Don’t know if it’s the record, but we have a 2.5 hour speedrun.
Which black mummy things are these? I’ve been grinding on some black dudes who hang out in an area accessible via a teleport north of the Third Church of Marika in Limgrave. They are very weak to a backstab with a dagger and give over 1000 runes each.
I assume they’re the same type of dudes. These are the ones near the Bestial Sanctum in northwestern Caelid. But same 1k a pop and fairly weak, provided you don’t let them jump on you and slit your throat. But I can wang one from behind with my flail and go to town on it with it pretty much stunlocked.
I’ve also come across them in Liurnia of the Lakes but not in an easily farmed area like the Caelid guys.
Yeah that’s the same guys. You can get to that area via a teleportal just north of the Third Church of Marika. I’ve been sneaking up behind them and back stabbing them with a dagger. 1000 damage then just one more hit to kill them.
Ars Technica has an article about the taxonomy of difficulty in ER:
Basically they divide it into mechanical (pressing the buttons at the right time), punishing (cost of making an error), arcane (how opaque are the game mechanics), grindable (can you trade time for difficulty), and walls (how smooth is the difficulty curve).
I don’t fully agree with the taxonomy but it gets the basics right. I’d subdivide “arcane” into the purely mechanical aspects vs. more in-universe ones. Soulsborne games score high on both. A mysterious world could be seen as attractive, sure. But personally I fail to see how not explaining basic game mechanics could be seen as a positive. The former leads to a sense of satisfaction when the puzzle is solved. But the latter just leads to frustration like “Wait, you can do XYZ? I’ve played the whole game without it!” Levels and ability points and the like already break the fourth wall. There’s no point to maintaining the same air of mystery when explaining what they do.
Can you really enjoy the thrill of victory if you know what the fuck your status icons mean? I mean, that’s basically easy mode.
It brings to mind Paradox games, which are all fabulous, but which are about as approachable as a sheer cliff covered in barbed wire. I was only able to get into Crusader Kings 2 because somebody (might’ve been in a thread here, come to think of it) pointed me at some excellent tutorial videos. After a couple hours of literally playing along with the YouTube videos, I had enough of a handle that I was able to start enjoying it.
Paradox makes great games, but opaque design isn’t a virtue. It’s bullshit. The fact that fans can be counted on to make videos and maintain wikis does not excuse the developer.
And I still don’t understand inheritance laws.
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but now I only do about 850 damage when I backstab them. Using the same dagger (Misericorde).
Elden Lord checking in 
Knocked over the final boss last night. Superb gameplay boss, very tough, great soundtrack - but perhaps lacking a bit in the lore of previous finales. It’s a big mystical Elden beast, there’s no ‘Is this the blood? The blood of the Dark Soul’ moment. Perhaps that will be in the DLC.
Managed to find 1 npc quest that gave me a different ending - I found another npc (let chaos rule the world!) which I think will give another, but I couldn’t manage to find the right place to go. Will look for it on NG+, but tbh having got the blind playthough done I’ll prob look all the npc stuff up now online.
You get to choose to stay on NG as you would expect, so you can run around at end game level exploring, doing optional bosses, helping co-op or pvp etc. There’s a tough one (Melania) in the Haligtree that seems as hard as the Elden beast.
Did end up re-speccing to dual katana dex but it wasn’t needed in hindsight - the elden beast drops savage magic attacks so I had the idea that an evasive quickstep or bloodhound step would be good. But it wasn’t really - just needed a bit of levelling up (did it at 115 in the end), practice to get past the first phase boss in good health, and then choosing your spot to wail on the beast with a good weapon art.
Classic Dark Souls boss - getting on your bike is almost never the right general strategy, you need to engage. Once you figure out how and when, you start to see that health bar moving.
Nice! Not Elden Lord yet; got stuck at phase 2 of Fire Giant, and I decided to wander off somewhere else before coming back.
Now the proud owner of the Moonlight Greatsword!(can’t use it yet, playing with a greatshield + big stick)
MLGS - iconic. I’ve not actually seen it yet in the game, good to know it is there. I’m definitely going to try mage build, magic very powerful in this game from what I have seen on some invades.
Fire giant is a big lad isn’t he? Hefty health bar. Wouldn’t say I’ve really got the hang of horseback fighting yet but managed to get him down riding around him.
How many hours?
Around 62 hours all in.
Felt like I explored most of the world, tried to find the npc storylines etc. but was always moving the main story ahead. Did quite a bit of co-op and invading early but much less late on.
Running a very simple build with just one weapon meant not farming a single thing all game - at least till right at the end. I grinded for two max katanas for the final boss and that was it.
Just in general there’s no need to be grinding in this game unless you want to. Like you have a new weapon or spell you’d like to try and need to hit the stat reqs. Rune rewards go up as you progress and it’s quite nicely balanced - if you’re stuck on something just go explore and open some new stuff up.
An interesting twist. The YouTuber below suggests killing all of the merchants except one. When you do that the (with an added little step for each one you kill, detailed in the video) one merchant will have all of the items for sale (so, one stop shop):
Short video (2:14):
62 hours?? I’m 100 hours in, still wandering about discovering stuff!
Speed runs are down under one hour now
I always prefer ones without glitching or game-breaking. I wonder how quickly it can be beat “legit”.
I’m trying to go thru as blind as I can and it’s going well, just beat Godrick at 26 which sounds pretty solid. I’m making a knight with heavy armor and weapons. I’m at 20 endurance and don’t want to waste too many points there if I don’t need to.
I don’t want to find out TOO much but is there a Havel Ring type item in this game that lightens your load?
If there is a similar item is it early, mid or late game?
Do I have to beat a boss type guy to claim it?
Not looking to know exactly where the item is (if it does exist) but general hints are appreciated.
There are ways to increase your Equip Load if that is what you mean (easiest and non-spoiler way is to increase your Endurance stat). There are items that help too.
Yeah I’ve been pumping my endurance stay but every previous souls game has an item called Havels Ring that increases your equip load 25%. I’m just wondering if there is one of those in this game so I can stop pumping endurance.