One of my mistakes for a lot of the game was carefully avoiding “traps.” In Elden Ring, always let yourself get caught. (It’s more fun when you don’t see it coming and can’t avoid it, though, like the thing at the Academy in my case.)
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Yeah I’m firmly in the “okay this may warp me someplace odd and screw up my immediate plans but what an adventure it’d likely be!” camp, because of said travels I likely ended up with the somber smithing stones that let me level up my weapon of choice so highly that nothing in Liurnia can resist melting within a few hits from it.
Speaking of such I now have a second great rune as even stuck as a pure melee character in an academy full of magicians I’m overleveled enough (not intentionally, 'tis a side effect of said adventures) to pretty much tank anything in there. The middle boss died in I think 4 hits, maybe 5, aside from the big boss there it was kinda a massacre.
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Fun/weird fact, in the unpatched version of ER you can easily run away from the traps. The first time I saw one I thought it was a crossbow trap from DS2 and ran back.
Unpatched Elden Ring is weird, there’s loads of missing items and empty chests.
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yeah i stomped the shit out of liurnia as a pure melee strength character, i think it’s their apology to us after the first 10-15 hours of hell
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I do actually have a random question about the game I’ll ask here as y’all are less likely to accidentally spoil something than google: when I first got through the gate to the Raya Lucaria Academy and saved at the site of grace there before going up the lift to the academy proper that whole place was swarming with bloodstains on the ground with notes saying things like “boss ahead” and “can’t lure out”. The thing is there wasn’t any, I just got onto the lift and went into said academy and bashed people. Normally I would chalk it up to the usual troll messages (which I approve of)… but that’s still a ton of bloodstains on the ground in a place that had no enemies at all.
I’m just curious if I did something like sequence break enough things that something didn’t spawn (again) or whatever actual explanation there is for that as it sticks out as rather weird. I know my second trip to Liurnia in general was much different as there were a bunch of NPCs and summons that weren’t there the first time I visited so I guess I wouldn’t be shocked if something similar did (or in this case didn’t?) take place.
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Did you try taking the lift to more than one destination? If not, there might be more to see.
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there might be loads of bloodstains because it’s a popular pvp area (does pvp contribute to bloodstains?)
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There seemed to be no way to get the lift to go elsewhere (and beneath it was a death pit) so I’m gonna go with the pvp theory.
Played a bit more, got to the plateau area but I gotta stop to… let’s say half-complain about something else. Got to Three Sisters a couple days back, started a side quest where I knew exactly someone was gonna show up and hence was able to quickly progress it to the point where the sorcerer in Three Sisters gave me an invitation to give to someone named Sellen who would tell me the next bit of info I need for it. That was great for me as I checked my map and knew exactly who that was. Went there, said hi to the person and they would not talk to me no matter what and I couldn’t figure out how in the heck to get the invitation to work.
Since I was warned about some NPC/side quest stuff being rather “sensitive” to things like sequence breaks I decided it was best to just google and see if I accidentally borked this side quest without ever knowing. It turns out I did not, it’s just that there are two NPCs in the game with the exact same name and I only found the “wrong” one for this sidequest. Now I am gonna guess that there is a good chance there is some impostor deal or something similar going on (don’t want to know), but identically named NPCs feels a half-step too trollish even for From.
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Playing now and again to help friends through bosses. Was asked today to help kill both a godskin noble and an apostle in separate regions… but I didn’t have either unlocked as I’m still quite early in my NG+. So I was immensely proud to find myself traversing both Caelid and the Volcano Manor and unlocking both these fights in like thirty minutes flat. I haven’t played in a month but I still got it!! I still got the skills!!!
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So I once again warped myself into a fairly dangerous area (Volcano Manor) and won’t let my self truly fast travel out of here back home (although I did fast travel around this area a bit for a specific reason that will soon become clear). I made some new friends, explored around this place a bit, left for a bit when I noticed the map pick-up was nearby and eventually got the bridge raised so I could easily get to the fog gate (I mean it only appeared afterwards, but the messages let me know what was up), behind which was the Godskin Noble.
I hate the Godskin Noble. Here is how my time with him went.
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Early attempts with two handing by +5 Watchdog’s Staff which went… poorly. I could play very conservative and get it to its second phase at which point I was dead meat. It’s odd rolling like a cheese wheel attack ruins me and I just put a marker on the map to remind me to come back for it later.
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Kill a nearby dragon, nets me another +6 somber smithing stone which means I can upgrade my weapon to +6 (only using these when I have a spare in case I need them later). Try the noble a few more times and it doesn’t make enough of a difference.
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Go explore the Mt. region in front of this manor, great area for exp/runes, take out a mini-boss and a tricky tree guardian, drop down off a broken bridge and generally this is a neat area. Gain a couple levels (straight 40s on VIT, END and STR) and ponder if switching to a one handed club and trying to parry the Godskin Noble will help, so many From games have those stupid “parry check” bosses I hate.
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Try it and while it is hard it is definitely parriable, but I am as always awful at doing this and haven’t tried yet in the game really. Had a decent run where I got it down to maybe 1/3 health tops but otherwise still seems beyond me, gives up again.
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Fast travel back to where I was before and continue exploring around, do an underground cave with one of those like awful blade chariot things constantly running back and forth except this place also has lots of lave you have to traverse. It’s rough but I eventually make it to the fog gate with 1/2 health and no heals left, fortunately it has a check point thing right there. Leave and go “I wonder if there is any way to either make the parrying attacks more damaging or make the timing more friendly?”.
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Go to google, find out that some shields have larger parrying windows than other. See the best one is in Stormveil Castle, go to buy it and find out that I don’t have the stats to wield it (needs 13 dex, I have 10). Figure a small shield still has a bigger window than my medium one so pick one of the ones I have already, fast travel back and try again.
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First battle I block three of the very first attacks it tries against me, freak out but stick to it. Second phase is still a problem, I hate the rolling attack as beyond hitting me and sometimes chaining hits it also screws up my camera view and throws me into chaos. I wish I could say that I eventually figured out how to deal with it, but mainly sometimes I got lucky and had the space to play “keep away” from behind a pillar but otherwise it was at best a coin flip. Got it down to a shred of health left once and got wiped out by a multihit sword combo that tanked all my health before I could use one of my two remaining heals. Another time got it low while down to no heals and it won the duel.
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Finally have a run go well, goes a bit off the rails near the end but it stays mostly even, use my last heal behind a pillar (which blocks next to nothing, thanks From), say to hell with it and with less than half a health bar left toss out a prayer of a parry and the god smile down on me and have it connect. Land the follow-up hit, is just enough to finish off this accursed noble, I am finally free!
That was more than an hour fighting that darn thing (not counting the times I walked away to do something else), there’s always one of these boss fights in a From game where it is just a struggle and this is the first true one I’ve come across here (others I was clearly outgunned and left).
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I tried that first guy a couple times, and I’ve just been avoiding this whole area since. Fought the tree guardian beyond as a summon a handful of times, and he’s not fun either. And I have a 60 strength and a +9 weapon!
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godskin noble i remember being a “pull all of your bullshit before it gets a chance to pull its” type of boss. elden ring has many
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Now is that a +9 normal weapon or +9 “special” weapon? I ask as while normal weapons seemingly go as high as +25 (which sounds insane but a friend swears is true, maybe he’s joshing me) mine is a special one that maxes out at +10, so I assume a +9 can mean two very different things.
That tree guardian was a pain, although I was fortunate to take it out on my second attempt. I used the horse a bit to pick away at it but it seemed only moderately useful, I think I mainly got lucky in that I got near its legs for a bit and got a few hits in safely before it managed to do something to endanger me.
…God 60 strength sounds lovely.
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It’s a special one—the commander’s halberd—so it tops out at +10. I haven’t found the stone to take it there yet. And indeed normal weapons do go up to +25, but I don’t think I’ve taken anything past +23 yet.
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And that 60 strength is after the +5 from Goderick’s shard and the +3 from Radahn’s talisman. There’s a 40 something dex in there too, so my attack power is like 668 right now. If I was comfortable playing with something slower and shorter to swing I’d probably be doing a lot more damage.
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Yes our winning fights against him involved bleed weapons, one person hitting while the other runs back to throw all the possible status effects at him, etc. Sleep was also massively helpful.
To stop his roll you have to hit him while he is rolling which is much easier with two people OR if you just have a thrust weapon and nerves of steel to smack him while he’s coming right at you. In our winning fight I just had to go all out and act like I was in Bloodborne w/r/t aggression levels, lmao. I would stand and face him while he was rolling at me and poke him to stop the roll.
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Maybe I’m fishing for info I don’t want to know but how’d you know how to achieve that warp? If I recall correctly you may have done something previously that would have precluded you from the only dialogue I’ve come across that tips you off about it.
I haven’t done anything inside volcano manor because I don’t want to ally myself with those jerks, so I was considering looping back and getting in the other way.
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i respect this, as I had similar impulses when I first played. However I later came to regret staying away from the manor’s main entrance. Spoilers if you’re interested: the initial interactions with their questline are not understood by the game to be an affiliation with their order. You can get quite close to them and even enter volcano manor through the front door/talk to people inside without adopting their creed. You have to do quite a lot of stuff before fully embedding yourself into the org/taking actions you can’t take back.
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That’s helpful! Thanks!! I didn’t want to have to miss out on a whole dungeon.
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Cool! And yes it will be very obvious when they want you to do something bad. I believe they ask you to pledge yourself to their cause? and then there’s a series of things you have to do to get your first assassination assignment… and then you have to actually travel the overworld to go do the assassination!
Thoughts about how this figures into the game as a whole, if you’re curious: afaik it does not affect any endings. And as far as I know, the game also allows you to do the assassinations without locking off questlines for you. In my NG+ I’ve been doing them after scorning the whole organization the first time and so far nothing seems different.
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