Elden Ring: Breath of the From Software

I started playing after the patch where they make Monkey Bush much louder. You can't miss his voice now even from the road. I still had to stumble around to find him, his camo game is strong.

I went back to Caelid. I saw some big dude in the swamp and Enn Ohh. Even the plain old swamp denizens are out of my league. I did tidy up that town nearby, got some cool swag. Beat up some twins, was feeling myself a little.

Made my way back to the tower overlooking the great Erdtree, which is just spectacular there, and platformed and rangefought and ensorcelled and scratched my way to the top. I prefer this to just piles of dudes like you see in Stormveil. This tower is one of my favorite places so far. Classic From bullshit, soup to nuts.

Caelid is a very advanced area level-wise for the time you can get there. I would bounce to one of the other area options. Have you done Morne? That's a great earlyish option.

I'm experimenting with other weapons besides the +17 bastard sword. I've been trying out Radahn's twin greatswords which are very cool and I also upgraded the ruins greatsword which has some pretty awesome charge attack and weapon art gravity damage.

I made it up to the Atlas Plateau and was immediately wiped by some red lightning dragon. “Whelp, let’s go see what going on in Caelid.”

I’m still rocking a +5 Bloodhound’s Fang but I also have a +15 Great Mace for strike damage.

What are some good Ashes of War? I haven’t engaged with them at all (except for No Skill on my shield), possibly because my main weapon can’t use them.

I like the lion one where you do a backflip. It does an incredible amount if stagger.

The rest of atlus isn't as hard as the dragon.

Rogier's Four Sword thing is a pretty good ash, if they all hit at once it's a lot of stun. I'm not using one on my Uchigatana +8(?) because Unsheath is awesome all by itself.

Switched off from my default DS kit of shield + katana to a more BB style staff+ sword. I have quick glints or whatever the tiny fast ones are called and they are so disruptive, even in close combat. slash slash, plink plink, slash slash (BLOOOOOOOOOD) maybe a stun in there. It's all good.

I am not sure where Morne is. I am now over by the Lake of Liurnia helping tortoises and blowing up HUGE piles of those sea cucumber farty guys.

I use Chilling Mist as my ash. It throws a frostbite cloud in front of you and also makes your weapon do frostbite damage for a while. When you inflict frostbite on an enemy it does a chunk of instant damage and also makes them take more damage while it's active.

Edit: I've been rocking the Nightrider Glaive for a long time now, with heavy (strength) scaling. It gets S strength scaling once it's upgraded enough and I like the reach and moveset. I think it's at +22 these days? Still rolling with the Brass Shield I found like 5 hours into the game also. I think it's the best light 100% shield in the game? I keep hoping I'll find a better one just for looks but whaddya gonna do.

Fucking hell, the boss at the end of Volcano Manor has the most demented design I've seen in anything From Software. Just wild shit.

I had to dump like 10 levels into END to wear this matching hat/armor set without heavy rolling but I think we'll all agree it was worth the 1.2mil xp

I just fought one of those dudes with the Smaugh armor at the Volcano manor fort.

I had a lot of trouble with the 3 Great Jar Duelists in Caelid. Just a bunch of katanas and blood waves. So after banging my head against this, I cheesed it super hard by hiding on a tiny ledge and letting the Duelists fall off the ledge trying to get me. No regrets.

They're cheap, you're cheap. Fair game.

I have a lot of respect for folks that can just swordwhip every bad guy to death and I -ALSO- have a lot of respect for folks that figure out good places to stand while their Wolves tear up some bad guys and they can move on with their day.

I remember in DS1, in the forest where the sword-dog lives, the opening area had a few pretty tough, invader-like characters that would really aggressively come after you. But you could dash out, trigger all their awareness and run back to the entrance and sliiiiiide off the edge and land on a ledge and watch them all spill over your head off the cliff trying to kill you. Get a quick bunch of souls and avoid a lot of grief. Smarter, not harder!

I'm in an area filled with really hard enemies who are also literally invisible. So that's cool.

Disgustipater wrote: I had a lot of trouble with the 3 Great Jar Duelists in Caelid. Just a bunch of katanas and blood waves. So after banging my head against this, I cheesed it super hard by hiding on a tiny ledge and letting the Duelists fall off the ledge trying to get me. No regrets.

This is a pretty funny one as the equipment of the guys who spawn here is a random selection from people that have either beaten the duelists or done PVP (I'm not sure which), but this only happens if you're online. Rivers Of Blood is popular online so those three were consistently RoB spammers. I couldn't figure out counterplay against them and wasn't having fun so I went offline where I got a nice variety of predefined NPCs to beat. A different kind of cheese .

In general I'm finding that despite putting the game away for two weeks I'm kind of burnt out on it. It's just kind of endless. I'm annoyed that Vyke's invasion is bugged for me; apparently if you don't get invaded before fighting all of the bosses in Liurnia he won't invade (following similar rules to actual invasions in the game). The frustrating part is that he's located on the ass end of the region where you'd only really venture after completing most of the bosses. After looking up his lore I think he's one of the most interesting characters in the game.

I felt like I was getting bored with my thrusting sword/glintblade phalanx build (which was very effective!) so I ended up switching to the Bastard's Stars with a bit of a respec. Its weapon art is fantastic. I was initially powerstancing with that and the Nightrider flail but I soon realised that the powerstanced moveset wasn't adding much to my game plan so I went a flail + shield combo for now. I think a bleed build/cold build would benefit more from powerstancing. Having access to such a high number of respecs is great. The limited number of smithing stones to get new weapons up to scratch is a little bit more annoying, I guess I need to find the relevant Bell Bearings.

I'm having a lot of trouble with Alecto. PVP and these bosses that don't allow summons reveal how not great at this game I am. I find the difficulty curve of this game annoying as I'm either massively overleveled for the region (Caelid after Liurnia was a joke) or well outside of my skill zone (Moonlight Altar).

sornars wrote: I'm having a lot of trouble with Alecto. PVP and these bosses that don't allow summons reveal how not great at this game I am. I find the difficulty curve of this game annoying as I'm either massively overleveled for the region (Caelid after Lirunia was a joke) or well outside of my skill zone (Moonlight Altar).

Had to Google this boss since I didn't recognize the name. So much stuff in this game you can just walk past without noticing it