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The [Elden Ring] Thread - Shadow of the Erdtree Announced!
Replaying ER with the hope of actually finishing it this time. Liked the look of the pyro stuff Jrx was on about earlier in the thread so Faith probably paired with Dex with a reaper probably.
It's going great. Forgot how to open the map, where to get the fire spells, the multi groups thing for help & buffs, didn't spec for my intended weapon first and nearly killed my boi Boc. This is going to be a run.
edit: Oh yeah I'm rusty as hell. Dying to everything. Cemetry shade just wrecked me really quickly twice.
Actually having a story instead of a Rorschach test actually bad storytelling, says internet.
Like, I *like* the Rorschach tests, they're fun and engaging and seeing what I can come up with from all the breadcrumbs is fun and reminds me of watching cartoons as a kid when you'd get random episodes from up and down the season whenever the station felt like it and you had to piece the plot out from it, but I'm not going to pretend From are actually good at, like. Stories.
Souls is actually rather carried by its mythological, dreamlike atmosphere, for me. It makes the disjointedness feel appropriate rather than jarring. Which I think is part of why Elden Ring hit me a lot less. It feels a lot more like a place and the Marika Family Drama feels more real and the moment you start painting with specifics instead of broad impressionistic brushtrokes the whole thing stops feeling like a fun inkblot to coalesce into sense and more like someone is just not bothering to tell you things.
I used the recommended strategy for Commander Niall/Niell/whatever, the castle sol guy: stack up on magic boosting stuff, pop terra magicka at the door, pop flask, melt him down with comet azur
It was supposed to take him out in one hit but he had just a sliver left so I switched to a sword real quick and dodged his lightning jump, two slashes, done.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
They definitely put it in a drippingly derisive way though
BahamutZERO on
+5
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
The problem with the internet is that people have lost the ability to present anything as personal taste and instead always present things as objective fact and that you're clearly a silly dumb goose if you disagree.
Actually having a story instead of a Rorschach test actually bad storytelling, says internet.
Like, I *like* the Rorschach tests, they're fun and engaging and seeing what I can come up with from all the breadcrumbs is fun and reminds me of watching cartoons as a kid when you'd get random episodes from up and down the season whenever the station felt like it and you had to piece the plot out from it, but I'm not going to pretend From are actually good at, like. Stories.
Souls is actually rather carried by its mythological, dreamlike atmosphere, for me. It makes the disjointedness feel appropriate rather than jarring. Which I think is part of why Elden Ring hit me a lot less. It feels a lot more like a place and the Marika Family Drama feels more real and the moment you start painting with specifics instead of broad impressionistic brushtrokes the whole thing stops feeling like a fun inkblot to coalesce into sense and more like someone is just not bothering to tell you things.
From is exceptionally good at what they do, which is make a place feel realized via ambience. The drama of the gods in Elden Ring does feel very story-booky but the entire rest of the world is a joy.
It doesn't even have to be post-apocalyptic. Look at Sekiro. Perfectly executed environments.
I agree they can't do what someone like CDPR can do when it comes to storytelling. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with a AC6.
Actually having a story instead of a Rorschach test actually bad storytelling, says internet.
Like, I *like* the Rorschach tests, they're fun and engaging and seeing what I can come up with from all the breadcrumbs is fun and reminds me of watching cartoons as a kid when you'd get random episodes from up and down the season whenever the station felt like it and you had to piece the plot out from it, but I'm not going to pretend From are actually good at, like. Stories.
Souls is actually rather carried by its mythological, dreamlike atmosphere, for me. It makes the disjointedness feel appropriate rather than jarring. Which I think is part of why Elden Ring hit me a lot less. It feels a lot more like a place and the Marika Family Drama feels more real and the moment you start painting with specifics instead of broad impressionistic brushtrokes the whole thing stops feeling like a fun inkblot to coalesce into sense and more like someone is just not bothering to tell you things.
They don't do much to make me care about what happens next in the plot, since in the back of my head I know I'll probably never know what actually happens (what's the difference for the PC and the world and humanity between any of the Dark Souls endings in any of the games), but they do pretty well at making me care what happens next in individual quests or character narratives.
And sometimes they deliver really well on that excitement, walking into the room under the Cathedral of Manus Celes (where you get the DMG) is pretty great.
though good luck following most of those without a guide
From Software managed a trick where I don't usually have any idea of what is actually happening in the world. I can never keep the characters straight and I rarely, if ever, even know what the goal of the game is.
But, everything js presented so deliberately and thoughtfully that I end up spending hundreds of hours in the game.
I love the idea of spellblades, but 95% of the time if I'm playing one I just end up focused on the melee and maybe use magic a dozen times for enemies that are too annoying to melee.
I love the idea of spellblades, but 95% of the time if I'm playing one I just end up focused on the melee and maybe use magic a dozen times for enemies that are too annoying to melee.
i try to stick to more melee or close aoe spells in practice
I love the idea of spellblades, but 95% of the time if I'm playing one I just end up focused on the melee and maybe use magic a dozen times for enemies that are too annoying to melee.
Easy solution is make your magic also melee. It's real good in this one.
Feeling pretty good heading into the later prt of the game with my sorcelator. I have all the spells I want (didn’t go after the deathbird ones), most of the talismans I have access to at this point, a couple decent INT-scaled weapons at +8 or higher.
And I’m only around level 120 when normally i’d be closer to 140 at this point. INT at 75.
I’m still using the meteorite staff primarily because none of the other come close to the damage output even though this one isn’t upgradeable.
Edit: also someone in the se++ thread turned me on to Rollo the Omenkiller and that guy is a great tanky ash
knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
i respecced my str/int build to a 55/55 split and tested a couple staffs
Meteorite just barely lost to Lusat's at that level, and since i'm using it for gravity spells it actually comes out ahead. It's nuts.
What it is that the scaling curves on most of the endgame staffs are way, way backloaded. The Carian Regal staff has a 60 Int requirement with S scaling but is worse than the Academy staff until like 70 Int.
Man, I finally committed to killing the gargoyle outside the beast chapel before heading to Altus, and I think a caestus guy might've been the worst character to do that on. Between their long, spindly legs and the way they jump all over the place they're already obnoxious to hit. But then add caestus onto that with sometimes being able to whiff against enemies whose collision you're rubbing up against, and it was a novel new kind of frustrating fight for me.
My adventure continues. One shot Margit, Gostoc continues to be an asshole. And the birds... didn't go as well as last time. Two shot Godrick then died repeatedly to a Tibia Mariner.
+1
GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
i respecced my str/int build to a 55/55 split and tested a couple staffs
Meteorite just barely lost to Lusat's at that level, and since i'm using it for gravity spells it actually comes out ahead. It's nuts.
What it is that the scaling curves on most of the endgame staffs are way, way backloaded. The Carian Regal staff has a 60 Int requirement with S scaling but is worse than the Academy staff until like 70 Int.
It's definitely a weird thing. But I also like that there are effective staffs for lower-level int builds. Elden Ring really encourages splashing in some of the spellcasting stats to other kinds of builds. You get so much bang for your buck at like, 12 Faith for example. Raise it to 15 and you get Flame, Grant Me Strength which is fantastic for Str, Dex, and Quality builds.
Int requires a little more investment but getting that 18 for Rock Sling gets you a bunch of other good stuff. Including Night Maiden's Mist, which is honestly pretty incredible.
A splash of magic has always been pretty nice for utility, though easy damage is less common.
You can get a solid foundation for utility and weapon buffing in DS1 with 15 int and an Oolacile Catalyst (pyromancy for damage doesn't really count, since you're spending level-up amounts of souls you're just not actually leveling up), DS2 lets you use any buff by investing spices, DS3 you can get pyromancy buffs and poison with barely more than minimums in int/faith, etc.
Though from DS2 forward there's little reason not to just full invest in magic and use something with appropriate scaling for melee even if you barely want to use said magic.
Blasphemous Blade is good. Ordovis Greatsword, Golden Halberd, and Staff of the Avatar too, but Holy runs into serious damage type issues in endgame.
Magma Wyrm is really quite good unless you don't like it.
Various pure strength weapons are great heavy and then you can buff them with your faith, if you don't mind buffing.
There are lots of lighter, faster weapons that would be great too, as heavy and using buffs, like the broadsword, bandit's curved sword, great epee, etc.
Kamar on
0
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Blasphemous blade is definitely the best STR/FTH weapon, but it's kind of an easy button for the game.
I just wanted to chime in a bit late re: FromSoftware games having obtuse stories:
Since Demon's Souls, I always felt that Miyazaki took the wrong approach from his inspiration. For those of you who don't know, what Miyazaki, in the past, listed as his prime inspiration that motivated him to make these game's lore so full of gigantic holes was his own lack of fluency in the english language, that lead him to not understanding sometimes big parts of the english books he was reading in his youth.
Now here's where that becomes a problem: When Miyazaki read those books and missed parts of the background behind the plot and characters, they were still there, he just had no access to them. For the SoulsBorne games, we have no way of knowing if this is the case, but more often than not I suspect it's just not. Why invest resources into *fully* developing the lore and then not showing most of it after all? It's much easier to just develop fragments and then proof-reading enough to make sure they're not fully disjointed.
But personally, I always felt that you could feel how this approach feels hollow. It's the difference between having two pieces of a picture and seeing that they are part of a bigger picture, and having two small pictures where you see they are missing something that connects them, but it does not look like any big picture would fit both of them. In one case something is there, you just can't see it, but maybe extrapolate it, in the second case someone just came up with 2 cool looking small pictures and put the task of connecting them to you. In my opinion, that was always the mark of a weak storyteller.
How much do y'all normally invest into vigor, mind, and endurance? I'm at 40 vigor and like 20 mind, and I've been pumping endurance lately because I find myself always running out of stamina in fights. Maybe I play too aggressively. I don't know. I do a lot of rolling and running and attacking every opportunity I get.
I'm still using the bloodhound fang (got it up to +9 so far) at lv 110, and I just beat the Sol Castle boss guy in the snowy mountaintop area. Dunno how close to the end I am but it feels pretty close.
i've been consistently doing 52 vigor now; it's only 150 less HP than 60 for a savings of 8 points which is a worthwhile trade imo. the last few levels of vigor are marginally less efficient, but it's a fairly flat curve so where you stop leveling it pre-60 is fairly arbitrary.
mind is completely dependent on what you're doing with the bar; 16 gives you an even 100 which is enough for most non-caster or sporadic casting builds. you'll want to dump more points in if you're running a high tier summon or doing serious casting. i think my melee wizard is sitting at around 23-25. a dedicated wizard probably needs a lot more.
endurance usually ends up around 20-27 depending on weight needs. the ROI on stamina gain isn't super good compared to FP from mind or HP from vigor, so i try not to invest more than i absolutely need to hit my weight target.
How much do y'all normally invest into vigor, mind, and endurance? I'm at 40 vigor and like 20 mind, and I've been pumping endurance lately because I find myself always running out of stamina in fights. Maybe I play too aggressively. I don't know. I do a lot of rolling and running and attacking every opportunity I get.
I'm still using the bloodhound fang (got it up to +9 so far) at lv 110, and I just beat the Sol Castle boss guy in the snowy mountaintop area. Dunno how close to the end I am but it feels pretty close.
I default to like 40/none/30 and bump stamina if I need more for carry weight or a stamina-thirsty weapon.
On my casters I've been pumping mind into the forties so that I have a bit of wiggle room to get full use out of a blue flask, preferably without needing to completely bottom out my FP.
+1
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Green turtle talisman is very helpful if you find yourself running out of stamina a lot. It wont give you more successive actions, but a brief pause in between dodges will give you a decent amount back.
I hate leveling HP in games, so I think I got to Radagon with, like, 25 Vigor? At most. Might have been 20. But that's a me thing and I wouldn't reasonably recommend it.
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
edited March 2023
Unless you are glutton for punishment and/or shooting for a no-hit run, there is almost no reason not to spend half of your first 30 levels on vigor and then the rest on a mix of mind, stamina, and whatever you need to use your intended gear. Vigor gives the best return on investment overall and until your weapons are like +6, there is very little damage boost for points in strength, dex, faith, or arcane. The exception to this is intelligence because there is a weapon with S scaling at base level (meteorite staff) that you can get pretty early, but you still shouldn't put much more than the required amount for whatever sorceries you want to use until you have enough upgrade items to use a better staff.
Sure, I'm aware, but the fact that "minimum required to use abilities, then everything else to HP" is always the best build in every game that allows you to put level ups directly into HP is *why* I hate leveling HP in the first place and refuse to do it until literally everything else I want is taken care of.
Sure, I'm aware, but the fact that "minimum required to use abilities, then everything else to HP" is always the best build in every game that allows you to put level ups directly into HP is *why* I hate leveling HP in the first place and refuse to do it until literally everything else I want is taken care of.
I did say it was a me thing.
I get this vibe. I hate levelling stamina for similar reasons. I am thinking it's probably why I hate using 2-handers in these games, so my next run is going to try to be different.
Posts
It's going great. Forgot how to open the map, where to get the fire spells, the multi groups thing for help & buffs, didn't spec for my intended weapon first and nearly killed my boi Boc. This is going to be a run.
edit: Oh yeah I'm rusty as hell. Dying to everything. Cemetry shade just wrecked me really quickly twice.
"In your face storytelling" lmao
Like, I *like* the Rorschach tests, they're fun and engaging and seeing what I can come up with from all the breadcrumbs is fun and reminds me of watching cartoons as a kid when you'd get random episodes from up and down the season whenever the station felt like it and you had to piece the plot out from it, but I'm not going to pretend From are actually good at, like. Stories.
Souls is actually rather carried by its mythological, dreamlike atmosphere, for me. It makes the disjointedness feel appropriate rather than jarring. Which I think is part of why Elden Ring hit me a lot less. It feels a lot more like a place and the Marika Family Drama feels more real and the moment you start painting with specifics instead of broad impressionistic brushtrokes the whole thing stops feeling like a fun inkblot to coalesce into sense and more like someone is just not bothering to tell you things.
I used the recommended strategy for Commander Niall/Niell/whatever, the castle sol guy: stack up on magic boosting stuff, pop terra magicka at the door, pop flask, melt him down with comet azur
It was supposed to take him out in one hit but he had just a sliver left so I switched to a sword real quick and dodged his lightning jump, two slashes, done.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
People are entitled to their personal tastes
They definitely put it in a drippingly derisive way though
From is exceptionally good at what they do, which is make a place feel realized via ambience. The drama of the gods in Elden Ring does feel very story-booky but the entire rest of the world is a joy.
It doesn't even have to be post-apocalyptic. Look at Sekiro. Perfectly executed environments.
I agree they can't do what someone like CDPR can do when it comes to storytelling. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with a AC6.
They don't do much to make me care about what happens next in the plot, since in the back of my head I know I'll probably never know what actually happens (what's the difference for the PC and the world and humanity between any of the Dark Souls endings in any of the games), but they do pretty well at making me care what happens next in individual quests or character narratives.
And sometimes they deliver really well on that excitement, walking into the room under the Cathedral of Manus Celes (where you get the DMG) is pretty great.
though good luck following most of those without a guide
But, everything js presented so deliberately and thoughtfully that I end up spending hundreds of hours in the game.
i don't need this
(agile pyromancer with quickstep shamshir or warhawk talon)
And I’m only around level 120 when normally i’d be closer to 140 at this point. INT at 75.
I’m still using the meteorite staff primarily because none of the other come close to the damage output even though this one isn’t upgradeable.
Edit: also someone in the se++ thread turned me on to Rollo the Omenkiller and that guy is a great tanky ash
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Meteorite just barely lost to Lusat's at that level, and since i'm using it for gravity spells it actually comes out ahead. It's nuts.
What it is that the scaling curves on most of the endgame staffs are way, way backloaded. The Carian Regal staff has a 60 Int requirement with S scaling but is worse than the Academy staff until like 70 Int.
It's definitely a weird thing. But I also like that there are effective staffs for lower-level int builds. Elden Ring really encourages splashing in some of the spellcasting stats to other kinds of builds. You get so much bang for your buck at like, 12 Faith for example. Raise it to 15 and you get Flame, Grant Me Strength which is fantastic for Str, Dex, and Quality builds.
Int requires a little more investment but getting that 18 for Rock Sling gets you a bunch of other good stuff. Including Night Maiden's Mist, which is honestly pretty incredible.
You can get a solid foundation for utility and weapon buffing in DS1 with 15 int and an Oolacile Catalyst (pyromancy for damage doesn't really count, since you're spending level-up amounts of souls you're just not actually leveling up), DS2 lets you use any buff by investing spices, DS3 you can get pyromancy buffs and poison with barely more than minimums in int/faith, etc.
Though from DS2 forward there's little reason not to just full invest in magic and use something with appropriate scaling for melee even if you barely want to use said magic.
right now I'm swapping between the Magma Wyrm Greatsword and a bleed-built Flamberge
envoy's long horn if you're not
Can play with this if you want to really explore your options.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JyvpCTKQ54VNfssbHefRQ6IobZyYNUuNSunFR2TPoqA/copy
Blasphemous Blade is good. Ordovis Greatsword, Golden Halberd, and Staff of the Avatar too, but Holy runs into serious damage type issues in endgame.
Magma Wyrm is really quite good unless you don't like it.
Various pure strength weapons are great heavy and then you can buff them with your faith, if you don't mind buffing.
There are lots of lighter, faster weapons that would be great too, as heavy and using buffs, like the broadsword, bandit's curved sword, great epee, etc.
I am so bad at this game now
Since Demon's Souls, I always felt that Miyazaki took the wrong approach from his inspiration. For those of you who don't know, what Miyazaki, in the past, listed as his prime inspiration that motivated him to make these game's lore so full of gigantic holes was his own lack of fluency in the english language, that lead him to not understanding sometimes big parts of the english books he was reading in his youth.
Now here's where that becomes a problem: When Miyazaki read those books and missed parts of the background behind the plot and characters, they were still there, he just had no access to them. For the SoulsBorne games, we have no way of knowing if this is the case, but more often than not I suspect it's just not. Why invest resources into *fully* developing the lore and then not showing most of it after all? It's much easier to just develop fragments and then proof-reading enough to make sure they're not fully disjointed.
But personally, I always felt that you could feel how this approach feels hollow. It's the difference between having two pieces of a picture and seeing that they are part of a bigger picture, and having two small pictures where you see they are missing something that connects them, but it does not look like any big picture would fit both of them. In one case something is there, you just can't see it, but maybe extrapolate it, in the second case someone just came up with 2 cool looking small pictures and put the task of connecting them to you. In my opinion, that was always the mark of a weak storyteller.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
I'm still using the bloodhound fang (got it up to +9 so far) at lv 110, and I just beat the Sol Castle boss guy in the snowy mountaintop area. Dunno how close to the end I am but it feels pretty close.
i've been consistently doing 52 vigor now; it's only 150 less HP than 60 for a savings of 8 points which is a worthwhile trade imo. the last few levels of vigor are marginally less efficient, but it's a fairly flat curve so where you stop leveling it pre-60 is fairly arbitrary.
mind is completely dependent on what you're doing with the bar; 16 gives you an even 100 which is enough for most non-caster or sporadic casting builds. you'll want to dump more points in if you're running a high tier summon or doing serious casting. i think my melee wizard is sitting at around 23-25. a dedicated wizard probably needs a lot more.
endurance usually ends up around 20-27 depending on weight needs. the ROI on stamina gain isn't super good compared to FP from mind or HP from vigor, so i try not to invest more than i absolutely need to hit my weight target.
I default to like 40/none/30 and bump stamina if I need more for carry weight or a stamina-thirsty weapon.
I did say it was a me thing.
I get this vibe. I hate levelling stamina for similar reasons. I am thinking it's probably why I hate using 2-handers in these games, so my next run is going to try to be different.
I may not last long.
i'm not going to notice a few points of AR, but i will notice the HP
Being able to tank hits and still fuck things up is fun.