I don’t even understand how her super attack isn’t hitting him. The effects are going right through him at times he shouldn’t have invincibility and it sure seemed to hit me at a greater range than that.
The supposed way to beat the Waterfowl attack is to run away from the first two moves then toward the third. It never worked for me as I usually went into straight panic mode. But you can see it done successfully repeatedly on YouTube by good players.
Nice video. I just actually finally took down Malenia with my mage on NG+ after countless tries. Not sure I would ever be able to repeat it, but you only need to get lucky once.
I abandoned magic altogether and used the Dark Moon greatsword and jellyfish shield. When activated, the shield offers a significant boost to damage. For talismans, I used the Shard of Alexander and the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia to bolster the Dark Moon’s ash power. I used an upgraded Dragoncrest talisman to mitigate physical damage and the upgraded magic boost talisman in case I needed to cast spells. I wore the full spellblade set to tweak out extra magic power for the Dark Moon ash power . For my ash summons, I used the Mimic armed with the jellyfish shield and a fully upgraded Moonveil katana. I also equipped the ironjar and uplifting aromatics for the Mimic to use. Tossed in some volcano pots as well.
During phase 1, I spammed the ice arc from the Dark Moon until Malenia was knocked down. Then my Mimic and I were able to inflict significant damage - largely because of the Moonveil’s bleed damage. During the first phase, the Mimic actually cast the uplifting aromatic that gave me some extra cushion against physical damage.
I basically repeated the process in phase 2. The Mimic was almost at full health thanks to the ironjar aromatic and kept the boss busy enough while I spammed the ash power of the Dark Moon. When I knocked her down, my Mimic and I kept up the damage. By the time the fight was over, the Mimic had a sliver of life left. I think I dodged twice during Phase 2. But in the end, my Mimic really showed up for this fight.
I started everything off with a Golden Vow buff. I have both 80 int and faith because I wanted to use the Prince of Death staff for my spells.
Congrats! Malenia’s a tough fight. It can be tricky for your summon to hurt her more than she life-steals off of it.
Thanks! My plan started to come together once I gave Moonveil to the Mimic. The life-steals weren’t as bad once I did that. On a previous run, I cast the Meteorite of Astel on Phase 2 Malenia and I was basically just evening out the life she was stealing from my Tiche. I knew that run wasn’t going to end well.
Black Knife Assassin Tiche+10 puts the hurt on Malenia. It’s hilarious. Plus Tiche is very agile and dodges like a mofo improving survivability greatly through the entire fight.
This isn’t really much of a spoiler, but it fits better in this thread then the other, I suppose.
I started playing Elden Ring recently, only several hours in, and there’s something that strikes me as odd about the world-building. While it all looks great and interesting and all, I don’t get why there are very different creatures/people wandering around that don’t seem to care about each other. At least in the ES games it felt like a real world where different types of creatures reacted to each other. This feels like it’s meant to be a game, all set-designed specifically for me, as opposed to an immersive experience.
Maybe it’s part of how the whole world’s gone crazy and all, but when this giant skeletal monstrosity is standing right there where some guards are patrolling you’d think someone would at least point it out and maybe the giant skeletal monstrosity may be a little bit more antagonistic towards the puny beings around it.
What am I missing? Is this just one of those ‘accept it, that’s the way these games are made’ kind of things?
It’s my first ‘souls-like’, a genre I didn’t really have an interest in, but I needed something a bit different to counter what I’ve been playing. Perhaps I’m expecting the wrong thing from this RPG.
There’s a few areas where enemies are fighting. I think this could have been done more or better. Although supposedly you’re walking into a heavenly realm that is basically in ruins from all out war, and the dust has been settled for a long while.
Sekiro’s final area feels about right in this regard, and probably the best showcase for this in the From game, with people fighting it out in several areas.
Yea, you will see enemies fighting each other in a few areas. I think we are led to believe that certain enemies are under the influence of others, so you see them acting in tandem.
The area’s great bosses may have that power. However, Dark Souls type games aren’t necessarily logical, unlike some RPG’s.
Ok, looks like I should skip the logic of it all and just accept everyone is an enemy of me and they don’t really care about each other.
Pretty slow going. I’m just sneaking around and attacking foes from stealth. Annoying that a ‘save point’ resets enemies each time. Gah.
If it moves and is taller than you, it will most certainly attempt to kill you.
If it doesn’t move and is taller than you, it will attempt to kill you, but probably hasn’t spotted you yet.
If it fills the screen and has ominous orchestral music playing, it’s a boss. You’re supposed to learn the subtle tells to avoid damage (“Oh, it wriggled it’s right tail, that means “delayed attack combo #5” will start after a left-right swipe…well, time to properly time the next 5 dodges in sequence and exploit the 1.5 second window after it has set the right side of the arena on fire!”)
If the orchestral soundtrack includes a choir and/or single woman wail, the fight might be harder than implied above.
If it is humanoid and approximately as tall as you, not wielding a weapon and dressed funnily, it’s probably one of the few rare NPCs. Try talking to them, but don’t expect to understand shit. This is a From game, cryptic gibberish is about as good as it gets.
That said, stealth doesn’t work on bosses. Archery might, if you don’t run out of ammo.
LOL
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Sigh. That was the feeling I was getting. How does a game outdone by so many others in the RPG world gain such a high reputation? It’s not that it can’t be fun to play, and I’m hoping to get my money’s worth, at least, but it’s like taking the best parts of an open world RPG and stripping out the stuff that requires writing and dialogue and more complex programming for how the world reacts.
Oh, I shouldn’t complain. I like ARPGs after all, and maybe if I look at ER as an action game, even if slow, then pieces mesh better. Must be the elevated visual quality that has me mixed up.
While I’m here, the online connectivity is a bit of a mixed bag. I kind of like the bloodstains showing other players deaths, but the messages just take me right out of the immersive world. And some people think it’s cute to drop the messages right where other interactions have to take place so you have to cycle through them. Hmm, I should check if I can turn those off. Any other reason that logging in is worthwhile?
Well, I wouldn’t really consider the From Soft games RPGs in the traditional sense. Sure, there’s technically levels and attributes, but those only exist to serve the laser-guided focus of either making you (slightly) harder to kill or improving your ability to kill things. Everything is focused on combat, and said combat is stacked heavily against you.
The games are more in the vein of Castlevania - everything is out to get you, and the story mostly serves as an excuse for why you are running around and murdering mouldy undead monstrosities. The only “role” you’ll be playing is appointed executioner of whatever the game wishes to throw at you.
And, in my opinion, at this point the entire series wallops in it’s own miserable masochism tango when it comes to combat. It’s a slog. It’s stacked against you. It has degenerated to the point where you dodge a thrashing ball of pain and murder until a window comes up where you can stab it in the ankles once or twice, then return to avoiding half the screen coming after you again. Rinse and repeat.
The “open world” at least improves the exploration aspect a bit, and gives you a chance to get stuff before having to bash your head against the inevitable boss encounters.
As for the online aspect…
Besides the bloodstains and the “helpful” messages (YMMV. It made me wish for the ability to strangle people via TCP/IP), you can summon other players to help you with boss encounters, aka “Jolly Cooperation!”. This also opens you up for suprise buttsex not-so-jolly invasions aka non-consentual PVP.
If I sound grumpy, then, well, that’s because I have become utterly disenchanted with From’s output over the years. They built a niche, and now lean into that hard. That in itself would be okay. But there’s a legion of rabid fanboys that have subscribed to the idea that this is peak game design and cannot be improved upon, AND ESPECIALLY NOT BY OTHER DEVELOPERS!!!"
Worse, it now permeates their entire portfolio. IMHO the Armored Core series wasn’t improved by the addition of souls-style boss encounters.
As for Elden Ring, some of the vistas in the game are pretty breathtaking (the underground area comes to mind especially, but I admit that Skyrim had a similar thing with the Blackreach). The combat starts out okay, but quickly devolves into the typical From Soft boss bonanza, with recycled enemies and bosses as you reach the later areas. For a soulslike, well, it’s impressive. But I wouldn’t consider it an RPG by any stretch of imagination.
They are action games where you level up, that’s it
Unparalleled sense of exploration, solid but not impossible difficulty, and simple to understand but deep mechanics that also rely on player’s dexterity and wits to overcome the challenges.
It’s the perfect blend.
Really, you think it’s unparalleled? Hmm.
Strangely, taking a break from Rogue Trader for this and now experiencing Elden Ring and discussing it here, I felt more interested in Rogue Trader and dove back in. It definitely clicks more than ER does even if the quality isn’t at the same level. Ah well, I’ve been bouncing around games since I finished up the amazing BG3 and the okay-ness that was Starfield so perhaps this is just another symptom of a greater problem with me and games. Instead of trying to find the new, perhaps I should be sticking with what I know I love.
Elden Ring landed the same for as it did with Bateau. The exploration of the set-piece locations such as Stormveil Castle provided my favorite experiences of last year.
I play entirely in offline mode. I relish the loneliness of the world, and the cleanliness without messages, blood stains, and ghosts.
From might have had an edge at some point, but they’ve become stagnant, basically copying themselves. IMHO, they’re the Apple of action games. Decent product, but heavily reliant on a cult-like following and selling minor improvements as the greatest invention since sliced bread.
Been there, had that. Though I usually go for something completely outside of my comfort zone - that way I got to enjoy (yes, I actually did) stuff like “I Was a Teenage Exocolonist” or the absolutely marvellous “Slay the Princess”. Helps keeping things fresh and occasionally expands the gaming horizon, mostly due to the fact that you can’t constantly compare it to the 15 other iterations of the genre you’re intimately familiar with.
Regardless, since you already have ER installed, push for the peninsula south-east of the starting area. If the gameplay doesn’t click for you there, then I’d say go for something else. If your internet connection is wonky, use offline mode - there’s NPC summons for the bosses, and as _aaron already mentioned, the landscape and atmosphere is much improved by the absence of messages like “try finger but hole” and “jump here”.
I did play Slay the Princess, definitely a recommended experience. It’s one of those types of games I normally wouldn’t go for but gave it a shot and I’m glad I did.
My net connection is pretty much perfect, so it’s not an issue with that, but I think I will switch back to offline mode to avoid those pesky messages, even if the bloodstains were a clever addition to give a peek into what’s ahead (lots of bloodstains may mean back off!).
Oh, and what’s the weird tablet symbol that appears on the left of the screen from time to time when I’m walking through an area? Perhaps it has to do with summoning, as it started appearing soon after I got a bell.
And finally, I’ve yet to figure out how to use the HP flasks to replenish health. I know how to cycle between everything, but using them isn’t available. I thought it’d be a shortcut number key on the keyboard, but that’s not it. Hmm, maybe the key bindings will tell me.