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I explored a bit more, getting vigor to 30 and got a longsword to +15, picked up flame strike, equipped frenzied burst and stopped charging lightning spear. I absolutely devastated leyndale last night, now that I got that sweet raging wolf set I'm plowing thru volcano manor. Also lannaeispcja the ancient dragon was annoying. I think they were easier on my ugs dude because I didn't insist on mounted combat(never fought lansiciahflvu the ancient dragon on my first playthru, only the ones in farum azula). Wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't literally one shot me. Really torn between pumping vigor or faith, on one hand I feel like sub 40 on my main damage stat is bad and should be priority, on the other hand just getting vigor to 30 made such a big difference. Straight sword FEELS week because its so fast and small and its always the weapon I start with and trade out of right away in these games, but it really is stronk. I'll always have a fondness for the claymore, tho (never my main it seems but always my fallback). I GOT THE GODSKIN APOSTLE ON MY FIRST TRY. While on the phone, for some reason that is the trick
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Oct 25, 2023 17:45
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If something kills you in one hit, pump vigor. You're better off not dying and using your estus while limply hitting an enemy vs. dying and not having any chance to heal.
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Oct 25, 2023 18:02
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Eerkik posted:I explored a bit more, getting vigor to 30 and got a longsword to +15, picked up flame strike, equipped frenzied burst and stopped charging lightning spear. I absolutely devastated leyndale last night, now that I got that sweet raging wolf set I'm plowing thru volcano manor. Straight Swords are very strong and about as unique and fun as the class can be in Elden Ring, but I always end up with a colossal sword or great hammer of some type and keep the sword as a lightweight specialist, usually with Sacred Blade for undead. The attack speed really synergizes well with the free flat +fire damage weapon buff you can get with flaming strike, but of course we all know the real benefit is how much cooler the weapon looks. Envoy's Long Horn solves dragons for me, I always level one up for that reason. Well it solves everything truth be told but I save it for fights I just generally don't like or am sick of (like dragons) because if you're just skipping every fight then what's the point You're about at the point where I usually start putting points into my damage stat beyond the bare minimum, but I usually also have 45+ vigor by the end of Leyndell so that's still a good priority. Vigor is one of the best damage stats, both because you do more damage when you're still alive and because you can start working in trades if you have the poise for it.
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Oct 25, 2023 18:08
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Eerkik posted:Really torn between pumping vigor or faith, on one hand I feel like sub 40 on my main damage stat is bad and should be priority, on the other hand just getting vigor to 30 made such a big difference. Vigor should be priority, unless you’re trying to meet the requirement to equip something. The primary source of damage is almost always weapon upgrade level and not stat scaling. Damage stat scaling is good, but it gets better the more upgraded your weapon is, because upgrading weapons both improves their base damage and their scaling percentage. A guy with 40 vigor and base required stats for anything+15 will have much more staying power in a fight than a guy who put those levels into the damage stat instead: yes, the second guy will do more damage per hit, but only a couple points more per level. Those levels aren’t wasted, the value will only increase as the weapon levels up, but at the same time, a guy with 40 vigor has at least 3 times the health of a guy with 10. If you have a couple larval tears you can test the change in damage for yourself by going to Rennala for a re-spec.
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Oct 25, 2023 18:11
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I grabbed Grafted Blade Greatsword early, put all my levels in STR and DEX til I could wield it two-handed and it's carried me easily up to and through Raya Lucaria (I'm now level 45). gently caress-off huge sword too good
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Oct 25, 2023 18:21
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I have been using the starter uchigatana the whole game and I’m currently in the Academy. Is it viable for the whole game like the DS1 version? The
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Oct 25, 2023 20:45
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axolotl farmer posted:I have been using the starter uchigatana the whole game and I’m currently in the Academy. Yes, and you can find a second one in a limgrave catacomb.
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Oct 25, 2023 20:51
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U-DO Burger posted:I treasure each and every FromSoftware platforming section Mods ? Is this sick filth allowed ?! axolotl farmer posted:I have been using the starter uchigatana the whole game and I’m currently in the Academy. Most definitely. If you started as Samurai (and thus got a free one on char creation) you can even loot a second one in a relatively early catacomb on the Lirmgrave plateau next to the foot of the giant-rear end bridge for sick dual-wielding action. Next up is getting that bleed weapon art from the castle in SE Lirmgrave, duplicate it (the merchant on the beach of the Weeping Peninsula to the south will sell you what you need), affix it to both and enchant with blood. Voilà, you have an endgame-viable build - although at that point be sure to up Arcane over Dex, it's a bit counter-intuitive but not only will it scale your weapon damage as well as Dex, you'll do ridiculously fast bleed procs. They've toned it down from launch, but it's still pretty naff. Oh, you'll also need to keep a flail handy and upgraded to deal with stone trolls, miners, starbeasts and other "only vulnerable to smash" enemies. Luckily there's one in the very first soldier camp, and that one too is pretty much servicable till endgame. Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Oct 25, 2023 |
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Oct 25, 2023 22:44
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axolotl farmer posted:I have been using the starter uchigatana the whole game and I’m currently in the Academy. Any weapon you have the stats for is viable for the whole game, except for your bare fists. You probably want to branch out a bit to deal with enemies that resist slash and bleed, and/or are highly dependent on you poise-breaking them. I would also suggest having a more multi-faceted or high-impact strategy for late-game bosses. Your ability to have multiple weapons up to the highest upgrade level is more constrained than I like for regular smithing stone weapons until the very end of the game, and somber weapons are locked at +6 until you can pass one of three roadblock bosses and pick up a level 7 (at which point you can immediately raise it to +10, because you can grab 8 & 9 without fighting anything from your arrival in Limgrave except a scarab that contains the 8, and the Ancient Dragon one can be got by following Varre's questline, which requires a few invasions that don't have to be successful or killing an NPC by invading their world via a sign in Altus, but otherwise doesn't ask much).
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Oct 25, 2023 23:17
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Here's a trick for getting several early Somber 7's: there are a handful of non-respawning Fingercreepers outside of the Dung Eater's sewers prison. Each are eligible to drop a Somber 7, but you can increase their drop rate by popping a silver-pickled fowl foot before fighting them. You can usually get at least one of them from the pack. And it's a relatively straightforward run towards that location, and you can advance an NPC quest at the same time. It does require killing 2 shardbearers and the draconic tree sentinel though.
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Oct 25, 2023 23:36
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Yeah you can bee line it past those Omens and the Rats and the Miranda Blossoms completely untouched.
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Oct 26, 2023 00:10
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Eerkik posted:Really torn between pumping vigor or faith, on one hand I feel like sub 40 on my main damage stat is bad and should be priority, on the other hand just getting vigor to 30 made such a big difference. It can't be overstated that Vigor actually gives greater and greater HP gains every point up to 40. (And keep in mind other HP bonuses are percentage based, so those get even better too.) The mid to late game is pretty explicitly balanced around you having at least 40. The real question with Vigor is 40 vs. 60, though that shouldn't be a pressing concern until you're moving into the endgame.
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Oct 26, 2023 02:26
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High Vigor is very clearly better than low Vigor. The gains in HP are so stark and obvious that you need a special kind of brain to insist on not levelling it up. The only really obscure mechanic is equipment load and absorption. It's easy to dismiss armor as useless, and that each point of absorption you accrue appears to have diminishing returns. Not true. Absorption is percentage damage reduction, so each point of DR you get is more extended HP. With heavy armor (not even Bullgoat's) and a full 60 vigor, you can tank a surprisingly high number of attacks from endgame bosses and enemies. Not facetank levels, but enough that you have much more wiggle room to learn the fight. This dynamic is most obvious in Lies of P, which has much harder HP scaling, but on the other hand has much high DR scaling. That is a game where you absolutely want to level your equipment load to always wear the heaviest defense parts you manage.
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Oct 26, 2023 03:05
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Get your fake bloodborne outta her3
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Oct 26, 2023 03:10
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verbal enema posted:Get your fake bloodborne outta her3 I dunno this guy claims to be an Elden Lord maybe we should give him a chance
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Oct 26, 2023 03:16
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Modal Auxiliary posted:I dunno this guy claims to be an Elden Lord maybe we should give him a chance Nah sorry he a chump
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Oct 26, 2023 03:18
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:It does require killing 2 shardbearers and the draconic tree sentinel though. DTS was one of the roadblocks I mentioned, the others being Godskin Noble in Volcano Manor and Valiant Gargoyles in Nokron (which also requires Radahn, but gives you a bunch of 7s in Deeproot).
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Oct 26, 2023 03:34
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axolotl farmer posted:I have been using the starter uchigatana the whole game and I’m currently in the Academy. Looking forward to possibly being able to respec, I already have one of the things but I don't remember how. Also Demon's Souls is 50% off on PSN, I am trying to resist.
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Oct 26, 2023 03:41
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Weeping is really cool and has tons of good loot for like every build, highly recommend it, and yeah you'll know the academy when you see it
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Oct 26, 2023 03:44
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Just being an incredibly angry person truckking along with 25 vig 40 str 15 DeX Oh what have I done myself? Again! Ty grafted Greatsword tho
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Oct 26, 2023 03:49
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If I put points into vigor instead of endurance I can't dress up my guy however I want. How is everyone getting around that?
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Oct 26, 2023 05:03
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Perry Mason Jar posted:If I put points into vigor instead of endurance I can't dress up my guy however I want. How is everyone getting around that? Lighter weapons. Arsenal Talisman. Taking off my pants/helmet.
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Oct 26, 2023 07:18
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Perry Mason Jar posted:If I put points into vigor instead of endurance I can't dress up my guy however I want. How is everyone getting around that? Grinding until I have both high af. 
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Oct 26, 2023 10:37
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Perry Mason Jar posted:If I put points into vigor instead of endurance I can't dress up my guy however I want. How is everyone getting around that? Great Pot Arsenal charm, finishing the game around 125-150, leveling END early anyway, my fashion is medium armor instead of heavy, great stars are only 10 weight.
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Oct 26, 2023 10:42
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verbal enema posted:Nah sorry he a chump im gonna body slam you and your getting one shot because you have no vigor nor absorption
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Oct 26, 2023 10:45
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Like 25 or so END is all you need to wear medium-heavy armor and get 100+ poise, you don't need to stack it up high unlike DS3.
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Oct 26, 2023 10:46
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I went 50 end and arsenal charm on my last character so I could use use a decent loadout with light roll and it worked out pretty well, that extra mobility really helped out in a few fights like Malenia and Radagon
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Oct 26, 2023 10:51
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Paracelsus posted:Any weapon you have the stats for is viable for the whole game, except for your bare fists. You probably want to branch out a bit to deal with enemies that resist slash and bleed, and/or are highly dependent on you poise-breaking them. I would also suggest having a more multi-faceted or high-impact strategy for late-game bosses. I honestly hate the way From does weapon upgrades. DS1-3, Bloodborne, Elden, it's all annoying. It's not like having 15 upgraded weapons gives you a massive advantage over just the 2-3 and one or two special ones. You can only wield the two. In practice you're married to a couple weapons you like from the early game, or you restart a run and beeline this or that thing you've found and find awesome. They should just dole out MacGuffins that say "now you can upgrade to +2 !" and from then on all of your weapons can be upgraded to +2. Tweak the soul cost if you'd like to keep things in line from a powercreep standpoint. That or level up a MacGuffin that you can move from weapon to weapon. That or just do it like Sekiro and... don't have weapon upgrades at all. Just movesets, arts and damage types. Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Oct 26, 2023 |
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Oct 26, 2023 13:55
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Kobal2 posted:I honestly hate the way From does weapon upgrades. DS1-3, Bloodborne, Elden, it's all annoying. It's not like having 15 upgraded weapons gives you a massive advantage over just the 2-3 and one or two special ones. You can only wield the two. In practice you're married to a couple weapons you like from the early game, or you restart a run and beeline this or that thing you've found and find awesome. The Elden Ring upgrade system is really annoying to people who Just Play, but it's an interesting puzzle to people who Make Builds and Do Runs.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:03
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Ehhh I don’t know. I have Made Builds and Done Runs and the interesting part happens mostly after some more or less boring frontloaded stuff that virtually every character wants to do. I don’t really love the idea of further simplifying the upgrade system since they’ve already sanded it down hugely from DeS or even DS1…but I wish there were more, and more convenient, places to get stones, or ideally the opportunity to procgen level-appropriate dungeons like Bloodborne chalices. I’ve spent enough time in the Limgrave/Raya Lucaria mines at this point.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:22
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I definitely got stuck without any... I think Smithing 3s when I was Just Playing. Eventually had to look up where to farm them when I realized I had a bunch of 4s I couldn't use on anything. With the giant world it's not too hard to fall into that kind of trap. I do like that they ditched armor upgrades from DS1, though - I recall it was both tedious and fairly pointless.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:30
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A lot of the previous complexity was just fiddly and didn't actually result in any interesting decisions for the player to make. Complexity isn't interesting unless it results in a player being able to make satisfying choices.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:51
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Kobal2 posted:I honestly hate the way From does weapon upgrades. DS1-3, Bloodborne, Elden, it's all annoying. It's not like having 15 upgraded weapons gives you a massive advantage over just the 2-3 and one or two special ones. You can only wield the two. In practice you're married to a couple weapons you like from the early game, or you restart a run and beeline this or that thing you've found and find awesome. Sekiro does have attack upgrades but they are for beating bosses which is a good thing imo.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:52
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Omnomnomnivore posted:I definitely got stuck without any... I think Smithing 3s when I was Just Playing. Eventually had to look up where to farm them when I realized I had a bunch of 4s I couldn't use on anything. With the giant world it's not too hard to fall into that kind of trap. Its pretty noticeable in Elden Ring in particular. For example, I think a lot of the 7 and 8 stones you can find are underground, which you can skip entirely.
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Oct 26, 2023 15:57
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Bug Squash posted:A lot of the previous complexity was just fiddly and didn't actually result in any interesting decisions for the player to make. Complexity isn't interesting unless it results in a player being able to make satisfying choices. The present upgrade system doesn’t result in interesting decisions either. You can go to the level appropriate mines or you can look up where to find stones as loot. Or you can do neither and run around with crap weapons hoping to find the sixth smithing stone+3 you need to un-roadblock your damage. I’m not gonna spend time defending the DeS weapon upgrade system, because it’s insane. But Elden Ring’s isn’t more fun, it’s just usually less annoying. All the actual interesting choices are in the ash of war system, which is independent of it.
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Oct 26, 2023 16:03
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Kobal2 posted:I honestly hate the way From does weapon upgrades. DS1-3, Bloodborne, Elden, it's all annoying. It's not like having 15 upgraded weapons gives you a massive advantage over just the 2-3 and one or two special ones. You can only wield the two. In practice you're married to a couple weapons you like from the early game, or you restart a run and beeline this or that thing you've found and find awesome. This is one of the areas where DS2 was the best DS. The weapons took fewer shards to upgrade each level, the world was more generously salted with them, there were fewer upgrade levels, and you got access to a vendor that sold unlimited large shards very early. You had to be a bit more selective with twinkling titanite and especially petrified dragon bone, but for most weapons it was easy to have a large arsenal at useful upgrade levels so experimentation was low-risk.
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Oct 26, 2023 16:47
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CommonShore posted:The Elden Ring upgrade system is really annoying to people who Just Play, but it's an interesting puzzle to people who Make Builds and Do Runs. Which I guess is fine and dandy in DS1 which, even Just Playing is a 40h game or something. But Elden Ring is loving *massive* and your first run of it, trying to see and find everything and kill every boss before you either do NG+ or Do A Run, can easily break the three digits (hell, I'm 140h in and I still haven't finished Leyndel !) so the "one hundred billion super cool weapons available but you get to pick 3, forever. Sorry." is aggravating. All the more so with the respec system ! It's super easy to completely turn your build around mid Just Playing but woops, now none of your weapons work and you have to grind poo poo just to get your new ones to subpar ! Silly. Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Oct 26, 2023 |
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Oct 26, 2023 18:10
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I never found smithing stones to be much of an obstacle since you can eventually just buy them, I was mostly put off trying different weapons by stat requirements. Like ooh the dark moon greatsword, looks amazing! Oh I have to pump points into a stat I haven't touched all game. I eventually ran out of respecs because I kept respeccing to try new weapons without paying attention. Hopefully the DLC gives some more respec mats
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Oct 26, 2023 18:36
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In ER you can get just about every single weapon up to +9 or +24 with 8 +10 and 13 +25 - tons of room.
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Oct 26, 2023 18:41
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Vintersorg posted:In ER you can get just about every single weapon up to +9 or +24 with 8 +10 and 13 +25 - tons of room. Once you're done with Farum Azula, sure. Until then?
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Oct 26, 2023 18:53
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