|OT| Elden Ring - Foul Tarnished, in search of the Elden Ring

Panda Pedinte

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I found an underground forge with "smithing golems" with weak points in their buttocks. It seems there are several like that. Not sure that qualifies as "catacombs", though.
Those dungeons with the golems are smaller, they must be the equivalent of the mining caves from the base game, and besides the upfrade stones I algo got the throwable weapons.

---

One thing that may become a popular theory between the people who discuss the lore is how the DLC area probably was the center of the Lands Between. it kinda obvious but I'm putting it between spoilers for anyone who didnt unlock most of the map.
 

Hektor

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For those curious it was against Rakshasa. She uses a huge katana with bleed and just face tank your attacks, after getting her weapon the description even says it makes you jard to stagger so at least it makes sense lore wise.
Hard to stagger?
My Greatsword Strenght Build calls bullshit on that :h02totallynotmoaning:
Had her stunlocked 24/7.
 
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Finally started the DLC. It took me a while to get my mojo back and even then I don't know if my dual-wield built is gonna give me problems. Other than that made it to what i assume is the first legacy dungeon and spent a while fighting an invader I think I made it to just before the first dungeon boss There's an NPC summon that's why I think it's a boss

I tried to kill one of those fire things but I assume there's some sort of trick cause their HP bar was barely moving.

As an aside do we know how the sekiro like power-up items scale ?
 
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Panda Pedinte

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I nay be reaching but I feel that Shadow Keep has a lot of callbacks to the previous souls games.
 
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Beaten the dancing lion, contrary to what i was reading online, the mimic tear is still too broken. I also found a catacomb (with too many jars). I think it's the first time in the whole game were the boss has died after me (and it counted as a win,


Question: Are you guys using the new weapons? I'm wondering why should I choose them if I need to upgrade them before doing the same damage as my +25 weapon.
I would like the game to show me in some capacity how the weapon would be upgraded so I know if it's worth the upgrade.
 
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Durante

Durante

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Did From ever fix the performance issues of the base game?
I feel like performance is worse, if anything. I never really had much stuttering (except maybe once every few hours) even in the base game, and I still don't have it in the DLC.
However, I now very frequently get sub-60 FPS in the DLC and I can't remember that happening in the base game.

This could of course have to do with their RT implementation, but it really shouldn't on a 4090.
 

Panda Pedinte

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Question: Are you guys using the new weapons? I'm wondering why should I choose them if I need to upgrade them before doing the same damage as my +25 weapon.
I'm mainly using Milady but I also experimented with Dry Leaf Arts and the Great Katana
 
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Fought another invader I feel like they read my moves.

Also I feel like fighting dragons is miserable now they seem to have too much HP i killed one in the dragon pit by shooting arrows and darts for like 20 minutes. I hope it'll get better once I've gotten enough scudtree levels.
 
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Panda Pedinte

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I just staggered the daylights out of the dragon.

I still can't kill the first furnace giant. lol.
Did you use the Scadutree Fragment to upgrade your damage? If yes just keep attacking their legs after breaking their stance two or three times they will fall down and you can attack their face. They drop tears for your Wondrous Physik flask so it's useful to defeat them.
 
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Hektor

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Im at the final boss of the DLC, and i gotta get real here for a second, as much as i loved this DLC, comparing the final boss to Gwyn from Dark Souls 1 and you really look at two entirely seperate genres of videogames.
 

Snakethesniper

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Im at the final boss of the DLC, and i gotta get real here for a second, as much as i loved this DLC, comparing the final boss to Gwyn from Dark Souls 1 and you really look at two entirely seperate genres of videogames.
Got to the final boss too just moments ago, managed to get it to half his life, then it became Dragonball Z and I quit lol.
 
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Hektor

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I went back to fight Malenia, and it took me only 3 attempts LOL.

Obviously having a higher level helped, but her moveset is really easy when youre used to the DLC bosses
 

Joe Spangle

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I always play these games the same - Usually go for dex with some magic, a straight sword or katana, turtling my way behind a shield, slash slash then retreat.
I'm not great at parrying, not great at timing a dodge roll but would like to try something different this playthrough so am going for a strength build with maybe faith and possibly going to try two handing weapons rather than a shield.

Any tips on a strength build? Good weapon to use? Good ash of war?

Its great getting back into this game, it is a special one. This time im making notes as i go, keeping a little book with plot points, characters etc and it is really helping me understand whats going on. The first time i played i didnt really have a clue about any of the story points.
 

Panda Pedinte

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Finished the DLC and I loved it with some reservations. The difficult jumping in the last boss was enormous, about the leveling system I don't mind it at all but I understand why some people might be annoyed about it.
 
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d00d3n

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I feel like performance is worse, if anything. I never really had much stuttering (except maybe once every few hours) even in the base game, and I still don't have it in the DLC.
However, I now very frequently get sub-60 FPS in the DLC and I can't remember that happening in the base game.

This could of course have to do with their RT implementation, but it really shouldn't on a 4090.
I have only played for five hours or so, but performance has been very solid for me playing in 4k resolution. I have ray tracing disabled though, after getting bad performance and not noticing a major improvement in the main game ...

The verticality is really noticeable in the DLC in a good way. All the environmental obstacles turn out to be playable areas at other elevations!

I have no opinion yet on the game balancing issues that some people are complaining about. The first mini boss seemed quite difficult with no summon at this stage in the game, but it was an optional battle off the beaten path
 
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Panda Pedinte

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How do you get all the items from [Hidden content]
From Igon you just need to finish his quest. It involves talking to him, killing the dragons fighting each other in Jagged Peak and talking to him there and the last step is summoning him in the fight against Bayle.

so summoning him in the fight. For the priestess I only got the heart and the weapon, later I saw you can get her as a spirit ash.

About the black syrup, give it to Thiollier so he can give an item to you after you keep talking to him. By this video you need to give the connoction to her before killing Bayle.
 
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MonthOLDpickle

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You get ash and an incantation. Or weapon and that heart thing. Man choices ffff.

Unless someone doesn't want the gravel weapon, maybe can trade something?
 
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LEANIJA

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Played a whole bunch the last couple days and made good progress. I like it a lot, and the magic of exploring Elden Ring for the first time is there again =)

I started with finding as many Scadutree fragments by half-following the RPS guide - and it really helps. I also searched for the spirit ash updates as Im relying on the mimic whenever I can. I really think these mechanics balance the game towards an easier difficulty and its fully intended - because it always comes up that the game is unbalanced in that way: nope, those are the built-in difficulty modifiers :)
I think I managed to get to +7 scadu & +5 spirit or so; explored quite a good chunk of areas (but I know there is still a lot more) ā€“ and downed a whole conga line of bosses, too. ;)

I also replayed a bit of the main game when I noticed I didnt have a great rune activated (and had forgotten how to!). my character was in a very barebones NG+2 so I went on to do a bit there too.
 
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I have to say that the small adjustment of Scadutree is an improvement (my main weapon went from 980 to 1140) I've beaten a bunch of bosses and I think I've reached the path of no return I have to use mesmer's flame to burn something.

So I'm exploring the rest of the map first, I have to say that there are 2 areas that I've would not have figure out how to make it there if I didn't search it online.
 
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SaberVS7

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Can someone explain to me how, mechanically, the HDR in FromSoft games breaks in response to a new Nvidia driver being available?

I have completely confirmed the pattern - HDR works fine, but the moment that "A new Game Ready Driver is available" pops up in the corner of my screen, HDR in Elden Ring, Sekiro, and AC6 will instead become a grayscale-filter when I go to play them if I don't go play Nvidia Driver Roulette.
 
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Durante

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I have no idea what they're doing.

It also makes absolutely 0 sense for HDR to only work in fullscreen mode. If you implement HDR the way MS tells you to do it (which is really not hard) then it works perfectly fine in windowed (and therefore of course borderless) mode.
 

Hektor

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JUST DEFEATED THE LAST BOSS

HOLY SHIT SAYING THIS WAS A CLOSE VICTORY IS PUTTING IT MILDLY

I literally died half a second later.

Couldn't think of a more climactic ending than this

 
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Completed the Abyssal Woods. I'm kind of conflicted with the fact that torrent chickens out and you have to explore slowly despite being nearly empty. Yes sure having to stealth or parry the orange heads-thing is a change of pace but ehhh. At least i got a talisman to make the boss of the area easier

I think at this point I've completed/progressed any quest as far as I can (unless i botched some) and I have beaten every boss so far (including the furnaces) and gotten as many fragments as I can. So time to go to the last dungeon.
 
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Panda Pedinte

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Completed the Abyssal Woods. I'm kind of conflicted with the fact that torrent chickens out and you have to explore slowly despite being nearly empty. Yes sure having to stealth or parry the orange heads-thing is a change of pace but ehhh. At least i got a talisman to make the boss of the area easier

I think at this point I've completed/progressed any quest as far as I can (unless i botched some) and I have beaten every boss so far (including the furnaces) and gotten as many fragments as I can. So time to go to the last dungeon.
I felt that place was a nice change of pace. At least the the enemies there doens't respawn after you kill them and the boss from the area was a cool fight.
 

MonthOLDpickle

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Since I got the gavel dropped for me by a rando should I get the ash and incan from the priestess (even tho I prob not use any of the two set of rewards either way)

I also don't feel comfortable using CE to get items. I say a 100+ hours over the years was me helping others and I don't want to lose out on helping randos.
 
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And Another God Slain.

I have to say that I wanted to do the final fight with Ansbach and Thiollier but i gave up the boost the boss got made it too hard, that said i still got their loot, so it's all fine.. As for the DLC as a whole I liked it even if I'm a bit conflicted about some things like the extreme verticality that's kind off pointless when most places can only be accessed by very specific places and the leveling system early on was a bit frustrating but once i go to higher tree levels it became more manageable.
 

LEANIJA

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I've just beaten the DLC, so here's a couple of thoughts:

I really liked it, I thought it lived up to the hype and the standard of the base game. I enjoyed exploration, liked the scadutree levelling system (because it rewards my desire to explore everything), liked the Legacy dungeons and the world in general.

I didnt try many of the new weapons (even though they seemed awesome), as I mainly relied on absolutely wrecking everything with Marikas Hammer.

The bosses werent a huge threat to me, as I leaned into levelling up the scadutree fragments and revered spirit ashes (found all of those upgrades); and I used the Mimic in every fight I could (except, funnily enough, the last boss which I beat solo with a strategy that didnt need it).
Most of them took only a few tries; with only the optional "Legend" bosses needing more (those were the ones that required extra strategy, usually buffing up, making sure I had tons of stamina, then turtle behind a huge shield and poke them).


The whole thing took me 45 hours or so; and I had lots of fun and not a huge amount of frustration. I explored a lot and found plenty of hidden side content and areas, and tried to do all the questlines, but despite my best efforts, Im sure I missed a bunch still (and surely also messed up questlines).
 

FunnyJay

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I bought the base game during the sale, and I have now played a few hours.

In certain ways I find the game much harder than Dark Souls.
Back when I first played Dark Souls, the difficulty mainly came from getting used to the stamina-based gameplay, learning the esoteric rules of how to level up and how humanity worked.
But you got a fairly decent idea of where to go (and I was tipped off that the graveyard was the wrong direction), and the "linear" route always gave you ample opportunity to level up before reaching the next boss.

In Elden Ring, I got a good idea of how all of that works, since it is still a FROM software game.

Instead, you get a vague idea of where to head (the castle) and of course I set off in the wrong directions, since I beelined to the cliff and ended up in some catacombs deep under the cliff below the castle.

This was not the right way to go.
So I played a few hours, wondering how to level up, since Melina wouldn't show up.
Finally, I googled it and found out I was in the wrong location.

So, I made my way over to where she shows up and was finally able to level up.

But man, runes are hard to come by in the beginning.
A lot of the regular enemies hit really hard and leave only meager amounts of runes, making it much harder to level up. And I really get the feeling that you are pretty much meant to meander about and exploring, since going more straightforward towards the castle was pretty much a dead end right now thanks to the troll guarding the gate entrance.

And you also have a horse that I need to get to terms with, both how to combat well on it (enemies on horseback are really hard to get close, even when I'm on Torrent) and when to actually use it vs walking.

Decisions, decisions.

So, TLDR:
Harder in a different way. Tougher levelling, harder to know if you're making any good progress, hard to know where it is safe to go, but easier to run away from tough enemies and even bosses.


All in all. It's a good game! šŸ˜†
 

LEANIJA

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I hope you have tons of fun with this game! It'll be frustrating at times, but can be exhilarating like no other :)

You made the right choice of just exploring and finding stuff. All these side caves are filled with enemies to level up, items to help you, and often with bosses at the end to give you cool weapons and other upgrades, like amulets.
The way to go is indicated on the map with an arrow potruding from the site of grace you last visited, so, in general, if you follow that, you will follow the story.

btw - the troll guarding the ravine below the caslte can be bypassed by just riding past him :)

i always keep saying this: the game gives you tons of options to make it easier or harder: ive levelled by just griding runes and made it easier that way; I relied on the spirit ashes whenever possible; I prioritized upgrading the flasks and the extra flask you'll get... it all makes ER life more enjoyable :) but its really up to you how you want to play, and that is (one) beauty of this game

and of course, feel free to ask things here :) im also certain theres tons of "beginners guide" videos on youtube with cool secrets and guides to get started properly