4251

I started Caelid at 70 and finished it at 100-something. It felt like the difficulty doubled once I stepped further into the zone, especially Dragonbarrow (?). The zone boss was actually one of the easiest parts.

4252

I found a cold hammer or something. I guess I should be able to take the cold ability off of it and put it on my nightrider flail? It might be worth trying tonight. I don’t think I’ll have the strength to use that hammer.

4253

farming rats for rune arcs is for noobs. I enjoy farming rune arcs in multiplayer helping defeat bosses. I got 2 for killing Godrick twice, but Godrick is too much work. The first boss in the Academy is super easy, barely an inconvinience… Works pretty reliable.

4254

I did Radahn on my second playthrough and it was almost comically easy compared to it’s original form.

For those who didn’t experience imagine the fight only the damage is 4-5 times as much and he has 4-5 times as much health. The NPCs died within 6 seconds of contact and the total damage they dealt over the fight was about equal to you attacking twice.

All that said, I don’t care because I didn’t enjoy the fight.

4255

Dragonbarrow is basically an endgame area you can get to at level 20 easily.

4256

Second as in Journey 2 (New Game+) or second character? I’m wondering if you mean you outscaled or Radahn was nerfed.

I had the opposite reaction. I maybe spent two hours to beat Radahn without any summons, thrilled by slowly overcoming the challenge. I perfected the run-up and the first phase, but the second phase was always messy. That probably was the last legend I managed or bothered to solo.

On the other hand, every fight with two enemies, I call shenanigans and summon everything in reach.

4257

I don’t think you can do that. The whetblades are what lets you change the infusion type independently of ashes of war which do their own type (at the time I was using hoarfrost stomp). But you can’t “move” a type from I’ve weapon to another.

4258

Second character.

And he was nerfed. Famously so. I thought people were being hyperbolic because From Soft game and the internet, but it’s a insane difference between the two versions.

I hated it because a lot of the fight was effectively a drawn out boss run.

Run down the hill. Teleport. Run to the signs, run towards signs, dodge, hit signs, run, dodge, run, dodge, mount run to signs, resummon dead guy, actually start fight, get one shotted immediately after 5+ minutes of fucking around, loading screen, repeat.

Like I can see the first 3 minutes of the fight in my head because it never varied other than maybe I make a mistake and die and have to do it exactly the same way again. I didn’t use visual cues to dodge his arrows, I used sound because I’d done it so many times I knew when to dodge by the audio of the attack.

Edit: And I was definitely stronger on the second run, but not to this level. It was like doing the fight with my first character after I’d beaten the game. Only even easier than that would have been.

4259

I see…me ignoring the signs actually made the fight less annoying, because I was only focused on the fight. I accept the happy accident.

I’m also very grateful to play on the PS5. I love loading under five seconds to get back at things. I noticed PC has text on its loading screens and PS5 doesn’t. They must guess PC has time to read them. Anyway, in the Radahn fight, the run up the hill actually gave me time to mentally repeat the next tactical change to try.

Maybe I’ll dip into that fight next to see what this nerfed version is like. I had been wondering how late to save it on this second character. Now that sounds like it isn’t a problem.

4260

Even then you’re running at him for like… a minute.

I’ll pass. But I’m famously annoyed by gimmick fights and the run to him was very gimmicky.
I’ll die 30 times in a row and at the end of the day not care much in the final analysis, but don’t waste my time with busy work.

For example Melania is the perfect “hard boss” when it comes to not wasting my time (the actual fight I have big issues with, but that’s another discussion).

The hallway to the fog door is maybe a little longer than it needed to be.

4261

Wait until you face Donald

4262

I’m certainly with you on that. Spawn at the fog gate and go! I thank my Stockholm syndrome for justifying the Radahn run as necessary for my development as a person.

Melania is my favorite fight, despite some problems. I was stunned by how it looked as it progressed.

4264

Hi, this is my first post in the thread. I’ve been playing (slowly) for about 2 weeks a bit at a time, and have 25 hours in the game with my astrologer. Great game, but a bit like a bourbon cask stout beer for me - very tasty to have a bit of it, but I can’t play it all day long.

My real achievement in the last two weeks isn’t killing Margit, but actually reading the thread all the way to the end so I can post! The good news for all the posters who have said they were “so behind” in the last week or so is that I’m even further behind!

4265

Don’t want to thread cop, but i kinda feel that talking boss strategies should either be in the spoiler thread or covered by spoiler tags - especially if you start talking about actual surprises and shit in the fight.

4266

First of all, congratulations. That’s amazing. Catching up on a 4000+ thread, that’s no joke. I’ve done it in the past, it takes many days and a lot of time.

Second, I saw your deleted post. I would suggest you also start reading the spoiler thread as well. People are generally pretty good about posting major spoilers only behind blurred spoiler text in there, and there’s lots of useful info in there as well. Ultrazen actually posted a different video in there.

Video link originally posted by Ultrazen in spoiler thread

In case you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the spreadsheet comparing staffs in that video. Though do give that video a view as well, I don’t want to rob that guy of a click for putting this nice spreadsheet together comparing staffs.

staff comparison spreadsheet screenshot

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4267

I’ve avoided the spoiler section because who spoils the video games? I’ve also avoided all the spoiler text people have posted here, though I’ll probably start reading more of them as I get a bit further along. I typically avoid that stuff unless I feel stuck, and the game is so open that I haven’t felt like I’m at a gate I can’t get past yet (or at least go do something else!)

That spreadsheet is very handy, though. I haven’t spent any stones on upgrades yet because my staff will not take them, and I only hold onto a sword to kill trash on my horse. But the analysis paralysis I’m going to feel when I actually can upgrade something will be intense, and that spreadsheet is gonna be useful to know there are a few mostly similar options. The thing is, I don’t want to look up where they are and make a bee-line for them. I’d rather explore organically, which is what I do with most of my in-game time.

Last night, I talked to the two fingers witch/crone/whatever sitting on the bridge near Stormveil, and she mentioned that the bridge was out, but why would that matter? Also, there was a place to jump to from the end of the broken bridge. If I’ve learned anything in my 25 hours, it’s that if there’s a place to jump TO, you need to jump. If you are level 14 and have 120,000 runes in your pocket, YOU STILL NEED TO JUMP.

It was pretty crazy to walk along a super narrow path for many minutes, and emerge in a totally new area of the map. I spend the rest of the evening running around trying to get the map fragments, because I’ve played too much assassin’s creed. The game’s willingness to let me go all over the place and murder my own face is really great. It reminds me a bit of the old euro-jank Gothic series, where combat was difficult and brutal, enemies that would instantly murder you were everywhere, and there was something amazing hidden around every corner - if only you took the time to look. It’s my first FROM game, and from what I’ve read here so far it seems like I jumped in at the right time.

Now if only the camera didn’t occasionally murder me when I was in small rooms, that would be great! There’s a knight in a small room somewhere in Stormveil castle (I bet this spoils no one) that repeatedly murdered my “please don’t get close to me” astrologer because the camera would go wonky and he’d foot stomp slash me and that was it. Seriously, Margit was a pushover in comparison. Sounds like I need to disable a setting in the camera menu and see if it helps, at least in those situations.

4268

One of my own big takeaways from that spreadsheet is how good the Astrologer’s staff is for pure INT scaling. Obviously I didn’t start with that one, since I started as a Prisoner, but I remember I ran into a merchant that sells it. I had assumed that since Astrologers start with that one, it must not be great. But it turns out it is!

Re: Yeah, exploring is so good in this game. Each new area always has some new twist or variety or interesting geography or interesting enemies or scary vistas, and on and on and on. Previous FROM games had this as well, but not in an open world setting like this.

4269

Radagon is easy to co-op,

4270

you don’t need to kill the knight, look for shiny items in the room…

4271

A lot of the starting weapons are some of the best in the game…the katana, the great knife (bandit), the long bow, the astro staff. You can play to end game with the starting samurai stuff lol.