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John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
So before I go and waste even more time on it, what's a good time for Fringefolk Hero's Grave? I've got 32 Vigor, 22 Strength, +3 weapons. The vibe I get is that it's probably doable at this point but still potentially frustrating.

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John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Esme posted:

If you can comfortably do Liurnia dungeons then Fringefolk shouldn’t be a problem.

Well, let's put it this way, that doesn't mean anything to me yet. :v:

Though I should really go suicide run for the talisman at the very least.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
So before going back to Fringefolk Grave I decided to randomly double check the minor tree in Limgrave because I couldn't shake the feeling I had missed something there. And technically, I did. The well. :aaaaa: :wtf:

Cleared that out, including the boss, then went and cleaned out Fringefolk. I can see why people don't like that boss type. Loved the time it comboed from its grab right back into a second grab. Still managed to get it second try though. Which is very much my usual pattern in Souls games so that bodes well.

What doesn't bode well is that the game locked up real hard when I tried to warp out of a dungeon. One of those lovely "hard shut down my PC because I can't interact with any windows properly" ones.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 30, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Cripes is Stormveil Castle just an endless fractal of secret side paths. I went back earlier today because I remembered I never figured out my way to the tease loot along the ascent up the outer wall. Turns out I mostly just forgot about a rather obvious side path, and I'm glad I checked because Brick Hammer. :swoon: Then just now I remembered I never figured out what was up with the tower elevator, which I just went and looked up and I'm kind of glad I did instead of trying to puzzle it out myself. But then in the process of doing that, I also realized I never figured out the deal with the all the rooftop loot, and nabbing those ended up leading to another goddamn hidden side area with a talisman no less.

On the one hand, it's truly impressive, but on the other hand it's kind of driving me nuts how tightly nested some of this stuff is.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Re: Spirit Ashes. I've been rather fond of the horned warrior dude I got from Siofra River. Really solid ranged potential that tends to gently caress up anything with bad poise, and can scrap in melee if anything closes in. And he heals off of kills so on the off chance he picks something off himself he lasts longer.

Re: Smithing stones. At the very, very start of the game it seems like they'll be rare as can be, but basically anywhere you look in the early game there will be level 1 stones pre-placed and the basic knights all have a chance to drop them as well. Once you find a mine or two you'll have more early upgrade materials than you'll know what to do with. In short, level 1 stones are crazy plentiful, 2s a bit less so, and then at least in my experience level 3s are where the bottleneck starts to hit. But it also depends on what order you do things in. People with more experience might be able to clear this up for me: I've gone up to Liurnia first and it's got 4s and 5s showing up as secrets/rewards/etc. but it seems like you're more likely to find 2s and 3s over in Caelid? I looked it up like a lot of things with Liurnia there's a decent number of 3s out there, but they're just awkwardly spread out and/or stashed away.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Feb 7, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
At this point if I'm tasked with jumping down tomb stones, I get off Torrent and do it on foot.

I also really wish they made the interact radius on Torrent just the tiniest bit more forgiving. You can harvest materials from miles away, but trying to read a message requires ridiculously precise placement. And yet items don't feel like they're that slippery most the time. :shrug:

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Figured I should double-check, though I'm pretty sure the answer is no: I've already reached Altus Plateau and have been running around doing stuff (mostly Mt. Gelmir) up there. Would running over to the Leyndell outskirts to grab :love: the Giant Crusher :love: break any NPC stuff? There's no additional progress check to get over there or anything right? (And yes I know actually grabbing it involves...additional steps, let's say.)

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Epic High Five posted:

Decided to try out invasions and the 2nd one was some guy right before a really annoying grace to get to and I just didn't have the heart to kill them despite them not even being able to get a hit in on me, so I dropped some soap and waved before severing instead. I think I may not be cut out for invasions, I'm too much of a sunbro :(

I need to make a non-combat invasion guy who just drops stuff or FASHION POLICE to rates fashion with items

I've pondered the potential of ending up in other people's worlds just to spam Y O U ' R E B E A U T I F U L at them.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Sicko alert: The more ulcerated tree spirits I fight the less I mind them. The way they can near-instantly go into explosion mode at random or chain grab you is not ideal, but otherwise I do really well against them.

Meanwhile I find Avatars...not difficult but kind of annoying. And starspawn are a way messier and obnoxious boss type by far.

Magma wyrms are mostly just tedious particularly if their AI goes overboard on the lava puke.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Feb 12, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Darth Walrus posted:

The useful thing about Ulcerated Tree Spirits is that once you filter out all their mad wriggling, their actual attacks are relatively slow, infrequent, and well-telegraphed. They're easy bait for guard counters, and even their mid-fight nuke attack has a significant telegraph if you know what to look out for. The Tree Spirit coils in on itself into a rough cone shape, then starts glowing before going boom.

Yeah, this is why I don't find them to be too bad. They're big wriggly bastards but they do have actual body language and most of what they do is actually still readable on-screen despite their size. I basically just run up to their unprotected belly from the side and dodge the occasional claw swipe or tail whip while going to town on them. The head slam comes out a bit faster, but it's still telegraphed and you can just...not stand directly under its head. (And if you are in the right spot you can still bait it out and make it leave itself vulnerable for ages afterwards.) The grab is specifically preceded by them squirming away and doing the Midir "I'm about to eat you" roar so it's obvious when that's about to go down. Literally my only issue is that sometimes they can go straight into the nuke fast enough that getting away is a crapshoot (or the equally realistic problem, you're fighting one of the first two in the game where you don't get a lot of space to maneuver and can be backed into a corner). But even in the early game it was never enough to totally wreck me if I ate a hit from it due to over-committing.

SlimGoodbody posted:

Depending on when you stumble into that place, he can go from a sweaty fight to a downright brick wall. You're in a cramped little room and he can hit hard, fast, and at frightening distances. If I recall, the move was too stick on him and get behind him as often as possible, because he has no trouble hitting you anywhere in the room, but you can only melee him from arm's length, so putting space between you only helps him. He took me several tries as well. Good luck, skeleton.

I think what really cranks up the bastardness is that even if you lodge yourself right up his rear end, he'll just bust out the shield slam to punish you that way. It's still better than being anywhere else in the room though.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Feb 13, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Cripes, fully exploring Leyndell is going to be a bit of a project.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

CJacobs posted:

Just before I commit to an ending, there's conflicting information on the various wiki's I could use help on- You can undo the Three Fingers affliction, and once you do that, you're again eligible for any other ending you like, correct? I'm just exploring the most options I can because I love this game and its world and don't want to lock myself into one ending if possible.

Yeah, basically AFAIK every other ending can be unlocked well in advance, simultaneously and it all boils down to which one you pick at the very end.

Frenzied Flame is the singular exception and it locks you out from the rest. Reversing it is permanent and takes weird steps because it was patched in after the fact IIRC.I

Also apparently there's actually a minor variation to it depending on when you get fingered.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
The Forbidden Lands really didn't need to be capped off with yet another goddamn boss fight. Especially when combined with all the optional ones you can hit while going through and out of Leyndell on top. The game's pacing is a mess right now.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
The first time through Caelid tower, I wasn't even convinced that stupid sconce was the legitimate way down.

Oblique Angle posted:

Probably means the mega-gargoyle in front of the lift up to the mountaintops. Good news is you can ride right past him if you want, probably not a bad idea since he's a giant rear end in a top hat.

Yeah, the gargoyle. Though it doesn't really scream optional. If anything that convinces me all the more that this phase of the game is a nexus of rewrites/cuts/rearranging in the usual messy Fromsoft style.

The funny thing is, this isn't a complaint about difficulty. My build has reached a point where I'm chumping bosses pretty hard. Possibly because the Roundtable Guide has sent me to do various things earlier than strictly necessary.

Which on that note, there's at least one baffling step on the list - they say to fight the Twin Gargoyles noticeably early just for the sake of unlocking their grace to warp back to later. :psyduck: I still pulled out a W on the first try, but unless I'm missing something there's literally no reason you have to knock them out right away. The next nearest grace isn't even that far away.

Mikojan posted:

I'm on Maliketh and got the first grace in the haligtree. I've been 100%ing every zone so far and feeling a bit burned out. This is my problem with open world games. I feel compelled to do and get absolutely everything and by the end I just want te get it over with.

It doesn't help that limgrave was my favorite zone and every other zone after that felt a bit bland, apart from the lake and maybe volcano manor.

Ironically, I've loved the open world exploration and its largely the legacy dungeons that burn me out. Stormveil is a rat's nest of paths and Leyndell feels endless, especially if you include the sewers. And the sewer's very own catacomb because why not. (And it's one of the mindscrew ones to boot.)

Raya Lucaria was a surprise because it's shorter and less complicated by far. I also thought hunting down the key was a good touch and connected the open world and dungeoneering aspects in a way the rest of the game largely hasn't.

Well, also burnt out due to some of the shittier technically open world areas. Deeproot Depths sucks.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
In fairness, some of it is clearly a me thing because ADHD and long marathon sessions, but basically I feel like latter-era From's map design sometimes has a tendency to fractalize in a way that's mentally exhausting to keep track of. Doubly so if my mental bandwidth is being used up by trying not to die. I was stuck in Leyndell at one point because I was trying to find the Seedbed Curse and I knew for a fact that it was in an obvious early area and it turned out that I had completely forgotten the ladder going up, because that building already has like 2-3 other exits and alternate paths to worry about and a bunch of Perfumers which at the time were a bit of a threat.

Though even then Stormveil is especially weird with things like the tower elevator only existing to support a secret side path rather than being a central shortcut back to a grace. In earlier games it totally would've been. Or how a couple of the rampart side paths just kind of terminate without really leading to anything significant. I figured disarming the welcoming committee (actually more specifically the second phase welcoming committee with the exploding bolts) would reveal something significant but I think there's just some plants up there.

Edit: Also I fibbed earlier because I remembered the one bad part of Raya Lucaria, the platforming across the rooftops and belltower stuff. That was pretty bad and to hell with any alternate paths that require A) extensive platforming and B) split off in such a way where you have to make multiple trips. I did one jaunt across the ones in Leyndell and then said to hell with it.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 16, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
I'm pretty sure I had better performance on phase 1 of Rykard stubbornly hacking away at him with my regular weapon than on the second try actually using the spear.

I probably should've just combined both techniques and embraced the hot tub. Too late to test that now tho.

Edit: I continue to not be a fan of the wind weapon boss gimmick stuff, but at least unlike DS3 they both give you the weapon BEFORE the boss fight starts and it's not a loving puzzle to figure out how to actually use the drat thing.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Feb 17, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Vermain posted:

deeproot is flatly impossible without actual tree magic holding it all together, anything with a ceiling that high down that deep in the earth would've collapsed into rubble well before people started building ruins into it

Interestingly enough, as per Tarnished Archaeologist, it's possible Deeproot's city was originally the chunk of Leyndell that's now a moat. So apparently tree magic wasn't enough. :v:

Though maybe it was their own fault for building ruins in the first place.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
He'll also drop it if you kill him at any point. Otherwise, there's one ash of war you probably won't use and a warhammer for non-spell rewards.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
That's a Banished Knight, I think. The key difference is that Banished Knights are merely assholes, whereas Crucible Knights are total fuckfaces. :v:

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

BigDumper posted:

I think I’m overleveled, I just clowned on the Fire Giant and beat him on my first try. Granted I did bring Alexander along for the ride, but it was significantly easier than I thought it would be. I’m level 130 but I haven’t really done any grinding, I’ve just been exploring as much as I can. Fighting all the smaller bosses seems to be paying massive dividends, I definitely recommend doing that instead of rushing to the main bosses.

It's hard to gauge what is being overleveled in this game. I was in the exact same position, maybe even a few levels higher, and yeah Fire Giant really isn't so bad.

I cringe whenever I see clips of people with absolutely tiny health bars run in and get one shot.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

CommonShore posted:

I just really enjoyed bringing the different structures up and finding the pathways through it and then dealing with the stuff that lives on the new structures. It's an oddly satisfying three-dimensional environment, and the rot is much more consequential than the surface swamp because of the lack of torrent, so you really need to interact with it in some way.

I wouldn't say it's my absolute favorite, but I do agree that it's a really cool area and a nice change of pace in the half of the game that really needs more changes of pace.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Wow, the contrast between the parts of Elphael that are simplistic and straightforward and the parts where the designers just decided to be total assholes.

It's incredibly, fantastically rare that I claim something in a From game straight up feels like it got zero playtesting, but Elphael has pushed me to that point multiple times.

Edit: In general the second half of the game has had all these out of nowhere difficulty spikes. And it's not a matter of stats - I've been at soft-capped vigor and strength for a while. In fact I'm literally at the point where I don't know what to put points into anymore.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Feb 20, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Angry Diplomat posted:

Elphael is an optional end-/postgame area designed, at least in part, as a love letter to the Great Hollow and Anor Londo. It is intentionally malicious and forces you to either approach problems laterally or git really, really gud. It rules imo

Except for the parts where there's just basic rear end knights milling around that die as easily as anything else at this point in the game. The lack of consistency is part of the problem.

Edit: Oh, on top of the intended challenges being some real horseshit, you also have a number of spots that feel unintentional and broken. The outer ring Avatar can aggro onto you if it's at that end of the map when you go climbing the elevator tower, turning the ladder into a deathtrap because it will just endlessly spam lasers. That's also the elevator that (beyond not feeling like it needs to exist in the first place) you could originally activate early by throwing your imminent corpse down onto the button and skip most of the level. Helping Millicent feels completely RNG as to whether or not she dies instantly in part because you awkwardly spawn away from her with one sister automatically locked onto you before you even make it out of the summon animation. (I then also had to play games going back and reloading the area multiple times to progress her poo poo, but I mostly blame the Roundtable Guide for glossing over that information.)

Also when you're fighting the second (of what, like six?) Revenants down in Revenant Alley it can draw the attention of the room above full of Haligtree and Rot Knights, forcing you to deal with them as they funnel down the ladder that seems to solely exist for their benefit. Which makes me think it's another intentional gently caress you, but I don't really recall anywhere else in the game where an encounter is built like that so I'm not actually sure and it feels sloppy either way.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Feb 20, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Though I do have to be honest, I made an rear end out of myself trying to deal with the plaza Avatar thanks to fatigue leading to poor decision making, but I also frankly can't conceive of how you'd approach that encounter "correctly". Like, at all. Do the second pair of arbalest snipers inflict friendly fire? Though even if that is the case I can't see that fight being anything but a total fuckfest. I know you've got access to ashes there, but IME avatars by themselves can wipe a summon out on their own, before taking into account the archer and knight flanking it and the potential sniper coverage.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
I mean, yeah, you basically have to take that alternate path to the second pair of snipers to avoid the first pair. Which actually makes the encounter even weirder because then that second pair only exists to...punish you for rushing the first two? Or punish you from coming at the area from the grace behind it, which is also some rude bullshit.

FWIW, my incredibly crappy method was to pull each of the three back into the grace hallway. Turns out fighting a putrid avatar in a matchbox is loving awful! The ash stake radius also ends right at the doorway, so you can't reliably keep something summoned unless you stroll out into sniper territory.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
I did exactly that but Big Doot is still a fucker.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Malenia is such a bummer. Her design is so loving rad and her moveset is exactly the kind of flourishy but fair endgame fight I love. Even has a bit of Metal Gear Rising in there with the prosthetic giving extra tells and windups to her moves.

But Waterfowl Dance is just the dumbest, most bullshit move I've ever seen. And yes, I know it's dodgeable (and/or interruptible if you're lucky). The problem is that it's basically impossible to figure out how to dodge it on your own barring brute force experimentation over endless attempts.

To me it further speaks to this leg of the game being undercooked and lacking in polish. Even her phase 2 cutscene shows this, where she turns into a flower off-screen in a hilariously jarring way without even a token sound effect. Without Waterfowl Dance her threat level would absolutely plummet and so it feels like it was a cheap attempt to make the fight harder and appropriately "endgame".

I sort-of regret summoning a gank squad to do the deed, but I managed to properly dodge Dance once in the process and I helped several others across the finish line so the karma balances out. It continues to be a shame that you can't refight bosses as you like. They even literally have items called Rememberances, lemme remember the bosses then, From.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Technically, going by the stats, the awful platforming gauntlet in the path of madness was a harder challenge for me than Malenia was.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Angry Diplomat posted:

Dung Eater is aggressive as gently caress but also quite resilient, and he likes to shoot those Omen homing missile things and apply his AoE debuff scream. He's basically always doing something to annoy everyone around him, so yeah, he makes a great tank

Also by comparison Mimic Tear's AI was neutered to make it less able to solo the game at no risk to you and Tiche does the usual Black Knife dancing around. I wouldn't expect either to be an ideal tank. Though there is the possible trick of giving the Mimic the aggro talisman.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Yeah I think there's a pretty clear distinction to be made between a general heal punishing response and straight up input-reading reactions that happen before you've even fully pulled out the flask.

My personal kryptonite are the dodgy enemies that leap 10 feet straight backwards on the first frames of my attack swing. Comes with the territory of using big slow weapons, but it's very obvious they're responding to the button push and not the actual attack hitboxes.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Doomykins posted:

You're out of luck for finnicky bits like individual item sparkles especially in the open world but graces tend to account for almost every boss. You can set 100 markers on your map so I put skulls on "to do" and swords on "done." Pair with a comprehensive NPC quest guide and a list of Night Cav/Deathbird/Dragon spawn locations and you can about lock down 100% of the game.

Roundtable also has various additional checklists and a map, though unfortunately it seems like only certain things cleanly carry over between pages. Sometimes you can mark a given quest step, dungeon, item, and/or boss and get credit tracked across all appropriate lists, other times not so much.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
FWIW, I'm right there with you and I'm still actively playing the game. At least with most points of interest you can reasonably assume you've cleared them completely if you have them on the map and a lot of the notable items in the game can be cross-referenced. But have you actually found every ruin basement? Have you actually killed every field boss? Welp, good luck tracking all of that poo poo down.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Admittedly part of the problem for me is that the Steam overlay does not get along with the game and/or the anti-cheat layer so tabbing back and forth to a checklist is a quick way to induce a freeze. Or just crash the Steam overlay, which continues to be a huge piece of poo poo. I should probably just try alt-tabbing to a proper browser window, I'm just always paranoid of games handling that even more poorly...

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Unfortunately I don't have a second monitor to make it nice and simple, I either have to flip back and forth or use my tablet I guess. I'm probably just being dumb and paranoid tho. DS3 acted a little weird on an alt-tab but nothing disastrous.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
So FWIW, it turns out I can still manage to make the game crash by alt-tabbing back and forth. Though it did only happen after I accidentally went into the Steam overlay once, so maybe that had something to do with it. It only happened that one time and it was also thankfully a crash and not a hard freeze.

Ultimately I managed to mostly fill out the checklist. :toot: I'm generally only missing random drops, a few various field bosses (mainly Night Cav and some others that are dubiously bosses at all), and I'm sure a bunch of random beetles. Otherwise it's all shop-bought stuff that isn't going anywhere or stuff I haven't encountered yet. There were a few odds and ends I needed to clean up, including one very obvious cave in Liurnia that I just plain missed, probably because I was struggling with navigation at that point, but nothing huge.

I think the only thing I'm truly stumped on but also completely unmotivated to go looking for are exactly 2 cracked pots. I have them narrowed down to 5~ possible locations, but meh.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Joke Miriam posted:

I only had to kill one of them. Didn’t even need to encounter any assassins on my way to 3 if the lights.

Also remember you can see them if you have the Sentry Torch “out,” but are two-handing your main weapon.

Yeah, I didn't even realize there are four of the fuckers in there. Not that I was exactly surprised to learn it, either.

And people complain about the archers???

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
This has to be a case where I managed to intuit the optimal path that disarms them almost completely. I only needed to deal with two archers total, and I had plenty of cover such that I could approach them with ease. I'm not even sure I strictly needed to kill the second one, but she was a sitting duck.

Edit: Well, and 60 vigor and good armor. Not saying I didn't eat some shots.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Feb 24, 2023

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.
Having the torch only made the Assassin I needed to deal with realistically fightable in the first place, it did not make it any less bullshit. The scaling seems completely out of whack on them, much like other random difficulty spikes throughout that part of the game.

John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Doomykins posted:

Not much random about difficulty jumps in end game areas and post end game optional "how tough are ya" Salty Spitoon dungeons. :v:

But I mean...if something is a noticeable difficulty spike with nothing as bad preceding or following it...then yeah, I'm gonna call it random. It's not like Ordina is some big "welcome to endgame hell" setpiece either. See also: Zamor Ruins.

Darth Walrus posted:

I don't think that the BKAs you fight in the Liturgical Town are any tougher than the ones you take on in Altus in front of the Sainted Hero's Grave, are they? It's just that there's four of them (though thankfully only one at a time) and you can't summon spirit Pokémon or use an offhand weapon.

Maybe I just had bad luck with its AI being extra dodgy/grab-happy or the terrain was causing a problem or maybe I was ultimately just playing like rear end but it felt like the one I fought in Ordina was proportionally stronger than the one I fought in the early-ish evergoal that I felt underleveled for at the time. The one in Altus it's hard to say, because I stumbled into it having just fought Lansseax so I was lower on supplies than was ideal.

That's the thing I guess, it's an enemy type that may as well be a full blown boss unto itself for how nasty it can be...and it usually is! So here's this area where they put four of them in there. And made them invisible for no reason other than gently caress you. It's just excessive. That 3 of them are functionally optional (and you can almost certainly sneak past the fourth) feels like another case of wonky late-game design.

Plus, the rest of the game is pretty blatantly designed around the idea that you can and should, if roadblocked by something tough, gently caress off and level up some and come back. But between them being scaled for endgame stats and stats being soft-capped there's not much to do other than git gud. And YMMV as to whether or not that's fine but I just chafe at the inconsistency.

Though I suppose by comparison, I also hated at least 80% of Ringed City. But that's basically a non-stop fuckfest the moment you arrive all the way down to Gael so it's at least consistent about it. But also lbr, regardless of how difficult or not the archers or the BKAs are, it's not like Ordina was From bringing their A-game.

verbal enema posted:

why is there some kinda like general thought of weapon upgrade materials being scarce? i keep finding ancient dragon stones all over the late game

buy the other ones at the store?

They tweaked the availability of materials post-launch. Nothing to do with a lack of ancient dragon stones and everything to do with getting bottlenecked on a lack of mid-tier stones.

Even now a lot of stone deposits or loose drops will be tagged with "necessary item ahead" messages.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Feb 24, 2023

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John Murdoch
May 19, 2009

I can tune a fish.

Doomykins posted:

You have to go through Castle Sol to unlock the right to enter a presumably scarier, more advanced zone and everything around Ordina will slap your poo poo for nasty numbers. :v: You have to ride through the foreboding "things ain't right here" approach to snowland, you should assume secret snowland is prolly meaner. :shrug: There's literally nothing random about entering a late game zone and then entering a later game zone behind it.

Edit: How can you say nothing as bad doesn't follow Ordina? You go to Haligtree!

:confused: We apparently had very different responses to that part of the game, because nothing about Castle Sol -> Consecrated Snowfield felt like a build up to a big scary difficult endgame area to me. And again, it was not consistently difficult besides.

Re: Haligtree. The tough parts of Haligtree were...the big dooter and that one Leonine dude guarding an item. Loretta is a fun, actually pretty well designed boss and I liked the rest of the area with it only getting bogged down thanks to overuse of giant flowers.

John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 25, 2023

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