Elden Ring

[Maf]

I promise I’m not taking commission but here’s another Dist mod video

 

 

It’s a mod where everytime he kills any boss the game jumps up a NG+. Usually the max NG is +7, but this is uncapped.

 

The good thing is the enemies and bosses drop souls in line with the NG+ level so some smaller bosses he gets 85k. But they do take some killing

 

Anyway, the thing I never realised is how strong Black Flame Blade magic is. Even at this difficulty he is only resorting to using it when it gets really hard because it’s that strong. 
 

So if you’re finding this game hard there’s another broken strat 

[Maf]

I’ve become really invested in this run (posted above) and am on part 3. I’ve fast forwarded some bits where the strategy is clear but the guy is just getting stuck on bosses for ages. 
 

But it’s really interesting how the strategies and tactics evolve and in a way shows Elden Ring in its best light. And that is the game is so flexible with the character build 

 

Because of how insanely spongey the enemies become there has been a very strong reliance on Black Flame and recently Scarlet Rot that does a percentage of damage which obviously helps with the ever increasing health bars and defence stats. 
 

But he still has to hit them and survive and is currently on NG+65 so I think he’s earned it

 

But the changing in weapons, using more heal spells, constantly shifting the load out slightly to stay in the fights - it’s really cool

 

One thing I’, really impressed by was he was getting his ass kicked by the Black Cavalry bosses but he figured out he can use a certain shield to parry them, knock them off the horse, then they’re quite easy to backstab loop. Except the damage was pitiful so he upgraded a dagger that does extra backstab damage + black flame

 

It’s this kind of strategy building I love to see. So I’m skipping some bosses once the strategy is figure out because it can take a while but watching the decision making and evolution is really interesting. 

 

He has also region locked himself so the self imposed rule is he can’t leave an area until he’s killed all the bosses in that area. So the second area, the swamp, was super rough and took a long time but now he’s in the Atlas Plateau with cooler weapons and upgrade materials it’s got a bit easier - at the cost of even with 80+ points in health everything 2-shots him. Big attacks is instant death. 
 

I’m not entirely sure how NG+ works. It seems with each NG+ the HP and attack damage from bosses increases by 5%. But unsure if that counts towards their defence and poise ratings, etc as well. Despite being on such a high NG+, the Blood Hound Greatsword still does damage. Maybe the mod is accurate, maybe it’s not.

 

The other thing is the mod takes the hard cap off the player stats so he can go past 99. But I think the soft cap scaling is till in play, not sure

 

I don’t know why I can’t sit through the first 5mins of a film but can watch 23 hours of someone playing Elden Ring 

[spatular]

I’ve been watching quite a lot of videos of this too, a lot I still don’t understand.
 

 only just worked out/looked up how to use magic.

 

tried the 2 main places to go in the second area but found them a bit difficult so was wandering around a bit aimlessly although found a few good caves/mini dungeons. Then found a way though to another big (3rd? And 4th?) area, it’s up north anyway, so exploring around there, now in some sort of volcano zone. The difficulty I guess is finding things appropriate to fight for my level/lack of skill. Went back to the second area and may have over leveled as it wasn’t too hard, but it’s a bit vague on if I’ve finished those or not. Then I tried to fight a bear and learnt to stay away from bears.

[Maf]

Yeah, bears will fuck you up 

[Maf]

Watching Elden Ring again it really is a masterpiece. It’s not without fault, but there really isn’t another game out there doing what this game does. Even previous From games, fundamentally similar, but they don’t have the creativity, depth or surprises of this game. Add to the fact that the parts that are similar or done before in previous games, is just so much higher quality and better in Elden Ring. I don’t know if I could say it’s a straight 10/10 because I can’t really be assed to finish it myself. It has too much bloat and repetition common to open world games. But really looking at it, this is an exceptionally well crafted game. Even if the experience as a whole could do with some nips and tucks what is in it is really fucking good and clever. It’s an incredible dark fantasy adventure. 

[radiofloyd]

I think it’s From’s worst game.

[one-armed dwarf]

To me, an issue with Elden Ring is while it has surprises, everyone sees the exact same surprises as each other in the same way. Its surprises are meant to be discovered really easily, which somehow demystifies the whole thing. Part of this is also down to things which FROM have no control over, the online tendency to overly discuss and big up all these discoveries and I know it's hypocritical to give out about that, but it sort of means I don't care about the underworld area or the shortcuts. They don't really feel that special. Also most of it is front loaded in the Limgrave area it feel, and later on they repeat so many reskinned dragons and tree monsters and things

 

The part I like with it remains its opaque lore torn into fragments scattered around the world in item descriptions. I think it's a cool and unique way to immerse yourself in a setting, but ER's world just sort of feels like a bunch of MMO themepark style zones linked together. Its static, with undynamic enemy behaviours and no real possibility for emergent stories, just the ones that the designers author themselves. Exploring it feels much closer to Ubisoft than BOTW imo. Its just too frictionless, the world has no real sense of threat outside its boss fights. The FROM formula did not successfully transplant to a fully open world imo, so much got missed along the way

[spatular]

on the last boss now, will i be able to beat it, not sure.

[Nag]

Good job getting there... you can use the horse now can't you?... that's gotta help.

[spatular]

thanks! yeah you can use the horse, i did try that, not sure if it was helping. been watching some guides on how to fight it, none use the horse but were probably made before you could use it.

[Nag]

It was a pain in the arse chasing the thing around... which is helped a lot if there's three people in there.

[spatular]

^ that sounds like a good plan, i need to look into how to get more help, i'm using the ash summon (can't remember what it's called) so there's 2 fighting currently but they usually die early in the second part of the fight

[spatular]

Got the boss done in the end, I upped my health flask count which I think helped.

 

overall enjoyed it, at the start really enjoyed the exploration, reminded me of botw a bit. Later on with more combat and stuff I don’t think I fully got into the combat and would say even at the end wasn’t good at it, but was still quite enjoying it overall, had some good fights. There were still some areas left to explore but think they were locked behind quests. The quests are incomprehensible compared to modern games with quest markers and stuff, I tried to follow a guide to do one which apparently might get me a better ending but got stuck on an optional boss. The ending I got was rubbish/ nonexistent 

Spoiler

It was me just sat in the thrown and that was it

 

[Maf]

I’m a bit split on Elden Ring lore. It’s quite interesting and the way they tell their stories mixes well with an open world setting. There’s also some really nice touches where the tree roots and the corpses in the mini dungeons are sacrifices/life essence for the tree (or something, I forget, actually)

 

But the bits I picked up and saw other people talk about is cool

 

But, I suppose like the gameplay, it also is a bit of a do-over of the Bloodborne lore, with metaphysical gods outside of reality (for Elden ring) and space (for Bloodborne) and some people have been driven insane and it affects characters eyes (frenzy in ER and madman knowledge in BB) etc

 

There are similarities where it kind of feels like they took another run at these concepts. Elden Ring is still different and has unique stuff. But overall I think I prefer Bloodborne’s take. It’s darker, got more character and generally more interesting. Religion vs science is inherently more relatable concept opposed to Elden Ring where it’s more like god-sibling rivalries and dynasties or something

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I don't recall exactly what's going on in Elden Ring anymore but I think the stuff in the roots of the dungeon was more like a backlog where things weren't dying properly

Spoiler

Down underneath the tree you find this disgusting huge corpse with a fishface or something that's fucking it all up (I've not watched this vid but it shows it clearly)

 

 

Elden Ring is pretty Berserk-esque in how it's got this religion with a bright and beautiful facade which has a really ugly and dark other side to it

 

[Maf]

Oh, yeah, that’s right it’s the opposite. Things aren’t dying in the dungeons and it’s part of what’s fucking up the world. I didn’t remember the detail, but I knew it was a cool thing

 

I actually think the ER lore is out together really well and fits the open world setting. Where as the other FromSoft worlds are a bit small and convenient 

[Maf]

Some are saying it’s the greatest game of all time