Elden Ring - From Software + George RR Martin

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Kirun

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Hearing limegrave music again and makes me want to fire this baby up for my 5th, or is it 6th? play through
I was always partial to the Liurnia of the Lakes track - I love the dichotomy of "upbeat/uplifting" and yet extremely ominous tone that it has.
 
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Phazael

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Ignore the wicker men. Risk not worth reward.
The blocking tear is arguably one of the best things in the entire expansion. The lifedrain tear is pretty solid as well. And really, you only actually have to straight up fight like three of them if you know what you are doing. The rest can be taken down with pots. I do think their rune value is ridiculously low though.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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Cyberpunk in its current format is also on the top of the list for best games. It came out buggy and should have never been part of the PS4. Now after Phantom Liberty, The company redeemed itself with the release. I am very much looking forward to "Project Orion" which is in the works as the sequel to Cyberpunk.

I have yet to try Elden Ring..........
Deutschland 83 Running GIF by SundanceTV
I'm really enjoying it right now, other than a little bit of my graphics issues, but I think I got them ironed out. It's definitely a different experience than elden ring, but it's apples and oranges, but those are great.
 

Fogel

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Thinking of seeing if there's any good Elden Ring mods yet too. Anyone find a good mod yet? I've seen mods that rebalance/replace spells etc but haven't done a ton of research yet.
 

Phazael

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They toned down a bunch of his 30 second continuous wombo combos, though he still sometimes does them. His main bread and butter combo has a bigger parry window and is easier to read (they dialed back the diarrhea christmas lights on the encounter a lot so you can see wtf is actually happening). He is still basically completely impossible to do as a mage if you don't summon. Ansbach is helpful if you are exploiting bleed, but otherwise useless. Mimic with the heal flesh trick so he self heals works ok, especially if you are running bleed. Golem with heals is hilariously easy (the Golem can mostly solo him if you can keep him healed). Easiest way to beat him remains Fingerprint Shield and bleed spear counterpoke, because you can tank just about anything he does except his grab. The black shield with massive holy dr is pretty good too.

But compared to release, he is much easier. I think I was able to take him out with Dry Leaf Arts stun punch with summons last time I beat the expansion, which I would have had to be a twitch master asian to pull off before (I do not have those reflexes). If you can parry reliably, he is no harder than Melenia.
 

Noodleface

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I played 2h colossal sword with no summons the whole game, so I didn't want to summon for him

The build absolutely felt impossible. I ended up using a shield that blocked 100% of his damage and just poked him to death. It felt silly but I felt like I was going to have a seizure in p2
 
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Kirun

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Shield was the auto-win of the entire DLC. That was my one major issue with it.

But, magic was the auto-win of the OG, so I guess OP builds will always exist.
 

Phazael

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The reason shield got so strong is due to how hyper agro (Bloodborne levels of twitch) the mobs in general are in the DLC. Two hand unga bunga using hyperarmor was also pretty much and auto win for most of the DLC, but a few specific bosses, like the last one, make that really unfeasible. I have seen people use the blocking tear and make it work, but it takes ludicrous timing that my old man reflexes simply can't do. I used palm blast on my last run to hyperarmor my way through the vast majority of the DLC, but it was essentially the same general principle. Pretty much share the same main gripe of the overtuning of some encounters making certain fights completely easy/hard for certain builds to the point where you needed to switch out.

And casters are just fine in the DLC (even the last one) if you went spellsword for some of them. MLGS pretty much could get you through the entire expansion. Ancient Death Rancor was pretty god damn OP as well. Dagger builds and paired power stances kind of got shafted by the super agro mobs though. But yeah, shield plus spear has always been one of the strongest builds in any souls game and the DLC was no exception. Blood Tax on General Pig Dude's spear combined with a decent shield pretty much lets you face roll the whole thing on NG+.
 

Springbok

Karen
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DLC was good, but if the base game was a Springbok 9.99/10, the DLC was maybe 8.5? It was great, especially compared to the SLOP we have on offer these days but compared to the best game of all time, it fell quite a bit short for me. Bosses were mostly good/great, last boss was terrible and didn't like the theme or whatever either.
 
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Rajaah

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Shadow of the Erdtree is a good time, but I never finished it. A few of the bosses are just too ridiculous, and some of the areas were brutal (the dark forest with the frenzy brain things). So after a while it just stopped being fun and I moved on. Never had that happen with the base game. I was also playing on like NG+++ so maybe on a future NG the DLC will be more manageable.
 
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Bald Brah

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Shadow of the Erdtree is a good time, but I never finished it. A few of the bosses are just too ridiculous, and some of the areas were brutal (the dark forest with the frenzy brain things). So after a while it just stopped being fun and I moved on. Never had that happen with the base game. I was also playing on like NG+++ so maybe on a future NG the DLC will be more manageable.

Biggest problem with the DLC are the areas aren't well defined. You really need to skip a lot of bosses and collect all the easy scadtree fragments first. I know I had a lot of problems with the mesmer guy and the boar guy but some of the later bosses like the saint bug guy were incredibly easy because I had a lot more fragments and some upgraded ashes of war.
 
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Utnayan

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Biggest problem with the DLC are the areas aren't well defined. You really need to skip a lot of bosses and collect all the easy scadtree fragments first. I know I had a lot of problems with the mesmer guy and the boar guy but some of the later bosses like the saint bug guy were incredibly easy because I had a lot more fragments and some upgraded ashes of war.

Yep this was where I think they could have done this differently. Tune the bosses to the amount of scadtree you should have when you reach them and to put a guardrail on that, maybe just have them drop off bosses instead and tune the bosses appropriately. Rather than just scatter them all over like pacman power pills.
 
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Kirun

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Yep this was where I think they could have done this differently. Tune the bosses to the amount of scadtree you should have when you reach them and to put a guardrail on that, maybe just have them drop off bosses instead and tune the bosses appropriately. Rather than just scatter them all over like pacman power pills.
Or just do an entirely different progression system all-together. Rewards for exploration are all well and good, but when it's "forced" in a sense? Feels a lot less good.
 
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Bald Brah

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Or just do an entirely different progression system all-together. Rewards for exploration are all well and good, but when it's "forced" in a sense? Feels a lot less good.

Yeah it's just a dumb mechanic.

Not sure why they couldn't just tie the expansion bosses to PC level. Regular game was tuned to end around 150. They could have just tuned the expansion to end at 250. But I guess there are a lot of diminishing returns on skill ups past 150.

Not sure why they didn't want to change the diminishing returns. To not trivialize the base game bosses with expansion levels?

But that's how most games work.
 
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jayrebb

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Shield was the auto-win of the entire DLC. That was my one major issue with it.

But, magic was the auto-win of the OG, so I guess OP builds will always exist.

They left thorns in for a ridiculous amount of time in the DLC. Felt like nearly 2 months and might have even been toward 3 months.

People kept saying they are going to nerf thorns. Patches came and went with 0 tuning to it.
 

Bandwagon

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OK I did it.

I've played for an hour on steamdeck, which makes this the longest I've ever played any souls game. Seems fun so far. Going as a samurai.
 
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Oblio

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Does the steamdeck feel like your drone controls and your character is the drone?

If so, Margot is fucked. Game can't handle a pro droner.
 
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DickTrickle

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I could never play this game on a steamdeck. This is the only game where I was contorting my body while holding the controller, like I was playing a Wii game or something, heh. I had to remap my horse mount/dismount button because I'd always press too hard in a tense fight and jump off at the worst time.
 
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