Elden Ring - From Software + George RR Martin

Phazael said:

If its the giant mace/hammer ones, there is a secondary attack from a charged R2 on those weapons that they all use that makes a mini explosion (similar to the one for the Ruins GS) that has a hit box a lot bigger than it looks on screen. Its purely a ground attack so it can be jumped, making them very susceptible to jumping unga bunga. And a lot of collosal weapons have a dead zone in close where the hitbox simply does not connect (more prevelant in the expansion for sure), but you cant really take advantage of it because those types of Enemies will spam their shield charge if you are too close to them.

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Nah, it's the first one you fight in Gravesite Plain. The dude with the sword and crossbow. His crossbow is easy enough to dodge around, but his jump attacks kept "hitting" me, yet the jump attack was landing 2-3 feet right or left of me. And like I said, there were a couple attempts where his little "straight line" slash thing was technically "hitting" me because I rolled/moved late, but I took no damage - you could see the "trail" still slightly touching/going through my character.

Went back to finish up the rest of the base game on my save after completing the DLC - haligtree, farum azula, capitol of ash etc.

Pretty fucking hilarious how easy mode all of this is after having to deal with the nonsense in the DLC. Placudisax was a fucking nightmare last time I played through it and he exploded like a bitch this time lol

Watching shit like that makes me feel like I've been playing a completely different game than them.

ronne said:

Went back to finish up the rest of the base game on my save after completing the DLC - haligtree, farum azula, capitol of ash etc.

Pretty fucking hilarious how easy mode all of this is after having to deal with the nonsense in the DLC. Placudisax was a fucking nightmare last time I played through it and he exploded like a bitch this time lol

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I also thank the DLC for my new found gudly gittins

Completely changed how I play caster

finally a reason to play kung fu knight!

Seananigans said:

Yeah I haven't really ever had a build that incorporated a bunch of buffs into things. Usually just walk in and start smashing.

Might be something fun to do at some point.

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is what above was doing but with regen healing on as well as health on damage flask.

The Fire Knight Greatsword is like having a Fiery Defender. It's scales A with str too.

Finally finished my 100% run, just need the endings and its done. Also got every spell and weapon you can in 1 run.

Started the DLC yesterday and holy fuck. The way these guys can change up the theme and atmosphere is just incredible. Going through some random dungeon and I end up scaling some crazy fucking mountain with dragons fighting. The fucking set pieces in the DLC might even be better then the original and that's saying a lot.

ronne said:

Compared to the base game where every corner of every map had something to do in it.

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I have to hard disagree with this.

Other than Liurnia, Leyndell(although let's face it, Leyndell is basically just one giant ass Legacy dungeon, rather than an "open world" area) and the underground areas, this is pretty true of the base game as well.

Altus Plateau is a gorgeous area, but the boss fights there are super bland, easy, boring and there isn't much going on in general. Shaded Castle was about the only "standout" area here to me.

Limgrave and Weeping Peninsula both have giant ass swathes of totally empty space, outside of Morne and Stormveil that's pretty much all they are.

Caelid is much the same, only add a fuckload of scarlet rot swamp bullshit. Radahn's beach is entirely unused, other than the one little tomb at the very edge of the beach.

Consecrated Snowfields is just one giant, empty snowfield with fucking dogshit visibility in much of the zone. So not only is it mostly devoid of shit to do, you can't even see half of it.

Mountaintops of the Giants is very similar, although some of the views/vistas save it because of how badass they are. But the river area? The giant frozen lake? Lots of empty space.

Now, having said all that, I just completed Gravesite Plain in the DLC, went back and did Azula, and I'm starting to understand the complaints.

While the areas look fucking awesome, music is fantastic, atmosphere top notch, etc., the whole scadoosh tree mechanic is very "meh" and kills a ton of replay value. I honestly don't even mind that the mobs hit hard as fucking trucks to the point I've swapped out to the phys dmg reduction talisman. I do enjoy bosses that force you to "avoid" perfectly, rather than just facetank like a tard. What I hate about it is what a fucking HP sponge most shit is early on. I don't mind having to play "near perfect", but I hate when I have to keep it up for 4 hours because the boss doesn't take any damage. I smoked the living shit out of Mohg with Eleonora's (not the best weapon against him, obviously) and then I felt like I was using a fucking +1 rapier against the first Gaol Knight (despite him being bleedable). And that was even with +2/+1, since I had explored around a bit before fighting him.

I mean, it's still great and I'm still having fun. But I do agree that my desire to replay this is dwindling pretty quickly and I'm only through the first area. Going back to finish Azula after made me realize that the base game really is just better thought out, designed, mechanically more enjoyable, smoother, etc.

Wait til you have to ring the finger bells.

People called the base game repetitive with a different dragon, or magma wyrm, or Charon, or death bird, or death rite bird, or crucible knight, or bell bearing hunter, or giant carriage, or knights cavalry, or erdtree avatar, or misbegotten, or rotten gladiator, or new evergaol in every area.

But even though they were repetitive reskins they all had some unique attack and dropped somewhat useful loot. It did give you pause to stop and investigate certain areas more thoroughly.

The new expansion has very little of that. Only 2 decent legacy dungeons. Very few world bosses. Even some of the sparse few dungeons lack boss fights.

Instead we get dumb rock guys that take a half hour to kill and even dumber furnace golems that take one hour to kill.

Bald Brah said:

Wait til you have to ring the finger bells.

People called the base game repetitive with a different dragon, or magma wyrm, or Charon, or death bird, or death rite bird, or crucible knight, or bell bearing hunter, or giant carriage, or knights cavalry, or erdtree avatar, or misbegotten, or rotten gladiator, or new evergaol in every area.

But even though they were repetitive reskins they all had some unique attack and dropped somewhat useful loot. It did give you pause to stop and investigate certain areas more thoroughly.

The new expansion has very little of that. Only 2 decent legacy dungeons. Very few world bosses. Even some of the sparse few dungeons lack boss fights.

Instead we get dumb rock guys that take a half hour to kill and even dumber furnace golems that take one hour to kill.

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Horrible take a usual.

He's not wrong about the finger ruins areas though. Not one but two pretty vast areas of nothingness save for the bells and some shitty fucking serpent dudes that can stunlock from range. And outside of Manse Hall, Abyssal Woods is in the same boat. That's three huge portions of the map that are mostly emptiness.

Hell, for the amount of space it covers on the map, even Jagged Peaks was a bit of disappointment to me. But it, at least, had a few mini bosses, one major boss and an epic NPC in there though.

Meanwhile, Shadow Keep comprised no more than half the map space of any of those places and had so many twists, turns, levels and bonfires that it was hard to track what was left to explore.

I still largely enjoyed it all. Just a bit strange design, IMO.

Just a really weird complaint that it's not populated with enough enemies/loot. Literally just got done collecting everything in the original and at no point did I think in the DLC has skimmed in anything. Id argue its more cohesive then the original after Lyndell, which felt disjointed and you could tell wasn't as polished as the first part.

You can't impart a sense of granduer and have an item drop or a unique enemy fight every 10 feet.

Seananigans said:

I'd argue given the similar large empty areas in the main game, it's the same exact design. Just since it's all compacted so neatly into the DLC area, it feels different.

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Perhaps, but there's no denying the emptiness in the DLC is exactly that. I mean, there's nothing at all to even pick up in these places save for a couple of cookbooks in AW.

Jagged Peaks had a few items, bosses, etc at least. I was just disappointed in how little there was to actually explore given how much map space it had at first sight.

The base game had some areas with a bit less reward than others, and one can surely argue the legitimacy of some of the items found in those places, but no place I can think of that similar to the Finger ruins or AW. Just MO.