Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Really got a feel for “trading hits”, too. Twice the duel ended with me getting the killing blow just as their blood loss proc’d or their magma adventure brought me to a sliver.

There were a number of times in this game (offline), I feel more than in past games, where there were both enemies that took out huuuuuge hunks of my health and also fights of attrition that left me with only a sliver of health at the end. I know there's invisible math at work, but I wonder if the game is designed that way to make things more exciting?

There are actually a few enemies here that seem kinda chill. The demi-humans in the woods somewhere, if you kill the big one they just cower harmlessly. Same in one cave, iirc. The wolves will try to get you, but they're nowhere near as aggressive as the bears. Trying to think of any other humans or humanoids that don't just automatically aggro. The miners in some, erm, mines? A few other things here and there. But yeah, certainly by the end of the game I was talking to the screen, basically pleading "don't pick a fight with me because I will destroy your entire enclave." I guess all the more chill enemies are balanced out by the relentless ones, like the spider things with swords or the dogs or big birds or bears or the big guys in one of the sewers or some of the knights that follow you and gang up, and so on. Even the little white blobs that blow bubbles out of their trumpets are assholes, though nothing here is worse than the cheese-proof enemies in DS2 that do not ever de-aggro.

fights of attrition that left me with only a sliver of health at the end.

I have wondered same about attacks - some enemies, my spells will do 95% in 2 hits, and i have to waste too much mana to finish that small sliver off, it feels... intentional and trolly, haha.

Completed it the other day, now I'm just doing some hoovering up before NG+. I really think this is the best, if not by far the most involving, game I've ever played.

It’s great. Dunno what system you play on, dog latin, but I backed myself up before doing some experimental respecs (and then reverted so I’d save my larval tears etc)

Just read something about an invader who, thanks to a glitch, apparently got summoned to help Rennala! That's kind of awesome.

It can happen, once I invaded into the Fire Giant's arena helped out the big old dummy.

I felt like I was finally doing really well, but Castle Sol is HARD man :( I cant even bear to think what Haligtree and endgame will be like.

I think I ran through most of Castle Sol. It's not enormous (unless I've missed a bit) but yeah, SE of the enemies are tough

Can't believe how much I missed in Mountaintops of the Giants first go through. I'm also taking through other areas of the game trying to get to all the Grace Points I might have missed and there is A LOT.
I mean, I'll look on Fextralife for a specific item or weapon and it'll turn out it's in a bit of Limgrave I just didn't happen to quite scope out properly, despite feeling like I've combed that while area several times over

Two times I've played through the game to completion, I've missed the Highroad Cave in Limgrave until the "taking stock" phase at the end. Something about the place where it's situated doesn't inspire investigation, it's also very well-hidden. I remember feeling like it was a pity, too, it's such a cool little diversion

Castle Sol was tough, iirc. It's got those lion monsters, guys firing explosives at you, some knights, tough/tricky boss fight. Which is the castle with the invisible stairs? That took some time, too.

This is really funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MW-qdNoYA

FINISHED MY FIRST PLAYTHROUGH! the last boss fight was so relaxing but still pretty tough, great music! here's me:

https://i.imgur.com/rZYclJP.jpg

spoilers: idk if i became elden lord or not? i touch ranni's summon and got the age of stars ending i guess

as a sword and shield user i didn't learn about guard counters until 120 hours into the game. probably would've made things a lot easier

Congrats! Tbh I didn't use guard counters either, they seemed too unreliable. Half the time you would get interrupted by an attack before your counter. Maybe if they had given them crazy hyperarmor and damage reduction? Also, they can be parried (which only matters for pvp).

the most memorable battle for me in ANY souls game was the valiant gargoyle fight in the siofra aqueduct. i stumbled into the arena without preparation and very few flask charges. battle was going OK but then ran out of charges before the second gargoyle even spawned. i had a sliver of health, managed to hit 20 of the narrowest dodges of my life and finished the battle. afterwards my partner was like "i didn't say anything, i didn't move a muscle. there was no way i could interrupt that magic"

Age of Stars means you don't become Elden Lord. I believe the idea is that you leave the Lands Between with Ranni as her consort. I don't know what this means for the Lands Between though. As far as I understand, there is no ending that leaves the Lands Between ungoverned by a higher power

I've never got the hang of guard counters either and basically stopped using shields altogether as soon as I learnt how to dual wield. I'm also seriously terrible at jump attacks, despite having a build which is geared towards them (dual wielding greatswords). For some reason I always end up missing the attack and then getting stabbed in the back.

I'm not sure if it actually matters, but for some weapons it seems to work better if you trigger the attack closer to when you hit the ground (as opposed to earlier in the jump)?

Valiant Gargoyles was maybe my fave boss fight tbh. The other duo bosses (Godskin, Abductors) felt unfair

I love guard counters. I’m in love with my lance and am currently enjoying assisting others with the final bosses in a full Haligtree Knight cosplay. Lance+shield makes tough enemies (knights, revenants, Crystallians) a breeze

I installed DS2 again, it’s the one From main game I haven’t spent time on. I previously found it janky and poorly designed but after 300+ hours of Elden Ring these deficiencies have become charming in relief

I didn't have that much trouble with the other two duo fights, since I was pretty leveled up by then, but the gargoyle fight was a real pain. I *think* I only prevailed after one fell off a cliff?

I didn't deal with guard counters either, they were as unreliable/unpredictable as parrying. As with most of the other games, as applicable, best strategy for me was always to be strong enough to beat an enemy down, which may be why I struggled the most with high-poise enemies.

Loved that Valiant Gargoyles story but they were probably my least favorite duo, in that I had to kill one before the other spawned and reached me in order to do it. For the others, it felt more reasonable to fight them both, as long as I kited them around. I just did the Abductors on my level 35 character recently and it was a fun challenge.

Godskin Duo melted like butter for me, and I hardly remember Valiant Gargoyles. Maliketh was a piece of piss. But the Tree Sentinel before him was SO FUCKING HARD. Malina was the toughest ever.

I definitely died more frequently to the Draconic Tree Sentinel in Farum Azula (and the Crucible Knight! wow!) than I did to Maliketh (who I'm pretty sure I beat on my first try).

Yep. Meanwhile my friend slaughtered that Tree Sentinel but had terrible trouble with Maliketh

i fought the draconic tree sentinel with honor by cheesing it with scarlet rot and then running away 3 times

i kind of stalled out on this game. partially bc i haven't had as much time to play. but mostly bc i couldn't beat the knight protecting the entrance to leyndell, so i decided i probably needed to level up more, but i'm just not doing great at accumulating enough runes to level up. i guess i need to research some rune farming tactics, though playing the same area over and over again does not sound very fun.

I got stuck at the same place, took a breather. I came back a bit later and found a different entrance to Leyndell (which I call Washington DC), but what really helped was exploring older areas a bit more - not just farming runes in well-known places, but finding a couple more caves, leveling up weapons and summons a bit more.

Now I’m at a similar punch point in the mountain tops, but at least I know I’m running out of New Huge Areas to find, so I’m trying to push through

With PS4 fog/draw distance + mountaintops of the gods fog, plus getting caught in a snowstorm up there, I have no idea how I managed to find a cave there last night! If the storm ever dies down or my ps4 learns to have better graphics, I’ll probably discover that this cave entrance was obvious and unmissable in the middle of a sunshiny field. In the moment, though, it was much more like “whoa! Cave!”

Still taking through post-game. There is so much stuff I missed in Caelid which would have really helped me earlier in the game. Currently trying to grab all the Physick knot tear things

Raking

Karl, did you find that Rise in the Mountaintop which you can only access via an invisible path demarcated by very thin wispy white cloud outlines which you can't see because everything around there is white?

For the entrance to Leyendell, if you used a furled finger I think there's an NPC summon there to help with the tree sentinel.

xpost dog latin, maybe i did? there was an invisible path, like a bridge (marked by blood stains and a couple messages, including one from an ilxor that said something like "NOT DOWN!"), and i followed it straight up to the edge of a tall building (the rise?), at which point i could not figure out how to get in, and turned back, shamefully

also, you know those winged/bat creatures that are in the mountaintops (and also other areas...maybe these are the cold weather variants)? the ones that stay high up in the air, dart in close to hit you, then fly back up again?

i *HATE* those

i would and could and will take down 10 giants in a row before approaching a group of 4 to 5 little wingdings

I’ve been playing this game so long and only just found the extra pots in Azealia’s Grave (the warpy warp puzzle dungeon)

Still missing one cracked, one ritual

i have never, ever crafted a pot (cracked or ritual)

i should probably check that out, but with my (horrible) faith build, it always seemed like pots were the replacement for incantations, for players who aren't focusing on magic?

I would call them a poor substitute for spells or incantations, but they can be handy for proc-ing certain kinds of damage/status effects (Rot Pot is a particular favorite)

i fought the draconic tree sentinel with honor by cheesing it with scarlet rot and then running away 3 times

This was me. The way I see it is, in almost every battle the bosses, if not all enemies, have the upper hand. Limitless stamina, stupid hit boxes, crazy moves/powers/weapons, and so on. So I figure if there's anything the game allows me to do to make it easier, that means the developers are OK with that. For example, my aforementioned gargoyle over the cliff. There is a cliff there, *I* can certainly fall off the cliff (and did, often), so why not the gargoyles? They have wings, if the devs didn't want them to fall off the cliff they wouldn't.

Mountaintops, I think the storm dies down if you kill the dragon (which I never did). The invisible bridge, it's a PIA that really requires using those magic glow stones.

I'm not sure I ever crafted anything or used pots or perfumes. I think I did craft some poison darts once or twice, which were useful. Maybe anti poison/rot stuff? I found the places where I was most likely to get rotted or poisoned, it happened so often and so fast that using the boluses was pointless, since I was just going to get rotted/poisoned again. Better to just heal through it and get where I needed to go.

kind of annoyed i can't do the varre quest without having an online membership

do you all feel like the online aspects of this game make it worth a PS+ membership alone? now that you can get the cheap essential membership i'll probably try it out at least for a few months. but i'm not really interested in invading/dueling/etc, at least i don't think i am. but even that brief morning where i could see the messages and had the option to summon help was pretty enticing.

hard to say... i never did PvP but i find the messages feature in souls games when there are a large number of players to be something special

tim rogers said that the message system is a callback to japanese arcades where there would be a clipboard on the cabinets for people to share tips asynchronously. thought that was super cool

I can't imagine playing any of the ds games or elden ring without the online component, it's such a big and funny part of the games to me

thanks, i signed up for it

yeah I don't really play any of the online stuff, but going through these games with the messages, calling for help, and and seeing ghosts of people running around makes the games feel so alive. I'm relatively new to the ds series, but when I played the first one it was during a big 10 year anniversary event that the community had and there was tons of online activity everywhere in the game. Really confusing at first because I didn't know what all the blood stains were, etc, but it gave the games a unique feel.

I'm honestly impressed how well all of these games work in single player mode, though I can always tell I am missing out.