Topic: Elden Ring Hype Thread

@nessisonett That would be good because I always find with Souls games that the start is the hardest and then by the end I'm smashing everyone up. The only exception of course being Sekiro which saves the most ludicrous boss for last.

It'd be nice to see them get the escalation right here.

@johncalmc As others said, the bosses in caves, tombs and the like are very easy, and can often be 1-shorted.

The bossses in legacy dungeons like Godrick are full on souls bosses and quite difficult.

There is actually a formal tier system (enemy/great enemy/etc/etc/shard bearer) in place.

@Mega-Gazz yeah it's hard to say what combination of bosses I've done without looking it up or getting spoilery. But I've done at least three of the ones that have cutscenes. I have two remembrances. Done probably a dozen or more random dungeons, gaols, etc.

Managed to finally beat the tree sentinel, dragon agheel, a couple of mini-dungeon bosses, met Patches and another npc invader in like one 45 min session. Also interacted with a silver frond and a spirit showed me the way to some treasure! I'm heading back for Margit later. @johncalmc, I definitely think being able to nope out and go explore somewhere else, level up whilst exploring/discovering without having to grind and come back later, along with your ashes of war summons might make thing easier. I'm guessing there's going to be some really difficult stuff in the margins, like nameless King or Martyr Logarius.

OK, the Misbegotten Warrior and Crucible Knight boss battle is just obnoxious. Game throws two powerful enemies at you almost at the same time in some crappy arena where it's easy to get stuck on trash littering the place. Literally the worst part of this game so far.

Redmane Castle is seriously getting on my nerves, since I died a few times to these insane giant lion enemies in the courtyard, kept getting poisoned by some obnoxious flying thing until I was able to find the site of grace, etc.

Thanks for the input everyone! I played the previous games on 30 so I guess I should be fine. I’ve been spoiled by Nioh’s performance modes. Be picking it up tomorrow.

@johncalmc Yeah I can see where you are coming from as apart from the Tree Sentinel I've not really struggled with much in the open world. The Banished Knights in Stormveil Castle I seem to struggle against, and those blobs with two swords and a shield in one of the dungeons destroyed me.

I tried one of the Evergaol bosses, and that definitely felt like a step up terms of difficulty from what I've experienced so far.

I went wandering underground and accidentally found a boss. Apparently that earned me a trophy! And a fairly rubbish reward, just one of those things to boost a renowned ashes to +10 which I doubt I’ll ever use. I just don’t have the FP for the special summon I found, it needs like 120 because it’s some Perfumer person.

AHAHAHAHA

I beat it!

Two bosses at once. One that felt almost impossible.

The real gamechanger was switching from Unsheathe to Bloody Slash. Bloody Slash is broke af. I went from doing chip damage to the Crucible Knight to taking off 10% of his health per hit from a distance (a short distance, anyway). Of course, this louse has his shield up pretty much any time he's not attacking and you barely have any time to punish an attack you dodge before he stomps the ground and does an obnoxious AoE skill that's difficult to avoid, but I discovered it's possible to exploit a platform in the arena that makes him way more open to attacks. Of course, Bloody Slash takes off some of your HP every time you use it, but the losses are minimal if you combine it with a flask of wondrous physick that heals you continuously after use. This flask ability can also be used to counteract the effects of poison if you don't have any antidote items on you, btw.

Still a BS encounter, though. Honestly, I'm just glad they're dead.

Friendship ended with Unsheathe.
Now Bloody Slash is my best friend.

@Ralizah Congrats! Glad to see you overcoming what genuinely looks like a bloody annoying fight. I always hated duo bosses though, can’t be bothered with the crystalians in the Academy Crystal Cave for example. Unfortunately(?) it looks like I won’t be able to fight that duo boss due to my wanderings, apparently taking the big lift meant that an NPC went a bit kill happy inside that castle 😂

@nessisonett I could see this fight being way easier for someone who opted for a magic (or hybrid) build, since the Crucible Knight is apparently easy to cheese with magic damage. As a purely melee/physical ranged fighter, though, he was a nightmare. I did grab a seal and an incantation to try and damage him magically, but my stats are so low on that end that I basically did nothing to him.

Thankfully, the other boss is super easy to stagger, so he goes down easily if you're able to continuously interrupt his attacks. Although mess up your timing and even he'll claim almost your entire life bar with only a couple of hits.

Well, I just hope future boss fights are less annoying. Other than this one, ER's bosses haven't been too overwhelming.

@Ralizah Awesome and well done!

I'm currently playing around with Weapon Arts/Skills, currently still working on pure DEX build and wielding dual Uchi katanas...

I was debating trading out 'unsheathe' on one of my Uchi swords for something else - could you explain Bloody Slash? I understand that the Uchi has 'bleed' as a passive skill, so does Bloody Slash stack with that?

And is it a 'one-off hit' skill like Unsheathe? Or is it a temporary buff that lasts for x-seconds after you trigger the art?

I'm still pretty in love with Unsheathe, but wouldn't mind having more options up my sleeve now that the difficulty is ramping... thanks!

Wow- https://www.google.com/amp/s/gamerant.com/elden-ring-100-perc...

30 hours in and I've barely even left Limgrave, other than to gather more map pieces and see what's out there. I feel like I've done about all there is to do in Limgrave though (I'm probably wrong)

@CJD87 I don't think Bloody Slash adds a bleed effect. You're coating the blade with your own blood (thus the small bite taken from your own health pool when using it) and then slashing it at enemies. The blood slash actually travels a couple of feet in front of you before dissipating, so it has pretty good range. The main thing is that it does great damage, though. So does the R2 ability on Unsheathe, but this cuts right through heavily armored enemies as well.

So, yeah, it seems to be purely damage-based like Unsheathe. Probably worth experimenting with if you're finding yourself struggling against knights and whatnot. I wish I'd equipped this earlier in the game, as a lot of heavily armored characters have given me grief in this game.

Worth mentioning that the Dex scaling on the keen affinity is better for bloody slash than unsheathe was. I have a B-rank on dex with this ash of war.

@danlk1ng Same here dude, I've only just ventured into Weeping Peninsula. I have done a bit of Stormveil Castle and Caelid, when I got transported to the latter.

@Ralizah Thanks for bloody slash reccomendation. I do have that but when I went to equip it all my stats went red, so I kept Unsheath. Will defo give it a try later though.

@Ralizah Did you keep the blood aspect when you put the ash of war in? If so, does Arcane bump up your AR or just the amount of additional bleed?

30hrs in and I’m just enjoying this game more and more. This is so good! I freaking loved played the first Dark Souls. The sense of wonder and unknown, so good. I tried Dark Souls 2, Blood Born and Demon Souls but none were as enjoyable as the first time I played Dark Souls. But Elden Ring is giving me same feeling I enjoyed so much about Dark Souls, but more. I love riding Torrent around on the open map, rain, sunshine, thunderstorms, the far stretching fields and all the little nooks and crannies to explore. The jousting matches with other riders, helping out and getting help from other people. Beautiful vistas, amazing monsters, the feeling of accomplishment. SO GOOD!

Draconian Tree Sentinel done and dusted and he won't be missed. Could not for the life of me dodge his suspiciously overtuned lightning attack so it took far more attempts (around 10) than it should have. This game is rapidly approaching Top 5 of all times status. It's incredible.

@Mega-Gazz I went with Keen affinity, since it scales well with Dexterity.

@Kairu Yeah - he was really an excellent tutorial in super tight control of Torrent. I'm going to head West for a little while before continuing North because I'm feeling distinctly under-levelled (62 quality build) after that encounter!