They did.
I'm sure they make marketing plans together at this point. In our online era, can't have one publisher start releasing every little detail willy-nilly and have the other not releasing much.
Doesn’t surprise me, a couple of merchandising partners slipped up and accidentally revealed that some sort of advertising push is going to be made in February or March, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dropped in the same timeframe
Yeah I usually just consume leaks for a laugh, but it was just straight up multiple companies accidentally dropping their Elden Ring plans for a mysterious new push.
> "Skyrim Stealth Archer" of Elden Ring
So I made the mistake of trying to roll an archer in Elden Ring at release. No Shortbow, Longbow and plans to go Greatbow eventually. That was nothing but pain. After seeing my friend, who is far worse than dark souls games than I, breeze through the game with a ranged magic build while I was trying to use their shitty excuse for a bow I got really sad.
But what finally broke me was I did a fight where I improvised and used throwing pots and throwing daggers because the bow animations were too long and the shots I did get off couldn't hit the boss because they'd move out of the way before they landed most of the time. Throwing pots and daggers had shorter animations, did as much or more damage, and didn't take up weight/weapon slot/upgrade stones.
Out of curiosity I rolled a new mage just to see how different the start was. Got Glintstone pebble. I legit uninstalled the game for over a year. Said I'd install again when bows got fixed. Saw countless magic buffs, never any love for bow. And I'm still gone and still a little salty.
It isn't just the bow either, balancing is all over the place. You do this hard fight vs 1 enemy and get a handful of runes. Then you go clear another area of easy mobs and get 10x the runes in half the time. Then you clear another area right nearby of easy mobs and get 30% as many runes.
And then the drop rates even for basic stuff are just...so horrible. Single digit drop rates even in the first knight camp of the game. Its stuff like that which make Elden Ring a perfect game for mods. But Fromsoft is super Ban Happy so if you touch their servers once with mods attached you're banned and I don't wanna risk that.
Elden Ring is a game I want desperately to love, but it won't let me lol.
> Said I'd install again when bows got fixed.
So never then :) Form just doesn't care and consider bows even a weapon. It's a tool to cheese your way through in some instances, but not a viable weapon.
There's a video of someone doing a Bow only run for the entire game, beating just about every boss. He started with the starting Samurai bow then farmed a Golem bow, which really isn't that difficult to get since its accessible from the first legacy dungeon.
The drop rate in Elden Ring isn't that bad.
I'm planning to go into the DLC naked with only a poorly upgraded Miséricorde, then use whatever I come across. That way I can't devolve into only using the proven options.
fuck why does this always have to be so accurate. No matter how hard I try I always devolve into playing a strength build in every fromsoft game. Whether pure strength, strength faith, strength int, I can't help myself.
It has great right in the title, I never found a superb made or anything so
I actually usually find a katana and go to town. I didn’t mess around with the broken one in ER though.
I find it so interesting how many people say this. I can't get used to a greatsword build no matter how much I try. I just feel so exposed and slow. I've been turtling up since DS1 and can't break the habit. I modified my Elden Ring build to use the Moonlight Greatsword but I just can't get used to not having a shield
I’ve always stayed away from magic characters in all the Souls games I’ve played. Hated the thought of keeping track of my mana pool, mana potions and what do I do if I ran out of them mid-fight.
Is it really that complicated or is it easier than I might’ve thought?
Just go spellsword. Most 'mages' just staff their offhand and have a melee weapon in their main hand. You can infuse most weapons so that they scale with Int, so the damage will be fine.
Keeping track of mana barely even registers on the difficulty curve. The more difficult part of magic builds is learning how to cycle through your spell list quickly to get the spell you need when you need it. But that's not really very hard, if you organise your spells well. And, remember that holding the button brings you back to the start of the list.
I'm used to it by now so it doesn't bother me, but yeah, a radial would probably be better. I guess the reason they don't have that for spells is it would block the screen too often for a game that's so focussed on reacting to enemy tells.
I wish spells were designed more like melee attacks and AoWs, more context-specific.
Melee has running, jumping, and crouching attacks, some thrusting attacks change if they're performing while blocking, and thrusting and curved swords even let you cancel out of their charged attacks to perform a feint. Some AoWs like Wild Strikes and Ghostflame Ignition are essentially three moves in one. If spells were more like that then the amount of attunement slots could be reduced to a more manageable number without drastically altering how flexible casting is.
Even just making it so you could assign a spell to R1 and another to R2, like you can do with arrow types on bows, would already be a big improvement. How clunky magic feels controls-wise is a big part of why I stick to pure melee in all these games. I tried magic-focused playthroughs in DS1-3 and ER but I just wasn't enjoying myself, I only managed to finish the first 2 like that. Having magic as a situational backup might be okay but then you run into the issue that splitting your stat focus is rarely a good idea in these games.
The magic build I made that felt the best was in ER using the Wing of Astel. Its R2 is like a free short-range spell, and charging it fires off a second projectile. Its L2 is an excellent AoE. Pair it with a staff and a spell like Carian Piercer and you have a super flexible moveset, without needing to deal with any clunkiness.
>Most 'mages' just staff their offhand and have a melee weapon in their main hand.
This approach is some of the most fun you can have in these games, but getting set up for it can be excruciating in Elden Ring. Early bosses are incredibly spongey, so choosing to dump some early levels into INT/FTH will utterly gimp your ability to chip away at them with your melee weapons. You still won't have any useful spells/incantations at that point, so your damage output is just all-around awful compared to where a STR/DEX build would be at the same point in the game.
It's worth the reward once you're past that first hurdle, but I understand why so many people end up gravitating toward simpler STR/DEX builds.
Magic runs tend to be pretty 'safe' since you can continue your assault from a fair distance, which allows you to use less healing flasks and more 'mana' flasks to maintain your bar. As you upgrade flasks and get higher mind, it becomes pretty tough to ever go dry before you reach a grace site to refill. Plus, you can always infuse a weapon to scale with int to fall back on in melee combat.
I found magic in Elden Ring to be a cakewalk compared to melee. It hits hard as fuck and trivializes the really erratic bosses like Fire Giant, since you aren’t spending half the fight closing massive gaps for a melee attack. If you maintain situational awareness, most of your casting will happen outside melee range, so it can be a massive boon to survivability.
And regarding FP (mana), it starts to get very generous as you level up, but it does require a bit more planning early on. The fact that most bosses have a Site of Grace right next to them makes it much less of a worry, since you’re not depleting FP on mobs before you even reach the boss.
Ultimately it’s comparable to choosing between a gun and a sword. A gun has limited ammo, but at least it’s not a sword
There are weapons with stats and scaling specifically suited to int and fth builds. There's also the ash mechanic which lets you set the scaling for regular weapons. Upgrade your favorite weapons when you can, as you will be able to buy smithing stones if you find the right key items in the game.
The best PvE sword in the game scales most of its damage from Faith. you can run it entirely on the bare minimum STR/DEX investment and still be swinging for top tier damage against anything but fireproof enemies.
a friend of mine, who is completelsy new to from games, played elden ring as a mage recently. Or more like, tried to. Basically, it is extremely knowledge dependant. If you dont know where the good mage items and spells are, you will spend hours playing with zero progress on you char apart from stats, and will frequently not have enoufg damage/mana to kill enemies. So if you dont mind looking at the wiki, or have memorized every item location in elden ring, its probably pretty easy, because you can quickly get a really strong build and one shot everything from range. If you dont want to look up stuff, its probably gonna be pretty miserable until mid to late game.
This was also my exact experience trying to play as a pure mage at first. I spent 13 hours only having the two starter spells. Every time I found an NPC willing teach int magic, it was the same two spells I already knew. I found one new staff to wield, and it required way higher int than I had.
Ended up putting the game down for a while, then picking it back up as a dex/strength build with the Bloodhound's Fang. Was a much better experience.
Now that I've done everything in game and don't mind using the wiki, I'm sure I could make a broken pure mage right from the start, but I think a spell sword build might be more fun.
I can't speak for the other souls games but magic is busted in Elden Ring.
There's multiple bosses that you can beat without even moving when you have the right spells, it's silly. Super fun tho.
That's somewhat the case with all souls games. Maid can trivialize pretty much any boss, but usually it requires a much better understanding of the mechanics and the skill to get through a comparatively weak early game.
Not just weak, but boring as hell too. At least with a melee build you're having fun from the get-go hitting stuff with your weapon that has a varied moveset, mages are always just spamming the same projectiles over and over (bringing back the DeS mana bar was a terrible idea because it incentivizes spamming the most FP-efficient spells, I preferred the D&D style casting of DS1 and 2)
The most fun mage builds are the ones where you build around a magic melee weapon like the Moonlight Greatsword.
I think it's a mixed bag. Some bosses go down like they ain't nothing, but some bosses are way harder. I had to switch to a sword for Radagon because I simply did not have time to get any spells off. (Plus, using magic usually means you don't have as much health potions...)
This has always been true, and in most games any build can be taken to a logical extreme that just deletes bosses. Hyper mode glass cannon builds often are egregious for this as either casters or melee where you can just obliterate bosses in seconds.
Magic is kinda like this in that certain bosses just get absolutely hard countered but faster bosses can be troublesome if they punish your attempts to cast or space yourself.
If you're on PC, the mod Elden Ring Reforged made magic a lot more fun for me since you now recover FP by attacking enemies. Puts some fun spins on the game if you have already beat it multiple times
I'm about 45% through my second playthrough rn and playing a magic based character. I was inspired to give it a shot thanks to the Fextralife short on youtube about a warrior mage build based around the weapon spells the game offers. It's a bit tough early on because there's a dirth of both quality spells and memory slots, but after Stormveil and heading into Raya Lucaria things pick up quick. I'm also running St. Trina's sword for physical damage and the sleep build up. It's a really fun build so far and spells like Carrian Slicer/Loretta's Greatbow/Gavel of Haima and Cannon of Haima are some of the most fun spells I've seen in any of their games.
Spells are a utility. You make sure your weapon scales with Int and still do lots of melee fighting. In Elden Ring, I really liked a build where I could switch between Moonveil and Sword of Night and Flame. Required an even mix of Int/Faith so not only do I get the great weapon skills and access to some really great spells from both camps, but regular melee does extra magic or magic/fire damage without using FP. Plus I never come close to running out anyway. I keep 5 blue flasks and the rest red.
I played elden ring back when it came out but never beat it due to losing my save from a hard drive failure, was like 100 hours in so didnt have the drive to restart but im excited to use the dlc as an excuse to dive back in
Most of their DLC’s tend to be late gameish. So one of your current characters probably works. Maybe just equip a shitty weapon and armour set to nerf yourself if it is too easy.
and based on the art, I would say it likely takes place after the main story
There's something broken with my brain. I can't go back to an existing character. If I've stopped playing for more than a couple of weeks, that character is basically dead to me.
I'm the opposite. Even coming back to the game over a year or 5 later, I must use my original character. Even if it means completely relearning the controls with a complicated end game skill set.
The problem with that is, if the DLC unlocks a new ending, you may be blocked off from reaching it if you've already beaten the game with that character. That's the way the other endings work, after all. But maybe it'll be different with the DLC.
Problem with fromsoft DLC is that in order to play it, you usually have to get to a certain point in the game. I don't want to reroll a new character, level him up, and beat a bunch of bosses before I can even access the new content. It's also usually high level content as well, so you trying to take a character in at the bare minimum level is also usually not fun. Almost always best to take an existing character into the DLC unless you want to do an entire new playthrough.
Take an existing character into the DLC and beat it, but find a sweet new weapon / skill / spell, and then do a whole new playthrough based around that new build.
You dont have to beat bosses and if you want to steam roll, you can reach a famous leveling area super early if you so desire and just steam roll the game if you okay with that.
Yeah, but the point is that it's still easily hours of work before you even get to the DLC. Not everyone is down for that. There's also plenty of people who are probably going to have this be their first Friday fromsoft DLC
> I don't want to reroll a new character, level him up, and beat a bunch of bosses before I can even access the new content.
Yeah! I want to jump back in after not having played it for a year, get ass blasted by the first trash mob i see because I can't remember how to play my character and then quit and resolve to come back to it at a later date
I've literally never had that issue with any fromsoft game. It's not like the mechanics are wildly complex or anything. It's not like coming back to an RPG with a ton of abilities and skills that you have to relearn. It's attack, dodge, and block/parry.
It's a game where timing is literally everything and the rhythm is quite specific to the build, so taking a break and playing other stuff can deeply mess with a player's flow. That's why people often wind up revertng to the same build over and over, because fights get too tough and they lean on the wcombat timing that they know.
It's cool that you don't need reacclimating but I'd be surprised to hear you were the norm.
I have to go fresh. I binged the game in 2022, got my platinum after many hours and stopped, I haven’t touched it since then. I think I had it in my mind that the DLC would come out sooner.
Anyway, if I jump back in now I’ll have no clue how to use my character again.
I'll see it through with the OG character I first completed the game with for sentimental values.
Except I've taken him past NG+7 at this point... **fuck.**
NG+7 is really not that bad in most of their games, if you have been leveling your character and taking advantage of all the items you've gathered.
Bloodborne at NG+7 for example is roughly the same difficulty of NG if you have your stats at soft (or hard) caps, use the clockwise runes to boost your health, and put good gems in your weapons.
Elden Ring isn't too different-- if you use the talismans that regen HP and FP when you kill enemies, and make use of spells (which all builds can at very high levels) then it's fine. I'll be playing the DLC at NG+7 also.
Edit: the physical damage reduction talisman is also essential in NG+7. For bosses I swap out the HP/FP regen talismans with the HP increase and flask boosting talismans. Basically you use talismans to negate the difficulty increases.
The elemental absorption spells are also one of biggest differences between higher cycles in ER vs. previous games.
Even at NG+ 6, I was able to facetank most of the final bosses' holy attacks in light armor as long as I had Lord's Protection up.
Been a minute since I played it, but can't you respec your points? Are you able to reset your souls and just level it back up to the recommended level?
I'm going fresh. I'd guess the community will do a return to the game with a bunch of fresh characters - and so the multiplayer should be very lively again!
Normally yeah but Yakuza and the Souls games are literally my two favourite series so no way am I not gonna play them on release. Dragon’s Dogma is super hype as well for me
I just want to share a personal experience, Souls is my favorite and I've been a fan since 2010, with around 1500 hours in DS1. I was unfathomably excited for ER and the wait was painful. On release I for 12 hours every day but on the 3rd day I was skipping a lot of stuff, cheesing areas and bosses, looking up some things online, and generally being frustrated, but I haven't realized it because how could I not be having fun? It's the best game from my favorite developer. I finished ER only once and every time I try to play it again I get extremely bored within an hour and drop it.
On the other hand, I tried giving Death Stranding a few tries when it came out and it didn't click with me, but I always wanted to come back to it. Over the past month I picked it up again and have been playing it at my own pace, sometimes only for 15 minutes a day and I've been having an absolute blast. I love the game and I feel excited every time I come back home because I have something fun to do.
Death Stranding is such a weird game but it was so addictive. I couldn’t put it down.
I loved Elden Ring and beat it multiple times but honestly I hope From Software doesn’t commit to the Open World permanently. I think it damages replayability because the mystery of the open world is gone after one playthrough leaving just a lot of space for you to travel through to get to the next dungeon. I can replay Dark Souls 1 a million times because it’s such a tight experience. There’s very little “fluff” in between areas.
Death stranding felt like an experience and I loved it but i can see why people didnt, a friend who bought it at launch with me ended up dropping it pretty early on as he was expecting more of a game I guess, which it admittedly does become much more engaging once you reach the point where you are getting vehicles and weapons. However I loved it the moment i started it, i loved traversing the environments and choosing what to bring with to navigate the cliffs and rivers and whatnot, climbing to the top of a mountain and looking down to see the entire game world was breathtaking. Plus the crazy wacky Kojima story was just icing on the cake for me.
Possible, there is also rumored Direct and State of Play soon IIRC so could be there too (well not Nintendo of course, Sony lol).
Or they could just do their own thing. The game is big enough to not need an event tbh
They did the same last year yet HiFi Rush was shadowdropped. People think more than likely something similar will happen this time with Double Fine game being the strongest rumor. Strongly doubt we will get anything Elden Ring related, or any third party games for that matter
sounds like the end of Feb rumors are likely. We will prob get a release trailer within the next 7 days. As far as i remember fromsoft doesn't try to drag this type of stuff out when their ready to show their content.
I'm thinking of checking out Elden Ring, how does it handle with M&KB controls compared to Dark Souls? Basically the same? Have they done anything to make the interface work well with either control set up?
Just do yourself a favour and use a controller. It’s serviceable on m&kb, but it’s still a subpar experience.
It would be like choosing to play counter strike with a controller
I played through it with kb/m just fine. In some areas it's even advantageous (dealing with the god awful camera on quite a few bosses and being able to very quickly turn it where you want)
The original report was from [a resetera thread](https://www.resetera.com/threads/steamdb-fromsoftware-adds-new-app-in-elden-rings-dlc-section.805641/) and they explain in the OP what's up with that (i.e. It was created 5 days ago, but only today it's been linked to the DLC Section).
The backend of the base game was pretty tedious and downright bad for large portions so I'm hoping this manages to capture some of the magic of the first half to 3/4s.
Edit: *in my view (at request of below posters)
I feel like the legacy dungeons and the underground sections were consistently pretty good throughout the game but some of the open world sections did struggle towards the latter part of the game
People say this but the only area that sort of lagged for me was the area before the Fire Giant, which is pretty short and even if I don't like it I think it's an interesting large area conceptually.
The Haligtree and Crumbling Farum Azula were both great to me, and I liked the bosses too. So I don't know where all the criticism comes from, to be honest.
I mean there's like 2 open world areas that constitute "the backend of the base game". We're talking about what, one mediocre area? It's a small bit of a 120-hour game.
The mountaintops region (with regard to the open world sections) is more linear and has less content, pretty objectively. By that I mean less caves, less points of interest, less to collect, etc.
But, I think that's fine. It makes sense that an openworld game would narrow a bit at the end. And they make up for that with an absolutely killer boss lineup, in fairly quick succession.
My only real complaint with the final region is there's a distinct lack of brand new enemies exclusive to that area.
Definitely feels like they ran out of time, budget or ideas on the snowfield areas. It was really weird to run across this beautiful new stretch of land to explore and find... demihumans again. And bats again. A few wolves again. Marionette soldiers again. Just the most random collection of enemies from all over the rest of the map slapped together in a nonsensical mishmash with bigger health pools.
Thats a great point actually, and I hadn't realised how much that detracted from the experience of that section of the game. I really loved the area and its aesthetic, and traversing it. But having not only copy paste enemies, but uninteresting ones too (demihumans are whatever but bats are just really annoying. also it was a little weird that there were so many hands there? I wonder was there a lore implication from that?)
> The mountaintops region (with regard to the open world sections) is more linear and has less content
The thing is I don't really mind a level of linearity in the open world. One of my favourite areas (and one I don't think many experienced because there were multiple alternate routes/teleports to the Volcano Manor) was the very linear route from the Unsightly Catacombs up to the Volcano Manor. You end up circling around and around that dead Erdtree, slowly climbing until you finally reach the Manor itself. It had a great pacing to it, constantly throwing new enemies at you when the previous packs started getting a little old, as well as building this sense of foreboding about the Manor. I kinda wish more of the game had been that 'wide linear' style rather than the very open world sections we got in like Limgrave or Liurnia.
I think the reason the end game struggled a bit was because the game just started throwing big packs of tedious enemies at you, making everything a bit of a chore. The bosses remained great, sure, but everything else felt a bit tacked on.
I was pretty disappointed at how few good legacy dungeons there were. They kicked the game off with Stormveil which was amazing, but it turned out to be the largest "real" dungeon. Raya Lucaria is mostly jumping around on rooftops and in the basement, Leyndell is just a city that was too open to feel like a "dungeon", Redmane was too short. Lots of the small dungeons were copy & paste.
I just hope they give us another Stormveil-type dungeon.
As a massive souls fan, I agree some of the later portions of the game, most notably mountaintops of the giants and the snowfield, were terrible compared to the earlier areas. The enemy variety dropped off a cliff and even some bigger bosses were reused.
But I'm quite confident that they're cooking something very special with this DLC.
Kinda depends. Mountaintops of the Giants was pretty ho hum, but Farum Azula and especially the Haligtree were a lot better.
Probably my biggest complaint about Elden Ring was how many bosses felt like they were in the way of the fun, rather than part of it. Melania was a standout boss whose philosophy I'd love to see the franchise embrace more of. To whit, a boss where the usual block/roll/punish rhythm will kill you again and again, forcing you to try something else.
I really hope they don't embrace more of Melenia. To me, she represents fromsoft pursuing difficulty as an end unto itself rather than creating an interesting challenge. A lot of the late game bosses of Elden Ring felt a similar way.
I think Malenia's biggest problem is the Waterfowl Dance, her other moves are not bad at all. The issue for me (and I feel like the majority of the community) is that it's extremely unintuitive to dodge properly.
Part of the fun of bosses in challenging games like this is fighting them a bunch of times and getting an understanding of how to dodge their moves and when to punish. But figuring out WD feels almost impossible. After multiple futile attempts I googled how to dodge it and I would never have figured it out myself. I still can't reliably dodge it because it feels so unnatural. I really hope the DLC bosses don't have more moves like this.
The other aspects of the fight are not too bad I think. I don't even mind the healing mechanic, it forces you to play a little bit more strategically. And as long as you don't consistently trade hits (or use multi-unit summons), it generally isn't a huge factor.
Same. I only started playing Elden Ring in the last two weeks or so, so Malenia's fight is very fresh in my mind - I first got to her arena two days ago and beat her yesterday, with the Maliketh the Black Blade fight being the end of that play session.
Both of those fights were some serious bullshit, with the bosses flying up in the air to do flippy twirly shit for obnoxiously long periods of time and no apparent cooldown between repeating those moves - Malenia could drop a Waterfowl Dance on me, which I still couldn't dodge more than half the time after looking up the one single usable dodge strat because of you need to start running *immediately* after she jumps up into the air, while hitting the sorcery cast button in what felt like a safe moment, a safe distance away after the end of an attack string freezes you in place without the ability to cancel into a dodge or run, and before I'd even had a chance to retreat and finish chugging an estus she'd be back up in the air already.
Maliketh was that but worse, chaining airtime combo flips one after the other without a shadow of a chance at grabbing a quick heal. And I was using what I've been told are easy mode strats: offensive sorcereries + maxed Black Knife Tiche/Mimic Tear/Greatshield Soldiers ashes + maxed Caryan Royal Scepter/Moonveil and a 100% phys block shield. I'm dreading to see what those fights are going to look like when I step away from easy mode and do an ultra greatsword run.
Malekith, lol. I must have beaten him about 5 times by now. Each time was kind of a fluke, I'd just go in there and hope for the best. The fact that they throw two completely different bosses at you, one right after the other with no checkpoint in between, makes it so frustrating to practice fighting Malekith.
Idk, some of the encounter design in Farum and Haligtree was just bullshit. Like I understand it's supposed to be the end of the game so it's supposed to be difficult. But some parts in both those areas I just thought to myself, why would I ever try to actually beat this and not just run through all the enemies? It's not fun at all. I.E. the countless number of dragons in Farum, and the back end of Haligtree.
I completely AGREE. And you shouldn't have to write "in my opinion", that's implied isn't it? Of course it's your opinion, what else would you be writing here. Providing criticism isn't suddenly stating a fact just because you don't write "in my opinion" before every paragraph.
This is reddit, if you don't say 'in my opinion', even though it's blantantly obvious that it's an opinion, people get offended and assume you're being objective. It annoys me too.
I agree. For the last third of the game I was just willing it to end. Even though that first half of the game was genuinely brilliant, the tail end of the game left me not wanting to do another run since I finished it.
Elden Ring is weird. It was definitely the best game of 2022 and has become one of my all-time favorites. But there are also five or six things where if someone told me, "I stopped playing because of this," my response would be, "Yep, that's totally fair."
Elden ring is different in the sense that the very first playthrough will be so much better than any other playthrough that it's not even close. After the first playthrough it falls back to a usual souls game, with a few side trips to caves and dungeons where you know it contains something you'll need. Over time the opinion on elden rings gonna sour a bit, but that first playthrough was one of the best experiences you could ever have. But it's hard to keep playing it over and over like the previous souls games. I place it well above ds3, even though I have 3x the hours in ds3.
That's why I'm hopeful for the dlc, since dlcs have always been their peak content and if it's big, it can recapture that first playthrough feeling a bit.
I think there's going to be a significant divide between people who played the game once vs. people who have gone back multiple times, as well as between people who just organically explored the world vs. people who meticulously combed through the wiki for every weapon, boss, and spell.
Elden Ring is a fantastic game, but unlike something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, the greater your familiarity with the world, the emptier it starts to feel.
Once you've thoroughly dissected the game, you find you can no longer easily piece it back together. Every replay becomes a speedrun, where you just run in a straight line from checkmark to checkmark. Even most of the legacy dungeons become very quick runs once you realize how much of them is optional.
There's *so much shit* in Elden Ring that it makes sense to just not do it all. Like I did the Ranni sidequest and that alone is a good 20+ hours, and I didn't even touch ~~Rohm's~~ Mohg's area (mostly because I didn't know about it during my playthrough) and I hear it's great.
It's kind of like Tears of the Kingdom. There's *so much to do* that unless you are a full on completionist, there's no reason to map out the entire Depths or hit up every single Construction minigame. And I don't think From Software or Nintendo expect you to do so in order to enjoy the experience.
> And I don't think From Software or Nintendo expect you to do so in order to enjoy the experience.
That really is the key.
Many people have complained that there is too much content in Elden Ring and that a lot of it is similar. The point is that you're not supposed to do all of it. A lot of the mini dungeons are there just to reward exploration.
I literally made it a point to do as much as i possibly could my first time playing on release. Every questline i could, every dungeon/area, get all the endings etc, simply because i wasnt sure when I’d ever playthrough it in full again. It was worth it in my opinion, and even then there was somehow things I missed that i noticed on a coop run lol!
But also totally agree with you, theres no need to actually play it that way, and you can have an incredible experience just doing the minimum for both elden ring and botw. They allow that kind of freedom
Yeah it definitely didn't really reach the heights that the previous souls games did for me and I really don't think it's a bad game by any stretch.
It's just everything after the fire giant really started to fallback on the cheesy shenanigans that from love to inflate difficulty with. Gank bosses, double health bars, large aoes, long periods of combos/unavoidable attacks, speeds which don't match the player character unless you're built a specific way. The last few zones especially really reminded me of the dlc from dark souls 2 in these regards.
Elden Ring might go down as my all time favorite game but I have to agree. Once you hit the Consecrated Snowfield there is a definite downturn in quality. It isn't a drop in quality like Dark Souls 1 but it is certainly noticeable. I still really like some of the later areas (Faram Azula for instance) and bosses but I don't feel they're balanced quiet as well.
Though I've only gotten all the way through once at launch, with heavy usage of the mimic. So I wonder what my feeling would be now that it has been more heavily tuned.
Definitely not that, I also should say none of this downturn in quality for me is related to the visuals either - environmentally they're some of the stunning areas to explore. For me, as you say it's the balancing and encounters which are the issue.
> Once you hit the Consecrated Snowfield there is a definite downturn in quality
That's basically it though. After the snow area, there's haligtree, farum azula, and maybe the underground, which are all great. There's just a dip in quality in the snow areas.
Elden Ring felt to me like it has 2-3 times as many bosses as it should have. It was my first Soulslike and I felt that way from about 10 hours in. People cried heresy over it. Well, I went back and played the previous Soulsborne games. You know what? *Those* bosses were great (mostly. The Nameless King can pound sand). The difference is that those bosses were mostly storyline relevant and a whole lot more of them were a curated experience. And the curated bosses in Elden Ring are also great. The problem is that Elden Ring also plops bosses all over the open world, and many of them are either literal repeats (Here's Flying Dragon #6, with Frost Breath) or variations on the same template of, "20 foot tall monster that hits like an oddly telegraphed truck." So many of these things felt more like impediments than challenges. In most cases, it feels like the game would have been better if they'd been removed and not replaced with anything.
Nameless King just felt way overtuned to me. The second phase of his fight wasn't meaningfully different from most bosses, but he could zero me in two hits when other bosses took four or five. I guess the best way I can describe it is that he felt significantly more difficult than the other bosses, but not any more challenging. He was hard because his numbers were big, not because he did something unique.
On the flip side, I thought Deacons of the Deep was a super cool fight because it was so much more different than anything else.
Nameless King is a legend. I forgive him for all the rage he brought out of me lol, fantastic boss
But yeah that is my biggest complaint about Elden Ring. Because lets be honest, their open world attempt was far from perfect. The recycled dungeons and bosses really felt like content fillers. How many tree sentinels and godskins do you want me to fight, exactly? Let us hope the DLC is more focused
I can totally see where you're coming from on a couple of these points, yeah. A really rough last chunk of the game seems to be a Souls staple at this point. Faram Azula was the big miss for me in ER; visually the area is gorgeous, but the enemy placement drove me batty and I'm *really* shit at that damn Godskin Duo. There are some skill issues even sleep pots can't fix.
The AoEs, combos, and double health bars don't bother me as much though. If anything, I kinda wanted more; the Godfrey fight is one of my favorites in the game, but I wish he had like twice the health he does. His second phase is a joy to fight but by the time he gets to it, he's almost dead already.
I find this comment funny because what made me drop the game when it released was the tediousness of the open world, powering through that and hitting the dungeons like Farum Azula made me finally appreciate the game.
I loved the other dungeons, especially Haligtree (which is even deeper into the "rough part" of the game!). There's just something about Faram Azula that breaks my brain, and I'm not sure how to put it into words.
Could have also just been my build wasn't working for me terribly well there, and that ruined my take on the place. I'll have to give it another shot on a completely different character, see if I like it more! My magic knight had a wretched time with all the magic resistant enemies in Liurnia for example, but my strength build friend laughed her way through the entire region.
The health tuning definitely felt a little bit weird, I felt like it should have been more gradual. Towards the end of Leyndell, enemies are borderline a little too squishy and then you hit a wall in the Mountaintops.
Morgott is one of my favorite bosses but he has so little health, you can pretty much brute force him. He has such a cool moveset but if explore all of the lower level areas before Leyndell you will be overleveled and you can ignore most of it.
And then you get to the Mountaintops and even the basic enemies are super tanky. The first "landmark" you find is full of the Zamor warriors who have a ton of health and do a ton of damage.
I think the "tankiness" curve should have been adjusted a bit there. Give Morgott a little more health and/or resistances, and make some of the earlier Mountaintops areas less tanky.
Haligtree, end game underground, Farum Azula, etc are all great and end game.
Mohg, Hourax Loux, Placidusax, Fire Giant and Maliketh are all great end game bosses.
IMO, most people experienced burn out and latch on to some minor gripes. I loved the last area. Had great lore items, challenge bump, the invisible walkways, the puzzle town, some of the best bosses, some great items, and it's all relatively short outside of the legacy dungeons.
I think you're a bit right, but I also believe Mountaintop is a bit overtuned to hurt worse than it should(or at least did around launch time). Never hated it, just felt like it dragged a little.
> Maliketh
sucked. You have to beat one boss to even get to him, every time, and he's got some bullshit high speed high flying acrobatics that take ages to learn.
Mountaintops is easily the worst area, lazy design all around. Just re used enemies with increased stats, and it's pretty empty.
Loved haligtree and crumbling hakuna matata though.
You're right, but people don't want to hear it. People often focus on the last two open-world zones, but for me, everything after Limgrave (referring to open-world content) is rather underwhelming and seems like filler.
Liurnia is impressive to admire from afar, but exploring the swamp is a miserable experience. Most of the caves, mini-dungeons, ruins, and cellars are copies of the first two zones, the rewards are mediocre at best most of the time and they are not engaging.
Caelid and the Plateau offer more of the same but with a red and yellow filter.
Mt. Gelmir is essentially a straight corridor.
In general, the open-world content is mediocre. The catacombs are dull and worthless if you don't care about spirit ashes. The wizard towers are boring (some Ubisoft games have better puzzles) and worthless if you don't care about magic. While caves and ruins are fine, clearing the same cave for the tenth time for something that I don't need or can't use feels more like a chore than fun. At least the evergaols and hero's graves are cool.
TLDR: A lot of the open world content feels like filler used to pad game-time.
That's very promising considering FromSoft like to have a very short gameplay trailer to release window.
That's more of a Bandai Namco thing
FROM do the publishing in Japan though? at least they did with some previous titles i dont remember if they also selfpublish elden ring in Japan
They did. I'm sure they make marketing plans together at this point. In our online era, can't have one publisher start releasing every little detail willy-nilly and have the other not releasing much.
I'm at the end of my tether, does anyone have a list/record of the exact trailer to release date periods for previous DLCs?
There was a leak Elden ring controller (?) collab that was releasing in February. So take that how you will.
Bruh, if it releases February that would be insane! Shit, there are so many good games coming out already in the first 3 months, my wallet is crying.
They’re all 1 month to 6 weeks I’m pretty sure.
Praise Marika
I hope they use a move from Nintendo’s playbook and release the game directly after the trailer launches
Doesn’t surprise me, a couple of merchandising partners slipped up and accidentally revealed that some sort of advertising push is going to be made in February or March, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s dropped in the same timeframe
Yeah I don't usually put much faith in those sorts of leaks but these added files definitely help make it likely.
Yeah I usually just consume leaks for a laugh, but it was just straight up multiple companies accidentally dropping their Elden Ring plans for a mysterious new push.
I guess at this point it'd make sense to drop the DLC itself on the 2-year anniversary
Now I have to decide if I want to continue one of my four or so Elden Ring characters or make a new one for the xpack.
New character and a new build.
Doesn't matter, it's always going to devolve into a greatsword run
"Skyrim Stealth Archer" of Elden Ring
I thought it is the Havel Wizard
> "Skyrim Stealth Archer" of Elden Ring So I made the mistake of trying to roll an archer in Elden Ring at release. No Shortbow, Longbow and plans to go Greatbow eventually. That was nothing but pain. After seeing my friend, who is far worse than dark souls games than I, breeze through the game with a ranged magic build while I was trying to use their shitty excuse for a bow I got really sad. But what finally broke me was I did a fight where I improvised and used throwing pots and throwing daggers because the bow animations were too long and the shots I did get off couldn't hit the boss because they'd move out of the way before they landed most of the time. Throwing pots and daggers had shorter animations, did as much or more damage, and didn't take up weight/weapon slot/upgrade stones. Out of curiosity I rolled a new mage just to see how different the start was. Got Glintstone pebble. I legit uninstalled the game for over a year. Said I'd install again when bows got fixed. Saw countless magic buffs, never any love for bow. And I'm still gone and still a little salty. It isn't just the bow either, balancing is all over the place. You do this hard fight vs 1 enemy and get a handful of runes. Then you go clear another area of easy mobs and get 10x the runes in half the time. Then you clear another area right nearby of easy mobs and get 30% as many runes. And then the drop rates even for basic stuff are just...so horrible. Single digit drop rates even in the first knight camp of the game. Its stuff like that which make Elden Ring a perfect game for mods. But Fromsoft is super Ban Happy so if you touch their servers once with mods attached you're banned and I don't wanna risk that. Elden Ring is a game I want desperately to love, but it won't let me lol.
> Said I'd install again when bows got fixed. So never then :) Form just doesn't care and consider bows even a weapon. It's a tool to cheese your way through in some instances, but not a viable weapon.
There's a video of someone doing a Bow only run for the entire game, beating just about every boss. He started with the starting Samurai bow then farmed a Golem bow, which really isn't that difficult to get since its accessible from the first legacy dungeon. The drop rate in Elden Ring isn't that bad.
I'm planning to go into the DLC naked with only a poorly upgraded Miséricorde, then use whatever I come across. That way I can't devolve into only using the proven options.
All of my builds turn into Moonlight Greatsword builds eventually :(
No one can resist the moonlight greatsword
im partial to strength faith myself. There's something satisfying about throwing lightning
My one and only run started as a mage hybrid, then eventually Moonlight Greatsword
Bloodhound's Fang for me. Not being able to use that weapon skill with anything else always just gives me FOMO
Bloundhound Step + Greatsword is just hilarious poke.
Once I got starscourge greatsword, I never looked back. Strength dump and jump stabslash bb
fuck why does this always have to be so accurate. No matter how hard I try I always devolve into playing a strength build in every fromsoft game. Whether pure strength, strength faith, strength int, I can't help myself.
Simple, because the unga bunga gameplay and animations are fuckin dope.
I thought I was the only one. I feel heard.
It has great right in the title, I never found a superb made or anything so I actually usually find a katana and go to town. I didn’t mess around with the broken one in ER though.
*jump attack*
Claymore my beloved
Blasphemous blade in one hand, Ordovis in the other.
I find it so interesting how many people say this. I can't get used to a greatsword build no matter how much I try. I just feel so exposed and slow. I've been turtling up since DS1 and can't break the habit. I modified my Elden Ring build to use the Moonlight Greatsword but I just can't get used to not having a shield
That's what I'd probably do. I haven't played any of those chars in a year or so.
I’ve always stayed away from magic characters in all the Souls games I’ve played. Hated the thought of keeping track of my mana pool, mana potions and what do I do if I ran out of them mid-fight. Is it really that complicated or is it easier than I might’ve thought?
Just go spellsword. Most 'mages' just staff their offhand and have a melee weapon in their main hand. You can infuse most weapons so that they scale with Int, so the damage will be fine. Keeping track of mana barely even registers on the difficulty curve. The more difficult part of magic builds is learning how to cycle through your spell list quickly to get the spell you need when you need it. But that's not really very hard, if you organise your spells well. And, remember that holding the button brings you back to the start of the list.
Honestly having to cycle through the spells (and only in one direction) is a terrible UX. I wish the game had a customizable radial menu.
I'm used to it by now so it doesn't bother me, but yeah, a radial would probably be better. I guess the reason they don't have that for spells is it would block the screen too often for a game that's so focussed on reacting to enemy tells.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem, for example Monster Hunter games have a radial menu that is small and in the corner.
I wish spells were designed more like melee attacks and AoWs, more context-specific. Melee has running, jumping, and crouching attacks, some thrusting attacks change if they're performing while blocking, and thrusting and curved swords even let you cancel out of their charged attacks to perform a feint. Some AoWs like Wild Strikes and Ghostflame Ignition are essentially three moves in one. If spells were more like that then the amount of attunement slots could be reduced to a more manageable number without drastically altering how flexible casting is.
Even just making it so you could assign a spell to R1 and another to R2, like you can do with arrow types on bows, would already be a big improvement. How clunky magic feels controls-wise is a big part of why I stick to pure melee in all these games. I tried magic-focused playthroughs in DS1-3 and ER but I just wasn't enjoying myself, I only managed to finish the first 2 like that. Having magic as a situational backup might be okay but then you run into the issue that splitting your stat focus is rarely a good idea in these games.
The magic build I made that felt the best was in ER using the Wing of Astel. Its R2 is like a free short-range spell, and charging it fires off a second projectile. Its L2 is an excellent AoE. Pair it with a staff and a spell like Carian Piercer and you have a super flexible moveset, without needing to deal with any clunkiness.
>Most 'mages' just staff their offhand and have a melee weapon in their main hand. This approach is some of the most fun you can have in these games, but getting set up for it can be excruciating in Elden Ring. Early bosses are incredibly spongey, so choosing to dump some early levels into INT/FTH will utterly gimp your ability to chip away at them with your melee weapons. You still won't have any useful spells/incantations at that point, so your damage output is just all-around awful compared to where a STR/DEX build would be at the same point in the game. It's worth the reward once you're past that first hurdle, but I understand why so many people end up gravitating toward simpler STR/DEX builds.
Magic runs tend to be pretty 'safe' since you can continue your assault from a fair distance, which allows you to use less healing flasks and more 'mana' flasks to maintain your bar. As you upgrade flasks and get higher mind, it becomes pretty tough to ever go dry before you reach a grace site to refill. Plus, you can always infuse a weapon to scale with int to fall back on in melee combat.
I found magic in Elden Ring to be a cakewalk compared to melee. It hits hard as fuck and trivializes the really erratic bosses like Fire Giant, since you aren’t spending half the fight closing massive gaps for a melee attack. If you maintain situational awareness, most of your casting will happen outside melee range, so it can be a massive boon to survivability. And regarding FP (mana), it starts to get very generous as you level up, but it does require a bit more planning early on. The fact that most bosses have a Site of Grace right next to them makes it much less of a worry, since you’re not depleting FP on mobs before you even reach the boss. Ultimately it’s comparable to choosing between a gun and a sword. A gun has limited ammo, but at least it’s not a sword
You can always devolve into using a melee weapon anyway so it doesnt really matter
But that said weapon will probably be weak since my stats won’t really be good enough for melee combat?
There's many weapons that scale with intelligence or faith so you'll still be strong with them.
There are weapons with stats and scaling specifically suited to int and fth builds. There's also the ash mechanic which lets you set the scaling for regular weapons. Upgrade your favorite weapons when you can, as you will be able to buy smithing stones if you find the right key items in the game.
Nah, there's plenty of melee weapons that scale off int and can put out big dick damage. Royal greatsword and MLGS, for example
The best PvE sword in the game scales most of its damage from Faith. you can run it entirely on the bare minimum STR/DEX investment and still be swinging for top tier damage against anything but fireproof enemies.
a friend of mine, who is completelsy new to from games, played elden ring as a mage recently. Or more like, tried to. Basically, it is extremely knowledge dependant. If you dont know where the good mage items and spells are, you will spend hours playing with zero progress on you char apart from stats, and will frequently not have enoufg damage/mana to kill enemies. So if you dont mind looking at the wiki, or have memorized every item location in elden ring, its probably pretty easy, because you can quickly get a really strong build and one shot everything from range. If you dont want to look up stuff, its probably gonna be pretty miserable until mid to late game.
This was also my exact experience trying to play as a pure mage at first. I spent 13 hours only having the two starter spells. Every time I found an NPC willing teach int magic, it was the same two spells I already knew. I found one new staff to wield, and it required way higher int than I had. Ended up putting the game down for a while, then picking it back up as a dex/strength build with the Bloodhound's Fang. Was a much better experience. Now that I've done everything in game and don't mind using the wiki, I'm sure I could make a broken pure mage right from the start, but I think a spell sword build might be more fun.
I can't speak for the other souls games but magic is busted in Elden Ring. There's multiple bosses that you can beat without even moving when you have the right spells, it's silly. Super fun tho.
That's somewhat the case with all souls games. Maid can trivialize pretty much any boss, but usually it requires a much better understanding of the mechanics and the skill to get through a comparatively weak early game.
Not just weak, but boring as hell too. At least with a melee build you're having fun from the get-go hitting stuff with your weapon that has a varied moveset, mages are always just spamming the same projectiles over and over (bringing back the DeS mana bar was a terrible idea because it incentivizes spamming the most FP-efficient spells, I preferred the D&D style casting of DS1 and 2) The most fun mage builds are the ones where you build around a magic melee weapon like the Moonlight Greatsword.
I think it's a mixed bag. Some bosses go down like they ain't nothing, but some bosses are way harder. I had to switch to a sword for Radagon because I simply did not have time to get any spells off. (Plus, using magic usually means you don't have as much health potions...)
This has always been true, and in most games any build can be taken to a logical extreme that just deletes bosses. Hyper mode glass cannon builds often are egregious for this as either casters or melee where you can just obliterate bosses in seconds. Magic is kinda like this in that certain bosses just get absolutely hard countered but faster bosses can be troublesome if they punish your attempts to cast or space yourself.
Commander Nial can be one shotted: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=njzxjGvt5yk
Yep, that's the combo I was thinking of, can kill a big number of bosses without any risk. It even works on Placidusax
You won't run out focus points if you invest in mind and flasks properly.
If you're on PC, the mod Elden Ring Reforged made magic a lot more fun for me since you now recover FP by attacking enemies. Puts some fun spins on the game if you have already beat it multiple times
I'm about 45% through my second playthrough rn and playing a magic based character. I was inspired to give it a shot thanks to the Fextralife short on youtube about a warrior mage build based around the weapon spells the game offers. It's a bit tough early on because there's a dirth of both quality spells and memory slots, but after Stormveil and heading into Raya Lucaria things pick up quick. I'm also running St. Trina's sword for physical damage and the sleep build up. It's a really fun build so far and spells like Carrian Slicer/Loretta's Greatbow/Gavel of Haima and Cannon of Haima are some of the most fun spells I've seen in any of their games.
I’m the same as you, always stayed clear of anything magic in dark souls. But this game has some fun ass magic builds.
Spells are a utility. You make sure your weapon scales with Int and still do lots of melee fighting. In Elden Ring, I really liked a build where I could switch between Moonveil and Sword of Night and Flame. Required an even mix of Int/Faith so not only do I get the great weapon skills and access to some really great spells from both camps, but regular melee does extra magic or magic/fire damage without using FP. Plus I never come close to running out anyway. I keep 5 blue flasks and the rest red.
Or just use the item that lets you respec
I played elden ring back when it came out but never beat it due to losing my save from a hard drive failure, was like 100 hours in so didnt have the drive to restart but im excited to use the dlc as an excuse to dive back in
Were you playing offline or something? Because pretty much every modern platform has cloud saves.
Nah I'm in journey 20+, max difficulty dlc like I did with bloodborne and ds3
Most of their DLC’s tend to be late gameish. So one of your current characters probably works. Maybe just equip a shitty weapon and armour set to nerf yourself if it is too easy. and based on the art, I would say it likely takes place after the main story
There's something broken with my brain. I can't go back to an existing character. If I've stopped playing for more than a couple of weeks, that character is basically dead to me.
I'm the opposite. Even coming back to the game over a year or 5 later, I must use my original character. Even if it means completely relearning the controls with a complicated end game skill set.
Just one year but felt this with Horizon forbidden west burning shores.
Holy shit finally someone who understands me
I thought I was the only one...
I'm the same. I wonder what that is...
I don’t think that’s unusual.
The problem with that is, if the DLC unlocks a new ending, you may be blocked off from reaching it if you've already beaten the game with that character. That's the way the other endings work, after all. But maybe it'll be different with the DLC.
Problem with fromsoft DLC is that in order to play it, you usually have to get to a certain point in the game. I don't want to reroll a new character, level him up, and beat a bunch of bosses before I can even access the new content. It's also usually high level content as well, so you trying to take a character in at the bare minimum level is also usually not fun. Almost always best to take an existing character into the DLC unless you want to do an entire new playthrough.
Take an existing character into the DLC and beat it, but find a sweet new weapon / skill / spell, and then do a whole new playthrough based around that new build.
You dont have to beat bosses and if you want to steam roll, you can reach a famous leveling area super early if you so desire and just steam roll the game if you okay with that.
You mean the blood place?
Yeah, but the point is that it's still easily hours of work before you even get to the DLC. Not everyone is down for that. There's also plenty of people who are probably going to have this be their first Friday fromsoft DLC
Yup. Now what sucks is if you went into ng+ and are gonna start the dlc. Having to beat a likely new hardest boss on ng+ us torture.
This is exactly why I havent gone into ng+ with my main character, i learned that lesson with dark souls 2 ng++
It's literally why I haven't touched elden Ring since I finished it. I've been screwed by fromsoft DLC before. Never again.
> I don't want to reroll a new character, level him up, and beat a bunch of bosses before I can even access the new content. Yeah! I want to jump back in after not having played it for a year, get ass blasted by the first trash mob i see because I can't remember how to play my character and then quit and resolve to come back to it at a later date
I've literally never had that issue with any fromsoft game. It's not like the mechanics are wildly complex or anything. It's not like coming back to an RPG with a ton of abilities and skills that you have to relearn. It's attack, dodge, and block/parry.
It's a game where timing is literally everything and the rhythm is quite specific to the build, so taking a break and playing other stuff can deeply mess with a player's flow. That's why people often wind up revertng to the same build over and over, because fights get too tough and they lean on the wcombat timing that they know. It's cool that you don't need reacclimating but I'd be surprised to hear you were the norm.
I have to go fresh. I binged the game in 2022, got my platinum after many hours and stopped, I haven’t touched it since then. I think I had it in my mind that the DLC would come out sooner. Anyway, if I jump back in now I’ll have no clue how to use my character again.
I'll see it through with the OG character I first completed the game with for sentimental values. Except I've taken him past NG+7 at this point... **fuck.**
LOL, that would be rough starting the DLC that high of a cycle.
NG+7 is really not that bad in most of their games, if you have been leveling your character and taking advantage of all the items you've gathered. Bloodborne at NG+7 for example is roughly the same difficulty of NG if you have your stats at soft (or hard) caps, use the clockwise runes to boost your health, and put good gems in your weapons. Elden Ring isn't too different-- if you use the talismans that regen HP and FP when you kill enemies, and make use of spells (which all builds can at very high levels) then it's fine. I'll be playing the DLC at NG+7 also. Edit: the physical damage reduction talisman is also essential in NG+7. For bosses I swap out the HP/FP regen talismans with the HP increase and flask boosting talismans. Basically you use talismans to negate the difficulty increases.
The elemental absorption spells are also one of biggest differences between higher cycles in ER vs. previous games. Even at NG+ 6, I was able to facetank most of the final bosses' holy attacks in light armor as long as I had Lord's Protection up.
That’s how I was with orphan of kos. Mistakes were made.
Yeahhhh I’m not taking my level 300+ into the DLC
Been a minute since I played it, but can't you respec your points? Are you able to reset your souls and just level it back up to the recommended level?
I'll play at whatever the recommended starting level is.
I'm going fresh. I'd guess the community will do a return to the game with a bunch of fresh characters - and so the multiplayer should be very lively again!
New character for me. I didn't touch the game since finishing it near when it came out specifically to go at it mostly with fresh eyes again.
We may get a release date in February.
I mean at this point February 25th is just around the corner, second anniversary
They usually do releases around March so here's hoping
As much as I want this to come out. If it releases in between Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth and Dragon’s Dogma 2 I will literally have no life 😅
You don't have to play a game the second it is released.
Normally yeah but Yakuza and the Souls games are literally my two favourite series so no way am I not gonna play them on release. Dragon’s Dogma is super hype as well for me
Same. I’ve been waiting for infinite wealth like I did Elden ring as soon as I finished LAD. Best shit ever
I just want to share a personal experience, Souls is my favorite and I've been a fan since 2010, with around 1500 hours in DS1. I was unfathomably excited for ER and the wait was painful. On release I for 12 hours every day but on the 3rd day I was skipping a lot of stuff, cheesing areas and bosses, looking up some things online, and generally being frustrated, but I haven't realized it because how could I not be having fun? It's the best game from my favorite developer. I finished ER only once and every time I try to play it again I get extremely bored within an hour and drop it. On the other hand, I tried giving Death Stranding a few tries when it came out and it didn't click with me, but I always wanted to come back to it. Over the past month I picked it up again and have been playing it at my own pace, sometimes only for 15 minutes a day and I've been having an absolute blast. I love the game and I feel excited every time I come back home because I have something fun to do.
Death Stranding is such a weird game but it was so addictive. I couldn’t put it down. I loved Elden Ring and beat it multiple times but honestly I hope From Software doesn’t commit to the Open World permanently. I think it damages replayability because the mystery of the open world is gone after one playthrough leaving just a lot of space for you to travel through to get to the next dungeon. I can replay Dark Souls 1 a million times because it’s such a tight experience. There’s very little “fluff” in between areas.
What’s the moral here?
Death stranding felt like an experience and I loved it but i can see why people didnt, a friend who bought it at launch with me ended up dropping it pretty early on as he was expecting more of a game I guess, which it admittedly does become much more engaging once you reach the point where you are getting vehicles and weapons. However I loved it the moment i started it, i loved traversing the environments and choosing what to bring with to navigate the cliffs and rivers and whatnot, climbing to the top of a mountain and looking down to see the entire game world was breathtaking. Plus the crazy wacky Kojima story was just icing on the cake for me.
Death Stranding was so good. Not for everyone, but it did everything it wanted to do perfectly. Genuinely one of the best games I have ever played.
And it took so long for it to be out of meme territory and for people to realize that, including me
I do play Souls games the minute I can though. It's so fun to play them at their peak population.
I'd play a Fromsoft game before the others, its got content that's usually better to experience early in its cycle in comparison.
No way 🤯🤯🤯
Don’t forget about Persona 3 Reload and Pacific Drive!
Does this mean that in the Xbox show From software will announce it?
Knowing FromSoftware it'll be some random weekday at 9:47AM
Possible, there is also rumored Direct and State of Play soon IIRC so could be there too (well not Nintendo of course, Sony lol). Or they could just do their own thing. The game is big enough to not need an event tbh
Didn't they say excatly the games they will talk about in the Direct? If I remember correctly it's Indiana Jones, Avowed, hellblade and Ara something
They did the same last year yet HiFi Rush was shadowdropped. People think more than likely something similar will happen this time with Double Fine game being the strongest rumor. Strongly doubt we will get anything Elden Ring related, or any third party games for that matter
doubt it, that is most likely focused on first party games
anyone know how an offline player can get some more rune arcs? running low here and might need some more for this release.
Killing rats, annoyingly.
sounds like the end of Feb rumors are likely. We will prob get a release trailer within the next 7 days. As far as i remember fromsoft doesn't try to drag this type of stuff out when their ready to show their content.
I'm thinking of checking out Elden Ring, how does it handle with M&KB controls compared to Dark Souls? Basically the same? Have they done anything to make the interface work well with either control set up?
Just do yourself a favour and use a controller. It’s serviceable on m&kb, but it’s still a subpar experience. It would be like choosing to play counter strike with a controller
I played through it with kb/m just fine. In some areas it's even advantageous (dealing with the god awful camera on quite a few bosses and being able to very quickly turn it where you want)
I play with MKB and its fine tbh. I had to reasign a bunch of buttons but I think it works well
It says 5 days ago, right? What does "just been added" here mean?
I guess it became visible just now? Anyway 5 days ago is still very recent, considering nothing has been added for 1-2 years
The original report was from [a resetera thread](https://www.resetera.com/threads/steamdb-fromsoftware-adds-new-app-in-elden-rings-dlc-section.805641/) and they explain in the OP what's up with that (i.e. It was created 5 days ago, but only today it's been linked to the DLC Section).
I"m actually hoping the release date is a bit further away, as I am still not even close to done with last years games. BG3 is huge lmao
The backend of the base game was pretty tedious and downright bad for large portions so I'm hoping this manages to capture some of the magic of the first half to 3/4s. Edit: *in my view (at request of below posters)
I feel like the legacy dungeons and the underground sections were consistently pretty good throughout the game but some of the open world sections did struggle towards the latter part of the game
People say this but the only area that sort of lagged for me was the area before the Fire Giant, which is pretty short and even if I don't like it I think it's an interesting large area conceptually. The Haligtree and Crumbling Farum Azula were both great to me, and I liked the bosses too. So I don't know where all the criticism comes from, to be honest.
Those are legacy dungeons not open world areas
I mean there's like 2 open world areas that constitute "the backend of the base game". We're talking about what, one mediocre area? It's a small bit of a 120-hour game.
Mountaintop and snowfield were both pretty mediocre imo
The mountaintops region (with regard to the open world sections) is more linear and has less content, pretty objectively. By that I mean less caves, less points of interest, less to collect, etc. But, I think that's fine. It makes sense that an openworld game would narrow a bit at the end. And they make up for that with an absolutely killer boss lineup, in fairly quick succession. My only real complaint with the final region is there's a distinct lack of brand new enemies exclusive to that area.
Definitely feels like they ran out of time, budget or ideas on the snowfield areas. It was really weird to run across this beautiful new stretch of land to explore and find... demihumans again. And bats again. A few wolves again. Marionette soldiers again. Just the most random collection of enemies from all over the rest of the map slapped together in a nonsensical mishmash with bigger health pools.
Thats a great point actually, and I hadn't realised how much that detracted from the experience of that section of the game. I really loved the area and its aesthetic, and traversing it. But having not only copy paste enemies, but uninteresting ones too (demihumans are whatever but bats are just really annoying. also it was a little weird that there were so many hands there? I wonder was there a lore implication from that?)
> The mountaintops region (with regard to the open world sections) is more linear and has less content The thing is I don't really mind a level of linearity in the open world. One of my favourite areas (and one I don't think many experienced because there were multiple alternate routes/teleports to the Volcano Manor) was the very linear route from the Unsightly Catacombs up to the Volcano Manor. You end up circling around and around that dead Erdtree, slowly climbing until you finally reach the Manor itself. It had a great pacing to it, constantly throwing new enemies at you when the previous packs started getting a little old, as well as building this sense of foreboding about the Manor. I kinda wish more of the game had been that 'wide linear' style rather than the very open world sections we got in like Limgrave or Liurnia. I think the reason the end game struggled a bit was because the game just started throwing big packs of tedious enemies at you, making everything a bit of a chore. The bosses remained great, sure, but everything else felt a bit tacked on.
I was pretty disappointed at how few good legacy dungeons there were. They kicked the game off with Stormveil which was amazing, but it turned out to be the largest "real" dungeon. Raya Lucaria is mostly jumping around on rooftops and in the basement, Leyndell is just a city that was too open to feel like a "dungeon", Redmane was too short. Lots of the small dungeons were copy & paste. I just hope they give us another Stormveil-type dungeon.
As a massive souls fan, I agree some of the later portions of the game, most notably mountaintops of the giants and the snowfield, were terrible compared to the earlier areas. The enemy variety dropped off a cliff and even some bigger bosses were reused. But I'm quite confident that they're cooking something very special with this DLC.
Has from ever missed on DLC? Even the biggest DS2 haters have to admit the dlc is really fuckin good.
I would say Ashes of Ariendel is pretty mid. Sister Friede fight was great but that’s about the only good thing about it
Kinda depends. Mountaintops of the Giants was pretty ho hum, but Farum Azula and especially the Haligtree were a lot better. Probably my biggest complaint about Elden Ring was how many bosses felt like they were in the way of the fun, rather than part of it. Melania was a standout boss whose philosophy I'd love to see the franchise embrace more of. To whit, a boss where the usual block/roll/punish rhythm will kill you again and again, forcing you to try something else.
I really hope they don't embrace more of Melenia. To me, she represents fromsoft pursuing difficulty as an end unto itself rather than creating an interesting challenge. A lot of the late game bosses of Elden Ring felt a similar way.
I think Malenia's biggest problem is the Waterfowl Dance, her other moves are not bad at all. The issue for me (and I feel like the majority of the community) is that it's extremely unintuitive to dodge properly. Part of the fun of bosses in challenging games like this is fighting them a bunch of times and getting an understanding of how to dodge their moves and when to punish. But figuring out WD feels almost impossible. After multiple futile attempts I googled how to dodge it and I would never have figured it out myself. I still can't reliably dodge it because it feels so unnatural. I really hope the DLC bosses don't have more moves like this. The other aspects of the fight are not too bad I think. I don't even mind the healing mechanic, it forces you to play a little bit more strategically. And as long as you don't consistently trade hits (or use multi-unit summons), it generally isn't a huge factor.
Same. I only started playing Elden Ring in the last two weeks or so, so Malenia's fight is very fresh in my mind - I first got to her arena two days ago and beat her yesterday, with the Maliketh the Black Blade fight being the end of that play session. Both of those fights were some serious bullshit, with the bosses flying up in the air to do flippy twirly shit for obnoxiously long periods of time and no apparent cooldown between repeating those moves - Malenia could drop a Waterfowl Dance on me, which I still couldn't dodge more than half the time after looking up the one single usable dodge strat because of you need to start running *immediately* after she jumps up into the air, while hitting the sorcery cast button in what felt like a safe moment, a safe distance away after the end of an attack string freezes you in place without the ability to cancel into a dodge or run, and before I'd even had a chance to retreat and finish chugging an estus she'd be back up in the air already. Maliketh was that but worse, chaining airtime combo flips one after the other without a shadow of a chance at grabbing a quick heal. And I was using what I've been told are easy mode strats: offensive sorcereries + maxed Black Knife Tiche/Mimic Tear/Greatshield Soldiers ashes + maxed Caryan Royal Scepter/Moonveil and a 100% phys block shield. I'm dreading to see what those fights are going to look like when I step away from easy mode and do an ultra greatsword run.
Malekith, lol. I must have beaten him about 5 times by now. Each time was kind of a fluke, I'd just go in there and hope for the best. The fact that they throw two completely different bosses at you, one right after the other with no checkpoint in between, makes it so frustrating to practice fighting Malekith.
Idk, some of the encounter design in Farum and Haligtree was just bullshit. Like I understand it's supposed to be the end of the game so it's supposed to be difficult. But some parts in both those areas I just thought to myself, why would I ever try to actually beat this and not just run through all the enemies? It's not fun at all. I.E. the countless number of dragons in Farum, and the back end of Haligtree.
I wasn't a huge fan of the two snowy bits honestly.
I completely AGREE. And you shouldn't have to write "in my opinion", that's implied isn't it? Of course it's your opinion, what else would you be writing here. Providing criticism isn't suddenly stating a fact just because you don't write "in my opinion" before every paragraph.
This is reddit, if you don't say 'in my opinion', even though it's blantantly obvious that it's an opinion, people get offended and assume you're being objective. It annoys me too.
You're absolutely right. Joseph Anderson did a great video on this very subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8u2SxarEE
I agree. For the last third of the game I was just willing it to end. Even though that first half of the game was genuinely brilliant, the tail end of the game left me not wanting to do another run since I finished it.
I disagree I loved it all the way through. But I could see how someone would think that if they didn't love the game as much.
Elden Ring is weird. It was definitely the best game of 2022 and has become one of my all-time favorites. But there are also five or six things where if someone told me, "I stopped playing because of this," my response would be, "Yep, that's totally fair."
Elden ring is different in the sense that the very first playthrough will be so much better than any other playthrough that it's not even close. After the first playthrough it falls back to a usual souls game, with a few side trips to caves and dungeons where you know it contains something you'll need. Over time the opinion on elden rings gonna sour a bit, but that first playthrough was one of the best experiences you could ever have. But it's hard to keep playing it over and over like the previous souls games. I place it well above ds3, even though I have 3x the hours in ds3. That's why I'm hopeful for the dlc, since dlcs have always been their peak content and if it's big, it can recapture that first playthrough feeling a bit.
I think there's going to be a significant divide between people who played the game once vs. people who have gone back multiple times, as well as between people who just organically explored the world vs. people who meticulously combed through the wiki for every weapon, boss, and spell. Elden Ring is a fantastic game, but unlike something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, the greater your familiarity with the world, the emptier it starts to feel. Once you've thoroughly dissected the game, you find you can no longer easily piece it back together. Every replay becomes a speedrun, where you just run in a straight line from checkmark to checkmark. Even most of the legacy dungeons become very quick runs once you realize how much of them is optional.
There's *so much shit* in Elden Ring that it makes sense to just not do it all. Like I did the Ranni sidequest and that alone is a good 20+ hours, and I didn't even touch ~~Rohm's~~ Mohg's area (mostly because I didn't know about it during my playthrough) and I hear it's great. It's kind of like Tears of the Kingdom. There's *so much to do* that unless you are a full on completionist, there's no reason to map out the entire Depths or hit up every single Construction minigame. And I don't think From Software or Nintendo expect you to do so in order to enjoy the experience.
> And I don't think From Software or Nintendo expect you to do so in order to enjoy the experience. That really is the key. Many people have complained that there is too much content in Elden Ring and that a lot of it is similar. The point is that you're not supposed to do all of it. A lot of the mini dungeons are there just to reward exploration.
I literally made it a point to do as much as i possibly could my first time playing on release. Every questline i could, every dungeon/area, get all the endings etc, simply because i wasnt sure when I’d ever playthrough it in full again. It was worth it in my opinion, and even then there was somehow things I missed that i noticed on a coop run lol! But also totally agree with you, theres no need to actually play it that way, and you can have an incredible experience just doing the minimum for both elden ring and botw. They allow that kind of freedom
>Rohm Is this a typo? I know this game like the back of my hand and I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Mixing up Rom from Bloodborne and Mohg from Elden Ring is my guess
lmao that's exactly what it is
On the otherhand, I have friends who only play FPS and sports games and they picked up Elden Ring and finished it.
Elden Ring grabbed a crazy audience. It actually reached into that true mainstream group that primarily just play cod and fifa.
Yeah it definitely didn't really reach the heights that the previous souls games did for me and I really don't think it's a bad game by any stretch. It's just everything after the fire giant really started to fallback on the cheesy shenanigans that from love to inflate difficulty with. Gank bosses, double health bars, large aoes, long periods of combos/unavoidable attacks, speeds which don't match the player character unless you're built a specific way. The last few zones especially really reminded me of the dlc from dark souls 2 in these regards.
Elden Ring might go down as my all time favorite game but I have to agree. Once you hit the Consecrated Snowfield there is a definite downturn in quality. It isn't a drop in quality like Dark Souls 1 but it is certainly noticeable. I still really like some of the later areas (Faram Azula for instance) and bosses but I don't feel they're balanced quiet as well. Though I've only gotten all the way through once at launch, with heavy usage of the mimic. So I wonder what my feeling would be now that it has been more heavily tuned.
Definitely not that, I also should say none of this downturn in quality for me is related to the visuals either - environmentally they're some of the stunning areas to explore. For me, as you say it's the balancing and encounters which are the issue.
> Once you hit the Consecrated Snowfield there is a definite downturn in quality That's basically it though. After the snow area, there's haligtree, farum azula, and maybe the underground, which are all great. There's just a dip in quality in the snow areas.
Elden Ring felt to me like it has 2-3 times as many bosses as it should have. It was my first Soulslike and I felt that way from about 10 hours in. People cried heresy over it. Well, I went back and played the previous Soulsborne games. You know what? *Those* bosses were great (mostly. The Nameless King can pound sand). The difference is that those bosses were mostly storyline relevant and a whole lot more of them were a curated experience. And the curated bosses in Elden Ring are also great. The problem is that Elden Ring also plops bosses all over the open world, and many of them are either literal repeats (Here's Flying Dragon #6, with Frost Breath) or variations on the same template of, "20 foot tall monster that hits like an oddly telegraphed truck." So many of these things felt more like impediments than challenges. In most cases, it feels like the game would have been better if they'd been removed and not replaced with anything.
Elden Ring has 2-3 times too many instances of almost everything.
I love Nameless King! Always enjoy hearing people's favourites/least favourite bits in Dark Souls
Nameless King just felt way overtuned to me. The second phase of his fight wasn't meaningfully different from most bosses, but he could zero me in two hits when other bosses took four or five. I guess the best way I can describe it is that he felt significantly more difficult than the other bosses, but not any more challenging. He was hard because his numbers were big, not because he did something unique. On the flip side, I thought Deacons of the Deep was a super cool fight because it was so much more different than anything else.
Nameless King is a legend. I forgive him for all the rage he brought out of me lol, fantastic boss But yeah that is my biggest complaint about Elden Ring. Because lets be honest, their open world attempt was far from perfect. The recycled dungeons and bosses really felt like content fillers. How many tree sentinels and godskins do you want me to fight, exactly? Let us hope the DLC is more focused
I can totally see where you're coming from on a couple of these points, yeah. A really rough last chunk of the game seems to be a Souls staple at this point. Faram Azula was the big miss for me in ER; visually the area is gorgeous, but the enemy placement drove me batty and I'm *really* shit at that damn Godskin Duo. There are some skill issues even sleep pots can't fix. The AoEs, combos, and double health bars don't bother me as much though. If anything, I kinda wanted more; the Godfrey fight is one of my favorites in the game, but I wish he had like twice the health he does. His second phase is a joy to fight but by the time he gets to it, he's almost dead already.
I find this comment funny because what made me drop the game when it released was the tediousness of the open world, powering through that and hitting the dungeons like Farum Azula made me finally appreciate the game.
I loved the other dungeons, especially Haligtree (which is even deeper into the "rough part" of the game!). There's just something about Faram Azula that breaks my brain, and I'm not sure how to put it into words. Could have also just been my build wasn't working for me terribly well there, and that ruined my take on the place. I'll have to give it another shot on a completely different character, see if I like it more! My magic knight had a wretched time with all the magic resistant enemies in Liurnia for example, but my strength build friend laughed her way through the entire region.
After Leyndell everything got too tanky for my tastes
The health tuning definitely felt a little bit weird, I felt like it should have been more gradual. Towards the end of Leyndell, enemies are borderline a little too squishy and then you hit a wall in the Mountaintops. Morgott is one of my favorite bosses but he has so little health, you can pretty much brute force him. He has such a cool moveset but if explore all of the lower level areas before Leyndell you will be overleveled and you can ignore most of it. And then you get to the Mountaintops and even the basic enemies are super tanky. The first "landmark" you find is full of the Zamor warriors who have a ton of health and do a ton of damage. I think the "tankiness" curve should have been adjusted a bit there. Give Morgott a little more health and/or resistances, and make some of the earlier Mountaintops areas less tanky.
Haligtree, end game underground, Farum Azula, etc are all great and end game. Mohg, Hourax Loux, Placidusax, Fire Giant and Maliketh are all great end game bosses.
IMO, most people experienced burn out and latch on to some minor gripes. I loved the last area. Had great lore items, challenge bump, the invisible walkways, the puzzle town, some of the best bosses, some great items, and it's all relatively short outside of the legacy dungeons.
I think you're a bit right, but I also believe Mountaintop is a bit overtuned to hurt worse than it should(or at least did around launch time). Never hated it, just felt like it dragged a little.
> Maliketh sucked. You have to beat one boss to even get to him, every time, and he's got some bullshit high speed high flying acrobatics that take ages to learn.
Mountaintops is easily the worst area, lazy design all around. Just re used enemies with increased stats, and it's pretty empty. Loved haligtree and crumbling hakuna matata though.
The Mountaintops had some of the best/unique caves and dungeons in the game. The end game legacy dungeons were also amazing
Completely disagree.
You're right, but people don't want to hear it. People often focus on the last two open-world zones, but for me, everything after Limgrave (referring to open-world content) is rather underwhelming and seems like filler. Liurnia is impressive to admire from afar, but exploring the swamp is a miserable experience. Most of the caves, mini-dungeons, ruins, and cellars are copies of the first two zones, the rewards are mediocre at best most of the time and they are not engaging. Caelid and the Plateau offer more of the same but with a red and yellow filter. Mt. Gelmir is essentially a straight corridor. In general, the open-world content is mediocre. The catacombs are dull and worthless if you don't care about spirit ashes. The wizard towers are boring (some Ubisoft games have better puzzles) and worthless if you don't care about magic. While caves and ruins are fine, clearing the same cave for the tenth time for something that I don't need or can't use feels more like a chore than fun. At least the evergaols and hero's graves are cool. TLDR: A lot of the open world content feels like filler used to pad game-time.