Elden Ring: Breath of the From Software

I didn’t play him pre patch but I have a strong suspicion that they overcorrected when “fixing” Radahn. I’m not that great at the game but he only hit me once during the fight and I beat him on my first go. It’s disappointing as the atmosphere and concept of a raid boss was fantastic.

I now understand why I thought smithing stones respawned in caves. If you do summoning pool co-op with the branch; when summoned in someone else’s world you can sometimes loot the cave walls as a phantom for more materials including ones that don’t respawn in your world.
Edit: I just looked it up and apparently even this is a glitch!

Also, for those that don't know, if you add some group passwords, you will get the rune boost effect (gold falling leaves and the arrow up fowl foot icon) anytime someone else in the group does a significant thing. With the ones I use, it happens quite frequently. The summoning pools pull from these groups, and it also prioritizes group messages and bloodstains, which seems to get rid of a lot of the "but hole" messages.

In the in-game "system" menu (not title screen options), under Multiplayer, you can add up to five group passwords. A few big one are:

(no quotes and case sensitive)

Lore YouTuber VaatiVidya’s “SEEKERS” group,
The Elden Ring’s Wiki’s “FEXTRA” group
Elden Ring subreddit’s “straydmn” group

Getting rid of the but hole messages would be tragic though

I have to admit that I did laugh at one on a summon monument that said “Ruins but hole”

Ugh, that stupid fat guy miniboss before one of the rune towers. Just absolute patience, he has so much HP.

Yea that fat guy was pretty rough. I did him all hit and run on horseback, except for his one roll attack that I don't think you can dodge on your horse so you gotta get off and roll around or whatever.

I found he catches himself up on the fence if you go up into one of those alcoves and you can hit him with several pretty heavy hits. It's one of the only ways I beat him.

I just got past him and didn’t find him too bad because he (and his lanky brother in the basement of the Caelid tower) stagger very easily before they go into their second phase. Using Glintblade Phalanx made them pretty easy to get to half health after which you can afford to take more risks. They still hit like trucks in either phase. I found the skinny one much harder than the fat one.

Huh! I hit like a tank with a claymore and I couldn't even come close.

I think the Glintblade Phalanx Ash of War specifically targets poise leading to frequent staggers; I have it on my Estoc and pretty much always have it cast before jumping in for an attack. I believe jumping attacks and (charged) R2 attacks also hit poise. I believe it works a lot like other status effects in that you build up an invisible meter which will decline over time so you need to stay in their face with lots of quick attacks.

sornars wrote: I didn’t play him pre patch but I have a strong suspicion that they overcorrected when “fixing” Radahn. I’m not that great at the game but he only hit me once during the fight and I beat him on my first go. It’s disappointing as the atmosphere and concept of a raid boss was fantastic.

This is confirmed. He was re-re-patched in 1.03a to absolutely obliterate people again. All is right with the world.

So, I got a PS5, and I got ELDEN RING and it's really really good, and we don't need to belabor all this, you all know. I did go from PS4 to PS5 and there's not THAT much difference outside of load times; which are an order of magnitude faster.

I went about 10 hours in with a bog standard shield + sword guy. Got through Margit, explored all over the castle and kept eating shit against the Silver Knight/Black Knight (not sure of real names) 1-2 somewhere along there.

Now am about 15 hours on a Dex/Int Samurai Mage that softens these fellas up with some Glintstone-to-the-dome and Unsheathes for a big hit as they approach. The Black Knight wind/fire stuff still screws me, but it's just me being bad, I am not outclassed.

Environmental spoiler below, don't read this if you haven't played the game for less than 20 hours.


I'm conserving runes like some sort of hoarder, I don't even know why. I should just level and get on with it, but maybe I am leveling wrong?!?!? That's one of the tougher things for me with From games. I really want to min/max, but I am so damn ignorant..

Just wanted to say I've been kind of plugging away at a slower pace in the background at Elden Ring and I think it's the way this game wants to be played. If you play too much at once the open world is a touch too repetitive, your minute to minute fights get samey. But coming back to it in decent size sessions more sporadically still has me enthused. The whole underground of this game has story/worldbuilding reveals that are better than most entire game stories. The visuals in this game, not just technically, are next level all-timer stuff.

I can safely say that if you've revealed most of the areas and generally know the story, I think you should just look up the NPC quests. Some of them are good and very informative, and missing them would just be a crime. And you would miss them because even though things are less janky than before you still have to do a certain thing in a certain location that you might never have any reason to return to. I would have skipped one of the *core* quests that I have been interestedly and avidly following by not sitting at the right bonfire and paying attention if I hadn't started consulting a guide. The game also is a little bit more invested in actual characters acting concurrently to the story, up from "almost none" in the souls series, which I think is the direction the series should go.

I know others have laughed and gone on and on dogging him, but I think you can really see George RR Martin's influence in the storyline. The world bible is quite a bit different, for the better, than the Souls stories. The past events of the world care about relationships between individual characters and some key climactic named moments that shaped the world. That all has huge Martin vibes and Miyazaki and From are much better at just providing extremely vague "grim apocalyptic events in the past" which is a different thing and much less satisfying. I honestly hope they keep working with either Martin or some other fantasy writer in the background.

I agree with Gary, I might re-re-start, if only to take actual notes. You gotta go talk to people multiple times. Empty those conversation trees. I went back to some vendor and he said, "hey, a werewolf lives in the park," and that's some huge thing for me now. You gotta keep going back to Roundtable Hold, because doors open and randos start showing up and I got someone's eyeball I think and picked up Deathweed along the way and now a Beast Priest thinks I am cool and on and on. There is SO MUCH game in here. I remember in DS there was a whole turn-into-a-dragon path that was so far off the path I was kind of stunned people ever found it and ELDEN RING has like 3 of these going in the first 15 hours of the game.

I ground to a halt in the capital and haven't been playing much. I still boot it up for an hour here and there, and I'm definitely still going to see it through, but I think I just burned myself out temporarily. Didn't help that the capital sewers are very not fun I just bailed on them eventually, figuring I'll come back 30lvls later and see if they're less painful.

The approach in Elden Ring is actually cooler here to the dragon item thing in DS3. It's not a story spoiler so I'll keep it in the clear.

If you do dragon faith stuff it starts to change your appearance in minor ways. Yura warns you about this in his first or second dialog (guy next to the opening little lake under a big broken colliseum half).