In typical fashion for my play style, after reaching level 90, I finally went back and beat Godrick the Great tonight.

As a mage, he still beat my arse, however my gravity spells ultimately took him down. Suck it Godrick!

Real life tree sentinel.

Soft cap for damage from INT is 80, so you probably don't need to wear that burger king helmet much longer. I played a mage build for my first playthrough and I never felt comfortable using those helms since they all detract from a survivability stat like Vigor/HP, and I was already really squishy.

The "best" thing to do is to always wear the heaviest armor you can and still medium roll. The Carian Knight set, found in Raya Lucaria, is a good Medium armor set. I usually wore most of that set once I got it. Wearing fashionable armor isn't a bad thing though, so wear what you like. And speaking of fashion, that was another reason I couldn't tolerate the burger king helms. They are atrocious looking.

If I can remember....my memory might be foggy....
I focused on leveling INT more than Vigor until the capital and beyond, and my damage was very good so I could blast most things before getting hit. Once I got my INT up enough to use the Carian Regal Scepter I started allocating points to Vigor and a little to Endurance.

You technically only need enough health to not get one-shot, but some attacks can get pretty scary as the game goes on. Most content before the capital is pretty tame damage-wise, so you can get by having less Vigor.

And FYI, the Meteorite Staff will outperform most other staves until you get them upgraded a lot. I believe the Carian Regal Scepter didn't pass it up until it was +6 or +7 for me (I forget what my Int was at the time, that will make a difference)

Yeah I'm using Meteorite staff now. Opted not to use/upgrade the Academy staff. I did get an Azur Glintstone staff but haven't upgraded it yet. Guess I need to decide between that one and the Carian Regal Scepter after I get it.

Carian Regal is probably the best "all around" staff. Some folks like Lusat's, but I'm not a fan. It has a little better scaling and passively boosts damage by 10% but your spells cost 50% more FP. That didn't seem like a good trade off to me.

flintdragon said:

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javajaws said:

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Task for tonight (subject to change!) is to find some better armor. Currently mostly using Carian Knight armor. Any armor suggestions for a level 70-80 Int sorc build? I've got the 2-faced helm from Raya Lucaria as well that gives +6 Int.

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I'm running a mage build as well. I think after a while, the armor doesn't really matter. I used to use the +6 Int helm for a while but hated it because it is so big and ugly. I'm using the snow witch set now and keep that fungus set that gives better immunity for areas that need it. weapons are the standard carian royal scepter and moon veil. Instead of just blasting everything, I'm trying to use the sword more just so I can understand timing and dodging better. It's a great game. I'm taking is slow. About to take on Leyndell and the areas north of it.

I kind of wish the game was less creepy though. Great for atmosphere but I have some friends who won't play it because of that. Why is everyone weird looking or wearing a scary mask. LOL

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All of Miyazaki's games have been like this, rooted in horror and Lovecraftian themes. While Bloodborne is the most direct homage to Lovecraft, everything going back to Demon's Souls draws on it.

Also, I'm sure folks here have watched his videos for other Souls games, but for those who haven't, Vaati released his first lore video. If you want to see someone dig deep into the game (or past ones), his channel is a great follow.

Glad you're enjoying the game. I haven't seen anyone post this yet, so here is a "pro tip":

When a lift is part of the path to get to a boss, reset it on your way back to the boss. This allows you to run much faster, especially if aggro'ing enemies is a given. Once the lift gets to the top, run over the middle button as you run off of the lift. There is a half a second where the lift won't move, which gives you time to get off.

DallasTeleAg said:

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Glad you're enjoying the game. I haven't seen anyone post this yet, so here is a "pro tip":

When a lift is part of the path to get to a boss, reset it on your way back to the boss. This allows you to run much faster, especially if aggro'ing enemies is a given. Once the lift gets to the top, run over the middle button as you run off of the lift. There is a half a second where the lift won't move, which gives you time to get off.

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Nice tip. I was trying to use the lever on the top floor to send the lift back down and it wouldn't activate (which seems kind of silly). This at least effectively does the same thing.

DallasTeleAg said:

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Glad you're enjoying the game. I haven't seen anyone post this yet, so here is a "pro tip":

When a lift is part of the path to get to a boss, reset it on your way back to the boss.

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Sad that so many of us have figured this out. "Better send this back down so it will be there after this boss kicks my a$$ again!"

jr15aggie said:

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DallasTeleAg said:

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Glad you're enjoying the game. I haven't seen anyone post this yet, so here is a "pro tip":

When a lift is part of the path to get to a boss, reset it on your way back to the boss.

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Sad that so many of us have figured this out. "Better send this back down so it will be there after this boss kicks my a$$ again!"

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What's helped me a lot is the physiks flask. I have a mix of crystals that have been amazing. One heals me over time, and the other mitigates damage. Once I started using that (and got vigor and endurance both above 30) I've had to use the lift less.

bluefire579 said:

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Also, I'm sure folks here have watched his videos for other Souls games, but for those who haven't, Vaati released his first lore video. If you want to see someone dig deep into the game (or past ones), his channel is a great follow.

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How spoilerific is this? I may wait until I beat the game.

Yeah it's got a lot of spoilers.

Getting the great jar arsenal talisman is kicking my tail. From what I read, it doesn't matter what level you are because this one scales in difficulty based on your level...

Edited to say I finally beat them.

zip04 said:

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Getting the great jar arsenal talisman is kicking my tail. From what I read, it doesn't matter what level you are because this one scales in difficulty based on your level...

Edited to say I finally beat them.

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So much random luck in that depending on which builds you summon. Glad you got it!

one thing you can do is go offline and you get invaders from set generic characters rather than it choose from random player characters.

zip04 said:

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Getting the great jar arsenal talisman is kicking my tail. From what I read, it doesn't matter what level you are because this one scales in difficulty based on your level...

Edited to say I finally beat them.

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I just did the cheat on that one. LOL

Cromagnum said:

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bluefire579 said:

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Also, I'm sure folks here have watched his videos for other Souls games, but for those who haven't, Vaati released his first lore video. If you want to see someone dig deep into the game (or past ones), his channel is a great follow.

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How spoilerific is this? I may wait until I beat the game.

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Definitely recommend beating it at least once first.

zip04 said:

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Getting the great jar arsenal talisman is kicking my tail. From what I read, it doesn't matter what level you are because this one scales in difficulty based on your level...

Edited to say I finally beat them.

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I always had the same summons. I beat that one fairly early in the game, but not without difficulty. Each fight required I use a completely different strategy.

I had a bandit type, which I just had to spam attacks with my dual daggers on. However, the moment he pulled out a shield, I just started backing away and around him until he put the shield away, and then it was back to spamming.

For a mage type I got, It was pretty much the same.

The third was a heavy duty knight. For those, until I started dual wielding twinblades, I used my spear with bleed, and would back away/dodge until he attacked, then do a jump power attack, then repeat. He would eventually stagger so I could do a crit. Rinse and repeat until dead.

Didn't realize we had a gaming board, nice to see an elden ring thread. I have hundreds of hours in all the souls games including Nioh and would love to hear what people are saying a month and a half after launch, imo this game has some serious flaws, and is much weaker than the rest of the from catalog.

Gratz?

Edited my post to not seem like a dewsh

1. Have you played the rest of their games. I only ask because many people are playing this as their first souls experience and they have nothing to compare it to. Elden Ring is already better than 99% of triple A releases of the past 10 years. If this is your first souls game you will tend to defend it pathologically, as I do occasionally with DS2, since that was my first souls game. Sinking 100 hours into that game, death after death, you form an emotional connection to it.

My complaints in ascending order of importance:
- reused assets that ruin the exploration, and totally ruin any replay ability (which all the other games have in spades). Once you see one catacomb with crafting material and a spell, you've seen them all. Reused bosses is criminal, and out of like 150 bosses, only like 3 are original. I remember beating Astel, and then going to the min South of the haligtree only to find another Astel! Imo in about 6 months people the honeymoon phase will wear off and people will notice this, since it will ruin replay ability for non lore-hunters. This isn't even going into the 15 tree spirits, etc.
- Because of above, the open world is empty, just like breath of the wild. The legacy dungeons with their tight design are the best parts of the game, and I think most would agree with me. The legacy dungeons in here are so good, that it's upsetting that the open world was so copypasted.
- Boss design is pretty bad and pretty lazy in this game, oscillating from wildly difficult and unfair, to very easy (bc of the open world) I am pretty good at these games, but after the 50th gank boss fight in a cave I'm exhausted. Triple crystalians, godskin duo, gargoyles, etc. This was everyone's complaint with DS2, but I see no one in the souls community complaining about the exact same issue here, when it's even worse. Additionally, it seems that bosses were designed around summoning spirit ashes, and that's very troubling because unfortunately that's not the "correct" way to play this game. People talk about an easy mode, that's always been the difficulty selector in these games. You can't design fights around spirit ashes, and make it so that the fight is bad, insanely difficult, or just annoying without a summon. Multi-enemy boss fights have to be designed in a specific way or they're ***** Twin demon princes from DS3 is the perfect example of a good multi-enemy boss fight (best multi boss in the series imo). You have to have one boss that is aggro and one that isn't. When you have bosses interlocking their attacks, that boss fight is *****

TL;DR

Lazy non-legacy dungeon design that was clearly padding for the world size, boring exploration with little actual reward, atrocious boss design outside of a few fights.

Imo there are objective methods of judging these games because we can compare them to each other. And I think things like level design and bosses are clearly inferior to basically every other title. Let me pose a question with an obvious answer. What if the world size was shrunk down by 50% and 5-6 more legacy dungeons were added, would the game be better off? Absolutely. The legacy dungeons in Elden Ring are some of the best in the series, with Stormveil/Raya Lucaria/Leyndell probably having THE best design in the entire series.

I'll respond to something I just saw in here. "Introducing souls to new players" at the expense of what makes souls "souls" is not worth it imo. If media is not vigorously gatekept then it will deteriorate, because the only way it can pick up new members is if it expands its core vision. If Elden ring were not open world then there would not be the influx of people that we got. Ofc new people jump on with every new release, but they're the type of player that like the focus of souls games. I can't tell you how many people I've seen who like the game because "it's pretty," imo new players experiences should be discarded until they have something to compare it to. As I said in my previous post, souls is an established franchise whose mainline releases are already better than 99% of games, you have to compare them to games of similar quality. This would be like if I played one of the Legend of Zelda games and remarked that it was the greatest thing I've ever played. That might not be true, but I cannot judge that objectively until I play other games in the same series. Zelda games are already of a higher pedigree than the average triple A release, so ofc if i pick a random game in the series I am going to think it's great if all I have to compare it to is games like Horizon where you just run around collecting crafting materials.

I am a gatekeeper, I said it in my post. Gatekeeping media is the only way to preserve the original intention of that media, this is especially true in video games where the only way to expand sales is to "dumb down" the content of a game. Accessibility is directly in line with a bland featureless experience since it has to cater to all play styles, and can't do one in depth.

The spirits are an obvious issue, many of these multi enemy bosses aggro are clearly programmed for ashes, where your mimic tear just become a sponge so that you can 1v1 the boss. Look back into the series and the multi enemy boss fights have always been ****, especially in DS2. O&S and Twin princes are good because their aggro isn't designed to be annoying. I would recommend playing ds2 to understand what I mean by this. There is an obvious intended difficulty to these games, and that's tight combat centered around 1v1 encounters, with no summons. Sekiro and bloodborne don't follow this as closely because you have more tools at your disposal to avoid damage, like the rally system in bloodborne, and the blocking in sekiro.

The pistol comment doesn't even make sense. Bloodborne combat was different and was designed around aggressive combat. Parrying was essential to that games combat, in a way summoning wasn't for souls. Elden ring is souls, despite the faster paced combat (which is an issue in its own, since you don't have the tools like in sekiro and bloodborne to avoid taking damage.

Video games are just like every other forms of media, they have filtering mechanisms and are developed with an original vision and are intended to be experienced a certain way. This is exactly why souls has never had an "easy mode," despite there being mechanics to adjust the difficulty, like kindling bonfires or using summons. From doesnt put things in places for no reason, we know this because the environmental storytelling is very cohesive. It's very clear that with Elden ring they were in over their head and needed more time to flesh the world out.

The central issue with the summons is this: because of the lazy design, you are all but forced to use summons in specific instances because if you don't a particular boss becomes a slog. Having to use the mimic as a sponge to get hits in is lazy, and it works so well that it almost seems like it was intended.

Breath of the Wild suffers similar issues. A totally empty landscape walking simulator with barebones features and repeated assets to pad out content. Being able to climb wherever in a video games means nothing if there's not a tangible and meaningful reward doesn't work. It's an insidious gameplay loop where you explore the world to find meaningless items that make exploring the world easier, not finding items that allow you to tackle specific challenges in tightly designed areas like in the other zelda games. Zelda at its best is a puzzle game, and the highest quality of its franchise has been those games with puzzle like mechanics, like majoras mask.