Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Expansion Announced

[NecroMorrius]

Well, this is actually, unexaggeratedly unplayable. I've tried three bosses and each one is subject to long hanging pauses making timing of dodges or parries impossible, and the game engine speeding up and slowing down at random. It's not simply that there are quality of life bummers or rough edges, this is actually unplayable. 

[Timmo]

Jesus, the PS4 version on PS5 is butter smooth. If the whole game is 60fps then it's a dream.

[robdood]

3 hours ago, Doctor Shark said:

Vigor - how much HP you have. Also works for general immunities and fire resistance 

 

Mind - how much mana you have to cast spells before you run out

 

Endurance - how much stamina you have, how much you can roll and heavy your equipment can be

 

Strength - how hard you hit stuff, allows you to carry bigger and heavier weapons, how strong your physical defence is

 

Dexterity - used for dexterity based weapons, such as rapiers, daggers, bows and crossbows. Reduces fall damage. Makes you roll a bit more quickly. 
 

Intelligence - allows you to cast intelligence based spells, increases the damage they do and increases your spell resistance

 

Faith - allows you to cast faith based spells and improves them

 

Arcane - helps you find more stuff and increases your resistance to certain negative effects 

 

 

 

 

For all those who don't know you can press whatever you SELECT button equivalent is on any menu screen to get help that explains everything like this!

[Vulgar Monkey]

5 minutes ago, Moz said:

Well, this is actually, unexaggeratedly unplayable. I've tried three bosses and each one is subject to long hanging pauses making timing of dodges or parries impossible, and the game engine speeding up and slowing down at random. It's not simply that there are quality of life bummers or rough edges, this is actually unplayable. 

 

Have you tried any of the stuff going around on reddit?

All helpfully summarised here:

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/elden-ring-players-share-possible-fixes-for-technical-problems#comments

[Popo]

Wading in on the graphics/performance chat - the game looks great, especially when the early morning sunlight dapples across the landscape and through the trees, but it’s more DS3 than Demons Souls remake. I do get that it’s a massive world and that that might be an apples and oranges comparison, and I’m sure there’s years and years of built up tech debt to take into consideration… and it’s a cross-gen title, but that it doesn’t look as impressive as DeS is… disappointing. 
 

Particularly because I can’t tell the difference between performance or frame rate modes whatsoever. I assume the difference is resolution and LOD? 
 

But to play it? Man oh man. It reminds me of  how Naughty Dog added the crawl function to LOU Part 2, and how transformative that was for how you could approach combat - only this time it’s sneaking. It really does open things up - coupled with the way enemies roam the landscape now, instead of just waiting to be triggered by the player when close enough. It’s fabulous. 
 

My biggest nope so far (still in the opening area):

 

Spoiler

Having gotten a hard-fought win over one of those emaciated giants, I rode Torrent further east from the soldier encampment near the entrance to Stormfront Castle and found an up-draught, which takes you to a cliff side with about 6 of the buggers all roaming around. I did manage to take a couple of them down on horseback (a highly recommended way of fighting these slow, lumbering beats, by the way) but they started converging on me so I noped the nope out. 

 

[Mawdlin]

I've never bought a big name game at launch before, preferring to wait a few weeks for the price to go down.

 

But I'm all onboard for this journey.

 

Got the last copy at Hamilton Argos just now. Phew!

[Dark Soldier]

Fuck me its a bit fucking good this innit lads

[Bobbi Champagne Jr]

13 minutes ago, John0 said:

My point was more, if it's trying to emphasise exploration and not walk you down a path, why does it have several big pointy arrows and NPCs that tell you to follow them?

I completely missed the first site of grace as you exit the tomb at the start. I saw the big dude on the horse in the distance ad just went the other way. It took me about 4 hours worth of exploring before I got back there and found it, and the proper way to go 😂

My one problem with the game is that the buton to open the map, doesn't close the map. IT'S MORE FRUSTRATING THAN ANY ENEMY I'VE FACED. 

[CrichStand]

9 minutes ago, Broker said:

I’d argue that every other game ensuring you walk down a path which gets slightly harder with each encounter is the poor piece of design. Fromsoft are trying to build interactive worlds which you explore, not superhero theme park rides like most other triple A developers. It’s why their games have worldbuilding far more satisfying than any other games and the exploration is so memorable. It’s the best design. Plus it’s awesome for multiple playthroughs not to be dragged through a tutorial every time. 

Good luck with that if you don’t know any of the buttons or any of the moves, or the systems in the game, or how important stuff works! You can just allow tutorials to be switched off or not job done, no need to have a tutorial section that is missable and put many players off the game right from the start. 
 

I didn’t miss the opening tutorial myself but I did miss - how saving works, how fast travel works, upgrading your weapon and a few other things because I chose to explore the open world. Which was really easy until I opened a random chest which dropped me in a ludicrously difficult area not knowing that I could leave it using the map, because the game had allowed me to miss the tutorial. Proper daft and caused massive amounts of frustration and I’ve played all the Soulsbourne games apart from Sekiro. 
 

Sounds like the main path is nails hard anyway though. Time to find out!

[ox1973]

4 minutes ago, Bobbi Champagne Jr said:

My one problem with the game is that the buton to open the map, doesn't close the map. IT'S MORE FRUSTRATING THAN ANY ENEMY I'VE FACED. 

 

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts too! The real souls starts here etc.

[fattakin]

err im about 90 mins in and a bit lost!

Where do i get the horse?  I dandered over to the big gate and ran away and have just been following the road and skirmishing.

What do the skulls with glowing eyes littered around mean?

How do i level up? Find better weapons?

I picked vanguard as advised, shield seems OK with ranged but still getting smashed by others.. i assume i upgrade it over time?

[Ry]

has anyone been able to log into online services on Xbox?

 

Each time I get a "network error failed"

 

I wouldn't mind getting some help. 

[Qazimod]

4 hours ago, Qazimod said:

I don't have the game yet (later this afternoon apparently)

 

It's here..  Er, and day-one-patching for the moment.

 

I pretty much muted this thread and the world "elden" on Twitter for the past few days  so I'm looking forward to going in.

[yashiro]

• Use the bonfire (site of grace) at the front of the big castle entryway the game is directing you to. There will be a cutscene.
• Yellow beams and sparkles show you the direction to proceed. I believe even the world map tries to do this too.
• Hit the skulls.
• You level up at bonfires like every other souls game. You need to unlock the horse via the afore mentioned cutscene first.
• Weapons you loot from enemies and chests (are you serious with this). You can upgrade weapons at an anvil.

[Captain Kelsten]

Level 12, five hours in, just found the first boss

[Alan Stock]

One thing I forgot to mention is the totems, I've only seen one so far but looks like they will be used as checkpoints right before boss doors. I hope this is the case and I welcome it. As you may have heard me disparaging running from bonfires to bosses as being one of the things I hate about Souls games (thankfully Sekiro largely addressed the issue as well).

 

Another thing I forgot to say is that I think the move to weapon skills is a great decision. They were in DS3 but underutilised. Putting parry as a weapon skill is a great idea, so you have to decide whether to include it in your arsenal. I do have a question about parrying. For the tutorial boss I was trying to parry him but was armed with a normal shield so the parry window was small. However I died twice trying to parry him to no effect. The boss is armed with a spear - is it actually possibly to parry spears in souls games?

[NecroMorrius]

1 hour ago, Vulgar Monkey said:

 

Have you tried any of the stuff going around on reddit?

All helpfully summarised here:

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/elden-ring-players-share-possible-fixes-for-technical-problems#comments

 

Yes, most of it is voodoo and none of it stops the game freezing 2-20 times per minute. This isn't stuttering, but rather pauses where the entire game and all input freeze for between half a second to two seconds. Even the intro slideshow at the start freezes on starting a new game. Even the menus freeze.

[dug]

11 minutes ago, Bobbi Champagne Jr said:

 

My one problem with the game is that the buton to open the map, doesn't close the map. IT'S MORE FRUSTRATING THAN ANY ENEMY I'VE FACED. 

 

6 minutes ago, ox1973 said:

 

Thank you! This has been driving me nuts too! The real souls starts here etc.

 

Came here just to post this. 

 

Literally every time I open the map, I try to close it with the touch pad, go "fuck!" and have to press cancel twice. I rather they patch in a fix for this than any frame rate issues.

[Popo]

9 minutes ago, Bobbi Champagne Jr said:

I completely missed the first site of grace as you exit the tomb at the start. I saw the big dude on the horse in the distance ad just went the other way. It took me about 4 hours worth of exploring before I got back there and found it, and the proper way to go 😂

My one problem with the game is that the buton to open the map, doesn't close the map. IT'S MORE FRUSTRATING THAN ANY ENEMY I'VE FACED. 

Ugh! Yes! I hate this too!

 

3 minutes ago, fattakin said:

err im about 90 mins in and a bit lost!

Where do i get the horse?  I dandered over to the big gate and ran away and have just been following the road and skirmishing.

What do the skulls with glowing eyes littered around mean?

How do i level up? Find better weapons?

I picked vanguard as advised, shield seems OK with ranged but still getting smashed by others.. i assume i upgrade it over time?

 

Keep following the critical path and you’ll get everything that’s coming to you, equine or otherwise. 
 

The skulls with glowing eyes have rune items in them, a bit like the soul items from DS (renowned warriors soul, heroes soul, etc.) - you use them to gain runes (although bear in mind you don’t lose them when you die when they’re in item form, so better to use them when at a place of grace and can spend them immediately).

 

Have you been to the ruined church with the merchant inside? It’s a good place to visit!
 

3 minutes ago, Ry said:

has anyone been able to log into online services on Xbox?

 

Each time I get a "network error failed"

 

I wouldn't mind getting some help. 

 

Sorry man, no issues here last night or this morning. Maybe do the thing with the restart?

[Ste Pickford]

33 minutes ago, John0 said:

My point was more, if it's trying to emphasise exploration and not walk you down a path, why does it have several big pointy arrows and NPCs that tell you to follow them?

 

Perhaps because it's not *just* trying to emphasise exploration, but also teach you about untrustworthy NPCs, and to have you wits about you no matter what you've been told.

[Jackson]

42 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

Hahaha. I’m not sure if it’s just poor design or some kind of crazy in-joke. One thing it’s not is more accessible! I’m sticking to the main path for now though before I try exploring again. The real Souls starts here. 

The bonfires literally point you in the direction you need to go to progress. It's definitely the most accessible From Software game I've played.

[the_debaser]

14 minutes ago, fattakin said:

err im about 90 mins in and a bit lost!

Where do i get the horse?  I dandered over to the big gate and ran away and have just been following the road and skirmishing.

What do the skulls with glowing eyes littered around mean?

How do i level up? Find better weapons?

I picked vanguard as advised, shield seems OK with ranged but still getting smashed by others.. i assume i upgrade it over time?

Spoiler

the horse is given to you by some ghostly woman, she’s in the ruined church thing where the Santa Claus guy sits who tries to sell you shit

 

[the_debaser]

I’m dying a lot and the loading times are pissing me off. They really should have put in a difficulty setting, or at least sort it out so you’re not waiting 15 seconds to restart every time you die. 

[spanx]

Just reached Mergit

 

Hahaha. This may take some time

[John0]

12 minutes ago, Jackson said:

The bonfires literally point you in the direction you need to go to progress. It's definitely the most accessible From Software game I've played.

 

So did you follow the kind of natural path...

 

Spoiler

... up the hill and through the mobs of guards with the kind of mortar cannon thing. Did you make it to Margit pretty much directly by doing this? Or was I supposed to be put off by the giant beast thing and the mortar cannons?

 

[CrichStand]

9 minutes ago, Jackson said:

The bonfires literally point you in the direction you need to go to progress. It's definitely the most accessible From Software game I've played.

Yeah, that’s a nice touch. Seem like there are a lot more bonfires too. Don’t agree about this being the most accessible From game though, certainly not from what I’ve experienced so far at the start of the game. I’d say the Demon’s Souls Remake is far more accessible, at least in the beginning.

[Gigawatt]

Very childishly, I laughed out loud at 

 

Spoiler

“Have you met the Finger Maidens”. 

I’m 42 years old. 

[yashiro]

They prefer two fingers.

[Jamie John]

Pro tip: the small beast bones you get from mercilessly slaughtering squirrels and deer can be turned into little bone darts in the crafting menu, if you buy the cookbook from Santa's Little Helper in the ruined church. They don't dish out much damage, but they're great for aggroing enemies from a distance. If you've never played a Souls game before, then figuring out a way to take on enemies one by one is a very useful tactic, and these dart things allow you to do just that.

 

Anyway, I've got horsey boy now, and I've met 

Spoiler

Level up lady. From the sounds of it, though, I could have met her sooner if I'd actually used the bonfire in the ruined church, instead of just activating it. I didn't get the cutscene where she turns up and gives you the whistle until I'd run the gauntlet past the giant that jumps down on you and all the archers 

 

[El Spatula]

So far I've twatted some wolves, an angry man who didn't like me twatting his wolves, and an angry tree thing. 

 

I've been twatted by a horrible Bloodborney nightmare that laughed at my weapons.

 

Also it seems to run fine on my Ryzen 2600x/ 2060 potato. Which is weird but nice.

 

Oh occasionally I turn into Benny Hill when entering a new area....