Elden Ring - gamertags on first page

Just found the catacomb people have been talking about on here. The catacomb sucked but I loved the death knight boss fight. Great battle and a good reward.

Literally had to spend an hour and some change unlocking Haligtree and going through a good chunk of it just to get Dragoncrest Great shield Talisman because I never picked it up in my first play though let alone NG+. The things we do eh?

My thoughts of the DLC now that I had some serious playing session:

1. Everything is cranked up to 11 (as you all good people said), to the point I was feeling useless and hopeless. Thankfully, it dawned to me that there's no reason to beat every enemy I find and running away can be a good thing - but they *do* tend to follow you a long way and eventually gang you, so choose wisely.

2. I mistakenly thought that boss in the early mausoleum was supposed to be beatable; he is actually the DLC's Tree Sentinel horse cunt and I should get back to him laterz.

3. If the catacombs are still mix-n-match, we are fucked; the one I actually finished was nails, full of traps and powerful enemies and the boos was a bitch to kill (nice medallion though). I dread to think how the rest fare.

4. My fist boss (Rellana) was doable once I skipped summoning the NPC (who was useless anyway) and beating her on my 4th attempt boosted my confidence. Also, her weapon (swords) is really nice at +10 (and put a spectacular show); I use them constantly now.

5. My second boss was a camera nightmare, spent most of the fight clipping through its body and I'm glad to see the end of it. I also agree with loto , bosses need to chill out and give you a second to breath once inside the arena...

Bottom line, I'm starting to feel the DLC now and look forward to whatever punishment lays ahead

Yikes, everyone has forged ahead - though to be fair I did only play for a few hours yesterday. But it sounds like I need to beat Rellana before I can make serious progress? I tried her a few times yesterday, got reasonably close, but decided to head off and explore. I think now though I've done pretty much everything I can find aroung Gravesite plain (including Blackgaol Knight). I did also go down The Dragon's Pit and ended up riding Torrent up a moody mountain on the other side but without finding a map marker it was hard to know what to do, so I headed back.

The good news is my vitality is now 37 

I found renalla after I’d explored most of the map so no you don’t need to fight her early. Somehow I’d manage to explore in every direction before the castle except the castle.

Sounds about right. My ashes are still +6 and haven’t been upgraded for absolutely ages. However I beat the Melania of the dlc and my +6 mimic tanked until the boss was about 10% health so it was still holding its own.


Looking at the map there are two small areas I’ve yet to reach and I’m +9 and +6

I’m not sure exactly as it’s so big. I know I’d beaten a couple of major bosses whilst everyone here was talking about her and I had no idea who she was. Have you already done slightly nw of the starting point? North of her is also another main boss but yeah it’s all so vague right now as it’s huge and I’ve seen so much. I’m sure there are loads of secrets I’ve missed along the way.

Don’t forget that the sites of grace on the map point the way to go. I got sent in multiple different directions before her.

Apart from Rellana (which was my own doing as I didn't take the time to actually try and learn her moveset for ages so just kept getting wasted), I haven't found the DLC too hard yet. Sure, everything hits hard but that's to be expected really. Thinking back to the rest of From's DLC for it's soulslikes and I always remember getting a much ruder awakening. The Old Hunters was insane to get to grips with, Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City from DS3 had some utterly horrible moments (and incredibly unfair to boot, like the angels in the poison swamp). DS1's started with the Sanctuary Guardian that legitimately took me forever. DS2s first area was just full of poison, with ghosts that you couldn't kill, and two bosses in a row that made me stop playing for a while.

This by comparison actually feels do-able straight off the bat.

Made quite a bit of progress just running about finding new areas but finding actual maps is a pain in the arse. Also finished off a boss that gave me 380k runes but need to kill snakey boy to progress after that.

By my Lord.

Will I ever make sense of this jumble?

Had a good exploration yesterday, felt I had opened up most of the routes around the starting area, but then found myself descending to another large area...stopped at a grace as it was getting late. Still overhwlemed at the size of this map. I haven't beaten any of the story bosses yet, but managed to cheese a greater enemy yesterday but taking advantage of a rocky outcrop and let my Mimic tank whilst I abused my Sacred Sword Wave of Gold attack.

Thought I'd finished one of the minor catacombs yesterday, but turns out I have completely missed a boss inside who drops some good stuff. Back I go...at some point.

I couldn't help myself and googled the full map...

Thinking about the difficulty of the base game more and I think where people's issue stems from is somewhat similar to the whole "you need 50 Vit late game just to not get 2-shot by bosses" thing. "Not getting 2 shot by bosses late game" was like, 3 points of stat investment in the older Souls games, but in ER it's obviously not - and by that point you're past the first soft cap and basically already at the point where further investment adds nothing at all (going from 60-99 adds as much as 50-60, which itself pales compared to the growth you get at lower values).

In the earlier games it gives more leeway - if you're having trouble, you were able to drop a few points into health and give yourself more of a fighting chance. In this one, it's effectively rendered impossible to that - which saps away at that feeling of "anyone can achieve this given time and a little dedication/patience".

The scadutree blessings probably techincally could have helped with that, but it feels like most of the later stuff expects you've found nearly all the bloody things, and *even then*. And all the above contributes to that feeling of "the game is designed/balanced around summons". But the trouble is there is that it's hard to find a summon which is both not useless and not absurdly overpowered to the point of trivialising the entire fight.

It's noticeable that all the older "hardest ever" souls fights pre ER didn't really feature anything even close to frequent the 2-shot kills you see here - even stuff like slave knight gael, fume knight, nameless king. ER has the big "you're dead in 2 hits" fights, but at the same time, usually made those bosses pretty squishy themselves to compensate, like Maliketh etc. But this DLC dips into both and has non-squishy bosses who *also* obliterate you as the norm.

I think I wish the ash summons were just better balanced. Like maybe if they labelled them as "this one's not going to die in 3 seconds, but unlike tiche it's going to make it feel like you actually did something". As that's what's contributing mainly to my stubbornness in not really using them.

I actually think blocking is stealth quite good against these bosses - I chucked on a greatshield talisman for the 20% stamina cost reduction and an eclipse greatshield and you can get away with a lot.

DLC feels like your only real option is big bonk weapons though, which IMO is a weakness. When everything is loooooong attack strings, with little downtime, if you've got a faster, less damaging weapon you're fucked. You want as much damage output in your one attack you get to make as possible.