I think the thing that saves it from the worst of lawmowerism for me is that it very rarely does the “now we put all these markers on your map for you to go look at” thing that often leads right to me just stopping a lawnmower game. Leaving it up to me to explore, and then making exploration somewhat potentially dangerous really does a lot.
4 Likes
I thought it was just the catacombs and magic towers that get tedious and feel like busywork dotting the map. the catacombs don’t get interesting until the last 2 or 3 that have like doubled copies of the dungeon in there somewhere. It was great when I first started the game and had just done a mine, two caves, one of which was the patches cave, and a catacomb and thought there was just different shit in every direction, hadn’t mapped out the routines and limitations of the game yet.
2 Likes
I wonder if Nokron’s tourism board ever sued Nokstella in the good ol’ days before the Shattering.
4 Likes
late to the party but crystalians are trivial with a strike weapon, hits will gradually reduce their defense and poise, i think they are dull to fight beyond that because they’re a gimmick mob
fwiw i really like how they seem to have designed things so most builds have at least one glaring weakness that you have to deal with through counterplay or being intentional with your gear, keeps me from feeling like the game is a solved problem even tho i’m heading into the home stretch
8 Likes
the draconic tree sentinal outside the gate to the city (i guess?) is kicking my ass. i feel like the past 4-6 hours of the game has mostly been very difficult and very repetitive fights. i assume this might be a confluence of factors, like what i chose to focus on first, but i am really hoping to get to a point in the game where i don’t need to concentrate with every single fiber of my being to succeed.
also, yeah, where do i go after Radahn? lol
post radahn advice with minimal spoilers: explore mistwood again
5 Likes
Being on horse doing a single hit and then running away worked great for me the 3 times I fought the Draconic Tree Sentiel. See the first two I got to one hit left and then the topography meant I just wiffed 4 times in a row and died.
Sadly I found the capital had lots of enemies for running away or intense concentration. I got summoned for my first run through and the other phantom was a murder machine so got to see the whole level and where bonfires were. Honestly worked out great for me.
Now on to The Next Thing over here.
Tried to meet Ranni finally, turns out her bodyguard probably go aggro’d by a bear.
1 Like
I’m using straight swords and I switch my off hand 2nd sword with a shield, dex build.
So fard I’ve played against the 1 and the 2 crystalians boss fights. On the first I only used shield block counters and it lost poise in 3 counters, and died in 2 crits. For the second fight I used the arena to keep one at bay, only to find out they lose poise even faster with jump attacks.
I imagine my equip is not the best for them but even not changing my equip, both of those strats made them less than trivial.
I’ve had a lot more trouble with the pumpkin head duo.
1 Like
Btw, and sorry for the double post, but I remember someone much earlier itt saying that in these games HP should be have been raised with the level, or have some counter balance to damage of some kind.
You actually have that since Bloodborne, with DS3 and this game as well.
On Bloodborne it was almost every early character level, but in this game is more subtle.
Every 2 levels or so you physical damage resistances increase, and other increase depending on which stats you raise.
This has been present ever since they remover armor upgrades.
yeah I know that, I was saying HP should increase in the same way. all those defensive stat auto upgrades in this game manage to do is keep your ‘die in two hits’ status constant over the course of the game, provided you’re diligent with vigor. if you’re not diligent with vigor, you’re going to get one shot by a lot of things, regardless of your armor. that was not the case in previous games. here the main counterbalance is mimic ash and respecs
i’m behind most folks here but:
dex/faith mostly, treespear (great against those miners and random resistant people when i use its holy damage L2), imp heads and prophet robes, just got black flames and dragon powers and stuff so my guy is becoming more “fucked up” and will hopefully continue that way
i think weapon upgrading sucks in these games and needs to be 100% reconsidered at least as far as solo play is concerned. really gets in the way when you have a charitable, imaginative, initial good-faith approach towards these games. i read broco’s posts about an early boss being balanced for “+9” or something and tbh it sucks. It is appalling to even consider the allocation of unknown-scarcity items towards an unknown cap when there’s still the joy of discovering new weapons, some of which are regrettably “better” than others d/t scaling and whatever other shit. Anyway… this is a very “casual” complaint and once you elect (make a brave/uninformed choice) to juice a weapon up this anxiety mostly recedes but when a game feels free and expansive it is a real bore to think about such closed systems. The narrative divergences are constantly restricted to a series of coin flips (yes/no questions, whatever other yes/no flags) and they introduce but quickly resolve anxiety in combination with autosave. In some ways the early game feels like this with class choices and restricted loadout options (do I two hand, do I use this weapon I found or not, etc) but weapon upgrades are many times more complex and involved, sadly/crucially optional and at your own pace (it can be ignored, without making a choice—ignoring an npc after you’ve laid eyes on them, on the other hand, is a choice b/c you don’t know if they’ll disappear next time you come through) , and simply too effective compared to stat increases and weapon swaps, but combined with low information it’s just ugly. It does not permit me to dream as freely as I would like and that’s half the reason I like these games. Been shitty since demon’s, as far as I am concerned. Not in the business of providing real solutions but fitting with the game’s current loop, rather than giving me a 20th rune arc I don’t know what to do with after small dungeon bosses, they could create a forced choice to upgrade something when using that teleport to entrance. I’d upgrade what I had at the beginning and then begin to favor what I liked (w/diminishing returns, not increased smithing stone costs) as I progress. Seems better atm, equally as grindy albeit more obvious.
14 Likes
fwiw i don’t agree at all that margit is balanced for a +9 weapon. i certainly didn’t have anything near that when i beat him and it didn’t feel like i was doing a pitiful amount of damage or that the fight took too long.
i do agree the system would benefit a lot from more transparency and clarity on what you should have when, and where to find or farm upgrade materials. the split between somber & normal smithing stones feels really weird – i always have an excess of the somber because they only take 1 stone per upgrade tier, while “normal” weapons take 13 to fully upgrade out of that tier. i only had enough normal smithing stones to upgrade two weapons by the capital, but i could basically upgrade every special weapon i found that takes somber stones.
7 Likes
Yeah the weapon upgrade system blows. It’s hard to care about any of the weapons you get once you become really comfortable with a cool one, 20% of the way in
I think the series would really benefit from a weapon proficiency system instead of a weapon upgrade one - using a (renamed) smithing stone would effectively level every weapon from that weapon type in the game
10 Likes
it’s funny the upgrading thing is so awkward now because the way infusion and weapon skills work now is miles better than it used to be
9 Likes
interestingly, they already have this, just obfuscated. When you pick up a map for a new region, look out for any red rimmed black dots on the map, those indicate mines where you can get smithing stones and somber smithing stones.
My description is bad, these points on the map:
11 Likes
yeah the biggest twist in elden ring is all the “seek hole” messages being pretty good advice
17 Likes
yeah, i noticed those 30 hours in, and it was another 20 hours before i knew what they actually meant and how they were different than other caves.
Pretty burned out on this game ~45 hours in! My bottom line is “Elden Ring is proof that no game can hold my interest for more than 40 hours (***1/2)”
The other one is “Elden Ring is Dark Souls Simulator (***)”
4 Likes
I am 70 hours in and it turns out there’s another entire game north of the previous game
3 Likes