BTW I might have to eat my words on Dex builds having no conceivable use in Elden Ring. Unless I have a better idea, I might do my first major respec into Dex for this one late-game boss I ran into.
Just as I started to think I could steamroll the rest of the game with it, my whole greatshield emphasis could not be backfiring harder on this one
I think the thing about low hp builds in previous souls games is in general Iād much rather play perfectly for a short period of time than well for a longer period of time. Iām generally ok repeating some stuff but I absolutely hate doing meticulous setups over and over again. If I fuck up just kill me and let me get back in there.
Unfortunately in ER thatās not really possible since there are times where youāre just going to take damage, you cannot humanly dodge the bonkers long combos fast enough, and you either need to block them, tank the damage or deflect aggro. Mostly I deal with this by using summon ashes a lot but otherwise a lot of encounters are super frustrating for me at this point if I solo. So I almost do feel like just giving the player vigor automagically as they level up would be a better solutionāif something is a requirement donāt pretend itās optional. But then, Fromsoft is gonna Fromsoft
All that said I really appreciate all the fights like the dual tree sentinel fight where if it sucks for your build it is always an option to just book it out of there
They give 1 point of defense in every category as you level up any stat, thatās essentially the same idea.
Both of those are equally frustrating, to me, but there are more ways of thinking about the tradeoffs here.
If a boss seems intractable at first, I like to optimize for āseriously experimenting withā the boss for a high ratio of my time. That means minimizing one-shots so I donāt waste more time on the runback or first phase, and it also means not going for ultraconservative take-forever tactics (because Iāll probably lose eventually anyway and Iāll have learned little about faster ways to safely deal damage).
If necessarily Iāll go in with a ātraining buildā focused more on defense than offense, say, and then reloadout/respec when I have enough knowledge to try to actually win. And my ideal win condition looks like semi-sloppy tactics that take appropriate risks to deal extra damage when the boss canāt hard punish me, and only aims for perfection at avoiding one-shots.
nice radahn fight
yeah, this is also just generally good advice for beating most difficult games. when playing SMW rom hacks iāll always opt for the in-rhythm fast approach to learning an obstacle rather than the measured slow approach because the latter just takes way too much time between attempts, plus itās harder to memorize.
practicing for the fast way normally saves time in the long run (there are some notable exceptions, but i usually start with that strategy and then adjust if itās clear itās not going to work.)
brocoās post could also be characterized as āplay to learnā rather than āplay to winā, which is a somewhat subtle but important distinction
Even if you donāt like using summons in your own game, itās a good method for getting summoned yourself, even just mentally losing the performance pressure because youāre not trying to win, youāre just getting that valuable information on how a boss functions, is a huge help.
Level 45ish?
Playing with mostly DEX and FAITH and its going OK so far.
Iām still on the basic long bow (+2). Buying 99 arrows every castle/dungeon run. I can make some nice fire arrows but I need an easier source of beast bones.
Ive found a precious Ice axe and Im just absolutely ice stomping my way to victory and causing frost build up on everyone. One shotting low lever freaks enmass. Im cheesy and loving it.
Kinda feeling like I should switch over to INT as fire and healing are OK but not super spectacular.
I dont have PS plus and Im wondering how much Im really missing out. I really enjoy messages but Im also really enjoying the mystery of having no warnings.
Killed me a Goddrick, getting absolutely leveled by phase 2 of the Moon Queen of Laser University so Im out wandering the world. Went back in the castle and found all sorts of rooms I never entered, same in book town. Found a key to give to a wanna be wizard and Iām like āI have no idea why you wanna go there but here you go buddyā. Is the fiction that things are normal when Im not around? Is he just totally unaware of how nuts everyone is?
This is like Toups said the best zelda game. This is LTTP / Zelda2 3D. I havenāt loved a game this much in forever and I wasnāt sure I ever would love a new game this much.
Is this Malenia or is there an even harder secreter boss somewhere? I only just dipped my toe in that fight and trying to get a feel for what Iām in for
The two Iāve found so far:
So far Iāve found three in Nokron alone, but obviously you need to get there first.
Another distinction that follows from that is that some types of game difficulty above all it make it hard to learn ā for example, if a boss has 3 phases, the main reason thatās such a problem is that you donāt get to practice the moves from the last phase nearly as often.
Iām not sure how I feel about that sort of difficulty. Part of me wants to say thatās real dumb and every game should have a practice mode that lets me warp directly to the parts Iām having trouble with and let me mess around, instead of wasting so much of my time on redoing parts I already learned well enough.
Thatās almost certainly an overreach: thereās a lot to be said for the extra tension and sense of hope/crisis of only rarely finally seeing āthe last bitā. But at this point I feel like most ādifficult gamesā have started to rely on this type of difficulty way too much. Iām starting to bridle at the artificiality of the walls every game routinely places in between me and learning, and emotionally rejecting the ādramaā theyāre trying to create because Iāve seen it too many times. Itās like thereās now an implicit conventional wisdom that āterrible pedagogy = fun challengeā.
Just died like 30 times, with many summons pals along the way, against the Black Blade Kindred outside the Bestial Sanctum. Summoned one guy like 10 times in a row, what a trooper. One time me and another guy got him down to maybe halfway, and then the other guy died and I ran away. Then I found another summon sign and me and that person got em down to like 10 percent before they died. āLetās play it safe.ā Ran away again, and then found another summon sign of a big buff Guts cosplay guy and summoned him. Then we immediately got invaded by some dude. No prob. 2 vs 1. Anyways he shows up and then lights himself on fāin fire and then just starts running around like a crazy person and it inflicts us with Chaos death and the other guy dies immediately. He then kills me, but it seems glitched, because then he kept killing me over and over as like tree roots sprung from my body and the death sound effect played over and over and then a Blue Ring Hunter guy got summoned while this happened and almost made it over to us before I guess the game just decided to let me die for real.
Tried one more time and the summon was a Rennala cosplay and knew exactly the one spot to stand in where she could repeatedly cast gravity rocks and keep aggro but couldnāt be hit. She cast like 50 times and then finished him off with the moon spell while I watched, cowering in fear behind the Sanctum doors until it was over, then ran over to bow to her. Thanks, Queen.
yeah, as a game designer iām really fond of making an āeasierā phase 3, which provides that same level of tension but without as much frustration
the last jump in a good mario hack is rarely the hardest jump, but itās certainly the most tense
A thought partially inspired from how ER has both āSites of Graceā and āStakes of Marikaā: is there a game out there that in addition to normal savepoints, allows you to place your own āghost savepointsā? If you start from one, youād be in ghost mode and touching a regular savepoint wouldnāt give you any permanent progression.
Iām imagining little flag checkpoints youād plant into the ground, but a system like that might have evolved from PC menu-based quicksaves, too.
do you remember in ultima underworld how you could plant a little tree to act as a mobile checkpoint? you had to replant it any time you wanted to save the game elsewhere.
a kaizo hack i played had checkpoints that would send you back to the previous checkpoint when you died, so you had to reliably do at least two checkpoints worth of level at a time. it was pretty fun and an interesting mid point between ādo a level with checkpointsā and ādo a level without checkpointsā
Its that one but I sure feel dumb not knowing about the magic sigil that would have shaved 10 hours off the whole thing!
