Elden Ring - From Software + George RR Martin

Yea I started a 2nd playthrough rather that going NG+, but the overworld map OCD just gets to me too badly. I wound up on another like 80 hour playthrough doing every random shitty side tomb and ruins, collecting 50 additional weapons I'd literally never look twice at.

I might give NG+ a try just to like streamline what my objectives actually are and not have to worry so much about finding every random cave and point of interest etc.

Just skipping ash summons in general is enough to turn almost any build in to hardmode heh, at least for a few specific fights depending on what you're doing. Just the AI fuckery that happens with a 2nd target in the arena is such a crutch it almost doesn't matter what the summon actually does.

For those that do enjoy summons: Nephali is actually nuts if you make her a puppet and upgrade her fully. She's probably not quite as much raw damage as Tiche, but the amount of stagger she puts out is just completely ridiculous.

RE: bleed builds, yea that video above is kind of what I expected, just wasn't sure if there was anything more to it really. Flies look to be the ultimate boss crutch, and then it doesn't much matter which weapon you wanna use as long as it's ARC scaling or occult infused. Interesting that he's using the "unique" breath attacks though - I've been entirely unimpressed with those every time I try them due to the awkward angles stuff comes out at. I'd much rather just channel the normal one for longer if i'm in a situation that I can cast a spell that takes that much windup.

I assume the dragon seal has the same issue the beast seal does where scaling incant with ARC doesn't actually provide any benefit to buffs like bloodflame enchant etc?

Tuco said:

I've been enjoying my 'git gud' playthrough that eschews summons, talismans, OP builds etc.

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No active liars tongue?

Ppl be scared of the tongue but it's only adding the DS1 online experience. Go ahead, it's fun.

There's some outdoor bosses it will screw with. Black blade Kindred is a fave of mine to grief the care bears on.

Invasion PVP is awful though? Your odds of getting any kind of real/interesting fight are astronomically low. It's just an endless string of people with cheat engine edited characters to have full legendary talismans/+10 weapons at level 50 or oneshotting with spell parry bugs etc.

There's just too much that needs fixing in PVP right now for it to be anything other than a waste of time. The duel arenas are where it's at because that's largely people looking to have an actual fight.

And here I am starting run 3. NG+ just doesn't do it for me for some reason. Your character is already complete, so what are you even doing? Justn a boss rush? Meh.

Time to see how miserable it is to start bandit and rush DEX/ARC.

ronne said:

And here I am starting run 3. NG+ just doesn't do it for me for some reason. Your character is already complete, so what are you even doing? Justn a boss rush? Meh.

Time to see how miserable it is to start bandit and rush DEX/ARC.

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The game has 6 different endings known so far. It is nice that you can do NG+ runs much quicker for that reason alone. And can try different builds with NG+.

Alright someone lore me, this is the only bit I can't really figure:

CaughtCross said:

The game has 6 different endings known so far. It is nice that you can do NG+ runs much quicker for that reason alone. And can try different builds with NG+.

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6 is being pretty generous. 4 of them are the same thing with a different color pallet lol. There's 3 if you go by available achievements.

But yea I suppose if you have a build in mind with a specific really endgame item then NG+ is really the only play. Like if you wanna do a run with Granseax or whatever it is what other choice do you even have.

ronne said:

Alright someone lore me, this is the only bit I can't really figure:

Spoiler

Why the fuck is Godwyn 100ft tall and made out of squid? He's obviously a man in the intro and all the rest of the back lore, but his corpse/prince of death in the game is a fuckin huge lovecraftian horror ;thing that it's hard to even make sense of when you look at it.

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Soygen said:

So pretty much everything past Radahn, I've felt overpowered. I get to Rykard and he's kicking my ass and I'm like, "Finally, I caught up to content that is my level!". SPOILER(probably?) - Nope, you're just supposed to use that snake spear in his room. I'm still too OP. Gonna avoid leveling any more at this point. I think I'm like 115 going into the capitol city.

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You might hit a wall later if you do that, there is some serious spikes with end game and optional bosses.

Yea there's a bit of a plateau post-radahn for sure, and then as soon as you progress past the capital it's back to fuckin rape-o-clock