Elden Ring

[aceluby]

35 minutes ago, RumHam said:

How do you upgrade these things?

Go to the roundtable and go back and forth between talking to the blacksmith and talking to the girl that gave you the jellyfish (takes like 3 or 4 trips).  After their conversation, reload the roundtable and the girl should have moved to by the blacksmith.

[Fez]

I believe Margit is technically an optional boss. There is a back entrance into the Castle. The only thing I'm not sure of is if the door is one-way or not; since I found it from within the Castle.

Also, I think theoretically you could do one of the higher level legacy dungeons first instead.

I'm curious if this is truly like BotW and you can immediately get to the final boss if you want. Or if there are blocks in place.

[sifth]

 

We ran into an old friend, during our second night of adventuring, lol

[briantw]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I'm curious if this is truly like BotW and you can immediately get to the final boss if you want. Or if there are blocks in place.

I'd think you'd have to kill all the bosses that hold fragments of the Elden Ring.  Most if not all others may be optional.

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, briantw said:

I'd think you'd have to kill all the bosses that hold fragments of the Elden Ring.  Most if not all others may be optional.

A lot are definitely optional. There's a Youtube channel that has been posting many of the boss fights, and reached one of the endings while saying it wasn't necessarily the "true" ending because they had skipped some boss fights getting to that point.

@Fez

Spoiler

I found someone showing the conversation with Gideon, but not with Enia. Is she also at Roundtable hold?

 

[Fez]

27 minutes ago, briantw said:

I'd think you'd have to kill all the bosses that hold fragments of the Elden Ring.  Most if not all others may be optional.

An NPC did tell me I had to beat the other major bosses before I could enter the capital city. But considering how many roundabout paths there are in the game, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a hidden way in.

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

A lot are definitely optional. There's a Youtube channel that has been posting many of the boss fights, and reached one of the endings while saying it wasn't necessarily the "true" ending because they had skipped some boss fights getting to that point.

@Fez

  Hide contents

I found someone showing the conversation with Gideon, but not with Enia. Is she also at Roundtable hold?

 

Spoiler

Yep. You'll know you'll have found her because there's an enormous deformed, possibly psychic hand, called "Two Fingers", that is beside her. Any video might actually be labeled Two Fingers instead, since it's the more surprising and lore-relevant piece. Though Enia does all the talking.

And I have to assume Two Fingers is a direct GRRM creation. It is such a weird and specific thing.

 

[briantw]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

An NPC did tell me I had to beat the other major bosses before I could enter the capital city. But considering how many roundabout paths there are in the game, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a hidden way in.

  Hide contents

 

Based on the opening cinematic it seemed like the whole point of the game was to collect the shards of the Elden Ring to become the Elden Lord.  It very much sounded like you needed all of them.

[RumHam]

I found a great spot to grind runes. 

Spoiler

Talk to D the Hunter in the roundtable place and he'll mark a spot on your map just north of the third church of marika. You'll be teleported to a spot near a boss. Don't fight it, or anything else. Just ride your horse downhill to the bridge and use the bonfire. Then you can go back and fight the cloaked guys one at a time. They give 1000 runes each. There are ~18 of them around. 

[Mexal]

Nice. Thanks.

I killed Godrick on the 3rd try. Wasn’t so bad once I switched from skeleton to jellyfish abs used my rock sling spell. Level 28. Moving on to the Lake now.

[Fez]

Didn't get a chance to play too much tonight. I looked up this meteorite staff and got it and rock sling. It's a nice combo.

I also went back to Stormveil Castle because I remembered there was a locked door and a broken elevator I never figured out. Turns out there's a lot of optional areas in there. Including a hidden, non-boss (had no name at least) absurdly powerful creature. I ended up running past it and found an item and some visual design with some really interesting lore implications; though I've no idea what they might mean yet.

[RumHam]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

Didn't get a chance to play too much tonight. I looked up this meteorite staff and got it and rock sling. It's a nice combo.

I found those too. The staff after the mindfuck of

Spoiler

being teleported to that mining cave controlled by centipede monster. 

I also had maybe my favorite "oh no way" moment so far earlier. I dunno if this is something that was known or a huge spoiler, and there is no way properly spoiler tag it because the game is non-linear. It made me think of skyrim. 

 

[Mexal]

7 hours ago, RumHam said:

I found those too. The staff after the mindfuck of

  Reveal hidden contents

being teleported to that mining cave controlled by centipede monster. 

I also had maybe my favorite "oh no way" moment so far earlier. I dunno if this is something that was known or a huge spoiler, and there is no way properly spoiler tag it because the game is non-linear. It made me think of skyrim. 

 

On man, this happened to me as well. And if you go up, that’s not the way to get out so… I lost quite a bit of runes when that happened but did get level 5 smithing stones that I haven’t figured out how to use yet.

[mcbigski]

22 hours ago, Slurktan said:

The wolves suck against him. The jellyfish is fantastic vs him or really any single target boss.

Yeah, the jellyfish is surprisingly useful.  I mean no one ever suspects the jellyfish.  Was using the 5 nobles mob ash and the summons at first, but he was taking out the mob all at once, so I went jellyfish and much easier.  Is it like the previous games where if you use a summon sign for a boss battle, the boss gets somewhat tougher?  Because when I beat Margit I didn't bother bringing in the sorcerer.

18 hours ago, Fez said:

I believe Margit is technically an optional boss. There is a back entrance into the Castle. The only thing I'm not sure of is if the door is one-way or not; since I found it from within the Castle.

Also, I think theoretically you could do one of the higher level legacy dungeons first instead.

I'm curious if this is truly like BotW and you can immediately get to the final boss if you want. Or if there are blocks in place.

I went around the back first, you can get in, but you can only access a couple of rooms with no encounters.  I assume the locked door is the exit from the final boss in the castle.

Took me a while to figure out a couple of very basic things.  Not sure how long I spent running around with only 4 flask charges at +0 before I tried upgrading a second time.  Oops.  No idea where I picked up the Golden Seed and the other item.  Happened to notice a tiny erdtree in the storm plains I'd ridden by about a dozen times and said, wait a minute...  So that's what to look for for seeds.  Does the cost start to scale?  Found another seed but it isn't letting me upgrade.

Also, was used to titanite shards, chunks etc progression.  So I'm wandering around looking for smithing stones and see Smithing Stone (2) X 1.  Sweet, two stones!  Upgrade time.  Except that I haven't found the smith yet who can upgrade past plus 3 three yet, so every time I find lvl 2 or even 3 stones, my rage meter goes up a little more.  Running an Astrologer, so got my staff to +3, and my magic short sword to +2.  Then found the Demi-human queen staff, which is marginally better at +0 than my base staff at +3, but I don't have the stones to upgrade it, even if the guy at the Roundtable seems able to.  Trying to stay unspoiled, but apparently I need to explore that crystal cave full of whoop ass more, since I'm going with an INT build.

[Fez]

25 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Took me a while to figure out a couple of very basic things.  Not sure how long I spent running around with only 4 flask charges at +0 before I tried upgrading a second time.  Oops.  No idea where I picked up the Golden Seed and the other item.  Happened to notice a tiny erdtree in the storm plains I'd ridden by about a dozen times and said, wait a minute...  So that's what to look for for seeds.  Does the cost start to scale?  Found another seed but it isn't letting me upgrade.

Also, was used to titanite shards, chunks etc progression.  So I'm wandering around looking for smithing stones and see Smithing Stone (2) X 1.  Sweet, two stones!  Upgrade time.  Except that I haven't found the smith yet who can upgrade past plus 3 three yet, so every time I find lvl 2 or even 3 stones, my rage meter goes up a little more.  Running an Astrologer, so got my staff to +3, and my magic short sword to +2.  Then found the Demi-human queen staff, which is marginally better at +0 than my base staff at +3, but I don't have the stones to upgrade it, even if the guy at the Roundtable seems able to.  Trying to stay unspoiled, but apparently I need to explore that crystal cave full of whoop ass more, since I'm going with an INT build.

Gonna use spoilers in case any/all of this is info you don't want:

Golden Seed/Sacred Tear scaling and types of locations

Spoiler

The first golden seed upgrades costs 1, the next several cost 2, then it goes to 3. Not sure if it keeps going past that. Sacred Tears, which upgrade the amount of healing/FP recovery, always cost 1. At least so far.

Golden seeds are found at those tiny trees and sometimes dropped by unique, non-boss enemies. Sacred Tears are found at the ruined churchs in the open world.

The smith location

Spoiler

He's in the roundtable and is available from the start. You might've missed his room

Crystal cave/INT stuff

Spoiler

It's not actually in the cave. It's southwest of there.

 

[RumHam]

Is there no armor upgrading in this game? Also is it possible to upgrade staffs? The Blacksmith doesn't seem to do it. 

Also has anyone found a way to respec? 

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Also, was used to titanite shards, chunks etc progression.  So I'm wandering around looking for smithing stones and see Smithing Stone (2) X 1.  Sweet, two stones!  Upgrade time.  

This threw me first, thinking I had found multiple of the same item. Now I use it to get an idea of where I am difficulty wise. If I start picking up [4] and [5] items I know I probably am in danger. 

I got lucky with the Grave Glovewort and found a [4] last night. I just don't know which summon to upgrade. 

I'm thinking there's probably a way to craft like five [1]s into a [2] etc. 

[Werthead]

Ha. The Iron Throne Greatsword.

[aceluby]

19 hours ago, Fez said:

I believe Margit is technically an optional boss. There is a back entrance into the Castle. The only thing I'm not sure of is if the door is one-way or not; since I found it from within the Castle.

Also, I think theoretically you could do one of the higher level legacy dungeons first instead.

I'm curious if this is truly like BotW and you can immediately get to the final boss if you want. Or if there are blocks in place.

I'm pretty sure you have to find the ring fragments in order to progress.  There might be some back doors, but I haven't found them yet after a lot of exploring and am locked behind several big blue doors I've found.

This morning I went through and did a few of the smaller dungeons and mini-bosses.  With the +3 wolves and rock sling, most were done in a few hits.  The huge bear was the hardest, but even that was done on my first try.  I also got a new potion mix with a hp + stamina regen, which when mixed with my hp regen talisman will nullify poison.  Gonna do a tiny bit of grinding tonight and get more stonesword ruins, spells, and ashes.  Shouldn't take too long if I go to the spot with a bunch of huge trolls that give 1k ruins + refill all your flasks on kill.

[RumHam]

3 minutes ago, aceluby said:

  Shouldn't take too long if I go to the spot with a bunch of huge trolls that give 1k ruins + refill all your flasks on kill.

You should consider the spot I mentioned ten posts up. Lots of isolated small enemies who give 1094 each. Pop one of those gold pickled feet and you can probably kill ten of them before it wears off. 

[aceluby]

15 minutes ago, RumHam said:

You should consider the spot I mentioned ten posts up. Lots of isolated small enemies who give 1094 each. Pop one of those gold pickled feet and you can probably kill ten of them before it wears off. 

Yeah, that's a pretty good spot, but a bit riskier since any of those guys can one-shot me and killing them doesn't refill all my flasks

[Kalbear]

There's a special spot that you can get to from limgrave which cheeses rune farming to an absurd level - 1952 runes per run, can reset and do it again in less than a minute, no combat required (only torrent).

https://www.windowscentral.com/elden-ring-best-way-farm-runes

The above does a decent job of describing where it is, this does a good job of showing the right turn