Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion Announced

[Qazimod]

Found RKL* today. Beat RKL today.  

 

A pretty scary boss at first - even with all of my guarding the chip damage was annoying, but a hit and run strategy during her unsafe moves eventually did it. Rushing in is so tempting, but you're only making the next death happen sooner.

 

*

Spoiler

Royal Knight Loretta

 

[deerokus]

The very open nature of it is causing the spoiler issues. Some item one person found right at the start someone else might find after 35 hours.

[Ste Pickford]

I'm pretty relaxed about spoilers, but appreciate big / later stuff being tagged.  Please don't post the whole map though, I've avoided seeing it so far.

[Alan Stock]

I think boss names are fine if they aren't spoilery (like revealing an NPC you fight or something), same for location names. As for actual events in the game that's where spoilers hurt the enjoyment for me. But yeah although people are being good I've accidentally spoiled myself on a few minor things just by clicking on spoilers misinterpreting where they are in the game, so location/progression indicators before spoilers would be handy. By its nature its going to be easy to slip up on spoilers in this game especially the further people get. Problem is half the fun is the shared experience so its either go in alone or accept the odd thing will get spoiled, I guess. 

 

Also stay away from Youtube at the moment because as people are getting further into the game they are spoiling bosses etc with thumbnails.

[Jamie John]

Re Castle Morne side quest:

 

Spoiler

Is the location of the father of the woman you meet when you first enter the Peninsula obvious? The guy you're supposed to give her letter to? Are you just supposed to infer that he's somewhere in the mountain of bodies in the central courtyard?

 

I feel like I've searched the entire castle but can't find him anywhere. There's a room right next to the first PoG, before you even go up the lift, that is suspiciously empty. Maybe I need to go back to her to tell her that daddy's not coming home...

 

I've got to say that Castle Morne was disappointingly simplistic after Stormview, but I suppose it is a lot smaller. Those grinning blond fucks who occupy it are what I imagine Boris Johnson will end up looking like when he gets sent to hell.

[joemul]

33 minutes ago, Thor said:

Done, you might want to edit your quote of me though.

 

 

This thread seems to be all over the place for spoiler "rules", we openly talk about fighting Margit and Godrick at Stormveil Castle and no-one bats an eyelid; but then other smaller stuff is considered serious spoiler material. Not having a go at you or Joe here, I'm usually pedantic as fuck* when it comes to spoilers, but I'm less concerned about them with these kind of games, and I got the impression that was also the general feel of this thread. 

 

*But not as pedantic as some in the Bloodborne thread back in the day, who insisted on initialisation of boss names (ie Vicar Amelia = VA). That drove me mad.

Done! Merci 😁

[Alan Stock]

1 minute ago, Jamie John said:

Re Castle Morne side quest:

 

  Hide contents

Is the location of the father of the woman you meet when you first enter the Peninsula obvious? The guy you're supposed to give her letter to? Are you just supposed to infer that he's somewhere in the mountain of bodies in the central courtyard?

 

I feel like I've searched the entire castle but can't find him anywhere. There's a room right next to the first PoG, before you even go up the lift, that is suspiciously empty. Maybe I need to go back to her to tell her that daddy's not coming home...

 

I've got to say that Castle Morne was disappointingly simplistic after Stormview, but I suppose it is a lot smaller. Those grinning blond fucks who occupy it are what I imagine Boris Johnson will end up looking like when he gets sent to hell.

 

This just hints where to look:

Spoiler

 Looks like you missed a drop-down from one of the upper levels. He should be up there. Also I was dissappointed as well with the size, although the back part is cool.

 

[Ry]

I've seen magic dudes one hitting some very hard bosses with a massive beam. 

 

Wish I had went with that class. I feel I'm playing on hard mode with my pure melee build. 

[Retroid]

Holy shit, that is not on! (Godrik bug)

 

Spoiler

I killed Godrik, except he grabbed me with his invisible dead arm and killed me instead.

 

 

 

Should have been a draw atleast!

 

 

 

[Ste Pickford]

2 minutes ago, Ry said:

I've seen magic dudes one hitting some very hard bosses with a massive beam. 

 

Wish I had went with that class. I feel I'm playing on hard mode with my pure melee build. 

 

Whatever I do in any Souls game I always have that class envy, and always think I'm underpowered compared to everyone else.

[Alan Stock]

In co-op last night I was kind of blown away by how cool some of the spell effects were that my comrade spellcasters were using, it felt like they were more boss-like than the actual boss!

 

Just tried out my first invasion, nothing ever changes. Teleported to a lake where 2 players in massive armour and wielding endgame huge weapons were just waiting for people to invade them. First guy jumped and connected with a hit just as I was in my lunge animation. Instadeath. Looks like the gank squads are already in full effect!

[Broker]

7 hours ago, Cyhwuhx said:

Stormveil Castle spoiler that kind of blew my mind and made me go, "Oh From... that's so you...:

 

  Hide contents

 

Where do I find this fucker? I want to murder him.

 

6 hours ago, Majora said:

 

Mines are the best places to farm smithing stones. You can usually find them at places on the map that look like a red circle. 

 

You can buy smithing stones and sombre smithing stones later on but they're pretty expensive compared to just doing a run through a mine and getting them for free + souls from killing some usually pretty easy enemies.

 

Mines don’t respawn though. I’ve cleared all the ones I’ve found and upgraded 2 weapons but I’m having to buy them for my third weapon because there’s not enough around to do it any other way. 
 

5 hours ago, Anne Summers said:

Are there covenants in this like in DS? Haven't found any mention of them yet, I don't think. 

I’ve seen nothing so far.

 

1 hour ago, therearerules said:

Yeah, lots of open spoilers in this thread, or spoilers with no indication of what the spoiler might even be. If it;s specifics like bosses people could at least spoiler it with a dungeon name or something. At least for the first month or so.

 

I still think it’s kinda impossible to do spoilers here. It could potentially be months before people go the same way someone else did. How are we treating discussions of the teleport chests? How do we mark the spoiler to say what’s inside without that being a spoiler for some people? 
 

32 minutes ago, Vulgar Monkey said:

 

On the note of engine blahblah though, as well as obviously allowing them to add or refine things without having to bolt stuff on to layers upon layers of pre-existing convoluted code, does developing a new engine yield any benefits around....uh, 'efficiency', for lack of a better word I guess?

 

What I mean is, I could boot up Red Dead 2, tweak a few settings, and it would still run with much higher visual fidelity than ER at lower resource costs in terms of clock speeds, memory usage etc. Presumably as it is a newer engine that hasnt been expanded so far beyond its original incarnation. I assume a lot of that comes down to how the engine does what it does?

It depends. Red Dead’s engine looks great with less hardware stress because honestly, what Red Dead’s engine is doing is very limited. There’s a bit focus on graphical fidelity there, and Rockstar’s engine is absolutely spectacular for handling crowds and draw distances. But in terms of interaction with the world, it’s very sparse and limited mostly to interacting in one or two ways with things of relatively consistent size with your character. It’s also worth noting that the RDR2 engine is still RAGE, the engine they started using with Rockstar Table Tennis a full three years before Demon’s Souls came out. 
 

Switching engine or rebuilding is something gamers seem to love suggesting (not saying you are, more that it becomes hard to understand what it means when people suggest it as the solution to literally everything). The reality is that the times when it’s most beneficial are when you’re either switching genre or you’ve drifted a long way from what you started out doing with it. Whilst From could absolutely build a new engine with higher visual fidelity, there would likely be a trade off somewhere. They’ve not really strayed far enough from Demon’s to make an engine switch something that would automatically be a benefit, although going forward building an engine from the ground up which has more robust support for large maps and all the stuff that comes with them might be worth it. 

[Cosmic_Guru]

6 minutes ago, Ry said:

I've seen magic dudes one hitting some very hard bosses with a massive beam. 

 

Wish I had went with that class. I feel I'm playing on hard mode with my pure melee build. 

Conversely as a magic user the melee guys seem to have all the fancy moves, and certainly all the fancy gear, not to mention meaningful ashes.   There are crystals and stones which have magical properties  like gravity bomb and magic Ray which I assume many be used by all classes.

In boss battles I just stand still or roll away going phut phut phut.....

 

[Ry]

I have yet to find any armour that comes close to the armour I got in the first 2 hours of the game. And I'm over 30 hours in.

 

 

Also, is there a way to compare armour in shops to what you have equipped? Or is this another stupidly omitted design choice? 

[Davros sock drawer]

Anyone looking for Smithing Stone (4), I just found a good place:

 

Spoiler

Gael Tunnel. It’s a little red blob juuust inside Caelid, south of the Rotview Balcony Site of Grace (which in turn is the first one you come to on the right of the main road into Caelid from NE Limgrave (near Summonwater Village)

 

Be warned. It’s horrible. But the goodies are there to be yoinked.

[Ry]

Just now, Cosmic_Guru said:

Conversely as a magic user the melee guys seem to have all the fancy moves, and certainly all the fancy gear, not to mention meaningful ashes.   There are crystals and stones which have magical properties  like gravity bomb and magic Ray which I assume many be used by all classes.

In boss battles I just stand still or roll away going phut phut phut.....

 

 

I never use my ashes. I don't understand that shit . I can't use most of them if I have a shield. And even the ones I have tried have been crap and leave me open. Don't even know if you can upgrade them

 

Although some do work when you have a shield equipped by double tapping LT. 

 

My whole playthrough has been 

1. Shield up

2. Attack

3. wait

4. Attack again

 

Yawn. Lol

[robdood]

Haven't got much time to play today, so just squeezed in an hour - thought I'd have a go at practicing Godrick and er.. accidentally whooped him first go, lol.  I did have my Clymore+9, Demihuman spirits and the NPC summon lady with me.. we smashed the heck out of him! 

 

After beating him, was intrigued by the description of the great rune so spent the last hour finding tons of bits of the castle I missed, awakening the rune and then equipping and using it!  Man, +5 to all stats until you die is CRAZY GOOD. 

 

Aaah I have a busy weekend this weekend so not gonna get much chance to play, sadface.  I'm going to have to duck out the thread for a while cos it seems like EVERYONE's ahead of me now and I'm getting bad FOMO / spoiling shit for myself.  

 

What a fucking game though.  ❤️ 

 

[spanx]

Not being a super experienced Souls fan, the thing I’ve really noticed about the engine and the art/animation is how fucking cool the bosses are in motion. Full of movement and weight and momentum. I think seeing it all in super detailed and smooth 4K really brings home how good their artists are. 

[PeteJ]

1 minute ago, robdood said:

 

 I'm going to have to duck out the thread for a while cos it seems like EVERYONE's ahead of me now and I'm getting bad FOMO / spoiling shit for myself.

 

I feel the same way, except you are also ahead of me! It's like I've fallen off the back of the discussion wave and now I'm all alone. 

Still not been to the castle. 

[robdood]

51 minutes ago, Thor said:

Done, you might want to edit your quote of me though.

 

 

This thread seems to be all over the place for spoiler "rules", we openly talk about fighting Margit and Godrick at Stormveil Castle and no-one bats an eyelid; but then other smaller stuff is considered serious spoiler material. Not having a go at you or Joe here, I'm usually pedantic as fuck* when it comes to spoilers, but I'm less concerned about them with these kind of games, and I got the impression that was also the general feel of this thread. 

 

*But not as pedantic as some in the Bloodborne thread back in the day, who insisted on initialisation of boss names (ie Vicar Amelia = VA). That drove me mad.

Saying the name of a boss or a location isn't exactly a spoiler (unless I suppose it's a character we already know and aren't really expecting to be a boss). 

 

But saying 'Oh I was doing this boss fight then half through *THIS HAPPENS*' is kind of spoiling what makes that encounter cool and interesting, yanno? 

 

And yeah fuck acronyms.  

[Davros sock drawer]

5 minutes ago, robdood said:

 

 

After beating him, was intrigued by the description of the great rune so spent the last hour finding tons of bits of the castle I missed, awakening the run and then equipping and using it!  Man, +5 to all stats until you die is CRAZY GOOD. 

 

 

I don’t think I can do this. Will it become obvious to me how I can equip it in due course?

[robdood]

1 minute ago, Davros sock drawer said:

I don’t think I can do this. Will it become obvious to me how I can equip it in due course?

Ok, I presume you've beaten Godrick or some other boss that gives you a rune, yes? 

 

Look under key items in the menu.  Read the description.  It tells you where you need to take it to awaken it.  Once you've done that, you can equip it at a grace site.  You then have to use a rune arc to activate it. 

[Davros sock drawer]

2 minutes ago, robdood said:

Saying the name of a boss or a location isn't exactly a spoiler (unless I suppose it's a character we already know and aren't really expecting to be a boss). 

 

But saying 'Oh I was doing this boss fight then half through *THIS HAPPENS*' is kind of spoiling what makes that encounter cool and interesting, yanno? 

 

And yeah fuck acronyms.  

The acronyms came about as I recall because of the name of the last boss in Bloodborne, which was a huge spoiler.

 

Personally I’m risk averse when it comes to spoilers. I’d rather someone scratch their head a bit at an acronym they don’t immediately get than have someone spoil something, but it’s not a hill I’d die on.

[Davros sock drawer]

2 minutes ago, robdood said:

Ok, I presume you've beaten Godrick or some other boss that gives you a rune, yes? 

 

Look under key items in the menu.  Read the description.  It tells you where you need to take it to awaken it.  Once you've done that, you can equip it at a grace site.  You then have to use a rune arc to activate it. 

Ah, I’d missed the location. Cheers!

[John0]

24 minutes ago, Jamie John said:

I've got to say that Castle Morne was disappointingly simplistic after Stormview, but I suppose it is a lot smaller.

 

It was simple in terms of structure compared to Stormveil but it's very cool atmospherically.

 

Spoiler

That scene when you first walk in is a proper "What the fuck happened here?!" moment. And it was great to explore as battles are still being fought - I always like that stuff as it makes you feel like you're exploring a living breathing world a little more. Quite something!

 

[Kevvy Metal]

24 minutes ago, robdood said:

Haven't got much time to play today, so just squeezed in an hour - thought I'd have a go at practicing Godrick and er.. accidentally whooped him first go, lol.  I did have my Clymore+9, Demihuman spirits and the NPC summon lady with me.. we smashed the heck out of him! 

 

After beating him, was intrigued by the description of the great rune so spent the last hour finding tons of bits of the castle I missed, awakening the rune and then equipping and using it!  Man, +5 to all stats until you die is CRAZY GOOD. 

 

Aaah I have a busy weekend this weekend so not gonna get much chance to play, sadface.  I'm going to have to duck out the thread for a while cos it seems like EVERYONE's ahead of me now and I'm getting bad FOMO / spoiling shit for myself.  

 

What a fucking game though.  ❤️ 

 

 

I beat Godrick a few days ago and have since been rinsing the castle, and holy shit... there's so much more! 

Also here's me beating Margrit - 

 

Spoiler

 

 

..and here's me beating Godrick, first attempt - 

 

Spoiler

 

 

...and me beating the next major boss with summons help

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Cosmic_Guru]

One thing I really enjoy about this is the sense of humour the team has for object location.  

 

Two examples talisman for higher attack with ranged weapons 

Spoiler

At top of guard tower occupied by  you've guessed it, archers

And that cotton wool stuff on

Spoiler

Ruin strewn precipice  

 

[Girth Certificate]

Haha, dude shouldn't have brought a stick and magic sword/hammer to a ghost jellyfish fight

[Broker]

24 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

The acronyms came about as I recall because of the name of the last boss in Bloodborne, which was a huge spoiler.

 

Personally I’m risk averse when it comes to spoilers. I’d rather someone scratch their head a bit at an acronym they don’t immediately get than have someone spoil something, but it’s not a hill I’d die on.

The Bloodborne thread was a mess of annoying acronyms way before many people were getting to the final boss. It seemed to be universally agreed in there that hearing the name Vicar Amelia was a giant spoiler that would ruin the game for people. 

[Mike S]

36 minutes ago, robdood said:

Haven't got much time to play today, so just squeezed in an hour - thought I'd have a go at practicing Godrick and er.. accidentally whooped him first go, lol.  I did have my Clymore+9, Demihuman spirits and the NPC summon lady with me.. we smashed the heck out of him! 

 

 

I think he's one of those bosses that are all talk and not so much trouser.

 

I found him yesterday and had a couple of attempts with my +5 broadsword and my +1 Jellyfish managing to get him down to his last third of health both times (although the Jelly was dead in less than 30 seconds). At lunchtime I fired it up, nipped to the smithy, and levelled my sword as high as I could (to +7) and went and did him first time as the increase in damage output made all the difference, plus I was no longer as concerned by his dramatic second phase as it is all dodge able. Stupid Jelly was dead in thirty seconds again though. I was level 40 though which seems to be over levelled.

 

Now I need to work out the rest of the castle layout as I can see tempting glows of loot in areas I've not got access too, plus there is a huge lift shaft I cannot operate. That's tomorrow's mission I think...