Elden ring!

[MFB]

Crumbling Farum is a million times easier than Haligtree and even Mountaintop of the Giants IMO. The only really bad section is when there's scads of those skeleton guys cause they're super beefy and will poise right through your attacks if you try to hit them while they're attacking. Good time to use moonveil and pull carefully - especially when you first go up the elevator and there are a few of them that aggro together if you walk forward that look dead unless you hit them with a ranged attack. Oh, the sentinel miniboss is also a huge asshole, but that's kind of to be expected. If you don't feel like beating him fair and square you can always run up to maliketh's door, save and quit, and then creep up behind him and kill him with poison mist without any threat to yourself.

The other section(s) of crumbling farum that suck are a few specific enemies - especially the full health sleeping dragon in middle of the level and the INCREDIBLY beefy crucible knight. I learned to just never fight either, since neither one gives you any drops, and they have a pathetic amount of runes for how difficult they are. The banished knights that hang out around the godskin duo are really nasty too but you can take them out as long as you sneak up and hit them with a few super powerful attacks before they can retaliate.

Crumbling is just dumb because well, it's crumbling and I seem to hit every shit angle on the collider geometry and slide off some part of platforming, so I've biffed a couple runs worth of runes just because of that. I already took down the first dragon almost solo, but I said fuck it and summoned Mimic just to melt thru him between the two of us.

I remember that Sentinel fight very well, shit fucking stonewalled me for so long on my strength build, no idea why either cause he's not that difficult; but maybe it's because there's no summons for it.

 

[wankerness]

Crumbling is just dumb because well, it's crumbling and I seem to hit every shit angle on the collider geometry and slide off some part of platforming, so I've biffed a couple runs worth of runes just because of that. I already took down the first dragon almost solo, but I said fuck it and summoned Mimic just to melt thru him between the two of us.

I remember that Sentinel fight very well, shit fucking stonewalled me for so long on my strength build, no idea why either cause he's not that difficult; but maybe it's because there's no summons for it.

No summons (the earlier one is easily wrecked with the rotten stray) and very low margin for error. Usually if he hits you you'll get staggered and then wrecked by the follow-up attack, especially after you lower his health to the point where he starts spawning lightning all over the ground. I've killed him just fine on a strength build without cheese, but he can be really bad news if you're a build with slow cast times (ex, it's very hard to get rot breath to build up on him on this version of the fight since you can't let your spirit tank for the time required to do a full charge of that) or one that makes the fight take forever (ex, trying to kill him as a caster without getting lucky cheesing with comet azur before he hits you/runs out of the way or something). I think I've killed him with poison most times, it's just not worth the headache.

 

[MFB]

No summons (the earlier one is easily wrecked with the rotten stray) and very low margin for error. Usually if he hits you you'll get staggered and then wrecked by the follow-up attack, especially after you lower his health to the point where he starts spawning lightning all over the ground. I've killed him just fine on a strength build without cheese, but he can be really bad news if you're a build with slow cast times (ex, it's very hard to get rot breath to build up on him on this version of the fight since you can't let your spirit tank for the time required to do a full charge of that) or one that makes the fight take forever (ex, trying to kill him as a caster without getting lucky cheesing with comet azur before he hits you/runs out of the way or something). I think I've killed him with poison most times, it's just not worth the headache.

I did another repec recently where I took like, 5 pts from VIG/MIND and threw it into END since I'm using Moonveil more and was tired of it being legitimately +1 pt at most to that, so I've also got a decent amount of poise with my mobility now. I'm rocking: 55 VIG/MIND, mid-20s END, 12 STR, 18 DEX, 70+ INT with Fingerprint armor and talisman for stamina recovery, so I think compared to past Sentinel fights, I'm in a better position for casting or just going straight katana.

 

[Mathemagician]

To date my only platinum trophy. Waiting for either DLC or enough time to pass that it worth replaying again.

 

[MFB]

Finally took down Maliketh with me and mimic both using magic, Rock Sling OP but whatever. Got to end it with a critical hit too and watch me stab his with Moonveil for the final blow, felt good. Him and Draconic Sentinel only took a handful of tries each by this point.

 

[MFB]

Gideon and Godfrey fell tonight, as did Radagon on the 2nd attempt but Elden Beast tore right thru me with his sword arc attacks. Luckily I'll come back for him tomorrow as I have a decent grasp on the moveset from Radagon to advance thru him quick enough.

 

[wankerness]

Gideon and Godfrey fell tonight, as did Radagon on the 2nd attempt but Elden Beast tore right thru me with his sword arc attacks. Luckily I'll come back for him tomorrow as I have a decent grasp on the moveset from Radagon to advance thru him quick enough.

Are you trying to fight Radagon/Elden Beast "legit" or just spam rock sling? I seriously cast nothing but rock sling with the gravity staff (after summoning a brass shield/moonveil mimic tear) for the entirety of both of those fights and beat them first try. Especially Elden Beast just melts, if you're hitting him with all three rocks on every cast and never going up to crit him, he is staggered half the time. Stupid overpowered. Never had an easier time except my first kill where I used the old cheese (visible in the Dunkey video!) where you could bumrush Radagon and kill him with Carian Slicer without him retaliating, and then used the Comet Azur cheese to knock off 2/3 of Elden Beast's health and it was easy from there considering I hadn't had to heal once.

I had some pretty easy kills using Flame of the Redmane spam on Radagon/Elden Beast but they nerfed that into uselessness a few months ago. Last time I did a melee build I tried to do the same thing with Giant Hunt - it was not as effective (took more mana and did less poise damage) but I still eked out a win on the first try.

 

[MFB]

I was casting Rock Sling while Mimic aggros with Moonveil, but considering how RS worked on Maliketh I might just go duel caster build and melt. My DHQ Staff does more than the Meteor staff considering it's +25 at this point, so no problem with damage output or anything, it's just making sure they don't keep hitting me with AOE or making sure we alternate who's getting hit.

I can also just chain-cast Astel's Meteor which did a fuckton on Godfrey when I did it to him, but it keeps me locked in position so it's high risk high reward.

 

[wankerness]

I was casting Rock Sling while Mimic aggros with Moonveil, but considering how RS worked on Maliketh I might just go duel caster build and melt. My DHQ Staff does more than the Meteor staff considering it's +25 at this point, so no problem with damage output or anything, it's just making sure they don't keep hitting me with AOE or making sure we alternate who's getting hit.

I can also just chain-cast Astel's Meteor which did a fuckton on Godfrey when I did it to him, but it keeps me locked in position so it's high risk high reward.

The mimic is really, really bad at holding aggro and also staying alive if you equip it with a staff. Plus if you have more than one spell equipped it will just randomly cast every spell you have equipped with no apparent strategy. It might work if you ONLY had rock sling equipped but I dunno.

Additionally, if you're using a staff like the one from Rennalla the mimic will frequently run up into melee range and cast the weapon art in some kind of idiotic suicidal mission. You definitely need to use the gravity staff if you try that strat.

I ONLY had it equipped with ancient death rancor on the prince of death staff for Malenia and that worked as designed so maybe! But the only reason he didn't get annihilated is cause she was stunlocked.

 

[MFB]

OK, so went dual MVK on Radagon and melted him pretty quickly, it does roughly 1.5x what my Rock Sling did which is odd that there'd be that much of a discrepancy with my higher INT/S-scaled scorceries vs. minimal Dex to use it even at max weapon level; but whatever, I beat him by the 3rd or 4th try, had one really bad attempt where I summoned Mimic with staff and you better believe he fucked it up by trying to continually use Terra Magica while he got fucking beat. Took down Elden Beast on my 2nd try of the night, pretty underwhelming fight over all that one - he's just a big towering mass with a sword, and he covers A LOT of ground when he attacks.

So yeah, Age of Stars ending down, working on getting the legit last Legendary Scorcery and then I'm gonna try and get the trophy for Malenia and maybe Placidusax too just to clear all of them besides the endings.

 

[wankerness]

OK, so went dual MVK on Radagon and melted him pretty quickly, it does roughly 1.5x what my Rock Sling did which is odd that there'd be that much of a discrepancy with my higher INT/S-scaled scorceries vs. minimal Dex to use it even at max weapon level; but whatever, I beat him by the 3rd or 4th try, had one really bad attempt where I summoned Mimic with staff and you better believe he fucked it up by trying to continually use Terra Magica while he got fucking beat. Took down Elden Beast on my 2nd try of the night, pretty underwhelming fight over all that one - he's just a big towering mass with a sword, and he covers A LOT of ground when he attacks.

So yeah, Age of Stars ending down, working on getting the legit last Legendary Scorcery and then I'm gonna try and get the trophy for Malenia and maybe Placidusax too just to clear all of them besides the endings.

MVK scales almost entirely off of INT so that makes sense. IIRC the dex scaling is a D or C so it's barely getting anything from dex. While its A scaling in Int means it still increases in damage when you are putting 50+ points in int (I haven't looked it up but my experience is something like, the lower the letter rating, the less benefit a weapon gets from your stats past a certain number - ex something with D scaling is going to get practically no benefit from continuing to increase that stat past 30).

The mimic tear has to be "programmed" by adjusting your spell loadout to only include things you want it doing, and by equipping a staff with no weapon art. Again, the only time I successfully used it as a caster was on Malenia and I had to have ONE spell on my bar and a staff with no weapon art, and even then he'd just randomly start rolling around sometimes when she was nowhere close and screw up the stunlock and then she'd eat my face.

Placidusax is another one that was a joke to beat first try by casting nothing but rock sling. That said, you do have to actually get the timing down to dodge his constant divebomb attacks in phase 2 or you're likely to run out of flasks. He has quite a lot of health. My easiest kills on him were just spamming the shit out of swarm of flies since bleed works on him (but he has a lot of buildup resistance, so it wasn't viable with a melee weapon), but they nerfed that spell considerably so that probably wouldn't work very well anymore. He's really not that hard compared to Maliketh or Malenia, it should be pretty easy for you, the runback is just annoying. I really like the boss music on him, it's like sorta post-apocalyptic industrial music or something. It almost reminds me of Trent Reznor's Quake soundtrack. Very unlike anything else on the soundtrack.

Have fun with Malenia. I'm sure you CAN beat her with spells and/or MVK, but I'm also sure it's about 20x harder than just respeccing dual bleed katana or blasphemous blade (or int/faith glass cannon build where you spam ancient death rancor, though that's a lot harder than the previous two strats). If she doesn't get chain staggered you're going to have to get good at dodging waterfowl dance, which is a tall order. It took about 5 kills before I could even fully dodge it half the time.

 

[MFB]

MVK scales almost entirely off of INT so that makes sense. IIRC the dex scaling is a D or C so it's barely getting anything from dex. While its A scaling in Int means it still increases in damage when you are putting 50+ points in int (I haven't looked it up but my experience is something like, the lower the letter rating, the less benefit a weapon gets from your stats past a certain number - ex something with D scaling is going to get practically no benefit from continuing to increase that stat past 30).

The mimic tear has to be "programmed" by adjusting your spell loadout to only include things you want it doing, and by equipping a staff with no weapon art. Again, the only time I successfully used it as a caster was on Malenia and I had to have ONE spell on my bar and a staff with no weapon art, and even then he'd just randomly start rolling around sometimes when she was nowhere close and screw up the stunlock and then she'd eat my face.

Placidusax is another one that was a joke to beat first try by casting nothing but rock sling. That said, you do have to actually get the timing down to dodge his constant divebomb attacks in phase 2 or you're likely to run out of flasks. He has quite a lot of health. My easiest kills on him were just spamming the shit out of swarm of flies since bleed works on him (but he has a lot of buildup resistance, so it wasn't viable with a melee weapon), but they nerfed that spell considerably so that probably wouldn't work very well anymore. He's really not that hard compared to Maliketh or Malenia, it should be pretty easy for you, the runback is just annoying. I really like the boss music on him, it's like sorta post-apocalyptic industrial music or something. It almost reminds me of Trent Reznor's Quake soundtrack. Very unlike anything else on the soundtrack.

Have fun with Malenia. I'm sure you CAN beat her with spells and/or MVK, but I'm also sure it's about 20x harder than just respeccing dual bleed katana or blasphemous blade (or int/faith glass cannon build where you spam ancient death rancor, though that's a lot harder than the previous two strats). If she doesn't get chain staggered you're going to have to get good at dodging waterfowl dance, which is a tall order. It took about 5 kills before I could even fully dodge it half the time.

Ah that explains it, I figured DEX would be MVK's main attribute since IIRC that's the higher requirement to using it, but yeah with 70 INT it may have better scaling than the staff I was using based on the base stats.

I did take out the majority of my spells, leaving myself Terra Magica + RS + Night Shard, which were intended to be for myself and I learned that very quickly when Mimic put it to absolute shame. The next time I went in with only RS and it was fine, but that was when I then tried the dual MVK route which was the winner.

BB requires FAITH vs. INT so I don't think I can even use that, although part of me wants to try a Faith build next. No clue how I'm going to tackle her honestly, but we'll find out, I'm stupid over leveled at this point (183) so hopefully that works in my favor or it'll prolong my misery.

 

[wankerness]

Ah that explains it, I figured DEX would be MVK's main attribute since IIRC that's the higher requirement to using it, but yeah with 70 INT it may have better scaling than the staff I was using based on the base stats.

I did take out the majority of my spells, leaving myself Terra Magica + RS + Night Shard, which were intended to be for myself and I learned that very quickly when Mimic put it to absolute shame. The next time I went in with only RS and it was fine, but that was when I then tried the dual MVK route which was the winner.

BB requires FAITH vs. INT so I don't think I can even use that, although part of me wants to try a Faith build next. No clue how I'm going to tackle her honestly, but we'll find out, I'm stupid over leveled at this point (183) so hopefully that works in my favor or it'll prolong my misery.

Respeccing is easy enough in the game that having to do it for one or two bosses is no big deal. The only real commitment cost are the +10/+25 upgrade materials, but usually if you use a gimmick build/weapon you’re not going to need it to be maxed out anyway. Though if you do all the sidequests you probably have more of them than you know what to do with since caster builds barely use any weapons.

I think there’s usually about 8 of those larval tears I get on the average playthrough. I think there are at least 10 but I don’t know where they all are and the one that comes off the guy who’s buried up to his waist in the snow is absolutely not worth the trouble of fighting that goddam mega-rune bear.

 

[MFB]

Tried Malenia maybe a dozen times tonight even with respecing for +10 RoB, just can't win, so oh well and goodbye Elden Ring; onto the next game, that juice ain't worth the squeeze.

 

[wankerness]

Tried Malenia maybe a dozen times tonight even with respecing for +10 RoB, just can't win, so oh well and goodbye Elden Ring; onto the next game, that juice ain't worth the squeeze.

But, you have the embarrassment of knowing that you're in the bottom 65% of Elden Ring players who haven't beat Malenia!

I'm sort of surprised how high that stat is. More than 1/3 people who play the game at all beat her!

 

[TedEH]

More than 1/3 people who play the game at all beat her!

Wouldn't that stat be considerably boosted by that one guy who was going around helping people beat the hardest bosses?

 

[narad]

I don't even particularly remember any challenge in the game that wasn't completely fleeting, apart from Malenia. That fight was basically the whole game to me.

 

[wankerness]

Wouldn't that stat be considerably boosted by that one guy who was going around helping people beat the hardest bosses?

Only on PC and probably not more than a tiny percent of them, considering millions of copies were sold. Not to mention I think a substantial portion of players never engage in coop with randos and that guys summon sign was probably never up for more than a few seconds at a time!

 

[Leviathus]

I'm wondering how brutal the DLC bosses will be, considering how they're generally the hardest in each game. Malenia was for sure the biggest hurdle in all of souls for me. What could they be cooking up to make her comparatively easier?

 

[wankerness]

If the rest of the game is any pattern, they’ll either make you fight two malenias with no changes to her AI, or they’ll team her up with the crucible knight from farum azula!

My suspicion is at least one boss will disable ash summons, but I guess we’ll find out.