Elden ring!

[wankerness]

Ended up beating it last night, managed to get Godfrey and Radagon down to half-health solo, but the ability to summon mimic after that becomes infinitely smaller so I just said fuck it and immediately popped him to melt everyone. Elden Beast as a STR build fucking sucks, I switched to my +10 Grafted Greatsword just for the extra ~250 per jump attack to speed up killing him; he also got the short end of the stick as EB would always go for him and never really aggro'd for me, so after the Radagon fight he'd start at half-health and no way to increase that.

At some point I'll respec my original build for bleed and max out ROB just to melt the same last ...four bosses I just beat, but I'll have to go back to align with the Three Fingers so I can get the last ending, but that's a ways off. I'll probably bring this guy with me into the DLC as my original build was STR, and this one felt like I got it right.

Elden Beast is easiest as a strength build if you use the right cheese. Ex, if you get a weapon with Giant Hunt on it and just spam that over and over, he pretty much stays stunlocked till he dies. You used to be able to do the same thing with Flame of the Redmanes but they nerfed that one to death.

 

[MFB]

Elden Beast is easiest as a strength build if you use the right cheese. Ex, if you get a weapon with Giant Hunt on it and just spam that over and over, he pretty much stays stunlocked till he dies. You used to be able to do the same thing with Flame of the Redmanes but they nerfed that one to death.

Huh, I don't think I've ever gotten that one before, like the name rings zero bells, but I always end up using the same colossal weapon anyways which you cant change and I hate that; one day I'll learn to use a different one, but not today! He's not even particularly hard in a traditional sense, as you have tons of area to attack, but he tends to slink away and then pop back up, so it's a chase game I don't have time for.

Like a less shitty version of ROM

 

[Moongrum]

Elden Beast is easiest as a strength build if you use the right cheese.

I embarrassingly used this cheese when I fought Elden Beast:

But since I was a strength build I used the Beastman Curved Swords with the heavy infusion, felt really unsatisfied when I beat him

 

[wankerness]

I have killed Elden Beast with:

-a holy build (SUCKED, had to resort to blasphemous blade spam since my main holy weapon was a bleed weapon/holy damage combo, both of which are useless against him, and even the taker's flames was not great)
-mage build 1 was when the game first released and you could cheese radagon 100-0 with carian slicer without him fighting back, and then I did the comet azur nuke on beast which got him to like 30% health, and just limped through the rest of it
-mage build 2 I used literally nothing other than rock sling and it was really easy, but Radagon was not totally trivial
-bleed build I used a claymore with flame of the redmanes and it was a joke - anything with actual bleed was useless, hence why I basically went with a strength build weapon that didn't scale off my stats
-strength build 1 I used a greatsword with giant hunt and it was pretty darn easy

I haven't fought him yet on my most recent strength build playthrough, I was probably going to try and fight him legitimately first and then do giant hunt as soon as I got mad. It's just a crappy boss, it seems designed for the horse but you can't summon the horse, as a result if you get bad RNG you can be constantly using your entire stamina bar just to stay in melee range of him and then you can't damage him. Cool visuals and I like the music, though.

I embarrassingly used this cheese when I fought Elden Beast:

But since I was a strength build I used the Beastman Curved Swords with the heavy infusion, felt really unsatisfied when I beat him

I have never used any buff build on any character, ever, apart from the brief experimentation with comet azur build. I guess I'm just too lazy. I'd never even heard of the bloodboil aromatic until watching that video. So I guess the cheese here is just from stacking buffs (I'm familiar with the raptor's black feathers and golden vow and the talismans, but I guess Bloodboil aromatic and the physik are what really make that overpowered? Unless something's off with how good that particular weapon is, I've never used it.

 

[Moongrum]

So I guess the cheese here is just from stacking buffs (I'm familiar with the raptor's black feathers and golden vow and the talismans, but I guess Bloodboil aromatic and the physik are what really make that overpowered?

Yep, it's just the sum of all the stacked buffs and the high damage per second from the two curved swords that does it! I also used the rotten winged sword insignia which stacks damage for each successive hit, which is good for fast weapons like two curved swords.
Bloodboil aromatic makes you take more damage but gives extra max stamina and deal +30% damage for 60 seconds.

 

[wankerness]

Huh, I don't think I've ever gotten that one before, like the name rings zero bells, but I always end up using the same colossal weapon anyways which you cant change and I hate that; one day I'll learn to use a different one, but not today! He's not even particularly hard in a traditional sense, as you have tons of area to attack, but he tends to slink away and then pop back up, so it's a chase game I don't have time for.

Like a less shitty version of ROM

The ash of war drops off one of the night watch guys. I think maybe one of the ones on the weeping peninsula? It's early in the game for sure.

 

[MFB]

Respec'd my very original build to Bleed so I could burn thru Maliketh/Godfrey, then got stonewalled on Radagon/EB as I didn't realize they were totally immune to bleed, so then I went to INT real quick and melted with MVK; but before doing all that, I made my way down the dumbest part of the game for sure, and found the Three Fingers, so I could achieve the Frenzied Flame ending, which means I've now platinumed the game.

Frenzied Flame is by far the coolest ending of all, shit's like a fucking Picasso painting of nightmares overtaking the Lands Between

 

[wankerness]

Respec'd my very original build to Bleed so I could burn thru Maliketh/Godfrey, then got stonewalled on Radagon/EB as I didn't realize they were totally immune to bleed, so then I went to INT real quick and melted with MVK; but before doing all that, I made my way down the dumbest part of the game for sure, and found the Three Fingers, so I could achieve the Frenzied Flame ending, which means I've now platinumed the game.

Frenzied Flame is by far the coolest ending of all, shit's like a fucking Picasso painting of nightmares overtaking the Lands Between

Frenzied Flame is definitely the coolest ending visually. I like the dung eater ending somewhat, but it's definitely less cool cause there aren't giants involved. The Goldmask ending is the only one that's "happy" in any way I think.

That section of jumps is THE WORST section of its kind in any fromsoft game, and they all have sections like that where you have to carefully fall down a bunch of tiny rafters. Very distant second is the one in bloodborne with the miniboss at the bottom. I used to think the Caelid tower was also just as bad, but that one I feel like I can usually do first try now at least, unlike the one below Mogh. I usually save scum there to avoid having to start from the beginning every single time. I've also gotten to the place where you get the fingerprint shield and gotten killed by the crazed vendor guys there. I basically screamed out loud when that happened.

 

[MFB]

Frenzied Flame is definitely the coolest ending visually. I like the dung eater ending somewhat, but it's definitely less cool cause there aren't giants involved. The Goldmask ending is the only one that's "happy" in any way I think.

That section of jumps is THE WORST section of its kind in any fromsoft game, and they all have sections like that where you have to carefully fall down a bunch of tiny rafters. Very distant second is the one in bloodborne with the miniboss at the bottom. I used to think the Caelid tower was also just as bad, but that one I feel like I can usually do first try now at least, unlike the one below Mogh. I usually save scum there to avoid having to start from the beginning every single time. I've also gotten to the place where you get the fingerprint shield and gotten killed by the crazed vendor guys there. I basically screamed out loud when that happened.

I have no actual proof of it, but it felt like there was invisible geometry that made some of the jumps that much harder/impossible to land correctly, not to mention the BS height that SHOULD be negated if you have the Longcat Talisman on but here it's conveniently still far enough to do full insta-kill. Maybe because you have to trigger the floor falling part, but you should be able to jump from higher up than where they actually allow you to.

 

[wankerness]

The really asshole sections of it are a place or two where like, it looks like you should easily be able to jump, but there's a coffin directly above you that blocks you from jumping upwards, so you hit your head, don't go far enough, and die.

At some point I looked up a video of the "easy" path where you could basically just walk or run off everything and land on something below, but I forgot the path by the next playthrough. But, there IS an easy path, it just doesn't look like it should work, cause I think one of the "falls" requires you to point backwards and hit the backstep button.

 

[p0ke]

Yeah, that part's just complete bs. I just don't get why the hell they'd wanna make sections like that. It's not actually hard either (since there's basically no penalty for dying in ER), it's just super duper tedious.
A similar but much shorter thing was the hole in Majula in DS2. I guess it would've been easy buying the most expensive ladder, but I went with the middle one, missed a drop, but luckily had just enough hp to survive the fall to the next rafter and then somehow managed to make it all the way down. The rest of the place, all the way to the boss sucked, but at least it didn't have any more stupid rafter jumping...

 

[wankerness]

Yeah, that part's just complete bs. I just don't get why the hell they'd wanna make sections like that. It's not actually hard either (since there's basically no penalty for dying in ER), it's just super duper tedious.
A similar but much shorter thing was the hole in Majula in DS2. I guess it would've been easy buying the most expensive ladder, but I went with the middle one, missed a drop, but luckily had just enough hp to survive the fall to the next rafter and then somehow managed to make it all the way down. The rest of the place, all the way to the boss sucked, but at least it didn't have any more stupid rafter jumping...

What do you mean it's not hard? If you often die while attempting it that kind of seems like the definition of hard! The game just doesn't punish you for dying, so it's like Super Meat Boy difficulty. But with a lot more tedium cause you have to go back through the easy part every time.

 

[MFB]

What do you mean it's not hard? If you often die while attempting it that kind of seems like the definition of hard! The game just doesn't punish you for dying, so it's like Super Meat Boy difficulty. But with a lot more tedium cause you have to go back through the easy part every time.

p0ke's not wrong - it's NOT hard, it's just tedious as fuck, there's no penalty besides time at a minimum, or at best if you go in with a bunch of runes and fuck it up to the point where you lose them. There's a grace point right before you begin the jump down, and you only have to jump one rafter as there's stairs taking you down past the first two, then it's onto tombstones.

 

[wankerness]

I'm confused, what IS hard to you guys then? A segment that you die on over and over if you don't do it correctly seems equivalent to a boss that you die over and over to if you don't execute it correctly, I guess the only difference is you can think about each jump for a long time. If the argument is it's easy cause you can try it as many times as you want, then does that mean the only hard games are ones where your save gets erased if you die (ex Diablo hardcore mode)?

 

[MFB]

A boss is something that comes down to RNG for how much it attacks/which attacks it uses/how much it moves which also determines my chances of hitting it, and if I can hit it more then that means poise break for a critical doing more damage, etc which is why I consider ENEMIES = HARD, but platforming/environments = tedious; especially in something that really has no reward to it besides an ending, but even that wasn't mandatory, I just did it because I could, no one put a gun to my head saying "PLATINUM THIS GAME!" If it had kept me locked out of certain events in the game, I'd probably say 'yes, this part is genuinely hard' but it's two-fold for me saying it's not.

 

[p0ke]

What I meant was that in theory getting down there is easy - you immediately see where you need to go, and it's basically just a few difficult jumps you gotta nail and the rest is coasting. I know, you could argue that in theory it's the same with bosses, but the difference is that the boss will kill you if you sit around and plan too long, and also there's the AI factor - a boss fight will never be exactly the same twice, but the environment never changes.

 

[wankerness]

Hmm. I guess I just view platforming as the worst, hardest aspect of games (Hollow Knight made me want to die in a couple sections and I doubt I'll play the sequel cause the platforming was so off-puttingly difficult) so I absolutely consider a section like this hard cause it requires way more precision than the bosses do, and almost always results in more deaths than any boss ever does. You can't get out your mimic tear and mash your biggest moves and maybe get lucky with a dodge or two to get through it!