GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:

I think NPC Invasions can involve time travel, in a way. There's two Hoslow brothers, one of whom you kill for volcano manor and the whip they both drop says it's a unique heirloom of their family, making you having two of them some sort of time paradox. You also invade members of the original roundtable hold who are almost certainly long dead. I'm not sure if it ever states that Rykard was eaten willingly or not but yeah he wants to eat strong people and absorb their power.

loquacius posted:

I'm having a lot of trouble with the Banished Knights in Stormveil, specifically the guy near Rogier's chapel who has a greatsword and shield.

I'm using a greatsword and shield myself, and the problem is that (a) I don't have the stamina to block an entire combo of his, (b) if I dodge one attack, he just gets me with the next one, and (c) I keep getting staggered and stunlocked and I cannot for the life of me stagger him a single time, so whenever I get in a hit at least one (probably two) is coming right back at me.

Another problem is that when I do a search for "elden ring banished knight" I just get like a zillion results about their armor set so I can't use online resources like I have before.

Any tips???

loquacius posted:

I'm having a lot of trouble with the Banished Knights in Stormveil, specifically the guy near Rogier's chapel who has a greatsword and shield.

I'm using a greatsword and shield myself, and the problem is that (a) I don't have the stamina to block an entire combo of his, (b) if I dodge one attack, he just gets me with the next one, and (c) I keep getting staggered and stunlocked and I cannot for the life of me stagger him a single time, so whenever I get in a hit at least one (probably two) is coming right back at me.

Another problem is that when I do a search for "elden ring banished knight" I just get like a zillion results about their armor set so I can't use online resources like I have before.

Any tips???

loquacius posted:

I'm having a lot of trouble with the Banished Knights in Stormveil, specifically the guy near Rogier's chapel who has a greatsword and shield.

I'm using a greatsword and shield myself, and the problem is that (a) I don't have the stamina to block an entire combo of his, (b) if I dodge one attack, he just gets me with the next one, and (c) I keep getting staggered and stunlocked and I cannot for the life of me stagger him a single time, so whenever I get in a hit at least one (probably two) is coming right back at me.

Another problem is that when I do a search for "elden ring banished knight" I just get like a zillion results about their armor set so I can't use online resources like I have before.

Any tips???

Megasabin posted:

GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:

That specific knight you can just wait at the top of the ladder near him to walk by then run past him too.

Idiot Doom Spiral posted:

Yupp, although it sounds like an odd move to have your spy wear a team jersey.

In news nobody should care about :
I've been experimenting with builds that aren't beaten to death entirely. Discovered that curved swords in general, but Bandit's Curved Swords particularly (still have to try out Shamshir, since it's annoying to get more than one) are really, really good when dual-wielded. Easy enough to forget even if you started as a warrior.

You can run them many ways too, and still do metric assloads of damage. Right now I'm running Sacred or Flame Art (Sacred Blade for Farum Azula seems solid) with 60 Faith at lvl 120, and each sword pops out 600-odd AR that comes out pretty fast. The jump attack seems to be able to connect incredibly early, and the running attack can move you pretty far and stays out for a while without making you immobile. The R2 comes with the classic cancel-into-backflip, but will hit twice if charged. For all-out damage, Winged Sword Insignia (don't have the better version yet), Sacred Blade on one sword + whatever buffs you want to run. The output can really, really be scaled up to be nutso.

For the Banished Knights, I've been mostly just backstabbing and parrying them with a misericorde. They're really weak to both those, and you can swap the crit ring in and fire off RKR/determination before stabbing if you really want to flex.

Playing around with things, daggers seem to have a 3-hit powerstance L1

loquacius posted:

My instinct is always to roll to the side, but this just gets me combo'd, especially from the whirlwind thing. I'll play around with dodging into stuff, and I actually haven't been jump-attacking so far but that seems like it'll be an important strategy if I keep rolling STR. The idea of jumping over sword strikes is an especially good tip. Thanks guys

I taught myself to dodge-roll fighting the Night's Cavalry in Weeping Peninsula, and side-rolling worked wonders there because he was weak on the side he wasn't holding his flail on, but it sounds like it's a bad idea in the general case.

loquacius posted:

I'm having a lot of trouble with the Banished Knights in Stormveil, specifically the guy near Rogier's chapel who has a greatsword and shield.

I'm using a greatsword and shield myself, and the problem is that (a) I don't have the stamina to block an entire combo of his, (b) if I dodge one attack, he just gets me with the next one, and (c) I keep getting staggered and stunlocked and I cannot for the life of me stagger him a single time, so whenever I get in a hit at least one (probably two) is coming right back at me.

Another problem is that when I do a search for "elden ring banished knight" I just get like a zillion results about their armor set so I can't use online resources like I have before.

Any tips???

Video Nasty posted:

So I finally made it to the Lake of Rot last night and I raised up all the pillars before I fell off the tall ones and the Godskin rear end in a top hat killed me before I could heal up.
Since I raised that platform it doesn't seem like I can get back up onto it now. Do I have to find a new path up or is there a way back onto the platform that I'm just not seeing?

Heithinn Grasida posted:

Those guys are huge assholes. You might try an ash of war with good stagger potential. Spinning slash or impaling thrust (with a great sword) are both really good for breaking enemies stance and neither should be terribly hard to land. You should be able to interrupt most of the knight’s moves with those, and a couple of them will open them up for a critical.

Megasabin posted:

Finally beat the game. I like to get pretty into the lore when I play From games, so I took some notes while playing. Been writing up a timeline of the game for myself and while trying to piece things together, I came to this conclusion about some of the ancient civilizations in The Lands Between. Interested to see thoughts from any of the other lore fans on here. I will spoiler the sections pertaining to one of the civilizations, since they relate to one of the optional bosses in the game.


The game mentions 4 ancient civilizations that seem to be dated further back than others, but their history in terms of geography, time period, and interactions with the other societies is murky at best.

- The Onyx/Alabaster Lords who were “a race of ancients with skin of stone who were said to have risen to life when a meteor struck long ago” [Onyx/Alabstor Lord’s Greatsword].

- An unclear group of lords in an unclear geographic area who worshipped god known as The Scarlet Rot before it was sealed away [Mushroom Crown, Scorpion’s Stinger].

- A civilization “gone to ruin” never give a name. They were the creators of all the mechanical constructs in the games. From literal item descriptions we know those to be The Golems, Imps, Watchdogs, Stonesword Keys, and Crystal Darts [Golem Greatbow/Greataxe, Various Imp Masks, Crystal Darts]. An interesting example of delivering narrative through gameplay mechanics, is that crystal darts make all construct enemies go berserk. Other than the literal item descriptions referenced above, there are some convincing aesthetic decisions that tie this civilization to a few more structures in the game—namely the visual motif of a stone structure with a magic light source that powers it similar to the Golems. This design appears in the intricate stone elevators found in the Divine Towers & Well entrances and the Waygates. The design is also utilized in the Evergaols & The Abnormal Stone Cluster enemies, but that issue is a bit more complicated, and I discuss below.

- The Era before the Erdtree Era featured a society comprised of dragons & the subservient beastmen and was ruled by Elden Lords known as Dragonlords. The Dragonlord dynasty is a religious monarchy that utilized the same organization as The Golden Order (Celestial God—Physical Vessel—Consort/Elden Lord). Dragonlord Placidusax served as the Elden Lord, but the God & Vessel of this dynasty remain unknown [Remembrance of the Dragonlord]. It’s unclear where this dynasty was located geographically, with the only information being Placidusax’s Elden Throne was “at the heart of the storm beyond time”. Farum Azula is actually a mausoleum structure built for Placidusax’s corpse/slumber [Azula Beastmen Ashes] and does not indicate the area the actual active Dynasty reigned.

Let’s talk about a possible connection between these groups. Abnormal Stone Cluster enemies drop a ruin fragment of Farum Azula on death. If you look at the design of the abnormal stone cluster, you can actually see the ruin fragment, and it’s clear that fragment is the source of the purple light that is likely keeping the construct together. Of note, the most common place to find Abnormal Stone Clusters are the Evergaols, which also happen to be stone structures that have a purple glow when activated. I am going to use this to infer that whoever built Farum Azula also built the Evergaols and Abnormal Stone Clusters. If we take into account that Farum Azula is a mausoleum for Placidusax, it would be fair to infer that it was built while the Dragonlord dynasty was collapsing/dying. Whichever group is responsible for building Farum Azula, they were either a direct part of the Dragonlord Dynasty or a neighboring civilization that watched its demise.

So, who built the Evergoals & The Abnormal Stone Constructs? I think there are three arguments that could be made:

-The Mechanical Construct Civilization built them because they are consistent with the same stone construct-magical light engine aesthetic motif seen in the Golems, Waygates, & Divine Tower/River Entrance Elevators. There are also stonesword key imps in Farum Azula.

-The Alabaster/Onyx Lords built them because the purple light is the same purple hue gravity magic utilizes and this type of sorcery “originates” from the Alabaster/Onyx lords [Meteorite, Rock Sling, Gravity Well]. When the Abnormal Stone Clusters engage their self-destruct attack, they glow bright purple directly before exploding, and it basically resembles the Rock Sling spell. The Alabster/Onyx lords also already have another connection to the Dragonlord Dynasty in that both them & the dragons share the physical feature of stone skin [Gravel Stone, Any of the Defensive Talismans]. If this connection is true, we could then probably assume that Farum Azula levitates because of gravity magic.

-All of the above is true because the Alabaster/Onyx Lords and The Mechanical Construct Civilization are one & the same entity.

I would really like the 3rd option to be correct, because it would be more elegant. Gravity magic being used to power elevators makes sense. If gravity magic is responsible for the Evergaol’s ability to wrap prisoners to an alternate dimension, then using that same tech for the Waygates is consistent. One issue with this theory is that the Divine Tower/ Well elevators & Waygates utilize a white light rather than a purple light, and From Software is usually not sloppy with their aesthetic design. If this turns out to be correct though, then it’s quite possible that the Stone Lords were simply part of the Dragonlord Dynasty, and 3 out of the 4 of these ancient beings are part of the same civilization.

What about the Scarlet Rot worshippers? Turns out we can link them as well via the legend of The Blind Swordsman, which also connects to The Erdtree Dynasty. There is a unique dungeon in Limgrave called the Highroad Cave. The boss is a special Golem construct named The Guardian Golem, which holds “a precious item” [Wherever Fextralife get their enemy descriptions]. This item is the Blue Dancer Charm, which states there is a legend of a fairy who bestows on a flowing sword upon a blind swordsman, who then uses the weapon to seal away an ancient god that was rot itself [Blue Dancer Charm, Flowing Curved Sword]. This swordsman would go on to become Malenia’s mentor [Prosthesis-Wearer Heirloom].

juggalo baby coffin posted:

this is super interesting.

my initial read on the alabaster lords was that they were the ancestors of the Nightfolk race, given that they also bleed silver, but I've since changed on that. this might help with your work, but i'm piecing together stuff about the Nox, another one of the prior civilisations who now lives underground.

The Nox worshipped the night sky in the age when fate was determined by the stars. I think this is a very literal state of affairs: formerly fates were linked to the stars, and by reading the stars you could read the future. The items that mention this are stuff like the astrologers set, astrologers cane, and some spells.

The Erdtree supplanted that state of affairs. The stars were sealed away, and their role was taken over by the Golden Order, the new determiner of fate. There is no true night in elden ring, even though there is a day/night cycle. It's still almost daylight bright at night, just gloomy, and there are no stars.

Now you would think that that is what drove the Nox underground to their false sky, but it's not. They were explicitly banished there by the Greater Will for some transgression, and I think I know what it was: everyone's favourite summon.

The description of the mimic tear states that it was an attempt by the eternal city to create an artificial lord. The nox await the age of stars, and their lord of night (paraphrased from the nox armour again), but I imagine were not too keen on waiting for the stars to be restored naturally and wanted to make something to kill radahn and release the stars. I don't think the Greater Will would be jazzed about this, and so sealed them off in the underworld just in case. Remember, you can't access either of the Nox towns until the stars have already been released.

There's a few types of mimics in the underground cities, but the main variety of note is the type that turns into player-style NPCs. They all turn into naked nightfolk, who bleed silver, much like the description of the player race once said. What is interesting is that the Nox, while resembling nightfolk physically (they at least have the same skin tone), do not bleed silver.

So my theory of the nightfolk player race is that they are descended from escaped mimics. There are a few ways out of the eternal cities despite there not being many ways in. Over time in the light and surface order of the Erdtree their mimic biology changed to more resemble the 'acceptable' human form in the Golden Order, leading to the loss of shape-changing powers and silver blood. It sounds like a big jump, but the Erdtree is explictly said to be responsible for present form of things, and minor changes in its health have led to stuff like the Omens and Misbegotten.

A functioning, younger Erdtree would probably be able to force something human-like into something human.

Where this is neat is that if your player character is a Nightfolk, and you beat the game, it means Nokstella's gambit of creating an artificial lord paid off.

also with regard to your issues of colour coding with the elevators, it's worth noting that the enhanced versions of the golems also use a blue glow effect, so both blue and purple light are within the wheelhouse of that historical era.

GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:

I think NPC Invasions can involve time travel, in a way. There's two Hoslow brothers, one of whom you kill for volcano manor and the whip they both drop says it's a unique heirloom of their family, making you having two of them some sort of time paradox. You also invade members of the original roundtable hold who are almost certainly long dead. I'm not sure if it ever states that Rykard was eaten willingly or not but yeah he wants to eat strong people and absorb their power.

Mercury_Storm posted:

I was still using sneak and upgraded to invisibility and silenced footstep stuff later, and then was wondering why everyone was having problems with Ordina, Liturgical Town because I just snuck up on everything and stabbed them

Phenotype posted:

There's a ladder you can use to climb back up.

Yeah, I was dicking around with the ones in CFA last night using different weapons, and holy poo poo it's really hard to fight them with a straight sword and shield, or even two straight swords. For the last 70 hours I've been jump-attack staggering things with big maces or greatswords, and I basically haven't learned how to deal with these kinds of enemies when they don't even acknowledge it when I hit them.

Disco Pope posted:

This talk of the knights reminds me - I was a little sad at how quickly stealth gets forgotten in this game. Really early on, there's some thrilling guerilla warfare going on with pulling enemies and watching for patrol routes and making big use of stealth backstabs. The first ruins/camp you are likely to encounter can play out like Metal Gear Solid 5 at low levels. And then you just kind of forget about hiding in bushes and smash/blast everything after about 3hrs.

Megasabin posted:

***interesting discussion of ER lore***

Megasabin posted:

Thanks for thoughtful response. Some questions:

1. When you refer to the night folk as an option for the player race, what do you mean? I thought you might be referring to starting class, but I don't see that as an option?

2. Can you tell me where the golems glow blue instead of red? That would be really helpful, because it definitely would strengthen the final part of the theory.

Phenotype posted:

Wait, huh? So how does Rykard's thing work, anyway? Maybe I missed stuff when I was going through there, but I only have the vaguest idea of what they're up to in Volcano town. Rykard made a pact with a giant serpent, right? Who's actually another outer god like the Greater Will? And then he let the serpent eat him and now he's the face inside the serpent? So when he wants you to join the famaleee, he really wants to eat you and what, absorb your power? So then if Henricus gets eaten by the snake, then he gets spit out as a Recusant phantom to attack you? I don't get the deal with all the other recusants in the manor, unless they're just not as worthy as you are and never got introduced/eaten by the snake.

Hell, even Rya's quest was a little weird -- I went back to her after exploring the dungeon a bit and she's apparently really depressed to find out what I saw, but like... what did I even see? All I did was whack some weird snails and a Bloodhound Knight and found my way to a church. I'm not sure what sort of horrors I was supposed to find behind the secret passage but it didn't seem any worse than Stormveil castle.

quote:

This time I'm going to give a thorough explanation of what is going on in this category as this run was insane.

To start off, this run is done on CURRENT Patch as we believe it has more stability, and this falls into the UNRESTRICTED Any% category on https://www.speedrun.com/eldenring
This category allows ALL use of glitches and the ability to ALT+F4 the game to achieve the Wrong Warp. This allows us to enter Farum Azula and is why you see the game close during that segment.
The zip glitch further explained below is also extremely hardware dependent and requires a stable 60 fps as well as stable frametimes.

The run has pretty much come down to a test of a runners patience, nerves and the ability to perform 13 FRAME PERFECT glitches known as "The Zip". This zip glitch allows us to teleport a wide range of distances using a combination of blocking, holding walk, and pressing W to move forward with a combination of 139 frames. If the two actions add up to 139, you teleport, and this distance can vary depending on the combination. The longer you hold W, the further you go. Some zips are so precise, that you need the walk and block duration to line up perfectly, which makes them double frame perfect

I'm not even done yet, as we also have a newfound discovery which is the reason why we no longer have to fight bosses. This is thanks to speedrunner SeekerTV, and it is known as the "Megazip". This is done by performing a normal zip, and pressing W to walk forward again within a 12-14 frame window after the initial zip. This nearly quadruples your momentum launching you significantly further.

We can use this megazip to kill Maliketh as well as Elden Beast. We don't fully understand what is going on behind the scenes, but we believe that by going far enough away from a boss arena, the platforms deload and the bosses begin to fall to their demise. In normal circumstances, we wouldn't be able to use this as our character would normally die before the boss does. This is due to the inherent fall timer in Elden Ring which will kill you after roughly 13 seconds of falling. However, by doing a mid-air attack we can actually reset this timer allowing us to fall even longer than the normal 13 seconds. This buys us just enough time to fall for long enough where the boss will die before us.

Maliketh "Megazip" requires extremely specific positioning and angles as to have your character get "zipped" high enough where you can fall for roughly 8 seconds before attacking. If you launch too high, the game wont let you attack. If you launch too low, you will die before the boss does. You also have to deal with performing a frame perfect glitch under high pressure with an angry Maliketh trying to kill you

The Elden Beast "Megazip" is a bit easier as we start as the Vagabond class, which has enough starting equipment that we can reach "Heavy Equip Load". (We also use this for the second zip of the run). This heavy equip load causes zips to go roughly 8% further and allows us to get just enough distance enabling us to more consistently to kill Hoarah Loux. It is a blessing that he has a cutscene, as when his first phase dies, it teleports us saving us from very imminent death. Elden Beast takes a bit longer to fall for whatever reason, and lucky for us the timing lines up perfectly where we can get piledrived by Hoarah Loux and receive the "God Slain" message indicating Elden Beast is dead right as the screen fades to black.

The final boss is now dead and we are teleported to the final platform where we can beat the game. Radagon gets to survive, as the only trigger check for being able to activate the Statue is whether or not Elden Beast is dead. Hope this explanation helps and thank you for watching!

Megasabin posted:

ancient civilizations

Megasabin posted:

juggalo baby coffin posted:

1. when you pick the 'base template' for your character you can pick from a set of appearances that have lore descriptions. there's some really interesting stuff in there, because you can pick the same numen race as marika and the black knife assassins.