I think all/some of the spirits re-incorporate at least once, or at least I’ve seen a boss throw down an AoE attack that blows away my spirits then see I have spirits again a moment or two later. I’m usually busy dodge-rolling and praying during those times so not entirely taking notes Skeletons in general put themselves back together unless you strike a separate killing blow after they’re down so I’m not surprised that the spirit Skeletal Militia does it but I wasn’t too impressed with them when I tried them. Maybe I owe them another chance.
My experience with spirits has been that they’re useful but not going to carry me. When I’ve tried to kite with them, they were doing minimal damage and if I used them to distract while I attacked from range, either they got quickly killed or I quickly regained aggro or both. Usually both. It’s possible that whoever you were watching was later in the game and fully leveled them up and they’re more impressive or that he’s just a lot better than me. Or both. Probably both. Ain’t no one gonna want to spend time watching ME play this game, after all.
Played through to the final final boss today - late game is suitably epic, some breathtaking I-need-to-screenshot-this moments. Wondrous game.
Last few bosses are ridiculous, on the one hand, but the game also gives you some equally ridiculous tools. This is cool and will enable most people to complete the game if they want to, but gives loads of re-playability for the hardcore players who will enjoy working on them solo. The one spirit summon I mentioned earlier is a huge carry, allowed me to do all the late game bosses first or second try. Not the final one, though - that is pretty hard even with the summon and I haven’t beaten it yet.
Ran the simplest of builds - melee with the mighty claymore. Found it early game, infused blood with bloody slash ashes and that was it (levelled at every opportunity - a lot more important than your character’s level). Not figured poise out yet but you seem to need to stack a fair bit before you’re obviously tanking stuff - like 40+.
Bumped faith a little bit to see what some incantations were like but didn’t find any must haves - heal poison was good in places. The beast regen seemed modestly viable, but prob more a pvp tool. If there’s a heal scarlet rot one that would be useful but would likely be high faith.
Going to start experimenting with different weapons as the final boss cannot be bled afaict- a respec into either pure str or pure dex sounds like it is in order and choose an S-scale weapon.
So much to take in with the game but just one more point - isn’t the map exceptional? You can figure out a lot of interesting / important places to go just by looking at the detail.
Have you tried the moonveil katana? That is very OP and available 2 mins from start - although I guess the magma wyrm would be hard right off the bat. Needs some investment in INT to wield.
I find this game, more than any other, makes me feel like I’ve wasted an evening of playing. I take down the Night Cavalry, then a troll (cheesed it with my jellyfish), then make my way up the stream to face Bloody Finger Nerijus. I easily take out the skeletons along the way, kill a dragonfly, then Nerijus spawns and kills me quickly. I respawn and head up the stream again and get promptly overwhelmed by the skeletons losing any chance to get my runes back. Frustrating. I went back and killed Nerijus (I just wound up my battle axe wild strikes and had him pretty much stun locked for most of the fight) then into a cave, killed a few guys (highwaymen) easily enough, stole some things from a chest which upset some dude called “Patches” who manages to kill me because I backed into some furniture and couldn’t roll/move away from him. Respawn, head back in to grab my runes and have another go at Patches. This time the highwaymen swamp me and kill me before I can recover my runes. Goodbye Nerijus runes, however many that was. The rest of the play session continued in a similar vein.
This is good evidence that the Souls games are not twitch games. Rolling and parrying are all about timing rather than lightning fast reflexes. You can generally see the attack coming well in advance, the key is in timing your moves in response. In Elden Ring I was practicing my parrying on some early enemies, it might have been in the tutorial area, and I kept going too early because they had this slow wind up then a bit of a hesitation before they’d actually attack.
Same with i-frames. You don’t need twitch reflexes to exploit the i-frames (it’s not really an exploit, it’s just how the rolling works), you just need to time it correctly. It’s like when someone throws a slow ball at you in baseball or cricket, you don’t need awesome reflexes to hit it, you need good timing.
This is often a difference without distinction. When some guy is going to do three wide sweeps and a downward slash that’ll rattle the ground, I need to rapidly dodge-dodge-dodge-roll at the right moments or else get cut in it and if you don’t do so rapidly, you’ll get caught in it, knocked off balance and eat the rest. Then I need to immediately get to his side to poke him twice before we do this again or my chance to do any damage is lost until the next bout of attacks. It’s not like I’m saying this because I read it on a poster; this is my direct experience in playing the game. I suspect you’re just faster at it and see it as no big deal whereas other people will legitimately struggle with it and likely throughout the entire game. Sure, it might not be as twitchy as some Mario Maker insane hell levels but it’s going to require some fast reflexes without much room for error. Maybe later you can turtle through more hits but my experience (and guides I’ve read) is usually some variant of “Blocking this will eat your entire green bar, leaving you unable to attack or dodge…” when it comes to boss fights.
I’ll agree this is different for single mook enemies which I assume are the skeletons Dr.Strangelove is referring to. Those usually seem to have a single easy answer once you noodle it out and the timing stakes are much lower.
It’s a hybrid system apparently - static poise like DS1 plus hyperarmour active poise like DS3.
I don’t have a feel for the scale or balance of it yet but you can see big armour preventing stagger on some hits.
I agree DS1 poise was simplest and best - really influences the feel of the game. But I appreciate their efforts in trying to make it more sophisticated, just a hard mechanic to balance right because it’s so fundamental.
DS1 poise is a bit busted for PvP (see Giantdad), which is probably why they changed it for the subsequent titles. But I really miss it for the PvE portion of the game.
Well, my point is that there’s not a lot you can do “rapidly”. To roll twice you need to wait for the first roll to finish before commencing the second roll. My biggest problem is doing a dodge or roll too early or trying to initiate a second move before the first move has completed, which tells me it’s not about reflexes.
Na, I’m rubbish at it, but like I said above, it’s not that I’m too slow, it’s that I’m not timing correctly.
What’s different about this one? I thought the open world was supposed to make it easier (as compared to other Souls games) to avoid unsatisfying situations like the one you’re in.
Heh, again I think the distinction you’re making is largely irrelevant (and not entirely accurate but whatever). We’ll have to just disagree on that one. If someone said to me that they didn’t think their reflexes were good enough for the game, I’d suggest from experience that they might well be right and to buy it direct from Steam where they can return it.
I’ve found the biggest way to prevent this stuff is to cash in my chips early by spending my ElderBucks on leveling before I die and potentially lose them. But each level takes more to buy so eventually you’re risking a wince-worthy loss regardless.
In other news, I started a Vagabond the other day and find it both more and less fun than the Astrologer. More fun because the power progression for the Astrologer is terrible unless you’re reading guides on how to swipe mid-level gear right away from some place surrounded by death-monsters. Less fun because doing things besides throwing blue pebbles at monsters brings home how terrible I am at the fighting mechanics. I’m a pro at beating the shit out of the little black mummy-things everyone grinds on though!
I agree with your take. Maybe it’s not strictly accurate, but when most people talk about twitch games I think they’re including ones that require accurate timing, and not just pure reflexes. Even super fast-paced shooters are often more about timing than reflexes.
I was practicing on the Hollowed spear dudes (specifically, the ones in the Upper Undead Burg guarding the merchant entrance). A little easier to practice with than the skeletons since I get more than two misses before dying. Still, my success rate for parrying was like 2/3 at best.
A mode, or even a game item (like a ring) that gives you some indication of when to parry would be nice. That could be a form of easy mode without changing the fundamentals of combat.
Yes, I can see that people probably mean hand/eye coordination rather than reflex/twitch.
The thing that makes it frustrating, along with the other Souls games, is that you only have one chance to get your XP back otherwise it’s lost forever. The open world doesn’t make much difference to that other than giving you a bit more space to sneak around whatever last killed you to pick them up again. I don’t mind so much if it is runes gained by killing normal respawning enemies, but losing runes gained from a boss fight is frustrating. Levelling as soon as you can to lock the runes in helps but as Jophiel says, you eventually end up with a significant number of runes that can’t be used yet.
Later on you get talismans that function like Rings of Sacrifice in DS1(destroys the talisman on death, but you get to keep your runes). You should to get a few of those for the exact situation you’d described.
Apparently that guy who suggests you enter Stormveil Castle via the easy side entrance follows you around and steals runes you drop when you die. So the number you recover is less than what you had when you died.
Skeletons in general put themselves back together unless you strike a separate killing blow after they’re down so I’m not surprised that the spirit Skeletal Militia does it but I wasn’t too impressed with them when I tried them. Maybe I owe them another chance.