Elden Ring

[karaddin]

On 3/24/2022 at 8:39 AM, RumHam said:

 

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It's in Raya Lucaria at the bottom of the water wheel elevator where the "negates fall damage" talisman that doesn't actually prevent fall damage is. 

 

I actually watched a video explaining fall damage which was very helpful. You can fall 15 metres without taking damage and up to 19.9* without dying, but once you pass 20m it's death at all times. At 15.1 you take something like 33% damage scaling up to 50% at 19.9. All methods of reducing fall damage merely reduce the amount of damage you take within that window, they do not prevent guaranteed death at 20m. Apparently in previous games the damage started at 5m and scaled in a more intuitive manner.

This was my first souls game and it was a very steep learning curve with mouse and keyboard. I had no clue when I first started as an astrologer only to switch to vagabond for learning the game. Once I was more comfortable I went back to the astrologer and played through the whole game on that. Killed most of the prominent optional bosses, including all the time bearers. Malenia was the hardest by far. I'd used the rune farm with the chicken so was probably over leveled (to offset my lack of skill and arthritis) but it didn't really help much for her fight as the healing on hit made it so much more punishing to get hit and her flurry would still one shot me at 1800 health.

I'd expected to mostly use pebble based on comments I'd seen here and elsewhere but did wind up using a few different spells depending on the situation - the moonblade spell from the glintstone dragon in the Ranni quest line was probably the main staple and core for malenia, glintstone spiral is great against bigger bosses, the big glintstone shard did the job on the final boss, comet azure with the flask to blow up everything that would stand still. By far the best way of dealing with the crucible knights. Loretta's mastery for long range sniping.

Astel was probably the most annoying though, the teleport into grab one shot was so obnoxious and his hitbox was terrible - both for him hitting you and for his body being so big that rearing backwards takes him from in range when you cast to out of range by the time the projectile reaches him.

[aceluby]

I always feel like the game is mocking me when I see "No Skill" after using a magic death laser to beat a boss.

Like, I know it's just the skill name on my shield, but still... it hurts.... and I know....

[karaddin]

11 hours ago, aceluby said:

I always feel like the game is mocking me when I see "No Skill" after using a magic death laser to beat a boss.

Like, I know it's just the skill name on my shield, but still... it hurts.... and I know....

I'm doing another run now playing a poorly focused incantation/melee build and some of the fights are really throwing me with how hard they are, only for me to realise it's because I cheesed them with comet before lol.

Had a particularly striking run last night though with back to back bosses I really struggled with on the astrologer getting killed on the first attempt this time - Astel (with only 2 mana flasks left as well) and Glintstone Dragon Adula. Rot breath is carrying heavily at this point wherever I get the chance to channel it, and the dragon at least makes sense as it's resistant to regular magic. I think it's also the Dung Eater puppet - I didn't know to to that the first time and after these 2 fights I think he's the best at holding agro.

Then I went and tried Alecto in the nearby evergaol and got wrecked while the astrologer did it easily lol. 

[aceluby]

8 hours ago, karaddin said:

I'm doing another run now playing a poorly focused incantation/melee build and some of the fights are really throwing me with how hard they are, only for me to realise it's because I cheesed them with comet before lol.

Had a particularly striking run last night though with back to back bosses I really struggled with on the astrologer getting killed on the first attempt this time - Astel (with only 2 mana flasks left as well) and Glintstone Dragon Adula. Rot breath is carrying heavily at this point wherever I get the chance to channel it, and the dragon at least makes sense as it's resistant to regular magic. I think it's also the Dung Eater puppet - I didn't know to to that the first time and after these 2 fights I think he's the best at holding agro.

Then I went and tried Alecto in the nearby evergaol and got wrecked while the astrologer did it easily lol. 

I super cheesed Alecto, lol.  Basically sat behind a rock and cast mist until she died.  I know I'm playing on easy mode at this point, but that gives me an opportunity to play through again with a completely different style.  I think on NG+ I might try power stancing Moonlight Greatswords, just to change things up a bit.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

I think on NG+ I might try power stancing Moonlight Greatswords, just to change things up a bit.

There's so much depth to the mechanics of these games that part of the difficulty is deciphering all the things people talk about assuming prior knowledge combined with the questionable mouse and keyboard controls. "Power stancing" is something I've seen on Reddit a bunch as well but I still I have no idea what it is lol. I think I saw it referenced when googling how to activate the mini comet azur on the SoNaF as being when you're (on PC) holding shift and right mouse to prepare the ability, in which case I guess it's a thing only some weapons have? Since many will just use the ash of war from that.

[RumHam]

12 hours ago, karaddin said:

I'm doing another run now playing a poorly focused incantation/melee build and some of the fights are really throwing me with how hard they are, only for me to realise it's because I cheesed them with comet before lol.

I kept my "first try" boss streak going through Radahn, which surprised me. Then I went to fight the mini-boss of Crucible Knight and Misbegotten(?) Knight and lost three times. I barely remembered that fight from my first playthrough. You just reminded me why. Because I blasted the first one before the second had even spawned and it was trivial. 

 

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

There's so much depth to the mechanics of these games that part of the difficulty is deciphering all the things people talk about assuming prior knowledge combined with the questionable mouse and keyboard controls. "Power stancing" is something I've seen on Reddit a bunch as well but I still I have no idea what it is lol. I think I saw it referenced when googling how to activate the mini comet azur on the SoNaF as being when you're (on PC) holding shift and right mouse to prepare the ability, in which case I guess it's a thing only some weapons have? Since many will just use the ash of war from that.

Power stancing is using two weapons of the same type (two katanas, greatswords, etc...), then the left attack button has a special attack that will hit with both weapons instead of one at a time.

[Werthead]

Hmm.

[karaddin]

The any% speed run record is about as ridiculous as BMXing through it.

I found yet another area I missed on my first run with Auriza hero's grave (or whatever the one outside Leyndell is called) only to realise it's another of those chariot ones which I hate. But no worries, I found a cheese that killed all the chariots very quickly! 

Spoiler

For some reason the Morgott's shackle you can buy from patches makes them respawn and run into each other lol. Just had to use it at a certain spot

 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, karaddin said:

The any% speed run record is about as ridiculous as BMXing through it.

Is that the unrestricted one, done under 7 minutes? Just watched that yesterday, boggling at the description of how the "zips" were achieved and their speculation as to why bosses were being killed without any interaction. Crazy stuff.

(I can't help but think about the people who complained about CP2077 being too short, when I think the fastest speedrun is at 2.5 hours long, and glitchless is over 3 hours long.)

Speaking of, I watched a guy named "Let me solo her" in a loincloth with a jar on his head get summoned in to help

Spoiler

with Malenia...

and they proceeded to do a hitless solo despite the fact that as the 2nd summon her HP was 3 times normal. I find stuff like that crazy:

 

[RumHam]

I've had three bosses kill themselves during this run. One of the two gargoyles ran off the map, one of the ancestor spirits warped away after taking a bit of damage and never came back. Like two minutes later it just died and I won the fight. Radahn also meteored himself off the map. Weird. 

I didn't realize there were so many bosses that only come out at night. Gotta go kill all those now. 

Lore wise, does anyone know who Renna was? The wiki seems to suggest she's just an alias of Ranni, but I think she must have been a person who got puppeted by Selvus so that Ranni could have a body after she died. 

[karaddin]

@Ran yup that's the one, been watching his improving records since the one just under 30 minutes and the way they keep finding new things to shave off is impressive

[aceluby]

I've spent the last few days just helping people with Melania.  It's kind of hilarious how bad some builds are geared for this fight and the sheer number of people who hide behind shields as she just heals herself is incredibly frustrating.  I've gotten a few groups that just wipe the floor with her though.  One was another mage and a guy with the blood flies incantation and we took her down incredibly fast, which was super fun.  Most though are me watching as the other two get panic roll killed over and over.  Have done this for probably 4 hours total and have only taken her down maybe 10 times, but it has been pretty fun nonetheless.

[karaddin]

I just spent 2 hours beating my head against the draconic tree sentinel in Farum Azula, that's another of the ones I cheesed with comet azur the first time lol. Rotten breath damage seemed to get capped around the time he got to 20% so it was like the fight had a cliff I kept running into at the same time I'd start making more mistakes. It's a field boss with no mount and no summon so the only time to try stack more rot was during one ability he barely used and always when I was in a bad position. Was a good opportunity to improve my mechanics though!

[sifth]

 

This was easily one of my favorite boss fights in the game.

[Slurktan]

Kind of falling out of love with this game.  The "good" bosses are all overtuned to try and stop multiplayer from making them a breeze so they get things like infinite stamina and input reads and animation cancels.  Makes them annoying to do solo. Then there's just the sheer amount of "you fought this dude earlier now there's 2 of them" boss fights that makes Dark Souls 2 gank bosses seem fun in comparison.

[Ran]

15 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Kind of falling out of love with this game.  The "good" bosses are all overtuned to try and stop multiplayer from making them a breeze so they get things like infinite stamina and input reads and animation cancels.  Makes them annoying to do solo. Then there's just the sheer amount of "you fought this dude earlier now there's 2 of them" boss fights that makes Dark Souls 2 gank bosses seem fun in comparison.

If on PC, you can try this mod to reduce the general difficulty of the game.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

Kind of falling out of love with this game.  The "good" bosses are all overtuned to try and stop multiplayer from making them a breeze so they get things like infinite stamina and input reads and animation cancels.  Makes them annoying to do solo. Then there's just the sheer amount of "you fought this dude earlier now there's 2 of them" boss fights that makes Dark Souls 2 gank bosses seem fun in comparison.

Multiplayer has not been a breeze in this series, for a long, long time. Just take this video of me and my friends fighting Gael in DS3, during locking down.

4 of us faced him at the same time, my friend being an extremely experienced gamer, who's beaten all of the FromSoftware games many times and he still kicked are ass for 3 hours.

[Slurktan]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

If on PC, you can try this mod to reduce the general difficulty of the game.

Lol this is probably the easiest game fromsoft has made since demons souls. Just not as a pure melee char.  It's a fn joke with magic.

It's also not hard with pure melee. It's unfair which is something that hasn't been done on a from game in a long time and fairness was the series hallmark.

[karaddin]

The moments which aggravate me the most are definitely where it feels unfair. I was slamming against Radagon and Elden Beast yesterday and Radagons ability to change targets from my summon to me in the middle of his attack and virtually teleport to me while I'm stuck unable to do anything because I'd just started a cast and there's no spell cancellation feels really shit.

And on the attempts that get through to Elden Beast half my spells do nothing but waste time and mana because the center of its hitbox is so damn far away that they don't reach when you're basically at it's head. 

Basically the bosses having bs powerful moves is fine, them getting to operate under different mechanics to the player feels unfair.