Elden Ring: a thread specifically for spoilers

Hmm… maybe I shouldn’t ride up to the tip of this rock

I spent all my time today trying to take down a big enemy. It’s funny how this is such an obvious traditional boss fight that you would find in a game like Zelda. Hit the feet until the enemy goes down and stab them in the chest. Repeat until dead. And yet, because it’s a Souls game, this isn’t even a boss, just a regular enemy and oh yes, he can realistically, sometimes almost accidentally stomp you to death in an instant.

Soooo good. I hope I can take him down tonight. I paused the game using the menu explanation screen. Hopefully I won’t get disconnected, I’ve been away from the computer for the last few hours. A true test of the menu explanation pause method!

Yes it is that.

Well maybe not… If you’re a coward.

I have been doing Ranni’s quest for like 2 days. It’s freaking ridiculous how much content is tied to that quest. It’s also impossible for me to find the next steps without cheating as I’m not good at following quests in this game. :) I think I’m towards the end of it. After than it’s a push to finish my first playthough. Unless I hit a brick wall I think I should have it beat this weekend.

In every DS game following quests required either huge amounts of luck or a willingness to check the wiki.

I found some ash that couldn’t be summoned, and then gave it to an NPC in the Roundtable hold, but I have no idea what’s supposed to happen next, if anything.

This mirrors my last week perfectly. I will warn you that pushing to the end is rough. I had cheekily thought after Ranni’s quest I was going to go ahead and finish the game, as I felt I’d seen enough content for my Int/Dex playthrough, and yet it just seems to keep stretching on. So, I’ve hit a state of zen for the third time where I’m just coming to terms with me not finishing this thing for a while.

One annoyance with this game is that quests can be so hard to parse out that I end up looking some things up when I could’ve figured it out myself easily. There are parts of Ranni’s quest that I needed guidance on, but then I got to the door TimJames is at, and I felt really dumb that I looked up the answer.

I’ve tried invasions as of last night, and they are dumber than ever, with the caveat that phantom bloody fingers and a host compass are really neat inclusions. They let you warp around the player’s level, which is handy for those times when you spawn twelve miles away, which is every time.

Caria Manor seems to be the best early-ish invasion spot for me, and fits thematically with my character.

I never found moonveil on my playthrough, but I’ve gathered my weapon might actually be better than moonveil at low-level pvp, from run-ins with a dozen players using moonveil. Check it out if you want to explode everything with reckless abandon, and if a big fire poker fits with your fashion-souls: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Death’s+Poker

Why the game turns off summoning pools when you defeat an area boss is beyond me though. I can’t ever help fight Radahn again until ng+? The hell?

Going down the Siofra River well like, okay…okaaay…okaaaaay???

Yeah, that was pretty amazing to look at. I absolutely loved the art design. I don’t actually think that area is as big as it looks though. I think I’ve explored all of it (although it’s possible I haven’t I’ve explored enough of it to find the second elevator to the surface which puts you near the swamp. It’s not small mind you, but it looks absolutely huge.

Unless you’re real far in the game, I suspect you haven’t explored it all.

Just within the area that is immediately accessible, there are two major boss fights, so unless you saw them both you likely missed part of what you can already get to.

Then there’s a lot of additional stuff you can get to, but not until later in the game.

Two different ways to describe the scope of the game world. One more mysterious, one on the nose.

Come on man! Leave some shocking surprises for people. You don’t have to give it away to get Internet points. There aren’t any!

This reminds me of book readers going into the Game of Thrones HBO thread.

Huh, will have to do some more exploring down there. I’m more or less blocked heading north anyway. I seem to do very little damage to the top-tier non-boss monsters I’m facing right now. So I need to go somewhere else anyway.

Currently using Greatsword + 5 (from starter area chest. Got instant teleported to the capital and there’s this big statue guy that I can whack on for a good number of hits, but he ends up killing me before his damage goes down all that much. And then on the other side, the “Study Hall” there’s some mage guy that again, I can hit a bunch, but his health doesn’t seem to go down much at all, the low-tier guys around him I take out in one hit, but I whack on the main dude and do very little damage.. Not sure if that means I need to switch weapons, use consumables, or just level up more. Or maybe I’m supposed to get good, dodge more and just take forever whacking on them.

There is a specific boss fight that folks here are having trouble with that is sort of a key encounter in the game many folks are talking about. I am watching some folks play this section out and their running commentary while they encounter this (and their utter joy at what unfolds in the battle) is really fun. It’s fun to watch for those that already beat this fight to sort of retroactively appreciate what this battle accomplishes and it’s good for those stuck on it to appreciate how hard it is for everyone else, as well.

I found this out last night. Fighting theses crystal dudes in some cave with my trusty twinblade with bleed and was having trouble. On a whim tried my newly gained nightrider flail and wow, night and day.

Yeah. Use crushing weapons against the stone dudes.

Lots of enemies have weaknesses to certain things. That’s why that stuff is all there for you to use against them. If it looks like they should be susceptible to fire, they probably are.

Cool. Broke my rule and looked at a video of how to get to the Meteorite Staff. Of course, with my TOTAL lack of any sense of direction, after I was transported to this completely new part of the world, I needed to pause frequently to see what direction I needed to go based on the video. Somehow this hostile world around me did not pause as I tried to figure it out, and I rode fast past where I needed to go. Somehow found my way to the staff, got it right before I was killed, woke up still in this hostile environment with no map of it, could not fast travel out, so I jumped on my horse and tried to ride around fast to try to find a point of grace. Lots of BIG bad monsters chasing me, chugging health flasks, found a merchant but nothing too interesting, just ran around avoiding stuff when I found a point of grace and I stopped there.
I was pretty happy with myself when I ended up being escorted to the Roundtable Hold without having done any reading or searching on how to get there.

I don’t know how long this game will hold me, but I have to admit a sense of accomplishment from just about any advancement in the game. I’m one who NEVER plays on Hard mode, LOL

Those damn rats in stormveil castle. I had 9K runes on me, made it past the rats, died somewhere on the field in front of the main gate. I went back to recover the runes, and I knew it, the rats got me.

Made progress, killed the dragon, killed the lion, found a yellow boss fog gate, and some ballista kill area after the lion. Tough spot, need climbing.

Lol, nothing I said its going to prepare someone for how huge the game is. Hell, I don’t even know how big it is yet.

But I wouldn’t want someone to give up on this game without realizing its scale, because it’s not immediately apparent how huge it is.

And come on, man, the game being big isn’t a spoiler.