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SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



Fister Roboto posted:

THE CURSED CRUD CONSUMER

THE ODIOUS CRINGE POSTER

LORD OF SCRIMBLO

HAND OF YANKIE DOODLE

OF THE WARBLOUS JABERWOCK

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McCloud
Oct 27, 2005

Gologle posted:

I'm finally at the point in my STR/INT character where I have all the weapons I really wanted to play with, so here's my brief thoughts on each one:

Starscourge Greatswords - drat, you people who have been playing with this all along have been playing on easy mode. It's just fantastic. Great all around, nothing really bad to say about it.

Ruins Greatsword - Fantastic. Nothing really bad to say about it, the fully charged R2s are immensely satisfying and fun. I can't decide which is my favorite between Starscourge and this, they're both really really good.

Meteorite Ore Blade - Very solid weapon. Gravitas, tbh, is as disappointing as I knew it would be, but it's really good against flying enemies. Maybe with more weapon levels Gravitas will stop letting me down, but other than that the weapon is just good, being a katana and all. The R2s on this thing feel great, but upon looking up the movement values don't actually hit that much harder than any other katana???

Rogier's Rapier - Honorable mention, it's more of a dex weapon, but I used it for some time before I got some of the other weapons. I no longer use it, but honestly? It's very good, even outside of Glintblade Phalanx. Another weapon with great R2s.

Troll Knight's Sword - It's fine. It's not as strong as I was hoping, it's probably the weakest weapon on this list tbh, but it's perfectly fine in midgame. It's kind of a worse Zweihander? If the follow up to the WA didn't take one thousand years to come out it would be better. I'm probably going to stop using this one past Leyndell.

Great Mace - the only non Somber weapon I'm rocking at the moment, Cold infused with Waves of Darkness. I did not expect to get this weapon at first, but as soon as I did, I knew it was going on the list. Love it. Waves of Darkness is strong, a very strong Ash of War, but even outside of that the BONK on this weapon feels excellent.

Royal Greatsword - the weapon I have the least experience with atm, I've only been using it for like 2 hours now. Surprisingly actually does a lot of damage, I think this weapon with my current stats hits the hardest out of all of them. I think that will change later on as I go into the endgame, but right now it's great. I like the WA, but I don't like how you can't seem to cancel out of the first part of it, unless I'm doing it wrong. I can easily see situations where you can die using this WA.

My INT is only 25, and I expect it to remain at 25 for a long time, so I don't think I can do justice to any of the spells I'm using enough to comment about them. Except Cannon of Haima. Cannon doesn't do as much damage as I know it can do right now, but even so it's still a blast to use. I'm using the Carian Glintstone Staff right now, but I might switch to the Academy Staff as I'm not using as much of the Carian sword sorceries as I thought that I would. Even so, I don't think it would make a significant difference so I'll probably just keep using the former.


I started playing Elden Ring today, and I was facing analysis paralysis as usual on what spec to roll with, but this seems very interesting to me. How much did you put into str/int/misc like vigor and so forth? I usually always end up playing meathead swordswingers in soulsgames so it might be fun to switch it up with a bit of spell-casting this time

Gologle
Apr 15, 2013

The Gologle Posting Experience.

<3
At the point I am now, it's like 90% bonk, 10% spells, because spells in Fromsoft games require very high int investment usually to bring out their true worth. The hardest hitting spell (in one go without chain casting) I have is Cannon, and it only does as much as one, maybe 2 2h R1's (from the ultra weapons). Honestly, I'm fully willing to accept I'm doing a gimmick right now, it's just that the gimmick is also surprisingly good because the weapons themselves are great.

If you want to emulate me then early levels I would gun for either the clayman's harpoon in the first underground area (low drop rate from specifically spear wielding rock dudes) or meteorite ore blade found in the Caelid Wilds in the pest ruins, it's going to be a suicide run but that's fine. All the other weapons in that post require you to progress too far into the game. Get minimum stats to use that, get minimum stats to use meteorite staff and rock sling sorcery, then put the rest into Vigor until 30-40, as well as whatever levels of Mind and End you deem acceptable to you personally. IMO, you can rock 15 Mind for a long time, but I would go for at least 20 End, but again, it's my opinion, you do you. You may come to notice even at this point that your stats are spread kind of thin, that's just the fate of a hybrid build in the early levels. Prioritize Vig, at low levels weapon upgrades will matter much more than stat scaling for damage, so using minimum stats for using your weapon is fine.

Remember two handing weapons gives you a 1.5x multiplier to your strength stat, which will be key to actually using the bigger weapons, because it means, for example, to two hand the Ruins Greatsword you actually "only" need 34 strength, not the 50 it says. And on my character specifically the Ruins Greatsword is the highest strength requirement weapon I will ever use, so for the others you can 2 hand them with even lower strength, which frees those levels up to be put elsewhere (like Vigor! Level your vigor!!!!!)

I wanna say, starting out as Str/Int, level vigor first to 20, level end to 15, then get minimum damage stats for the weapon/catalyst/shield(?) combo of your choice, then pump vigor for a while, as well as putting points in end so you keep mid roll at least. By the midgame, which is basically Altus Plateau you'll want Vigor at 40. Also remember Fashion Souls is the real endgame, if you don't look your best what is even the point of playing this game, so in that light End might actually be the most important stat in the game.

Because this game is so big, you're going to have a lot of weapons to choose from, which can definitely trigger choice paralysis. My earnest recommendation is to do what I'm doing and use all of them depending on your mood. I'm using like 5-7 different weapons depending on my fancy right now. Lots of people wind up finding plain weapons like say the mace or brick hammer or claymore more fun and putting their preferred infusions on those. Take advantage of the 2h strength boost!

War Wizard
Jan 4, 2007

:)
I always tell myself my next run will be with Str/Int but then make a gimmick off some other fictional character. I got summoned to help a guy larping as Rykard and he pulled it off really well. Looked right out of the portrait.

Flytrap
Apr 30, 2013

War Wizard posted:

I always tell myself my next run will be with Str/Int but then make a gimmick off some other fictional character. I got summoned to help a guy larping as Rykard and he pulled it off really well. Looked right out of the portrait.

Cosplay runs are the best. Flipping through all the armor and weapons to figure out how to best emulate a certain look is almost as fun as playing the build itself.

War Wizard
Jan 4, 2007

:)
You can tell he was dedicated to the bit because he had the little crown that nobles drop. Also, he was using the magma spells.

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."
I feel like Gideon and Horauh Loux(sic?) are easy to goad you into letting your guard down on the actual final boss and getting smacked around, though I did manage to get the Elden Beast to nearly half once though!

I switched from Godslayer greatsword back to the old standby the Bloodhound sword during Maliketh and just kind of kept it, but are there any melee weapons that golden anime guy and Elden Beast are particularly weak to so I could steamroll this and bumble into an ending?

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



Wolfsheim posted:

I feel like Gideon and Horauh Loux(sic?) are easy to goad you into letting your guard down on the actual final boss and getting smacked around, though I did manage to get the Elden Beast to nearly half once though!

I switched from Godslayer greatsword back to the old standby the Bloodhound sword during Maliketh and just kind of kept it, but are there any melee weapons that golden anime guy and Elden Beast are particularly weak to so I could steamroll this and bumble into an ending?

Honestly the Godslayer sword is a great choice for them, it's not in the name for nothin

ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe

Wolfsheim posted:

I feel like Gideon and Horauh Loux(sic?) are easy to goad you into letting your guard down on the actual final boss and getting smacked around, though I did manage to get the Elden Beast to nearly half once though!

I switched from Godslayer greatsword back to the old standby the Bloodhound sword during Maliketh and just kind of kept it, but are there any melee weapons that golden anime guy and Elden Beast are particularly weak to so I could steamroll this and bumble into an ending?

I used blasphemous blade in the first part, then switched to the sword of night and flame in the second. I also killed the elden beast in co-op using a night glaive with the black flame tornado ash.

The biggest help is having the black knife tiche summon.

i am harry
Oct 14, 2003

ive always liked that you can eat a golden chicken foot between the time you kill a boss and the time it rewards you with runes for killing the boss

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Putting on Rogier's gear, buffing magic, and then spamming shard spiral chews up the Elden Beast fast btw, if you haven't tried that. It works really well with the "successive hits increase damage" talismans, too.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

War Wizard posted:

Help! I'm addicted to blackflame! I'm a faith build and I'm stuck just going back and forth between blackflame fireball and destined death from the black knife. Bosses just melt over time and I'm beating things while under leveled.

I know pest threads are great, but is there any reason to use regular fire?

Also lol, I've never had an easier time with Comrade Naill, light roll makes it so easy to keep distance, and he takes so long to finish swinging his banner around I could pelt him with full powered blackflame.

Embrace the black flame. And SLAY GODS.

It's da best.

Epic High Five posted:

Honestly the Godslayer sword is a great choice for them, it's not in the name for nothin

Yeah the Godslayer Sword tends to vaporize large targets.

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."
For some reason I just assumed Godslayer looking all holy and Elden beast doing holy damage would cancel each other out...i'll try it!

Epic High Five
Jun 5, 2004



Wolfsheim posted:

For some reason I just assumed Godslayer looking all holy and Elden beast doing holy damage would cancel each other out...i'll try it!

It's actually fire damage! Plus the percentage health damage it does on every attack. The former is great for Radagon, the latter for the Beast. No idea if it stacks with the dagger's destined death effect but if it does that could be hilarious

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Wolfsheim posted:

For some reason I just assumed Godslayer looking all holy and Elden beast doing holy damage would cancel each other out...i'll try it!

Nothing Godslayer/Black Flame does holy damage. Fire damage and a DoT that does % health, every time, making it an ideal boss killer.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
This Vigil overhaul mod is funny as hell.



That's the Unsheathe art of war on a scythe.

McCloud
Oct 27, 2005

The game just made a what's up, dog joke

It literally dropped dogs from the sky on me. Lol

SHISHKABOB
Nov 30, 2012

Fun Shoe

SardonicTyrant posted:

It's heavily implied Marika had her eyes removed at some point. In all the official artwork and media I've seen her hair is obscuring her face.

Yeah and while doing Hyetta's quest and looking at the shabriri grapes, they are very clearly almost the same thing as the Radagon and Marika Scar/soreseals. Eyeballs!

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Radagon is definitely missing his eyes when you fight him so yeah, assume Marika was as well.

Gotta wonder who was stealing God’s eyeballs and how. Witch of Hemwick passing through?

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
Shabriri did it

kecske
Feb 28, 2011

it's round, like always

the twin gargoyles fight is some god drat poo poo I tell you what

Benagain
Oct 10, 2007

Can you see that I am serious?
Fun Shoe

McCloud posted:

The game just made a what's up, dog joke

It literally dropped dogs from the sky on me. Lol

The DLC will drop caelid dogs on you calling it now


SHISHKABOB posted:

Yeah and while doing Hyetta's quest and looking at the shabriri grapes, they are very clearly almost the same thing as the Radagon and Marika Scar/soreseals. Eyeballs!

god DAMMIT I never noticed this before! Agh!

Wolfsheim
Dec 23, 2003

"Ah," Ratz had said, at last, "the artiste."

kecske posted:

the twin gargoyles fight is some god drat poo poo I tell you what

I just realized I never went back for those guys lol

i am harry
Oct 14, 2003

Summoning D and mimic tear or a banished knight was the way to deal with those two gigantic bastards

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


It's possible to summon albinuric girl outside the mist where she can shoot through which gives her quite a bit of protection from sweep and breath attacks, though she can still die from direct aggro.

kecske
Feb 28, 2011

it's round, like always

D and mimic used their shared braincell to stand in the poison every time :argh:

SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



Edit: sorry, buttpost

nopants
May 29, 2004

Gologle posted:

I'm finally at the point in my STR/INT character where I have all the weapons I really wanted to play with, so here's my brief thoughts on each one:

Starscourge Greatswords - drat, you people who have been playing with this all along have been playing on easy mode. It's just fantastic. Great all around, nothing really bad to say about it.

Ruins Greatsword - Fantastic. Nothing really bad to say about it, the fully charged R2s are immensely satisfying and fun. I can't decide which is my favorite between Starscourge and this, they're both really really good.

Meteorite Ore Blade - Very solid weapon. Gravitas, tbh, is as disappointing as I knew it would be, but it's really good against flying enemies. Maybe with more weapon levels Gravitas will stop letting me down, but other than that the weapon is just good, being a katana and all. The R2s on this thing feel great, but upon looking up the movement values don't actually hit that much harder than any other katana???

Rogier's Rapier - Honorable mention, it's more of a dex weapon, but I used it for some time before I got some of the other weapons. I no longer use it, but honestly? It's very good, even outside of Glintblade Phalanx. Another weapon with great R2s.

Troll Knight's Sword - It's fine. It's not as strong as I was hoping, it's probably the weakest weapon on this list tbh, but it's perfectly fine in midgame. It's kind of a worse Zweihander? If the follow up to the WA didn't take one thousand years to come out it would be better. I'm probably going to stop using this one past Leyndell.

Great Mace - the only non Somber weapon I'm rocking at the moment, Cold infused with Waves of Darkness. I did not expect to get this weapon at first, but as soon as I did, I knew it was going on the list. Love it. Waves of Darkness is strong, a very strong Ash of War, but even outside of that the BONK on this weapon feels excellent.

Royal Greatsword - the weapon I have the least experience with atm, I've only been using it for like 2 hours now. Surprisingly actually does a lot of damage, I think this weapon with my current stats hits the hardest out of all of them. I think that will change later on as I go into the endgame, but right now it's great. I like the WA, but I don't like how you can't seem to cancel out of the first part of it, unless I'm doing it wrong. I can easily see situations where you can die using this WA.

My INT is only 25, and I expect it to remain at 25 for a long time, so I don't think I can do justice to any of the spells I'm using enough to comment about them. Except Cannon of Haima. Cannon doesn't do as much damage as I know it can do right now, but even so it's still a blast to use. I'm using the Carian Glintstone Staff right now, but I might switch to the Academy Staff as I'm not using as much of the Carian sword sorceries as I thought that I would. Even so, I don't think it would make a significant difference so I'll probably just keep using the former.

royals greatsword is plenty of fun in pve spamming the aow. the aow locks you into a long animation, so probably not great for pvp. i had a lot of fun killing bosses with it. it was especially fun spamming the aow against malekith and beating him in a battle of flashy jumping giant sword attacks

Slanderer
May 6, 2007
Just learned (from posts a few pages back) about the pre-festival Redmane Castle. In the past I had seen mentions of triggering the festival, but I had no clue that the place was (slightly) more fleshed out at the start of the game, since I never saw that in 2.5 playthroughs. I even realized I could go back and get the Ruins Greatsword but I had no clue that was supposed to drop from going there before the festival. I had been trashing that location as been "unfinished" and I was totally wrong!

That said, it's a lovely "legacy dungeon", if it's meant to be one. I still wonder if they had grander designs for it, because it's still kinda...nothing.

IncendiaC
Sep 25, 2011
Redmane is supposed to be more of a Castle Morne/Castle Sol/Caria Manor type mini-dungeon than a full fledged Legacy dungeon. The only true Legacy dungeons are Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Volcano Manor, Leyndell, Farum Azula, and Haligtree.

Nokron and Deeproot technically pass the “several sites of grace and a miniboss somewhere in the middle” test but they’re also not considered Legacy dungeons.

Doomykins
Jun 28, 2008

Didn't you mean to ask about flowers?
Redmane and the other fort in Caelid have formidable, dangerous approaches and gauntlets. The other fort has the jackass with the magic greatbow artillery for example. Combined with Caelid itself being Red Hell I think the entire area is a kickin' legacy dungeon experience. Also Sellia, so that's two mid-tier dungeons!

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
I think my favorite dungeony bit of Caelid was the tower, but Sellia was cool too, yeah

The Berzerker
Feb 24, 2006

treat me like a dog


After I did all of the endings last year I started trying challenge runs (mostly restrictive on weapons, I also did a boring bow run) but I've decided to see what it's like to try a very overtuned Sword of Night and Flame run, as I've never used it.

Grabbed the Morning Star and some blood grease, and beelined for the old 100k rune dragon - dumped those into INT and FTH (less in FTH because I also grabbed the talisman). Grabbed somber stones up to 5 or 6, tons of golden seeds and sacred tears, and other stuff as I zipped around, and now I'm back in Limgrave demolishing everything. Having two weapon arts in this thing feels so unfair, I love it. I'm also going to hit most of the summoning pools, I've barely done any coop in Elden Ring so I figured I'd try it out and see how it goes. Is it just level based, or weapon upgrade level based, both?

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.

IncendiaC posted:

Redmane is supposed to be more of a Castle Morne/Castle Sol/Caria Manor type mini-dungeon than a full fledged Legacy dungeon. The only true Legacy dungeons are Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Volcano Manor, Leyndell, Farum Azula, and Haligtree.

Nokron and Deeproot technically pass the “several sites of grace and a miniboss somewhere in the middle” test but they’re also not considered Legacy dungeons.

I don't think it was supposed to be that, I think its just how it ended up, probably because of development constraints. Part of the issue is that every other open world region lead into at least one very large dungeon that feels like a real capstone of the whole region so Caelid comes across as the weakest link in that regard.

Nokron and Deeproot are more their own distinct thing that don't neatly fit into the open world/legacy dungeon formula in the rest of the game, but I think you could still make an argument there that the underground portion where you have access to Torrent is the 'open world' section (ie Siofra river) and then the rest of it like Nokron and the lake of rot fit more into the legacy dungeon mould. At the very least these areas have way more visual variation than any of the other places that could be considered legacy dungeons

Doomykins posted:

Redmane and the other fort in Caelid have formidable, dangerous approaches and gauntlets. The other fort has the jackass with the magic greatbow artillery for example. Combined with Caelid itself being Red Hell I think the entire area is a kickin' legacy dungeon experience. Also Sellia, so that's two mid-tier dungeons!

They're ok, but I feel like the other forts in Caelid are more along the lines of something like Haight's fort or Fort Laiedd in Limgrave and Mt Gelmir, fairly small overall. The other regions tend to have one large secondary dungeon in addition to the main legacy dungeon, Limgrave has Castle Morne, Liurnia has Caria Manor, Altus Plateau has the Shaded Castle and the Mountaintop of the Giants has Castle Sol. In Caelid the only thing on that level is really Castle Redmane, and I think Caelid doesn't have a Hero grave either.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

khwarezm posted:

They're ok, but I feel like the other forts in Caelid are more along the lines of something like Haight's fort or Fort Laiedd in Limgrave and Mt Gelmir, fairly small overall. The other regions tend to have one large secondary dungeon in addition to the main legacy dungeon, Limgrave has Castle Morne, Liurnia has Caria Manor, Altus Plateau has the Shaded Castle and the Mountaintop of the Giants has Castle Sol. In Caelid the only thing on that level is really Castle Redmane, and I think Caelid doesn't have a Hero grave either.

The secondary "castle" in Caelid is Sellia. It is larger then castle Sol or Shaded Castle.

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Caelid is weird because it's the most visually distinct and interesting looking part of the world yet you can skip it completely and still finish the game.

It's also weird because large parts of it are scaled harder than anything outside the Mountaintops but you can accidentally get stranded there from probably the first chest you ever open.

khwarezm
Oct 26, 2010

Deal with it.

VictualSquid posted:

The secondary "castle" in Caelid is Sellia. It is larger then castle Sol or Shaded Castle.

I think that's too open, it's more like the windmill village or the frenzied flaming tower and their surroundings (all three let you run around on Torrent).

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
There’s a couple of villages around. Frenzy towns in Weeping and Liurnia, demihuman village section on Gelmir, Jarburg, Albinauric. Sellia and Ordina are like the vertical version of the concept I guess

ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe

IncendiaC posted:

Redmane is supposed to be more of a Castle Morne/Castle Sol/Caria Manor type mini-dungeon than a full fledged Legacy dungeon. The only true Legacy dungeons are Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, Volcano Manor, Leyndell, Farum Azula, and Haligtree.

Nokron and Deeproot technically pass the “several sites of grace and a miniboss somewhere in the middle” test but they’re also not considered Legacy dungeons.

As someone who only played a bit of Dark Souls 1, and no other FromSoft games, I can easily say that feeling of delving into a dangerous Dungeon is what Elden Ring does best. It's not what it's known for amongst souls like players, but to me that's where the game hits its highest.

I felt surprised you listed Volcano Manor amongst the dungeons but realize I took Rya as the way in, so I may have skipped most of it. Nokron (minus the ancestral woods, why was that put there?), Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, and Leyndell were all top notch experiences, and are probably what saved the game for me, aside from some of the boss fights. The crypts were very cool, but I ended up saving most of them until the end, so it turned into a pretty repetitive experience. Farum Azula, and Haligtree felt pretty lousy, since most of what I ended up doing was running past dudes because there so tedious to fight.

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Goatson
Oct 21, 2020

The real 12 points was the Thug-Friends we made along the way

ninjoatse.cx posted:

As someone who only played a bit of Dark Souls 1, and no other FromSoft games, I can easily say that feeling of delving into a dangerous Dungeon is what Elden Ring does best. It's not what it's known for amongst souls like players, but to me that's where the game hits its highest.

I felt surprised you listed Volcano Manor amongst the dungeons but realize I took Rya as the way in, so I may have skipped most of it. Nokron (minus the ancestral woods, why was that put there?), Stormveil, Raya Lucaria, and Leyndell were all top notch experiences, and are probably what saved the game for me, aside from some of the boss fights. The crypts were very cool, but I ended up saving most of them until the end, so it turned into a pretty repetitive experience. Farum Azula, and Haligtree felt pretty lousy, since most of what I ended up doing was running past dudes because there so tedious to fight.

There is Volcano Manor for recusant tourists. Couple of npcs selling nothing particular

and then there's the real volcano manor with the locals partying on rooftops and having a barbecue next to the lava pits.

Sounds familiar?

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