Elden Ring

[apsham]

I'm having a blast with my New Game+ already. 58 hours on my first run and I'm running into quests, NPCs and entire areas that I never knew existed before. Plus running with an entirely different build has me playing entirely differently, combined with me being probably over-levelled is a great way to try new playstyles and there's a ton in here. Every time I get a new weapon I kind of wanna see what I can do with it, I'm only now kind of understanding the depth of some of the more unique weapons arts.

[King Ellis]

Anyone seen a boss called the bearing collector or something along those lines? When I loaded the game up the other day having rested at the church near the start with the trader that looks like Santa (Elle church I think it's called) the boss health bar came up and this big red dude was attacking me. As I recall he sorta looked like an invading player character might look only bigger. Not seen it before or since.

Seemed odd to spawn into a boss so not sure if it's a glitch or if it's a roaming boss similar to how I think they originally planned the silver Knights to be in Dark Souls.

[apsham]

They're regular enemies that can spawn in 4 locations.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Bell+Bearing+Hunter

They're the kind of mini-bosses that you see in this like the Tree Sentinels. They get health bars but they are in multiple locations.

[King Ellis]

Ah, so it seems like maybe I've just stumbled upon it by hitting a certain time of day there. I do tend to warp there quite often so seems odd that that it's not come up again. Might have to try and get it to spawn again to have a rematch since it killed me first time.

[apsham]

I'm ready to start NG++ and I never came across these guys, I had to search that up. Although I've known for a while that I should be spending more time exploring at night in order to find stuff like this.

Man, I love this game.

[Draevyn]

I broke down and bought this for the PS5. I can already tell that I'm going to be beyond frustrated but I'm going to try not to give up on it for too long if I do have to take a break. It really is a beautiful game atmosphere wise but man, I've only fought Beastman of Farum Zula so far in Groveside Cave and it took me a good half hour to get him down. I can only imagine what's going to happen when I come up against an actual big bad boss.

[Ruki]

58 minutes ago, Forky said:

I broke down and bought this for the PS5. I can already tell that I'm going to be beyond frustrated but I'm going to try not to give up on it for too long if I do have to take a break. It really is a beautiful game atmosphere wise but man, I've only fought Beastman of Farum Zula so far in Groveside Cave and it took me a good half hour to get him down. I can only imagine what's going to happen when I come up against an actual big bad boss.

When you get too frustrated, throw it in the mailbox and I'll deal with it for you. And then get frustrated myself. 

[rocksta]

Just beat the 3rd/4th main quest boss. 

Was getting so frustrated with the 4th in the moon phase. And the long run over after spawning. 

Promised myself it was the last run and then was going to shelf it. Finally beat it by the skin of my teeth. Such a feeling. The challenge is definitely the best part but if I didn't beat it that run I may not have for a week. 

 

[FLiam]

I bought this yesterday and am immediately overwhelmed. Despite having no markers and any real idea of what to do other than go around stabbing and slashing stuff.

[apsham]

2 minutes ago, FLiam said:

I bought this yesterday and am immediately overwhelmed. Despite having no markers and any real idea of what to do other than go around stabbing and slashing stuff.

Check out the two guides I posted above, that should give you a bit of an idea what to do with yourself to at least get yourself moving along.

For a good while at the start of the game, you SHOULD just be wandering around finding things, killing things, levelling up and everything of the sort. You'll find a lot of places, materials, weapons and things of that nature and once you're more comfortable with using them you'll have a better idea of maybe what you want to do going forward.

[Kaney]

I really wish demos were still a thing, or blockbuster or something.

I have only ever played the PS5 Demons Souls and I enjoyed it, but I know its considered the easiest of the soulsbourne games. I feel like I want to try this but I hate the thought of dropping that much cash on it and not liking it.

[Bobfoc]

Nintendo has been good with free demos recently. I wish more companies would provide them. Some of the most fun I had on the PS1 was with demo discs.

[Schlitzbrille]

 

Now it's getting silly. I'm in.

[apsham]

I heard people saying that Hoarfrost Stomp was overpowered. I wasn't aware just how overpowered it was, damn.

[RPS]

I bought it. What class is the easiest to cheese this game?

[apsham]

1 minute ago, RPS said:

I bought it. What class is the easiest to cheese this game?

Vagabond is a great start because it has decent stats and a 100% physical block shield. From there classes really don't matter all that much at all, it's what you do afterwards that destroys the game - there's a few weapons in particular that make that happen. Moonveil is one of them.

[RPS]

On 13/03/2022 at 16:43, apsham said:

Vagabond is a great start because it has decent stats and a 100% physical block shield. From there classes really don't matter all that much at all, it's what you do afterwards that destroys the game - there's a few weapons in particular that make that happen. Moonveil is one of them.

I went with Astrologer. I actually started off as a Samurai because that was my gut reaction of what I would normally play in a game. Once I saw that arrows were not infinite I noped out of the game.

I have some questions. I'll save my thoughts on the game until a week or so.

Do upgrades with the runes scale? Melina showed up and I can upgrade stats. 700 or so runes for an upgrade. Can I just farm an area for runes, upgrade, go back and kill the same baddies? 

What is my incentive for going for huge monsters outside more runes? Presumably some resources or weapons?

Last question - when I die do I drop my items or only my runes?

[apsham]

3 minutes ago, RPS said:

I went with Astrologer. I actually started off as a Samurai because that was my gut reaction of what I would normally play in a game. Once I saw that arrows were not infinite I noped out of the game.

I have some questions. I'll save my thoughts on the game until a week or so.

Do upgrades with the runes scale? Melina showed up and I can upgrade stats. 700 or so runes for an upgrade. Can I just farm an area for runes, upgrade, go back and kill the same baddies? 

What is my incentive for going for huge monsters outside more runes? Presumably some resources or weapons?

Last question - when I die do I drop my items or only my runes?

1. Levels scale with runes, yes. What I did at the start to get used to the game and my weapon was to use the Gatehouse checkpoint (the one that I got the ability to upgrade/horse at - but it could be different for you) because there's that big enemy camp nearby. Every time I was exploring and I was close to getting another level, I'd warp back there, get the runes that I needed and get the level instead of running around scared to lose things.

2. More runes, yes - but named mini-boss characters sometimes do things like unlock more talisman slots for you (that's the big benefit to beating Morgit, the one that everyone talks about on the bridge) and talisman's are like rings in this game (compared to other souls games) - they give you sometimes pretty powerful benefits. Others might drop items of importance or ones that are worth having for certain builds.

3. When you die you'll drop runes only, and if you can make it back to where you died - you can get them back. But if you die before you retrieve them - they're lost for good. There's an item that you can get sometimes.. I think it's called the Sacrificial Twig? It goes into a talisman slot and when you die, it'll break instead of you losing runes.

Another thing to note is that outside of levels, a lot of your damage input upgrading comes from upgrading your weapon at the smithy. There's a small anvil you can do that at in the church that had the merchant in it just outside the area that you started the game from, but once you get to the roundtable you'll be able to do it past +3 or +4 - whatever the anvil limits you to. You can usually find these stones in mines, and even if you don't have them marked on your map you can see where mines are... they're usually little black circles surrounded by a red border on the map. You'll usually find enough Smithing Stones in there to get 1 or 2 weapons upgraded, and just doing it a couple times can be a massive help.

As you upgrade weapons the scaling on them improves - every weapon scales in some way, but usually with STR, DEX or INT - sometimes in combinations. The higher the letter grade, the more additional damage you'll get by having lots of levels in those stats. You'll find whetstones that'll help you change weapon arts and alter what stats they scale with later in the game, so any weapon can be viable for any build with the right arts and items.

[King Ellis]

I actually like that in regards to the whetstones. It makes everything more flexible being that you can just change your weapon whenever you want. Like, in Dark Souls you might have one fire weapon, one lightning weapon, one for the skeles etc. Now you can just have one and you don't have to share your upgrade resources around.

Though, I suppose with Dark Souls those resources were very easy to come by after a certain point.

Speaking of upgrades, I think I jumped from like +7 to +14 all at once because I got a bottleneck at the level 3 stones. Then I found a good place for them and flew through the upgrades.

[apsham]

There are places in Elden Ring to get ball bearings that will allow you to just flat out buy as many Smithing Stones, Somber Smithing Stones and the stuff that you need to upgrade your summons as well (Gravewort/Ghostwort?) which I thought was also a really nice touch. If you go for NG+ it means that you have the ability to go out and upgrade your weapons that you want for the next playthrough, or allows you to change what you're doing mid-run if the feeling suits you.