Elden Ring: Breath of the From Software

Disgustipater wrote: I been playing for about 7 hours and I haven’t found a new, useable weapon in my level range. Is this normal? I’ve mostly just been running around Limgrave and got to Stormveil.

Also, where is this teleport chest that everyone says is at the beginning? I haven’t run across it.

It sometimes happens, depending on your build. A good thing to do which won't spoil much is go to fextralife's wiki and look up a couple of the types of weapon you might be interested in, and find one that can be gotten sitting on the ground somewhere or in a chest that can be accessed easily. You can bee-line toward it on a suicide run and grab it to get yourself up and running.

Also, a lot of weapons drop from mobs, so if it's an achievable mob to beat you might pop the drop rate increase consumable and grind them till you get the weapon/armor you want.

It is:

I just want to clarify the premise of the question - forgive me if you already know this but weapons aren't "level gated" per se but they do have stat requirements. By investing a enough points into the relevant stats you can use anything you find, I imagine most weapons in Limgrave are only a few points away from being usable for most classes unless you started with the Wretch or something.

As Gary Sax says, depending on your intended build you might not have a lot of options for a while (it took me 20 hours to find another thrusting sword) but it's worth mentioning that the base class weapons are generally not "bad" so if you like the moveset feel free to upgrade them and they can stick around with you well into the mid-late game. I'm still using the Prisoner base weapon but have upgraded it into something that dishes out decent damage.

I wasn’t sure if I should upgrade my starting sword or wait for a slightly better weapon like I expected from previous games.
My go-to in previous games was the battle ax but I looked it up and it doesn’t seem like it shows up for a while.

Gary Sax wrote: It is:

Warning: Spoiler!

A chest in the ruins in the swamp right in front of the opening area, where all the dudes are worshipping the dragon in the swamp. It's in the staircase down in the biggest ruins part.

I don’t even know where that is or remember seeing it. Is it before the tutorial pit?

Edit - just looked it up. Yeah, haven’t gone there yet. People were acting like it was in the opening minutes.

I didn't even see it until much later. This is definitely one of those games in which everyone's path through it is different, and if you are looking the wrong way at the wrong time, you miss something.

Raya Lucaria is sooooo good. But what is it about From and running around rooftops? Every damn game. Burger King guys are fun to massacre.

Got caught by one of those Iron Maiden things…not quite as horrifying as the bag men in Bloodborne but still pretty rad to be taken to a completely new area you had no idea existed.

Really settling into my dual wield build- got the ornamental straight sword and digging it’s speed and unexpectedly wide attack arc. Got it by taking the “vengeance” gate and beating the very first “joke” boss.

Re: weapons you’ve got to keep in mind that you could in theory go through the game with your starting weapon. Just smith it up and anything is tenable if not S tier effective based on what some dude on the internet said. Also bear in mind that it’s a good idea to kind of specialize in a couple of weapons to switch so that you can cover damage types, weaknesses, and take advantage of situation special abilities. For example, some weapons are better suited for mobs, some for tight spaces, some for flying enemies. There are so many variables beyond the stats sheet. Some of which aren’t even apparent without trial and error. I had no idea at first that the turtle shell recovers stamina for example.

There are a couple of good weapons early on- Twinblade is one folks like, and also the Uchigatana which I passed on just because I didn’t want a katana LOL. Reduvia is cool but I never had the Arcane for it. The humble flail has lasted me a good long time and I’ve got it up to like +12 and it’s still very viable.

But then later on you can be cussing because you blew smithing stones on a weapon that’s not as cool/good as something you picked up later

I’m just glad to finally be out of hobo clothes, got the Carian Knight set and it works surprisingly well for my dex build even though it’s full plate. It’s working better for me than the Royal Remains, but I still switch to the Perfumer’s garb when I’m against a lot of magic.

60 hour mark and I’m just not tired of this game at all, it keeps giving and giving. There’s always something incredible to see, some minor but fulfilling task to do, some rewarding challenge to go after. I don’t even remember the last time I played a game for 60 hours. I think it was Bloodborne actually, or maybe MGS5.

Michael Barnes wrote: But then later on you can be cussing because you blew smithing stones on a weapon that’s not as cool/good as something you picked up later

That was why I was hesitant to “waste” my smithing stones on my starter sword. I found a great axe and a flail but they are too high in levels for me now. Maybe I should just blow all my golden runes now on leveling.

Definitely use your golden runes. Levels now > other things later. Don't be afraid to use smithing stones, there are plenty more where they came from. The only one that's limited is the final one to get to max level and even that you get a bunch of I think.

Also, the iron maiden definitely didn't take me away to a magical land when it ate me... Do you have to get killed by the attack?

Just beat an extremely annoying team-up miniboss. After the first time I tried it I knew I was going to summon. So I summoned twice and it was good to go. For once, I got a very patient summoned player to help, so we both did the slow aggro work of chipping down

Michael Barnes wrote: Raya Lucaria is sooooo good. But what is it about From and running around rooftops? Every damn game. Burger King guys are fun to massacre.

This Reddit post made me chuckle:
www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/te8m...hare&utm_medium=mweb

The new patch has also improved early game smithing stone access by having some merchants start selling different stones in limited quantities and lowering the price.

Another early game smithing stone tip, if you see a blue light trapped in a statue, try and get a giant to help you get inside. You’ll find tons of stones inside. I recall finding two,

I just fought some kind of fucked up huge... Bloodborne thing? And 2shot it! But then you walk basically right into another boss fight against a real nasty glintstone dragon who is handing me my total ass. He's got a couple spells that are basically instakills that I can't figure out how to dodge.

sornars wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote: Raya Lucaria is sooooo good. But what is it about From and running around rooftops? Every damn game. Burger King guys are fun to massacre.

This Reddit post made me chuckle:
www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/te8m...hare&utm_medium=mweb

The new patch has also improved early game smithing stone access by having some merchants start selling different stones in limited quantities and lowering the price.

Another early game smithing stone tip, if you see a blue light trapped in a statue, try and get a giant to help you get inside. You’ll find tons of stones inside. I recall finding two,

Warning: Spoiler!

one in the valley of giants east of Stormveil and the other in Stormveil itself

There is one in Caelid, you have to have one of those gold wyrms break it.

Apparently the patch nerfed Radahn pretty soundly, so good news to any of y'all that haven't tried him yet. Hopefully he's less incredibly not fun for you

Re: Iron Maidens- yeah, they have to kill you. You get YOU DIED and everything. Then you appear in the obligatory lava dungeon instead of at the last Grace or stake.

Last night’s goal was to get the Bloodhound Fang from that first evergoal I found south of Agheel. Dude used to one shot me, now I just about one shotted him. Apparently you can get Blaidd to help but I didn’t need him anyway.

The Fang is pretty good, it’s kind of a lighter/thinner/curvy greatsword with dex scaling. I’m not used to the slower swing but I’m stoning it up because I think it has potential to be a late game winner.

Back to Raya Lucaria…thought Radagon was the end but I guess not!

I'm using that sword now. I like it.

I ran into some crystal/scarlet rot minibosses behind an illusory wall. You 1000% need to use a strike weapon. I still haven't been able to do it but I'm using the big battle hammer now which is a big improvement.