Elden Ring - From Software + George RR Martin

Bald Brah said:

You can just roll or ride torrent through fake walls. No need to swing weapons. Rolling or torrent are much faster. Especially for the crypts.

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lol, it's possible I've just been doing it wrong the whole time by striking sus walls instead of rolling against them, if that's how most of them open. That or there are bullshit messages everywhere for no real reason.

Loaded up my old save. Level 277, main game totally cleared out, DLC maybe one third cleared. Looks like I was using Beastman's Curved Sword x2 (Blood) + Lord of Blood's Exultation. Each sword has 115 blood buildup on it. 75 Arcane. I'm guessing this setup completely obliterated anything that could be hit by Bleed. Also guessing the DLC bosses have high blood resistance which nerfed my setup a bit.

Something I did originally, when I first started ER at launch, was drop a message right at the starting point. It's been appraised about a zillion times, and given me lots of free heals during boss fights. I forgot to drop a similar message at the start of this newer playthrough, unfortunately. When I was on the old file for a few minutes it got appraised, which was just a reminder. Too bad message appraisals (presumably) don't work cross-character.

Level 277 is going to face roll the DLC, once you get the Scadooshes. Just like at launch, shield counterpoke with spear is top tier, especially if you can rock Lansax Spear from the capital and/or a decent bleed spear. At that level you likely have enough stats to rock the fingerprint which is ez mode for the DLC. Just make sure to include at least one ranged weapon art and any ash summons should be more DPS focused if possible, so Tich is good early on then build up the birdman and eventually the twins from the DLC itself. Lightning is really strong in this expansion, but there are a lot of command grabs on mobs so having an out (Hora Luix Stomp is amazing, Endure is good) from those or means to drive off multiple enemies is useful. With that level of Arcane you probably should consider going for the lightning rod from Bayle as early as you can pull it off, since that weapon just kills it in the expansion but Bayle is pretty rough until you learn the fight. Mogh's Spear is pretty good in most of the fights as well. Very few top enemies in the expansion are immune to bleed and a couple of weapons in it can ramp up the buildup pretty damn high (Pig Rider spear with Blood Tax being the best) if thats your jam (double tree spears with blood tax is equally amazing).

Biggest change you are gonna notice (aside from the hyper agro mobs) is that Poise and hyper armor are significantly more important for many encounters. So try to keep your poise as high as you can, even at the cost of raw defense and attack. Otherwise you just will get rag dolled by shit you should be trading with constantly. But at the end of the day, except for a couple bosses any build is workable in the DLC even at that massive level.

Last thing I did this weekend was beat Godfrey, gold spirit version. Why do you fight Godfrey twice like that? Almost as weird as fighting Mohg twice.

Wondering if maybe the golden Godfrey fight was supposed to be a Godwyn the Golden fight, but it wasn't finished, so they just added the gold effect to the Godfrey model and made it another Godfrey.

Hell, after I beat the game the first time, I thought the golden guy in Leyndell WAS Godwyn and didn't know what people were talking about when they said Godwyn wasn't in the game.

I know Godwyn's a corpse in the underworld and all that, but a golden avatar of his human form seems logical. Maybe an idea scrapped in development was to have a whole thing with Godwyn fighting you as his human avatar and then later his true form in the underworld. He's still the biggest loose end from the game at this point.

Phazael said:

Level 277 is going to face roll the DLC, once you get the Scadooshes. Just like at launch, shield counterpoke with spear is top tier, especially if you can rock Lansax Spear from the capital and/or a decent bleed spear. At that level you likely have enough stats to rock the fingerprint which is ez mode for the DLC. Just make sure to include at least one ranged weapon art and any ash summons should be more DPS focused if possible, so Tich is good early on then build up the birdman and eventually the twins from the DLC itself. Lightning is really strong in this expansion, but there are a lot of command grabs on mobs so having an out (Hora Luix Stomp is amazing, Endure is good) from those or means to drive off multiple enemies is useful. With that level of Arcane you probably should consider going for the lightning rod from Bayle as early as you can pull it off, since that weapon just kills it in the expansion but Bayle is pretty rough until you learn the fight. Mogh's Spear is pretty good in most of the fights as well. Very few top enemies in the expansion are immune to bleed and a couple of weapons in it can ramp up the buildup pretty damn high (Pig Rider spear with Blood Tax being the best) if thats your jam (double tree spears with blood tax is equally amazing).

Biggest change you are gonna notice (aside from the hyper agro mobs) is that Poise and hyper armor are significantly more important for many encounters. So try to keep your poise as high as you can, even at the cost of raw defense and attack. Otherwise you just will get rag dolled by shit you should be trading with constantly. But at the end of the day, except for a couple bosses any build is workable in the DLC even at that massive level.

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Not doing DLC on the level 277 save. That's my old save that is on like NG++ or +++ and gets ragdolled around by a lot of the DLC stuff. I'll do it on my new NG that I'm running now with the 2x Great Stars or Blasphemous or whatever I end up sticking with.

Many of the Demigods and gods have multiple avatars that sometimes seem to have a will of their own. Marika/Radigon literally fucked themselves, for the most prominent example. St Trina and Miquilla is the DLC example of note. I think the Godfrey stuff is there because they built a false narrative (the golden order) around him as the first Elden Lord when we was really the Houra Luiox barbarian king originally, which the last fight is the big reveal of. The golden form I think is just some sort of false image from the golden order. At least thats the in game lore shit. The real explanation is that they probably made that boss and did not know what to do with it so fuck it make it a boss on the final run in the future ruined capital sequence. A lot of the lore on that is dumped in item descriptions, random blurbs about the First Elden Lord and the Barbarian King. The shit on Placidex and Farum Azul is much more obscure, imo.

Bald Brah said:

The omen king you actually fight three times. He appears outside the capitol causeway as well.

His appearances make sense because he is running that part of the world and trying to slow you down on your way to Leyendell where you finally defeat him. There is a lot of building up to his final fight and final form. But he is always a physical opponent and has a good reason to exist where he does in the game.

Someone even said if you skip the Margit and Causeway fights the Godfrey shade won't even aggro on you. FromSoft is fucking clever.

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Is Sewer Mohg supposed to be the final Mohg? I always figured the underworld Mohg was his canon final stand, since he's atop a fortress in the Underworld. I generally fight that one last. Though the first time I played through the game I think I fought the sewer one last since it was one of the last areas I even found.

Godfrey shade not aggroing is kind of crazy. If you can skip Margit to that point, can you even fight Morgott? I was under the impression that you couldn't get into Leyndell without having a Great Rune, meaning beating either Godrick or Renalla or Radahn (or Rykard, I guess).

That's where I left off because I consider Morgott to be kind of a "final boss" if ER were a regular game. Everything beyond that ramps up significantly in HP and power level so that's like the endgame, while Morgott is the end of the normal progression. If that makes any sense.

...do you even need to fight Margit, Godrick, etc? Is there a particular point where you're required to have the Great Runes from the big bosses? Seems to me like maybe you could just speedrun to the end by assembling the Dectus Medallion and bolting to Leyndell, taking out one area lord en route.

Never really thought about which things in the game are really "necessary" because I automatically want to get everything, but right now I'm wondering if the game is actually fairly short if you just beeline the few required things. Fire Giant and Farum Azula would be brutal in a lower-level bare minimum run though.

Any talisman recommendations for Faith? Probably not going above 25 Faith and mostly only using Faith for buffs. I could do more with it though if I find some spells I want to use. Using a Clawmark Talisman +7 which works fine but also seems basic. Not sure if Incant Scaling (i.e. why I've used stones getting it to +7) even enhances buffs. Since Clawmark scales off of Str/Fth it's perfect for my current setup.

Really liking Granssax's Bolt, might try building around that. Still waffling between it and Blasphemous Blade, if I don't stick with Great Stars (and probably won't long-term, though it's fun in the mid-game).


Found this buff stacking chart because now that I've got 25 Faith I had to figure out what stacks with what.

FGMS + Golden Vow is good, but a bunch of other things overwrite them. Blessing's Boon is a good third buff, though the Physick regen buff is just as good and probably lasts a lot longer, so I can save some MP with that.

Noodleface said:

You don't have to fight margit or godrick.

Leyndell actually has a door preventing you from entering if you don't have two great runes, but you don't have to kill godrick to get that like you said.

What's interesting is if you kill morgott then go back to stormveil margit is gone completely.

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That was gonna be my next question, does Margit poof. Whoa, that's some detail, for something almost no players would actually see.

nu_11 said:

Archeologist

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The most accurate description of ERs story. Gotta comb over every square inch of the world for the tidbits that are there.

So much stuff is so easily missed. I only ran into malenias daughter/avatar/astral projection by complete luck in altus plateau on my first play through.

nu_11 said:

Wrong.

He's the most popular, but the best lore is The Tarnished Archeologist.

The truth is that that major parts of the story of Elden Ring cannot be resolved. So most of the story ends up pointless.

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Tarnished Archaeologist is a freaking awesome youtube channel. Only watched like two of his videos because they're so good that they're actually sort of exhausting, and just make you want to start another playthrough of the game.

And yeah, the game does take an archaeology-like approach to its world building. They took the "music box kid who tells you about Gascoigne" storyline and made like 100 of that for ER, things that are easy to miss where the world tells a little storyline.

Cleared a bunch of side-dungeons, trying to find mines and catacombs so I can upgrade weapons and Mimic Tear (which is +5 and probably about the strength it should be at +10, good but not OP).


Pretty cool to finally be using buffs in this game. Next major fights I have are (still) Morgott and now Mohg 2.0 (beat the sewer one). Not sure if I want to go after Mountaintop/Farum/Haligtree or start doing stuff in the DLC (I'd probably get roflstomped at level 85). Pretty much at the mercy of upgrade materials. Maybe I should just do the rest of the underworld, remember that being full of mats.

Rajaah said:

Any talisman recommendations for Faith? Probably not going above 25 Faith and mostly only using Faith for buffs. I could do more with it though if I find some spells I want to use. Using a Clawmark Talisman +7 which works fine but also seems basic. Not sure if Incant Scaling (i.e. why I've used stones getting it to +7) even enhances buffs. Since Clawmark scales off of Str/Fth it's perfect for my current setup.

Really liking Granssax's Bolt, might try building around that. Still waffling between it and Blasphemous Blade, if I don't stick with Great Stars (and probably won't long-term, though it's fun in the mid-game).

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Any sort of chargable weapon art is going to benefit tremendously from the talisman dropped by the Gaol version of Godfrey. Next to Alexandar's Jar Shard it is probably the most ubiquitous talisman in the entire game and obtainable fairly early. The other talismans are largely going to depend on your kit and playstyle. I am partial to the Turtle talisman and Pierce Counter talisman with that weapon, maybe putting the XP one in slot four once you get it. But I generally use those last two slots either for the various Erd Tree talismans or for elemental defense talismans for specific fights. And Talismans, there is a Dex scaling one mid game I believe, but the simplest option for buffing is probably the Arcane talisman found in the very first dungeon, if you have the stats, since it weights nothing. If all you intent to do is buff, just grab the lightest one you can slot. If you want to occasionally cast (and the late game AE lighting is pretty clutch for melting big dragons), get the lightning incant talisman for sure.

As far as the spear weapon art, don't overlook Dex as it really ramps up the lightning damage way more than faith. The range is pretty good and will tempt you to just faceroll the weapon art all game, but the weapon itself is actually pretty decent in melee as well. And while you are waiting to get it, the Tree Spears dropped by the poison dudes in Caelid or the big spear with built in Golden Vow are great early stand ins for it. A lot of armored hall trash goes down to the classic block and counter poke with this weapon. You can truck through an entire playthrough on this weapon, DLC included almost as easily as a DMGS build will.

But Blasphemous is still the king of easy runs, even after all the nerfs. Combine the MP on kill talisman with this thing and you literally need almost nothing else. Its solid for most bosses and amazing on trash with the drain on kill effects. Even if you are not swinging it, simply off handing it on your back while two handing your main weapon is pretty good for the passive effect. Beyond that there are a million guides on how to be Blasphemous Billie out there and defeating Rykard early is not tough if you are any good. Same deal with Great Stars, really. If you ever want to try the Unga Bunga plus Sorcery variation, the Ruins Greatsword is pretty amazing and similar in its weapon art mechanics.