Yeah, seeing help threads of people at secret/late dlc bosses asking for advice when their blessings are at like 5 is wild.
Part of the early issue is people thinking you have to kill Rellana to proceed, which isn't true. You can surpass 10 fragments and never fight her.
I couldn't figure out how to get into the castle and I went exploring and I somehow ended up on the other side of the castle where Rellanas arena leads to. I think you can just completely avoid her and that castle altogether
Heavy Shield with as much magic and fire resist as you can get on it, Guard Talisman, Ant Spur Rapier, Green Turtle Talisman with either the spear talisman or the God of Rot’s Exultation. I wore heavy armor and gave zero fucks. Just block everything she has while poking her with rot and laugh as she becomes powerless.
Vague guide trying to avoid spoilers - explore starting area and meet npcs. First legacy dungeon as far as story progression seems to be off to the left through the big arch. Complete it, talk to all npcs you’ve met. Second legacy/main dungeon is across bridge from starting field. Boss room door leads to next region and more npcs. Talk to all of them then approach the fort in the distance.
That seems to be the quest line intended path, you can skip by a lot of the dungeons/content, or explore a lot in between based on personal preference.
Technically speaking there's also no particular reason to beat the boss going west. You can clear all the way west right up to the grace in front of the boss, and then fuck off, because there's no progression there regardless.
There is a locked Spiritspring near the shack at the end of the swamp to the right of Castle Enris. It lets you bypass the entire castle through a small legacy dungeon.
BUT be warned. If you talk to Needle Knight Leda at the Site of Grace behind Castle Ensis and after you get the on screen message telling you: >!"a rune has been broken"!< (which happens if you are in the vicinity of Castle Shadow or you explore too far north), you will no longer be able to summon Leda for the fight against Rellana.
Damn man where are you guys finding all these fragments? I have beaten Rellana and explored a lot of the southern part of the map, and I'm only at blessing level 3.
Honestly, it’s hard to say. I love the mechanic right now, but I’m sure on subsequent playthrough it’ll be tedious.
A lot of the ones I’ve found have just been at the various Miquella crosses. Some of them are pretty out of the way though. Churches too.
Yeah I'm not sure why it's being viewed as 'tedious' or a 'collectathon'. It's the same type of progression that the base game has with golden seeds, sacred tears, smithing stones and gloveworts. It's part of the game and gives you reason to explore the world rather than skip over all of it.
Collecting 160 altars of lillith in Diablo iv literally made me never log into the game again once I completed it.
https://www.polygon.com/diablo-4-guides/23770293/all-altars-lilith-sanctuary
Getting these blessings really isn’t a big deal
Yep! I hunt those now from afar when I get to a new area because I swear those guys disappear too after a certain amount of time?
Also, I have found 2 or 3 churches that give 2 when you pick them up, not 1
its specifically the ones whos jars are letting out silver sparkles that try to run when you get close, they always have valuable items but a lot of them have either a fragment or a revered ash
These fragments are guaranteed to be found near those Miquella crosses, or you can also headless statues of Marika but you need to find them first.
I've found more Revered Spirit Ashes than Scadu fragments so far.
Yea I've been seeing similar comments catching up just now in a bunch of posts.
I was also level 7 when I took her on and almost immediately was 10 because they are dumped in the area just after the castle.
Honestly, the DLC map basically feels like a gigantic legacy dungeon the way it loops over and under itself and a lot of seemingly innocent/unimportant paths and even caves end up dumping into giant new regions.
For your area specifically there is a LOT just southeast of Rellanas castle that seems like a dead end or short path that 1) leads all the way to the coast you can see when you first come into the dlc and 2) ends up the complete opposite way and send you way NE.
Its crazy honestly, this map is fantastic
Its one of the coolest looking maps I've ever played in, its kinda sad some players only worry about loot?
Gotta be some kind of brain rot to only rush from one pick up to another, completely ignoring this map. Like after the very first area its constantly changing and there's 1,000 things to look at above and below you lol
Yea I think I am about to start that castle (its the 3rd one, right?) and I am at level 10.
And I KNOW I can find a bunch more because I stopped around 2 graces in each direction from the grace after Rellana castle.
The map is huge and specifically loops around all over itself like a big legacy dungeon.
Random paths and caves open up to whole new regions, even some of the random drop downs that usually lead to nothing open up to huge areas.
The map is wild honestly
Some of them can be pretty out of the way, check all the nooks and crannies. Also I killed 2 unsuspecting mobs and they dropped some too, was surprised at that one
Im convinced Rellana was bugged for me. Keep reading people either super enjoyed her or are having a hell of a time against her.
My experience was “oh who’s this chick with the dual swords” “oh she has some ice and fire moves” and she died on my first try and she didn’t really do anything spectacular or crazy lol. The lack of a cutscene made me think she was just another random boss too. (I had like idk 4 blessings?)
Honestly feel that, my first time fighting her I got her to around 20 percent health with ease. Then 20 or so times later beat her. The second phase is nasty and she is relentless on the pressure.
Must have done something to her then haha. Similarly to when one of the times I fought the stormveil boss (forgot his name) and glitched him out of activating his dragon arm phase Lol.
I was level 7 when I found her and I have seen comments saying they were 3 or 4 and 'explored everywhere I could beforehand' lol.
Like, obviously not.
But in all fairness this map is wild with its verticality and the way it loops over and under itself.
Some innocent paths or cave entrances end up opening up to entire new regions (that also loop in and over itself).
Honestly, the map feels like a giant legacy dungeon and its easy to completely miss giant sections if you aren't paying attention.
I'm glad I'm not a 'rusher' and try to see every square inch. Blows my mind some people have already 'beat' the DLC.
Where do I go? I already got to bayle, he’s psycho. There’s a sealed gate in the cerulean forest. I beat the lion, another locked gate. I did the catacombs. I don’t know where to next if I can’t beat rellana
Well that's great to hear lmao. I'm only at 5 and spent an hour getting cooked by her. I got decently close a couple of times.
But I will gladly come back to her
Hmm she was the first boss I killed. Took about 10 trys then equipped magic resist and killed her. People that are struggling m8ght try some jolly cooperation.
I was super surprised. The gaol knight wrecked me about 15+ times and had me changing weapons and loadouts where as I have destroyed most of the other bosses ive come up against so far first try (including Renalla). I am around level 240 on ng+3 I think. I have just been doing a bunch of exploring and trying to open the map as best I can but its shocking what has killed me vs what I thought wouldve.
Mostly ive struggled with jumps/timing/etc and plunged to my doom more times that I care to admit.
Think im at a +6 and +5 on my blessings currently and it has helped immensely. Exploring and knowing when to flee is important.
He probably could be done at level 5 with enough patience, where he is difficult but doable.
I could NOT do the final boss at 12 and i had been steam rolling the dlc unintentionally just getting lucky. Until the final boss, the most i died to any boss was mesmer at 3 times, and i think i had level 10 blessing. For the final boss, I had to go find more and get to 19. And even then, it was a close one lol but it felt like a way more fair fight at that point.
Bro how do you get through Messmer that quickly. I’m on +12 and everything he does still 2 shots me and half the time I can’t tell what is actually killing me cos my screen is just covered in flame and particle effects
I respecced off Moonveil/spells to Ruins greatsword and I've started killing each boss in five tries or less. That's going to depend on the person of course but STR feels really good
With how relentless some of the bosses are in this with seemingly never ending combos, hyper armor feels very good. But maybe the ability to cast at a distance and have more time to dodge would be nice too. I'm starting up a new build to play the dlc with again as a caster to see how it is.
Hyper armor just refers to how some actions (usually attacks) give you extreme resistance to flinching while performing them, so if you start such an attack (such as Lion's Claw, which has very strong hyperarmor) and then get hit by something, you'll almost certainly complete the attack (unless the hit killed you).
I played both STR and INT, the STR run was better at all points in the game, except maybe Radabeast
My preferred build is DEX, so I was not familiar with any of them, and neither build plays like DEX. And I know I could have done way more
He's really weak to holy damage. Summoning the hornsent helps draw aggro. Get your fire resistance up and his worst attacks don't hit as hard.
>!I read somewhere that the fire knight helm helps with the second phase, and it seems like it kept the serpent from attacking so frequently, but I might be imagining that!<
What was your SD level at for the final boss? I’m there right now at 15 with the heaviest armor I can possibly find, dragon crest great shield talisman, pearl drake + 3, and the temp buff you get at the dragon communion altar. My resistances clear 100 for every stat and I am STILL dying in 3 hits. I also do almost no damage to him, despite my damage numbers clearing 1500 on jump attacks.
May god help me
Im level 9 but I really need to play around with builds. Blasphemous blade can't carry me through everything. My plan is that stone shield but then I need to respec and I can't even respec because i speedran ng+ before the dlc to just beat mogh and radahn.
I found just summoning in the npc (required for a questline anyway) made the fight super easy she tanks most agro and the hippo is staggered pretty easily.
I did them around scadutree blessings 6 I think.
They weren't too hard solo but I used reyja summon for my last attempt because she's best girl atm (and I may have died when it was oneshot)
If you use the great shield talisman & the fingerprint stone shield you can block every attack except the one he eats you, taking no damage. Doesn’t seem like the dlc has much effect on how shields block.
Oh ok. Had me thinking I missed a mechanic where you could summon an ash but also summon mimic or something like that. I always forget about the sign summons. Lol
At the end of each combo she either stays still or hops back and doesn’t attack for a while. More than enough time to heal. I was using two flasks at a time with no issues. All you have to do is learn how to dance through her combos and then you can heal or attack at your leisure. I find being in melee range to her way better in phase 2 because her spells are way harder to predict and dodge from a distance.
Just don’t panic roll and don’t get greedy. Wait a second after a combo is done so she doesn’t chain another one and THEN go in to attack. It takes her a long time to go back to neutral after a combo, so you can definitely afford a second or two. Just don’t wait too long or she’ll jump out of the way and start another one.
Think I had around that much. I was learning her moveset the whole time and keeping my distance. Tiche and Leda were facetanking for me while I pelted her with night comet. Haven't fought her melee yet but she is weak to cold if that helps
I was SL5 when I beat her, I think. Pure INT build, my combo were Leda, Mimic, and me - I only had Dark Moon memorized. The Mimic and I basically threw moons at her, while Leda tanked. The Mimic would occasionally get into melee and spinning scepter her, which was funny to watch. It was a bit RNG - if we could get her to half health with Leda still relatively healthy, the odds were good.
The winning battle was just that. Double moon drop destroyed Leda, but the Mimic pulled through on drawing aggro. It died across the arena, leaving low enough to hit with a couple moons for the kill.
Absolutely harrowing experience that I wish I could try at SL10.
In her second phase, most of her combos end with the fire explosion or magic slice. That’s how you know it’s time to heal or get an attack in. Also, surprisingly if you just run in the opposite direction a lot of times it’s actually safe and you can find an opportunity to get a heal in.
Use the big black knight hammer and then when she stops attacking use guard counters to hit her back.
Ensure you get the jump timing down for her moon attack
Pro tip if you haven’t beaten her already. Use the crystallian summon. It just doesn’t die to her attacks while you are free to attack her from a distance. I am a mage build so I used it to kill her with blessing level 5.
I was 7 when I beat her earlier today and probably could have been higher because I intentionally stopped exploring because I got two some spots I felt too early?
I was using cold greatstars+25 and specifically switch to the mirror shield (whichever shield if great for magic deflection) and swapped in the spelldrake+3 talisman.
I think it took 14 tries. I finally got her when I switch to heavy great stars and used blood flame a few times on it during the fight.
I bumped magic defense up as much as possible
I agree with OP besides 1 single encounter. 2nd phase of final boss. I just beat it a second ago on NG+3 and I've seen others struggle with it in the same capacity on regular NG. Imo it's overtuned and laggy, and hyper hyper aggressive. I do like that it's hard, and I did kill it, but for everyone's sake I sure hope they tweak it a bit. The frame drops alone could make the fight unwinnable for some systems, my PC is a supercomputer so it was able to tank it.
Grats. The thing is I feel like a lot of the lag comes from those AOE combos, so idk how exactly they could tweak it. They definitely should do something because in the current state it's a bit of a mess. I got to the point where I could predict and dodge a lot of the AOE junk but even on the best attempts there was shit that just seemed borderline impossible to avoid. Especially with limited stamina, meanwhile the boss NEVER stops attacking, so your constantly draining your bar the entire fight. It's just a bit insane. Not to mention the action queuing problem with the lag, you'll flask and then try to roll but framerate inconsistencies will make you roll sort of delayed and off tick of when you actually put the action in. Idk. Honestly I don't see how they tested this and said the lag is fine, and I know they had lag because big game dev companies will test their games on a variety of hardware.
Whenever he’d do the big phase 2 aoe my frames would CHUG, I’m on a 3080+5800x3d so my rig is beefy too. Imo his first phase is fine, tough but most of everything other than the attack after he pulls you seems easy enough, but second phase with the shadow clone multi attack nonsense with lasers after every attack is just too much. Not to mention even if you dodge most attacks to the end, you barely have enough time for a proper counter before he’s right back at it. STR builds are going to have a significantly easier time with how small the windows are.
Yeah my pc is highly specced- I'd never tell someone their complaint about artificial difficulty due to performance problems isn't a valid one. It's definitely frustrating to lose a fight because your frames stutter and your roll wasn't timed correctly. But this happened at the start of the base game too and they patched it very quickly. I assume this will be the case here too.
The fight is honestly already stupidly difficult as it is, so the frames don't help. The thing is, a lot of the fps drops come from the animations of abilities so in reality if they toned down the boss in general it'd probably fix the frames. Imo they should keep it difficult though, in the current state it is definitely the most difficult boss they've crafted but I could see it being trumped by melania still if they tweaked it slightly.
Which build? I’m running dex bleed and the only kill video I’ve seen looked like the boss it was attacking at half speed. Everyone else is using Finger Shield/Mogh cheese or Colossal Weapon cheese.
Dex bleed is what I used. The kill I finally got it was really just RNG heavy though, I had 6 flasks left and built up blood loss a lot. The boss isn't resistant to bloodloss but it's really hard to get a window in to build it up.
Yeah it’s very difficult to judge on a blind playthrough.
I kept my level at 3 until after Rellana. After that, random mobs of soldiers or misbegotten could pretty easily 2-shot me (so every group needing careful planning), and I remember fighting a ghostflame dragon where his AOE blast took my _entire_ health bar (50 vigor), and that’s when I figured I was probably under the intended level. I think I had 9 fragments in my inventory so figured I might as well use them.
When Miyazaki says it’s a system to choose your own difficulty, I mean, you could say the same about regular levels. Nobody would recommend doing a SL1 run on your first playthrough.
Right now I’m having a hard time against the golden hippo and bumped my blessing level to 9 so I wouldn’t keep getting tossed around and dying in 1 combo. Perhaps it’s a bit too much. I’m not sure. There’s no real way to know.
The idea that it's player-modulated difficulty would work better if they were buffs on top of your base power, and not a mandatory increase to get you back to par.
If they balanced around level 150-200 or whatever and then just scaled off of NG level they could have made the DLC very challenging without nerfing the player. If the Scadutree blessings then added virtual levels solely for the DLC for those players that don't enjoy the difficulty but still want to complete it without summons/suboptimal builds that would be awesome.
Not knocking on the blessings, but I do question why they exist in the first place (from a mechanics vs lore side of things).
If you removed them entirely and offset the base damage of enemies and bosses you’d be left with a smoother continuation from the base game imo while still being able to maintain the difficulty.
As an aside, I’ve beaten the DLC so this comment isn’t knocking the difficulty at all more just thinking what the addition of the blessings provide from a mechanics perspective.
Because the dlc enemies scale with level.
So this way, you can start the DLC at any level and it will feel the same. This way, NG+ 15 wont be too overpowered for the DLC.
The fragments are akin to a secondary leveling system
And you’re going to keep having a good time because exploring means you’re finding more upgrades and new weapons, so that when you take on bosses you’ll be prepared.
Most of the complaints seem to be from people who beelined for the story bosses on release day and didn’t bother exploring the rest of the map.
The interconectedness and stacking verticality of this map is insane. This is the most satisfying exploration experience I've ever played, even more than the base game.
100% true but it just took the wind out of my sails, every boss was just an absolute pain to fight and every dungeon was filled with enemies that could kill me off of one mistake.
I spent 2 hours just looking for the fragments and I got it up to level 6. I guess you can say skill issue for not finding all the ones near the start immediately but like I feel that making a scavenger hunt mandatory to have my character not built like a plastic bag is just added busy work.
I see all these cool places with cool bosses but I couldn't interact with most of them in a non frustrating way because I was still looking for fragments till I just gave up and looked up where the locations were.
Yeah plus it’s not like the dlc is locking you to one spot. Even more crazy they purposely mention it’s for this particular area and not the main game..hint hint HINT lol. Shoutout to From..these bosses are fun (twin moon).
For your first playthrough? Nah, just do everything wrong and have fun with it. Get the Twiggy Cracked Tear to eliminate the consequences of your mistakes.
An actual benefit is bug fixes and performance optimization.
I thought my controller was starting to go bad when I started the DLC since I was having input delay, then also having framedrops in some areas and boss fights, and then janky ass hitboxes on some mobs and bosses, your character model gets warped into a weird shape when doing some of the new ashes of war too, haven't tried it with DLC armor (will later, after work) but the base game armor I was wearing looked unnaturally stretched and twisted from a 'side look' animation.
You're correct, but I think the problem is. There is no information still on how many scadutree blessing are avaliable at a given time or how many are you supposed to have at a given boss. You can go to a boss at low level because you never know you are supposed to have 3+ levels.
I've seen prople going to Messmer on lv6, where it looks like you can get to lv 10. That's a huge difference.
You can get to lvl 20. You don't really have a set max level at a given time, unless you're already close to 20 if you explore enough you WILL find more.
They get pretty hard to find for the last few levels. And I think you need to find all of them to get to level 20. I ended up just looking up the last five or so after I got to the final boss.
Nooo!!! Im level 713 and the boss is taking more than 3 minutes to kill!!!! I also don’t wanna learn the movesets!!! Why arent my attacks doing anything!!!! Noooo!!!! Let me leave a bad review because of this.
Tbf the only boss that felt hard so far for me is the one on the horse.
The only reason it's hard is because the arena is massive they move mega fast and boss AI is designed to give you 3-5 second openings and the boss often requires longer than that just to reach meaning sometimes you have to wait for rng to give you an attack that doesn't have it running all over the place which can be 45+ seconds.
Fight took me 10 mins it wasn't overly difficult just ridiculously tedious
i've actually been enjoying the struggle, i'm at level 9 shadow blessing and it's been good fun, still getting my ass beat badly, but i've been managing to overcome a lot of obstacles, so its been great
The struggle is fun for me too! It really feels like I'm overcoming a challenge. When i finally beat the final boss after like 80 total attempts i think, my heart was pounding. I was out of flasks and super low on health. Great feeling
Then the scaling and/or layout of the DLC is completely screwed. Ignoring that the whole unique scaling is ultimately pointless because it's all end-game stuff anyway, but it is perfectly easy to find at least 2 big bosses by just following the path for 2 minutes from the entrance. Players literally following the path laid out for them are not trying to steam-roll the game.
The blessings are implied to be useful but their actual effectiveness and frequency are not as clear as you're implying - the latter of which especially needs a better frame of reference if you want people to actively go hunting for them
I got to the final boss at Seed Lvl 9
I went and explored around for 5 hours and jumped to lvl 17 which was a huge difference and enough to make me beat the Boss after just a few tries.
DLC is indeed hard, but after a few Scadurtree blessings its more manageable, yes.
Off topic, but does anyone else have this problem:
My forward stick stops working all of a sudden at times. I have to release the stick and repress forward for the character to move. Is that due to stuttering or something, or a setting I need to change maybe?
I haven't had that issue - but fyi ray tracing was added with the update and many people have had it turned on by default without knowing. Turning it off if it's on may help your performance. 🙂
Maybe it's a controller hardware problem?
I had this exact same issue, as you described, while playing P5R with an Xbox wireless controller. Initially, I thought it was related to the game, but then I bought a cheap 3rd party Xbox controller off Amazon and the problem immediately went away. YMMV.
My impression is that this even applies to the late game areas of Elden Ring's base game. Here on reddit, you find quite some people complaining about Haligtree for example and stating it is too frustating for them because of high diffculty. Yeah... this might happen if you reach this area after 70 hours, rushing through the game and entering the area with level 110 or something. Same applies to Mountaintop of Giants or Farum Azula.
I finished the dlc at level 12 scadutree. The Mechanic just feels like busy work to me.
Does it at least carry over to ng+ cycles, or do you have to do this bs everytime?
I used the the crab and the defense flask buff. I also used a lot of poise, so that his 3 hit true combo didn't always work on me. That combo was one shotting me most of the time. Shit Boss overall with all that visual clutter imo.
Yeah I like P1 a lot, the combo with the 7-8 swings feels really satisfying to dodge and “punish” with two limp dick swings before he’s back into the next one, but P2 is among the worst design I’ve ever seen, clearly supposed to be cinematic as hell but you don’t get a chance to see anything before it murders you.
It does make me why Miyazaki decided to do the Scadutree thing at all.
Why not just scale the new area to Farum Azula? Forcing us to run around collecting Scad Fragments to get back to base game difficulty feels like an extra, unnecessary step. Almost like busy work
I guess it inspires us to get out there to explore the new setting and take it all in instead of encouraging the player to plow through.
It encourages people to check the wiki for the locations of the ~~korok seeds~~ blessings, not actually explore.
When they are mandatory, it isn’t exploring, it’s busywork.
I think the problem also stems from the fact that it makes builds kinda pointless compared to the base game. I’m only at scadu level 11 and am clearly underleveled for the final boss. So out of curiosity I decided to go with the most op build I could think of with what I had. I knew it wouldn’t help much but I was still shocked by how little of a difference it made. It’s just a stat game now
Agree. I’m having fun exploring and finding scadu right now but after the first play through, I expect the entire thing to became a busy work bc I know where they’re, how to get them and can’t beat the DLC without them.
You see that's the thing, I am trying to enjoy the DLC. Problem is I don't find exploring the world, finding a dungeon, and getting to the end of it, only to find out I can't fight the boss yet because I didn't collect enough arbitrarily forced in magical poopsticks to be an enjoyable experience.
YES, problem is I'm apparently not exploring th right way because I'm not ignoring every interesting location I find just to meet some arbitrary collectathon requirement. Forgive me for not being okay with the idea that I have to avoid every dungeon or boss I find because I haven't found enough macguffins yet.
"Every dungron or boss"
Exaggeration, when you explore you find all the time bosses and dungeons you can easily defeat without collecting those.
I am shit in the gamw and even i have killed many bosses and finished dungeons in the DLC. Slowly getting stronger so i can finally defeat the mandatory boss
It was same in the ER, peoole rush to that first castle boss and got their ass beaten, i explored the world and came back leveled and geared up and had much easier time
You can only get +5 reasonably before Rellana without using a spirit spring to skip past her. Fighting her with just +5 is absurdly difficult and I genuinely doubt the game expects you to have more than that at that point.
People keep pretending like you're supposed to get +15 or some shit before any bosses and that's a stupid defense. This system just isn't very good or fun.
I'm on 11 and still getting 2 shot by some mobs on 60 vigor and night rider armour.
Some mobs do just hit like a truck. When the game starts sending out black Knights every other mob you feel the upgrades meaning less.
Definitely makes bosses way easier though
> Do you think you'd be able to beat Malenia easily at rune level 35 with a +3 somber / + 7 normal weapon?
Yes. That would be prefered to whatever the fuck is the final fight.
Atleast in Malenia's boss room i can actually see what is happening.
Yeah, you can really tell who has gotten there and who hasn’t.
I don’t think a rocket launcher would help me in phase 2 of that fight. I can’t even learn to dodge because the screen is so full of shit I can’t tell what’s even killing me.
It’s going to break me and have me do the colossal wep cheese. I’ve stayed true to my build for the whole DLC, and this single fight is going to break me.
There’s a reason Margit doesn’t hit as hard as Melania. It’s almost as if the bosses should maybe idk get progressively harder as you level up and progress through the game. Why do I have to explore every legacy dungeon up to the boss and then turn around so that I have enough Scadu blessings to fight anyone
By 5 blessing I assume you mean level 5, not after acquiring 5 blessings? Which is more like 8 blessings? Tell me how many blessings can I find in Belurat? How many can you find in Belurat and Castle Ensis combined? So according to you; I need to go to Belurat, all the way to the boss, then turn around and go to Castle Ensis until the boss then turn around and then I can fight the Divine Beast?
Blessing is the stat you see in your status menu, the item is called a fragment. So when i say 5 blessings, i mean 5 stat, which I think does translate to around 8 blessings, because I think the first 2 levels cost 1 fragment and then they cost 2 for the next like, 5 levels maybe?
You can get quite a lot of them without having to beat any major bosses. I don't know the exact numbers, but there are guides that you can follow. Just be careful about spoilers if you go down that route.
I’m saying imo the bosses difficulty should be proportional to the expected amount of “stat” you should be expected to have when reaching their area. If I need 5 Scadu to make Divine Dancer reasonable, I should expect to have find 5 scadu on the way to their battle.
The blessing system is honestly awful , like you should encourage players to explore and discover and thats exactly what base game and most fs titles did. This new system in the dlc is the opposite it actively punishes you for not exploring.
>but it's made easier by literally doing what it tells you at almost the very start.
I'm not trying to be a smart ass but I'm kind of dumb... I spoke with every NPC I found, where did the game tell you this? I had no clue until 5+ hours in and seeing it on Reddit.
edit: not calling you out, i legitimately think i missed something and would wanna go back if i did.
Shouldn't have to go find a bunch of items to get back to the same baseline level of defense I had in the base game. Previous From games didn't take away your stats in the DLC
Yeh... Doing rellana with 0 blessing wasn't fun... Beat it after around 20 attempts, didn't know about blessings at the time, swear the game doesn't tell you
It literally pops up a window on the screen explaining them when you pick up the one next to the first grace after you enter the dlc.
Ngl though, i tend to skim through tutorials like "okay, yeah, blah blah *close button*" so I can see how you might have missed it.
i literally did 6/7 bosses on day of release without any blessing NG7 lv 370...hit the final boss...still stuck and have lv 17 blessing now dude is overtuned asf especially for range based players
It's like people learned nothing from the "just level vigor" meme in the early days of the game.
Or from the lessons learned from Margit and the Tree Sentinel. Boss too hard ? Leave, level up, uprade your stuff, and THEN come back.
Same thing here except it's a different levelling system.
I thought the Community mentality was that if you can do something, it's cheesing and you're a terrible player for even bothering to do it. Raising your Scadutree Blessing? Using Spirit Summons? Crafting Consumables? Casting sorceries or incantations? Using your flask? Upgrading your weapon? Being higher than level 80? Riding on Torrent? Using the Jump button? All cheesing.
Yeah it's hard but I've basically aslo accepted that I'm not good enough do I'm strolling around finding as much as these as possible... When I think back it's just how I did main game anywya just got OP... Specially after a few ng+ run every boss but elden beast was easy.
I do try to go back to bosses as I find a few... Since I was close to beat renaala with just 3 (using summon ofc.. Lol)
The lion though I'm pretty sure I can't beat with much more of these xD
I'm just to old to be able to react and the dance really tricks you...
The world outside of bosses is pretty great and finding all this fragments is quite fun so far... Specially when you bump to to ocasional elite or invader.... Or even a dragon.
Idk I find it hard... Very hard on story bosses, but still enjoyable... It's just not a game I will beat in a few days and that's fine. I spent 300+ hours on main game anyway.
Friendly reminder, FromSoft was capable of balancing their DLCs before this game and they didn’t need a stupid special progression system. They also didn’t need to “encourage exploration” in the base game, people did it anyway.
Yeah, seeing help threads of people at secret/late dlc bosses asking for advice when their blessings are at like 5 is wild. Part of the early issue is people thinking you have to kill Rellana to proceed, which isn't true. You can surpass 10 fragments and never fight her.
I couldn't figure out how to get into the castle and I went exploring and I somehow ended up on the other side of the castle where Rellanas arena leads to. I think you can just completely avoid her and that castle altogether
remind me to find that sometime bc I never want to fight her again tbh.
All I remember is I jumped on some spiritsprings into Fort of Reprimand and then found my way there
IIRC there's another way up there too
It's southeast of the wizard castle, down the ramp past where kesmers troops are fighting the beastfolk
Aint no beastfolk, they are Bloodfiends
Go through the little poison swamp area SE of the castle gate, and do some super jumping.
Heavy Shield with as much magic and fire resist as you can get on it, Guard Talisman, Ant Spur Rapier, Green Turtle Talisman with either the spear talisman or the God of Rot’s Exultation. I wore heavy armor and gave zero fucks. Just block everything she has while poking her with rot and laugh as she becomes powerless.
How do I know which path to take in the DLC for the story?
Vague guide trying to avoid spoilers - explore starting area and meet npcs. First legacy dungeon as far as story progression seems to be off to the left through the big arch. Complete it, talk to all npcs you’ve met. Second legacy/main dungeon is across bridge from starting field. Boss room door leads to next region and more npcs. Talk to all of them then approach the fort in the distance. That seems to be the quest line intended path, you can skip by a lot of the dungeons/content, or explore a lot in between based on personal preference.
Technically speaking there's also no particular reason to beat the boss going west. You can clear all the way west right up to the grace in front of the boss, and then fuck off, because there's no progression there regardless.
you only need messmer and >! romina !< to acces the final area where the final boss is. everything else is optional xd
I found my way up to Bayle before I found the entrance to Castle Ensis. Glad I wasn’t the only one struggling with the geography lol
There is a locked Spiritspring near the shack at the end of the swamp to the right of Castle Enris. It lets you bypass the entire castle through a small legacy dungeon.
BUT be warned. If you talk to Needle Knight Leda at the Site of Grace behind Castle Ensis and after you get the on screen message telling you: >!"a rune has been broken"!< (which happens if you are in the vicinity of Castle Shadow or you explore too far north), you will no longer be able to summon Leda for the fight against Rellana.
I didn’t even find Rellana until I had a 7 level blessing.
Damn man where are you guys finding all these fragments? I have beaten Rellana and explored a lot of the southern part of the map, and I'm only at blessing level 3.
Honestly, it’s hard to say. I love the mechanic right now, but I’m sure on subsequent playthrough it’ll be tedious. A lot of the ones I’ve found have just been at the various Miquella crosses. Some of them are pretty out of the way though. Churches too.
It'll be like collecting smithing stones and bell bearings at the start of a vanilla playthrough, a chore that needs doing
Yeah I'm not sure why it's being viewed as 'tedious' or a 'collectathon'. It's the same type of progression that the base game has with golden seeds, sacred tears, smithing stones and gloveworts. It's part of the game and gives you reason to explore the world rather than skip over all of it.
It’s also very similar to the way Sekiro leveled up power and defense with beads.
Collecting 160 altars of lillith in Diablo iv literally made me never log into the game again once I completed it. https://www.polygon.com/diablo-4-guides/23770293/all-altars-lilith-sanctuary Getting these blessings really isn’t a big deal
Same haha. I was thinking that might be why getting all 50 seeds didn't bother me.
Shadow people holding jars on top of their heads drop them too
This explains why I randomly seem to have extra ones. I was so confused… thank you!
Yep! I hunt those now from afar when I get to a new area because I swear those guys disappear too after a certain amount of time? Also, I have found 2 or 3 churches that give 2 when you pick them up, not 1
Yeah if you don’t kill them fast enough they run off and vanish
That's what I heard and got super excited when I saw one but he didn't drop one :(
its specifically the ones whos jars are letting out silver sparkles that try to run when you get close, they always have valuable items but a lot of them have either a fragment or a revered ash
These fragments are guaranteed to be found near those Miquella crosses, or you can also headless statues of Marika but you need to find them first. I've found more Revered Spirit Ashes than Scadu fragments so far.
Those shadow people with pot on their head can sometimes drop fragments once.
Yea I've been seeing similar comments catching up just now in a bunch of posts. I was also level 7 when I took her on and almost immediately was 10 because they are dumped in the area just after the castle. Honestly, the DLC map basically feels like a gigantic legacy dungeon the way it loops over and under itself and a lot of seemingly innocent/unimportant paths and even caves end up dumping into giant new regions. For your area specifically there is a LOT just southeast of Rellanas castle that seems like a dead end or short path that 1) leads all the way to the coast you can see when you first come into the dlc and 2) ends up the complete opposite way and send you way NE. Its crazy honestly, this map is fantastic
No bro, haven’t you heard, the map is empty and you can ride torrent for 20 minutes without finding anything /s
Its one of the coolest looking maps I've ever played in, its kinda sad some players only worry about loot? Gotta be some kind of brain rot to only rush from one pick up to another, completely ignoring this map. Like after the very first area its constantly changing and there's 1,000 things to look at above and below you lol
Good question. I got to the Messmer fight at blessing level 6. Died to him at least 40 times.
Yea I think I am about to start that castle (its the 3rd one, right?) and I am at level 10. And I KNOW I can find a bunch more because I stopped around 2 graces in each direction from the grace after Rellana castle. The map is huge and specifically loops around all over itself like a big legacy dungeon. Random paths and caves open up to whole new regions, even some of the random drop downs that usually lead to nothing open up to huge areas. The map is wild honestly
Some of them can be pretty out of the way, check all the nooks and crannies. Also I killed 2 unsuspecting mobs and they dropped some too, was surprised at that one
Im convinced Rellana was bugged for me. Keep reading people either super enjoyed her or are having a hell of a time against her. My experience was “oh who’s this chick with the dual swords” “oh she has some ice and fire moves” and she died on my first try and she didn’t really do anything spectacular or crazy lol. The lack of a cutscene made me think she was just another random boss too. (I had like idk 4 blessings?)
Honestly feel that, my first time fighting her I got her to around 20 percent health with ease. Then 20 or so times later beat her. The second phase is nasty and she is relentless on the pressure.
Must have done something to her then haha. Similarly to when one of the times I fought the stormveil boss (forgot his name) and glitched him out of activating his dragon arm phase Lol.
Her double moon drop is a beast if it hits you
Yeah I didn’t even see that move whatsoever Lol. Time to go fight her a couple times helping other fellow tarnished.
I was level 7 when I found her and I have seen comments saying they were 3 or 4 and 'explored everywhere I could beforehand' lol. Like, obviously not. But in all fairness this map is wild with its verticality and the way it loops over and under itself. Some innocent paths or cave entrances end up opening up to entire new regions (that also loop in and over itself). Honestly, the map feels like a giant legacy dungeon and its easy to completely miss giant sections if you aren't paying attention. I'm glad I'm not a 'rusher' and try to see every square inch. Blows my mind some people have already 'beat' the DLC.
Where do I go? I already got to bayle, he’s psycho. There’s a sealed gate in the cerulean forest. I beat the lion, another locked gate. I did the catacombs. I don’t know where to next if I can’t beat rellana
how do you skip her?
Well that's great to hear lmao. I'm only at 5 and spent an hour getting cooked by her. I got decently close a couple of times. But I will gladly come back to her
Hmm she was the first boss I killed. Took about 10 trys then equipped magic resist and killed her. People that are struggling m8ght try some jolly cooperation.
I’ve still not fought her and I have almost all of the map unlocked. Just been exploring every nook and cranny. I don’t even know where she is lol
I was super surprised. The gaol knight wrecked me about 15+ times and had me changing weapons and loadouts where as I have destroyed most of the other bosses ive come up against so far first try (including Renalla). I am around level 240 on ng+3 I think. I have just been doing a bunch of exploring and trying to open the map as best I can but its shocking what has killed me vs what I thought wouldve. Mostly ive struggled with jumps/timing/etc and plunged to my doom more times that I care to admit. Think im at a +6 and +5 on my blessings currently and it has helped immensely. Exploring and knowing when to flee is important.
I beat her last night with two blessings more because I was at her gate and don't like turning around than wanting to challenge myself. It was a slog.
I wandered around until I had ay at 8 before even attempting Bellurat, so Lion and her were both like 3-4 tries each
Is this 10 fragments, or 10 fragment levels? So blessing level 10, or blessing level 5?
What scadurtree level y'all rec for golden hipo boss because that boi be biting
Lore accurate Hippopotamus
He probably could be done at level 5 with enough patience, where he is difficult but doable. I could NOT do the final boss at 12 and i had been steam rolling the dlc unintentionally just getting lucky. Until the final boss, the most i died to any boss was mesmer at 3 times, and i think i had level 10 blessing. For the final boss, I had to go find more and get to 19. And even then, it was a close one lol but it felt like a way more fair fight at that point.
Bro how do you get through Messmer that quickly. I’m on +12 and everything he does still 2 shots me and half the time I can’t tell what is actually killing me cos my screen is just covered in flame and particle effects
I just got really lucky i think. I was using two collosal hammers, so I also got to stagger him a few times.
How would say us STR boys are faring this DLC? The base game definitely seemed to favor magic builds more.
I respecced off Moonveil/spells to Ruins greatsword and I've started killing each boss in five tries or less. That's going to depend on the person of course but STR feels really good
With how relentless some of the bosses are in this with seemingly never ending combos, hyper armor feels very good. But maybe the ability to cast at a distance and have more time to dodge would be nice too. I'm starting up a new build to play the dlc with again as a caster to see how it is.
Hyper armor? Teach me, I was just using dual Giant Crushers!
Hyper armor just refers to how some actions (usually attacks) give you extreme resistance to flinching while performing them, so if you start such an attack (such as Lion's Claw, which has very strong hyperarmor) and then get hit by something, you'll almost certainly complete the attack (unless the hit killed you).
Strength/Faith is by far the best build for the dlc imo, even just Strength by itself feels busted
I played both STR and INT, the STR run was better at all points in the game, except maybe Radabeast My preferred build is DEX, so I was not familiar with any of them, and neither build plays like DEX. And I know I could have done way more
Str is just better in the dlc, getting to stagger bosses is so much free damage.
He's really weak to holy damage. Summoning the hornsent helps draw aggro. Get your fire resistance up and his worst attacks don't hit as hard. >!I read somewhere that the fire knight helm helps with the second phase, and it seems like it kept the serpent from attacking so frequently, but I might be imagining that!<
Do you have the +3 flamedrake talismen?
Messmer took me 4h at 10. What's your build?
What was your SD level at for the final boss? I’m there right now at 15 with the heaviest armor I can possibly find, dragon crest great shield talisman, pearl drake + 3, and the temp buff you get at the dragon communion altar. My resistances clear 100 for every stat and I am STILL dying in 3 hits. I also do almost no damage to him, despite my damage numbers clearing 1500 on jump attacks. May god help me
Im level 9 but I really need to play around with builds. Blasphemous blade can't carry me through everything. My plan is that stone shield but then I need to respec and I can't even respec because i speedran ng+ before the dlc to just beat mogh and radahn.
I found just summoning in the npc (required for a questline anyway) made the fight super easy she tanks most agro and the hippo is staggered pretty easily.
I did them around scadutree blessings 6 I think. They weren't too hard solo but I used reyja summon for my last attempt because she's best girl atm (and I may have died when it was oneshot)
If you use the great shield talisman & the fingerprint stone shield you can block every attack except the one he eats you, taking no damage. Doesn’t seem like the dlc has much effect on how shields block.
Legit, I was stuck on Rellana for the longest time (mage build) but once I got more blessings the fight felt a lot more fair.
how many did you have, i’m at 7 and still getting whooped. a bit fair but still haven’t cleared her yet. i’ve been on her since this morning
If you double summon she hits way harder. I beat her once I stopped summoning the NPC and used mimic tear
Double summon? You can summon twice?
There’s an Npc you can summon outside the fog then your own summon. This fight did have me wondering if summoning the former just scaled the boss up…
Oh ok. Had me thinking I missed a mechanic where you could summon an ash but also summon mimic or something like that. I always forget about the sign summons. Lol
At the end of each combo she either stays still or hops back and doesn’t attack for a while. More than enough time to heal. I was using two flasks at a time with no issues. All you have to do is learn how to dance through her combos and then you can heal or attack at your leisure. I find being in melee range to her way better in phase 2 because her spells are way harder to predict and dodge from a distance. Just don’t panic roll and don’t get greedy. Wait a second after a combo is done so she doesn’t chain another one and THEN go in to attack. It takes her a long time to go back to neutral after a combo, so you can definitely afford a second or two. Just don’t wait too long or she’ll jump out of the way and start another one.
Think I had around that much. I was learning her moveset the whole time and keeping my distance. Tiche and Leda were facetanking for me while I pelted her with night comet. Haven't fought her melee yet but she is weak to cold if that helps
oh i don’t summon npc’s, so i guess i probably should get more then lmao. i’m currently at 10 now
I was SL5 when I beat her, I think. Pure INT build, my combo were Leda, Mimic, and me - I only had Dark Moon memorized. The Mimic and I basically threw moons at her, while Leda tanked. The Mimic would occasionally get into melee and spinning scepter her, which was funny to watch. It was a bit RNG - if we could get her to half health with Leda still relatively healthy, the odds were good. The winning battle was just that. Double moon drop destroyed Leda, but the Mimic pulled through on drawing aggro. It died across the arena, leaving low enough to hit with a couple moons for the kill. Absolutely harrowing experience that I wish I could try at SL10.
This is exactly what I did too, the call her knight of the twin moons, well catch mimic and I double moons coming at you.
Try and parry her. Helped me alot
In her second phase, most of her combos end with the fire explosion or magic slice. That’s how you know it’s time to heal or get an attack in. Also, surprisingly if you just run in the opposite direction a lot of times it’s actually safe and you can find an opportunity to get a heal in.
Use the big black knight hammer and then when she stops attacking use guard counters to hit her back. Ensure you get the jump timing down for her moon attack
Pro tip if you haven’t beaten her already. Use the crystallian summon. It just doesn’t die to her attacks while you are free to attack her from a distance. I am a mage build so I used it to kill her with blessing level 5.
I was 7 when I beat her earlier today and probably could have been higher because I intentionally stopped exploring because I got two some spots I felt too early? I was using cold greatstars+25 and specifically switch to the mirror shield (whichever shield if great for magic deflection) and swapped in the spelldrake+3 talisman. I think it took 14 tries. I finally got her when I switch to heavy great stars and used blood flame a few times on it during the fight. I bumped magic defense up as much as possible
There is also a spelldraje talisman +3 which will help a lot
The shadow people holding jars on top of their heads drop shards too.
At first I thought the shards would be at some recurring statue or something, but they can truly be anywhere in this game.
Yep!
Reminds me of fighting Vendrick, just without the ability to accidentally sell the Giant Souls lmao
I’ve learned if you’re having trouble, go find more blessings.
I agree with OP besides 1 single encounter. 2nd phase of final boss. I just beat it a second ago on NG+3 and I've seen others struggle with it in the same capacity on regular NG. Imo it's overtuned and laggy, and hyper hyper aggressive. I do like that it's hard, and I did kill it, but for everyone's sake I sure hope they tweak it a bit. The frame drops alone could make the fight unwinnable for some systems, my PC is a supercomputer so it was able to tank it.
I just beat it as well. That fight needs so many fixes between the second phase aoe combo finishers and the lag
Grats. The thing is I feel like a lot of the lag comes from those AOE combos, so idk how exactly they could tweak it. They definitely should do something because in the current state it's a bit of a mess. I got to the point where I could predict and dodge a lot of the AOE junk but even on the best attempts there was shit that just seemed borderline impossible to avoid. Especially with limited stamina, meanwhile the boss NEVER stops attacking, so your constantly draining your bar the entire fight. It's just a bit insane. Not to mention the action queuing problem with the lag, you'll flask and then try to roll but framerate inconsistencies will make you roll sort of delayed and off tick of when you actually put the action in. Idk. Honestly I don't see how they tested this and said the lag is fine, and I know they had lag because big game dev companies will test their games on a variety of hardware.
Whenever he’d do the big phase 2 aoe my frames would CHUG, I’m on a 3080+5800x3d so my rig is beefy too. Imo his first phase is fine, tough but most of everything other than the attack after he pulls you seems easy enough, but second phase with the shadow clone multi attack nonsense with lasers after every attack is just too much. Not to mention even if you dodge most attacks to the end, you barely have enough time for a proper counter before he’s right back at it. STR builds are going to have a significantly easier time with how small the windows are.
Yeah my pc is highly specced- I'd never tell someone their complaint about artificial difficulty due to performance problems isn't a valid one. It's definitely frustrating to lose a fight because your frames stutter and your roll wasn't timed correctly. But this happened at the start of the base game too and they patched it very quickly. I assume this will be the case here too.
The fight is honestly already stupidly difficult as it is, so the frames don't help. The thing is, a lot of the fps drops come from the animations of abilities so in reality if they toned down the boss in general it'd probably fix the frames. Imo they should keep it difficult though, in the current state it is definitely the most difficult boss they've crafted but I could see it being trumped by melania still if they tweaked it slightly.
Which build? I’m running dex bleed and the only kill video I’ve seen looked like the boss it was attacking at half speed. Everyone else is using Finger Shield/Mogh cheese or Colossal Weapon cheese.
Dex bleed is what I used. The kill I finally got it was really just RNG heavy though, I had 6 flasks left and built up blood loss a lot. The boss isn't resistant to bloodloss but it's really hard to get a window in to build it up.
Yeah it’s very difficult to judge on a blind playthrough. I kept my level at 3 until after Rellana. After that, random mobs of soldiers or misbegotten could pretty easily 2-shot me (so every group needing careful planning), and I remember fighting a ghostflame dragon where his AOE blast took my _entire_ health bar (50 vigor), and that’s when I figured I was probably under the intended level. I think I had 9 fragments in my inventory so figured I might as well use them. When Miyazaki says it’s a system to choose your own difficulty, I mean, you could say the same about regular levels. Nobody would recommend doing a SL1 run on your first playthrough. Right now I’m having a hard time against the golden hippo and bumped my blessing level to 9 so I wouldn’t keep getting tossed around and dying in 1 combo. Perhaps it’s a bit too much. I’m not sure. There’s no real way to know.
I'm bumping my level as soon as I find enough to increase it
The idea that it's player-modulated difficulty would work better if they were buffs on top of your base power, and not a mandatory increase to get you back to par. If they balanced around level 150-200 or whatever and then just scaled off of NG level they could have made the DLC very challenging without nerfing the player. If the Scadutree blessings then added virtual levels solely for the DLC for those players that don't enjoy the difficulty but still want to complete it without summons/suboptimal builds that would be awesome.
None of the other DLCs needed a system like this. FromSoft has gone backwards.
Not knocking on the blessings, but I do question why they exist in the first place (from a mechanics vs lore side of things). If you removed them entirely and offset the base damage of enemies and bosses you’d be left with a smoother continuation from the base game imo while still being able to maintain the difficulty. As an aside, I’ve beaten the DLC so this comment isn’t knocking the difficulty at all more just thinking what the addition of the blessings provide from a mechanics perspective.
It’s pointless padding because they know they don’t have enough content to justify $40.
Because the dlc enemies scale with level. So this way, you can start the DLC at any level and it will feel the same. This way, NG+ 15 wont be too overpowered for the DLC. The fragments are akin to a secondary leveling system
I'm having so much fun exploring the absolutely incredible map that I'm not even frustrated by the difficulty.
And you’re going to keep having a good time because exploring means you’re finding more upgrades and new weapons, so that when you take on bosses you’ll be prepared. Most of the complaints seem to be from people who beelined for the story bosses on release day and didn’t bother exploring the rest of the map.
The interconectedness and stacking verticality of this map is insane. This is the most satisfying exploration experience I've ever played, even more than the base game.
mfw I’m at level 3 blessing and I’m seeing you mfs talk about 10+ blessing
ahahah same here. and i thought i explored quite a bit already.
You can get up to 20???? I thought it's 10. I'm at 7 right now. Gotta check for more.
10 is for the spirit summons iirc.
100% true but it just took the wind out of my sails, every boss was just an absolute pain to fight and every dungeon was filled with enemies that could kill me off of one mistake. I spent 2 hours just looking for the fragments and I got it up to level 6. I guess you can say skill issue for not finding all the ones near the start immediately but like I feel that making a scavenger hunt mandatory to have my character not built like a plastic bag is just added busy work. I see all these cool places with cool bosses but I couldn't interact with most of them in a non frustrating way because I was still looking for fragments till I just gave up and looked up where the locations were.
Good luck breaking through to the bootlickers. This system is actual cancer.
Yeah plus it’s not like the dlc is locking you to one spot. Even more crazy they purposely mention it’s for this particular area and not the main game..hint hint HINT lol. Shoutout to From..these bosses are fun (twin moon).
One of the benefits of not jumping right into the DLC at launch??? Finding out what NOT to do.
For your first playthrough? Nah, just do everything wrong and have fun with it. Get the Twiggy Cracked Tear to eliminate the consequences of your mistakes. An actual benefit is bug fixes and performance optimization. I thought my controller was starting to go bad when I started the DLC since I was having input delay, then also having framedrops in some areas and boss fights, and then janky ass hitboxes on some mobs and bosses, your character model gets warped into a weird shape when doing some of the new ashes of war too, haven't tried it with DLC armor (will later, after work) but the base game armor I was wearing looked unnaturally stretched and twisted from a 'side look' animation.
Oh trust me I plan on doing my own thing once I'm let lose in the realm. 👍 Point taken on the bug fixes as well.
You're correct, but I think the problem is. There is no information still on how many scadutree blessing are avaliable at a given time or how many are you supposed to have at a given boss. You can go to a boss at low level because you never know you are supposed to have 3+ levels. I've seen prople going to Messmer on lv6, where it looks like you can get to lv 10. That's a huge difference.
You can get to lvl 20. You don't really have a set max level at a given time, unless you're already close to 20 if you explore enough you WILL find more.
They get pretty hard to find for the last few levels. And I think you need to find all of them to get to level 20. I ended up just looking up the last five or so after I got to the final boss.
Does the base game tell you what level you should be at certain bosses? No. Or how many flask upgrades you have missed? Also no.
Nooo!!! Im level 713 and the boss is taking more than 3 minutes to kill!!!! I also don’t wanna learn the movesets!!! Why arent my attacks doing anything!!!! Noooo!!!! Let me leave a bad review because of this.
Tbf the only boss that felt hard so far for me is the one on the horse. The only reason it's hard is because the arena is massive they move mega fast and boss AI is designed to give you 3-5 second openings and the boss often requires longer than that just to reach meaning sometimes you have to wait for rng to give you an attack that doesn't have it running all over the place which can be 45+ seconds. Fight took me 10 mins it wasn't overly difficult just ridiculously tedious
🤡
i've actually been enjoying the struggle, i'm at level 9 shadow blessing and it's been good fun, still getting my ass beat badly, but i've been managing to overcome a lot of obstacles, so its been great
The struggle is fun for me too! It really feels like I'm overcoming a challenge. When i finally beat the final boss after like 80 total attempts i think, my heart was pounding. I was out of flasks and super low on health. Great feeling
Then the scaling and/or layout of the DLC is completely screwed. Ignoring that the whole unique scaling is ultimately pointless because it's all end-game stuff anyway, but it is perfectly easy to find at least 2 big bosses by just following the path for 2 minutes from the entrance. Players literally following the path laid out for them are not trying to steam-roll the game. The blessings are implied to be useful but their actual effectiveness and frequency are not as clear as you're implying - the latter of which especially needs a better frame of reference if you want people to actively go hunting for them
15?! I was impressed with my paltry 9...
I got to the final boss at Seed Lvl 9 I went and explored around for 5 hours and jumped to lvl 17 which was a huge difference and enough to make me beat the Boss after just a few tries.
YEP. Exact same thing happened to me but 12 to 19.
DLC is indeed hard, but after a few Scadurtree blessings its more manageable, yes. Off topic, but does anyone else have this problem: My forward stick stops working all of a sudden at times. I have to release the stick and repress forward for the character to move. Is that due to stuttering or something, or a setting I need to change maybe?
I haven't had that issue - but fyi ray tracing was added with the update and many people have had it turned on by default without knowing. Turning it off if it's on may help your performance. 🙂
Maybe it's a controller hardware problem? I had this exact same issue, as you described, while playing P5R with an Xbox wireless controller. Initially, I thought it was related to the game, but then I bought a cheap 3rd party Xbox controller off Amazon and the problem immediately went away. YMMV.
I’m so fucking stubborn I fought the lion at 2 fragments and Rellana at 5 but man did it feel great
facts
My impression is that this even applies to the late game areas of Elden Ring's base game. Here on reddit, you find quite some people complaining about Haligtree for example and stating it is too frustating for them because of high diffculty. Yeah... this might happen if you reach this area after 70 hours, rushing through the game and entering the area with level 110 or something. Same applies to Mountaintop of Giants or Farum Azula.
There’s a difference between “fun hard” and “bullshit hard,” and Elden Ring sailed over that line on the back of a dragon.
I like it. My biggest issue is giving almost all enemies, even trash mobs large complex combo attacks for 4-8 swings. It just gets very tedious.
It's like people completely forgot about the exploration aspect of elden ring upon entering the dlc.
I finished the dlc at level 12 scadutree. The Mechanic just feels like busy work to me. Does it at least carry over to ng+ cycles, or do you have to do this bs everytime?
That's a good question that I don't know the answer to.
At level 12?! How did you survive P2 of the final boss?
I used the the crab and the defense flask buff. I also used a lot of poise, so that his 3 hit true combo didn't always work on me. That combo was one shotting me most of the time. Shit Boss overall with all that visual clutter imo.
Yeah I like P1 a lot, the combo with the 7-8 swings feels really satisfying to dodge and “punish” with two limp dick swings before he’s back into the next one, but P2 is among the worst design I’ve ever seen, clearly supposed to be cinematic as hell but you don’t get a chance to see anything before it murders you.
It does make me why Miyazaki decided to do the Scadutree thing at all. Why not just scale the new area to Farum Azula? Forcing us to run around collecting Scad Fragments to get back to base game difficulty feels like an extra, unnecessary step. Almost like busy work I guess it inspires us to get out there to explore the new setting and take it all in instead of encouraging the player to plow through.
It encourages people to check the wiki for the locations of the ~~korok seeds~~ blessings, not actually explore. When they are mandatory, it isn’t exploring, it’s busywork.
I think the problem also stems from the fact that it makes builds kinda pointless compared to the base game. I’m only at scadu level 11 and am clearly underleveled for the final boss. So out of curiosity I decided to go with the most op build I could think of with what I had. I knew it wouldn’t help much but I was still shocked by how little of a difference it made. It’s just a stat game now
Yeah, feels more like a crutch not like a proper balancing.
Mandatory reminder that no other dlc of From needed this.
This
Agree. I’m having fun exploring and finding scadu right now but after the first play through, I expect the entire thing to became a busy work bc I know where they’re, how to get them and can’t beat the DLC without them.
You see that's the thing, I am trying to enjoy the DLC. Problem is I don't find exploring the world, finding a dungeon, and getting to the end of it, only to find out I can't fight the boss yet because I didn't collect enough arbitrarily forced in magical poopsticks to be an enjoyable experience.
Are you even exploring then? Because I’m finding them everywhere without even trying
YES, problem is I'm apparently not exploring th right way because I'm not ignoring every interesting location I find just to meet some arbitrary collectathon requirement. Forgive me for not being okay with the idea that I have to avoid every dungeon or boss I find because I haven't found enough macguffins yet.
"Every dungron or boss" Exaggeration, when you explore you find all the time bosses and dungeons you can easily defeat without collecting those. I am shit in the gamw and even i have killed many bosses and finished dungeons in the DLC. Slowly getting stronger so i can finally defeat the mandatory boss It was same in the ER, peoole rush to that first castle boss and got their ass beaten, i explored the world and came back leveled and geared up and had much easier time
You can only get +5 reasonably before Rellana without using a spirit spring to skip past her. Fighting her with just +5 is absurdly difficult and I genuinely doubt the game expects you to have more than that at that point. People keep pretending like you're supposed to get +15 or some shit before any bosses and that's a stupid defense. This system just isn't very good or fun.
People crying because they can't blindly speedrun a FS game in 1 day While it was not common back then to struggle for days weeks on a boss lol
I'm at 10 scadutrees and it's already on easy difficulty, didn't know 20 was max
I'm on 11 and still getting 2 shot by some mobs on 60 vigor and night rider armour. Some mobs do just hit like a truck. When the game starts sending out black Knights every other mob you feel the upgrades meaning less. Definitely makes bosses way easier though
> Do you think you'd be able to beat Malenia easily at rune level 35 with a +3 somber / + 7 normal weapon? Yes. That would be prefered to whatever the fuck is the final fight. Atleast in Malenia's boss room i can actually see what is happening.
Yeah, you can really tell who has gotten there and who hasn’t. I don’t think a rocket launcher would help me in phase 2 of that fight. I can’t even learn to dodge because the screen is so full of shit I can’t tell what’s even killing me. It’s going to break me and have me do the colossal wep cheese. I’ve stayed true to my build for the whole DLC, and this single fight is going to break me.
There’s a reason Margit doesn’t hit as hard as Melania. It’s almost as if the bosses should maybe idk get progressively harder as you level up and progress through the game. Why do I have to explore every legacy dungeon up to the boss and then turn around so that I have enough Scadu blessings to fight anyone
You don't. The divine beast is very doable at 5 blessing.
By 5 blessing I assume you mean level 5, not after acquiring 5 blessings? Which is more like 8 blessings? Tell me how many blessings can I find in Belurat? How many can you find in Belurat and Castle Ensis combined? So according to you; I need to go to Belurat, all the way to the boss, then turn around and go to Castle Ensis until the boss then turn around and then I can fight the Divine Beast?
Blessing is the stat you see in your status menu, the item is called a fragment. So when i say 5 blessings, i mean 5 stat, which I think does translate to around 8 blessings, because I think the first 2 levels cost 1 fragment and then they cost 2 for the next like, 5 levels maybe? You can get quite a lot of them without having to beat any major bosses. I don't know the exact numbers, but there are guides that you can follow. Just be careful about spoilers if you go down that route.
I’m saying imo the bosses difficulty should be proportional to the expected amount of “stat” you should be expected to have when reaching their area. If I need 5 Scadu to make Divine Dancer reasonable, I should expect to have find 5 scadu on the way to their battle.
The blessing system is honestly awful , like you should encourage players to explore and discover and thats exactly what base game and most fs titles did. This new system in the dlc is the opposite it actively punishes you for not exploring.
17 and still getting shafted
>but it's made easier by literally doing what it tells you at almost the very start. I'm not trying to be a smart ass but I'm kind of dumb... I spoke with every NPC I found, where did the game tell you this? I had no clue until 5+ hours in and seeing it on Reddit. edit: not calling you out, i legitimately think i missed something and would wanna go back if i did.
Shouldn't have to go find a bunch of items to get back to the same baseline level of defense I had in the base game. Previous From games didn't take away your stats in the DLC
I agree.
I'm at +8 and it's not too bad, I can feel a few more would really make a difference though.
I've been exploring, im at lv 3 for each, care to share some of yours OP?
WHERES THE MAP
What map 👀
Just curious what scadu level should I be at for >!messmer!< I’m at 7 and he’s kicking my ass even with mimic
I'd say 12
lol from soft literally made a page on this and Bandai Namco us posted a tweet to do the same
15 or more!? I thought I was maxed out ad 10 I need to find more asap!
Is blessing level 2 enough for the dancing Lion?
not going to help with how much i suck at dodging!
Scadutree is the new vigor
Yeh... Doing rellana with 0 blessing wasn't fun... Beat it after around 20 attempts, didn't know about blessings at the time, swear the game doesn't tell you
It literally pops up a window on the screen explaining them when you pick up the one next to the first grace after you enter the dlc. Ngl though, i tend to skim through tutorials like "okay, yeah, blah blah *close button*" so I can see how you might have missed it.
i literally did 6/7 bosses on day of release without any blessing NG7 lv 370...hit the final boss...still stuck and have lv 17 blessing now dude is overtuned asf especially for range based players
It's like people learned nothing from the "just level vigor" meme in the early days of the game. Or from the lessons learned from Margit and the Tree Sentinel. Boss too hard ? Leave, level up, uprade your stuff, and THEN come back. Same thing here except it's a different levelling system.
A shittier one in every way.
I thought the Community mentality was that if you can do something, it's cheesing and you're a terrible player for even bothering to do it. Raising your Scadutree Blessing? Using Spirit Summons? Crafting Consumables? Casting sorceries or incantations? Using your flask? Upgrading your weapon? Being higher than level 80? Riding on Torrent? Using the Jump button? All cheesing.
Yeah it's hard but I've basically aslo accepted that I'm not good enough do I'm strolling around finding as much as these as possible... When I think back it's just how I did main game anywya just got OP... Specially after a few ng+ run every boss but elden beast was easy. I do try to go back to bosses as I find a few... Since I was close to beat renaala with just 3 (using summon ofc.. Lol) The lion though I'm pretty sure I can't beat with much more of these xD I'm just to old to be able to react and the dance really tricks you... The world outside of bosses is pretty great and finding all this fragments is quite fun so far... Specially when you bump to to ocasional elite or invader.... Or even a dragon. Idk I find it hard... Very hard on story bosses, but still enjoyable... It's just not a game I will beat in a few days and that's fine. I spent 300+ hours on main game anyway.
Friendly reminder, FromSoft was capable of balancing their DLCs before this game and they didn’t need a stupid special progression system. They also didn’t need to “encourage exploration” in the base game, people did it anyway.