Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Wow. I am 50 hours in and not even a 5th of the way through the game. There is so much to explore and do. This is absolutely the best iteration of the Souls style games. There are a TON of quality of life improvements in the interface and mechanics that make for a smoother game play experience but it's got all the tight technical combat and dangerous darksoulsy goodness. This game is like if Dark Souls met Breath of the Wild.

I started it up but it feels like the timing on dodge rolls is a bit wonky. Not in a broken way just in a 'this is slower than DSiii' way so all my reflexes are bad XD

Trying a mage. I never played one in Dark Souls but I'ma try it now XD

 LordofHats wrote:
I started it up but it feels like the timing on dodge rolls is a bit wonky. Not in a broken way just in a 'this is slower than DSiii' way so all my reflexes are bad XD

Trying a mage. I never played one in Dark Souls but I'ma try it now XD

I've barely used magic, but I've read that the second story boss has high magic resistance. It is good for dealing with miners though, those little bastards are practically immune to slash attacks.

If you haven't done it, there's a way to get 75K runes and 5 Dragon Hearts for pretty much free.

Just got the frenzied flame ending. I enjoy the implications of that ending immensely.

I haven't even gotten the second great rune yet. I am still exploring.

I’m going with extremly random numbers in my build. Just kind of want to try out various weapons. Though I’m very tempted to scratch that and go full sorcery. Magic on horseback seems really powerfull. Though I also really like the dragon powers so maybe I’ll go for an arcane/mind build. So many options seem fun haha.

Killed Godskin Noble. Had to use Khukris for bleed in phase 2. Checked Steam. Only 2.2% of players have this achievement. What in tarnation.

That guy is a pain in the ass if only for his roll attack. Bleed is definitely the way to go.

Got my Moonveil up to +9 somehow. I must've stumbled on +8 and +9 stones messing around in Caelid. With 30 dex/30 int I'm killing Liurnia bosses in 4-5 hits. I skipped some so I went back to get them, but I think I'm done with that zone since they're only giving 4k~ runes. Cleanrot Knight in Stillwater Cave at least gave a good talisman.

In terms of content/exploration the zones so far:



There's one castle I need to head back to in Mount Gremnir and then I need to kill 4 Altus Bosses (3 optional/1 Mandatory) and head into the capitol.

I'm also using Moonveil now after finding it and thinking it was super cool. Unfortunately, I pumped into to 40 only to find I have nowhere near enough of any other stat so I've been farming and exploring to get runes to cover my bases XD

The game has pretty great build variety tools so far.

Killed the duo Tree Sentinels with peak cheese. You can summon the archer gal from Liurnia into a spot they can't reach. She'll solo them and you can AFK or use archery/spells to speed it up.

Draconic Tree Sentinel actually took two tries. The gargoyle elite was a joke with Moonveil.

One shot, no damaged Godfrey Phantom. He gets staggered hard. One shot Morghutt with Ancestor Spirit since the stagger combo was too much for him.

Edit: Strangely enough, Steam achievements for those two are much higher than Godskin/Rykard.

Went back to Volcano Manner to kill Tanith and her knight. Easy enough. I think I'm at 88 now. Few more bosses in the capitol to hunt down.

Second Edit:

Sekiro is still better because I never felt the need to cheese anything and the gameplay was incredibly satisfying, but as an open world RPG...Elden Ring might be the GOAT. Morrowind has the best story for me out of everything I've played and several games have better stories, but the exploration and combat is top notch. The biggest negative are the occasional incredibly obnoxious enemies you run into and some of the tedious, copy paste dungeons. The Folk Hero's Graves I've gone into were miserable. Fighting skeletons is annoying because they revive. I literally just run past the Abductors if possible. In terms of exploration, I don't think I've gone through a hostile zone comparable to any of the Legacy Dungeons. Visiting Vivec for the first time is really the only thing I can think of that is on the same scope as Leyndell in terms of visuals.

I'm a little over 34 hours in and enjoying it quite a bit. I'm normally not a fan of the soulsborne games, but have loved Elden Ring.

I've been playing a spellblade so far, and it's worked very well. I've got my spells for range and I can also deal a large amount of melee damage.

Found Mohg the Omen and killed him. 0.8% achievement on Steam...that means a lot of players have no idea about the <spoiler> after him.
Went down to the Ainsel River first section, found the giant skeleton, got spooked by a boss out of nowhere, but I had fought it before and was overleveled by a ton.
Killed Putrid Avatar, Black Blade Kindred outside Beast Clergyman's Lair, and then the dragon on the Bridge. Also went back and hit up Shaded Castle.

I'm trying to knock out as much as possible before Radahn. I think I need to clear out Sealed Tunnel and find Crucible Knight Ordovis.

I've been enjoying the game, despite the starting class I picked. I thought Confessor would be fun, going with a sort of paladin playstyle. But I basically never used the magic except the heal spell. Found the katana and stuck with that for the speed and bleed damage, so I was basically playing a samurai with different armor and a heal spell. Finally got to where I could respec yesterday. Decided to go into a more spellcasting class, using an enchanted knight build I saw online using the Carian sword spells. Been having a bit more fun doing that now.

And I will freely admit I cheesed my way through some things. I saw online how to get to a runefarming spot in Caelid very early where you can sneak around killing the trash mobs for 1000 runes each. So, yeah, even though my character is level 50 now, I'm still getting my ass kicked in places that I know better players are breezing through. Doing a bit better now that I've changed over to magic. I've always sucked at these kinds of player-skill-based games, but I'm still having fun with this one.

Beat Crucible Knight Ordovis (2x Crucible Knight fight). Summon managed to split them, but did no damage and I was able to posture break Ordovis a couple of times with Moonlight Veil heavy attacks and kill him before his buddy aggroed back to me.

The Hero Grave Chariots are cancer. At least you can destroy that one in there for an armor set.

Ive been using Vyke's warspear (spear and shield as been my go to since DS1 - I miss my Dragonslayer Spear).

But the madness on this thing and the bonus fire damage has been a big boon. I just fethed up Astel, Natural Born of the Void. Me and my Mimic Tear ruined him with that spear. Invader's get pretty severely wrecked by it too. Have not lost a fight yet. Just a matter of time till I do, but so far the madness bit is doing it's job.

 Lance845 wrote:
Ive been using Vyke's warspear (spear and shield as been my go to since DS1 - I miss my Dragonslayer Spear).

But the madness on this thing and the bonus fire damage has been a big boon. I just fethed up Astel, Natural Born of the Void. Me and my Mimic Tear ruined him with that spear. Invader's get pretty severely wrecked by it too. Have not lost a fight yet. Just a matter of time till I do, but so far the madness bit is doing it's job.

You do Commander Niall yet? I killed Death Rite Bird and got him to 50%, but I'm at 105 and haven't done Radahn yet. Debating which order to go in for things.

Still getting my ass handed to me cause I'm a scrub.

Finally cleared all the bosses out of the first area I think. Moved onto the lakes and holy gak is the view gorgeous.

Time to get my ass handed to me in whole new ways despite presumably being massively over leveled.

 LordofHats wrote:
Still getting my ass handed to me cause I'm a scrub.

Finally cleared all the bosses out of the first area I think. Moved onto the lakes and holy gak is the view gorgeous.

Time to get my ass handed to me in whole new ways despite presumably being massively over leveled.

Did you do the locked dungeon in the starting area? I think you need two Stonesword Keys for it. Navigating it sucks, but it gives a really good talisman and there are a few more like it in the future. You can get Tree Sentinel and Crucible Knight armor sets from the one in Leyndell. I think there's also two Night's Cavalry (without good drops) and a Bell-Bearing Hunter (crafting drop) in the area that are only spawned at night. Plus Selenn is hidden behind a Pumpkin Head boss.

There's also a hidden Crucible Knight in Stormveil and another hidden boss that I won't spoil because of the implications, but you should look for those.

Pretty sure I found all that but the starting area thing. It's that fog all right when you exit. I completely forgot about that so guess I need to head back and knock it out.

Well, make sure you check out Village of the Albinaurics and Stillwater Cave in eastern Liurnia.

Minor Spoilers:

I started over a few days ago, because now I have a better idea what I wanted to do.

One thing of note, the Tree Sentinel in Limgrave - was able to beat him right after I got Torrent.

It's all about recognizing his attack pattern and it's actually easier to fight him on foot. In fact, and I'm probably not used to horseback fighting, but I found it easier to be on foot, than fighting with Torrent. Not sure if I like the Tree polearm weapon though and seems like you'd have to build a character around it. (Dex/Str/Faith weapon).

Question, is there any use for great runes other then to put them in the towers? I remember dark souls 1 where who you gave the lord vessel to would lock your ending. Worried about something similar in Elden ring. Or can I just go ahead and chuck it at the tower and not worry about anything? I was thinking there could be a reverse tower. With the schism between the fingers and all. I mean... (LOCATION SPOILERS)

You get the the bonus from the equipped great rune if you use a rune arc consumable, but the bonus only lasts until you die. Great for people who don't die, not so great for people like me who die a helluva lot. And I think rune arcs are finite.

you get rune arcs from winning co-op fights against bosses. At least I get them from beating margret in jolly cooperation. So supposedly they are infinite.

 Nerak wrote:
Question, is there any use for great runes other then to put them in the towers? I remember dark souls 1 where who you gave the lord vessel to would lock your ending. Worried about something similar in Elden ring. Or can I just go ahead and chuck it at the tower and not worry about anything? I was thinking there could be a reverse tower. With the schism between the fingers and all. I mean... (LOCATION SPOILERS)

Spoiler:

There is two fingers at the top of Lindgrave tower as well as a huge underground world! I was thinking there could be a reverse tower down there with three fingers on it instead or something

The runes you acquire are tied to endings and some, not sure if all, can give you bonuses if you use Rune Arcs. Currently there are six known endings.

Regarding the Two Fingers.

I await the inevitable PC mod that gives us a replacement Middle Finger model.

The great rune i have equiped adds +5 to every attribute. Thats equal to an additional 40 levels. If you have a weapon that scales with 3 stats (str dex faith like my trusty Vykes Warspear) thats 15 levels of bonus damage scaling + FP, HP, Stamina, and equipment load. I cannot think of a single reason to ever use a different rune.

I've moved on to a new rune farm i found out about online. You basically shoot this bird thing with a bow from up high, it runs at you, off a ledge to its death, and you get 11K runes. You then go to the site of grace that's right there next to you to respawn the bird, repeat.
I'm not ashamed, I know I suck at these kinds of games, so being a cheeseball and overleveling myself is the only chance I have, since "git gud" is not an option for me.
And I'll still get my ass handed to me even with doing this.

So second dungeon and boss was super easy compared to the first XD Like, first try and done easy. Was not expecting whatsherface to show up again there though and like that. I thought she was just some random NPC who gave me something XD