Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion Announced

[robdood]

So my new Strength build is going very nicely indeed.  Dual wield greataxes.  I helped a bunch of people stomp Margit, it was so fun.  I hit like an absolute truck and am half naked.  

 

Some highlights

 

Morne castle boss:

Spoiler

 

 

Margit first try:

Spoiler

 

 

[imp]

18 minutes ago, robdood said:

I've not got anywhere near the boss you guys are talking about, but is something like Barricade a good option? It makes a small shield a super-greatshield for about 5 seconds, it's an amazing weapon art. 

 

The dude who did the fight level 1 used it, but that was pre-nerf. I'm doing a big tanky boy with a big shield and a big spear right now, so I'll report back when I get to the fight!

[robdood]

And we're off again!  Come say hi if you're not on your own adventures!  Twitch and YT

[Captain Kelsten]

My shield (+25 fingerprint stone great shield) is 100% guard with the great shield talisman. Means blocked attacks don’t drain my stamina at all. 

[shirubagan]

Beat Godfrey with a little help from my friend… who was basically firing Shinku Hadokens at him non-stop. 
 

I’d had a few good runs at him before and got his health down to around 30% so I wasn’t doing too poorly… then I realised I had a way more powerful sword and some better fire res greaves which also helped. 
 

Am I ashamed of calling in my dad to beat up my bully? Not at all  

[Curtis]

1 hour ago, Uzi said:

I have a plus 10 of that summon already ooh la la 

Upon further testing, she isn't that great at trash mobs from a DPS standpoint, the secret sauce is her red blade throw which at first i thought was Bleed ticking away, but its actually a type of Fire that completely bypasses any resistances, making it really effective against high HP bosses. 

[Curtis]

1 hour ago, jonamok said:

Blessed relief for his long-suffering mount, too.

If you read the description/lore you'll know he mastered the art of anti-gravity (therefore not actually burdening the horse) so he could remain with his trusted steed forever more. 

 

Also, he has no legs, so he'd fall off a real mount. 😆

[pinholestar]

Don’t sleep on Banished Knight Oleg for summons btw. Dude fucks people up with his tornado twirl and he’s an absolute tank at +10 who lasts for ages.

[Qazimod]

Yes, finally beat GD after days of attempts. I was making use of most of the extra items and ashes that seemed to help - I just feel like in previous efforts I wasn't doing damage quickly enough. So yeah, I do use ashes here, but this is still a Strength character and I didn't really have a lot of ranged options available.

 

There's a clip available below. You can peep my stats and gear at the start - vitality, endurance and strength were about 43-44 and I'm still using the GB Greatsword.  

 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1430727413 (could be slightly spoilery as it reveals an effective status ailment)

[dug]

50 minutes ago, pinholestar said:

Don’t sleep on Banished Knight Oleg for summons btw. Dude fucks people up with his tornado twirl and he’s an absolute tank at +10 who lasts for ages.

 

Word. He's been my go to summon since I used him to beat Magrat on my first attempt.

[NecroMorrius]

Love losing 40k souls to the worse than usual lock-on camera in an absolutely unavoidable situation. Git gud

[kensei]

Mimic is hard to beat, even with the nerf, though. It'll use whatever items you equip for free, so you can get it to heal itself and apply appropriate blade enhancements. I imagine it's be pretty straightforward to get it to proc bleed or similar on other builds.

[5R7]

10 minutes ago, Moz said:

Love losing 40k souls to the worse than usual lock-on camera in an absolutely unavoidable situation. Git gud

240K...jumped off a bridge, missed the double jump 😂

[Jamie John]

I've reached MtO in the capital:

Spoiler

Mohg the Omen, in the Forsaken Depths. My +17 weapon does very little damage and my summon just doesn't attack him at all - I don't know if this is a bug or what. You can summon Dung Eater before the fight, but he's not much help.

 

I'm level 88. Is this a case of coming back later?

 

[NecroMorrius]

9 minutes ago, 5R7 said:

240K...jumped off a bridge, missed the double jump 😂

So your own fault then.

 

Another night of running into crap asset swap enemies in boring locations bring oneshot by, well, everything. Except for the times there’s a long absolutely piss easy dungeon with an impossible boss at the end where sometimes you can use your summons and sometimes you can’t. Roll the dice, see what hap-you died.

 

Back to just running past everything in true Dark Souls style. The one player behaviour they’ve never been able to counter. 

[Minion]

14 minutes ago, Moz said:

So your own fault then.

 

Another night of running into crap asset swap enemies in boring locations bring oneshot by, well, everything. Except for the times there’s a long absolutely piss easy dungeon with an impossible boss at the end where sometimes you can use your summons and sometimes you can’t. Roll the dice, see what hap-you died.

 

Back to just running past everything in true Dark Souls style. The one player behaviour they’ve never been able to counter. 

 

Why bother if it's annoying you so much? I drop any game I'm not enjoying immediately, there's better shit to do.

[Curtis]

I can't help but notice a lot of "i'm done with it" posts over the past couple of days? Have the semi-casual crowd who helped the game reach 12 million sales (thank you, seriously) reached their breaking point? 

 

I would say stick with it, and use every tool at your disposal to hurt the game that will never stop hurting you. And it only gets worse towards endgame, trust me - theres no respite or easy way to see it through to the credits.

 

The later enemies hit so much harder than any other Souls game. Thats why 60 Vigor has become a must! And i hate pumping HP for the sake of it, but this game is HUGE and LONG and you have to stay on par with the difficulty curve for each new region.

 

But like all Souls games, there is no need to grind levels to get "stronger". Bumps in SL will only help in a minor way (like being able to equip a new weapon). The key is tailoring your build to the playstyle you enjoy. All of them are effective!

 

If you need advice, feel free to message me, and we can look through your gear and stats and see what we can do to optimise it and make light work of problem areas. 

[Schnibbles]

1 minute ago, Curtis said:

I can't help but notice a lot of "i'm done with it" posts over the past couple of days? Have the semi-casual crowd who helped the game reach 12 million sales (thank you, seriously) reached their breaking point? 

 

I would say stick with it, and use every tool at your disposal to hurt the game that will never stop hurting you. And it only gets worse towards endgame, trust me - theres no respite or easy way to see it through to the credits.

 

Ha, is this supposed to reassure the semi-casual crowd? Of which I am one, and I'm indeed stopping playing after about 45 hours.

 

I don't regard it as a bad thing necessarily - I wasn't expecting to ever finish it, and I've just spent too much time on it and got "fatigued" as people are describing it. 45 hours is still a serious amount of time for me to put into a game. 

 

I think it's a little inevitable that the casual crowd will be more likely to enjoy the new areas, new bizarre enemies, new vistas etc rather than learning to bludgeon the game harder than it bludgeons you. 

 

I made it to the Capital but the balance of being murdered vs seeing cool new stuff had gradually shifted. Doesn't make it a bad game in my estimation by any means. 

[Captain Kelsten]

On the home stretch

 

Last few bosses

 

Spoiler

Killed Sir Gideon Offney first go and took his armour. Looks like a Ring Wraith wrapped in a knitted shawl

 

Killed Godfrey aka Hourah Loux first go, as well. Was remarkably easy. Now I’m wearing his armour, because it makes Noel Edmonds look like a badass Viking  

 

[Curtis]

  

31 minutes ago, Schnibbles said:

 

Ha, is this supposed to reassure the semi-casual crowd? Of which I am one, and I'm indeed stopping playing after about 45 hours.

 

I don't regard it as a bad thing necessarily - I wasn't expecting to ever finish it, and I've just spent too much time on it and got "fatigued" as people are describing it. 45 hours is still a serious amount of time for me to put into a game. 

 

I think it's a little inevitable that the casual crowd will be more likely to enjoy the new areas, new bizarre enemies, new vistas etc rather than learning to bludgeon the game harder than it bludgeons you. 

 

I made it to the Capital but the balance of being murdered vs seeing cool new stuff had gradually shifted. Doesn't make it a bad game in my estimation by any means. 

 

My point was: feel free to ask before giving up entirely, because its highly likely you aren't getting the most out of your set-up. I've been tutoring fellow forumites since Demon's in 2009, and they even dubbed me Sir Curtis. 😆

 

Since then i've clocked 7000+ hours on Soulsborne games. All that aside, i'm not a 'great' player, my enjoyment comes from figuring out the best way to abuse the systems in place. The purists who love the thrill of solo-ing everything might smirk and say, "nah thats not how its done", but what does it matter? Each to their own!

 

Also, do what i do: never try a boss more than 3-4 times. Take a break. Think about it. Sleep on it. If you're doing pitiful damage then your gear clearly isn't up to spec for that particular fight. Its not about learning every move and when to evade. Thats too clinical for me. Bashing your head against a wall repeatedly will only lead to a headache.

 

The beautiful thing about the open world nature of this game is even if you hit a roadblock (or two), you can still explore and find all sorts of distractions. Thats what this game is about. After beating Margit i went all over exploring, dying, suiciding for an item, and by the time i got back on the main story path, i was proper tooled up!

 

I'm always available for jolly coop. 

[NecroMorrius]

Erm I’ve got 1000s of hours in Souls games. I’m just baffled as to the seemingly random enemy difficulty I’ve encountered the past few nights, even in small areas. Again I’ve just wandered into another piss easy dungeon, pissed my way through it, gotten to the boss and watched my health bar disappear before I even saw what it was. The whole game, 60 or so hours, has been notably easy until this point. 
 

Edit: it’s three enemies I’ve already seen. Again 

[Curtis]

12 minutes ago, Moz said:

Erm I’ve got 1000s of hours in Souls games. I’m just baffled as to the seemingly random enemy difficulty I’ve encountered the past few nights, even in small areas. Again I’ve just wandered into another piss easy dungeon, pissed my way through it, gotten to the boss and watched my health bar disappear before I even saw what it was. The whole game, 60 or so hours, has been notably easy until this point. 

Its not seemingly random. Sure there are HARD accessible areas you can explore from the get-go like the Catacombs of DS1. The game is very 'gated' in its structure (warps and transporter chests not-withstanding).

 

If you're not having fun, shelve it. Then if it plays on your mind in the downtime, its clearly doing something right, you just have to approach it with a different mindset.

 

Frustration bad. Fun good. 😅

[NecroMorrius]

No, there are dungeons in which I can oneshot every enemy or group of enemies, and then can’t even see the boss before it oneshots me. What’s the point? It makes some sense in the overworld, but why should I piss through a boring dungeon with a tileset I’ve seen 20 times already to be rewarded with a fight I can’t win which bears no difficulty resemblance to the rest of the dungeon? And then the reward’ll be a spell, talisman, weapon or incantation I can’t use. Rinse repeat. Am I meant to summon? Unable to summon. For days now. Am I meant to summon ashes? Dead before I’ve rung the bell. All I want is an area I can go to and play the game which isn’t far too easy or far too hard (or both). 

[jonamok]

The real Elden Ring - those feel-good high-highs and ball-achingly low-lows - is this thread.

[Curtis]

 

19 minutes ago, Moz said:

No, there are dungeons in which I can oneshot every enemy or group of enemies, and then can’t even see the boss before it oneshots me. What’s the point? It makes some sense in the overworld, but why should I piss through a boring dungeon with a tileset I’ve seen 20 times already to be rewarded with a fight I can’t win which bears no difficulty resemblance to the rest of the dungeon? And then the reward’ll be a spell, talisman, weapon or incantation I can’t use. Rinse repeat. Am I meant to summon? Unable to summon. For days now. Am I meant to summon ashes? Dead before I’ve rung the bell. All I want is an area I can go to and play the game which isn’t far too easy or far too hard (or both). 

I understand where you're coming from, but why are you putting yourself through "yet another identi-kit cavern" when there are other things to do? 

 

The game has A LOT of copy & paste attributes, no doubt, but getting pent up on entirely optional content seems kinda futile. Come back much-much later and take supreme satisfaction in crushing whatever bothered you first time around.

 

Give your self a plan. A goal. And work towards that. The game will let you.

[Davros sock drawer]

Fuck me. Volcano Manor spoiler. Do not read if you haven’t rinsed it:

 

Spoiler

An entire huge dungeon with outside and inside areas. With shortcuts and bosses and lifts and everything. Basically the entire meat of a “normal” Souls game. 
 

All hidden behind one illusory wall. That you could easily miss. 

Incredible stuff.

[Benny]

My favourite invasion so far is to

 

Spoiler

Warp in somewhere high up, and use the laser eyes railgun out of nowhere. Players seem to only just be getting wise to its sheer range

 

[Monkeyspill]

Auriza Hero’s Grave is infuriating! 

[Bushtopher]

I’m about 50 hours in and currently exploring the Plateau. 
 

I remember hearing early on about some underground place down a long lift but still haven’t discovered anywhere like this. 
 

Could someone give me a hint as to where I should be looking, roughly? I expect it’s in Limgrave or Weeping Peninsula but sure I’ve explored every inch of those places but still not found it. 

[5R7]

Just now, Monkeyspill said:

Auriza Hero’s Grave is infuriating! 

once you know it...its real easy...you just

Spoiler

you sure?

Spoiler

ok ok. so

Spoiler

when you get to the bit you have t o drop to the beams, you go left ( as you are looking at them from above) THEN, you will find one of those stuypid fire towers, hit it, it rises up...then...either die, or warp back to start. when you do...head back where you were , and see what happens!