Elden Ring

No wonder the finger spiders hate you.

Covid hit our house finally which is interesting when you're staying with in-laws. Everyone's had to silo themselves off somewhere except the old man and the children who all remain covid free (or have already had it). I've pretty much taken up residence in front of Elden Ring. Was cooling on the game a bit but the last few days have reignited my enthusiasm. I've been going back to previously difficult areas and rolling through them. I get why there are mobs in the world now, it's so that you can empty the place!
Pushed on a bit as well, have seen more of the low snow area, the invisible assassin's village, the tree place and on to Malenia. The legacy dungeon before her fight is quite a surprise when you first see it. It's also surprising to find that there are still challenging areas when you feel like you've rinsed the other areas of the game.
I'm still on the last boss, I've not done anything much to progress that. I keep telling my partner that it's nearly finished but I'm not sure it is. Or will be. I can see a time a year from now where my character is level 439 and has had a bleed and faith based re-spec that might get me over the finish line but at the moment it feels like I'm at the end of the road.

Moving the conversation here, as otherwise it clogs up the PWB thread.

Stupid question: skills possessed by weapons, the ones that are generally default but can be changed with Ashes of War, can only be used when a weapon is on the left side… right? That would explain why I've never been able to do them. My shield is in my left and when I hit L2, it does a parry (the inate shield skill). I've never been able to use my sword's skill. Played around a bit this morning, did a bit of two-handed wielding and, yep, there's the sword skill. That's a bit shit, isn't it? How do I make use of the skills both weapons have if I can only do it with my left handed one?

EDIT: Okay, so having a spell item in the left seems to free up the L2 button for right-hand weapon skills. Hmm. But if I want my shield out, I'm fucked unless I change hands?

Do you really want to know? I could tell you. I'm about level 150, armed with excellent weapons and summons, and things the size of trees die in three hits to me. I have no skill. It's pure cheese. Do you want a taste of my cheese?

I only like cheese on pizza.

If it's 'Here's a farming spot for runes', I'm good currently - I found the hill down from the Bestial Sanctum with the black imps, so could spend time there getting 1,200 a kill. I also found the back route behind the elder white dragon… if I could be arsed to spend 20 minutes just smacking him, that's another 80k in the pocket.

I want good weapons. Good armour. Advice on which stats I should actually be levelling up. Where to get more summons (I have three, but they're middling at best). How the hell to best use magic (there's a difference between spells and glintstones, right?). Which Ashes of War I need and how I actually use them, because I don't have a clue. That stuff. Useful stuff. Tell me please.

Oh, and I found a chapel with a blocked door that's covered with a blue forcefield marked by runes. What.

There are a few chapels that fit that description. It's possible that you need to find three glowing turtles.

You don't want a farming spot, that's fine. Although you are not at the really good farming spot. The REALLY good farming spot. It's extremely difficult to get to, and involves completing a fairly long quest chain, and a perilous run through an area that it much too high level for you. It's one for later, I think, but even as it feels cheesy, it does make the game more accessible, less offputting. I genuinely believe that it is there deliberately. Don't kill that big dragon. That would be like cutting down a truly ancient tree, morally wrong.

So, good armour and weapons. With armour, it depends on what kind of fighting dude you are, really. Armour isn't actually all that important - even the starter armour sets are pretty good, especially when you upgrade them. The armour sets have a single upgrade available, it's not something you keep pumping resources into. I started as a Samurai, and the starter armour lasted me until the point when I decided I wanted a different look. The different look doesn't make me more effective, although it does make me a fair bit cooler. Anyway, the most important thing with armour is the weight. Don't go for a Heavy Load, as this severely reduces your roll speed. I play with a medium load.

My build is a magic-weilding samurai who never uses a shield and relies on dodging to stay alive. It's a fun, exciting, versatile, and effective way to play. My primary stat is Int, which I levelled up to 80 in order to use a specific spell which I have found to be too slow to use. Anyway, it means my spells and attacks with the magical katana Moonveil are devastating. The Ash of War that is on Moonveil by default (a magical version of Unsheath which I used as an unmagical Samurai for half the game anyway) is easily my favorite in the game. Your guy sheaths his sword and stands with his hand on the hilt. Then when you strike, he draws it and sweeps it in either a downward or crossward arc for Massive Damage and even more massive coolness. The Moonveil version adds a magical effect to this that effectively extends the range. In my off-hand (when I'm not two-handing the katana) I have a magical staff, and I mainly use the spell Glintstone pebble, which at 80 INT does a lot of damage for not much endurance cost.

If you are Samurai-mage-curious and want to know where I got my cool stuff, let me know and I can give some more details.

Honestly, I don't think you lose much if anything by delving into the Elden Ring Wiki a bit.
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Elden+Ring+Wiki
The game is so deep, that I felt I had a much greater appreciation for it once I started reading bits of the lore, and how to get more out of the game. Like you, I spent a good bit of time wandering around avoiding reading anything until I reached a point where I seemed to have stalled in progress and had no clue what to do, and I read up a bit on how to build a character, how to find some cool stuff and bosses, and where to find some quests. It gave me a renewed love of the game.

I dunno' if this is 'wrong' at all, if you don't stray from the path you don't find potentially powerful items, case in point with that White Dragon, like you said an extra 80k runes. It's just so big that you can also find a lot of 'not for me' stuff too.

As for 'how to get better without looking it up online', Elden Ring is super fucking big so most stuff is/has been a community effort because I don't think any one guy knew everything when they first played it.

First off, there's a respec option for items you can find around the world but you need to beat a fairly easy boss to use it first. Spoiler - click to showRennala in the Academy

Advice on which stats I should actually be levelling up

This will entirely depend on your type of build and it doesn't matter what you started as either, if you want to lean in on spells it's gonna be more Int than anything, but there's nothing stopping you going for a bit more HP if you want. Also look at the weapons themselves, since some physical weapons can scale of INT, some may scale of both INT and STR or INT and DEX but INT might be A and DEX might be B so the priority stat to increase is strength but you'll want some Dex too in that particular scenario.

Where to get more summons (I have three, but they're middling at best). How the hell to best use magic (there's a difference between spells and glintstones, right?)

I didn't use summons until the end because one boss broke me, but the best one and one you wont be at yet I don't think is Mimic Tear because it copies you and everything you are wearing. TL;DR save up Gloveworts because you meet an NPC who uses them to make summons stronger. I dunno if this helps but people seem to like the ones that summon a group of summons at once, like the Wolves but I haven't tried them so I can't verify. To use them you need the Spirit Calling Bell from Renna (I had to look this up sorry it's been ages) in Limgrave apparently, so nothing too dangerous.

Glintstones are a specfic substet of spellcasting I guess, but I never used them though I am pretty sure I saw several spells being sold from some people. The Faith sword you mentioned earlier, scales of Faith which is obvious enough but Faith is its own section of casting too, so something to keep in mind.

As for fighting in general, this game was anti melee as fuck imo and enemies can delay their next hit in a combo and catch you trying to roll away and I found without an abundance of endurance some bosses ate stamina on guard so I just had watch theirp atterns and find the safe spots to attack, if your timing is great you do get i-frames on the roll…but it is strict.

I would just focus on making a really strong weapon first of all. Depending on what you use it can be better or worse for fighting big enemies, Greatswords jumping R2 spam looks spammy but it does break posture a lot and force enemies/bosses to to fall into a stance you can do that stab animation with. If you're using Bleed weapons you want to hit as much as possible to proc it etc

EDIT - Oh lmao apparently Bleed hasn't been nerfed it's a specific OP Bleed PvP tactic/skill? If that's the case you want my advice, run Bleed and Arcane as son as you find a good Bleed weapon :^)

Dropping this here for my own reference.

What kind of fightsman are you at the moment? Big heavy fightsman with a big clobbering stick? Fast dodgy stabsguy? Flashy magician?

More importantly, what kind do you want to be? Do you want to have a big shield, and to hide behind it waiting for the right moment to hit with a big heavy attack? Do you want to be some kind of show-off with a katana in each hand, rolling and dodging about the landscape? Would you rather stand miles away from the action hurling spells? Or does some kind of priest or paladin role appeal to you? A religious nut wandering about defeating enemies through strength of faith alone?

There are so many builds in this game it's crazy. I can only really help you with samurai or ninja based ones, to be honest.

Also, have you done Stormveil Castle yet? How extreme has your wandering from the path been?

Regarding Ashes of War, I do my special sword attack while wielding my sword one-handed in my right hand all the time. I don't use a shield though. I have one, so I'll do a bit of experimenting later. To be honest, I can't remember what the buttons are to do anything. My hands do it automatically now. I do remember that doing the special attack with my bow can be a bit fiddly, I think it's a case of switching to the bow then two-handing the bow before I can do it.

It's been a while since I played, so this may be wrong, but…

I think you can get an Ash of War called 'No Skill', which you can then put on certain shields (ones without specific unique skills), and with that equipped hitting L2 will use your primary weapon's special, instead of parrying.

A couple of my stupider builds involved putting 'No Skill' on the Fingerprint Shield (ridiculously heavy, but probably the best shield in the game), and then using one of the weapons with hilariously OP skills in my main hand, which is part of what made me wonder if the name might be developer commentary…

Okay, now I've read more of the thread(s)….

Felt's point about the armour stats not mattering has one caveat, I would say, which is that 'Poise' is useful, especially if you're using a cumbersome weapon (as I always do now, because Monster Hunter has apparently made my a Greatsword main in any and all games where one is available); basically, the higher your Poise is, the harder you can be hit without being staggered, or it interrupting your attack animation. This is, as you can imagine, very useful, and though it tends to be that heavier armour has higher poise, there are some lighter sets that have relatively high Poise as the thing that sets them apart.

For me, when selecting armour the look/theme is the most important thing, Poise is second, base stats are third.

As Al says, you can respec, but the things you need to do it are a finite resource, so the best thing to do is try and work out how you want to play, and then look out for gear that supports that style. I also started out as a magic user, using the Moonveil, but eventually I decided that I didn't like kiting around everywhere, winning wars of attrition by spamming spells; I preferred the look/feel of incantations to spells, and hitting stuff - and being able to be hit by stuff - harder. I've tried various other magic and bleed builds since, but tend to eventually gravitate back, to the point where when I finally go back I'm pretty sure I'll find myself hitting stuff with one of two particular greatswords/colossal greatswords, and flinging fireballs (or EYEBEAMS OF MADNESS) at people again.

Oh, and never, ever sell weapons. It's not worth it. At all. After a few hours in the amount you get back is negligible, and if you respec later on you might find you've sold something good that you could've actually used.

Yes, I have a vague idea that Poise means something. Resistences too. My playstyle involves trying to never get hit, and most enemies don't hit me before I unleash some flashy move, so that is probably colouring my view of armour.

Do you guys know the story of LetMeSoloHer? I first heard of this lunatic in a Reddit post where someone had been trying to beat the notorious boss Malenia, Blade of Miquella. She's not the final boss of the game, but she is generally considered the hardest. The player checked the list of available player summons, and got this guy who was armed with dual katanas, and wearing nothing but underpants and a large jar on his head. His player name was "LetMeSoloHer." So the guy thought, "why not?" and let him charge in, and watched as he expertly dispatched Malenia without taking a single hit.

People thought he was making it up, but then videos started emerging from other players who had been helped by the same jar-headed hero. He became a cult hero, with all manner of memes, legends, and cosplay costumes appearing, and even copycat players. One of my favorites was a story of a player armed and dressed the same way as LMSH called LetMeTryToSoloHer, who would rush in and immediately die. Same gear, same attitude, but none of the skill. LetMeSoloHer turned out to be KleinTsuboi, an Overwatch player. Bandai-Namco ended up sending him a little present of a sword for his achievement in helping so many people.

Yeah I heard about that, really cool. That fight looked atrocious so I never bothered, Nameless King in DS3 was bad enough. ^_^ (Visuals of the fight looked cool as shit though)

Yeah, I thought it was all brilliant. He also nicely fit the traditional Soulsborne stereotype, where the players with no armour are the ones you should be really scared of.

I heard about another copycat similar to felt’s, that was called ‘LetHerSoloMe’, who I don’t think even equipped a weapon, but my favourite was probably ‘LetYouSoloHer’, who would apparently join, run to the side of the arena, turn into a candelabra, and then watch you fight her alone.

Oh, and yes, she is a nightmare - I thought I had her first time, but it turned out she had a second form… I went through a spell where I’d spend the first half of the fight desperately dying to keep my Mimic Tear alive, to give me more of a chance in the second, but in the end I actually got pretty good at the fight, and she’s far from the only boss in Elden Ring worthy of instilling fear.

I really do need to get back to this at some point.

I think if I ever beat her I dunno' if it's in a way I'd have enjoyed and I was already annoyed at this games boss fights at the end portion, fucking foreskin duo being the bosses that made me even use summons in the first place.

I think if I ever beat her I dunno' if it's in a way I'd have enjoyed and I was already annoyed at this games boss fights at the end portion, fucking foreskin duo being the bosses that made me even use summons in the first place.

It's interesting how different builds make different bosses difficult. I think I breezed past the Godskin Duo, but the Draconic Tree Sentinal on the bridge near there was an absolute nightmare and nearly stopped me playing the game altogether. I'd dispatched another Draconic Tree Sentinal outside the capital without too much trouble, but I'd been able to ride Torrent then.

Lots here to process, and I've done a few Googles for 'Things to do early in Elden Ring' today which gave me some extra pointers. For some clarity on my circumstances:

• I picked a Confessor. A badass warrior nun was kind of hard to pass up.
• Foolishly, I didn't realise that picking this class gave me the ability to cast spells from the get-go (didn't realise that finger ring thing did that). Got a few spells, with the Cure Poison being the most useful… although I cleared out the poisoned cave near the giant walking crypt without using it because I didn't realise I could at that point. Duh.
• I'm currently lv39, and I spent the last four levels entirely on Intelligence so I could use one of the Glintstone Rods I found (I have four different ones).
• That's because I explored too far and discovered a lady being held captive in an underground chamber. Turns out, that lady is also near the lake at the start, in a cellar with a boss fight I'd ignored. She sells Glintstone spells, so that's useful (though I can currently only use half of them).
• Got three summons: the jellyfish, the wolves and some skeletal militia things with spears. I didn't do this properly though, since I bought the bell and wolves from the Roundtable area, rather than getting them free from the lady in the church. Duh.
• I'm at the point where I'm relatively powerful (a bit) without being too strong. I can handle clusters of guards, though I need to be wary about taking on too many at once, and the giants no longer have me shitting myself. I managed to take out an entire convoy of soldiers, shamblers and giants that were towing a wagon! Felt happy about that.
• I've been to the Bestial Sanctum and farmed the hill there with all the black imps. Some easy levels to be had there. But the giant flying thing by the sanctum itself, geez.
• Decided today to actually follow the game path, so went to Stormveil Castle. Fought Margit for the first time. Got him down to half health! Found out about Margit's Shackle today too, so I'll go get that before trying him again.

Still a very long way to go, of course, but slowly slowly. I'm still very much a sneak, block and stab person, but adding in magic and some better weapons might see make at least some progress in the direction I'm meant to.

Sounds like you're doing fine to me, Margit really tripped a lot of people up when they first got there because he's the first main boss and if you didn't deviate you were not very equally matched (not that it stopped some people) to fighting him without getting destroyed, he's a bit of gatekeeper. So if you can beat him fairly easy it's a decent gauge on how well you're doing.

Oh, forgot to mention, I've been teleported by nasty chests three times now, but it was only the most recent that I ended up in the underground cavern that seemed to catch everyone off guard when the game first came out. I have a whip, so those stone-clad miners weren't hard at all. The scuttling shrimp warriors though? Yikes. Applying fire to my sword seemed to help, but even so I just ended up sneaking my way out (having already explored into the cavern pretty deeply) and leaving it for another day.

My first teleportation was to a tower faaaaaaaar in the north with a lift shaft (no lift or means of summoning it) and a giant guardian golem with a flaming axe. I've already killed one of those since as a boss rather than a regular enemy, but at the time this was very much nope. I might go back, see if things are different now I'm stronger and have my whip…

Had a trawl back through this thread (where it seems I've already shared most of the info above) and found myself laughing at the various things I've now done…

dizzy appears to have (again, possibly) found where I was talking about though. He'll probably know if he gets down to the bottom of the hill, and sees why I've never tried to get over the bridge there…

That's the Beast Sanctum hill! I spotted the dragon on the bridge and turned around, but then I found a slope down that went under the bridge… it was littered with imps and poison traps, but I made it down. Found a building that has a weird runic seal on the entrance, so can't get in there. Then I went further and ended up by that big white elder dragon I mentioned before…

Fire-breathing cat statue was at the end of a mini dungeon, I don't recall where. Pumpkin boi was underneath some ruins with a big poisonous plant on top – kill pumpkin boi and you get access to some spells. Twin trolls were in a cave on the beach. Darriwill the wotsit was in some sort of prison, marked by a big circle on the ground.

Beat all of these bar the flaming cat, but I'm pretty sure I've fought it once (and it killed me).

More bosses down: boat boi

Beat one of those! There are several, seemingly. This is how I ended up getting to the Beast Sanctum.

the disembodied voice of Boc had me running around like an idiot for a good five minutes.

Me too. This appears to be the only quest I've made progress in, though the ability to alter garments only seems to make them… shitter? Boc's moved on now, I'm sure he'll turn up again.

I found the Sorceress in the wrong place first, thought it was a trap, hit her, and now she's not spawning in the usual place.

Yep, this was something I did too but I didn't hit her and now I have spells. Yay. She's not giving me any kind of quest though, which I thought she was meant to. Hmm.

Speaking of Faith, really impressed with the patches for this, apparently the latest one buffed a lot of stuff including Incantations. Maybe one Day I''ll find out.

What are Incantations… the ones like Cure Poison that I already have? I found one that makes huge plumes of fire come out of my eyes, but then adds a gauge where if I do it too much, I might go insane or something (found it in a distant village where people with flaming eyes tried to kill me). So that's fun.