3949

The way I like to play open world games is to explore every inch of the map. The exploration is my favorite part. In fact, in Skyirm, I never rode anything or fast traveled because I wanted to find EVERYTHING and so I walked everywhere on the map, and tried to find ways to get somewhere that seemed blocked off. One challenge I have with ER is the map is not a fog of war map, i.e. once you find the map fragment you can’t tell where you haven’t explored purely from the map. So yeah, in my first play through (I’ll have to see if I have the energy to play a challenging game like this a second playthrough.)

3950

I type in qt3 in one of the group password slots. However, I don’t see any difference in the bloodstains or messages. I assume I should?

3951

There aren’t a ton of qt3 items, but they are there. I assigned mine to the 3rd slot, and it says -III- group vs the -I- group I use for SEEKERS. A circle around a message means it’s from one of your groups; distinguishing between groups is only done by which fancified roman numeral pops up.

3952

SEEKERS?

3953

That’s one of the more commonly used ones; I think it’s from Vaatividya’s youtube group? I see tons of those, lots of people using it and far more helpful messages than troll.

3954

Good deal, thanks. I just read about the Rune bonus you can get from an active group.

3955

Major Rahdahn strategy spoiler here: I did not swing a weapon at him even once. Just kept riding around at a distance refreshing the summons. They took him down.

Now attempting Commander ONeill in the swamp. I think I have a good strategy and twice have gotten him down to within one hit of death but then got trapped between him and the scenery or passed too close by two of his summoned axe dudes just as they both swang.

3956

This was the only way I could do it as well. Especially in phase two, where he would rush me down and two shot me if I even thought about getting close to him. First phase I used and incantation that gave him the good ol’ rot, but second was 100% riding furiously from summon sign to summon sign. That poor horse though.

3957

The netcode in PvP is so bad it’s hilarious. On some fights there’s a 4-5 second delay for my damage to register. I’ll attack someone a few times, run away, get killed, see the invasion failure message appear, and then suddenly the other guy takes a boatload of damage all at once.

Other times it’s perfectly smooth in the middle of a fight and the connection randomly fails.

What a mess. It’s still fun 30% of the time though.

3958

Not just PVP. When I was doing lots of Radahn runs there would definitely be times when the host would die to one of his arrows a full five seconds after I saw it shoot by.

3959

I summoned once for Radahn - then I realised I couldn’t summon torrent and never attempted such foolishness again

3960

I’m debating whether to play a fist-only build from NG or use my main character and wait till NG+2.

I hear there are problems with some enemy hitboxes but otherwise it’s pretty fun.

3961
3962

Using cestus…es? Or just straight up hitting with your fists?

3963

There’s an early spiked caestus and also that one in the hold. Never mind, that one requires really high stats!

3964

I tried that multiple times and it took forever and failed. I got fed up and just got in his face and had him down after just a few aggressive attempts.

3965

Look up, dude.

3966

I added that group and there are trolls there. But that is an interesting mechanic with the circled message or bloodstaine. QT3 just isn’t big enough to get many messages from it.

3967

finally summoned up the courage to go to the castle, and I beat Margrit with my 30ish astrologer (don’t know precisely, will check later and edit)! Took me about ten tries, mostly due to my own stupidity. First 7-odd tries, I thought I couldn’t summon, so I only got him halfway. Then I figured out I could use my spirits, so with the help of Lhutel the Headless, things went significantly better. However, I then managed to drop off the cliff twice while dodging and rolling… Sigh…

Anyway: I got him! Happy, with that, and even more so because I know this is just the start…

3968

This is the real Elden Ring, praise the sun.