The more I think about the thematic progression of this game the better it gets
>start off in limgrave
>feels very much like spring
>so many new npcs to meet and quests to start
>so much to explore and do in this early area
>weeping peninusla is the land of always rain, a trope of springtime
>can get into the underground for nighttime as a change of pace(but you'll be directed here later)
>can travel into caelid and see some fricked up blooming, again, a trope of spring
>stormveil castle, obviously representing a storm, is the transition between spring and summer
>boss godrick is also shitter moron and is considered to be a jobber in the lore by all the other bosses
>liurnia of the lakes is summer in full volume
>so much to do, largest area, huge variety of enemy types and places to explore
>now directed to the actual underground portions via quest to experince summer nights
>speaking of summer nights, this entire region has to do with the stars(carian family, glintstone magic, etc)
>boss rennala of this area is a queen of the night
>directed by the aformentioned quest to kill Radhan in order to free the stars
>radhan is fought in a large open desert and comes crashing down as a metor in his second phase, just like the stars will crash down to earth when he is slain
>you can also have a peek into mt. Gelmir from here, a volcano, summer heat pushed to the extreme. You will probably be invited there directly by rya, so will potentially do this area before altus, though, this questline doesnt require you to do the dungeon, so you can come back later
>anyways, now it's time for the altus plateu
>land of eternal autumn
>golden trees everywhere, golden city, golden land
>many locations here have windmills, indicating a harvest season that would happen in fall
>still a fair amount of locations to explore, but it seems to be slowing down
 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
 |
CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
I played and beat it once but I wouldn't replay it due to the open world and copy paste feeling locations.
>verification not required
>much of lyndell is undestroyed, a remanent of the good times in the past, a snapshot of the golden age
>boss morgot wants to uphold this golden order, deposit him being blind to half the city being destroyed
>at this point the player has gotten tired from so much exploration and is starting to feel burnt out
>autumn ends and we travel into winter
>mountaintops has a massive scale and is almost completely empty, with very little to explore
>fits thematically and lorewise, since this is a time of rest for the player(winter) and because historically dragons and giants lived here, so it would be the most undeveloped in terms of normal people sized structures
>this is also a land of contradictions, as the fire giants live here, whose flame you use to burn the erdtree, completely destroying what used to remain of the good times in lyndell
>from here you're taken to farum azula, a place out of the deep past and shattered to peices, physically representing the shattering war and how broken and divided the entire world is despite its put together appearance
>from the winter, you can also travel to haligtree, a place of new beginnings and hope, a new springtime
>or you can travel to moghs palace, a place of blood and death
>these two places are also closely tied together in the lore
>neither of these two places(three including farum), btw, have much in the way of exploration. Theyre more like legacy dungeons than open worlds, since the player is done with exploring entirely after winter
>anyways, eventually beat farum azula and completely wipe away the past, literally turning it to ash, before facing the final challenge and choosing the fate of the world
This game is kino through and through.
Discuss Elden Ring lore and mechanics
Thanks for reading my blog
even the DLC wait is kino
>Malenia and Haligtree citizens waited for Miquella with no idea when he would return, but they trusted his promise
>Miyazaki making the players wait 2 years for DLC featuring Miquella with still no release date set, so they feel the same pain as the characters in the game
Is this the longest people waited for DLC?
there has NEVER been such a wait for a fromsoft dlc like this
What was the usual wait, a year? Maybe it's because all the DLCs were cut content and in Elden Ring datamining revealed a scarcity of cut content.
Miquella Akbar
Take your meds
Alternatively, start a youtuber channel
I dont want to become more moronic than I already am
Elden Ring is an evolution of Demon's Souls design that pretty much course corrected every single mistake the Souls trilogy did.
It brought back physical damage types that actually matter. Finally there's shit actually weak to slash besides naked NPCs, strike gives a considerable advantage against armor throughout the whole game and thrust is very powerful against enemies with scales or beasts. In no other Souls game this is as relevant as in Elden Ring.
It expanded the weapon categories, standardized their moveset and then smartly picked several weapons for special moveset variations in a way that makes sense and gives variety (besides maybe the special R2 to Death Poker, since most players use it for the weapon art with pure Int build), and balanced those weapons around their stats, status effects and skill requirements in a way choices are well defined and provide tradeoffs/advantages.
It massively reduced fall damage to complement verticality in level design, added a proper tool to get over obstacles and traverse enviroments.
It brought back strong elemental counters, more and reworked focus on the use of consumables and combining attack and has several special boss fight-related tools. It also brought back status inducing builds that aren't a complete meme like in the entire Souls trilogy
Yeah the mechanics all work together really well and are very well though out. Having different builds actually feels like having true variety. Even within the same skill. Playing FTH/STR as a pyromancer with an axe feels very different from a dragon communion or pure holy build
The only major gripe is that the game either needed to dramatically reduce the weapon upgrading system (+25 is fricking insane) or make later game weapons much more likely to be pre-upgraded. That way you didn't have to completely start over if you wanted to change weapons later in the game.
It's actually great design because
>Weapons and Ashes scale a lot more from weapon level, allowing a more lenient level spread and meaning you can't just dump runes into damage stat and trivialize early game, but a good part of your progression is tied to actually reaching areas were smithing stones of the correct tier are.
>Making upgrading weapons a rune sink helps with giving reasons to spend runes obtained in side dungeons/bosses, especially if you want side weapons.
If anything they should add a bunch of extra smithing stones in Altus and Mountaintops
>Weapons and Ashes scale a lot more from weapon level, allowing a more lenient level spread and meaning you can't just dump runes into damage stat and trivialize early game, but a good part of your progression is tied to actually reaching areas were smithing stones of the correct tier are.
The issue is that you'll get enough to level up comfortably 1 and at a stretch 2 weapons up to par with the area. If you decide to switch weapons after that, you're shit out of luck, better look up where the ball bearings are, and even when you get it, the stones you can buy with it will still leave your weapon underpowered. You get the smithing stone ball bearing 3 in mountaintops. The fourth one is dropped by the fricking godskin duo. So that's fighting Morgott at +12, and fire giant and godskin duo at +18. This could be partially alleviated by just having more smithing stones for you to find, but it would be better if there were just way less kinds. Up to +10 with 4 tiers of upgrade materials is enough, with +10 now being as strong as the current +25.
Youre forgetting about somber weapons which are honestly broken
I'm currently doing a run where I'm using 5 total somber weapons and im in mountaintops with all of them at 8 or 9
There's less of them in the game, but you can absolutely and probably will switch to one or atleast will use it as an alt at some point
You're right in that somber weapons are much easier in this regard, it just bums me out that they're SO much easier that there's really little reason not to use them. If anything, regular smithing stone weapons are the ones that should be easier to keep upgraded, but instead they require much more effort.
Regular weapons have some great ashes though. A lot of them are just better than somber ones, aside from the cool factor.
Yeah thinking about this in that way, you're right, sombers should be harder to upgrade than they are
Yeah one of my issues is that I have yet to properly use ashes of war to really any degree. All my runs I mostly use sombers or if I use normal weapons, I'll only use an ash of war that fits with the RP im going for. Like flamestrike on a fth/str pyromancer. The one opportunity I had to use them, I played a samurai build with dual katanas, but ended up using storm blade on the uchi, then the nagi, most of the time since it's my favorite looking AoW in the game. Everything about it is so cool- the animation, the effect, the sound, the range, how you can chain them together indefinitely. All around a kino weapon art
It makes sense when you think about it. Regular weapons have ashes that can bend them to whatever build you have. Sombers are stuck serving specific builds.
Having them be slightly harder to upgrade seems like a trade off.
Late game items starting at higher levels is a decent idea, but honestly bell bearings are spread out enough to not make changing weapons that much of a big deal in the midgame
There should actually just be way more smithing stones than there are. Ever Notice that past the first merchant in Liurnia, there are no more venders selling smithing stones?
>don't read guide
>miss everything
My cousin is going through the game and every time I ask him what he's up to it turns out he missed an NPC interaction or something.
You can't have a big open world and expect quest progression to be "I ran into the character randomly at this location.
Previous souls games trained me to revisit every zone like an autismo anytime I did something major or killed a boss to scoured for changes. Probably why it took me 200 hours to finish the game unguided. Nailed a lot of the quests though besides the rat dude who makes armor altercations.
This unironically encourages replays with different builds
It was much harder in Dark Souls honestly. I would lie if I said I didn't need a guide for some though. I think a journal summing up the events/dialogues in the style of Pentiment/Morrowind would be a cool touch
>My cousin is going through the game and every time I ask him what he's up to it turns out he missed an NPC interaction or something.
Don't worry about your cousin. That's exactly how I played the game and I enjoyed every second of it
>what is replay value
every quest is optional, I don't understand the autism of people who feel the need to get everything on a single playthrough. Play blind and then do the rest on NG+, that's the entire reason it exists
Elden Ring is way too big to do enough replays to justify a specific thing with a character.
>play 1st time blind for best experience
>NG+ with guide/wiki if you want to hit everything, also allows you to try game with different build/playstyles by respeccing
it's not hard
>As I suspected, victory was impossible. This vessel was found lacking.
>I knew you were the stuff of champions. It was a marvellous battle. I implore you, take what I bequeath from inside me.
>All vessels are destined to one day break. But the great Alexander lived as a warrior to his last!
>giving his insides to the young jar so that he can one day eclipse Alexander
It's my headcanon that lil' bro becomes the new Elden Lord's top guy
>could just train beside you to get stronger after you become elden lord
>commits suicide instead
FROM went too far with the needlessly edgy NPC quest endings in this game, are Rya, Nephali, and Ranni the only ones with semi-happy endings?
He gets horribly cracked during the battle with Radahn and never recovers. The rest of his quest is him self actualizing and accepting his own limitations, both in terms of strength and mortality. Nobody lives forever. And it certainly isn't an edgy end, it's glorious.
I mean, you can let Rhykard's wife live and presumably become a snake monster.
It's not what she wanted but you can keep Millicent alive.
Was I supposed to be sad during Alexander's questline? His entire life is fighting and looking for worthy opponents, he wouldn't want to go out any other way.
ER is a good game but a lot of bits and pieces make it feel like it could've been better if it weren't for some nitpicks that end up holding merit, open world ends up having less and less if you don't care about specific build options or weapons and especially on repeat playthroughs, non-respawning materials required for crafting and shitty crafting in general, powerstancing removes the higher stat requirements but feels stripped down in turn, fewer variety movesets and movesets on weapons being locked in despite this being something that should've been fixed by now, etc. It's by no means a perfect game but it is still very quality
Overall an 8/10 imo
It was made exactly for people to go find their gear before mid or even late game. If you feel like skipping some stuff, you should just be able to do that. At that point you acquired the skills to deal with stuff without killing everything along the way, especially if you are targeting specific RL builds anyway.
I'm more bothered by the fact that Mt. Gelmir and Redmane Castles aren't bigger
Yeah those two places should honestly be the size of stormveil
Volcano Manor is varied enough I think, but yeah Redmane Castle fricking sucks ass. I think even the devs know it, which is why they let you just skip it entirely if it's time to fight the boss.
>Rykard confirmed Blonde
So Radagon not only abandoned her but was also cucking Renalla the whole time. Ouch.
think harder
How would rennala not know he's not her kid?
She would have not given birth to him lol
>inb4 theyre demigods
Not rennala
>How would rennala not know he's not her kid?
She had black hair and Radagon has red hair. That said,
is wrong, he didn't cuck her (until he left her, anyway), it was just Marika's influence bleeding through.
I love pretty much everything about Elden Ring but the bosses.
My favorite bosses are the golem giants actually. Hate shit like Maliketh with a passion.
I finally beat margit, but then lost the 12k runes exploring the castle like a moron
it's over
Let me tell you something you already know. The the lands between ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!
kill the "friendly" npc that tells you to take another path for a small reimbursement
he shall live
I noticed that after recovering them once, but they are all gone now
He is actively robbing you every time you die
Your losses in the castle will also be taxed just fyi. Probably GRRM's idea
Post your hopes and/or expectations for the expansion
>2 massive new areas as well as several other smaller locations
>atleast 3 legacy dungeons
>more weapons and spells that expand upon the builds that don't have much going for them (frenzied flame for example)
>3 new great runes to find
>miquella's inside his dream cocoon. This one seems obvious since it's probably him on the art in the announcement
>going to the fricking moon to find Ranni's discarded greatrune
>moon city filled with new enemies that are similar to but not like the nox
>this might be too weird, but maybe less gravity on the moon, or have some weird gravity magic thing going on that makes it normal
>underwater atlantis type city in the middle of the big lake in the center of the map. It can be in a dome or airbubble or something. I just wanna look up and see whales and stuff
>find the third great rune over here from some new, previously unmentioned demigod that marika or radagon had in secret, or something
>2 endings for the dlc storyline alone, plus atleast 1 new distinct ending for the whole game and 1 or 2 mending runes that can be added to the default
I hope they put back all the cut content, like the secondary quests, and maybe a couple more endings.
>everybody coming up with increasingly high and unrealistic hopes for the DLC as time passes
FROM is fricking up by making people wait so long, it will be basically impossible to live up to the hype at this point
same thing happened with DS3 DLC, was funny seeing all the loretrannies meltdown
what cut content?
>muh kale quest
it was garbage, it was pointless, a poor dung eater ripoff
>miquella
yeah no shit
I want a Gundao and an Odachi
and a dual straight sword
>Runebear Duo
>Godskin Trio
>Evergaol boss fight with "Hieronymus Loux" who just happens to look like a blue Hoarah Loux
For a non-bait answer, I want a boss fight against Prince of Death Godwyn so I can help him die a true death. His situation's just plain heartbreaking.
Miquella grows wings of Deathroot and rises up covering an Eclipsing Sun bleeding amber
>when your daughter fricks everything up to the point where you have to make a desperation move
night of the black knives moment
I hope we get to play as Marika/Radagon in the DLC
Why? That doesn't really fit with the theme of the game
I sometimes wish From Software would make a game where you play as Nito.
Random but I respect it. I always thought a 4 Knights game would be sick
I want to sleep on those pillows