Elden Ring - From Software + George RR Martin

Had to go look up how to get access to Scaduview. Never would have figured it out otherwise as I completely missed the gesture passing through the village.

Vinjin said:

Ditto for Putrescent Knight, which totally shocked me. I hadn't even attempted him again since I first discovered him last week. Came back just to show one of our sons how ridiculously OP the bosses are in the DLC. Survived the initial onslaught and before I knew it, he was half health. I might've gotten a little lucky on a dodge roll or two off the horse charge but I guess it was just one of those fights where things fell into place and he died without too much fuss.

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I think I killed him in 6-8 tries. Twin blades really wasnt working so swapped to double golden halberd and it absolutely wrecked him. Stuck with halberds since and its worked out good so far.

Midna took 6-7.

Messmer was a pain in the ass. He probably took 20-30 attempts. The camera angle combined with how flashy his moveset is was annoying.

It's Phazael

Kirun said:

It's Phazael

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I freely admit as a long time Souls and From fan, I generally do my first play using the Monnlight Greatsword setup. I mean, its their signature weapon and been in every single game. But I also fuck around with other builds. In fact, yesterday I decided to try running three characters through the early part of the expansion (using prior knowledge to grab early Scadoosh shards and get some key graces for later).

First was the Lightning Gransax guy and he just tore through most everything, making it all the way to the Finger Church and initial Fissue graces in a little over two hours, even dropping an undead dragon on the way. At 70 Dex and 50 Faith, the weapon art was just one or two shotting nearly anything though lack of large group options hindered me in a couple places (as did my 30 Vit I can get away with in the base game). I can see some enemies (esp Mesmer) giving this character problems, but unlike my caster he can actually engage in close quarters fighting. Once I get a generic spear worked up with a couple expansion weapon arts, this will be a cake run.

Next it was dual weild arcane Dagger girl, who was admittedly hard in the base game, but fun and workable. Complete shitshow in the DLC, between all the point blank AEs and the virtual requirement of using a shield to avoid getting one or two shotted when you make even the slightest mistake. And I cannot even imagine getting in close to bosses or harder overland enemies with all the PB AEs they throw around and how froggy they are. Whips were sort of ok, but I had to go spear and shield so much I lost interest because I was basically just playing my lightning guy, but with Mohg's spear. This is definately hard mode because you are basically playing the naked katana meme, but with the short range of daggers and nothing I have seen in the expansion on my first run seems to be a real upgrade for Reduvia (which the character was built around). If Dancer Blades were not total ass, I would try to pivot to them, but even the most common hall trash seems stagger resistant in the DLC so power stancing daggers with quick rolls is really masochistic.

Finally, I busted out my Ruins Blade centered Unga Bunga guy, as my co op pal wants to do another paired run together. While not as killy or dominating as the Lightning guy, being able to simply hide behind a Finger Print Shield and counter/spam weapon art with impunity is laughably easy. The first Mausoleum boss everyone is complaining about hit the pavement in one try simply to guard counters. The overland undead dragon my lightning guy killed was dead before it knew what had happened. I generally put myself in the summon pool to get easy Rune Arcs, XP, and Erdleave mascara things when generally exploring, because I enjoy the co-op experience. But I had to refrain from that because people would literally pull me in to tank for them the instant I put my sign down. It was crazy and I gained so much XP being a rent a tank in three hours. This was good, because this character was the lowest level and also sitting at 30 Vit after beating the main game (had a lot of stats to cover base reqs for a number of weapons and END). Definitely the easy mode for this expansion, with maybe a couple bosses (Scadoosh Tree, Metyr, and maybe Pig Rider dude) likely to be an issue.

Bald Brah said:

Yeah I don't like how they scrapped the one ruins, one random catacombs, one super chariot dungeon per sub area. Then one gigantic remembrance boss dungeon in the middle.

Everything is spread out and most areas only have one small side dungeon, usually without even a boss fight. And the dungeon bosses, if there is one, are absolutely pathetic compared to remembrance bosses. To compensate we only get one ridiculous wicker man per area.

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Some of the dungeon bosses are fairly rough, like the dude who makes a billion copies of himself or the goblin with the Moonveil. Most are like the base game, which is to say basic if you have a strong build and acting mainly as a teaser to late game hall trash. I found myself wishing there was more shit in the wide open areas, but then again I was fine not having to crawl through hall trash every square inch as well. There is so much content in this DLC, imo. I actually like the "bossless" forge dungeons as a change of pace puzzle level. Ignoring the scaling MP issues and some of the overtuning, my one big complaint is that for all the gear in this most of the weapons and spells are completely useless, especially by the time when you could reasonably obtain them. The throwing weapons would have been a fun early game thing to play around with, but they are complete dogshit in the DLC itself, as one of many examples.

Phazael said:

Finally, I busted out my Ruins Blade centered Unga Bunga guy, as my co op pal wants to do another paired run together. While not as killy or dominating as the Lightning guy, being able to simply hide behind a Finger Print Shield and counter/spam weapon art with impunity is laughably easy.

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Unga Bunga question

I'm level 70, working my way through South Caelid right now towards Redmane Castle and Radahn

Right now, I'm just 2 handing a Grafted Blade Greatsword +5 but is there a better setup I should be using? Like 1 handing the GBGS and using a shield? Is it easy to spam counters or parries like that?

I'm not great at this game so mostly I'm just rolling, mashing R1+R2, chugging flasks, and occasionally doing R1+jump to "break poise" of the mob but I dont know if I am even doing that part right.