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Elden Ring is finally real

Lord's Divine Fortification provides better protection than the livers, at 60%, if you have the 27 faith for it. Both body buffs, so don't stack. Just have to remember to reapply.
 
defeated the last boss last night at tree level 18 after a few days of learning how to overcome the camera and stuff so i could parry most of the applicable attacks. it's a great release that capitalizes on a lot of the strengths of the base game while improving many things i didn't like as much, and the additions of new weapon types and hybrid weapons, along with some cool new spells and buff mechanics, fit nicely into all that overall. even though some of the bosses really hit on what i feel are weaknesses in the action system (primarily the mounted guys and the camera being way too zoomed in on the last boss in general and a few other spots) i really liked most of them. as far as bosses go, the one where you fight alongside the game's breakout character was a real highlight, and i thought messmer was also really stylish and exciting. the double moon drop is also way up there among boss attacks i'm glad you can learn for yourself, even if the requirements are super high. though probably my single favorite moment of combat design is the miniboss at that hard-to-reach temple near the top of the world when it switches to a deathblight phase i was totally not expecting after the first version of that enemy. now that's a classic jumpscare

the world design is really what shines, though. shadow keep is a particularly incredible dungeon. the one central room and assorted nearby bits connecting it is already such a huge and rich area and it's still only a little more than half the whole thing. i've seen a lot of people compare the convoluted nature of paths through the game to dark souls 1, but i feel it's the opposite; you're teased early on with sights of most of the shadow world, occasionally above you but mostly below, and get to spend huge portions of the next 20-40 hours wondering how you actually get there as you slowly unfurl secret paths by studying areas and the map. an unassuming dungeon breaking the base game's pattern and leading through to a new, terrifying zone instead of just expecting you to teleport back out of the boss room is a great feeling; the closest thing to that i can remember in the base game is gael tunnel which just dumps you back out into that northeastern side of limgrave. but it doesn't overuse that trick either, and there are all kinds of classic souls drop-downs and hidden platforming segments to discover, too, including that one in the final dungeon that really hit me with acrophobia. which is pretty rare in games! it's something that really gets to me in real life, but i don't usually worry about falling down or even willfully jumping to my death just to see if that's actually what happens in games...

i generally feel that even these few large open games i've really gotten into lose some points in my mind because even though a lot of what's there is good and pretty fun for a single go-around the really exciting stuff that's really memorable, and that i might want to do over and over, ends up representing a pretty small portion of the game. even in elden ring, where i'm not really sure doing the critical path and a few side things for extra stuff you want (like quest items and equipment) is that much larger than a souls game, elicited some of that feeling when i played a second character (who ended up being the one i really got invested in the DLC with), i think partly because the structure of the game gets stretched in weird ways near the end, with a long and somewhat featureless trek through the areas after leyndell leading to one more fairly interesting main area and then a rapid-fire string of bosses. i don't think SOTE fully avoids that feeling of being padded out, but really dark souls 1 and 2 didn't either*. though i think SOTE comes close to the way i ended up playing 1 in the long term (just stop playing the game and mess around on a new character when i don't want to do anything that can progress the game anymore)...outside of being gated behind a boss in main game i find more difficult and annoying than almost any in the expansion. oh well! despite that i think it's likely i'll get plenty more out of it yet. i don't think it's quite in range of being my favorite post-demon's from game, but it's much, much closer to being at that level than the base game was.

*i haven't played 3...i did start it recently and i'm a lot closer to trying to really see it through than i've ever been. but maybe it's still not the time, haha
 
It’s fun exploring and finding new things to bonk with my goofy anvil hammer. Colossal Weapons did not get the nerf I had expected them to.

I still don’t know where I’m supposed to go, but I suppose that’s part of the journey.
 
It definitely is. There are some signposts to guide you along the core path, but there are lots of side tracks to follow to new areas, many of them found when and where you least expect them.
 
Yeah. Poke around everywhere. And sometimes you have to go through a dungeon or catacomb to get to another place. The critical path is quite short and a lot of things can be skipped, but skippable places (or non-critical areas in main dungeons) can lead to other places.
 
At the final boss now and it is Bad. It's a shame about so many of the bosses in this DLC, because the exploration side of things has been fantastic.
 
On the one hand, Fromsoft DLC bosses are always a step up from the base game, and they kinda have to be.

On the other hand: jeeeeeeesus christ
 
I crossed into some woods and got an ominous prompt that
A Great Rune had been Shattered.
What does this mean?

I’ve explored a fair bit and still have only encountered one major boss. Lots of people grouching about enemy difficulty. My big problem is I don’t know what to do or where to go. Goddamn From, can’t you make a straightforward narrative? Other than Sekiro’s “classical” story of a ninja’s devotion to a Dragon Boy.
 
I liked Radahn better when he had a horse.

Seriously though, if this is the way they're going with boss design moving forwards, I feel like they may be losing sight of what made their boss fights great in the first place.

R.R. Bigman said:
What does this mean?
Click to expand...
Two things. First, an area formerly blocked off is now accessible. Second, go talk to the NPCs you've met again.
 
You're supposed to get that message when you approach Shadow Keep. I don't know why they made it this way either, other than "typical FromSoft shenanigans".
 
Can't remember where I read it but apparently Miyazaki himself has admitted they may have reached the realistic limits of the formula of ever-increasing combo length/ever-decreasing openings.
 
I think they've also reached the limits of their game engine, since every boss is also hyper mobile now (even the enormous ones) and the camera just cannot keep up in a way that's helpful to the player.
 
I certainly wouldn't mind if they eased off the difficulty a bit, especially the more artificially inflated type where they crank the damage that enemies do through the fucking roof. But having all the enemies and especially bosses be in sicko mode 100% of the time gets tiring too.

Not that I think they'll change that, though. The challenge is such a part of their identity and brand, I don't know if they have it in them to not make something harder than their last game with each new release.
 
Wrapped up the DLC today. I'd like to compile my thoughts into a more substantial post but it's a little late to start doing that tonight. Maybe tomorrow!
 
Apart from Radahn, I generally loved the boss design and don't feel like he's necessarily a harbinger of future design. He's a superboss.

re: invisible map point, time usually doesn't progress in this game as you explore. Things don't really change until you get there. In this case, something big has changed and it has an effect on other stuff, including things that can happen in the keep, so I guess they decided the trigger would be geographical to make sure things have progressed by the time you get there. but it does mean you can push things forward faster than you intended. But until you enter Messmer's boss room you can still progress everyone's quests.
 
Yeah, some stuff advances after entering Messmer's boss fight room for the first time, and then the real point of no return is an event that you can do after beating the boss of the Rauh Ruins area - you'll know what I'm talking about when you get there.
 
I think I’m nearing the end of the DLC. I have a number of large side areas to visit, but I appear to be near a big “Point of No Return”. I will explore more, yet I can’t say I wouldn’t have preferred a much more structured DLC like Old Hunters. A lot of empty space and crummy rewards in the Shadowlands!

Around how what level Scadutree are you expected to have at the end of this? I’m Blessing Level 13 and noticed diminishing returns in regards to the attack and defense boosts after BL 10.
 
I finished it at 13. My brother’s character was at 16. So probably somewhere in that range? The max is 20 and the boost from the latter quarter of them is not too substantial.
 
I was 17 for my first character, on track to hit 20 on my second. After 12 I believe is where the returns start diminishing but you can still get another 20% or so for the rest of the levels.
 
I've been messing around with the (only partially functioning since the DLC release) first-person mod. It's pretty cool to see the game from this perspective! You'd think this would only make the game harder, but there are a couple things that are easier. First off, your character is not in the way of your view at all, and enemies take up much more of the screen, so reading their movements ends up easier in 1v1s. Though, for bosses, you might need to, uh, look up to see when an attack is coming. Second, there's a custom bit of code in the mod that allows you to take a single step during an attack animation. It ends up making it this really cool hybrid of how the King's Field and post-Demon's Souls era games play. It also hijacks the lock-on to provide auto-aim for ranged attacks, so you don't just have to free aim everything. It, uh, took me a while to figure that out though, so I kept turning the auto-aim off and manually aiming incantations without a crosshair, so uh. Oops. There are some other features, but they don't work in post-DLC Elden Ring versions, so I've got them turned off. Even without the full set of features, first-person Elden Ring is easily my favorite game feel a first-person melee combat game has ever had.

The real reason to check the game out like this is seeing all the small details it's easy to overlook in third-person, even if you know they're present. For instance, I'm spotting things like Godwyn's eyes near Those That Live In Death, how perfectly manicured Body Type B's nails are, and how the Catch Flame animation involves the Tarnished doing an unintentional backhanded peace sign.

Here's a video of what it looks like in action against an Erdtree Avatar. At the time I recorded, I was playing with another mod to replace the roll animation with the quickstep animation to ease how strange seeing a third-person action game from the character's point of view can be. The mod maintains the properties of each class of roll despite using the same animation for each, but I ended up turning it off because I wasn't quite sure if was making heavy rolls as lengthy as they should be.
 
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I have reached the final boss of the DLC. It lives up(?) to the negative hype.

It seem you really are not meant to fight Radahn Redux solo. His endless aggression, paired with the rewards for certain major NPC quests culminating in their availability for summons in both this and the previous fight against Miquella’s champions, back that up. The problem is that the helpers are Very Dumb and the health boost Radahn gets for calling them is obscene. That your Ash Summons get vaporized in seconds at or near max level is also a bizarre design choice given Revered Ash Blessings are one of the two major rewards of the DLC. I don’t know what the solution is here.

Guys, I think Fromsoft might not be the flawless developer scores of people online claim they are.
 
Taylew +10 is apparently extremely tanky against Radahn, if you keep it healed from afar. But yeah, it's a rough fight. You definitely don't want to summon both, but the distraction and blood loss buildup from Ansbach can help quite a lot. I concentrated hard on blood loss, blood loss, blood loss, to beat him.

Vanilla Radahn was also super hard early on, I hear, though that was before I had the game. From isn't flawless, but they do tend to make adjustments.
 
Ansbach does a good job of staying alive by keeping away from the action, I’ve found. I will try Golem Friend and Heal From Afar.

The Euporia twin blade seems to do good damage when I get some hits in. He’s just so damn fast!
 
My eventual solution was to respec heavy into arcane, with enough stats for a solid greatshield, put on Alberich's set, and hit him with Impenetrable Thorns whenever I had an opening. Not sure how much it just got nerfed though, and the Mimic Tear got in the last hit as I died.
 
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