Jump to content

Elden Ring - Information Thread, update (02/21): "Shadow of the Erdtree" expansion to release on June 21 ($40 Standard/$50 Deluxe)


Recommended Posts

16 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I have to do the same thing. I was pretty close to the end and I want to wrap this game up before the end of the year. I need to finalize my top five of 2022... pretty sure this game is number one for me. The other four may suprise a lot of folks :p

Mine, right now, would be:

 

1. Elden Ring

2. GoW:R

3. Triangle Strategy 

4. Total War Warhammer 3

5. Shredders Revenge 

Edit: Removed Nobody Saves the World to add Shredders Revenge.

 

I'm not counting Tactics Ogre Reborn because its not new, I've played it before, and own the og on SNES.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

I don't think horizon would make my top 10 this year. Good game, but I didn't love it.

 

I just didn't play that many games this year. I'm like you, Forbidden West was good but I really struggled to finish it. Same thing happened to the first one with me. I just can't pin point what makes me not enjoy these games more? It's my favorite genre...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I just didn't play that many games this year. I'm like you, Forbidden West was good but I really struggled to finish it. Same thing happened to the first one with me. I just can't pin point what makes me not enjoy these games more? It's my favorite genre...

The story is honestly uninteresting, so theres only really cool robo-dino's to keep me interested. It was fun, but thats it. Im not a big aloy fan.

  • True 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

No Vampire Survivors. Bad list.

Stll need to try this.

 

24 minutes ago, best3444 said:

 

I just didn't play that many games this year. I'm like you, Forbidden West was good but I really struggled to finish it. Same thing happened to the first one with me. I just can't pin point what makes me not enjoy these games more? It's my favorite genre...

Damn this sounds like my experience with the first game too... was hoping the second would be different.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Damn this sounds like my experience with the first game too... was hoping the second would be different.

 

Yup. Forbidden West is "impressive" but I had to force myself to play it 3 different times to finally beat it. Visually I think it's the best on PS5 even over Ragnarok. Aloy grew on me towards the end but she can be obnoxiously annoying throughout the game. I just didn't give a shit about the story, either.

  • Halal 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, stepee said:

Top 5 this year for me so far since we are doing this here:

 

Elden Ring

Sonic Frontiers

Kirby GOAT Edition

Oli Oli World

GOW:R

 

I don’t know where exactly GOW:R will fit yet so I just put it last, still too early to decide.

Yeah it's still early and my five isn't solidified yet. but as of now Elden Ring is number one for sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Yeah it's still early and my five isn't solidified yet. but as of now Elden Ring is number one for sure.

 

Elden Ring was such an incredible experience and a journey unlike any other I’ve had in a video game. Part of that is just having the time to devote that month to it like I did I think. At the time I beat it, it was the longest game I beat by like 70 hours. It inspired me to play some longer games like going in and beating Valhalla. It’s also the hardest game I’ve beaten in a long time. The sense of discovery was just something else in that game, it felt important in a way. It’s definitely a top 10 game ever for me, it’ll probably take me a bit to decide if it knocks something out of top 5 but it’s possible.

  • Halal 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, stepee said:

Top 5 this year for me so far since we are doing this here:

 

Elden Ring

Sonic Frontiers

Kirby GOAT Edition

Oli Oli World

GOW:R

 

I don’t know where exactly GOW:R will fit yet so I just put it last, still too early to decide.

 

I can safely put Sonic in my top 5 now this year. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've now put enough time in to give some decent impressions, and I think I can say that Elden Ring is undoubtedly amazing, but I just don't think it's a great gameplay experience. Sorry for the incoming wall of text, but I have thoughts.

 

First and foremost, this game is the ultimate collection of fantasy stuff. Everything from the biggest castles to the individual flowers comes in an incredible variety that is so carefully rendered it's hard to believe. I haven't even explored half the map and I feel confident this is the most impressive fantasy open world of all time. It's just so full of things it's consistently shocking. So many little corners that turn out to be so much more. It's so much that I don't think the game even knows what it's doing with it all. I don't doubt that there's lore for everything here, but if there is it would take an eternity to figure it all out, and it's not exactly being communicated to me as a player. I've put in a decent amount of time and I have only the slightest clue what is going on with anything, but I can't help but be impressed by everything.

 

I find it almost bizarre how much this game wants you to explore, and how much it punishes you doing exactly that. Walk down the wrong path and a you've been speared by a distant enemy you had no ability to see or hear. Find a cool spot in the starting area? Oops, it's meant for higher level players and now you have to weigh the runes you just lost against the time to go back and get them. Die to a boss you think is too hard right now? Sure, come back later, but your runes stay in there. I've abandoned my exploration so much that it compels me to try and find a more linear path just so I stop wasting time.

 

Still, the game world does consistently impress. It's so unlike anything else I've played and it really tingles that part of my brain that open world games and RPGs appeal to. I desperately want to explore everything and find better gear and get more powerful, but the thing I keep wishing is for this game world to be part of a better game.

 

The controls are a mess. The lock on does weird things, snapping the view in the wrong direction, not snapping on to an enemy I can clearly see in front of me, or losing lock on at the worst possible moment. I'm playing as a caster and it boggles my mind that I can't have more than one spell equipped at a time. In a game with such intense battles defined by the need for excellent timing, why am I forced to cycle through spells in the heat battle? Even worse, it's a list of spells that I can only cycle one way and will include utility spells like Starlight alongside all my combat and defensive magic. Likewise it's crazy that I'm constantly juggling which potions to use and can't simply have both health and mana ready to go whenever. Given how precious potions are, it's terribly annoying to drink the wrong one. That might be easier to avoid if the freaking UI would stay up. I can be actively engaged in battle and lose aggro, and suddenly I can't glance to see what flask or spell is selected or see my health and mana bars without pressing a button. My favorite UI element is a notification that prevents you from doing anything and doesn't indicate what button to press to make it go away; that was a fun death.

 

Speaking of the UI, the menus in general are a disaster, both overly dense and not nearly useful enough while being cumbersome to boot. Why don't any of my spells tell me how much damage they do or how long they take to cast? I get a million numbers for things I haven't even figured out and aren't explained, but I can't get a damage number on my primary attack? Weapons get some kind of damage number, why not spells? How the hell do I know if any of the spells for sale are worthwhile without giving up a bunch of money/exp? Why is there a whole page of all my armor that doesn't let me equip it or compare it to what I'm wearing? Why are some passive effects listed under "passive effects" but others are hidden in the item description? Why is almost nothing given any indicator as to how rare or important it is?

 

It really doesn't help that there is just so much junk in this game. I'm constantly picking things up that I have no way of knowing what to do with. I'd collected half a dozen talismans before I figured out I needed to equip them and then I had to google how to do it. I also hate that I can't pull up a map when I'm in combat, and that none of the menus pause the game. This is a giant game and I'm constantly pulling up the map to find my way, and you can't walk three paces without aggroing something, so just let me figure out where I'm going without risking an annoying and time consuming death.

 

On that subject, I can't help but feel like the sound design is lacking. Why is every enemy almost completely silent? I perfectly understand that they want to keep you on your toes or whatever, but absent some really giant dragons, basically everything is tiptoe quiet. Making some enemies silent makes sense, but the overall lack of sounds in this game is so odd. There isn't even a sound to indicate you're out of mana. Frankly, It feels unfinished.

 

A much larger issue is that I just don't like the flow of battle. My character feels sluggish and unresponsive. Cast times are so long that I'm constantly swapping back to my most basic spell just to get the cast off. A cast that I can't cancel! Also, why is there zero enemy AI? Every enemy has their own attack patterns, but no awareness of anything. In the first major dungeon there are a group of guards in defensive positions all pointing weapons at a door as I walk through, but none of them even fire unless I go right at them. I just went to the side (not even sneaking), and one by one stabbed them all in the back; only ever alerting the guy right next to them if I had an errant attack. I've gotten enemies to half health, dodged their attack, and had them lose interest and stop fighting, only to look straight into my eyes as I cast their doom. The combat is so bad at these fundamental things that it's hard to appreciate the really cool encounter designs because I'm always fighting the system as much as the monsters.

 

When I do kill the monsters and manage to save my runes and finally level up and get new stuff, I've found the progression to be really lacking. It's wild to me that the armor that I'm given at the start is comparable to basically any cloth armor in the game. It's also bizarre that the starting spells remain so essential for so long, possibly the whole game! Maybe melee characters keep switching out their stuff, but for me I'm struggling to find stuff that's a clear upgrade. Yeah, stats help me do more damage, but even that doesn't seem to scale that well. I'm more powerful, but when I'm using a lot of the same stuff from hour 2 in hour 40 and trash mobs will still wreck me, it's hard to feel like I've made much progress.

 

I posed a lot of questions and piled on the gripes in these impressions, and before anyone bothers answering any of them, I feel fairly confident that I know the answers: "discovery and difficulty." The game doesn't tell you anything so you have to figure it out for yourself. The designers made these decisions in order to make it harder and give you a sense of satisfaction. I can buy discovery as a philosophy when it comes to exploration and story (even if it's not my preference), but please tell me how the game works, especially when it's this complicated. There are so many freaking systems in this game I'm constantly googling and still don't have half of them figured out. Even a bunch of seemingly core systems might be locked behind enigmatic quests that I'd likely never have found without a guide. That's a failure of design, not a feature.

 

I went into this game sympathetic on the difficulty issue. I tend not to like "hard" games and have avoided all the Souls games for that reason. I'm willing to accept one shot kills and hidden traps and bosses that repeatedly wipe the floor with me, even if I don't think it's good game design. What I've found is that all that hasn't really been bothering me. Instead it's the aggregate of other issues like the controls and camera and menus that I'm struggling with. Again and again I feel like this game makes poor design decisions in order to maintain difficulty. I played Ninja Gaiden nearly twenty years ago, I know combat can be both fluid and unforgiving. A game can be hard without feeling cheap or broken. I'm enjoying the challenge in boss fights, even if some of the other stuff gets in the way.

 

Really, despite all my issues with the game, I'm still a rather taken with Elden Ring. The world is so huge and so full of things to do it's awesome. I continue to find ways to deal with the things I dislike about the game because I'm so compelled by the rest of it. If I squint I can see the masterpiece that so many have hailed it as, I just can't keep that vision in focus and enjoy it quite so much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The starting equipment being good is more of a freedom thing. Souls games want you to play the way you want to. That could be magic, could be sword and shield, greatsword, etc. So there is better gear but the differences aren't truly massive. I started my first run as a vagabond and switched to a halberd. Kept the vanilla halberd until I found the champion's standard. It was flat out better but the damage difference wasn't massive. I haven't used magic but I imagine that's why the starting spells are so good. 

 

For the controls my only complaint is it being a console game primarily. I wish the PC versions offered custom hotkeys for spells, items and weapons. I have enough keys at my disposal to not need to be scrolling through the menu options for my flask and crimson tears. 

 

The enemies don't have AI I think because Miyazaki is old school and wants you to learn enemy attack patterns and such. Though I do feel the bosses atleast react to how you fight I feel. If I'm defensive Melina is more aggressive then if I'm trying to do my usual just dodge combat. 

 

For the not pausing the game part you really just have to kill whatever was in the room with you for example and then use maps and such. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@TwinIonThis isn’t a counter argument, but your post made a lot more sense when I reached “avoided all the Souls games”. A lot of your complaints barely registered when I was playing this game for the first time as a veteran of those games. You fight the camera and controls as much as you fight monsters, item descriptions are often useless, half the difficulty is figuring out the various systems that you can easily miss if you’re unlucky or not using a guide.  

 

That stuff isn’t exactly all “good” and defendable, but for longtime fans, it’s at least familiar. You (hopefully) either get used to the flaws or find ways to work around them. I too find it clunky to shuffle through spells and items in the heat of combat, which is maybe why I tend to gravitate towards a simple “equip the biggest weapon I can and just bash skulls” approach in these games. No spells, no more than 3 items equipped at any one time, lean and mean. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, TwinIon said:

 I'm playing as a caster and it boggles my mind that I can't have more than one spell equipped at a time. In a game with such intense battles defined by the need for excellent timing, why am I forced to cycle through spells in the heat battle? Even worse, it's a list of spells that I can only cycle one way and will include utility spells like Starlight alongside all my combat and defensive magic. Likewise it's crazy that I'm constantly juggling which potions to use and can't simply have both health and mana ready to go whenever.

 

Can't you put 4 spells in the quick pouch and use them all fairly quickly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Can't you put 4 spells in the quick pouch and use them all fairly quickly?

 

You can't quick assign spells, but you can quick assign health or mana flasks.

 

10 hours ago, TwinIon said:

I've now put enough time in to give some decent impressions, and I think I can say that Elden Ring is undoubtedly amazing, but I just don't think it's a great gameplay experience. Sorry for the incoming wall of text, but I have thoughts.

 

First and foremost, this game is the ultimate collection of fantasy stuff. Everything from the biggest castles to the individual flowers comes in an incredible variety that is so carefully rendered it's hard to believe. I haven't even explored half the map and I feel confident this is the most impressive fantasy open world of all time. It's just so full of things it's consistently shocking. So many little corners that turn out to be so much more. It's so much that I don't think the game even knows what it's doing with it all. I don't doubt that there's lore for everything here, but if there is it would take an eternity to figure it all out, and it's not exactly being communicated to me as a player. I've put in a decent amount of time and I have only the slightest clue what is going on with anything, but I can't help but be impressed by everything.

 

I find it almost bizarre how much this game wants you to explore, and how much it punishes you doing exactly that. Walk down the wrong path and a you've been speared by a distant enemy you had no ability to see or hear. Find a cool spot in the starting area? Oops, it's meant for higher level players and now you have to weigh the runes you just lost against the time to go back and get them. Die to a boss you think is too hard right now? Sure, come back later, but your runes stay in there. I've abandoned my exploration so much that it compels me to try and find a more linear path just so I stop wasting time.

 

Still, the game world does consistently impress. It's so unlike anything else I've played and it really tingles that part of my brain that open world games and RPGs appeal to. I desperately want to explore everything and find better gear and get more powerful, but the thing I keep wishing is for this game world to be part of a better game.

 

The controls are a mess. The lock on does weird things, snapping the view in the wrong direction, not snapping on to an enemy I can clearly see in front of me, or losing lock on at the worst possible moment. I'm playing as a caster and it boggles my mind that I can't have more than one spell equipped at a time. In a game with such intense battles defined by the need for excellent timing, why am I forced to cycle through spells in the heat battle? Even worse, it's a list of spells that I can only cycle one way and will include utility spells like Starlight alongside all my combat and defensive magic. Likewise it's crazy that I'm constantly juggling which potions to use and can't simply have both health and mana ready to go whenever. Given how precious potions are, it's terribly annoying to drink the wrong one. That might be easier to avoid if the freaking UI would stay up. I can be actively engaged in battle and lose aggro, and suddenly I can't glance to see what flask or spell is selected or see my health and mana bars without pressing a button. My favorite UI element is a notification that prevents you from doing anything and doesn't indicate what button to press to make it go away; that was a fun death.

 

Speaking of the UI, the menus in general are a disaster, both overly dense and not nearly useful enough while being cumbersome to boot. Why don't any of my spells tell me how much damage they do or how long they take to cast? I get a million numbers for things I haven't even figured out and aren't explained, but I can't get a damage number on my primary attack? Weapons get some kind of damage number, why not spells? How the hell do I know if any of the spells for sale are worthwhile without giving up a bunch of money/exp? Why is there a whole page of all my armor that doesn't let me equip it or compare it to what I'm wearing? Why are some passive effects listed under "passive effects" but others are hidden in the item description? Why is almost nothing given any indicator as to how rare or important it is?

 

It really doesn't help that there is just so much junk in this game. I'm constantly picking things up that I have no way of knowing what to do with. I'd collected half a dozen talismans before I figured out I needed to equip them and then I had to google how to do it. I also hate that I can't pull up a map when I'm in combat, and that none of the menus pause the game. This is a giant game and I'm constantly pulling up the map to find my way, and you can't walk three paces without aggroing something, so just let me figure out where I'm going without risking an annoying and time consuming death.

 

On that subject, I can't help but feel like the sound design is lacking. Why is every enemy almost completely silent? I perfectly understand that they want to keep you on your toes or whatever, but absent some really giant dragons, basically everything is tiptoe quiet. Making some enemies silent makes sense, but the overall lack of sounds in this game is so odd. There isn't even a sound to indicate you're out of mana. Frankly, It feels unfinished.

 

A much larger issue is that I just don't like the flow of battle. My character feels sluggish and unresponsive. Cast times are so long that I'm constantly swapping back to my most basic spell just to get the cast off. A cast that I can't cancel! Also, why is there zero enemy AI? Every enemy has their own attack patterns, but no awareness of anything. In the first major dungeon there are a group of guards in defensive positions all pointing weapons at a door as I walk through, but none of them even fire unless I go right at them. I just went to the side (not even sneaking), and one by one stabbed them all in the back; only ever alerting the guy right next to them if I had an errant attack. I've gotten enemies to half health, dodged their attack, and had them lose interest and stop fighting, only to look straight into my eyes as I cast their doom. The combat is so bad at these fundamental things that it's hard to appreciate the really cool encounter designs because I'm always fighting the system as much as the monsters.

 

When I do kill the monsters and manage to save my runes and finally level up and get new stuff, I've found the progression to be really lacking. It's wild to me that the armor that I'm given at the start is comparable to basically any cloth armor in the game. It's also bizarre that the starting spells remain so essential for so long, possibly the whole game! Maybe melee characters keep switching out their stuff, but for me I'm struggling to find stuff that's a clear upgrade. Yeah, stats help me do more damage, but even that doesn't seem to scale that well. I'm more powerful, but when I'm using a lot of the same stuff from hour 2 in hour 40 and trash mobs will still wreck me, it's hard to feel like I've made much progress.

 

I posed a lot of questions and piled on the gripes in these impressions, and before anyone bothers answering any of them, I feel fairly confident that I know the answers: "discovery and difficulty." The game doesn't tell you anything so you have to figure it out for yourself. The designers made these decisions in order to make it harder and give you a sense of satisfaction. I can buy discovery as a philosophy when it comes to exploration and story (even if it's not my preference), but please tell me how the game works, especially when it's this complicated. There are so many freaking systems in this game I'm constantly googling and still don't have half of them figured out. Even a bunch of seemingly core systems might be locked behind enigmatic quests that I'd likely never have found without a guide. That's a failure of design, not a feature.

 

I went into this game sympathetic on the difficulty issue. I tend not to like "hard" games and have avoided all the Souls games for that reason. I'm willing to accept one shot kills and hidden traps and bosses that repeatedly wipe the floor with me, even if I don't think it's good game design. What I've found is that all that hasn't really been bothering me. Instead it's the aggregate of other issues like the controls and camera and menus that I'm struggling with. Again and again I feel like this game makes poor design decisions in order to maintain difficulty. I played Ninja Gaiden nearly twenty years ago, I know combat can be both fluid and unforgiving. A game can be hard without feeling cheap or broken. I'm enjoying the challenge in boss fights, even if some of the other stuff gets in the way.

 

Really, despite all my issues with the game, I'm still a rather taken with Elden Ring. The world is so huge and so full of things to do it's awesome. I continue to find ways to deal with the things I dislike about the game because I'm so compelled by the rest of it. If I squint I can see the masterpiece that so many have hailed it as, I just can't keep that vision in focus and enjoy it quite so much.

 

The sheer amount of options and the way of not knowing what's good until you try it is something I struggled with early-on too. I started as a melee character, but I also wanted to use ranged bows. I was miffed as to how hard it was to swap between ranged and melee combat in the heat of (Boss) battle because the tempo felt so aggressive.

 

However what I figured out is despite the number of options you have to dispatch an enemy, the game does force the rhythm of combat onto you and you have to know the patterns of enemy attack. There's just no getting around this one design element. If you don't know how long it takes for an enemy to perform an attack, don't know what combos an enemy can do, and don't know the downtime for an enemy, you will die. 

 

This is true for spell-based characters too. You need to know enemy attack patterns so you know the timing it takes to cast a spell, and the timing it takes to swap. Any buffing or support spells should be done pre-fight (so be prepared), and if they are done mid-fight then you have to know the breaks in aggression.

 

I think the one core mechanic the game doesn't make super obvious, that I didn't realize until several hours in and it seems like something you've also missed since you're saying trash mobs are wrecking you, was how important upgrading your weapon is. Weapon level is where most of your damage comes from, regardless of staff, seal, melee, or ranged. The smithing stones are precious, and its better to stick with a higher weapon level until you've gathered the upgrade material for any new weapon you want to use.

 

Spell damage changes based primarily off the staff/seal you use and the upgrade level of the staff, so that's why they don't list the damage of them in menus. And then your character level affects how much damage your staff/seal can apply to a spell just like it affects how much damage a melee weapon does, but the weapon level is more important. Think of weapon level is basically a damage multiplier, and think of character levels as adding ticks of damage that can be multiplied. The basic spells can be pretty good, and typically the more advanced a spell it is the longer it takes to cast. So you have a tradeoff of fast attack speed with more constant damage or slow attack speed for one huge chunk of damage. So in battle you want to default to the basic, fast attack speed, and when you've learned the enemy attack pattern you'll know when to swap to the big damage spells.

 

Here's a tip that took me hours to learn: Any fight that's not a boss arena and you don't think you're prepared for: Run away. Aside from invasions, it's pretty easy to run away and de-aggro enemies. 

 

I'm not sure why you're struggling so hard with the other issues though.

 

Map: I think they made the map inaccessible during combat so that it's more obvious that you're in combat. Also they don't want you to teleport away if you're about to die, which would ruin the losing runes mechanic.

 

Camera controls: This did annoy me, but it's less infuriating when you know that there is a distance limit to locking on, and the most likely reason the camera is doing weird shit when you press the lock-on button is because of this limit. I wish they would just let me unbind or separate "face camera to player" from the lock-on bind.

 

Menus: I thought they were fine. You compare armor stats under the equip menu, not the inventory menu.

 

Quests: I don't think there is a core mechanic locked behind a quest. The closest is upgrading summons, but even if you miss the NPC's quest you're not locked out of doing it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This game continues to blow me away with the amount of stuff you discover in it.

 

I'm like 160 hours in and finally discovered Nokron. It's doubly impressive because it's already part of a massive area in the game you discover early on, and in that area you're like whoa, then there's a whole other part. And then I get to this part and think, "Surely I've found everything in this area" and then nope, there's another area.  And when I think I've found it all I say, "surely I can't go over there" and then you can. Then there is stuff even beyond that. No wonder this game took 100 years to make!

  • Shocked 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

This game continues to blow me away with the amount of stuff you discover in it.

 

I'm like 160 hours in and finally discovered Nokron. It's doubly impressive because it's already part of a massive area in the game you discover early on, and in that area you're like whoa, then there's a whole other part. And then I get to this part and think, "Surely I've found everything in this area" and then nope, there's another area.  And when I think I've found it all I say, "surely I can't go over there" and then you can. Then there is stuff even beyond that. No wonder this game took 100 years to make!

 

It’s an absolute landmark in level design. The density is insane of actual designed level layout content. They have castles like the scope of an igavania castle but in 3D. It’s nuts. It creates a level of excitement when hitting a new area just thinking of how deep it may go.

  • True 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pretty remarkable how when you think you've explored the majority of an area the game pulls you back in and says

 

Cat Glasses GIF by Leroy Patterson

 

I was trying to progress the Seluvis quest, and part of it takes you to a place I had already been before, but there was a whole area I missed there was even a dungeon and a @stepee there too.

 

Heck, I even missed pretty big areas of Three Sisters. I could totally see someone else finding it though, just a pretty big blind spot for me. :p

  • Shocked 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Back on topic

 

Quote

Come forth, warriors, and bask in the glory of the Colosseum.

The Colosseums of Limgrave, Leyndell and Caelid will open their gates, allowing players to engage in battles such as duels, free-for-alls and team fights.
Prove your worth in the free Colosseum Update.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Commissar SFLUFAN changed the title to Elden Ring - Information Thread, update: free Colosseum Update announced for Pearl Harbor Day
On 12/3/2022 at 12:43 AM, cusideabelincoln said:

 

You can't quick assign spells, but you can quick assign health or mana flasks.

 

 

The sheer amount of options and the way of not knowing what's good until you try it is something I struggled with early-on too. I started as a melee character, but I also wanted to use ranged bows. I was miffed as to how hard it was to swap between ranged and melee combat in the heat of (Boss) battle because the tempo felt so aggressive.

 

However what I figured out is despite the number of options you have to dispatch an enemy, the game does force the rhythm of combat onto you and you have to know the patterns of enemy attack. There's just no getting around this one design element. If you don't know how long it takes for an enemy to perform an attack, don't know what combos an enemy can do, and don't know the downtime for an enemy, you will die. 

 

This is true for spell-based characters too. You need to know enemy attack patterns so you know the timing it takes to cast a spell, and the timing it takes to swap. Any buffing or support spells should be done pre-fight (so be prepared), and if they are done mid-fight then you have to know the breaks in aggression.

 

I think the one core mechanic the game doesn't make super obvious, that I didn't realize until several hours in and it seems like something you've also missed since you're saying trash mobs are wrecking you, was how important upgrading your weapon is. Weapon level is where most of your damage comes from, regardless of staff, seal, melee, or ranged. The smithing stones are precious, and its better to stick with a higher weapon level until you've gathered the upgrade material for any new weapon you want to use.

 

Spell damage changes based primarily off the staff/seal you use and the upgrade level of the staff, so that's why they don't list the damage of them in menus. And then your character level affects how much damage your staff/seal can apply to a spell just like it affects how much damage a melee weapon does, but the weapon level is more important. Think of weapon level is basically a damage multiplier, and think of character levels as adding ticks of damage that can be multiplied. The basic spells can be pretty good, and typically the more advanced a spell it is the longer it takes to cast. So you have a tradeoff of fast attack speed with more constant damage or slow attack speed for one huge chunk of damage. So in battle you want to default to the basic, fast attack speed, and when you've learned the enemy attack pattern you'll know when to swap to the big damage spells.

 

Here's a tip that took me hours to learn: Any fight that's not a boss arena and you don't think you're prepared for: Run away. Aside from invasions, it's pretty easy to run away and de-aggro enemies. 

 

I'm not sure why you're struggling so hard with the other issues though.

 

Map: I think they made the map inaccessible during combat so that it's more obvious that you're in combat. Also they don't want you to teleport away if you're about to die, which would ruin the losing runes mechanic.

 

Camera controls: This did annoy me, but it's less infuriating when you know that there is a distance limit to locking on, and the most likely reason the camera is doing weird shit when you press the lock-on button is because of this limit. I wish they would just let me unbind or separate "face camera to player" from the lock-on bind.

 

Menus: I thought they were fine. You compare armor stats under the equip menu, not the inventory menu.

 

Quests: I don't think there is a core mechanic locked behind a quest. The closest is upgrading summons, but even if you miss the NPC's quest you're not locked out of doing it.

I absolutely didn't realize that so much damage scaling is related to upgrading weapons until pretty far in. It's made a huge difference in how much damage I do. Considering the glut of weapons available, it seems odd that they'd "punish" you for trying new ones out or switching weapons too much, but it's good to finally know how important that is.

 

I also got fed up with the complete lack of any decent cloth armor and just threw enough points into endurance to just use some heavy stuff. That's helped a lot, especially when I go back to lower level areas, but it still seems odd how little difference there is between the best cloth and what you start with.

 

I've gotten far more used to the flow of combat, and while I won't lump it in with the controls and call it a poor design decision, I will say that it's still very much not my preference.

 

I continue to fight with the camera, and that distance limit on lock on sure sucks. I was just in an area where an enemy that was in plain sight would 1 hit KO me if I got too close, but I couldn't lock on to use my spell of unlimited range. I also had no ability to manually aim that spell. I imagine the point was to force you to dodge the attacks, but given that I was on a slim ledge with little room to maneuver, that too proved difficult. I died probably a dozen times to that stupid guy, losing a ton of runes in the process. I killed the boss of that area quite easily on my second try.

 

I do love the flexibility this game gives you in how you build your character, and the sheer volume of stuff still amazes me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...