What game are you playing?

[wankerness]

Remember how I just said that most of the ER bosses have been disappointingly easy?

I'm currently stuck on Alecto, Maliketh, and Malenia. Could be my build but gotdamn they're all hard as fuck. The Farum dragon was fine and the fire giant went down first try (barely) but I might have to actually study these 3.

Alecto's a little asshole. I can fight them "legit," but the fight goes on FOREVER and if you mess up one dodge on that diving blade flurry thing you're probably dead. So usually I just either outlevel the fight and annihilate it with something that it's weak to (ex the greatsword with a frost enchant) or spam the crap out of something that does poise damage and has some range (ex the weapon art with Moonveil) and get it over with. There's some cheese strategies that I used on one or two characters cause I was having a ton of issues with some builds involving getting them stuck on a ledge and then just R1ing them down and never hitting them with a critical attack, but it's hard to set up and usually it's easier to just kill them normally.

Maliketh's phase 2 is a nightmare. You can watch videos of people doing it at level 1 with no hits to try and learn how to avoid all his ridiculous bullshit and find openings. A lot of the attacks can be jumped over, which also allows you to hit him at the same time. But I'm bad at him so I usually just have to get out whatever does the most damage and has the most range and then I just kill him as fast as possible cause he barely has any hitpoints. Rivers of Blood weapon art works really well, for example.

Malenia I've managed to kill as a caster (mimic tear +spam ancient death rancor), strength build (dual wield greatswords which are enchanted bleed/ice, mimic tear, jump attack nonstop), faith build (spam blasphemous blade weapon art with the mimic tear non-stop) and bleed (usually dual wield katanas and just L1 spam, also have used Rivers of Blood but not post-nerf). However I feel like all those strategies were just exploiting things that she's weak to and I never learned how to properly deal with her without a summon. Probably never will, either. She's hard enough! That strength build strategy and the caster ones still tended to take 10+ tries. I can now dodge Waterfowl dance about 30% of the time, that's better than the first several playthroughs where I dodged it 0% of the time and just had to hope she'd either get stunned out of it or hit the mimic.

 

[TedEH]

I'm also currently stuck on Malenia - the current strategy has been to use Mimic Tear while holding a fast-ish weapon and try to time things so that we're constantly staggering her so she can't get any hits/heals in. It works for phase one, then I get nuked in phase 2.

 

[wankerness]

I'm also currently stuck on Malenia - the current strategy has been to use Mimic Tear while holding a fast-ish weapon and try to time things so that we're constantly staggering her so she can't get any hits/heals in. It works for phase one, then I get nuked in phase 2.

Are you using bleed? If you have a bleed weapon she also gets staggered when it procs, plus huge chunks of her health disappear, plus the mimic tear doubles the bleed buildup. I had good luck using dual wielded arcane uchigatana and nagakiba. Rivers of Blood (comes from an invader in a church in Mountaintop of the Giants) also CAN work but tends to be worse if you're using the Mimic cause the Mimic AI usually doesn't spam the weapon art the way necessary to stunlock her. I don't know what your build ended up looking like, this would work really well if you had probably at least 25-30 in arcane. Depending on what your build is I probably would have different suggestions. If you're mainly dex and very little arcane I have no idea and might suggest respeccing with Renalla!

Phase 2 you just need to run away from her initial dive and pray the mimic tear doesn't run into the cloud and kill themselves (they usually do). If you can avoid enough of her first few attacks she'll basically start at half health and die fast enough that you don't need to worry about things too much. The longer the fight goes on the more she heals and the less likely you are to kill her.

 

[TedEH]

I've got basically nothing in arcane / faith. It seems like i always end of stacking all the physical attributes and hoping I can tank my way through most of these kinds of games. Str. Dex. End. are all high, Vit. is mid, the others are lacking.

 

[wankerness]

I've got basically nothing in arcane / faith. It seems like i always end of stacking all the physical attributes and hoping I can tank my way through most of these kinds of games. Str. Dex. End. are all high, Vit. is mid, the others are lacking.

Yeah quality (str and dex) build is really not good for Malenia, partly cause you can't block her attacks or she's functionally invincible cause she'll just outheal all your damage. You'd have to REALLY learn how to avoid all her stuff which is not easy at all, especially in second phase, and especially when she's healing off the Mimic. What weapon are you using? Are you using a shield? Shield builds in this game are really good, especially if you get the str to use the "Fingerprint shield" that you get during that terrible jumping section between Mogh and the Frenzied Flame door. But they are very bad for Malenia.

I'd spec something else for her and then spec back if you want (Larval Tears aren't THAT rare), though you could also just kill the final boss and just not use the item in their room that sends you to NG+, so you can leave, respec and kill melania before ending the game. IMO faith is the easiest, get at least 50 faith, 30 mind and like 25 str/dex or whatever's required for blasphemous blade (sword from the Rykard soul), cast Blessing of the Erdtree (comes from the run up to the final boss in Leyndell, I think you might have to complete Farum Azula first) on yourself and the mimic at the start of the fight, and then just spam the weapon art on it over and over till she falls over. Arcane build is a little bit harder but not much. Get like 50 arc and 30 dex, go dual wield katanas with arcane enchantments, use sepukku (it drops off an invisible scarab on the frozen lake in central Mountaintop of the Giants - close to the grace point, but you might get attacked by that frost dragon) at the start of the fight, use the L1 attack when dual wielding, dodge when necessary, she gets blown up really fast. Either one of these might still take a few tries but they're about as easy as you can make the fight.

 

[TedEH]

Definitely running with a shield. It took me until over Lvl 100 before I realized how the guard counter works. I'd been struggling a lot with shielded enemies up to that point.

I keep thinking - how do you know so much about how the game works? I can't fathom the countless hours it would take to remember all those details (unless you're googling it before visiting this thread every time hah).

 

[wankerness]

Definitely running with a shield. It took me until over Lvl 100 before I realized how the guard counter works. I'd been struggling a lot with shielded enemies up to that point.

I keep thinking - how do you know so much about how the game works? I can't fathom the countless hours it would take to remember all those details (unless you're googling it before visiting this thread every time hah).

I've played through it 7 times in less than a year and done basically every single dungeon every single time. Hundreds of hours will do that to you. My memory consists only of Elden Ring knowledge, all music theory has disappeared.

I google things in some of my answers but not most. Like, I had to double check that was the name of the Nagakiba. Didn't look up requirements or locations for weapons or anything, just running off memory.

 

[MFB]

Remember how I just said that most of the ER bosses have been disappointingly easy?

I'm currently stuck on Alecto, Maliketh, and Malenia. Could be my build but gotdamn they're all hard as fuck. The Farum dragon was fine and the fire giant went down first try (barely) but I might have to actually study these 3.

What build are you doing? I know you said you were using a straight-sword but I assume if it's a STR you'd be using something better than the Lordsworn. I got to that point on my first playthrough, Maliketh was a big enough roadblock for my character I said "nope." and put it down until now, and that was like, 150 hours in to just stop playing.

Finished Nokron last night and got Mimic which I then immediately upgraded to +6 with whatever Ghost Glovewort I had on me. I totally forgot what you get at the end of doing that area and was like, "Oh yeah, Ranni's quest!" so now that i've got the inverted statue I can flip the tower and kill Preceptor Miriam again! And I GUESS drop off Rennala's divine ashes at the top of tower too, but that's minor. I'll kill that dumb dragon tonight too to get the levels I can off of it, but it'll only be a couple total since each one takes roughly 35K at this point.

 

[wankerness]

Elden Ring's last few bosses are massively overtuned and the game expects you to also be massively overtuned. There are tons of super-overpowered builds that can annihilate Maliketh's second form in seconds. Using a straight sword is most definitely not one of them cause it barely uses any of your stats (that weapon scales like crap, does almost no poise damage, and does no status effects). It's like playing the game on hard mode when it comes to the damage race bosses towards the end of the game. I think a lot of people get lured into using one of the easy to use starter weapons like the various straightsword or Claymore or something in the first half of the game, and then they just stick with it only to hit a brick wall towards the end of the game if they don't move on to something with better scaling or overpowered weapon arts (though some of the ones you can apply like sword dance or giant hunt serve the same purpose and you can put those on an otherwise lackluster weapon, plus you can improve some of the bad weapons just by changing the scaling at the blacksmith).

With how many hundreds of weapons are in the game, sticking with the most basic option just cause you started it is missing out on some of the fun. There's a lot of weird ones out there that are really good (ex Fallingstar Beast Jaw, the medium size bubble horn from the medium size bubble head guys, the halo scythe from the rotknights, astel's wing from the ledge in Nokstella) and some more basic ones that are great but aren't started weapons (ex Greatsword from the crashed caravan in Caelid or the huge hammer from the destroyed camp in Altus that's guarded by the putrid tree spirit). I think the only starter weapon for any class that's considered very good at endgame is the uchigatana and that's mainly if you're an arc build and enchant it with arc scaling. Well, and the longbow and finger seal, they never go out of style.

 

[MFB]

For my previous build, I never used a single weapon art/Ash of War as they always seemed to lower my stats compared to what it currently had, I have no clue how they're supposed to improve a weapon if you swap them

 

[BlackMastodon]

I don't really mind at all, but guys,

Elden ring!

Rejoice, ashen one I'm ready for the next dark souls.

www.sevenstring.org

Hey, at least they're not talking about the big four in a "Pantera" reunion thread.

Tbf, if there's no Elden Ring discussion in this thread then it goes back to Dark Souls. If there's no Dark Souls discussion, it goes back to Yakuza.

 

[BlackMastodon]

In other news, hearing about the new Fire Emblem game being aight but not as good as Three Houses makes me wanna go back and finish Three Houses. I love the tactics combat but the social simulator bits in between got a bit tedious and I think I just got busy with other stuff and bounced off. Another plus is that I can play it in handheld mode comfortably and play while my partner watches TV or something.

 

[wankerness]

Tbf, if there's no Elden Ring discussion in this thread then it goes back to Dark Souls. If there's no Dark Souls discussion, it goes back to Yakuza.

What do you want to talk about? Clearly you don't like Fromsoft or Yakuza. Generally with Nintendo games and the like I just clear through them quick and there's nothing to say other than "I played Mario it was fun." Speaking of which I am getting an urge to play a Nintendo game. Thinking it's either going to be Mario 64 or the Switch version of Skyward Sword.

For my previous build, I never used a single weapon art/Ash of War as they always seemed to lower my stats compared to what it currently had, I have no clue how they're supposed to improve a weapon if you swap them

Different weapons get different stat distributions depending on the enchant and your build. Like, if you had a build with 60 strength and 20 dex and you had a weapon with C scaling in strength and C scaling in Dex, and then gave it the heavy scaling, it would change that C scaling of Str to A and Dex scaling to D or something and you'd get considerably more damage. It basically raises the chosen stat scaling a level or two and makes other scalings worse. Some of the more complex enchants like Arc will also give a weapon bleed damage if they didn't have it previously (or increase the amount of bleed build-up considerably). Ones like Ice often make it worse cause they tend to take the stat scaling down so you only would want to use those for a specific boss that you wanted to do ice damage to, or you use it on a crappy weapon like the straight sword where the scaling wasn't any good to begin with.

 

[Mathemagician]

if it's the door i'm thinking of, you need to be naked. but it'll lock you into a specific ending unless you do a very long questline, so beware

it doesn't help in Elden Ring where every character is a G(eorge), R(R) or M(artin)

Godrick, Godfrey, Gideon, Godwyn, Godefroy

Renalla, Radahn, Radagon, Rykard, Ranni, Renna

Margit, Morgott, Melina, Maliketh, Malenia, Miquella, Mogh

that's just off the top of my head, i know i'm missing some

Killed Mogh and Rykard yesterday. The haligtree is stressful so I went and burned the tree and now working through Farum Azula.

This has probably been discussed already, but it's quite striking how easy the bosses are compared to various normal mobs. I'd much rather fight Mogh again than the Crucible Knight hanging around in Farum. A lot of that is the ashes summon, I suppose.

Got my lordsworn straight sword to +25. Might start leveling that ridiculous giant hammer just to finally try something different.

Don’t forget that Finkle IS Einhorn!

 

[BlackMastodon]

What do you want to talk about? Clearly you don't like Fromsoft or Yakuza. Generally with Nintendo games and the like I just clear through them quick and there's nothing to say other than "I played Mario it was fun." Speaking of which I am getting an urge to play a Nintendo game. Thinking it's either going to be Mario 64 or the Switch version of Skyward Sword.

I wanna be 100% clear:
1. I love FromSoft for the Armored Core games.
2. I tried DS1 and bounced off and decided the Souls Bourne genre isn't for me. No hate for people that enjoy it; do your thing. I will probably give Elden Ring a try eventually because of the critical acclaim.
3. Also no hate for people who enjoy Yakuza or JRPG's. Also not my personal taste, but y'all are free to talk about it.
4. I'm just taking the piss that the above 2 games are featured heavily in this thread.

 

[profwoot]

What build are you doing? I know you said you were using a straight-sword but I assume if it's a STR you'd be using something better than the Lordsworn. I got to that point on my first playthrough, Maliketh was a big enough roadblock for my character I said "nope." and put it down until now, and that was like, 150 hours in to just stop playing.

Finished Nokron last night and got Mimic which I then immediately upgraded to +6 with whatever Ghost Glovewort I had on me. I totally forgot what you get at the end of doing that area and was like, "Oh yeah, Ranni's quest!" so now that i've got the inverted statue I can flip the tower and kill Preceptor Miriam again! And I GUESS drop off Rennala's divine ashes at the top of tower too, but that's minor. I'll kill that dumb dragon tonight too to get the levels I can off of it, but it'll only be a couple total since each one takes roughly 35K at this point.

I've been avoiding theorycraft and just going sword & board vig/str/end the whole time and then being disappointed by every decent weapon requiring stats I don't have. For Malenia I should definitely ditch the shield since blocking is counter-productive, and if I go dual wield then I should probably respec so I can use rivers of blood, in which case I should also find another weapon to replace my boring +25 lordsworn. Blocking doesn't seem useful on Maliketh either, so I should probably go that route.

 

[profwoot]

Elden Ring's last few bosses are massively overtuned and the game expects you to also be massively overtuned. There are tons of super-overpowered builds that can annihilate Maliketh's second form in seconds. Using a straight sword is most definitely not one of them cause it barely uses any of your stats (that weapon scales like crap, does almost no poise damage, and does no status effects). It's like playing the game on hard mode when it comes to the damage race bosses towards the end of the game. I think a lot of people get lured into using one of the easy to use starter weapons like the various straightsword or Claymore or something in the first half of the game, and then they just stick with it only to hit a brick wall towards the end of the game if they don't move on to something with better scaling or overpowered weapon arts (though some of the ones you can apply like sword dance or giant hunt serve the same purpose and you can put those on an otherwise lackluster weapon, plus you can improve some of the bad weapons just by changing the scaling at the blacksmith).

With how many hundreds of weapons are in the game, sticking with the most basic option just cause you started it is missing out on some of the fun. There's a lot of weird ones out there that are really good (ex Fallingstar Beast Jaw, the medium size bubble horn from the medium size bubble head guys, the halo scythe from the rotknights, astel's wing from the ledge in Nokstella) and some more basic ones that are great but aren't started weapons (ex Greatsword from the crashed caravan in Caelid or the huge hammer from the destroyed camp in Altus that's guarded by the putrid tree spirit). I think the only starter weapon for any class that's considered very good at endgame is the uchigatana and that's mainly if you're an arc build and enchant it with arc scaling. Well, and the longbow and finger seal, they never go out of style.

Yeah I definitely fell into that trap. I did find the blood slash skill pretty early on and have been using that ever since with blood affinity, but it probably takes the same amount of time to swing as a colossal weapon so I should probably move on from that as well.

 

[RevDrucifer]

I just browsed through 3-4 pages of straight ER talk….then jumped up 20 pages for….more ER talk

For a game that’s been out as long as it has been, I suppose that speaks to how in depth it is since this already happened when it was released.

 

[TedEH]

I'm just taking the piss that the above 2 games are featured heavily in this thread.

It took a while for me to get it, but now that I get it, I really get it, and I haven't scratched that "multiple plays / builds / etc" barrier that some have. The Elden Ring hype, IMO, is really warranted - because it's a huge game that accomplishes its goals, provides so much material to work with, puts the open world to good use and feels meaningful / cohesive, runs well enough, and came out during a time where big hyped games have become buggy laughable jokes.

IMO this one is meaningful in the history of games as a whole - and will continue to be talked about for a long time.

I mean, for the last 5+ years, hype has usually led to needing to temper your expectations. This is one of those rare times where the actual product meets the hype.

 

[gabito]

I've said it before: FromSoft games are a cult. I love the players' passion, though.

That said, I'll eventually play Elden Ring because it looks cool and sounds super interesting. But someday, not now. I'm not ready for the exhaustion and to end up hating gaming like last time with Demon's Souls.

Also because I'll wait until it's 30 dollars or something.