Elden Ring

[Maf]

Typically bows get really good once you’ve amassed about 900 poison arrows and can stand a mile away pelting some big, stupid, unbeatable dragon thing to death. Then it’s like ahhh my trusty bow. 

[OCH]

7 minutes ago, mfnick said:

I’ve got a bow but keep getting bolts. Frustrating. I don’t like using the bow anyway so guess it doesn’t really matter. 

Honestly, bow and arrows have never appealed to me in Souls. They are a vital tool in the LoZ series. But I think, due to the stat requirements, they aren't really worth it. Especially the crossbow. If I want long range, I go for magic.

[one-armed dwarf]

The stat requirements complement other weapons too tho.

 

Also you can use bows with auto aim (maybe not all bows, not sure)

 

Spoilers for the big lad you see walking around the field at the beginning (sentinel)

 

Spoiler

 

 

edit I defeated Marge, maybe my luck will change

 

Spoiler

 

 

[radiofloyd]

Save file corrupted. Game crashed on a fast travel screen. 7 hours of progress lost… 

 

Wait for a patch or dive back in… Either way it’s bedtime and I have work tomorrow. Bummer.

[one-armed dwarf]

 

 

I guess I better back shit up, I'm getting into it now

[Maf]

 

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

But not on PC or Xbox 💪

 

 

 

Looks like only @mfnick got it right after all 

[OCH]

4 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

edit I defeated Marge

Noticing your lower left stats. I'm thinking I've got a bit of grinding ahead of me.

 

6 minutes ago, radiofloyd said:

Save file corrupted. Game crashed on a fast travel screen. 7 hours of progress lost

Ouch😬

Sorry to hear that. Haven't seen a thing like that since Returnal. Not good.

[shinymcshine]

12 minutes ago, radiofloyd said:

Save file corrupted. Game crashed on a fast travel screen. 7 hours of progress lost… 

 

Wait for a patch or dive back in… Either way it’s bedtime and I have work tomorrow. Bummer.

 

No idea whether this might help, but when I had an issue like that with the game Outward (which had a similar single save mechanic to the Souls games) I went into the save files section of the drive manager (on PS4) and found there were actually a couple of save files in there & an autosave. So I just deleted the corrupted one and it then loaded fine with the most recent remaining one.

 

Maybe worth a look ?

[radiofloyd]

11 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

 

 

I guess I better back shit up, I'm getting into it now

You mean backing up the vdf file?

 

After my save file got corrupted, I opened the save file folder (in Steam/userdata/) and there was just a vdf file.

 

I went on the Steam Cloud in my web browser and manually downloaded the cloud save for Elden Ring (an SL2 file) but that by itself doesn’t seem to do anything. Putting it in the save folder didn’t help.

 

Nothing to do but start over I guess.

[mfnick]

Put a few more hours in. Reached Godrick and his 2nd phase is just too much. So decided to do a bit more exploring, “unlocked” 3 more areas. Went far south and beat another achievement worthy boss on a island in a lake. That was really fun, great design to that one. Now travelling west. 
 

Enjoying it more but still not sure. Put about 10 hours in as well but feel like I’ve not really accomplished anything yet and I’ve still yet to get any items or abilities that have made a difference. Some people see that as a good thing but it’s feeling like a waste of time to me. In Sekiro, or any other Souls for that matter I’d have done and seen fucking loads by the 10 hour mark. Feel compelled to keep going though for some reason so it must be doing something right.  

 

[OCH]

16 minutes ago, mfnick said:

any other Souls for that matter I’d have done and seen fucking loads by the 10 hour mark.

Honestly feeling the same and I've only done just under 5 hours. That's the only problem with a boss being a plot brick wall. Ultimately, regardless of the "exploration", I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels until I kill him.

[Maf]

https://www.twitch.tv/dotodoya
 

Doto”s playing. This will definitely be good 🙂

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm not sure which files are the save files, the ones I found do say vdf on them and I'm copying them outside into documents every couple hours. So hopefully if I do get nuked (not by putin) it only destroys some small progress and I can pick it up again at another point

 

I'm at the same point as mfnick, and tried that dude out a few times. The first phase seemed pretty easy tbh, and I didn't get enough of a chance to check out the other part. But I finally found out what jump attacks are for, when (mild mechanical spoiler)

Spoiler

he does the big ground aoe, you can jump and attack sekiro style to deal with it.

On that note, I find all the Sekiro talk a bit interesting cause it's pretty clear IMO that the game does blend a lot of that game's gameplay into this. You have a stagger mechanic which requires you to be up front and fast with heavy attacks (r2) and there's these specific mechanics with jump that I mention. It's just more crytic about it, as is the fashion with these games. I don't think making it any faster or dash driven like Sekiro would be a good direction, doesn't really fit with the series ethos to combat

 

I'm generally having a good time with the game now. But I can't stress enough how fucked my expectations were by those reviews. Every little flaw and problem with the game just stands out way more when something gets received so well. It's better than DSIII in my book, but worse than 1 and 2. I guess tho every Souls games gets incredible reviews so there might be some recency bias from my PoV when it comes to how I'm reacting here.

 

I think the most meaningful big addition to the game is the horse combat. It brings it closer to what I imagine Dragon's Dogma II will try to do with open world combat. Except the first one didn't have mounted combat, so who knows. But there's a bit more cool guy potential and open-ness in the open world horse brawling than there is in the rolly-polly Simon Says main boss fights. I think it manages a decent enough balance between both these types of fight

 

Motion sickness warning, fight with the dragon. Video is HDR btw if you have a suitable screen (youtube makes it dimmer tho)

 

Spoiler

 

 

Unfortunately the much vaunted freedom has just served as a way to implement chalice dungeons IMO. They are called catacombs in this. When I was really struggling against Margaret people on resetera were telling me that it was my fault for not exploring more*. But even after exploring I'm finding a lot of these discoveries to be quite weak. Bloodborne is one of my all time favorite games and that's in spite of the chalice dungeons which I completely ignored. That said there are also some bespoke discoveries and questlines here, much more meaty takes on the NPC sidequests from previous games. So consider that a plus over old Souls. 

 

The open world design IMO is more Skyrim souls than BOTW, and people will really like that probably. It's not what I was really expecting though, so I can't help but be disappointed in that aspect. There's a lot of Shadow of the Collosus in the open world design as well I think, tho the environmental storytelling in these environments seems to really lack the interesting aspects of Souls and BB's more intimate environs. I really want to pore over these item descriptions and figure the lore out but on the surface level I've not been pulled into it yet but that could chance I guess

 

If I'm gonna do comparisons with past entries I will say based on what I'm seeing Elden has the best combat out of them all, tho I prefer Bloodborne so far for it's extremely unique weapons that just go way farther in giving some kinda feeling of player expression in that game. Elden is mostly the old classics you already know about

 

*this is another thing, it's way harder in this game to know if you are the appropriate power level to attempt something. The game basically beelines you to a too hard boss fight and it seems this is the hint to go south instead. It's not always clear how to progress, unless you are the sort of person who's find with grinding anyway and doesn't mind how powerful they are relative to what they're fighting. But imo it leads to a weird gameplay pacing problem with an RPG as intricate as this

 

edit and that's god dick down, I will beat mfnick

 

Spoiler

 

One thing I meant to do but didn't, Im pretty sure in phase 2 for the ground AOEs the first 2 are 'cleaves' right in front of him, and the third is one you have to jump for. So you could run behind him, wail on him, then jump r2 for the last AOE. But I got caught out and just ran out instead, 99 percent sure that's how to execute this mechanic tho and you'll see it on speed runs

 

 

[radiofloyd]

11 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I'm not sure which files are the save files, the ones I found do say vdf on them and I'm copying them outside into documents every couple hours. So hopefully if I do get nuked (not by putin) it only destroys some small progress and I can pick it up again at another point

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Couldn’t quite quote you properly but yeah, I hope it’s that simple. I have a feeling it isn’t (but it should be). The game also connects to the Elden Ring network when you try to load a save so that might affect it too.

 

Here goes my second attempt. Hope I don’t have this problem again.

[regemond]

This is the first SoulsBorne title I've ever actually tried, and fuck me, I love it. I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea how to maximise stats or where to get new weapons. Hell, I don't even know the story yet, besides 'go to the big gold tree'.

 

Rosie and I are playing together, basically switching the controller when we die (at least we're both getting the controller plenty with that rule...), and up to now I've beaten two bosses. One near the start, and one at the end of a cave full of wolves. I've also avoided several enemies. And several groups of enemies. Because I don't really want to lose my cash. I don't know what it is, but I can feel bits of Skyrim, bits of BOTW, bits of, well, everything, running throughout. But it still has its own personality that's so cool.

 

It's hard as shit, but once you learn the enemy patterns it's great fun. I picked up Horizon, too, but haven't even given it a go yet. Aloy can wait.

[radiofloyd]

I chose a Hero this time. The axe gives a very satisfying backstab. Explored an area I hadn’t explored before to spice up my first hour, found some powerful enemies, another cave, and a merchant. Shouldn’t take me long to power back to where I was.

[OCH]

Second try, but I (finally) beat a boss!

 

 

A Ghost.. boat 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, I've also discovered offline invasions are back... 🙄 Unfortunately encountered two of them. You can tell because they hard cancel your horse. These remind me why I play offline. The first one, I was clearly underleveled for. The second, I got caught on some swords sticking out of the ground? I don't like the lack of hit stun on enemies in this game. Also, once again, these red invaders are clearly faster in their movements than the player. I know to avoid these areas in future. Put markers on my map and everything.

[one-armed dwarf]

Offline invasions are just regular story related enemies. Some of them drop unique weapons with their own lore.

 

They aren't faster than the player either, they probably have light equip load if you're noticing that I think

[OCH]

17 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

They aren't faster than the player either, they probably have light equip load if you're noticing that I think

I guess so. The first one for example, had a massive mace. Meanwhile he looked like he only wore a knight helm. I imagine they will be more numerous than I'm used to (or comfortable with). I'll tick them off on my map as and when I encounter them.

[one-armed dwarf]

Onto the 2nd half of this now, at least I think. You can tell cause they tell you what your series of maguffins that you can proceed to knock off in whatever order are. It becomes much more classic Souls as it goes, even if the landmass is larger design wise it's largely the same. As it goes on it reminds me more of SOTC, a very scenery driven open world game. Figure out where to go by looking at the ruins on cliffs, they even have a little quest where you have to do a bit of orienteering, which I like. Kinda seems like there's not a whole lot to actually do in this section of the map tho, vast as it is. Again like SOTC, very deliberate use of massive amounts of negative space. I think now of the open world more as a narrative device and it does have some very cool backdrops and skyboxes. Charts your progress it does in a very tangible way, cause you hear the backstory to a biome before visiting it, or the distance between an area and the eld tree. You hear the legends, follow the direction that's given to you (no markers and waypoints, just 'go north past the thingy') and then it's like 'Im here now to fuck up some elden lord cunt, rip ye into pieces'

 

Just a screenshot, no spoiler 

Spoiler

 

I have more points in INT now and a big spirit greatsword I can use, and I'm finding out how to use the delayed cast to stunlock people for my pokey sword attacks. I kinda want some more big open world boss fights that use the horse tho, I have a feeling they don't have many of them tbh. Just a few dragon reskins. I might need to look up what INT/DEX weapons there are. One thing I want to do is powerstancing, I heard they added that back in. It's a thing from DSII, where if you have 1.5x the necessary stat to wield a weapon you can dual wield it with a unique moveset. One of the best things DSII had to offer