another reason the fight actually feels a bit refreshing, because he doesn't lean on an initial "mixup" in the same way as so many bosses do...
and then there was morgott. honestly, the main problem is just that i was like 40-50 levels lower and had substantially less HP/defense and HP recovery this time despite still investing pretty decently in the stat, it made a lot of his unparriable options (mostly his rebuys after the hammer swing where he can pull out a spectral spear thrust or sword spin combo depending on how far you are) really brutal and meant i died faster and had to spend more time running back until the fight finally clicked. but parries are incredibly powerful in this fight, because he always tries to sword swing out of the clash again, so getting the first parry can set you up to get the guaranteed crit (and mine have started hitting for about 2000 damage against most enemies...) once you learn the reactions to all 3. one of which is very fast, and has an awkward startup and arc that meant it took a ton of times before i could finally counter it, but that was a surprisingly satisfying victory, even if i really worked for it in the end. once i learned how to truly dodge all his other attacks and really got used the parry combo sequences i needed, i really felt like i'd mastered the fight, which is not really that common
and so far last up was radahn. turns out this fight really isn't a fun 1v1, even coming back a bit overpowered (with a +7 morgott sword, i was excited to try this weapon and the L2 is reallllllly slick, and 1200 hp...), he kind of feels like a boss from older games since he doesn't seem to have the same kinds of long elaborate combos, but the huge size of his model and his high-speed running around makes the camera and his reads really hard to keep up with regardless. but doing it made me love all the more the way they decided to make this one of the best and most unusual combat setpieces in the series, and that unique feeling of raising up an entire horde to slowly charge at him across the giant dunes is truly one of the game's best moments. i heard this fight was (probably over-)nerfed after i mentioned this to a couple people, but even so, it's heartening that there's SUCH a good example of them still making something that feels like it has narrative and mechanical significance far beyond just like..."YOU DIED"
a striking thing about going through godrick and rennala again is how actually easy they are next to late-game bosses, especially since there's some obvious moveset similarities to specific ones who can move faster and do way more damage relatively. the game's difficulty climbs so high over time that i never really felt strongly like i'd actually improved, but in retrospect that's clearly not the case. i also tried the redmane castle dungeon trip since i kind of gave up on it after getting killed by the giant at the front gate a couple times. which was cool, if also a shockingly brutal graceless stretch. although when i got to the boss i spent a while learning the first part of the battle only to find out that the crucible knights are also extremely resistant to stabs and i would've had to land way too many parries without failing more than a few times, all to gain about 1 level. not worth
and trying to run more properly through volcano manor was certainly an experience (since last time i fought rykard at the end of the recusant questline and never investigated the other route), i still haven't checked out everything since there was a bit near the omenkiller that was just way too much for me to handle straight up and i ended up doing a really scuffed quickstep run to open the bridge to the second half. godskin noble was one of the first true tests of parrying, and i never was able to react to his rapid stab fast enough (if parrying that even works). i just gave up and rolled it because i died every time i failed, lol. his roll attack is the other really dangerous one, mostly because the timing becomes super random from him bumping into pillars and walls (and occasionally causing frameskips from destroying 3 physics objects at once, which the engine isn't a fan of), but i got way better at dealing with it eventually. skipped rykard for now, might just not bother this playthrough since i don't want the stuff and kind of just hate him. i guess that's the accursed fate i'm delivering to enemies i really don't like fighting (and don't have to) on this run: "i hope you live"
relatedly since i was talking to my brother about this tonight, i think it's funny as hell that the recusant questline represents like half of the times in the game that there are quest markers on the map (that i know of, anyway). these people oppose the order of the world and basically consider themselves evil for you, and they will let you know exactly who they want you to kill and where to find them
and eventually i looked up and found out i was trying to do commander o'neil backwards the first time i tried, he *is* parryable and *isn't* bleedable, not the other way around, so when i tried to swing the bloodhound fang at the spirits and couldn't kill them i was just doing it totally wrong. i got to truly live the hit and run pickoff gameplan at least one time (which i've usually just balked at because it takes so long), and correctly stomping this guy was really great after how many times his endgame counterpart thrashed me last playthrough. looking forward to that runback now too
so after those tasks it was on to try and get onto the stuff i was really excited for, but first i had to fight the draconic sentinel at the end of altus. i hate this fight, and i think it highlights the major downsides of focusing so much on "difficulty"-the boss has such a ruthlessly efficient script that it borders on being predictable and stupid, but also such an overwhelmingly powerful moveset with huge hitboxes and powerful ranged attacks, that i find it totally joyless. also he's just kind of standing on the road in two spots blocking actual climatic moments in the game, and not actually some kind of superpowered god in theory, so i really don't get the point. and my daggers did almost no damage and he's basically unbleedable, so i pretty quickly gave in, grabbed the rot dog, and then landed the status and ran completely away to wait for his death. justified
golden god is a genuinely fun fight with fast weapons, i had this experience on my first run and even though this played out the same i genuinely enjoy the flow of going for 1-2 quick hits between each dodge of his own huge swings a lot. it's sort of funny how the stomp is his main starter, i think that's another reason the fight actually feels a bit refreshing, because he doesn't lean on an initial "mixup" in the same way as so many bosses do...
and then there was morgott. honestly, the main problem is just that i was like 40-50 levels lower and had substantially less HP/defense and HP recovery this time despite still investing pretty decently in the stat, it made a lot of his unparriable options (mostly his rebuys after the hammer swing where he can pull out a spectral spear thrust or sword spin combo depending on how far you are) really brutal and meant i died faster and had to spend more time running back until the fight finally clicked. but parries are incredibly powerful in this fight, because he always tries to sword swing out of the clash again, so getting the first parry can set you up to get the guaranteed crit (and mine have started hitting for about 2000 damage against most enemies...) once you learn the reactions to all 3. one of which is very fast, and has an awkward startup and arc that meant it took a ton of times before i could finally counter it, but that was a surprisingly satisfying victory, even if i really worked for it in the end. once i learned how to truly dodge all his other attacks and really got used the parry combo sequences i needed, i really felt like i'd mastered the fight, which is not really that common
and so far last up was radahn. turns out this fight really isn't a fun 1v1, even coming back a bit overpowered (with a +7 morgott sword, i was excited to try this weapon and the L2 is reallllllly slick, and 1200 hp...), he kind of feels like a boss from older games since he doesn't seem to have the same kinds of long elaborate combos, but the huge size of his model and his high-speed running around makes the camera and his reads really hard to keep up with regardless. but doing it made me love all the more the way they decided to make this one of the best and most unusual combat setpieces in the series, and that unique feeling of raising up an entire horde to slowly charge at him across the giant dunes is truly one of the game's best moments. i heard this fight was (probably over-)nerfed after i mentioned this to a couple people, but even so, it's heartening that there's SUCH a good example of them still making something that feels like it has narrative and mechanical significance far beyond just like..."YOU DIED"
Regulus
Sir Knightbot
Radahn was pretty difficult at launch and was nerfed significantly in one of the game's early patches. It adjusted his hitboxes slightly and cut down on his damage a lot. The damage reductions were supposedly a mistake, though, and they reverted them in a later patch. I haven't fought him since then so I'm not sure how different he is from launch Radahn now.
I’ve got about 80 hours on the clock, I’ve explored pretty much all of Limgrave and the sweeping Peninsula, a sliver of Caelid, and probably a bit more than half of Liurnia. I should probably cut down on trying to explore every nook and cranny everywhere or I may never stop playing this game.
I wonder if I’d be progressing quicker if I were trying to push forward all the time rather than looking everywhere initially. Probably I’d get levels more quickly and then be able to go back and have an easier time exploring the early areas. But that’s not me, I guess. I think I might be overlevelled anyway - I just beat the boss of the Carian Manor on my first attempt (thanks in large part to my Skeleton Militiamen summons, who aren’t particularly strong but do revive after death to distract the enemy once more).
I wonder if I’d be progressing quicker if I were trying to push forward all the time rather than looking everywhere initially. Probably I’d get levels more quickly and then be able to go back and have an easier time exploring the early areas. But that’s not me, I guess. I think I might be overlevelled anyway - I just beat the boss of the Carian Manor on my first attempt (thanks in large part to my Skeleton Militiamen summons, who aren’t particularly strong but do revive after death to distract the enemy once more).
It's somewhat difficult to get overleveled if you stay in an area (Limgrave, Liurnia, etc.). The design makes it so that each area gives enough XP to get to a reasonable level for that area. Higher levels require so much XP that your leveling will slow down the longer you stay in that area. Then, when you reach a new area, enemies and bosses give a lot more XP, and you'll be able to reach the next band of levels easily.
So yeah, it's designed so you're not punished for skipping content or for being too thorough. You should play it however feels best for you.
So yeah, it's designed so you're not punished for skipping content or for being too thorough. You should play it however feels best for you.