maliketh’s things are ridiculously long windups and massive amounts of holy damage, i’d say the main things to keep in mind while fighting him are to stack holy resist, usually attack him during the windups instead of cooldowns, and (importantly for late game ending ring bosses) use a greatshield instead of trying to dodge everything before you’ve internalized his mostly arbitrary timings. also don’t panic about the damage over time or max health reduction when his attacks do hit you. oh and have like 60 vigor so you can recover from mistakes. i’ve fought him so many times in co-op, and seen lots of hosts fail the vig check the first time he lands a big attack
i hope the dlc doesn’t have too many things that invalidate greatshields, they make the game so much less sweaty
Leveling in souls games is corny. Cap should be like 30… feels like cheating when you level up and make something easy. 120 especially is just wrong. Levels stop at 99 aka “max level” so 40-60 is appropriate to beat a game. Can’t get my brain around when to just pump up my guy. I lose souls constantly and I don’t care, and I never ever win.
I pump up until I reach the soft cap on the stats needed for my build. The benefit of one level becomes really hard to notice after that, and I take it as a signal that From considers that strong enough.
in every souls game besides DS1 i try to get my vigor (and endurance) to at least 30, thats usually sufficient. (Bloodborne i might push past that since builds are straightforward/boring in that game and u can ignore endurance unless youre using a big fuckoff weapon) In DS1 youre safe around 20-25
i found it kind of annoying that you need so much vig in ER cuz i used a jack of all trades and it worked great up until the endgame, where i was suddenly too fragile. but like respec is so cheap that its hard to be too fussy about that
Probably about time for a replay of this! i purposely left myself things to do in my first play instead of being exhausted so there are still places i havent been! (and yet it still took 120+ hours to complete lolol)
I miss my homies Boc and Big Boggart. and Rya, and Alexander, and Blaidd, and man this game has the best NPCs. all that and Patches too!!
it is forever funny to me that this games Guts homage is just Guts as a literal wolf man whose name means WOLF
invasions got weird in ds3 and elden ring works on the same model, you have to go in with some tricks up your sleeve expecting a 2v1 or 3v1. i hated it at first but now i appreciate it
The system sucks for people trying to just do coop PvE with their friends. They just get invaded nonstop nowadays.
It was probably fine near launch, but it seems prone to unbalanced matchmaking ratio with a smaller population (invaders can do it as a hobby indefinitely, whereas coop playthrough is more of a one-time activity)
for people in PC i highly recommend seamless co-op, which incidentally disables pvp completely, but i could see this being really frustrating for people who can’t use that for whatever reason
iirc there’s a 30 minute timer between invasions unless you’re using the taunter’s tongue, but that’s per-host so if you’re switching between hosts a lot to replay the same levels that effectively doesn’t exist does it
You can buy a Shadow of Erdtree + Basegame for PS5 combo thing for $80 and I’m thinking about the double dip even though I’m also thinking about how Monster Hunter is so much more engaging to me now and then I’m also thinking about how I bought Dragons Dogma 2 and the super special edition of Unicorn Overlord so like will I even have time to play DLC for a game I haven’t beaten?
It also took me like a decade to beat Demons Souls so wtf here I am
gotta be that Fromsoft touch, they know how to leave just enough to your imagination that their games stay curled up in your brain. that plus a slightly worn out but still fundamentally solid combat system, enough variety to spark at least a few unique replays per game, and classically great level design that feels good to re-experience. i think this is why most Soulsclones, even ones with very fun competent combat, dont have the same staying power
Its kinda funny that theyre such a wildly popular studio when 1) theyve been doing this for their whole existence basically 2) everything they do is foundational Good Video Games stuff, nothing super innovative or flashy really. Which like is nothing we weren’t saying here 10 years ago when “smart placement of dumb enemies and well paced levels without waypoint marker shit” felt like a blast of fresh air lol
i remember a friend watching me play Demons Souls and going “i don’t get it, this just seems like your average action RPG” and i was like man, it is that it’s just the best possible version of it
