I haven’t picked up Elden Ring in a while and never beat it, but I do have pretty fond memories. Probably because I’ve played other Soulslike games, including Dark Souls 1 and 2, and compared to many of them there are a number of QoL improvements that make it more enjoyable.
Was talking to some friends and I was the only one to beat the game straight, one just did an easy mod on his first day, three quit at the fire giant and one quit well earlier. Fire Giant was a wall for a good number of people, it seems, and is one of the few bosses I immediately remember from the game.
Not planning on getting the DLC since it’s been a couple of years now since I played and I’d essentially have to learn how to play the game again. Don’t really have it in me.
Having fun watching Brandon Sanderson, the author, play the DLC on twitter right now.
I am enjoying the DLC quite a bit. There is a lot to explore and some new, interesting weapons and skills. The recent items tab in Inventory is really helpful.
I haven’t defeated him yet. I haven’t found a config that works well against him. I figure he is similar to the gold Tree Sentinel in the original; an enemy you encounter right away, but that you have to work up to defeat.
I’ve killed a few of the mini bosses and gotten close on others so the difficulty seems about right.
I have been casually looking in on “Let Me Solo Her”, the famous Elden Ring player who solos Melenia for others. He has been playing the DLC and it is pretty interseting to watch a great player play it.
I won’t spoil, but he fought a very difficult boss 74 times before beating him. NOT the final boss, mind you. Just a very hard one(starts with “Mes”) and he eventually only beat it by summoning his mimic and another player to help.
I believe he spent 60+ attempts trying to beat it solo, not even summoning anything. Once he summoned his mimic and another player, it only took 14 or so turns to beat the boss.
I have heard others say the game is balanced around summoning. Don’t avoid it!
I still haven’t beat the dumpster fire, but I did wander around enough to fight a few bosses. Rellana was a blast, despite the roughly eighty attempts. So many fights ended with me getting greedy at just the wrong time. Turns out a bleed build is exactly the WRONG thing to use against her.
Almost certainly true. My only struggle is how much more health, damage, and poise bosses get when using a summon. In the aforementioned fight, there’s an NPC you can summon. I never got close to defeating the boss until I stopped summoning them and relied just on my mimic.
You’re right, I think I spoke too soon. I skimmed a blog post today about the 10 hardest bosses in the DLC. I was curious if I have run into any of them yet (nope). Some of the fights sound beyond my abilities and commitment. Fortunately I have a secret weapon – my son is playing the DLC as well.
This is the story of my boss fights. Rather than roll back and drink, I try to get in one last hit.
In my defense, it seems like bosses like to take that one BS crack at you sometimes when you do that, too.
For humor/fun:
I just saw a player called “Let Me Tank Him” solo the final boss for someone else. This guy is kind of the “Let me solo her” of the DLC so far.
He goes in and somehow fights the final boss, tanking a huge amount of damage. Or dodging it. I’ve only seen him from a far, as players stand way back and just watch him.
It’s impressive.
I did watch Dunkey. Pretty funny.
Ahem, I will not reveal my ignorance to you.
When I played the main Elden Ring, I used summons by ringing the little bell. They were helpful to certain degrees.
I was connected to the internet, but I never once brought another player in to help me. I saw the little summoning statues and clicked on them to “activate” them. Was that where I was supposed to summon real-life people in?
I probably should have done that and would have maybe gotten further.
A few fights had other NPC summons you could bring in, usually shown by a gold message on the ground. For other players, using the furlcalling finger remedy at those summoning statues would show the coop summoning signs (again, gold messages), allowing you to bring in a sacrifice volunteer.
I’m dumb and played the game cluelessly. Maybe it is a miracle I made it to the snowy area in the first place.
I have zero compunctions about using google, reddit, or wikis. I tend to stay away from the guides and walkthroughs, especially for the first time through, but for games as complicated as FromSoft tends to make, a lot of things can be missed that would be useful later.
I had even read at one point some players missed out on summons by not seeing that lady at the original campfire. And others went a long time without getting their horse by not stopping at the right spot.
I really do criticize the game pretty heavily in some ways. It’s stubborn in some ways that are just unfun. I still can’t believe there are storylines and quests. I mean, no journal to collect them in and zero waymarkers or help. Who knew? I did a few things, of course, but never really did any quest or side-quest to the full.
If anyone is curious, this Youtuber made it a goal to go into the DLC at Level 1 with pretty much no items. He then played Shadow of the Erdtree as if it were its own game and see if he could survive long enough to make it and defeat the first main-game required bosses.
Spoilers only for the opening area and first main boss. Very fun and impressive.
I defeated the Furnace Golem and the Blackgaol Knight miniboss last night. Both of these took me a lot of tries.
A couple of non-spoiler tips from a non-gamer geezer if anyone wants them:
Furnace Golem:
The trick for me was to stop trying hitting him and stop trying to heal. Instead focus on timing your jumps with his jumps to escape damage. When he stops jumping hit and heal as necessary. Eventually you get a knockdown (not a stagger). You can then run to his face and deal most of damage needed. He stays down for a while so don’t stress about being able to run around his body to his face.
I accidentally encountered him near an open crypt where I could hide behind a sarcophagus for protection. I wasn’t able to hit him, but I was able to practice the jump timing without taking a ton of damage. After that I was able to reset and take him down.
Blackgaol Knight:
In general you need to keep out of his reach, but not too far to trigger the crossbow attack. He is slow to react to your rushing attack, but deadly once he starts his attacks.
After he exhausts his attack you can charge in, get two hits, then roll back once or twice. If he charges you, then you roll back again. If he retreats for the crossbow, then you roll forward and attack.
You’ll have to side dodge his skill attack.
If you can hit him while he is jump attacking, you’ll get a knockdown. If you hit him with a ranged attack while he is going for his crossbow, he will stop. I’m not fast enough to switch between heal potions and thrown weapons so I used the Glintblade Phalanx ash of war on my sword. This seemed to trigger when he went into ranged mode.
I practiced by fighting him without using potions. I worked on keeping the right distance so he couldn’t deal damage.
I was looking forward to the DLC, but after the DLC patch I’ve been having problems with the game occasionally crashing and rebooting my entire computer. I played about 120 hours in 2022 without any significant performance problems or crashes with the exact same computer setup, and another 30 hours in 2024 in the month or so immediately prior to the DLC patch without any issues, so the issues only started with the patch.
I had put about 30+ hours in to the DLC, but after one crash now my entire save game is corrupted, and the corrupted save was already uploaded to steam cloud backup. Doesn’t seem like there’s anything I can do to recover it. Should have kept manual save backups I suppose.
I’m just going to drop the DLC for now and hope FromSoftware can fix some of the performance issues in later patches.
I finally beat Mohg last week and have been able to unlock the DLC. I ran around exploring the map and found a decent number of scadtru fragments and ash upgrades. I just got to the real first boss, Dancing Lion, and beat him on my 3rd try. Honestly my mimic tear and the NPC summon pretty much face tanked him , I only died the 2nd time because I decided to get involved lol, which was really surprising after all of the discourse about how impossible it is. For what it’s worth I use a pretty simple build. The heaviest armor I can wear, maxed Great Star with frost, jelly fish shield. 60pts in STR, 40 points in both vigor and endurance. I’m a big fan of being able to swing for the fences when panicking and not worrying about running out of stamina.
With the said, even with all that armor and what not, the boss was able to one and two shot me. Also had a shitload of extremely long twisty combos.