I think I finished mopping up the Southern Peninsula last night. With two exceptions: I didn’t bother killing all those dang plants. It takes forever to kill them with magic, and too dangerous to kill so many of them in melee, so I didn’t bother. Second exception: There’s a rider on a horse who only comes out at night. I got him off his horse a couple of times but then he just spawns a new horse and kills me.
I suppose the completionist in me wants to at least kill the horse guy before I move on, so I guess it’s the dark horse rider for dinner tonight.
While the open exploration is awesome, I’m finding I need a little nudge as to where I should be at any given time. I have a hard time distinguishing between “this area is too hard for you because you are underleveled/undergeared” vs “this area is too hard for you because you are a bad player”. This map gives exactly the nudge I need so that my exploration is a bit more focused and less prone to too many distractions:
That thing in the castle (twin to the Grafted Scion) was impossible for me, especially in that small room! I ended up cheesing him with a lance and shield and hiding more or less in the storeroom between his room and the elevator, and it was still hard. His attacks had so much range and came one right after the other, giving me very little in the way of openings. Later on I went back and did Grafted Scion and it was not tough at all but I was much higher level.
Radahn was balls until I rejiggered my stats to give me more health and let me use a quicker weapon, but I am finding what comes after him in more or less the same space to be even harder, actually, to the point of frustrated disgust.
Ooh, you should, he drops something cool. Is it too much of a spoiler for this thread to reveal that there are several of those guys around the map? I have so far found and killed three of them. I believe they are the same guys shown in the story trailer around thirty seconds in when she’s talking about the death rune being stolen, and if From is as precise as I expect them to be about these kinds of things there ought to be, I guess, four.
I wonder how many dragons there are. I keep stumbling on them, although one of them flew away before I could kill it and one was so “haha, no” that I just rode past and haven’t been back yet. They seem programmed very similar to Darkeater Midir but less aggressive, and having a horse makes a HUGE difference to the fight. If I had to fight them on foot…I don’t know. So far I am finding them the most “epic” and enjoyable. The music is great.
I have been finding multiplayer very frustrating so far. I barely remember getting any connection problems in the other games, but this one it is very much a tossup whether I will be allowed to stay for the whole fight. Several times I have gotten “connection problem, returning you to your world” when we were at most thirty seconds away from victory, and let me tell you that is annoying as hell, especially when you can see the other person continuing to fight and the connection seems just fine!
I haven’t had that problem since the first day or two.
There is apparently a location on the map where you are invaded by an NPC and then another NPC is summoned in to help you fight him. I saw that happen to a YouTuber and they had to be NPCs.
If I know the one you are talking about (there could be more than one, who knows!) it is pretty close to the start but missable. I know I missed it until I went back looking for something I had missed but had heard enough about incidentally that I looked it up.
but what about all the parts of the castle forever closed if you kill the boss before exploring? am I telling the truth or making it up? who knows? Sometimes the game frustrates me by closing off paths due to actions I didn’t know I was even taking.
I was planning on going back and I didn’t think there would be any closed off areas. There are several ways into the castle so if you went in the short way maybe you will run into locked doors you can only open from one direction.
Last night, I was just poking around the edges of the Liurnia Lake swampland for possible mines or mini-dungeons, and found a small mine with tons of upgrade materials. I followed its winding path up a cliffside, fought a very straightforward DS1-style boss, and emerged onto the Altus Plateau for the first time. I love how what I assume is a critical path was seemingly placed haphazardly and in no way signposted that it would lead to a gigantic new area.
Plus, I had so many upgrade mats, runes, and rune items after that one mini dungeon that I went from LVL 35 to LVL 40 and +5 main weapon to +13. I’m one-shotting everything in the previous areas, it seems.
I only have some vague recollection of fighting some kind of beast on my way to the bridge that unlocks Great Rune feature, that’s all. Is this the boss that is there?
It makes me happy I wasn’t the only one! The game gave you a key when you defeated that last boss. I want to say it’s called ‘discarded palace key’ or something like that. Read the key’s description and you’ll be on your way.
You, like me I think, got a little caught up in the excitement of the victory and kinda lost the plot lol.
