The Shattered Elden Ring Thread: Tarnished Edition - (Shadow of the Erdtree p. 85)

Silvanus

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Also the story is still incomprehensible. I fought and eventually got gud and killed this ancestral deer spirit ice god boss thing, and I will say its a gorgeous boss fight. Just hands down one of the best looking boss fights ever and my clear standout for best Elden Ring boss so far. That said, I have no idea why it was on a bridge in a secret underground world, no idea why it teleported me to a giant cavern, no idea why its hostile, no idea why there are ghost minotaurs around, no idea why killing the ice deer god lets me summon minotaurs now, and the deer god wasn't even guarding anything. Its a dead end, no pun intended. You kill the boss, get a random power, and then leave. No explanations, no dialogue, no hint of a story or plot, no reason why we fought or anything. And I feel let down. Great boss fight, great ascetics and feel and music and the dancing blue deer galloping in the sky was beautiful and then nothing. It's just over and the game is like "On your bike, nothing more to see, you must not dwell." and its like...wat?
There is lore about the Ancestral Spirits and the followers (the ghost minotaurs). It's on item descriptions and such, which is kind of par for the course with From Software.

Besides, this ain't new. People still don't really know what the fuck The One Reborn is. And that's a main story boss.
 

CriticalGaming

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There is lore about the Ancestral Spirits and the followers (the ghost minotaurs). It's on item descriptions and such, which is kind of par for the course with From Software.

Besides, this ain't new. People still don't really know what the fuck The One Reborn is. And that's a main story boss.
It's the One....but reborn. Makes sense.
 

EvilRoy

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And that's Malenia done. Fucking hell, she makes Orphan of Kos look like Pinwheel. I'm disappointed her boss weapon is a katana, but i guess that makes sense considering all the Sekiro bullshit she pulls off.
Well done, how long did it end up taking you?

I'm still plugging away at her - I kinda stopped trying on solo and now I've just been doing coop out of a combination of lacking the will to fight this fight solo (fat tanks don't do well against enemies that heal by hitting) and mild game fatigue after playing so much. I am loving the build variety I've been seeing doing coop though. There have been plenty of DS bosses labelled the hardest boss ever where you see only a couple three different builds going up against them, but Malenia has attracted all sorts of shit. Lots of bleed for sure, but there have been ice dudes, at least three people trying madness (which staggers like fuck so it actually seems to work well), a dude named "Big Donk" who used two greathammers with bloodhound step, a guy who learned really quickly that she is immune to Sleep, and then two people who have been using the one trick weapon in the entire game to some effect.
 

SilentPony

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There is lore about the Ancestral Spirits and the followers (the ghost minotaurs). It's on item descriptions and such, which is kind of par for the course with From Software.

Besides, this ain't new. People still don't really know what the fuck The One Reborn is. And that's a main story boss.
Wasn't the thing with The One Reborn that is was simply a bad translation from Japanese? Is was supposed to be something like Small Great One, or Short Great One. Bloodborne I remember between the translations and localization changed a lot of the story, from small details like changing "she" to "it" to big ones "grant us eyes" is actually "give us insight".
 

EvilRoy

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Wasn't the thing with The One Reborn that is was simply a bad translation from Japanese? Is was supposed to be something like Small Great One, or Short Great One. Bloodborne I remember between the translations and localization changed a lot of the story, from small details like changing "she" to "it" to big ones "grant us eyes" is actually "give us insight".
Apparently this even extends to the ingame messages now. I just read an article explaining that fort, night is benign if stupid in English, but the way it translates to Spanish makes it sound like there's going to be a brawl after dark. Or when you find a message saying "no horse ahead" pointing at something irrelevant that might be a dude calling someone a liar in Mandarin. I was honestly wondering why people kept saying "Grass" in messages as well, which has a dual meaning: in Japanese it comes across like someone saying "LOL" while in Mandarin it comes across like someone saying "FUCK". So completely different moods both of which are totally lost on an english speaker who wants to know why people keep saying the annoying ledge to reach is grass.

 
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Silvanus

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Wasn't the thing with The One Reborn that is was simply a bad translation from Japanese? Is was supposed to be something like Small Great One, or Short Great One. Bloodborne I remember between the translations and localization changed a lot of the story, from small details like changing "she" to "it" to big ones "grant us eyes" is actually "give us insight".
I had a little look around to see about that, and according to this retranslation project, both of those bits are actually pretty accurate ("Reborn One" and "Grant us eyes"). There's some other errors elsewhere of course.

But either way, the main point is... one can hardly say From Software haven't always been bloody opaque when it comes to lore.

Edit: forgot to include the damn link, like the fool I am:
 
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SilentPony

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Apparently this even extends to the ingame messages now. I just read an article explaining that fort, night is benign if stupid in English, but the way it translates to Spanish makes it sound like there's going to be a brawl after dark. Or when you find a message saying "no horse ahead" pointing at something irrelevant that might be a dude calling someone a liar in Mandarin. I was honestly wondering why people kept saying "Grass" in messages as well, which has a dual meaning: in Japanese it comes across like someone saying "LOL" while in Mandarin it comes across like someone saying "FUCK". So completely different moods both of which are totally lost on an english speaker who wants to know why people keep saying the annoying ledge to reach is grass.

That makes so much sense! So many messages in Elden Ring are complete gibberish. I thought maybe there was more to it, you know? I found a message in front of the fog gate to the ancestral spirit that said Tough Enemy, Therefore Grass. and I thought it was a reference to deer eating grass or something. But knowing it just means "Fuck" makes sense.

Also slightly off topic but slightly on topic, putting a dozen messages in front of doors or ladders so you have to keeping going to the next message before you can interact with the object is really fucking annoying. Also every single wall having a "Fake Wall" message is annoying. I guess I'll wait for post credit fuck-abouts before finding all the secrets.
 
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SilentPony

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I had a little look around to see about that, and according to this retranslation project, both of those bits are actually pretty accurate ("Reborn One" and "Grant us eyes"). There's some other errors elsewhere of course.

But either way, the main point is... one can hardly say From Software haven't always been bloody opaque when it comes to lore.
I think this video has a lot of what I meant:

Its good stuff. And yeah, I don't think I'll be understanding Elden Ring lore this playthrough.
So the translation isn't so much The One Reborn as it is The Ones Refounded or Reconsecrated. The Japanese word used it more akin to reestablishing or reconstructing an organization rather than giving birth.
 
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Chupathingy

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Well done, how long did it end up taking you?

I'm still plugging away at her - I kinda stopped trying on solo and now I've just been doing coop out of a combination of lacking the will to fight this fight solo (fat tanks don't do well against enemies that heal by hitting) and mild game fatigue after playing so much. I am loving the build variety I've been seeing doing coop though. There have been plenty of DS bosses labelled the hardest boss ever where you see only a couple three different builds going up against them, but Malenia has attracted all sorts of shit. Lots of bleed for sure, but there have been ice dudes, at least three people trying madness (which staggers like fuck so it actually seems to work well), a dude named "Big Donk" who used two greathammers with bloodhound step, a guy who learned really quickly that she is immune to Sleep, and then two people who have been using the one trick weapon in the entire game to some effect.
About 2-3 hours. It got to the point that I was able to basically perfect her first phase, but the second phase was the real challenge, mainly thanks to the attack where she shoots duplicates of herself at you. Eventually I managed to beat her because I got lucky and she performed a bunch of easily punishable attacks that allowed me to Swarm of Flies her to death.
 
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CriticalGaming

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About 2-3 hours. It got to the point that I was able to basically perfect her first phase, but the second phase was the real challenge, mainly thanks to the attack where she shoots duplicates of herself at you. Eventually I managed to beat her because I got lucky and she performed a bunch of easily punishable attacks that allowed me to Swarm of Flies her to death.
Just FYI if you ever fight her again with a different build or NG+ or whatever. When you see the tell for that clone attack just run as far as you can as fast as you can and you should avoid every attack.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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I’ll watch it after I’ve finished the main story, but OTOH how much will that have really explained anyways lol.
 

EvilRoy

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About 2-3 hours. It got to the point that I was able to basically perfect her first phase, but the second phase was the real challenge, mainly thanks to the attack where she shoots duplicates of herself at you. Eventually I managed to beat her because I got lucky and she performed a bunch of easily punishable attacks that allowed me to Swarm of Flies her to death.
I was able to beat her last night, more or less with the same spell although someone else was casting it for me haha. Cooping that fight is a lot of fun and I've done it a few more times now as the summoned help since the pressure is off.

I had wondered why there were no invasions in that area when I was doing all of this until I finally saw my first one. Poor guy was just not prepared to fight off three people with wild eyes and builds tuned for the most dangerous boss in the game. I've never really stomped in PVP before and I have no idea what on earth possessed a guy to pick this fight when he had less heath and a slower moveset than Malenia. The fight took a little less than a minute mostly because he kept running as the three of us blasted five kinds of bullshit at him. I did have to craft more frostbombs after which was inconvenient.
 

CriticalGaming

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I had wondered why there were no invasions in that area when I was doing all of this until I finally saw my first one. Poor guy was just not prepared to fight off three people with wild eyes and builds tuned for the most dangerous boss in the game. I've never really stomped in PVP before and I have no idea what on earth possessed a guy to pick this fight when he had less heath and a slower moveset than Malenia. The fight took a little less than a minute mostly because he kept running as the three of us blasted five kinds of bullshit at him. I did have to craft more frostbombs after which was inconvenient.
PVP has been strange because my go to farming spot requires me to complete a pvp invasion quest where i have to invade three people. The quest is easy because I don't have to win, I just have to invade so there is no pressure. But you cannot invade solo players so I've always faced groups. And I have won a shocking number of times. To the point where I genuinely don't understand why or how they didn't just merc me. But my bleed swords also will kill someone if I hit them two or three times outright so...even the dude powerstancing greatswords just couldn't keep out of my way and melted.

PVP in ER is pointless tbh, becuase it's so unfair to the invader (in theory) and the builds in this game are not designed for pvp in mind, Arts will pretty much instantly kill anyone they hit so it just becomes a duel of who gets hit first.
 

EvilRoy

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PVP has been strange because my go to farming spot requires me to complete a pvp invasion quest where i have to invade three people. The quest is easy because I don't have to win, I just have to invade so there is no pressure. But you cannot invade solo players so I've always faced groups. And I have won a shocking number of times. To the point where I genuinely don't understand why or how they didn't just merc me. But my bleed swords also will kill someone if I hit them two or three times outright so...even the dude powerstancing greatswords just couldn't keep out of my way and melted.

PVP in ER is pointless tbh, becuase it's so unfair to the invader (in theory) and the builds in this game are not designed for pvp in mind, Arts will pretty much instantly kill anyone they hit so it just becomes a duel of who gets hit first.
I did the same mission, although to be honest I never bothered to actually try in the invasions since it would take longer to be serious than to just jump off a cliff to fulfill the quest requirements. I'm kind of surprised invasions are a part of Elden Ring just on the basis that if you can only invade someone involved in coop it just turns into mildly annoying someone in a game-endorsed fashion. You're either gonna mess up a coop group run, or you're gonna get stomped. Either way both parties just kind of get inconvenienced by the exchange and nobody gets much of a reward. There are places where you can legitimately grief people like the Haligtree where you can push people off the branches, but aside from that most of the time an invader is going to at-best annoy somebody.

Now that I've been on the receiving end after convincing a buddy to try the game out its frankly just a weird little inconvenience. Getting set back progress is irrelevant to us because we're just hanging out, and even if we weren't most of the graces and shortcuts are tightly spaced enough that dying isn't really THAT big of a deal. Half the time I can just instantly smack down the invader because for some reason people always forget the bloodhound blade arte has a followup and there is some serious lack of understanding on the range of the eye-beam spell.
 

CriticalGaming

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I did the same mission, although to be honest I never bothered to actually try in the invasions since it would take longer to be serious than to just jump off a cliff to fulfill the quest requirements. I'm kind of surprised invasions are a part of Elden Ring just on the basis that if you can only invade someone involved in coop it just turns into mildly annoying someone in a game-endorsed fashion. You're either gonna mess up a coop group run, or you're gonna get stomped. Either way both parties just kind of get inconvenienced by the exchange and nobody gets much of a reward. There are places where you can legitimately grief people like the Haligtree where you can push people off the branches, but aside from that most of the time an invader is going to at-best annoy somebody.

Now that I've been on the receiving end after convincing a buddy to try the game out its frankly just a weird little inconvenience. Getting set back progress is irrelevant to us because we're just hanging out, and even if we weren't most of the graces and shortcuts are tightly spaced enough that dying isn't really THAT big of a deal. Half the time I can just instantly smack down the invader because for some reason people always forget the bloodhound blade arte has a followup and there is some serious lack of understanding on the range of the eye-beam spell.
I think FromSoft agrees because every new game they make doing pvp a bigger pain in the ass. Now you cannot get invaded playing solo, and they've designed it to be as unfair to the invader as possible which I suppose is the trade off for trying to fuck with someone's co-op fun. I would have rather they just left out invasions entirely but are probably keeping it around because for whatever reason there is a community for it.

However with ER's bullshit build possibilities, I doubt PvP sticks around very long. And the fact that an entire area is basically locked away for offline players, or when the game's servers go down is pretty bullshit.