Elden Ring Discussion Thread

Kinda shocked, I didn't expect it to be bad, it's actually great though. It keeps getting massively better too as I'm getting to the end. I didn't expect anywhere near the effort to make as much gameplay in it as possible, I've changed what I'm using so many times and it all just works now.

They kinda missed on the dungeon design and small scale exploration stuff, the overworld and traveling around definitely makes up for it though. If they were able to capture the atmosphere that Demon's and Dark Souls had this easily would've been the best one so far. It's definitely the best Souls "game" though.

Edit: Just noticed a lot of performance talk, I should add this in. I'm playing way below minimum specs at 30 FPS and it runs great. Gets a bit melty sometimes if I have a stream or video running too, it's mostly still fine then though.

Finished today. Soul Level 107.




Was a hella of journey where i had lots of emotional moments, good and bad ones.
I did a reskill and went full battle mage with the Sword of Night and Flame as it is way more safe this way to tackle dangerous enemies and it did lots of damage on top of it.

Lessons learned. Never play full melee again as i'm not good at dodge rolls.

Hope anyone has lots of fun, as the later bosses look very nice thematically and have a good soundtrack as well.

"

gandhar0 wrote:

Finished today. Soul Level 107.

Spoiler

Was a hella of journey where i had lots of emotional moments, good and bad ones.
I did a reskill and went full battle mage with the Sword of Night and Flame as it is way more safe this way to tackle dangerous enemies and it did lots of damage on top of it.

Lessons learned. Never play full melee again as i'm not good at dodge rolls.

Hope anyone has lots of fun, as the later bosses look very nice thematically and have a good soundtrack as well.

Couple of tips. Moonveil Katana is fabulous as a Mage offhand. Its scales with Int and the weapon skill is a stagger machine.

Also for your summon ashes try to use ones that draw agro more than say one tanky ash. Think wolves or the 5 shield bearers ones. It makes life so easy.

Also rock sling is flat out a game changer. The range and stagger is crazy. Grab a faster casting talisman and the game is easy mode from there.

For another tip on melee, if dodge isnt your thing, invest in shields (talisman and barrier), but also lean into staggers. Using a charge skill in their face sometimes is better than a roll fest and hoping to survive attack spam.

Also faith based builds past 150 are completely out of hand lol.

I cannot wait for arcane to be fixed and a few offhand scaling bugs with bleed before I make a build like that. Good times.

Seconded re the power of staggering. Bullying actual bosses with the right sword is a trip. It's rare that I listen to others when they say 'try close quarters combat' in other games but in this one, sometimes you really do get a payoff for not playing too timidly. I mean, it's not Sekiro (thank fuck) but I definitely oscillate between sneaking up on shit and just stun-locking it with sufficient stamina to keep on swinging.

The iframes on jump attack+a heavy as shit sword can be one hell of an opener. Or closer, depending on what you're whacking.

Soul Level 84 right now. Got up to the second true boss and oh boy did they make me eat a faceful of humble pie. 'Wow that was easFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK'

Notable weapon/build options for PVE:

Laser Beam Sword (Sword of Night and Flame)
Disrupter Rifle Shield (Erdtree Greatshield w/Fire's deadly sin)
*insert weapon here* with Hoarfrost Stomp - it reks, and any build can use it.
Mage with kamehameha (Comet Azure)
Bleed builds (various weapons/options here)

One or more of the above with a Mimic Tear ash - it's a clone of your character, and you trivialize the game.

They do give you an easy mode in this, just not in conventional difficulty settings.

Not sure why Moonveil is so popular, it's probably a weeb thing, but the Sword of Night and Flame thoroughly shits all over it, and so does any weapon with hoarfrost stomp, which is vastly superior to Moonveil's weapon art for staggering or damage.

Hoarfrost stomp is so good, that you could put it on a dagger with a cold infusion, and spam the skill on your mage, and it hits like a bus, and it's super FP efficient. I don't know what all determines the damage, but it does the same for me if it's on a dagger as it does on a colossal weapon, which means the best weapon to use it on is a lighter one just for access to the skill. Someone no-hit, low level ran the whole game, and guess what they used? Hoarfrost stomp.

I now know why I both loved the start of play and why I described the game as tough and why I thought a bore could be dangerous. I started my first character as a wretch.

Currently only level 9 with over 23000 runes in purchases, flaming pinioned arrows, poison bone daggers, and sacred blade broadsword, but I’ve raided every rune from the starting area to past the Burning Chapel. It’s an area “totally” designed for level 9’s.

Good thing I can already go to the Round Table lulz

P.S. F wiki walking. I’m playing this naked and stupid as a worn and torn newbie. So what if you finger invade me.

I even got my original name: Amaranth. I haven’t owned that name in a game since 2006.

"

rekikyo wrote:

I now know why I both loved the start of play and why I described the game as tough and why I thought a bore could be dangerous. I started my first character as a wretch.

Currently only level 9 with over 23000 runes in purchases, flaming pinioned arrows, poison bone daggers, and sacred blade broadsword, but I’ve raided every rune from the starting area to past the Burning Chapel. It’s an area “totally” designed for level 9’s.

Good thing I can already go to the Round Table lulz

P.S. F wiki walking. I’m playing this naked and stupid as a worn and torn newbie. So what if you finger invade me.

I even got my original name: Amaranth. I haven’t owned that name in a game since 2006.

Also started as a Wretch as a Souls Newbie since i could not decide what path to go and which weapons to use.
Imo ideal starter class if you dont have a plan and just want to find new armor and weapons and go from there. Also getting the first armor pieces/shields (either by loot or vendor) or any other weapons than the base club is also a small nice motivation boost early on.

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Not sure why Moonveil is so popular, it's probably a weeb thing, but the Sword of Night and Flame thoroughly shits all over it, and so does any weapon with hoarfrost stomp, which is vastly superior to Moonveil's weapon art for staggering or damage.

A few reasons imo.

1. Moonveil looks and feels awesome. Does great damage. Tons of people playing Mage main's. Is mechanically sound.

2. Hoarfrost's skill is bugged. Its overlapping, which means its hitting multiple times in succession with one cast. Then it fucking explodes. You are applying frostbite instantly, which is why is seems so ridiculous. So yeah sure go ahead and use it, but in its current state you are just diluting your game experience in my view. But different strokes for folks I suppose. People like using cheat codes and god modes in games, that's never been something I enjoyed. (That's said if you spend hours farming runes, and out level all the content, I think that's legit, albeit cheap)

3. Most Int/Mage builds. Dont wait to waste 20+ points just to equip night and flame.

Edit: and Royal Knight Resovlve with Golden Vow and then Golden Wave spam is quite something with the FP Tear.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

MrSmiley21 wrote:

Not sure why Moonveil is so popular, it's probably a weeb thing, but the Sword of Night and Flame thoroughly shits all over it, and so does any weapon with hoarfrost stomp, which is vastly superior to Moonveil's weapon art for staggering or damage.

A few reasons imo.

1. Moonveil looks and feels awesome. Does great damage. Tons of people playing Mage main's. Is mechanically sound.

2. Hoarfrost's skill is bugged. Its overlapping, which means its hitting multiple times in succession with one cast. Then it fucking explodes. You are applying frostbite instantly, which is why is seems so ridiculous. So yeah sure go ahead and use it, but in its current state you are just diluting your game experience in my view. But different strokes for folks I suppose. People like using cheat codes and god modes in games, that's never been something I enjoyed. (That's said if you spend hours farming runes, and out level all the content, I think that's legit, albeit cheap)

3. Most Int/Mage builds. Dont wait to waste 20+ points just to equip night and flame.

Edit: and Royal Knight Resovlve with Golden Vow and then Golden Wave spam is quite something with the FP Tear.

You can use Royal Knight's resolve on your weapon and then cast spells with it, or hit them with your weapon. It's the best damage buff in the game, works awesome with comet azure, or even on glinstone pebbles. Also, if you use Royal Knight's Resolve with a weapon you don't have the stats to use, it gives you the full buff for no additional FP cost. Like, how good is Moonveil when any weapon you don't have stats to use is better on a mage just because it has 1 buff?

It didn't cost a whole lot more points to increase faith vs dex to just use the night and flame sword, and it's just straight up better. Also, faith has some good buffs, including offensive ones like Golden Vow that are really good on anything. Efficiency wise, laser beam on the sword is superior from a damage to FP cost ratio than any spell. So, 40/40 int/fth split is better than 80 int on a mage that's not spamming comet azure with the infinite FP drink on a boss that's standing still. Full INT mages are remarkably inefficient from a cost to damage ratio with their spells, factoring in the amount of stats they had to dump to get it.

So, the best mage is actually the mage that uses the Sword of Night and Flame, IMHO, they also got more varied damage type options with fire and magic.

It's also not a huge stretch to be able to use the dragon incantations on the Sword of Night and Flame build, there's a helmet that gives +8 to arcane stat, which means you can use the frost and rot breath moves with pretty good effectiveness. And the golden order seal scales with both INT and FTH, so you got pretty high spell scaling for it.

Moonveil is patently mediocre, IMHO. There's just soo many better options for a mage. Just to summarize, anything with hoarfrost stomp, or Royal Knight's resolve, as well as the Sword of Night and Flame (which is the best mage, anyway).

I'd even argue the Dark Moon Greatsword is at least as good as the Moonveil for PVE. The weapon art lets you spam slash waves for free with the strong attack, and they do pretty good damage. If your starting class is hero, or something other than astrologer, it might be better to make a mage that uses this weapon, vs the Moonveil. 16 STR req for the Dark Moon Greatsword is also the same for the Brass Shield, in case you want a solid shield for blocking attacks. It better fits a traditional 'spellsword' build.

One thing I don’t like about grinding Elden Ring:

There are several areas to literally power level yourself. Personally have powerleveled from 18 to 50 in Caelid near the impenetrable fortress, killing dogs and soldiers. At 20 Arcane the drops aren’t bad either and free stacks of common smithing stones.

All these areas where 2 factions of enemies are fighting are too easy accumulation of runes vs the rest of the game. You just go in on horseback and clean up.

Then you turn around and try to solo fight something and get murdered, especially if trying to dodge with Pc controls.

I also don’t like playing it online, mostly because of Steam/Namco’s obligatory EASY anti cheat destroying fps and heating a supercomputer to the point the game sometimes shuts down after 20 min of play and starts freezing after 2 minutes. Seriously; I thought destructive anti cheats were a thing that ended in 2008.

Offline I’m nearly always max fps, although after 2-3 hours I do start slowing down due to hanging around power level areas with 20-30 units constantly challenging graphic loads.

I have optimized my controls on Pc a bit better, but still have dodging issues because mouse + left keyboard roll/dodge + directional walk is just a bush on a PC.