Elden Ring Discussion Thread

I've beaten the game, and I can say a few things on the matter as to "what's good for minimum effort, and/or beating stuff with the fewest attempts".

Those NPC/mob summons you get, use them. I kinda feel like the game was balanced around using these, because mobs and bosses are far more aggressive in this game, and do more attacks, with fewer openings. An extra target on the screen means you got extra openings, you go from "when is it safe to actually attack this freaking thing?" to balling it in the back for free hits while it smashes your pet, or you get to nuke the boss for free once you get comet azure.

Shields, they're amazing. There's a turtle shield you can grab, it's on top of a tower you gotta do some platforming to get, but it has barricade shield weapon art, which hugely buffs your blocking. A bit later you get a greatshield talisman which stacks with barricade shield. On the road below where you got the turtle shield, during night time there is a special world mob that spawns, a black knight on horseback, you kill him and get barricade shield ash of war and can put it on any shield. If you stack barricade shield with the talisman, even on a medium shield, you'll either take no stamina reduction when you block, or every little, and it gets the recoil ability of a greatshield. You can just turtle up, and wait them out, and patiently pick your spots to slip an attack in with guard counters, land a stance break => finisher, and they get rekt.

Spells, there's lots of stuff you can safely snipe at range, especially on horseback. Mages also get nuclear devastation later on when you get meteor and comet azure (basically kamehameha) for big openings. But those starting spells you get are actually 2 of the best ones, and you'll still use them even late game because they're FP efficient, saving your bigger nukes for bigger targets, and using low FP stuff like glintstone pebble to thin out packs, pull/isolate mobs, or get the jump on potential ambushes.

Also, DEX does *not* increase your cast speed! I don't care what the tool tab says, it's 100% fake news, I tested this, and can confirm there is not even a single frame of difference between 10 DEX and 99 on cast speed. There's a talisman you get later that marginally increases cast speed, and that's the only thing that buffs cast speed. So don't think you gotta pump dex on a caster, because you absolutely don't have to. The minimum to use whatever weapon you want is good enough.

So yeah, combine summons, shields, spells, and maybe go farm some runes a little bit, and you'll have a far easier time at the game than trying to Guts cosplay the game with a 2H ultra, or be a lithe weeb with a katana. I can't say the other word, but souls veterans know what we call those players.

Spellswords are quite good, you got the full arsenal of offensive options later on, some fights might be more favorable to getting in and hitting them with a weapon and using your shield-guard counters and finishers, and others might be more favorable for ranged, or a combination of both. Think about how you're gonna approach the mobs and the area while using the minimum amount of pots that you can, that way you don't find yourself short on resources when there's a meat grinder chariot around the corner, and you don't have the FP left to delete it.

This might be out of character for me but I highly recommend anyone on the fence or just curious check out Skill Up's review on YouTube. It's spoiler free and does an amazing job highlighting what makes Elden Ring so special despite being on the surface Skyrim x Dark Souls.

Thoroughly enjoyable take on the game imo.

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I'm level 70. 16% into the story. Lol.

My gameplay loop is really simple. Explore on low to no runes, find something I can't use, grind runes to level up to use it, rinse and repeat. It's happened five times now. I love it.

So i read one tip that the game just doesn't tell you. Its a doozie for explorers.



So I definitely alternate between weapons more than I expected. The bleed greatsword is awesome for bosses BUT my trusty starter broadsword is far superior for backstabs and combos against quicker mobs. I also managed to kill and acquire a heroic summon who wrecks face quite nicely.


But again Im in no rush to exhaust the game. Some can't help themselves and that's fine. We all have different ways of enjoying a huge open worlder and ER indulges most of them.


Edit. Oh. No bumps. I see. :( casualties of letting yourself be baited elsewhere in this...contentious space. Sucks.

Has anyone tried it with the low-end recommended specs? I love souls games but have been on the fence to get this one when I realized my GTX1070 was barely minimum specs. I see people with better cards complaining about stuttering and graphical issues and I'm not putting $3,000 on a new graphic card for a while. The rest of the PC is recent-ish (i7 8700) but I know my gpu is dated.

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Namcap wrote:

Has anyone tried it with the low-end recommended specs? I love souls games but have been on the fence to get this one when I realized my GTX1070 was barely minimum specs. I see people with better cards complaining about stuttering and graphical issues and I'm not putting $3,000 on a new graphic card for a while. The rest of the PC is recent-ish (i7 8700) but I know my gpu is dated.

To give you a point of reference.
I'm running it at 1080p with all max details at 30+ fps overworld,dungeons,boss fights.
I'm not running any ressource intense apps in the background or any overlays. Check if you have the newest windows version with winver in the win-search box. It can in some cases cause the white screen of death at game launch in some systems if it's too old.

Specs are:
GTX 1050TI (4GB vram), Ryzen 7 3700x (8c/16t),32GB ram,ssd,Win10(Ver:21H2), Graphics driver version: 511.79

Burned 12 hours on it over the weekend. Hit a story wall *and* a side dungeon with a certain traversal mechanic that can go suck a big one. Like, a big fat veiny one. I love the fuck you surprises and all but they can get...tiresome. I turn it off before I let that become 'discouraging'.

An Exile mate of mine asked me if it's an MMO (he's never played a souls game and wanted to know more) and I think he regretted asking me about it at all. Not just because I half-gushed before referring him to Skill Up
s exemplary review, but because he had no idea he couldn't just pop down to the shops and pick up a ps5 to play it. I felt really bad, as I do for a lot of PC onlies when it comes to Elden Ring. OTOH I've no doubt once they figure it out, the game will run better on a PC than it ever could on a console.

Related to my friend's query, I've been wondering: is Elden Ring 'a souls game for people who don't like souls'? Eh, I think of it more like an open world game gluing together a very refined version of souls combat. If a person doesn't like that combat, not even Elden Ring will change that. BUT if what put a person off that combat was how it was presented before the open world 'innovation', then there's a decent change Elden Ring will be the one that clicks.

PS fuck sorcerers. Why do they get infinite FP and we don't? Grrr.

Farmed a bit in north east Caelid where a grace is just behind a bridge.
Lots of smaller creeps there that grant slighty more than 1k runes and are very easy (not much HP) if opening with backstabs. Could be a good farming spot i suppose.

Update. Next major boss of the zone above the starting one fell down. Nice fight visually and thematically. Only needed 3 tries.

Level 64 currently (slightly more than 1k hp) and still running melee (sword and board) quality build mainly to test different weapons.

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gandhar0 wrote:

Farmed a bit in north east Caelid where a grace is just behind a bridge.
Lots of smaller creeps there that grant slighty more than 1k runes and are very easy (not much HP) if opening with backstabs. Could be a good farming spot i suppose.

Didn't expect weak foe,
try Stealth

Oh, still 16%. I reached the end stretch of Raya Lucaria Academy and then clicked the wrong thing and suddenly I was chilling with a giant turtle in a church. I haven't played since. I didn't read your post though, not beyond that first question. For fairly obvious reasons. :)

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Oh, still 16%. I reached the end stretch of Raya Lucaria Academy and then clicked the wrong thing and suddenly I was chilling with a giant turtle in a church.

Spoiler

I haven't played since. I didn't read your post though, not beyond that first question. For fairly obvious reasons. :)

Yeah did the same thing and was slightly confused. That turtle reminds me of Morla from The NeverEnding Story.

Holy shit, did they actually delete your post because of ER spoilers? Dude. I'm both sorry and amazed. I've been here for a loooooong-ass time and I've never seen that. Hell, I used to get in trouble as a moderator for editing spoiler tags into people's posts.

I'm actually not entirely sure spoilers bother me anymore -- I'm much more of a 'how it's done' than a 'what happens' kind of guy. If you're going to use The Internets, you sort of have to know you're exposing yourself to the emotions of others, and those emotions often lead to spoiling not through malice but a desire to share joy and fun. I find it hard to get angry at that, at least compared to some shithead spoiling something with the intent to do so.

Oddly, the ONLY spoiler I don't want to know for ER, as in I've gone way out of my way to avoid it, is the world map. And even then I sort of flirted with it, googling shit like 'is Elden Ring as big as Skyrim' and whatnot. Once I saw as I played that the tiny map just...kept...getting...bigger, I went with it and stopped asking. :)

Still haven't played more. GF is enjoying Shining Diamond (or was it Pearl?) having casually done a hundred hours of Arceus. Final Fantasy Origins is a few days away, and I'll be hogging the TV bigtime for that one. I'm definitely too 'deep' into ER to just stop cold but I'm glad to catch my breath for now.