Poise works super differently in Sekiro—it’s almost always more important than health since the Sekiro combat flow centres around being good at blocking on time and blocking well reduces enemy poise while preserving yours. It was a really good idea to have a specialized bar for it there. For ER? I dunno. I can see arguments either way I think
Also, hey, I totally missed this for 12 hours, but there’s an alter garments menu item when you rest at a bonfire. Or maybe it’s not always there? I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it, so maybe there’s something conditional about it. I could change my Vagabond cloak from grey to blue.
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There’s an item you unlock for that
After playing 300 hours this weekend I only have 2 items I can alter
I love that the option’s there though
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Haven’t used a shield yet, the two-handed moveset of this greatsword is just too good
Yeah I’ve been two-handing the twinblades and so far annoyingly it’s the best dex weapon I’ve found? I keep switching to other stuff hoping it’ll be better but it’s worse and I switch back. I want a new thing! come on don’t do this Dark Souls nonsense to me, game
Lol, that’s how I feel about the uchigatana. I’ve infused it with blood and I’m doing a bleed build until I have the stats to switch over to a giant STR weapon, my heart’s desire. I do feel like this game’s weapon ash system makes it easier to do viable, like, bleed builds and other weird builds like that. That’s pretty neat imo.
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Something about the combat in this game, the Ash system, and changes to builds really makes me feel like it hasn’t clicked for me, you know? I’m like 12 hours or so in and I feel like I’m trying to play it wrong. Like it’s just DS or something
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I’m using a boss flail that I hope I never have to give up. If I hit L2 it sucks in all the nearby enemies so I can hit them!!
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I beat Godrick at level 23 wearing chainmail from the starter merchant and using a +2 straight sword. I’m curious how leveled/upgraded people here were when they beat him. I found it pretty tough, under those conditions personally took me like two hours and a lot of (very bad) PC summons to eventually clear.
Also in true souls tradition i am spending all my souls buying limited supply stuff from merchants instead of leveling/upgrading haha
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it’s called a guard counter.
ripostes are called critical hits and they apply to any cinematic attack on a posture broken enemy
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I beat Godrick on my third try, I think I was in my 20s, using rock spell + jellyfish + flail. I think @miffy beat him in 2 tries using the same strat, without flail, at a lower level. Gaming goddess skills there I guess.
I felt bad telling other people he was easy cuz I guess he isn’t, I guess rocks are just OP, I hope I never have to give up using rocks.
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I was talking this over last night and realized the fine grain tuning with war arts and junk is very, very, armored core esque.
Like so much of this game is experimenting with fiddly combos to optimize an approach when fighting, even managing weight seems similar in some ways.
When I started thinking of my gal as a mech a bunch of stuff clicked into place, especially since I’m at the stage where leveling is hard but buying all the low level shit is easy.
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the summons are extremely plentiful near the big bosses in this one too so you can basically be like “nah” if you don’t feel like having a real hard time with any of them. I’m not always good enough to not lose an hour when I wasn’t planning on it but I’m pretty much always good enough to not die as the host if I’ve already gotten to the boss’s second phase at least once in a few tries if I get two half decent allies
the fights that have taken me longest so far are Loretta and the huge dragonkin in the northwest underground river because both times I had to admit to myself that I appeared to be doing good enough damage to take them on but they were too obscure for me to summon anyone so I had to roll up my damn sleeves
and in fairness to myself I have like 12 vigor at lv50 after pumping everything else for completely scatterbrained equipment requirements so I should probably not use my own offense as my only evaluator of readiness
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this is a very significant part of why I admire this game so much – like, even if it’s, on the one hand, just a punishingly difficult semi-linear solo action RPG, it has so much juicy DNA in it from so much of gaming history, in how the world feels more like ultima or something than anything else ever does, in how the equipment tuning is basically derived from the mech games that this company near-exclusively made for a decade, in how the whole approach to multiplayer and summoning has been scoped out to allow for so many preferences, etc.
it is a spectacular videogame
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Level ~10, chainmail from the starter merchant, +12 Grande Epee. I beat Godrick on the second attempt while summoning the NPC.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the Smithing Stone system in Elden Ring is a bit of a mess compared to all of the Souls games. It’s really important to systematically visit a Tunnel for each smithing tier. Completing Caves and Catacombs doesn’t matter but Tunnels really, really, do. That’s not signaled properly though, so it’s common to get stuck at a low weapon level for ages. (I did, too, I just recognized I shouldn’t fight in Stormveil Castle until I figured out how to solve my weapon problem.)
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yeah, the hard numbering does seem like a bizarrely artificial afterthought, but it’s like how they manage to fuck up the healing system in every other game seemingly out of boredom; this time they fucked up the upgrade system
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It reminds me of Bloodborne’s Ritual Blood system. That sucked, too.
I don’t think the screwup is that random though. It’s one of many systems that they had to iterate as part of moving to an open world. Unlikely that they would get every single thing right on their first attempt
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i actually really like this despite the mechanical fuckiness of it. Very tired of trying to remember if I need a “Smithing Stone” or a “Wretched Whetstone” or a “Twinkling Obsidian” or “Flame Opal” to upgrade a weapon. Just give me numbers
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This thread will have 100 posts every time I click it and tbh I’d probably like to stay 100% spoiler free even about the driest gameplay stuff so I’ll never look until uh, 3 months or something when I have beaten it piecemeal 1 hour per night which is all I could realistically average nowadays.
I made a character with sorta an rp approach (I don’t really do it but I tried to exercise my fantasy imagination) and really disliked something or other about the classes. I didn’t want to be a healer specifically but I said what the hell and chose a prophet who looks like a super old version of me if I got simultaneously aspirational and decrepit. Does that make sense? Me in my most intense life 30 years later. Chose a cracked pot cause I’m a hoarder irl.
Well I absolutely did not want to be a healer and holy shit I have a pokey spear, shield, bombs, and a fucking fireball right out the gate??? Glass cannon that can also heal is so fun. I feel like I have enough tools to try a lot of approaches to different enemies and it’s working so well. Anyway I’m in for about 4 hours, not much particular to note besides the game rules.
Oh yeah. Loathsome dung eater.
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I took a day off to play a bit. I love the game.
I’m really glad to see how far it goes in the opposite direction of Sekiro, a game I hated - it’s very loose. I’ve chosen an astrologer and have had good success nuking losers from afar. I feel like the focus on challenging bosses has been the series’ obvious weak point since like… Dark Souls 2 DLC, and the open world structure really helps alleviate that issue, at least so far - there are a lot of little candybar reasonable bosses, and you can just leave to explore and improve anytime you’re struggling, while past Souls games rarely gave such options.
The highlights so far have been
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giant bear comes out of his invisibility cape to destroy my girl out of nowhere
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teleporting trap chest in the swamp to a nightmare mine + the blood red sky outside when I finally manage to get out
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the red jellyfish corruption
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