Elden Ring is finally real

[R.R. Bigman]

When I started that video I thought that person was going to kill Last Boss in two hits. Even they barely eked it out. That second phase is a Key & Peele sketch of a modern Souls boss.

I honestly don’t think I can do this. I’ve found every Blessing and Revered Ash, only to still get torn to shreds once the second phase starts. The flashing lights and effects are not great on my eyes, either.
I give up.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Please spoiler the boss's name, just in case.

Also, for both of the times I beat the boss, I absolutely summoned and got carried by other players with tank builds. I don't give nearly enough of a fuck to slam my head against the wall for hours or days on end for what I suspect would be limited benefit; I'm just not that good at these games and certainly not that patient right now. Engage in some jolly co-operation to get it down, get the remembrance, and call it done. That's why the system exists!

After ~42 hours in the DLC on my first character (int) and ~37 on my second (faith), I'm still considering a run with the third to play with all the new physical weapon types, but I'm going back and forth. But this is also how I felt before starting the faith run, so we'll see how I feel in a few days.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I changed my post to not give away the surprise of the boss.


I also beat the boss! I actually had the items and the build to go full turtle, er, dog and cheese out a win with my long forgotten Mimic Tear and an NPC friend. Not a sign of a well designed fight when the majority of people have to use the same strategy to prevail.

This DLC was neat, but it also doubled down on nearly everything I didn’t like about the main game. I wish there more mini dungeons. There’s only about ten in the whole map.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I actually like what they did with the mini dungeons. There are fewer, but each of them is longer and higher in design quality than many of the ones from the base game, which often felt kind of perfunctory. I feel like any more and they would have stretched them too thin again. If anything I wish the base game were more like the DLC with mini dungeons, fewer and higher quality.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

I could have used maybe... one or two more little ones, just tucked into some of the more open spots, like the Jagged Peak or Cerulean Coast. But in general, yeah, I prefer not having quite so many variations on catacombs and caves, and I feel like a number of areas (like Bonny Village or the long river path down to the Cerulean Coast) serve a similiar purpose without being discrete "dungeon" areas. And I liked the forges better than the mines.

 

[Adrenaline]

I agree that the frequent mini-dungeons in the base game became repetitive, but some of the areas in Erdtree felt a bit empty without them. The conundrum of open world game design.

 

[Fyonn]

So, I have now 1v1'd the final boss of the DLC using a purpose-built Faith tank character.

Spoiler: Shadow of the Erdtree Final Boss

Ya'll ever hear about shields? Turns out, they're pretty good. I'm by no means someone who even approaches what "good" looks like when it comes to From Software games, so I think a greatshield build like this will lessen a ton of the difficulty. Especially so if you're using like, any of the additional tools the game expects you to use (i.e. Spirit Ashes and NPC summons) like you really should be. No way I would have ever tried doing this 1v1 if I hadn't won this fight the Regular ways on two different characters already.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, a holy spear like Siluria's Tree here is the best raw damage weapon to take against this fight. For the whole fight, Radahn has 20 Piercing Negation, and 40 everything else Negation except for Holy. Phase two gets the 40 Negation, but Phase one has 0 Holy Negation. Also, I switched from Morgott's Great Rune to Malenia's to counter-act the chip damage my own astronomical Holy Negation while blocking was letting through.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I know I'm late to the party because I'm not getting around to them until my third run, but the new weapon classes are pretty rad (I did try out perfumes on my other builds, but that's about it).

Light greatsword: I really like the Milady, it's just fun and smooth and comfortable to use. Wing Stance is kind of a requirement; I suppose they wanted to make it available to other weapon classes too, but it feels like it's 100% meant to go on the milady. Anyway, most of the attacks true combo into each other in really fun natural-seeming ways and it's nice and fast. And I'm using it with a heavy infusion on my str build, which I have to imagine is probably sub-standard, but it still does pretty great damage! The only drawback is it doesn't stun very well.

Beast claws are pretty neat, but a little finnicky. They do good damage and surprisingly good poise damage, but the moveset has you sliding and jumping all over the place and more than once I've yeeted myself off a cliff accidentally, and you have to be careful not to get locked into a combo animation while an opponent is ready to counter you (v common in the dlc). Also slightly more likely to end up sliding around the side of an enemy and attacking nothing? But they're pretty satisfying, and bleed buildup never hurt anyone, even if it feels pretty slow and most enemies die before it procs (which I guess isn't a new or uncommon issue with bleed weapons).

The Dryleaf arts are fun. Again, they do excellent damage and it's just kinda fun to spin and kick and jump. One weird complaint I have is that using it in my full heavy bullgoat armor and greatjar helm actually makes the moves a little hard to parse so I might slim down to slightly lighter armor at some point just so I get the "feel" better. Dunno if they have bad poise-break (which would make sense tbh) or if I was just fighting a knight that was particularly hard to stagger, but the attacks did feel light.

Great katana: I just don't like this one. It feels as slow as a colossal weapon, but with an awkward and unpredictable moveset that I find hard to get the hang of. I do like the overhead stance's heavy attack a lot, but other than that I'm just not a fan so far.

I suppose I should pick up the backhand blades and try those out, people seem to like them a lot. I got the throwing dagger but no thanks.

But the real jewel is going to be the thrusting shield. Can't wait to pick that up.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Backhand blades are a blast.

I didn't love the throwing dagger, but I had some fun with heavier Smithscript weapons. Being able to chuck a giant hammer is a hoot.

 

[Regulus]

Wing Stance is kind of a requirement; I suppose they wanted to make it available to other weapon classes too, but it feels like it's 100% meant to go on the milady. Anyway, most of the attacks true combo into each other in really fun natural-seeming ways and it's nice and fast. And I'm using it with a heavy infusion on my str build, which I have to imagine is probably sub-standard, but it still does pretty great damage! The only drawback is it doesn't stun very well.

Wing Stance absolutely was 100% made for Milady because it's actually the only weapon that can use it. It's currently exclusive to the weapon class, but the only other light greatswords in the game are somber weapons.

Poise damage is mediocre on Milady (or was prior to 1.13... I played through the DLC with it before that so I'm not sure how it is now), but the stance damage is actually really good. And the quick multihit moveset is good for preventing boss poise from recovering.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Wing Stance absolutely was 100% made for Milady because it's actually the only weapon that can use it. It's currently exclusive to the weapon class

Weird. I wonder why they bothered making it a separate thing, then. Several of the other new weapons (dryleaf arts, beast claws) are in the same situation, but they start with their unique weapon ashes equipped.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

I think they made it separate so you can put different ashes on it if you want, and made it a separate piece of loot so you might not find it right away. I didn't; I didn't explore that little area until quite a long time after getting (and using) Milady to good effect. I actually put the big Dancing Lion frost stomp on it initially and it worked quite well.

 

[4-So]

Was anyone able to get into the Nightreign network test? Any thoughts on it? I'm hearing it's pretty good but also a game that seems most comfortable to people who are in the roguelike kinds of spaces already.

 

[lincolnic]

I got in. Played it for an hour today and disliked it so much that I deleted the test app after that. My experience will not be everyone's experience, but for me playing Elden Ring (or any Souls game/Bloodborne) is about exploration and deliberate action. Nightreign, on the other hand, is about doing everything as fast as possible with no time to look at the items you're finding. It just felt bad, and the added pressure of the Fortnite-esque ring herding you towards a zone boss didn't help. The whole thing kinda felt like someone's weird mod. That's not to say it's badly put together or anything -- it's like one of those mods that the creator spent three years working on and polishing. But whatever crowd they were aiming for, I'm not in it and I won't be buying it in May.

Also, I think it will be very hard to play this game with two other randos unless all three of you happen to already be very good and/or very familiar with the maps. In the two attempts I did my team was getting split up constantly, and the game really doesn't make it easy to know where they are once that happens. It's even worse when you think about how vertical the Elden Ring landscape is. But if you've got two friends who you can get in a call with while you play? That's probably going to be a much better time.

 

[Paul le Fou]

The speed and pressure are things that everyone comments on and it's my #1 worry about the game. I think I can separate it enough from base ER and Souls in my mind to appreciate it for what it is - I like AC6 and Sekiro too - but we shall see. The relative lack of builds and planning out my characters is the other thing I like about souls games, and that's not present here either. But I do like roguelikes and action games OK, and I've heard other good things about how it holds together for what it is.

But I will probably look for people I know to play with rather than randos.

 

[Ludendorkk]

More info, including that characters have quests to unlock their full storylines

 

[4-So]

On the one hand, Elden Ring is my jam and my jelly. On the other, I'm usually disinterested in roguelikes. If a game is described in terms of "runs", I'm likely not playing it. The exception is when there is a narrative loop providing a reason for why you need to go again - games like Hades, Returnal, Deathloop. It's nice that individual characters have stories but I'm not sold on Fortnitereign's loop. It's an odd concept for Elden Ring, like turning The Legend of Zelda into an extraction game. Going to wait on this one to see if it sticks in the landing.