Video Games

[laxu]

Bloodborne is just such a joy at 60 fps. I added a few quality of life mods like the ability to warp to bosses, ability to upgrade from the lamp, L3 for jump etc. Unfortunately graphics mods don't play ball as most seem to crash or have disappearing assets or textures.

Super fast loading times are also very helpful.

Even at 1080p, the game really holds up after all these years. It looks great.

I did suicide runs through the DLC to get to Ludwig and pick up some weapons. Amygdalan Arm smashing coming up!

 

[Jynx]

I followed @Jynx advice and found the dragon that doesn’t move. (Wtf is up with that lol) After slaying him I had like 70k runes between my Morne run yesterday and the dragon windfall. I was able to level up like 7 points which made me say F it, let’s go to the castle.

I didn't want to complicated things at the time but... Did you know that if at the second you kill that dragon if you hop on your horse and quickly ride to the bonfire beside that dragon and rest at it before the dragon's death animation plays out you can reset the dragon while keeping the runes and can do it again?

...Indefinitely...

 

[Whizzinby]

I didn't want to complicated things at the time but... Did you know that if at the second you kill that dragon if you hop on your horse and quickly ride to the bonfire beside that dragon and rest at it before the dragon's death animation plays out you can reset the dragon while keeping the runes and can do it again?

...Indefinitely...

Damn I didn’t know that. Probably for the best because I’d have probably farmed that until I was immortal. Haha

Killing him once really helped me to pump my stats before the castle raid. I’m currently at 30-22-23-15 for V/E/S/D. I’ve gotten a bunch of loot from the castle but I’m not really inventorying it until I can make it out of there alive. I bought some carian greatsword ash from “random dude chilling in the Death Castle, WTF” but I havent tried arming it yet.

 

[laxu]

Damn I didn’t know that. Probably for the best because I’d have probably farmed that until I was immortal. Haha

Don't worry, there'll be plenty of farming opportunities later. Late game there's an area where you can get hundreds of thousands of runes with zero risk within minutes.

Killing him once really helped me to pump my stats before the castle raid. I’m currently at 30-22-23-15 for V/E/S/D. I’ve gotten a bunch of loot from the castle but I’m not really inventorying it until I can make it out of there alive. I bought some carian greatsword ash from “random dude chilling in the Death Castle, WTF” but I havent tried arming it yet.

You should be plenty powerful to tackle a lot of areas. Stats don't really mean that much compared to weapon upgrades in any Souls games.
Probably not worth putting much more into endurance at this point as you should be able to attack a lot, run away etc without running out of stamina. Most bosses are "do 1-2 hits max at a time" in ER.

 

[Jynx]

Damn I didn’t know that. Probably for the best because I’d have probably farmed that until I was immortal. Haha

Nah. You would've done it three times tops then 70,000 wouldn't feel like that good a bargain for the amount of effort.

Like above, levelling your weapons is far more important in this game in the early stages. You might notice letters beside the stats saying C or D. As you upgrade your weapon this should rise up to A or even S giving up better scaling.

Personally when I start a run I go to Liurnia of the Lakes and then to Altus Plateau and collect bell bearings that allow me to purchase smithing stones up to 4 and level my weapon to 12 from the outset.

 

[Whizzinby]

Don't worry, there'll be plenty of farming opportunities later. Late game there's an area where you can get hundreds of thousands of runes with zero risk within minutes.


You should be plenty powerful to tackle a lot of areas. Stats don't really mean that much compared to weapon upgrades in any Souls games.
Probably not worth putting much more into endurance at this point as you should be able to attack a lot, run away etc without running out of stamina. Most bosses are "do 1-2 hits max at a time" in ER.

Maybe I’ll focus on Vigor and Stength for the time being. I don’t really know how much of any of these stats I should be aiming for.

Did you ever dump stats into Mind or Archane? I take it Intelligence and Faith are primarily for the wizard classes, but I’m not sure if I should be adding stats to anything not V/E/S/D as a melee character.

Nah. You would've done it three times tops then 70,000 wouldn't feel like that good a bargain for the amount of effort.

Like above, levelling your weapons is far more important in this game in the early stages. You might notice letters beside the stats saying C or D. As you upgrade your weapon this should rise up to A or even S giving up better scaling.

Personally when I start a run I go to Liurnia of the Lakes and then to Altus Plateau and collect bell bearings that allow me to purchase smithing stones up to 4 and level my weapon to 12 from the outset.

Yeah I think I’m going to grace out of StormVeil for the moment and go hit some of the other areas to the east for a bit, particularly the ones I was shying away from in fear. (Plus the StormVeil knights are a pain in the ass, and I’m at the courtyard of death grace lol)

 

[Jynx]

Maybe I’ll focus on Vigor and Stength for the time being. I don’t really know how much of any of these stats I should be aiming for.

Did you ever dump stats into Mind or Archane? I take it Intelligence and Faith are primarily for the wizard classes, but I’m not sure if I should be adding stats to anything not V/E/S/D as a melee character.



Yeah I think I’m going to grace out of StormVeil for the moment and go hit some of the other areas to the east for a bit, particularly the ones I was shying away from in fear. (Plus the StormVeil knights are a pain in the ass, and I’m at the courtyard of death grace lol)

I wouldn't go East yet. Lol. Go North of Stormveil. Go around the castle on the East side.

 

[laxu]

Maybe I’ll focus on Vigor and Stength for the time being. I don’t really know how much of any of these stats I should be aiming for.

Did you ever dump stats into Mind or Archane? I take it Intelligence and Faith are primarily for the wizard classes, but I’m not sure if I should be adding stats to anything not V/E/S/D as a melee character.

Mind is mainly for how many spell slots you have.
Arcane influences item discovery (chance for random drops from enemies) and status effect resist, with some weapons scaling on arcane.

I wouldn't invest points in either.
Int is for spells and Faith for miracles. Pyromancies might use both if I remember right. Not much need for these either for a melee character.

 

[Jynx]

Maybe I’ll focus on Vigor and Stength for the time being. I don’t really know how much of any of these stats I should be aiming for.

You're using the claymore so I would at this point just keep dumping points into vigor and strength for the rest of the game. The hard cap is 60 on both before diminishing returns.

Did you get the Iron Whetblade in Stormveil Castle? You can use that to turn your weapon into a heavy weapon which increases strength scaling and reduces dexterity scaling.

 

[laxu]

We've been playing couch co-op Silent Hill 2 remake with my spouse lately. I do the combat, we tackle the puzzles together and she points me to items I missed with "wait wait, go back, I think there's shotgun ammo on that shelf!"

The game performs like crap compared to e.g modern Resident Evil games, but it is visually good looking. I've never played the original. It's very spoopy but the "other side" sections are basically like whole levels of trashed gas station toilets.

 

[Whizzinby]

Massive progress yesterday.

I was getting cheesed by some elevated cannon/crossbow after working through the courtyard people in StormVeil and about to give up, but on a play through while fighting the fat slob guy at the back I triggered the eagle with the gimp mask to the left which showed there was something in that direction. Those gimp eagles are friggin annoying. I’d dealt with some of the easier ones climbing the castle but these fire breathing ones suckkk. Down to one flask I got past them and saw the troll at the end of the courtyard, but found the tarnished chick chilling in a side room. There was no way I was going to beat that troll and his minions with one flask so I just decided to YOLO and try to run past them, and thankfully I found the grace on the other side of them by the mist. Quickly rested at the grace and then before triggering the myst saw you can call on that tarnished chick to help you with whatever is on the other side of the myst.

Godrick:

Dayyum. One shot, one kill. What a fight. I was completely amazed to take him out first try. Between the help from the tarnished chick and my beloved jellyfish, we just chip chip chipped away at him. I had a couple really well timed rolls through big attacks. When he levels up mid way…

The way they do those cutscenes for the big bosses is awesome. Sets an awesome tone for the fights. When he goes dragon arms that was legitimately a badass use of cutscenes to reset the fight.

Thank the lord I’m out of StormVeil!

I did a torrent run to unlock some graces at the lakes areas. Holy crap, I thought I had done a lot of the map, but sooo much to explore up there.

I ended up going back to Elleh to do my level up with my StormVeil loot and decided to take on the Tree Sentinel again…

He whipped me a handful of times again with the wolves. I flipped back to old Jelly and was able to kill him after three attempts. Big energy moment. But…. he doesn’t respawn. I tried to go back to some areas in Weeping peninsula and when I came back I was really sad to see he’s not there anymore. I kind of liked having horse gigantor there to sneak past and just look badass. He will be missed.

I found some boss by the big tree down south that whipped me real good. I need to go back and fight him then head north to explore the new areas above StormVeil.

 

[Aelred]

Have you made it to Roundtable Hold yet? I assume so since you've been outside Limgrave. You can get a nice axe or a funny dragon arm ala Godrick there. Iji the blacksmith is also on the West side of Liurnia, north of Stormveil.

I forgot about getting to Patches, not killing him and buying Margit's Shackle - which makes that fight a lot easier. But as far as the Quests and stuff are concerned, I messed them all up on my first playthrough as some are quite complex in the order that you need to do them. Going to Altus changes NPC quests, fwiw.

The game is massive, as is the DLC which I have grown to enjoy. Finding every item, cave, quest, spell etc. takes a long time. I liked the metroidvania style of previous Soulsborne games, and FROM are not planning anything that size again for the time being, so ER will be unique for some time.

At least you won't come to rely on a particular weapon or spell only to have it nerfed by an Update (Moonveil, Rivers of Blood, Dragon Magic...).

Over the last two days me and a friend helped another member of our online group go from First Step through to Farum Azula and the Haligtree. Not bragging, just saying practice and assistance makes it become easier over time. I learned a lot from summoning people in Souls games for help and watching what they did. Stormveil has a lot of nooks and crannies I wasn't aware of when I first did it.

PS, fwiw: the Wiki I use (Fextralife) describes the Erdtree Burial Watchdogs as "catlike hounds".

 

[Whizzinby]

I spent most of my session today hauling ass around the map, opening more graces in the north west. I’m still amazed by how big the map is. I’m getting turned around up north, but now having these graces open should help. Seems like now everyone is going to have some magic, a lot of what I ran across seemed to have some spell attacks. I didn’t do any big battles up north, but I was forced to rumble with another one of those red two finger ghost bastards that appears near a shack by one of the graces.

I went back south for a while, amazing how much “safer” you feel down there. lol I realized I only beat one of the ever gaol dudes. I dropped in the other two. I almost beat the ice dude first shot, then got manhandled a couple times and bailed. The crucible knight gaol dude up north just absolutely destroyed me. I tried once and bailed. I was able to beat that tree boss guy by the big tree down south.

My remaining to-do list down south

• Beat the cat-dog fire breathing bastard
• Beat the ice gaol dude
• Beat the crucible knight gaol

I did go to the round table again and had some new NPC’s to chat with. The fugly bitch by the fingers wanted my Godrick trinket to do some upgrade, but it looked like the upgrade only applied to two weapons I don’t use, so I held off.

The other dude in the back seemingly laid out the rest of the game, giving the backstory of the remaining dudes with great ruins. I was kind of depressed there are so many big bads left. lol The only thing he specifically states is avoid Calied.

Questions:

1. So if I should avoid Caled, which of the big bads or area should I go for next in terms of difficulty?
2. Will the Claymore be good enough to last me the entire game? I have it +5 currently.
   1. How can I add spells or magic to it?
3. I got some demigod staff from someone in StormVeil, is that any good? I assume that gives me the ability to do Gandalf some shit?

I reached level 50 before turning it off. 30-23-24-15 for V-E-S-D.

 

[Aelred]

I ended up being teleported into Caelid on my first playthrough - into a Crystal Tunnel that has lots of smithing stones but is really hard at low-level. You can just run around everything and get out the back instead of doing the dungeon.

You got a lot of runes there with the sleepy dragon. You'll need to run/dodge through Fort Faroth (get to the ladder!) to get half of the key you need to go up the lift - the other half is with Kenneth in Fort Haight.

With the Claymore you can add Ashes of War (special attacks/spells) you pick up in odd spots such as from scarab beetles. There was an Iron Whetblade in Stormveil that allows extra options for Ashes of War. As you go along, you may find other weapons that suit or are just cool, and latyer on you can purchase stones for upgrades except for +10 Somber and Ancient Dragon stones for weapons like the claymore.

I can't recall a demigod staff in Stormveil, but you need Intelligence for sorceries and Faith for Incantations. You pick up extra spell-slots from certain enemies as well.

"Standard" or wiki-recommended route is Weeping before the rest of Limgrave with detours to Caelid for mad runs for items if you know where they are, such as the sleepy dragon or key in Fort Faroth. After Stormveil, up to the Academy or Carian Manor or the Ravine right at the top of Liurnia. You can also get the invitation to Volcano Manor from Liurnia.

You can also use the teleporter from Impassable Greatbridge in Caelid to get to the Radahn fight, which also changes NPC quests.

So much left to do... Enjoy!

 

[laxu]

The crucible knight gaol dude up north just absolutely destroyed me.

They are very weak to parries until they ramp up for phase two. It's pretty daunting to try to get the parry timing right tho!

Btw, Stormveil castle has all kinds of secrets to it that you may not have found. Tip: Jumping on the ramparts.

I did go to the round table again and had some new NPC’s to chat with. The fugly bitch by the fingers wanted my Godrick trinket to do some upgrade, but it looked like the upgrade only applied to two weapons I don’t use, so I held off.

The thing to do in all From Software games is that once you beat an area boss, it's a good idea to go to the hub area to see if something has changed or someone has some new dialog. If you find a friendly NPC in the overworld, often they can pop up in Roundtable Hold too.

If you find a character in the overworld, especially in a legacy dungeon and they ask you to do something, try to do that thing before killing the area's main boss as that usually makes the NPC move elsewhere. This is a lot more vague in Elden Ring so don't worry about it too much.

Questions:

1. So if I should avoid Caled, which of the big bads or area should I go for next in terms of difficulty?
2. Will the Claymore be good enough to last me the entire game? I have it +5 currently.
   1. How can I add spells or magic to it?
3. I got some demigod staff from someone in StormVeil, is that any good? I assume that gives me the ability to do Gandalf some shit?

I reached level 50 before turning it off. 30-23-24-15 for V-E-S-D.

1. Liurnia of the Lakes and its castle is what you should tackle next. It's all magic in that area, so find yourself a shield with magic damage resist to help. Caelid has a ton of good stuff though so I recommend at least trying to unlock the map and run around collecting any stuff that you can just grab if you find the enemies too difficult.
2. Yes, any weapon can be if you like using it. You can buff it with grease items from your inventory. They don't last that long and are best used for enemies that might be weak to e.g fire etc. They will make that weapon do e.g fire damage so they will do less physical damage.
3. It's fine, and yes it would let you do spells. For spellcasting you assign spells to slots at the bonfire and can then cycle them with D-pad up. You might not have the stats for it though.

A good indicator for whether you can tackle an area is how many hits it takes to kill basic enemies. 2-3 hits is good, 4+ hits means go level up elsewhere.

 

[Jynx]

They are very weak to parries until they ramp up for phase two. It's pretty daunting to try to get the parry timing right tho!

@Whizzinby Pro tip. If you are going to try this buy the buckler shield off the guy beside the site of grace where you killed Godrick. It increases your parry window.

Parrying absolutely is the easiest technique with this guy.

 

[laxu]

Played a lot of Bloodborne on PC over the weekend. It crashes occasionally but generally works fine, and the loading times are so quick it doesn't matter too much.

Got almost through the DLC early (just Orphan of Kos and Laurence left of bosses) and am now just getting into Forbidden Woods in the main game. The Pizza Cutter weapon is carrying me through these areas.

Can't overstate how well this game still holds up, and it's still by far the best Souls game. The gun parry system is also so much better than the shield parry in Dark Souls and Elden Ring.

It's great that BB is finally playable on PC. The 60 fps and quality of life mods (e.g level up and upgrade at the lamp instead of having to go to Hunter's Dream for that) really make it even better.

 

[laxu]

@Whizzinby Pro tip. If you are going to try this buy the buckler shield off the guy beside the site of grace where you killed Godrick. It increases your parry window.

Parrying absolutely is the easiest technique with this guy.

I mentioned it earlier but it's worth saying again: for parries look at the weapon hand of the enemy, not the weapon. When it starts to go down from the windup, that's when you parry.

I saw this in some parry tutorial video for maybe BB or DS ages ago and it helped me a lot to figure out how to do it reasonably consistently. I do still mainly use it only for the knight type enemies.

 

[BahamaDada]

By the way @Whizzinby one of the talismans on the pickups of the above guitar is really easy to get. It's in some waterlogged ruins on the way to Caelid just East of Limgrave.

The other... Well, that's a whole other level and a long, long way from where you are now.

Which one? Spoiler tag?

 

[Jynx]

Which one? Spoiler tag?

Spoiler: Talismans

Green Turtle and Rotten Winged Sword.