Elden Ring - George R.R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki

Yep. Wrong one.

Where are you?

Snow.white.virus.exe

I’ve long since blown past that ass area now. Suffice is the say The Blood God and The Undefeated Swordswomen are now both dead!

D.E.D. DEAD!

Is it just me or do these areas feel like DLC?

I have heard jokes about how if the swordswoman is in the main game, although optional, imagine what the DLC bosses will be like.

OK got back into it, lots of family stuff going on. Still can’t come close to killing Astel, Naturalborn of the Bad DS Players (in Ranni’s quest.) I enter, dodge immediately, summon my +10 Mimic (that took a lot of focused harvesting!) and I’ve got my +9 Moonveil and my Meteorite Staff (I’ve got the Carian Regal Staff but only up to around +5 so it’s still inferior to my Meteorite staff, plus I’m slinging rocks and the Meteorite Staff add a bonus to Rock Sling.)

So, enter, dodge, summon Rich Little (my mimic) and lock on Astel’s head and try to throw rock sling in between trying to dodge. Have to get closer first to get in range of Rock Sling. It seems like I’m not really doing a lot of damage. But he’s sure doing a lot of damage to me. I even tried to close in on him and do some Moonveil specials - that was a good way to get grabbed in his mandibles.

I know the correct way is to dodge, stay back, and just hit him with Rock Sling. Looks easy in videos. But I’m not even close after about 10 tries. Not getting closer. I assume the only path forward is to just keep trying to learn how to dodge his moves?

Another need: I back up into the Cloister area to try to get a golden seed from that badass monster down there and try to get a Somber 8 and Somber 9 in the middle of all of that rot. However, both of these require wading into lakes of rot. Which kills me rather quickly. I had a few boluses or something but gulping those down didn’t slow down my health drop much at all. And I ran out quickly and don’t want to go searching for the materials to make them again (especially since they didn’t help.) When I trigger that beast I run to try to get some room but my health drops so fast I go through my health flasks very quickly then I die.

SOOOO - I need to stop what I’m doing and go find a way to deal with rot. I’m an INT guy, about 65 or more INT, so Faith is only around 12 if that matters. Suggestions?

You have the exact amount of Faith needed to use Flame Cleanse Me, which was the only incantation I used in my INT playthrough.

There really is little you can do to slow down rot. There is mushroom armor that will help somewhat but not very much. I think it is in a cave or mine somewhere.

When using the mimic start that fight with the moonveil in your hand, then summon your mimic. You want him to keep the boss busy with melee while you get close enough to do damage with your spells. Beware as he will come after you at times.

I probably had my INT in the 70s and my vigor near 50.

Yeah, I start with the Meteorite Staff in left hand, Moonveil in the right, hoping my mimic will either close in and use Moonveil specials on him or throw rocks at him. But he seems to just stay away. Frustrating.

OK, I’ll see if I can get Flame Cleanse Me and learn how to use it. Thanks!

The mimic will trade back and forth. The mimic has some weird AI. If you have knives on your consumables bar it will use those.

It’s kinda odd, when I’m using, say, The Headless (although only level 5 I think) I always see the attacks, etc. Often using my +10 mimic in boss fights it’s almost as if he’s more focused on not getting hit than hitting. Just fighting bad guys in the world, no problem.

Headless is almost always attacking. Hurling spears from low orbit or stabbing stuff.

Mimic uses “Invader AI” near as I could tell, which is nearly always trying to avoid getting hit, but it will also run in on occasion and try to do some damage. Which is good because the full aggro summons tend to last a few seconds unless they have giant health pools. In which case they last maybe a minute or two on a good day.

Woah, apparently the latest update adds ray-tracing to the game.

It already performs so poorly on my PC, it’s probably not worth trying there. But I’m curious to see if the Series X frame rate will stay smooth with ray tracing on.

Good Elden Ring performance will always be something I wish I had playing on my 2018 gaming laptop. It also is prone to crash to desktop following like a 3 minute hard lock.

I noticed the difference especially when I fired up Sekiro and it ran like the smoothest silkiness butter ever in comparison.

So another big patch dropped and one of its features is ray tracing. I fear that will doom the game for my older PC. Steam’s forum is full of people unable to play the game now. I guess you can disable it but you have to be able to get on it first and many can’t do that. It could be a driver compatibility issue.

Wait. It enables it by default?

On Steam they make it sound like you have to disable it. I saw a YouTube guy who said you have to enable it.

So I am not sure but based on the trouble people are complaining about on Steam and the replies I am guessing it must require disabling.

I started playing Elden Ring on my PS5 in the PS4 version as people said that it has better performance. I see the Ray Tracing is only for the PS5. While I doubt I’ll notice the difference with Ray Tracing as I’m repeatedly getting killed by Astel, I do have a question: Is it still better to play the PS4 version on the PS5?

There’s a ray tracing comparison vid here, and yeah… I don’t see too much difference other than lower frames. :)

It’s apparently doing ambient occlusion and shadows, so not global illumination or reflections.