Finished ranni quest tonight. Some good lore stuff there.

Eff commander Niall. Need his medallion half but he's mean and won't give it to me.

bbattbq01 said:

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Finished ranni quest tonight. Some good lore stuff there.

Eff commander Niall. Need his medallion half but he's mean and won't give it to me.

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Niall:
I normally try to solo bosses, but if they've got more than one guy, then I'm summoning an ash. By that point in the game you should have an arsenal of ashes. Summon a powerful ash if you want an easier fight, or a tanky ash if you just want it to be more manageable, and upgrade it to +8, +9, or +10.

You can also dismiss your ash once you've gotten rid of his 2 goons if you still want to finish the fight solo.

It seems From really wants you to have an extra body on your side in some fights, whether that's coop or ashes. If you want to try to do it completely solo, then good luck.

TriumphForks said:

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Some of these fights are clearly balanced with spirit summons in mind. Problem is the spirit summons often make the fight too easy so the fight becomes unbalanced in the other direction. Maybe that's what they intended. Too often it feels like "easy mode" to me rather than simply evening the odds. But some of the fights without them are just brutal.

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Bosses are far too fast with unblockable attacks to make trying to fight them solo worthwhile. The game has a lot of bull**** bosses and melee is definitely much harder than ranged combat.

I beat the game.

The final boss is impressive looking, but man beating it feels like you have to cheat fate. The boss covers a lot of ground and you can't ride your horse, so you're constantly chasing it. I had to use my bow sniper spell just to have a chance to hit it.

It has several attacks which can kill you almost outright, and I had 55 Vigor. I had to hope that the boss would target my mimic so I'd have a chance.

I'm not sure how a solo player, especially melee, is supposed to get through this fight.

I have finally gone through everywhere and beat all the main bosses. Decided to go ahead and end it with Ranni's ending.

I am 140 hours of gameplay in, and level 171.

My R hand weapon does 541 dmg and my left hand does 533; dual wielding twinblades with Blood Loss Ashes of war, and the headpiece and talisman that increase attack power when blood loss is in the vicinity. Puts my damage around 740 for each weapon when I proc blood loss, which is usually after 1 or 2 hits.

As for the final boss, it's very dodgeable. I actually found the first phase to be the harder of the two. The bosses that gave me the hardest times in the game were: Crucible Knight Duo, Final Boss, and Malenia. I think every other boss I beat in less than an hour of tries.

Absolutely fantastic game and definitely in my top 5 of all time. Is it number 1? Nostalgia for others says no, but it's just as good of a game as everything else in my top 5.

I'm sure there's a couple of things here or there that I missed, but I have covered the entire map and killed everything I could find. I never skipped a single boss encounter, so there is nothing serious left for me to do. I also finished Ranni's and Sellen's questlines

10/10. Loved my time and will be sad to not be playing it anymore. I'm not going to progress to new game because I want to wait for DLC to come out, and use my same character.

Will I play it again? Man, maybe one day. This game is just so freaking massive that I don't know if I could finish it a second time. Bloodborne is one I've beaten 3 times, but you can clear that entire game in a few days, even if you aren't rushing it.

I finally got the platinum trophy for the game last night after uploading a save file to the cloud, unlocking an ending, and downloading the saved file to cycle through until all the ending achievements were unlocked. I also completed the quest chains for Fia, Dung Eater, Varre, Volcano Manor, Goldmask, Sellen, and the Beast Cleric. I believe I completed every cave/catacomb/boss on the map, but even yesterday I realized I missed the very first Armorer's Cookbook and went off to find it and realized I missed the Limgrave Deathbird, so who knows what may still be out there.

I finished the game at around 148 hours played, around level 180, as an Astrologer staying with a pure INT build. I think by the end of the game I had 80 Int, 50 Mind, and 49 Vigor using the talismans to increase sorcery damage, Radagon's Icon, Erdtree Medallion +2, and the Holy Resist medallion for the last boss (otherwise I would use the +2 FP medallion).

By the endgame I was leaning heavily on Glintblade spells (mostly Adula's Moonblade) as my bread and butter, Stars of Ruin for fast moving foes (everything by the endgame), and the always useful Rock Sling. I also leaned heavily on the Wings of Astel as my melee weapon since the Ashes of War for that one is an amazing arc of magic explosions right in-front of you that could stun lock most lesser and medium level foes. I used a combination of Lusat +10 or Carian Royal Scepter +10 plus the Meteorite Staff in my OH for bosses if I was trying to stay at range. For the first 1/3 of the game I heavily used a shield/staff combo until I got more and more comfortable only using weapons in both hands.

Malenia, the final boss, and Astel (Stars of Darkness version in a Consecrated Snowfield cave) were the biggest boss obstacles I had during my play through. I have no clue why that version of Astel was such an issue for me compared to the first one you fight in the underworld, but I could rarely ever successfully dodge the tail attack and it wasn't until I figured out where to go for its grab attack that I finally got it down. Radhan was a bit of a roadblock too, but after I abandoned the idea of trying to get up into the fight with all the summons and just run around like a field commander summoning troops I finally got him down. My vigor was way too low at that point to get into his range.

For lesser bosses - Ulcerated Tree Spirits and Crucible Knights were generally my biggest obstacles, but I weirdly had a really easy time with the Crucible Knight Duo boss fight since I could have my Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tische tank one of them, which was such a giant help. An underrated summons I would use on occasion is the Greatshield Soldier ashes - those five guys would surround an enemy with their shields up and it was pretty comical to watch one of the catacomb bosses completely unable to move while I did my thing.

This was my first ever FromSoftware game that I played for more than an hour. I loved that this was a Breath of the Wild-esque sandbox for the most part since the sheer size I feel like rivals anything I have played single-player before. Just like BoTW I always felt like there was more and more to explore and it seemed like if I could see an area then I would be able to get there one day. I think only The Witcher 3 with all the DLCs clocks in around the same playtime that I have with this one. I loved the atmospheric world they developed, the gameplay was great, but my biggest complaints are the jumping/platforming feels like PS2/PS3 era stuff and the camera can be my biggest foe sometimes, especially on big enemies or ones that jump high in the air.

It's a solid 9/10, but I also doubt I'll be jumping into a NG+... I was amazed I never got open world fatigue with this one the way I have previously - Witcher 3 and Horizon Zero Dawn took me years to complete after playing, putting it down, and coming back. An amazing experience, but I will be looking forward to playing something hopefully a little less moody as my next game.

Prime0882 said:

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[snip]

By the endgame I was leaning heavily on Glintblade spells (mostly Adula's Moonblade) as my bread and butter, Stars of Ruin for fast moving foes (everything by the endgame), and the always useful Rock Sling. I also leaned heavily on the Wings of Astel as my melee weapon since the Ashes of War for that one is an amazing arc of magic explosions right in-front of you that could stun lock most lesser and medium level foes. I used a combination of Lusat +10 or Carian Royal Scepter +10 plus the Meteorite Staff in my OH for bosses if I was trying to stay at range. For the first 1/3 of the game I heavily used a shield/staff combo until I got more and more comfortable only using weapons in both hands.

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I played through most of the game as a Mage as well, and it's cool to see someone else have a really similar load out. I tried out a lot of the spells and ended up using Moonblade and Rock Sling a ton since they were so effective. Sling staggers and Moonblade is amazing damage. I'm glad they made Stars of Ruin cost less FP, I started using it more since then.

I was the same way with using a shield/staff for the first part of the game. I didn't shift to staff offhand and sword main hand until I got Wing of Astel. Fantastic weapon art for sure. Moonveil Katana is still incredibly strong as well, even after it was nerfed.

I found the most reliable way to beat Crucible Knights when you have to solo them is to us a small shield with parry. Tedious compared to most other enemies in the game.

Welp, put on my big boy pants and dove back in. I think samurai / 2 hand was just not a good fit for me. Switched to dual wield with 2 katanas (with bloody sash) and I'm having a lot more success.

Also finally managed to get a series X this week, this game looked good on xbox one, stunning on series x.

Teleported to the hold and got a message that there were new items for purchase, I guess when I set the tree on fire it moved the recipe book with the charm item to the hold… so was able to buy it and craft some more bewitching branch things. Result: Niall down.
Now exploring the haligtree… have made it down to elpheal. Man that first gauntlet run in the canopy with the a-hole giant horn blower was a pita.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/elden-ring/2-delayed

Quote:

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Bad news if you've already beaten the latest FromSoftware hit: Elden Ring 2 has been delayed. "We wanted to start work on Elden Ring 2 as soon as development on the first game concluded," director Hidetaka Miyazaki tells us in an exclusive interview. "However, Mr [George RR] Martin won't agree to a meeting until he beats Margit, the Fell Omen. Every time we reach out, he tells us that we must 'put our foolish ambitions to rest'".

Martin was given a pre-release copy of Elden Ring, and has attempted to defeat Margit over 70 times over the past two months. That doesn't sound like much, but we're told that Martin creates a new character every time he dies, writes 100 pages of backstory for them, and simply cackles each time the 'you died' message appears on screen.

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