I might have used Black Knife Tiche to kill her.
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Black+Knife+Tiche+Ashes
Ordinarily I wouldn’t be happy about that, but if I ever reach a point where a boss is like 1-hit away from dying I just consider the value of the challenge exhausted and don’t care what strat I use after to kill them. I am pretty sure I also did this with the final boss.
I think Malenia is definitely the boss were you may have to just accept that this game really is Summon Souls
yeah she’s the hard optional boss, there’s no gimmick. just summon help or dig in for a good struggle
I killed the Elden Beast with a nice Blasphemous build (and Tyche*, much better than the Mimic Tear).
Now only Malenia is left.
*by the way, Tyche’s Black knife projectile goes for crazy lengths, while if I try to use the same skill of the Black knife, fully upgraded, at over 60 Faith it’s much much shorter. Why is it so? Does Tyche the equivalent of 100 or so faith?
On a side note, the Sacred Relic Sword is an amazing pve sword but not so much for killing bosses. It seems to me that the skill of the Blasphemous Blade does more damage, albeit being less wide.
The Sacred Relic Sword skill is perfect for farming, it decimates everything for lengths at the Palace Approach Ledge Road (Mohgwyn Palace).
It’s not going to have miraculously great results or anything, but one common tip for Malenia is to equip the Bloodhound Step art for more iframes on your dodges. It turns Malenia’s one-shot wombo combo from practically impossible to dodge to very hard to dodge. But, if you don’t mind the outcome being more based on RNG than skill, it’s also a valid choice to equip a damage-based art instead and simply hope she doesn’t do it.
(This is second-hand info. I read the above advice on a wiki and I didn’t feel I would enjoy either robotically learning tight timing windows on a rare second-phase attack nor rolling dice over and over, so I “just walked out”.)
I managed to beat her with Mohgwyn Sacred Spear, whose move set and skill (especially) work great against her. I used a mimic tear and kept her staggered most of the time. It took only a few tries.
A situational weapon, which is perfect here.
I also used Blood Flies, especially during the second phase while Malenia was aggroing my Minic Tear. They ate up her life bar beautifully and the associated bleed helped slowing her down a bit.
With her remembrance I got Hand of Malenia katana. I prefer Rivers of Blood, but I must notice that giving the Hand of Malenia to the mimic tear makes it super fast and powerful, and possibly better than Black Knife Tiche.
Had one of those fog door keys, saw one in a random cave (one full of skeletons) and went “I’ll never remember this is here, may as well use it”. Was rewarded with a cookbook which may be the most worthless reward possible to me (crafting should be removed from as many games as possible). About ten minutes later I found one of those field circle boss summoning dealies, except this one needed said special key to open. The true Elden Ring starts here I guess.
I looked at the map to try (and likely fail) to memorize where it is at, gave up and found out online that the map has all sorts of markers you can place on it. It has struck me that the traditional From “you’ll figure it out approach” kinda doesn’t work in Elden Ring and they half realized it as there are a lot of pop-up messages to tell you what stuff does. The problem is half the time it tells me what stuff does hours before I can possibly use it which means I forget how any of it works, and half the time I get stuff and have no idea how to even begin to figure out what it does. I think I’ve already googled more stuff in this game than I have in any other From game (Demon’s excluded as I had to check that upgrade chart a lot) and I feel a bit bad about it but… it’s kinda a mess.
Like to give a specific example I found a giant walking temple with a bell hanging below it wandering around a field and attacked the legs enough to get it to fall. I went into said temple and it said each of these could be used to replicate a single something one time; I currently have zero of what it can be used on and hence have no idea what purpose it serves or even what to look for. I guess in another dozen hours I may find another and perhaps by then I’ll have something that works with it, but there are already a few systems the game introduced without me being able to actually use them (I can apparently alter clothes or something?) and my eyes are basically glazing over whenever this happens yet again.
Obviously the world design and combat/encounter mechanics are tremendously well done, as a game it is rather great, but From has basically trained me to only look up stuff online when desperate (aside from obvious Demon’s/Dark 2 examples) and I feel I’m gonna be stuck googling Elden Ring stuff all the time. I have to ask… is there just something about the game that is just flying way over my head that I’m missing, or I am really stuck in a “yeah you gotta look up things online, good luck ducking spoilers” situation.
I would say don’t worry about any of those confusing things unless you really want to know what they’re about immediately. It is a good idea to mark your map when you find something you can’t access, defeat, or make sense of, though. I did that a lot.
(Almost everything is optional, too. That goes for locations and game mechanics.)
yeah i’d say definitely don’t have to look up anything at all
I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ve been short one of those keys in some time. I’m fully expecting getting to the end of the game and having like one door left that I never found the key for or something.
you will, i lost count of how many there are which is a serious testament to the game’s size
So the map is significantly larger than I assumed.
It took me over 17 hours but I think I finally got my first trophy (and first castle), not the first one which I did make my way back towards at some point but one off to the east from the starting area, think it was named Morne. Was nice to come across something that felt like a full fledged From stage, it also had more checkpoints than I expected which was unexpectedly merciful of the game.
Still have not found my great/huge club (did find the large one), there will be much rejoicing when I do. For now I have been pumping up my strength as this watchdog’s staff I’ve been using seems to be the closest equivalent I have, still “only” have 29 strength (it requires 34) so I’ve been stuck in two-handed mode for most of the past 10 or so hours.
Two thing:
One, took 18 hours but had a random boss drop in on me on the field in the middle of the night for the first time, was the wonderfully names deathbird.
Two, I assume if I mention a bear some of you will know exactly what I am referencing. Scared the heck out of me.
Two, I assume if I mention a bear some of you will know exactly what I am referencing. Scared the heck out of me.
Bear Hill=Game Design
Okay so I was making my way back to the starting area to get back on track (i.e. maybe find that castle finally) and I stumbled upon another warp chest that sent me halfway across the map. As I have a pretty solid “no fast travel unless necessary or really dire” I am now sticking around this wildly different reddish area that I am perhaps only mildly underleveled for, although I’ve yet to come across any bosses so that’ll be a true test of that. I am hoping worst case to at least be able to make my way back “home” on foot but we’ll see as this is a very dangerous feeling area.
Gotta give the game credit, it does keep me on my toes.
That was one of two reasons I warned you about the swamp
So still in Caelid and ended up by an utterly massive dragon lying on the ground with numerous lesser ones around it, hopped on my horse and road past it to safety by the castle and whatever they call the bonfires in this game. Was done for the day but I saw its tail lying nearby and I just had to know what happened if I hit it. It did so little damage it wasn’t even visible on its health bar but back there none of the other dragons seemed to notice me. Turned around to go back towards the castle but… sometimes we all have gloriously stupid ideas that we have to see through.
Long story short with my biggest weapon held two-handed it took a good 45 minutes straight of whacking said tail for it to die, got about 70k runes (currently worth about 5 5/6 level ups) and a dragon heart but let’s not do anything like that again.
Okay via an… elaborate path I am somewhat back on track in the game. A summary:
-Hit a few points in Caelid where it felt like I was just too outgunned (I’m speaking mostly in terms of how many hits it took to take down standard enemies) so figured it’s probably best to head back “home”/the starting area, but first…
-I had to explore that cave I got warped into first. At this point I’ve picked up enough levels that I’m much more capable against the more deluxe guard creatures there and make it to the boss of the mine a bull-type creature but after a number of attempts feel like I’m just a little bit too underleveled for it. It’d be possible to beat it but it’d require a decent amount of time and too few mistakes, so I say bye to the souls I dropped in there and head back home.
-On the way back I find a fog cave that requires one of those keys to unlock, do so and make a good run there. Cave has a neat gimmick where the first time through you see a lot of on fire enemies behind barred doors, and eventually you pull a level that opens every door but also lets all these folks loose. I do good here, find a place where you have to drop in on a boss that is about my size with an axe that matches my reach but is a bit quicker which is an awful combo, especially with my shield not having a parrying ability. Give up and leave.
-Told that story to a friend and he went “but surely you have a different shield that can parry, if you thought that might help?” which was a good point. Go back with a different shield that can parry which requires me to switch back to one-handing my massive weapon and while I still suck at parry timing I had forgotten that one-handing a weapon makes it a bit quicker (and in this case gives it a touch longer reach) which opened the battle up a good deal. Beat the guy, saw an exit near the rear of that cave behind the “return to cave start” warp. Leads to a beautiful view on a cliff with a few pick-ups that more importantly is back in Limgrave, a shortcut home.
-Said cave drops me right behind a ruin that has the physick flask which seems like it’d be hugely useful, what a good run of luck this has been!
-On the way back to the start I stumble upon a cave with our good friend Patches who tries to give up halfway through the battle, I stop attacking to see if anything happens and after 5 seconds say to heck with it and swing again right as the game goes “okay guess the fights over” instantly enraging him and forcing me to kill him off. Oops, but I assume he was gonna betray me eventually anyways. Bye Patches.
-Near home I end up back at that swamp that warped me halfway across the world and I now know what the second thing @LaurelSoup was trying to warn me about was. I was able to handle it though.
-I cracked a dozen or so hours back so I knew where I had missed the thing that lets me add ashes of war to stuff (I quite literally walked right next to it back in like hour 2 without noticing it was there) so I can now parry with this shield, yay.
-Speaking of things I walked right past many many hours ago I finally found the path to the first castle. I would not have made it very far at all if I found it back then but got past that initial hump and am a good ways into said castle. It is designed very well!
So at hour… 30 or so I am finally where I am supposed to be, I can finally use ashes, I got that new thing that seems very useful, I still have no idea how to use any of these summon things I picked up so hopefully that isn’t a big issue. Still, pretty good progress today, here’s to being in an appropriate state for once!