Topic: Elden Ring Hype Thread

@Ralizah Hey! Glad to hear others are also struggling with Margit... but your surely deserve a medal for whooping him @ lv 16?!

I had to level up to arround 22-23 I think and upgrade my Uchigatana to +3.... I also coughed up and brought a 100% Heater Shield from the merchant at the round table.

It was a scrappy fight, and certainly not my finest work ha! What build are you running? And weapon etc?

I must say though, in a similar way to how I felt playing Metroid Dread, I am really enjoying the challenge. Nothing quite beats the sense of satisfaction from beating a difficult Souls boss. I would expect Margit might be a point where some people new to the series drop off....

Early enough I explored the south and found the chest at the top of that tower. Tower is called Tower of return.
Found some good stuff after Killing something
It was cool. Don’t miss it.

@JohnnyShoulder was going to ask this myself. Bloodstains don't seem to be working on Steam, wasn't sure if they were working on PlayStation but sounds like they're not

@CJD87 Yeah, I think, between being underleveled and having no upgraded gear, I made it harder on myself than it needed to be. But, as per usual with these games, once my lost souls are trapped in a boss room, I'll just throw myself at it until I get a good run. Which took the better part of an hour, in my case.

Too bad I can't parry worth a darn.

Since then, I've leveled up several times, and my Uchigatana is +2 now (where are people finding all of these smithing stones?! I found a mine with a few, but otherwise they're hard to come by). My current obsession is something called Night's Cavalry. I keep getting in horseback duels with it, but it disappears when the sun rises, so I've been unable to kill it as yet. Doesn't help I have to waste time clearing the area of mooks first so they don't interrupt our duel.

Also found some giant dude who was shooting enormous arrows at me. He's guarding some sort of dungeon, so I'll need to check that out as well.

@Ralizah I keep meaning to go back to that mine, to see if the smithing stones respawn. Other materials that you can gather do, but it might be a bit unrealistic to expect a limitless supply of smithing stones so early in the game

This is the weapon I'm using. I was using some rubbish sword - honestly, I don't know why either - and someone I know said I should go looking for that Bloodhound sword, which I'd already had in my inventory for the last five hours but never used. Still, got there in the end.

I don't have a clue what I'm doing any more in this game. After the first boss boss I don't know if I'm supposed to be following a certain path or if I can do the bosses in any order. I'm not sure what the little arrowy bits coming from the bonfires on the map are telling me. The map itself just doubled in size inexplicably when I visited a new place. I don't know what's happening. I'm not looking anything up in a guide or anything so unless I just happen to see a useful piece of information, I'm on my own.

I'm just walking the lands getting into adventures and seeing what happens and I am okay with this.

@Ralizah @danlk1ng

RE. Smithing Stones, particularly the (1) variant, I am also hoping they will respawn at the mines... but so far no luck!

In my early days wandering though, I did come across a good spot! I assume you guys have visited the grace site at 'Stormhill Shack'? If you fast travel there, then head directly East (not far) you'll come to a clearing with about 3-4 giants and a small glowing statue in the middle of them. Bait the giants into swinging you for you when you're near the statue.. this breaks it and you get about 3-4 Smithing stones (1) and I think also 1 x Smithing Stone (2)

I found this really early before I even knew what they did ha! I keep backtracking to see if the statue will respawn itself (for farming) but again, no luck. But hopefully this helps!

@Kyroki I thought there was a critical path and a load of side action and the arrow was leading you through the story and the rest was whatever but now I have three different arrowy bits so what you're saying makes sense. I don't know. I don't even really care. I'm perfectly content just wandering and seeing what happens and if I hit a difficulty wall I just walk somewhere else. It's quite impressive how well FROM's forumla being expanded into an open world just... works.

@Mega-Gazz Cheers, I'm pretty sure I have that shield but I think it will be too heavy for the build I'm using. I have a couple of tower shields like that. 😒

@danlk1ng @CJD87 As far as I know, no smithing stones do not repsawn but they do drop from certain enemies. The miners in the tunnel and less frequently the goblins in a catacombs can sometimes drop them. There is also a field in Stormhill with a load of goblins which has some.

I can't read any of this thread, even little things seem like spoilers :')

Also, you all seem like you're making loads of progress. You're playing it wrong. You're meant to stay in the opening area farming thin bones.

I did go down to a beach full of zombies, was super atmospheric. Kind of like Cleethorpes on a nice day.

I think I’ve found the worst optional boss encounter yet. Two pumpkin heads with flaming weapons in a tiny arena. At least you can use Torrent but still, truly horrible. If it wasn’t for me leaving runes in there I’d be long gone.

Also I like how there's tiers of boss in this game. There's like big enemies out in the world but there's also random bosses out there too. Then there's proper bosses that have their own arena. Then there's like boss bosses that have their own arena and cut-scenes and stuff. It's constant escalation and it does make the big boy bosses seem like an event.

There's so much in the new mechanics of this game that reminds me of Breath of the Wild - from the approach to open world (a fairly sparse map rather than one littered with question marks etc) to the stickers you can mark your map with, down to the fact that there are enemies that blow horns and bring every enemy nearby running after you.

I'm so glad that I'm not constantly farming for weapons/shields though, that's the one thing I dislike about BoTW's formula

Anyone else recognise about a million voices in the game? Dunno if it’s the influences from Game of Thrones but there are loads of B to C tier British actors in it like Shaun Dooley, Joe McGann, the girl from Sarah Jane Adventures, Jane from Eastenders etc. It’s like a who’s who of somewhat recognisable voices.

Thought it was my imagination TBH

That creepy hug lady is absolutely sending me. All she cares about is hugging. She needs another hobby.

Oooookay then. I seem to have completely skipped the castle and then found another teleporter after that, which took me to the very very top of the map, which has expanded accordingly. I am absolutely miles away from Limgrave all because I found an extremely well hidden path through a cave which just cut out the castle completely. The more I explore, the more this game grows in my estimation. The scope is insane. The way that From reward exploration while also totally taking into account exactly how you can exploit Torrent’s double jump on tiny parts of the terrain blows my mind.

Did you end up at the top right of the map?

@nessisonett Have you found Patches yet? And if so, is he voiced by the same actor? He was very much someone I recognised the voice but couldn't quite place him.