Elden ring!

[wankerness]

I was thinking to do predominantly strength and use faith for utility stuff or potential weapon buffs. Have you come across any elemental weapon buffs yet in the game, like a version of flame weapon?

You mean spells or enchants? I found a couple of the former, I’ve found a few spell books that unlocked weapon buffs. Black blade and some kind of lightning blade iirc. I haven’t used either cause my weapon isn’t buffable I don’t think.

As for what the other guy replied with, there are enchants too, which are done with the ashes and are permanent. I have a lot of those, still haven’t found the lightning one but had been using a holy one to give my weapon faith scaling and split damage before I got this weapon that I can’t enchant.

I beat two more bosses that gave trophies all the castle in weeping peninsula- one in that manor i mentioned before that rains arrows on you from hundreds of yards, and the other in the corner of the lakes in what I thought was a regular cave but then turned into quite something.

Oh, and here’s a hilarious area I found. Look at the sheer amount of bloodstains!! This was another good example of a place you are going to need to separate the run and jump buttons, some of these jumps you overshoot if you run and others you undershoot. I died twice at the end of the chain and then just teleported out!!

 

[LostTheTone]

I don't know if I fully agree - I definitely had trouble with it initially, but once I levelled up some summons it was manageable if not trivial. The Lone Wolf summon is great for stuff like that. They distracted the boss and some of the adds while I cleaned them up, then focussed down the boss. I think they're trying to emphasize that using the summons isn't cheating, but a mechanic you're expected to use. It's not the greatest fight overall though.

I guess there is some truth to that, but summons have been a core part of the series since forever. You always had the choice to summon, if you wanted to, but everything was designed so that if you were utterly shit out of luck you could just tackle any boss alone and in hollow form. You could potentially get stranded like that, so the game had to respect that in its design. Now it feels like at least some bosses are designed so that you have to summon or the fight isn't really practical. And it doesn't help that this game has DS3 style weapons so you can't really become a damage bulldozer like you could in earlier games. Sure, if you are way overlevelled you can just blitz through them, but that isn't quite the same thing. Oh and it doesn't help that most summons are only there to be a distraction, and that a good number of bosses have built in attacks that will incidentally kill summons while they are trying to attack you.

Going into a boss fight and summoning your hounds simply so they can cancel out the mob of random jerks so you can fight the boss is terrible design. That isn't a meaningful interaction because the player doesn't have a choice.

 

[wankerness]

The ash summons are infinite use items and clearly intended as a baseline mechanic, summons in other DS games are contingent on using limited consumables to get out of hollow form so it’s kind of something you aren’t supposed to just do every time. There are counterparts to regular DS summons and those usually aren’t worth using unless you’re struggling cause they buff the boss’s health - I’ve only seen them on like three or four bosses so far. You also don’t need them and you also will start getting better weapons if you search around and build properly. I’ve one shot every boss since Godrick, those two are a pretty huge brick wall to the rest of the game I think.

 

[LostTheTone]

The ash summons are infinite use items and clearly intended as a baseline mechanic, summons in other DS games are contingent on using limited consumables to get out of hollow form so it’s kind of something you aren’t supposed to just do every time. There are counterparts to regular DS summons and those usually aren’t worth using unless you’re struggling cause they buff the boss’s health - I’ve only seen them on like three or four bosses so far. You also don’t need them and you also will start getting better weapons if you search around and build properly. I’ve one shot every boss since Godrick, those two are a pretty huge brick wall to the rest of the game I think.

That's why I don't like them though.

First, if you're supposed to use them every time then why are they even an item? Why not just have them appear? Or why not just dispense with them and rebalance?

Second, the game is not well served by having loads of guys in the same fight. The skill is in timing and patience and finding openings. Having loads more stuff happening in the arena pulls it away from skill, making it more chaotic and (to my mind) less satisfying. Sometimes the boss aggros the summons and you just blitz them, but sometimes they ignore them. Sometimes your doggos munch all the mobs. But sometimes they don't and you get stun locked from behind by a goblin you couldn't see.

It isn't good design if you are just blitzing through so many bosses with no trouble.

 

[wankerness]

Well, I find it more fun to do that than struggle for hours. I guess if you don’t want to use the summons you can always intentionally make things harder for yourself to feel like other DS games.

The reason I’m blitzing through is mainly just my weapon since I found +7 upgrade materials for it and I’m progressing through +3 balanced areas now. I don’t use summons on every boss. But, I have when I’m confronted by something that looks scary and I don’t want to lose progress!

I guess I was wrong, I did die HARD on one boss when I tried to summon. Went in solo after that and it was much easier. Did get a gesture from summoning the dude though. The ash summons don’t help on everything, some mobs basically just aoe them all to death instantly.

 

[Mathemagician]

Caved and started looking up map fragment locations. I’ve ended up running all over the world and only found 2 on my own, so this will help a lot. As far as the “NPC ghosting model quest or just ending” that’s typical Fromsoft.

 

[wankerness]

Caved and started looking up map fragment locations. I’ve ended up running all over the world and only found 2 on my own, so this will help a lot. As far as the “NPC ghosting model quest or just ending” that’s typical Fromsoft.

Map fragments are one thing you don’t need to look up - if you look at your map you can see a little obelisk looking thing on the edge of the fog, and that’s where the map item is.

 

[stevexc]

That's why I don't like them though.

First, if you're supposed to use them every time then why are they even an item? Why not just have them appear? Or why not just dispense with them and rebalance?

Second, the game is not well served by having loads of guys in the same fight. The skill is in timing and patience and finding openings. Having loads more stuff happening in the arena pulls it away from skill, making it more chaotic and (to my mind) less satisfying. Sometimes the boss aggros the summons and you just blitz them, but sometimes they ignore them. Sometimes your doggos munch all the mobs. But sometimes they don't and you get stun locked from behind by a goblin you couldn't see.

It isn't good design if you are just blitzing through so many bosses with no trouble.

It's not "an" item, though, there's a number of different ones that all behave differently, have different strengths, weaknesses, resistances, attacks, etc. "Having them appear" would defeat the purpose entirely - it's literally taking an aspect of customization away from you. You could make the same argument for weapon elements - why give you the option to choose between fire and ice or higher base damage when it can be automatically decided at the fight, or just remove the aspect altogether - the only thing that matters is how much damage your weapon does.

And you're not "supposed" to use them, they're just one option. Like so many of the other systems in the game - magic, crafting, weapon types, ranged vs melee weapons, the various elements and statuses you can choose to use, skills, items - there's situations where the right one could give you an upper hand. You have the option to brute force your way through without, but series has always been about picking the tools that best suit the situation and the boss fight. You can play and probably beat the game as an unarmed Wretch, but you're going to have to play much, much more carefully to make up for eschewing all the other options you're given. I'll rephrase what I said earlier - it's not so much a mechanic you're expected to use but a mechanic you're expected to consider.

I disagree that making fights more chaotic is a bad thing too. It's a trade-off. If you choose to summon with spirit ashes, all of a sudden you're not being focussed on exclusively and your DPS is effectively increased, at the cost of having more things to pay attention to and more variability. It's on you to decide whether that's worth it, and whether that's the playstyle you enjoy.

Sure, this fight in particular seems a little biased towards getting you to use Spirit Ashes, but bear in mind that it's a relatively early game minor dungeon, it's completely optional, and the reward for beating the dungeon... is more Spirit Ashes. It's early game content, and I'd argue that it's actually good design to use early game content to give the player fairly clear situations to use the tools you've given them. This guy's a good one for Spirit Ashes, you've got the Tree Sentinel and Tibia Mariner for mounted combat, etc.

At the end of the day, though, it's your game and your enjoyment. As far as I've seen you're never forced to use any one mechanic in combat to finish the game, so if you don't enjoy playing that way... don't? Personally, I'm super, super bad at this game, so I'll take all the help I can get.

 

[wankerness]

Got some more fancy weapons I can’t use with my build, like a dual blades lightsaber looking thing that requires arcane investment and a legendary sword that’s int-based. Hopefully I find more legendary swords, this one I only got cause I have made a habit of following all the messages people leave even though plenty are trolling.

Hit two bosses I can’t beat without another probably 20 attempts, a screwed up laser-spewing bull on top of a volcano, and a greatly upgraded version of the tree sentinel that spams fireballs.

 

[Mathemagician]

I got killed by a bear in the overworld. Then went into a cave somewhere else and got killed by a bear. Wtf bro

 

[wankerness]

The bears are sons of bitches, I can’t kill them in the overworld, especially in Altus plateau. That one in the cave died fast enough I could handle it.

 

[LostTheTone]

Well, I find it more fun to do that than struggle for hours. I guess if you don’t want to use the summons you can always intentionally make things harder for yourself to feel like other DS games.

The reason I’m blitzing through is mainly just my weapon since I found +7 upgrade materials for it and I’m progressing through +3 balanced areas now. I don’t use summons on every boss. But, I have when I’m confronted by something that looks scary and I don’t want to lose progress!

I guess I was wrong, I did die HARD on one boss when I tried to summon. Went in solo after that and it was much easier. Did get a gesture from summoning the dude though. The ash summons don’t help on everything, some mobs basically just aoe them all to death instantly.

Well yes, it is more fun in the short term to win than to not win. But the point of Souls games is that you have to learn the bosses and the mechanics and execute smartly and then you win. In general, bad Souslike games are ones where the levels take more effort to complete than the bosses.

And as you say, you fire off the summons to help you out and keep you alive this time. But thats the opposite way that they used to work. It used to be that you summoned when you had died lots and needed a helping hand. But now the summons are unlimited use, and there isn't even an HP buff so there is literally no penalty for firing them off.

I think what is annoying me most is that the summons are very feast or famine - They either make a fight trivial, or they make no difference. They don't give you an incremental advantage, there isn't some tweaked version of the boss to account for them.

Which is a pity because that could have been a really cool way to use them - Bosses maybe use different weapons or attacks when fighting summons.

 

[Mathemagician]

I respect Fromsoft’s commitment to giants/golems that try to 360 no-scope me from across the planet.

 

[stevexc]

I think what is annoying me most is that the summons are very feast or famine - They either make a fight trivial, or they make no difference. They don't give you an incremental advantage, there isn't some tweaked version of the boss to account for them.

Where are you finding this to be the case? I haven't found that to be true at all, at least not in the majority of scenarios where I've used them. There's been a small handful of fights where I've dropped a summon and completely stomped the boss, but in all of those cases I've been overlevelled as well, plus they were minor inconsequential optional bosses.

Either way... just don't use them if you don't like them. You're not forced to as far as I can tell. It literally won't impact your enjoyment of the game to not use them, or whether or not someone else does.

Calling it "not good design" is just not correct, though, especially when you don't seem to understand how the mechanic works.

 

[SamSam]

I tend to use them if I'm struggling and find they are a good way to beat a boss down to 50% before they die.

It's just an option to help out when you don't want the full on Dark souls experience.

Then again it was the same in the other games (I only begrudgingly used a summon once in ds3 for sister friede and then proceeded to one shot her).

 

[wankerness]

The summons matter less and less as you progress. Like, the last couple bosses I used a +6 summon and it died in under 10 seconds without doing anything other than preventing me from taking a first hit to the face that I could have dodged if I wasn't casting summon anyway. Even when heavily upgraded they don't necessarily last more than a couple seconds.

I beat my second "great rune" boss after Godrick (it's weird how they count or don't count, like, Ranalla was the end boss of a second major legacy dungeon but wasn't a great rune boss, but had a remembrance), he was a ridiculous gimmick boss that had an infuriating guaranteed oneshot move that is very, VERY hard to dodge for reasons that will become apparent quickly to anyone that fights him. I cheesed him in a very soulslike manner after discovering the dragon rot breath was SUPER EFFECTIVE.

I think I might have skipped the dungeon associated with him - I was on a quest that put up a teleporter that took me right to the area before him. Though maybe that legacy dungeon has next to nothing in it, not sure.

So yeah, I'm over 50 hours in and I think I'm less than halfway through in terms of actual progression. I just had a very, very, very stressful descent from the ground level of the map about 20 minutes downwards with no point of grace until you actually reach the bottom. There's some really weird stuff down there. Got two more achievement bosses down there, one of which was a total joke (all the comments in the room after I beat it were like "didn't expect weak foe") and the other of which gave off heavy Sekiro vibes despite not being anything like any Sekiro bosses, I guess just because of the music and look. Very cool stuff. So, that last one is the boss I have that the fewest PS5 users have done out of anything I've done so far - 4.5% apparently. There are a LOT of boss trophies left.

I went back to that hellish mine that you get teleported to early on, and tried to clear it for real - that boss is a goddam nightmare. Gave up pretty quickly since the run back was annoying. It's the same boss that killed me repeatedly in the overworld, only crammed in a tiny cave, it's REALLY hard. I'm going to wait till I'm overlevelled and go back to stomp him.

I also got an int-scaling Katana that I heard mentioned somewhere - looked it up and it's widely considered the best weapon in the game. I am contemplating respeccing cause I got multiple respec items recently.

 

[Mathemagician]

Very minor enemy spoilers:

So I beat Castle Morne and then went back and fought Magrit at lvl 30. In the interim I got chased by a fucking sleepy hollow MF into the woods where I found a well. And then…man this game is so fucking big. Like holy shit. I’m glad I’m playing it without guides/etc. it’s so big.

 

[wankerness]

Found a much, much more op ash in an underground area.

Spoiler

It’s called mimic tear and it’s a clone of you, with all your abilities/items.

It eliminated the scaling problem with ashes on the last several bosses, I used it once and it trivialized a late game boss. I think I won’t use it again unless I’m desperate, the thing seemed like a “win button!” I did have it upgraded to +10 though.

I have been dying a hell of a lot on trash mobs, environmental hazards, etc but bosses mostly haven’t been too bad besides bullshit ones in tiny enclosed areas. Seems about par for the course with these games!

This game has the worst poison swamp in any of these games yet in the form of the

Spoiler

underground rot lake that gives you blood rot in about four seconds and has HUGE spaces between land masses as well as a giant boss in the middle.

That is one boss I did t even try!

 

[/wrists]

so is this game actually good?

 

[wankerness]

so is this game actually good?

Nope, stick to assassins creed