the main thing i wish i had known before playing the dlc is that the difference between medium rolling and light rolling becomes much more important. there are lots of enemy attack chains that will fuck you up if you try medium-rolling out of them but which light rolling will allow you to just barely evade
5 Likes
This is what greatshields are for
2 Likes
Iām running into this psychological issue where I have like mountains of cool gear that could enable all these different playstyles but likeā¦ Iām really comfortable with my light-greatshield Faith thing. I like how flexible incantations are, I like that theyāre like a little flavor on top of a mostly melee build, I like the security the shield gives (have one shot near every boss in the DLC so far, but also I am pretty overleveled now lol)ā¦ Like I kind of want to try all this other stuff out but I also definitely donāt. Itās starting to nag me more and more as I explore
4 Likes
sometimes you gotta mix it up, get naked and clawed out* with your worst least appealing gear, fight some chads/hunters and then appreciate what you got
*: I go with dual claws but cipher patas + jelly shield? sure
3 Likes
I had the exact same build and problem. Itās so cozy to turtle behind a big shield with an elemental defense spell. It started to feel kinda repetitive, but also the last thing I felt like doing was try a build where I have to dodge-roll all the time again.
And then the DLC started dropping greatshield-enhancing accessories which made it even cozierā¦
2 Likes
Im a big fan of using bloodhound step as a dodge. You can pass through all sorts of stuff without going light. Combine it with ironjar aromatic and you can rush in and take any bonk.
5 Likes
It seems like thereās basically four tactical āsystemsā you can build around: 1. sword & board, 2. two-hand, 3. dual wield, 4. primary casting. Damage types & status effects are like flavor you can build on any of these platforms, some easier than others. I suppose a caster could use a shield but sorceries always seem like the most boring way to play in Souls games, I basically never do it. But yeah, I donāt want to learn dodgeroll timings for every damn attack in the game, itās so much easier to eat a couple attacks on the shield and recover. Why would I want to die all the time learning boss patterns, that seems silly.
But like thereās these dual swords from this magic lady in the DLC where one is magic and one is fire and come on, that seems rad. And also I fought a kung fu man and could be doing kung fu. I mean, itās appealing.
5 Likes
Iām pretty sure the kung fu man was named Dryrush Deppy.
6 Likes
guessing youāre lumping all ranged in here, but try bows? donāt need to learn timings if youāre always out-of-range
also playing co-op lets you see first-hand how other players tackle the game. ārun as fast as you can away from your team and jump into lavaā āinsist on being first through a door & get bonked by an obvious trapā but sometimes you see a spark in someoneās loadout
5 Likes
Yeah I always have a crossbow as my alternate in my right hand in case I need to knock a falling monster off the ceiling or pull one enemy away from a crowd without alerting all of them.
3 Likes
i really like casting in this one, you can charge up a lot of spells and theyre more dynamic in flavor & application than a half dozen soul arrow variants. you can also mess around with weird faith schools like bestial incantations & dragon communion that let you breathe fire and summon giant claws/tails to hit things with and other cool looking shit that i dont know how good it is
3 Likes
Well I went all in and did a full respec to the fire & magic paired Rellana swords in the DLC. They scale evenly on str, dex, int and fth so in theory have an extremely high damage cap if you get to like level 300 or whatever. More importantly they look cool as shit. Since I pumped int & fth equally I also maxed out the fundamentalist incantation seal, to cast those weird int+fth incantations with the golden rings and stuff. I also made sure to be light rolling.
I gave it a good solid try for a couple hours, clearing a couple side dungeons. Wow! I hated it! The weapon arts are cheap and powerful, but if felt boring to use them constantly, and the one suitable for close range has a charge time that got me hit all the time, which thankfully I could hyperarmor through but often would lose a huge chunk of health in the process. Attacking normally instead was a bust - because dual wielding means one R1 press makes two attacks come out, it actually locked me into the attack animation for basically the same amount of time as my 1-hand Rykard fire faith greatsword swings, except I didnāt have a shield for instant block to recover after and did way less poise damage to hitstun enemies. In addition the armor you can wear with 25 end with light roll is a lot less damage reduction than 40 end with medium roll, I could absolutely see the difference. And for all these defensive losses, all I got in return was a slightly better roll.
Plus those fundamentalist incantations were a bust, they did less damage, cost more mana, were slower casting, and even often had less range than the weapon arts. Gtfo.
So I switched back to my old faith build and instantly loved it again, it felt so fresh and free in comparison. Problem solved
9 Likes
So Iāve one-shotted a lot of bosses, and gotten almost all the rest on like, letās say <5 attempts, but this Promised Consort Radahn guy, jesus christ.
5 Likes
Heās the Mike Tyson of Dark Souls.
4 Likes
But you canāt summon a guy with a giant shield to poke Mike Tyson to death with a little blood proccing shortsword, can you.
1 Like
Maybe thatās a rom hack?
4 Likes
So at the end of the day I only summoned player help for Malenia and DLC Radahn, one shot Godfrey, never died to Radagon, and took like 3 tries I think on the Elden Beast. I may have been slightly overleveled. Boy that Elden Beast hates melee builds doesnāt he, I swear I spent 80% of that fight running after his space whale ass.
Anyway me saying the game was about space aliens was multiply proven correct. All different kind of space aliens it turns out. Competing space aliens even.
I think I loved the game. I didnāt want to immediately start a NG+ right after it was over, that would be crazy, I will almost certainly never play this game again, but I did want more. Which is gross, I shouldnāt want that, there was already too much by any metric including my own good taste. But it really got its hooks in me, what can I say. When I was getting to the end of the DLC I started putting myself out there for coop summoning (for the first time) just to prolong the inevitable.
After it was all over against my better judgment I looked up a couple of them youtube ālore videosā because I knew through sb osmosis that that was a thing that was popular on the internet. More or less I agreed with the broad strokes of what the guy was saying, some quibbling differences, but all that proved was that the game mostly does have a more or less objectively correct interpretation except for a few vague spots, as long as you exhaustively get every item you can and read everything and talk to everyone, which of course I did. Which, I think, is kind of enervating. Demonās and Dark remain the twin masterpieces for their subtler, vaguer and more evocative settings and stories. I think Elden Ring is just too big not to ultimately make itself explicit. Thereās too many places detail has to go, and eventually enough detail piles up that specificity is soon to follow.
That said, like a billion of the comments were like āthank god this video came out so I can understand what I actually did in this game,ā so maybe calling it āexplicitā isnāt doing it enough justice. Itās still pretty fuckin good man. I canāt knock it.
From still the champs, all hail, etc, everyone knew this, now I join the chorus.
11 Likes
hey dont forget to leave yourself space to start a NG once a year, play thru stormveil castle, go āwell that was nice!ā and put it down again
im glad u got around to this 
i like the lore being more of a complete sourcebook you can find the whole of if you choose. its part of this feeling every so slightly distinguished from the souls trilogy & bb in vibe. also there is so much game that i think FS really doesnt want you to find it all, the community dedicating itself to picking each new game clean is kind of a double-edged sword. i still have a lot of unanswered questions and unplayed stuff cuz like i didnt want to excavate the whole world within one characterās story
i love the aliens under-girding the fantasy world as an extension of the outer god stuff in bloodborne & also im a mark for that kind of thing :B the warring gods ultimately being FROM SPAAACE is an audaciously big move that i love, it suggests that the mystery extends off this world into the universe itself. i followed Ranniās questline & ending and there is an explicit theme of traveling into the stars beyond the planet that the Lands Between exists on
i guess im saying: future souls next maybe? scifi souls??
2 Likes
spelljammer souls, including the hacky ship-to-ship gravity mechanics and the british empire portrayed as anthropomorphic hippos. it would be nice
6 Likes
oh my GOD
2 Likes