Seek seek lest ye praise the old grace, hunter of demons.
This is a thread about all of developer From Software's fantasy action RPG games, of which Elden Ring is the most recent as of this posting, and King's Field is the first iteration. In between were a couple of other games. Now, we're all friends eh? So, come have a look at this leaked preview video of the Elden Ring DLC I found! It's just down in this link here, it's a bit dimly lit so you'll have to lean waaay out to see it.
https://youtu.be/27YkBlmrfR4?t=18
Posts
From is, if nothing else, frugal as all hell.
ds2 and ds3 launched with season passes, bloodborne announced dlc a month or two post-launch
waiting a whole ass year to announce with concept art and a name screams "we weren't gonna, and then we sold 20 million copies"
Or rather, I started one
Man, magic outside of DS2 and Elden Ring is really fucking bad, isn't it?
Magic's pretty much always worse than melee if you know what you're doing in a given fight. So you might just be coming at it when you're already too familiar with DS3 to appreciate it. Like DS3 is maybe the worst it gets, but it's still all fine.
I'm more confused about calling out DS2 and ER as positive outliers; magic is way, way stronger in DeS than anywhere else, gloves and tentacles (and, for variety, a weapon gemmed for arcane) chew up Bloodborne's hardest content effortlessly, magic will blast through DS1 with maybe one difficult endgame area for whatever element you're running.
But DS2 is dark orb or go home outside of the prepatch heyday of Lightning Bolt and going to magic after melee playthroughs of ER it doesn't feel as easy as, say, slamming everything with jumping attack hammers/ultras or using stupid strong Ashes.
My wizard has always obliterated the game, in every single one.
I play each one with several characters minimum, I don't just roll a wizard.
I even was like wow apparently magic is hard now in DS3 maybe I'll get a challenge? Nope it was fucking easy. I do not understand.
Did you know it is possible to slaughter malenia guaranteed with a spell she can't dodge from such long range she can never hit you? It's called Night Comet and she doesn't dodge it. She does an automatic dodge after being hit, but she will tank the first one literally every single time.
So you can run away from her, turn around as she slowly walks at you, charge cast it and run away and she cannot touch you. Even her big scary attack will just miss. And then in the second phase you dodge her flower turn around and obliterate her with the big dragon ball beam. She is 100% free.
It is ludicrous how broken wizards are in ER.
(My wizard builds are always total glass cannons btw. I pump magic hard and I rely on it entirely, in every game.)
Then I saw my flat mate play with soul arrow. Pew pew pew. Then the stealth spell and the firestorm..
Flamelurker is quite good at closing the distance but dueling skeletons and red eye knights man to man vs blasting them at range is maybe a better example.
Or most enemies vs firestorm.
Even for easy Malenia kills, nothing really beats just dodging once and instagibbing each phase with whatever bullshit Ash, though to what extent that counts as melee...
Sure it can be faster sometimes. You don't do as much sniping and pulling so you can just run through the levels and get to the end faster.
Easier?
No way I know exactly how melee works. I am the action game man. I know how much effort goes into that.
Wizards are deeply stress free.
They are my derpy easy run throughs. Every single game. Every time. I am using way less complex skills, thinking less, and other than very rare occasional tough spots its just easy as fuck.
You are comparing a highly skilled person to someone who can accomplish something easily with no skill, and trying to declare that the highly skilled person is having an easier run through. This is not how that works. They have learnt to do something hard very well. This took a lot of work. This is the definitional opposite of easy.
And to further rip that apart, if I do learn those skills required to melee effectively wizards are literally unstoppable.
If I am a wizard that can dodge, knows enemy movesets well enough to predict them, I'm a god. Wizards are all about cheap and bullshit and massive damage so you don't have to dodge, if you can dodge too they have literally no weaknesses.
Being good at the game accelerates wizard power level so far past melee its like comparing a 3.0 dnd wizard to I don't know. A peasant with a stick.
and forget vigor, you gotta dump everything in int and attunement
and then you gotta turn all your flasks blue so you got no healing and it's like. god damn what is even the point
it feels so ass to use. it's up there with DS1 faith as one of the least enjoyable runs i've ever done
I think there's usually a point in 'moderately good' where melee is more consistent.
If you're moderately good at melee and expect to smash through a boss taking advantage of all sorts of windows and high raw DPS, hitting that fight with magic for the first time at that point can feel really bad. Even quick spells tend to have fewer reliable windows than even the slowest weapons, you're tied to a limited resource, and you can get punished harder by resistances. Since you're investing in raw damage and MP you're probably less sturdy, too, so going for inconsistent windows can lead to easy death. The advantages are less relevant to your experience than the weaknesses at that point.
Even if you're really good or know magic well enough that the other drawbacks don't affect you, it'll probably be slower by then than high dps melee.
This is bizarro talk to me so I'm just gonna agree to disagree.
You might be totally convinced of your opinion but there's no way you are ever convincing me.
Always. No exception. I play the strength builds too. I play everything.
Now faith..thats a mixed bag depending on game.
But in ER I made one character that could cast every magic int and faith with buffs and gear swapping and that character was absurd.
Literally never felt so powerful. That one did depend on knowledge of the game. But it was by far the easiest run I've ever had. Anything I had to fight, anything, I had the rock paper scissor counter.
Yeah you might just be really good at the game and so for you it works. For me it is the hardest playthrough. I couldn't finish it. I can't even imagine the last boss fight. I am not good at dodging so if something looks at me wrong then I'm toast.
I'm saying I fucked everything up with no effort just preparation.
Not "I'm skilled enough it isnt effort" I literally had to press less buttons and use no reactions.
I do not accept "Well you are just skilled" no. I needed less physical skills.
It takes some knowledge, patience, experimentation and preparation. Occasionally it takes some timing. It takes almost zero hand eye coordination, reaction speed or muscle memory.
Being good at melee means you have acquired those last three through a lot of effort and experience. But neverthless, theyre still high level skills you have acquired. You put in the work. It feels easier, but your brain is good at making hard shit youve learned feel easier.
That doesnt actually mean it is.
Conversely with a shield build I just held a button when big swing was happening and I took less damage.
Magic is more of a knowledge check than physical skills.
I am trying to do something closer to pure caster on my current pyro, and that does feel kinda miserable sometimes, but also like every single cast of great combustion did like a sixth of the abyss watchers' health bar so it's definitely got some stuff going for it.
Arcane is fucking amazing in ER, and the fact you can annihilate bosses with a single comet cast + free magic flask drink is nuts. Close range incantations (bloodflame claw, catch fire) are a ton of fun against big enemies like Ulcerated Tree Spirits and Rune Bears. And the Arcane/Faith/Int weapons are top tier shit in ER.
DS2, both sorcery and dark are 100% viable and do a ton of damage, with pyro and miracles being secondary supplementary skills.
Because with a good magic build you are chunking enemies from a distance which seems like would always be easier than needing to be up in an enemies face and probably hitting it more.
Incantations have plenty of melee ranged builds.
And being at a distance in this game is only really effective when you’re fighting things that are pretty easy to begin with. No amount of distance helps you with Crucible Knights or bosses, and with enemies like Rune Bears it's an actual detriment
I feel like even as melee most of my combat is staying at a distance until a safe moment where I run in and hit things.
So I'm not sure about that. Sounds like from the position of someone that's already got good reactions and timing it may not be as clear. But as someone who is not... staying out of melee range is the only safe place haha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwwz3SkhXMQ
Melee faith is fun as hell
There are a few hard things of course, but literally the only thing that is genuinely ah fuck is a crucible knight and nobody finds them easy.
Having both you and your Mimic Tear ash fire up Mohgs Spear on a boss is peak comedy
Theres always a grace before major bosses, its easy to do.
Then its just looney tunes as you both obliterate the boss.
Kite them both, hit Ornstein when he does his ice skating trick.
You do not want to kill Smough first.
Ornstein slides forward with his spear extended as a charge. Dodging that and punishing it with a few hits while kiting the both of them by weaving between the pillars is how you roll on this one. Big boy gets caught on the pillars a lot so it keeps him out of your hair.
You must not lock on so you can manually control the camera.
Ornstein has a gliding charge that can cover the whole rooms distance. Dodge this and hes temporarily separated from smough, who is still navigating pillars.
Hit him a few times, dodge away, then sprint back to the other end as smough catches up to Ornstein.
Repeat.
Oh yeah good call, do not do camera lock when you have both of them
Anyway, the cheesy approach to the fight is a nice crossbow with the bolts from the giant.
You can also try using the crystal halberd the game gave you near the beginning of the zone because it has really high damage until it breaks.
Ultras and greathammers can also stagger them with R2s pretty well, if you have one (or can use the one hidden in the zone).
If you have anything that upgrades with Twinkling you can max it out at the giant and have a lot more damage than a +10 normal weapon would give you, too.