Yeah, right…
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Man…storming the castle now. This is unbelievably compelling. Suspense off the walls. I totally get why people love these From Software games. Immenient, severe danger could be, and probably is, lurking behind every corner.
Personally, I don’t know why they lock these experiences behind some crazy difficult intro boss fight.
Like, when I tried to play Dark Souls 3 to learn how to play this game- that intro boss took me hours where I was immediately transported to another area where I went a little bit and had to fight another iteration of the previous boss. I had the impression that it was just a boss rush kinda game.
Luckily, Elden Ring is actually more approachable(especially once divorcing the relaxing open world vibe of BoTW from playing this game “oh im just gonna chill and see what I can find- oh crap, im going to die. I’m going to die again. I just need to reclaim my lost runes- nvm I just died. So much for leveling up”)
This castle is the most invested I’ve felt playing the game so far. If it weren’t for the hype, I might have just put this game on the infinite backburner.
Not that the game should be easier, I think its just missing the initial motivation to WANT to push through.
That being said- yeah, this game is like all the genres combined into one. Stealth, action, fantasy, horror- man, this game is much scarier than any horror game I’ve played- totally wasn’t expecting that
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Re: horror - I straight up screamed at something that happened outside the Volcano Manor in Mt. Gelmir last night. And then started laughing after I died because it was so terrible.
On another note I started playing the Capitol and I think I might have over leveled a bit due to all the side quests I was doing (I have 4 great runes at this point, although I’ve only restored 1). Or maybe it’s trying to lure me into a sense of complacency before inflicting further horrors upon me. We’ll see!
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Lol. If it weren’t for the notes from other players, I’d be a Level 50 nervous wreck playing this game.
Even if it is from a troll, I at least know something is coming to clench my sphinker to prepare
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For whatever reason the network connection is iffy for me (I’m on an Xbox One X) so half the time I’m playing offline. I can usually get it to reconnect but I have to restart the Xbox. The messages do help, annoying as they are. Even the trolls tell you something if you take the opposite of their advice.
Respecced back to int. It’s just better. I do way more damage than I did with str only, and I have more options. It seems the only benefit of str is you stagger enemies more easily, but bosses don’t seem to care. Faith also just didn’t seem that strong, only maybe a bit more fun and diverse. But then it becomes a lot to keep track of.
Moonveil just fucking wrecks. Its L2 R2 does at least 1k, comes out insanely fast, doesn’t use much fp, and also procs bleed. I’m just not convinced that any other weapon is better.
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You can combine it with 2nd hand poison katana, endless fun, 22 dex needed.
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What is the poison katana? I unfortunately missed rivers of blood. My build right now has 18 dex but I can use talismans to get that number up.
I did two handing blood and two handing great swords which was fun but overall not as much damage. Although the bleed proc was really frequent…
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Hmmm I wonder if I can still do this if I beat Rykard. I still have the first npc to kill on my map.
Fire Giant defeated. Quite a tough one for something that prefers to hang back and spell her shit out of baddies. Had to get up close and dodge and Moonveil the shit out of it in phase 1.
Anyway, feels like there’s a bit of a point if no return immediately after. Without giving anything away, am I better to get “secret” areas out of the way before progressing or will they still be accessible? I want to get all main bosses in this playthrough but also want to progress that main story!
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I’m playing on a Series S and since my loss of progress incident I’ve been making sure I quit to title at the end of a session, which means I have to go through the loading / connecting stage when I come back. Every single time since I’ve started doing that it’s taken four or five tries to connect to the server, so you’re not alone, though once connected it stays connected.
My big discovery last night was that the ‘magicians’ in Sellia Crystal Tunnel aren’t using magic at all, which is actually obvious from the colour of their homing missiles when you’re not panicking because you’ve been teleported into an area way above your pay grade. Going in the front, they were still enough of a nuisance, but I suddenly discovered that blocking their attack only caused a stamina hit, after which they became much less of a worry.
It’s possible that when I teleported there early in the game, it was before I’d found a 100% physical shield and that led me to assume they were magic attacks. It was certainly a bad time.
Anyway, I chickened out of the boss due to my rune count, but I did open up the ladder shortcut, so I’ll be back. My main points of progress were beating the invader at the Revenger’s Shack and getting to the boss door in Caria Manor where, once again, I chickened out. But in my defence, my nerves were in pieces by then.
I’m still risking the quick resuming… mostly because I’m a lazy bastard really
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I have to catch myself every time, but I don’t want to go through that again. It’s a drag because Quick Resume is such a great feature and very easy to become accustomed to. Not sure if it’s FS or MS who were at fault with this one, but it’s not the first time I’ve had issues with QR - just the first time it’s casued me any real inconvenience. I’m still finding stuff that was reset which I’ve been assuming is taken care of. I need to audit my inventory against dungeon rewards to see if any are outstanding - luckily I never sell anything other than crafting items.
I wonder if me playing offline has helped me avoid the headaches as You’re def Not alone with hitting the lost progress problem. A few of Reddit mentioned it.
QR is a great feature though but it’s broken on any game that relies on an online sign in.
My setup was a bit odd in that I had everything set for online, but never actually went online - I assume not being able to connect at the very start on day one and then only using QR meant that the game never tried to reconnect itself. Once the update happened, I was very clearly online and surrounded by notes and ghosts - possibly if I’d actually set the game to offline, the update might not have taken place. I’ll never know… but it’s all in the past now.
I’m not sure which I preferred - the world definitely works offline, and even if you don’t read the notes you can be sure that a bunch of them before a junction means something is about to happen, which changes the experience. But it’s also nice to have everyone’s ghosts goofing around, and to find and leave messages in stupid places - and I have been grateful for a couple of ‘Be wary of left’ notes in the dungeons.
I love all the messages and blood staines, they give you a feeling of shared struggle, of not being alone.
Plus I did need some mp help a few times.
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I was def I’m the same boat. Couldn’t connect day one so was offline since other than when I wanted to do the Varre quest. Then I went back offline and relied on QR and somehow avoided the 10 hour lost when updating problem.
I’d be as well going back online now that I’m closer to the end. I did like the ghosts and messages but me number of times I thought I was getting attacked was unreal 
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Oh yeah, especially in any scenario with ghostly enemies - the dungeon behind the stone imp at the start is a great example, I did that recently and mistook several player phantoms for archers. They often get in the way, too, and I’ve had a couple of isntances where I’ve been unable to switch to my shield because I’m standing somewhere with a message and another interaction, which hijacks the d-pad, bad form…
Speaking of misundertandings, I was scrapping in some ruins yesterday and accidentally mistook the blind woman who likes grapes for a dozing sentry. Gave her a couple of swipes on horseback and now I need to make amends at the church with the huge turtle in a pope hat (again, what a game). But I don’t think I’ve unlocked any areas with the item I need to do that, so I’m stuck with her giving me the silent treatment despite the fact I have two whole grapes for her.
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The first thing I was told upon getting Dark Souls 3 was to quit through the system menu to avoid losing progress, since it’s the only way to manually save. I guess I was lucky to get that advice. It’s unfortunate your playthrough has been… tarnished.
Online games and quick resume never work on my Series X though, so I’m always manually closing those games after a session. Hopefully more quick resume options become available so you can prevent updates or exclude games from it.
Anyway I am now 80 hours into Elden Ring, nearly at level 100, and am somehow even more into this game than I was the first few weeks. Except for the chariot tunnels. Those sections do nothing for me, to put it nicely.
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