This is one of the mildly disappointing aspects of the game for me. By the time you get to midgame (I think I’m midgame anyway) the neato weapons that drop are way under-powered and are pretty much impossible to assess unless you immediately burn a bunch of materials upgrading them but you don’t want to burn a bunch of precious 12-16 upgrade materials on a weapon that may not end up being fun/useful. This is the main reason I haven’t even tried out the majority of the Great/Colossal weapons even though they look cool.
Sounds like you just need to get an upgrade guide and see if it is worth it. That’s what I do in these situations.
There’s an abductor virgin at the bottom of Raya Lucaria Academy, and if you let yourself be killed by its grab attack, it’ll take you to the Volcano Manor.
Aye I got that on NG+ - missed it first time round as I completely missed patches second location. Very cool mechanic.
I was meaning that killing Rykard requires doing the npc assassination quest to gain audience, and the last one is Hoslow in the mountaintops. Don’t you need to do that to get in to see him, so it necessarily puts him after Morgott?
you can make your way to Rykard’s arena yourself; doing Tanith’s assassination quests just lets you skip the Volcano Manor area.
Oh right gotcha - didn’t know that, thought the quest was the only way.
Another thing I didn’t realise with Rykard is that you can upgrade the weapon. I mean it’s obvious in retrospect but just didn’t occur to me.
I wouldn’t really advise doing this on NG as it’s not necessary and your upgrade materials are likely too valuable at that stage in the game. But on NG+ he took me a few goes so I went ahead and put it up to the penultimate level.
They really should have made the spear retain some of its powers when used outside the fight. That would have made it the Stormruler from the previous Souls games, but actually useful.
Ok big spoiler here (I think) so I’ll cover it up. Don’t read it if you are still playing.
Very cool unexpected surprise walking through Capital when I walked through the door into the Roundtable. Glad I didn’t read about it first.
You’re right. Well, right in my case. As noted, you CAN just do the Volcano Manor “dungeon” and arrive at Rykard but I did it the quest way and that involved going to the mountaintops. In fact, my whole reason for tackling the Capital was to find a way to Hoslow and finish that quest.
I think I was confused on Rykard versus Radahan when I scanned the Steam Achievements list. Radahan was also undone and more people had done that than the Capital bosses. In any event, I only made it up the mountain far enough to kill Hoslow then have been working on various quest lines since (Ranni, Sellen, etc). I find those more interesting than the overall arc which doesn’t resonate much with me.
Having played both the melee and magic sides of the coin, magic is definitely easier. Once you get Azur Comet, many boss fights boil down to “Chargin’ mah lazerz” and melting the bad guy.
Back to Steam achievements, I found it interesting that around 75% of players have at least beat Margitt (or whatever his name is) in Stormveil. But only 30% have defeated some of the guys I’m beating now. The first number makes sense if you put it into the context of people being really excited for the game but that’s still an impressive number. But then 65-70% of the players haven’t made it to some of my stuff and I’m not even especially invested in the game or effusive in my praise.
I’ve played 100 hours and have only beaten Margitgud and Renalla. Partly because I’m happy banging my head against a wall for a night on an optional boss (looking at you Godskin) and partly because I’m just exploring. Some of that time might also be idle.
And Godrick, I forgot about him.
I’m currently banging my head against Rennala, and it’s particularly annoying for a single reason - I got her to 25% in phase two on the very first try, and I’ve steadily gotten worse. Getting through phase one is incredibly simple, but I simply screw up a dodge on the arcane missile things or the LAZORBEAM. I don’t like my increasing incompetence, and I don’t like the run back to the boss.
But damn am I having fun.
Yeah Renalla was annoying because the first phase was trivial (though every now and then I’d balls it up) and there’s a longish run to the boss each time.
Sending the lift back down before fighting the boss helped a little.
I make a habit of sending elevators back to start after I use them because I rarely need to backtrack but often see having to wait on the elevator as insult to injury after a defeat.
I beat Ren after a couple of tries but having to muddle through the first phase each time was indeed annoying.
Fire Giant almost broke me. Also, I felt resentful each time I had to make that ride around the corner and over the chain. Just put a respawn at the mouth of the fight area!
But I finally beat it and it was one of the very few fights in this game where I felt like I beat it by getting a little better rather than purely by luck or overleveling/overpowering. I can’t say I felt a life-altering adrenaline rush though 
Also, it was probably still like 85% luck.
This is interesting:
Haven’t fought the Fire Giant yet. I’ve just got to Leyndell. It was pretty cool exploring a building and finally realising it was the Roundtable Hold. I’d actually already been spoiled on it upthread but had expected it to be more of a reveal and was taken off guard. I was also expecting it to be exactly the same place I was used to rather than a rundown version.
They did something similar in Dark Souls III with the Firelink Shrine
This is me playing Elden Ring. Just trying to get to the next checkpoint
Well, I’m officially an Elden Lord now. Finished up around level 140 though I still have a number of optional bosses I could go back for (not including mini-dungeons, etc). I’ll probably spend an evening or two picking some off and leveling all my gear in anticipation of a New Game+ I’ll probably never start. I went into it not sure if it was worth it if you weren’t into the whole Souls “thing” and I’m still not sure it’s worth it. It’s a well-made game and it had enough good points to keep me playing it but it also has a lot more flaws than the launch reviews would have you think. Not fatal flaws but a collection of annoying things like the janky UI, irritating platforming bits, cheap fight bits like getting struck through walls, etc. Just stuff that make me think of it as a B+/A game rather than “10/10!! A+++++!!!”
I think the biggest “meh” point with me was (as mentioned a couple times in this thread), it never stopped feeling like a video game. The world has a ton of neat visuals but they all feel like set pieces designed to make you say “Neat” rather than a real world. I never felt much connection with the NPCs aside from one or two but I guess that’s just as well since almost everyone you mean is doomed in some way anyway. I felt no connection with the main game plot and completing it was really pretty anti-climatic. So, on a technical level, it’s a pretty amazing achievement between the visuals – both design and fidelity – and the fight mechanics and sheer size of it all. On a more vested level, I don’t know if I’ll take much from it besides “Yeah, I played that; oh yeah, that boss was a real shitlord…”
All that said, the game almost certainly WILL be Game of the Year and will almost certainly deserve it. But, if you’re questioning whether or not you should play it, if you’re not already sold on the Souls aspects, you’re probably not missing anything you can’t live without.