Topic: Elden Ring Hype Thread

Always make sure to do your NPC quests! Even the ones you get as far back as Liurnia. Slowly did a little of Latenna’s quest throughout the game and it finally paid off, I’m in an area that’s possibly one of the most hidden secrets I’ve seen in a Souls game. Which has now led to another crazy area and a teleporter gave me another route to Mohgwyn Palace. The map is genuinely even bigger than I expected.

Ok, Mohg is one of the best fights in the entire Soulsborne franchise. Incredibly well designed, challenging and even has an annoyingly cool gimmick. My gold standard is bosses like Gwyn, Artorias, Gael, Martyr Logarius, Lady Maria, Ludwig, Orphan of Kos etc. This fight is probably the first one in Elden Ring that fully stands alongside those ones. The fights where the odds feel stacked against you but you just scrape by. Brilliant.

Beat Malenia there and while I can understand the sheer irritation some people are feeling about how incredibly difficult she was (to the point of saying she’s the worst boss across all 5 games), I really enjoyed the fight. Another evil gimmick, insanely hard timing and such but I feel fantastic overcoming that. Only reason she isn’t one of my favourite fights is that she has a move that literally ended my run every single time she used it. Guess how many times she used it when I beat her? Zero.

…and The Shaded Castle is a good place to end my session. Wow…I’m actually getting a little overwhelmed so I’m gonna stop exploring and finally track down the glintstone keys for the fellow I met eons ago. This game…

@Snatcher
Good morning.
It’s nice to see your experience enjoying the game.
About the boss you fought in the early stone sword key you unlock : the same enemy is in the Stormveil castle basement except it doesn’t have a boss health bar

There’s a cool npc you might like early. Have a look up in mist wood ruins then have a chat with Kale (church of Elleh)

Awesome video...! What incantation are you using on your sword? It was giving me serious heart palpitations though watching you just leave your runes 'unclaimed'.... that is some serious confidence, I would have grabbed them ASAP ha! (That same guys levelled me a few times, until I long-bowed his ass prior to melee engagement)

@Snatcher Pump some points into endurance when you level up to increase your equip load. There are also a couple of talismans you equip which will increase END also.

I had to stop playing this because someone was inconsiderate enough to release another game and I had to review it but now I'm back in action and I had a radical day Elden Ring yesterday. Did like seven bosses in. Made loads of progress into a new area. I think I might be near the end of the story. Or the main questline or whatever. I don't know. It feels endingy.

Still smashing things up with my big sword. I've come up against a few optional (I think) bosses that are still too strong for me. I'm not good enough to avoid getting hit entirely and any time they hit me I die so I guess I need to be a bit higher level before I do them.

Ace.

@velio84 That NPC takedown is just class 🤩

Having finally caved and checked out those builds on Fextra I went after the Moonveil as even though I wasn't quite lvl 50 yet I was near enough and had by luck stumbled upon the area in some of my wanderings. I'd also stumbled upon a second Uchi so thought I'd try out your trick @CJD87 and duel wield the Uchi's and woah they are brutal. There's an area I found with some fairly weak enemies in North Caelid that drop a 1000 runes each and with the duel wield I can blitz through those with the L1 attack. I then went on to get the Moonveil by beating the Magna Wyrm also using duel wield, getting in there for a few quick slashes and then getting some distance. I've now got some new found confidence that I'm sure will get knocked out of me at the very next boss 😂

@velio84 I actually have that enchanment, but my INT is <12.... and my build focus is so DEX/VIG heavy that I don't think I could invest the required INT to make it scale enough to be worthwhile!
I am currently using 'Bloodflame blade' enchantment though, which compliments my dual katana wielding (both of which have 'bleed' as a passive ability anyway). BB enchantment stacks with the passive bleed, and it is crazy damage potential

@render Dual katana has been a game changer! Is your build predominantly DEX? There is an item (Iron Whetblade?) that allows you to assign affinity scaling to 'Keen' when you add an AoW to your weapons. So I have both katanas hooked up with AoW 'Bloody Slash' and assigned keen affinity to both. So the raw damage scales with DEX nicely, and also Bloody Slash is an excellent AoW in my opinion (possibly even better than 'Unsheathe').
Then obviously I have a backup shield for left hand if things get a bit too tasty for me out there... which is pretty often TBH!!
How#s Moonveil? I've heard the damage is wild, but not sure my low INT/FAI would or could work with it? (I am currently using Naga Katana in main/right hand and then Uchi Katana in left. Both with AoW Bloody Slash, and I have enchantment 'Bloodflame Blade' to use as well via the Finger Seal)

@CJD87 I started out with mainly DEX/VIG as well just because it seemed like the way to go with the scaling on the Uchi however for the Moonveil you also need 23 INT so I've had to scale that up. It was late last night when I got it and had to work on levelling up so I've not actually tried it yet but I'm hoping it's going to be wild.

Not sure if I've got the Iron Whetblade yet so will have to check later. I did try Bloody Slash and really liked it but found that Unsheathe was doing more damage for me. I'll see how I feel with the MV though as the main selling point is the Transient Moonlight skill so hopefully that's something that I'll be happy with. Then it's really a question of how much do I like a dual wield setup and can I find one that works with the MV or should I move more towards your Naga setup, which means of course that I have to go and find another item 😆

Per my post above, you should try using an int-scaling weapon and going full INT (I went up to 60) after the min dex/str. I did it with DMGS but you could probably do the same with moonveil. It makes you still a melee monster thanks to the int scaling but also good with spells.

@CJD87 @render I am running a similar build of dex/vig I mainly Two hand my Uchi and use unsheathe a lot. I'm interested in both your builds though either duoing katanas or using moonviel. I was thinking of lvling up arcane and seeing how the blood buildup is, however moonviel with int might be good too.

@velio84 so I’m just a little ways ahead of you and I would definitely suggest fully exploring the lake/swamp if you haven’t already.

After I finished the academy, I went back and did Castle Morne as I hadn’t done it previously… and then pressed on towards Caria Manor. I got sidetracked along the way though and found myself within a multi-story mine that had loads of awesome smithing stones etc. I lost a whole level worth of Runes at one point as I fell off a ledge while on a corpse-run but it was still a worthwhile sojourn for sure.

@Mega-Gazz I guess that's the decision I need to make now as MV scales really well with INT so should be good going forward throwing runes behind that. That does lock me out of other more DEX based weapons though but I guess there's always the re-distribution of stats mentioned by @velio84. I've not got to the Academy or Raya Lucaria yet anyway but would be interesting to know if it's a one time change or you can choose to do that whenever you like.

@Elodin Will let you know how the Moonveil is as I'll be trying that as soon as possible.

Edit: Just seen your reply @Kairu, so seems that it's something you wouldn't want to do too often but you can change a few times if you like as long as you can find the item.

@velio84 When I was at that point I went East and did the red bit of the map. Did a lot of stuff including killing the main boss there etc. When I continued on and went to the next critical path place I was, I think, slightly overlevelled because I was doing A LOT of damage to bosses but it was still presenting a decent challenge.

@Mega-Gazz Really enjoying reading about everyone's builds and playstyles! I plan to cop the Moonveil sometime soon, and then perhaps do a huge 'late-game' respec, pushing a lot of my stats from DEX - - > INT.

The blood build and dual katanas I have working for me now are pretty solid, and I managed to finally upgrade my Naga (main hand) to +15 Keen. Alongside off-hand Uchi +10 keen they are doing some serious damage.

but Moonveil definitely has my interest peaked!!

Awesome man, and I am loving reading about the build diversity! I have a small tip for you, which will help whilst you favor 'Unsheathe' as AoW. The defualt AoW you get with starting as Samurai I think you cannot alter affinity/scaling. BUT there is 'another' Unsheathe AoW (ts NW of the agheel lake site of grace I think) out in the world.

If you find this 2nd Unsheathe AoW, you can assign this to your katana instead and it will allow you to select a specific affinity (eg 'keen' if you want to scale it with DEX). Of course you need the right whetblade items to unlock the various affinities, but this will be v helpful!

My early game I was addicted to unsheathe, and found another by chance... and the 2nd 'open world' Unsheathe allowed me to apply scaling for DEX

@CJD87 Cheers for the tip, I will check that out as it should help a load with my current setup. The build diversity is truly amazing and the open world nature of it means that there's so many more possible combinations than were possible before.

Can't wait to play later, just gotta get all this real world stuff out the way first 😀

@render yes what @velio84 mentioned is a respec where you can move your stats around. The Larval Tears used to buy respects are rare at first, but at this point I have 10 of them. If you look where to get them you can get one easily.

Also, because this is a FromSoft game they aren’t very good about letting you try something without committing resources you can’t get back. For that reason I fully endorse save-scumming using PS+ in order to try out a respec before committing to it. Just log out at the respec person, manually upload your save to the cloud (or USB). This will turn off auto-sync so that it’ll only upload when you tell it to. Then go log in, respec and/or spend smithing stones, try it out a bit, and then log out of the game. If your auto-synch is off, you can go download your previously uploaded save and go back to before you experimented.