Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion Announced

[robdood]

Fwiw I agree with Kensei, I think the way they approach consumables in the game is daft. Like the reusable pots and physick flask are great ideas. Pots are completely hampered by the fact the the useful ingredients are way to rare / time consuming to get. Not sure why pots don't work just like physick, and why there's not a different limit on using run Arcs (Eg make its effects time based, but only usable once per rest at a bonfire) 

[mechamonkey]

Question re walking Mausoleums

Spoiler

Can you duplicate a rememberance you've already used?

May have cocked it up...

[therearerules]

Yeah, the physick flasks are excellent. With the pot capacity it seems like they should work like that.

[mechamonkey]

On 16/03/2022 at 08:19, John0 said:

 

Do you know who it was? How important were they?

Sorry delay just seen this

Spoiler

Normally he drops his armour after the quest.

But don't worry, there's a duplicate of him later on you can murder free of guilt after talking to him for a plot point who also drops it.

 

[Fargo]

Can anyone recommend a good guide to the progression route you should take ? I went off looking for cool armour sets and have found myself in areas I don’t think I’m strong enough for. Need to get back on track! 

[spanx]

Current status, way overlevelled for Nokron. Which made it a nice relaxing journey across the rooftops, a pleasant change from the usual stress. 
 

Having put 70 hours in now I think I’m close to having had enough. It feels like I have way more ahead than behind me and I’d quite like to play some other games. I’d mainline the main quest to see the end if I could but I need to grind so much to make that achievable and I’m not sure I can be arsed. Still kind of enjoying it at the moment so will keep plugging away but we’ll see how long. 

[pinholestar]

Other than magical horse-healing raisins and a few occasions when I was suffering from poison or scarlet rot, I didn’t use any of the consumables in nearly 200 hours of playtime and can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve used them across all the Souls games.

 

No doubt some will say that I’m severely hampering myself with such an approach and I’m sure the huge number of consumable and craftable items are quite handy if you get into the habit of using them regularly, but I’ve always preferred leaving the item slot solely for the use of flasks. That way I always know exactly how many taps it takes to access what I need in the panic of battle. Also having limited numbers of consumable items in these games always led to that classic video game pitfall of the “better save it for when I really need it” mentality and inevitably meant I never bothered with them in the end. Because the obsessive core of my brain couldn’t resist mashing Y to pick up every twinkling plant I ran across, I ended up with literally thousands of crafting materials by the end and they served no purpose to me whatsoever.

 

I’d use Rune Arcs once I had the patterns of a boss down and felt confident that with a decent run I could take them. When I ran low I’d jolly co-op for a few hours and build up a healthy reserve again.

 

If they removed crafting entirely from the game I wouldn’t miss it all, and it doesn’t seem like the most well thought out implementation of its kind.

[feltmonkey]

I'm about two hours in, and I've just experienced my fifth crash to desktop.  I've lowered the graphics setting, I'm playing offline, but the crashes persist.  I'm going to uninstall and reinstall the game, but I don't hold out a huge amount of hope.  What's there is great, but for whatever reason, for me it's broken.

[robdood]

14 minutes ago, pinholestar said:

That way I always know exactly how many taps it takes to access what I need in the panic of battle.

Just saying - press and hold down on dpad to select first item in your slots

 

[Captain Kelsten]

23 minutes ago, mechamonkey said:

Question re walking Mausoleums

  Hide contents

Can you duplicate a rememberance you've already used?

May have cocked it up...

Yes, but only once. 

[pinholestar]

Just now, robdood said:

Just saying - press and hold down on dpad to select first item in your slots

 

I know man, but why bother when there’s only two items in the slot? 

 

On a related note though, as I went full-on sorcery build for this game it meant coming up with a mnemonic system for all my spells on d-pad up. Glintstone Shard was my ‘home’ default, always available by holding up and then from there I’d know how many taps it would take to get to my AoEs/Death Beams etc. No reason why I couldn’t apply that system to items too, but I couldn’t be arsed to hold two such patterns in my head at one time.

[therearerules]

11 minutes ago, robdood said:

Just saying - press and hold down on dpad to select first item in your slots

 

game changer

[Vulgar Monkey]

Re rune arcs, having not used them so far I'm unclear on the mechanics for the first rune (godricks I think?).

It says it ups all your stats, however the consensus seems to be that during normal levelling, once you're up high enough you get severely diminished returns from additional levels, so does that also apply to popping off this rune?

[palaver]

Having some consumables equipped can be useful because Mimic Friend will pop them for no cost. Not that anyone would abuse Mimic Friend like that.

[Qazimod]

Took a look at BC/MtBB. Seems pretty nasty, but initial attempts aren't quite as hopeless as GD before. I feel like the speed is going to be a nightmare for my slow Strength boi - I only have a few small windows to get a hit in when it's in the middle of a recovery animation - and a lot of the moves it has get chained into other moves. I think it's going to involve a lot of "roll through the attack and do a single poke" to begin with...

[robdood]

28 minutes ago, Vulgar Monkey said:

Re rune arcs, having not used them so far I'm unclear on the mechanics for the first rune (godricks I think?).

It says it ups all your stats, however the consensus seems to be that during normal levelling, once you're up high enough you get severely diminished returns from additional levels, so does that also apply to popping off this rune?

It would do, yes, but its essentially 40 free level ups until you die which is pretty awesome and isn't really going to be useless unless you're like level 80 in all stats. 

[robdood]

Hey can someone with PC version try somethign for me: every time I put on the scale armour set (that I bought from the merchant on the way to Morne castle) my game crashes.  

 

That's a new one! 

 

EDIT - fixed by verifying game cache on Steam, it had to redownload and update the game! weird. 

[Captain Kelsten]

Last boss is bullshit for strength build, gotta say. 

[Alan Stock]

I'm still having huge problems with finding smithing stones +1, even farming early mines with item discovery boost is only dropping a few. I know there's a way to get them to sell, can someone hint me where I need to go? Its ridiculous as I have so many cool weapons that aren't viable because I can't ugrade them at all!

 

Regarding where I think I need to start looking:

 

Spoiler

I got the ball bearing for +3/+4 in mines at the capital off a dead miner, so presumably the ball bearing for +1/+2 is from something similar. I scoured the mines I have found so far in Limgrave/Weeping Penisula but no dice, and I've cleared nearly all the dungeons I've found in the lakes. Am I missing a mine somewhere, or something, or some obvious NPC that sells them? Can you give me a region to start looking? Ta!

 

[therearerules]

Just now, Alan Stock said:

I'm still having huge problems with finding smithing stones +1, even farming early mines with item discovery boost is only dropping a few. I know there's a way to get them to sell, can someone hint me where I need to go? Its ridiculous as I have so many cool weapons that aren't viable because I can't ugrade them at all!

 

Regarding where I think I need to start looking:

 

  Hide contents

I got the ball bearing for +3/+4 in mines at the capital off a dead miner, so presumably the ball bearing for +1/+2 is from something similar. I scoured the mines I have found so far in Limgrave/Weeping Penisula but no dice, and I've cleared nearly all the dungeons I've found in the lakes. Am I missing a mine somewhere, or something, or some obvious NPC that sells them? Can you give me a region to start looking? Ta!

 

Mine in the lakes

[imp]

So I’m getting to the final third of the game with my latest character, who started off as a big sword doing big damage, but it just wasn’t quite my jam so I decided to respec and make them a big shield holder with a big spear and a handful of incantations. I’m really enjoying the exploration - it’s so safe and tanky it makes getting through dungeons an absolute dream. The stats are pretty thinly spread so it doesn’t exactly rinse bosses wit it’s meagre damage output, but is still pretty capable with an extra dose of patience. Plus it’s fun to chuck a few lightning bolts every now and then - really looking forward to getting the really high level faith spells and then I think we’ll be cooking.

 

Still, I’m already looking forward to maybe trying a dex/arcane build next. That looks super fun now that arcane scaling has been fixed!

 

 

[robdood]

7 minutes ago, Alan Stock said:

I'm still having huge problems with finding smithing stones +1, even farming early mines with item discovery boost is only dropping a few. I know there's a way to get them to sell, can someone hint me where I need to go? Its ridiculous as I have so many cool weapons that aren't viable because I can't ugrade them at all!

 

Regarding where I think I need to start looking:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I got the ball bearing for +3/+4 in mines at the capital off a dead miner, so presumably the ball bearing for +1/+2 is from something similar. I scoured the mines I have found so far in Limgrave/Weeping Penisula but no dice, and I've cleared nearly all the dungeons I've found in the lakes. Am I missing a mine somewhere, or something, or some obvious NPC that sells them? Can you give me a region to start looking? Ta!

 

Lakes.  North east side of the main lake, look on the map, you'll see it. 

[Kevvy Metal]

 

[Alan Stock]

Thanks @therearerules and @robdood , just got it!

 

Spoiler

I'd been to that cave before but assumed I didn't have the right affinity or special item to take on the crystal boss because I couldn't do damage to it, just like the dual crystal bosses I'd met in another dungeon. So gave it another shot just now and seems like if you do enough damage or get enough stagger damage and you can shatter the outer shell making him vulnerable. I guess I wasn't being aggressive enough before, also I was using a frost weapon but it didn't proc the frost until after I already destroyed the shell, so not sure if that was it. Not a fan of the game design, it makes it seem like you are doing the wrong thing and need to come back because you do almost nothing to the health bar. If only I'd known I could have had this many hours ago, I found this cave before I did any of the great lift stuff/manor/capital outskirts! Thanks! Now I finally have stuff to spend runes on!

 

[robdood]

8 minutes ago, Alan Stock said:

Thanks @therearerules and @robdood , just got it!

 

  Hide contents

I'd been to that cave before but assumed I didn't have the right affinity or special item to take on the crystal boss because I couldn't do damage to it, just like the dual crystal bosses I'd met in another dungeon. So gave it another shot just now and seems like if you do enough damage or get enough stagger damage and you can shatter the outer shell making him vulnerable. I guess I wasn't being aggressive enough before, also I was using a frost weapon but it didn't proc the frost until after I already destroyed the shell, so not sure if that was it. Not a fan of the game design, it makes it seem like you are doing the wrong thing and need to come back because you do almost nothing to the health bar. If only I'd known I could have had this many hours ago, I found this cave before I did any of the great lift stuff/manor/capital outskirts! Thanks! Now I finally have stuff to spend runes on!

 

You also could've used strike (blunt) damage to help!  Thread moves fast, but we discussed this a couple days ago!

 

[robdood]

Separately - fuck me the City is the coolest area yet.  Feel like a Dark Souls 3 DLC area, it's enormous!! 

[spanx]

Done a bit of a rampage this afternoon, clearing some areas/bosses I’d noped in the past…

 

Spoiler

Windmill town freak

Crucible Knight

Magma wyrm

Couple of others I’ve forgotten

Also got some new ashes and powered them right up. Feeling suitably invincible, so clearly ready to head in to the city and reacquaint myself with failure and frustration. 

[Alan Stock]

11 minutes ago, robdood said:

You also could've used strike (blunt) damage to help!  Thread moves fast, but we discussed this a couple days ago!

 

 

Yeah I still don't have any blunt weapons above level 0 due to the smithing stone issue . Too hard to keep up with the thread with real life getting in the way!

 

Now I have so many weapons I can give a fair shot. I really wanted to try the whips, the one that looks like an unfurling sword is really cool (Urumi), as well as twinblades, a skeleton hand and some spears to try out. Time to get spending!

[Curtis]

3 hours ago, mechamonkey said:

Question re walking Mausoleums

  Hide contents

Can you duplicate a rememberance you've already used?

May have cocked it up...

Yes you can. Although only 6 out of the 7 in the game worked for me.

[robdood]

24 minutes ago, Curtis said:

Yes you can. Although only 6 out of the 7 in the game worked for me.

Isn't that because of the completely baffling Bell mechanic?

 

Spoiler

Only some mausoleums work for most remembrances, the ones with the bells.  Ones without are for special ones, allegedly.