Elden ring!

[MFB]

Cleared out some caves, Dragon Pit - which was a great misdirect from what I THOUGHT was leading me to Bayle - and then Ruined Forge something something, which didn't even have a boss, it was just a couple enemies in there that were similar to the Crystalleans. I think I DID find Bayle after, there seemed to be a large number of messages saying he was down there, but there was also several dragons around too, so I think either they get Warf'd to show me how strong HE is, OR it ain't his area.

Managed to also find the Two-Headed Green Turtle talisman, so hurrah to increased stamina recovery! I think I'm going to also swap up my talisman stack, since my STR is so high, the +5 I'm adding on is a drop in the bucket, so I'm running Greatshield/Dragoncrest Greatshield/Two-headed Green Turtle/Bullgoat because gimme dat +30 poise.

 

[wankerness]

Gaius is a turd. HAVE FUN! I saw a couple videos online of big strength build boys using the flask that increases poise damage and buffing up and basically just stunlocking him to death with jump attacks in about 30 seconds, but from what I've seen online there's really no other viable strategy to make him easy. The biggest tips for beating him "legit" that I saw were either to use that Feather talisman or whatever it's called that increases roll distance, and/or remove enough gear to get to light equipment load, cause with a medium load you pretty much can't roll through his charge at all. Apparently you also have to roll at the last split second possible to avoid his hitbox, too.

I'm going around now with the enhanced map trying to find all the blessings before fighting the last two bosses (Bayle/??? Final Spoiler Boss). It's very tedious. But, I'm finding dungeons in incredibly hidden places with incredibly convoluted routes to get to that I'd NEVER have found myself. This expansion definitely hides bosses a lot more thoroughly than the base game.

I got attacked by a death rite bird, which had me just mentally steeling myself to die in seconds, but I actually beat him pretty easily since you could summon. I think the higher level death rite bird in consecrated snowfield is the single most bullshit boss in the base game and insanely difficult, but this guy was surprisingly reasonably tuned. I think other than that I only fought two more bosses in Mausoleums I hadn't discovered (both easily defeatable via lions claw spam) and then got some good items I'd missed (Savage Lion's Claw AOW, and the double necked turtle talisman which massively increases stamina regen).

 

[MFB]

I got attacked by a death rite bird, which had me just mentally steeling myself to die in seconds, but I actually beat him pretty easily since you could summon. I think the higher level death rite bird in consecrated snowfield is the single most bullshit boss in the base game and insanely difficult, but this guy was surprisingly reasonably tuned. I think other than that I only fought two more bosses in Mausoleums I hadn't discovered (both easily defeatable via lions claw spam) and then got some good items I'd missed (Savage Lion's Claw AOW, and the double necked turtle talisman which massively increases stamina regen).

Because I'm a pathetic Elden Ring pleb, I use Lion's Claw on my Warped Axe build and did some reading online compared to Savage Lion's Claw, and yet to see a reason to switch; apparently it does have an extra hit component to it, but it doesn't do as much poise damage as normal LC, and in the time you do that extra hit with SLC, you could just do a second normal version as well.

 

[wankerness]

Yeah ok, that does sound worse. Lion's Claw has been hilarious against all NPC bosses, especially considering my build is like 30 str and 60 int. I just pancaked the last two Mausoleum bosses and the Mk II version of Death Knight into oblivion with it.

 

[pahulkster]

Looked up a boss list and only missed one in a mausoleum that was still hard to find when I knew where it was. Looking for it I also found a few scadutree fragments on big field enemies. Think I finished with 16 and 8 on the new blessings so I'd imagine a lot of the materials are in enemies like that. I explored a lot though so it's crazy how much is out there in general.

 

[wankerness]

Well, I went and got the rest of the fragments and looked up the couple of dungeons I missed, then I drained the cathedral and discovered there was another major boss down there (a very annoying sunflower that keeps reviving), then I stomped Bayle with that Dragonslayer Katana and Igon's help (that guy is an absolute must-summon for the voice actor giving an 11/10 performance) and it was kind of disappointingly easy - he died SO fast. That katana is so good against Bayle that it's practically like the super weapon you use against Yhorm in DS3.

Then, I tried the final boss a couple times, quickly realized it was futile with my current build, respecced to a STR/ARC build, put bleed on the badass spear you get from Gaius, and poked him to death in like 3 attempts. The only difficulty was dodging his stupid grab attack in phase 2, which is an automatic kill if he hits you twice, but after I figured out that timing (and found out the great rune you get from the sunflower boss clears the instakill mark if you DO get hit with a grab) it was easier than many of the earlier bosses. It was basically like the strategy I've always adopted for Nameless King, just use a greatshield and heal the chip damage from all the magic attacks and poke away, only way more effective cause bleed is overpowered.

So, I think I'm done - I'm pretty sure I got ALL the bosses, though I haven't looked at a list, and probably missed a few spells and AOWs that I wouldn't use but whatever. There's a lot of weapons I picked up that I'm curious about, like all the throwing weapons you get from the three forges, some boss weapons like a giant finger that flicks enemies into the air, and that greathammer thing that looks like a zwiehander with an anvil on it, but I think I'm a bit burned out on it right now and will wait a while before going through it with a second character.

 

[MFB]

Jesus, Shadow Keep is HUGE! apparently so huge that I managed to walk myself right out of it and into western part of the map, to the Ancient Ruins of Ruah which I had briefly visited earlier with an imbued stone key; according to the Wiki there's also like 7 floors to Shadow Keep which I would not have guessed. Gonna have to warp back and keep exploring.

I also poked around on the south-ish side of the map and cleared out some ruins with two Visages, one which I crafted like ...right of the wrong pot to try and awaken it with (fire vs furnace, didn't see the other one at the time), then followed the river down, and found the hippo duo and another cave that I'll come back to.

I've yet to encounter any sealed spirit springs, are they just like, really not as prominent as expected? For something that had a note to buy for them I thought they'd be everywhere.

 

[wankerness]

I've yet to encounter any sealed spirit springs, are they just like, really not as prominent as expected? For something that had a note to buy for them I thought they'd be everywhere.

I saw 4, and never found the thing to unseal one of them. If I remember right half of them were clearly just to defeat the furnace golems with pots, and the other two were actually needed for exploration.

 

[Moongrum]

Internet meta says the Bloodfiend's Arm is op. So I moved all my faith into arcane, I have 50str/50arc and this thing hits like a truck, it's stupid. Charged R2s on colossal weapons already do great poise damage, but then this adds massive bleed build up on those R2s, I ended up stunlocking

Spoiler

Romina

Since I now have arcane as well, I used Mohg's spear for the first time, and before I could hardly follow the

Spoiler

Dancing Lion

but just spamming the ash of war melted the boss.
It's kind of dumb that I've been playing with no summons because I want the "challenge" but have been cheeseing every boss with dumb builds like this lol.

apparently it does have an extra hit component to it, but it doesn't do as much poise damage as normal LC,

I found pretty early on savage lion's claw wasn't working for me because the bosses move so erratically, the 2nd follow up hit never connected and I was never getting stagger with just the first hit

 

[MFB]

I saw 4, and never found the thing to unseal one of them. If I remember right half of them were clearly just to defeat the furnace golems with pots, and the other two were actually needed for exploration.

Nothing special needed, supposedly it's just destroy the rock formation and then it opens

 

[narad]

Man, killed comander gaius. What a terrible fight. I logged a couple hours the night before trying different techniques, but never getting him below 40%. I think I was scadtree lev 9 / ash one lev 6. I decided to try some tankier summons -- I pretty much only use blackknife or mimic my entire previous playthrough. I landed on the greatshield skeletons. 5 blockers really stop his charging from having much effect and can really lock him up, but still, they were getting killed by the time he was 40% or so (but could get there consistently).

So I took a detour and followed some youtube tutorial on how to find those ash blessings, and just did them one by one until I was lev 9 there. What a difference! I think I killed him maybe 5 tries after that? I was blasting him with the dragon hunter's katana most of the time. It's cheesy, but so is he, so I don't care much.

 

[Moongrum]

I was blasting him with the dragon hunter's katana most of the time. It's cheesy, but so is he, so I don't care much.

I like to think of it as using the game mechanics to your advantage and being creative with the different summons and builds
I beat Gaius just now, too. I'm lvl 15 scadurtree, and used a bloodfiend's fork with poison infusion and the fingerprint shield, and just poked him, getting bleed and poison here and there while hiding behind my shield

 

[wankerness]

Gaius is terrible. i'm surprised you bothered at such a low blessing (9). I think you might need to look up a guide before you try tackling that final boss cause boy oh boy is he overtuned compared to all the other bosses.

I like the powerpyx guide to all bosses where the difficulty of every boss is listed as like 3/10 (which occasionally makes me roll my eyes) with Gaius the highest spike at "6/10" but then it reveals that the last boss is 9-10/10 difficulty so it's just relative to him.

 

[MFB]

Made my way thru the Specimen Storehouse all the way to Messmer, I really hate the Fire Knights, their flame coil spell seems to have the most "fuck you timing" because when they cast it multiple times in a row, the second one is already coming right after you dodged the first, so it's a major stamina drain. Couple that with Flame Rain which just destroys visibility on them and it's no fun all around.

I think I'm at Scadutree level 9 now, don't think I hit 10 but I may have, and decided to go clear out some areas first since my willingness to fight fire was at a low. Killed the 2nd Ghost Flame dragon y'all mentioned on the road with the knights, took 3 tries since I don't think the other one did GF bursts with his stomp attack, so that was new. I forgot stats straight up STOP at 99, so since STR is maxed now, I have to put any additional into either VIG/END since Mind is a bit of waste; I can do seven Lion Claw attacks on one bar, and I run 2 charges for it, so that's 21 per boss fight.

I'll most likely kill Messmer tonight and not drag it out any more than I have to

 

[MFB]

Killed Messmer after about a dozen tries, didn't feel clean but fuck it, he's dead. I tried him solo just to see his moveset, and he didn't do much in phase 1, but all his shit is SUPER spammy, my God. Then after that I found if I immediately summon Mimic, I was getting punished like Maliketh, but with fire instead of whatever status he uses; and it was around the 4th or 5th time I discovered the Golden Summon sign IN the room!

Switched my mixed physick for Opaline Hardtear to blast thru the opening damage, summoned Hornsted or whatever his name is, and THEN summoned Mimic once I could get the timing down. Blitzed him into Phase 2 between the three of us, lost Hornboi but me and mimic closed it out. That snake is WILD, like a worse version of Shadow of Yharnam since you know he can transform back and spam combo with the spear.

 

[wankerness]

Messmer, if you have enough blessings to not get 1-shot by his grab (I didn't!!!), is actually kind of a cool fight. I also really like the couple of bosses that have summon signs in the room. It's really hard to actually summon the dude, but this means that the boss doesn't get the massive health buff that they get on any boss where you summon BEFORE the room. So it's just plain a benefit for Bayle and Messmer. I used the bleed guy on the last boss too cause he gives you some breathing room and if you're a bleed build the extra HP is evened out by the fact you have another guy stacking the debuff.

There are several quests in this DLC that are progressed by summoning them during bosses, like DS2. I really like that. There's NONE of that in the base elden ring.

 

[MFB]

Man, Shadow Keep is convoluted as FUCK. Like, I could SEE all these extra areas and was trying to find entrances to them, only to find that parts are entirely disconnected from each other and require massive detours to get to, that no one would/should expect them to be part of the same area. I cleared out the Storehouse Back portion and drained the the church district, so I'll finish exploring that tonight maybe.

I also found my first armored visage, so I'll need to see what goes into taking them down, something about throwing pots into them, just curious which type since you reignite one by using a furnace hefty pot so it's not that.