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

[Dalisclock]

But here's the problem. When you replay dark souls or bloodborne to do a new build or whatever you still have to actually playthrough the game. So the challenge becomes can you beat the bosses doing x,y,z. But with Elden Ring, so much of the game is meaningless to actually beating the game that you don't have to bother with it. Yeah you can build all kinds of different shit, but no matter what you do 90% of the game is pointless to play, unless you are going to explore redundant shit with the build just because. But I feel like most challenges or repeated playthroughs are not going to do extra content just "because".

And in every souls game you're gonna be doing the same Cotent over and over again if you NG+. The thrill of discovery isn't there anymore. You know where every enemy is, you know where to find the cool items, etc. That's why NG+ runs tend to be a lot shorter, from what I've learned, because you can just focus build, grab what you need and plow through. Hell, you know all the main-line bosses by this point so it's just a matter of kicking their asses again.

I don't see it as terribly different.

This kind of makes my point about first playthroughs. This is all neat for you now because anything you discover is potentially new to you. But do you think you'd get the same satisfaction on replays? Maybe you would, it's dependant on the person, but I dunno how many overall players would feel that way.

To be honest I've never replayed a Souls game because most of my joy in these games comes from the discovery/level design aspect(and the lore). The only reason I'd replay would be to try the run again as a magic user or something, but it would still be the same set of bosses, I'd know what areas I could basically skip, I'd know where all the items I want are so I wouldn't be poking every corner.

I know the bosses get a lot of praise, and a lot of them are well designed and memorable, but quite a few aren't and if these games were merely a boss rush I doubt I'd bother with them because they'd lose almost everything I like about them. Which I swear is what some Souls fans seem to want considering how salty some of them get if you fight a boss using any methods other then dodge/block/attack. Summons/Ashes/Poison/items/terrain/wiki/etc are all 'not the intended way" to play or some BS.

 

[sXeth]

One thing you'll notice is that anyone doing challenge runs (like the Iron Pineapple Pacifist run, or the no hit speedrun) nobody is bothering with extra bosses, nor are they picking harder bosses like Melania. (except Lobosjr who beat every major boss at SL1). But that extreme, and when people find builds that just can't really do certain bosses they'll skip them.

A challenge build run becomes a lot easier when you only have to get through 13 bosses instead of 47. Or however many bosses are in a normal souls game, 25-30ish?

Well my second character being a shield user (/ice mage) I"ll let you know if I get there lol.

But yeah, primarily I'm only even blocking maybe 3-4 hits in a fight. Most of them I'm casually walking around not even dodging, because positioning by itself can avoid or bait out most attacks early on (before they start teleporting or you get your obnoxious stuff like Ulcerated Spirits). Blocking is to trigger a guard counter for the stagger and visceral more then anything.


I've seen jumping bow users truck Melania though. For my own part, well, anything that bleeds and can be staggered is dust to a Faith caster once they get the fly swarm. She'd occasionally try and do the Omnislash and just get staggered immediately because any lack of motion and that spell will blood loss instantly.

 

[CriticalGaming]

And in every souls game you're gonna be doing the same Cotent over and over again if you NG+. The thrill of discovery isn't there anymore. You know where every enemy is, you know where to find the cool items, etc. That's why NG+ runs tend to be a lot shorter, from what I've learned, because you can just focus build, grab what you need and plow through. Hell, you know all the main-line bosses by this point so it's just a matter of kicking their asses again.

I don't see it as terribly different.

The difference for me is that you still have to play the content. Like yeah there are one or two skipable fights, but for the most part when you replay a souls game or do a NG+ run, you have to still play the game and in someways you get to flex your mastery over the game. Like kicking bosses asses that used to give you a hard time, and that's cool progression. But when you do NG+ or just a fresh new game, you are expecting to play through the majority of what's on offer. A big majority of the game isn't ignored. If you get where I'm coming from on that.

To be honest I've never replayed a Souls game because most of my joy in these games comes from the discovery/level design aspect(and the lore).

Fair enough. Big ups to you.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

But here's the problem. When you replay dark souls or bloodborne to do a new build or whatever you still have to actually playthrough the game. So the challenge becomes can you beat the bosses doing x,y,z. But with Elden Ring, so much of the game is meaningless to actually beating the game that you don't have to bother with it. Yeah you can build all kinds of different shit, but no matter what you do 90% of the game is pointless to play, unless you are going to explore redundant shit with the build just because. But I feel like most challenges or repeated playthroughs are not going to do extra content just "because".

Again, optional is good here. If I didn’t know better it sounds like you’re arguing you’d rather not have the option to skip over whatever you’re not interested in seeking. Agreed there’s a lot of copy/pasty sub bosses and loot tunnels whether caves or catacombs, but not that big a deal as like you said it’s not something people are going to constantly scour the map for.
These places essentially act as loot holders, so if the layouts were too obtuse or confusing like with Tomb of the Dragons from the original or the chalice dungeons, it could lead to as much tedium and possibly more frustration.

I’d call it a wash overall as there’s good and bad about both past games and ER’s design, depending on the lens they’re viewed through.

 

[Silvanus]

So I'll pose this question to you.

Would you do the same thing on a second or third playthrough? Having experimented on what you found during your first playthrough, would you run around collecting all the random stuff on a second playthrough? Or would you decide what you want ahead of time, having found the stuff you liked the first time around?

See that's why the size of the world is poorly thought out imo. Because it's cool the first time, but once you know what's what, and what is pointless, so much of the game goes to waste. And I think it really falls into how many caves, mines, and catacombs are the same, it makes replaying the game so much less interesting because you aren't going to bother doing the same fucking dungeon for a reward you don't give a shit about.

I don't think this is a fair criticism. An open world providing 100+ hours on a single playthrough doesn't really need to focus on replayability.

With the bosses, the only recurrences are significantly different fights against the same individuals. Which countless games do: its the whole idea of a recurring villain.

The Asylum Demon and Firesage are far more similar to one another than Margit and Morgott. And you have to fight a whole bunch of copy-pasted Taurus Demons, another mainline boss. And if I'm counting correctly, there's only about 13 mainline bosses in DS1, too.

There's also the fact that even if Elden Ring has only 11-13 unavoidable bosses.... come on, every player is going to fight more unique ones that that. Its borderline inevitable. The important part is that in an Elden Ring playthrough the average player will still have faaaar more unique boss encounters than a DS player.

 

[CriticalGaming]

If I didn’t know better it sounds like you’re arguing you’d rather not have the option to skip over whatever you’re not interested in seeking.

I'm arguing that what's skippable is too much. It feels like they built all the extra shit first, then just picked a handful of shit to make the critical path.

And I think there are a few minor changes that would make the game feel better imo. For example requiring more bosses. Instead of two rememberances, you need four to unlock the final area, or force the player through some of the other dungeons as part of the critical path like Volcano Manor and the Caelid tower. It feels weird that you can never see a Godskin boss the entire playthrough and have your first experience be two of the motherfuckers. That sucks. I would much rather have two separate Godskin fights be required and have the double fight be optional.

I also think that a better quest structure would have been better for the game overall. They don't even have to be marked on the map or make it ubisofty in the open world. But a quest that says gather me blossoms from the catacombs to upgrade your ashes. Use quests to teach players about the mechanics instead of just hoping players figure shit out themselves or go to a wiki/youtube video. The obscure style works in Souls because as interwoven as Souls games are, they are still pretty linear and there is a reasonable expectation that most players are going to stumble across your NPCs.

I mean fuck...I beat the game three times, and platinumed it which required most of the optional bosses, gathering all the legendary items, it sends you everywhere. But i never once met or even fucking SAW the Dung eater. Everyone on reddit talks about the Dung Eater, he is even in the intro cinematic, I never saw him. I have no clue who the fuck he is.

 

[EvilRoy]

Windmill as noted, seems to have nothing to do with anything. I'm not even sure why Millicent goes there, as it has nothing to do with Miquella or Malenia either. I initially would've thought they were just Frenzied Flame from the behaviours, but they don't that either.

There is a ghost in the village who hints that the purpose of the weirdo village is to harvest skin for the godskin guys. It seems like it's supposed to be some sort of resident evil style dark village that acts in service of the black flame godskin guys.

Why is Millicent there? No clue, aside from the fact that if you knew roughly where the Haligtree was on a map you could reasonably start following that cliffside in hopes that it would turn north at some stage. The windmill lookout point is about as north as you can get before you have to follow back southward and commit to the capital.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I don't think this is a fair criticism. An open world providing 100+ hours on a single playthrough doesn't really need to focus on replayability.

I'd agree normally. Who gives a shit about playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey again. But Souls games have traditionally thrived on new game plus experiences. And ER continues that tradition with Ng+7 scaling. Because it's a core component of all FromSoft games, I think critisizing the replayability is valid.

However, maybe FromSoft just left NG+ in there because whatever. Er does have a respec option, so if you are not liking yout build you can go change into something else to try. And it is possible that replayability wasn't as considered this time. So it's possible, but people coming from previous FromSoft mindsets are still going to replay the game i feel, and especially since there are trophies for three different endings.

 

[sXeth]

I mean fuck...I beat the game three times, and platinumed it which required most of the optional bosses, gathering all the legendary items, it sends you everywhere. But i never once met or even fucking SAW the Dung eater. Everyone on reddit talks about the Dung Eater, he is even in the intro cinematic, I never saw him. I have no clue who the fuck he is.

The red dude who shows up in the Roundtable eventually (not sure what his specific trigger is). Even assuming you ignore his room (past the bell bearing merchant) the spirt tuning girl will suddenly have a convo option about it. Really hes one of the harder ones to miss.

Try and find Alexander after Caelid without a wiki (especially considering he's on a side road in Liurnia, an area most people will already have completed before Caelid), or Diallos after he leaves volcano manor (same thing). The final location of Patches. Or Tanith (assuming you teleport back to tell her "yo I killed your snake daddy" then you also need to randomly decide to go back to Rykards room). Corhyn and Goldmask kind of bounce around between being in reasonable locations and just randomly somewhere too.


Though my personal favorite is Yura the Finger Hunter's quest. It requires so much random backtracking and talking around Lake Agheel that I bet most people don't even get it started. Then you have to notice the random summon signs in other locations as there is never a direction to go to any of them. And you have to get his quest to get the item that stops Mohg's super attack being completely obnoxious,


Nephelis quest is basically wiki required too, but thats because they literally left an unfinished quest in the game, that bandaid patched something on when people noticed. But heaven help you if you visited the Albinauric Village before defeating Godrick and talking to her and Gideon, or you won't find her. Then you have to figure out to randomly look for that ash at the anticipation chapel (itself a "secret" zone), figure out to give it to her. Then guess that she warped to Godrics throne with no guidance.


Of course, Nephel Loux was probably originally meant to tie in with Godfrey/Hoarah Loux. Clearly "the Badlands" got chopped out at some point, and since he was in the list of biggus bossums, he got dumped in as an uncontextualized fight right before the final boss instead.

 

[Dalisclock]

The red dude who shows up in the Roundtable eventually (not sure what his specific trigger is). Even assuming you ignore his room (past the bell bearing merchant) the spirt tuning girl will suddenly have a convo option about it. Really hes one of the harder ones to miss.

Try and find Alexander after Caelid without a wiki (especially considering he's on a side road in Liurnia, an area most people will already have completed before Caelid), or Diallos after he leaves volcano manor (same thing). The final location of Patches. Or Tanith (assuming you teleport back to tell her "yo I killed your snake daddy" then you also need to randomly decide to go back to Rykards room). Corhyn and Goldmask kind of bounce around between being in reasonable locations and just randomly somewhere too.


Though my personal favorite is Yura the Finger Hunter's quest. It requires so much random backtracking and talking around Lake Agheel that I bet most people don't even get it started. Then you have to notice the random summon signs in other locations as there is never a direction to go to any of them. And you have to get his quest to get the item that stops Mohg's super attack being completely obnoxious,


Nephelis quest is basically wiki required too, but thats because they literally left an unfinished quest in the game, that bandaid patched something on when people noticed. But heaven help you if you visited the Albinauric Village before defeating Godrick and talking to her and Gideon, or you won't find her. Then you have to figure out to randomly look for that ash at the anticipation chapel (itself a "secret" zone), figure out to give it to her. Then guess that she warped to Godrics throne with no guidance.


Of course, Nephel Loux was probably originally meant to tie in with Godfrey/Hoarah Loux. Clearly "the Badlands" got chopped out at some point, and since he was in the list of biggus bossums, he got dumped in as an uncontextualized fight right before the final boss instead.

Oh, FROM quest design. It doesn't hold your hand, it frustrates you until you give up and go check the wiki.

Quest NPC: *Important lore stuff, I will start on a quest, see you around, maybe drops vague hint as to next stop*
Me: Can you repeat that? I want to write that down.
Quest NPC: Fuck off, find your own answers, I'm not repeating myself.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I'm arguing that what's skippable is too much. It feels like they built all the extra shit first, then just picked a handful of shit to make the critical path.

And I think there are a few minor changes that would make the game feel better imo. For example requiring more bosses. Instead of two rememberances, you need four to unlock the final area, or force the player through some of the other dungeons as part of the critical path like Volcano Manor and the Caelid tower. It feels weird that you can never see a Godskin boss the entire playthrough and have your first experience be two of the motherfuckers. That sucks. I would much rather have two separate Godskin fights be required and have the double fight be optional.

I also think that a better quest structure would have been better for the game overall. They don't even have to be marked on the map or make it ubisofty in the open world. But a quest that says gather me blossoms from the catacombs to upgrade your ashes. Use quests to teach players about the mechanics instead of just hoping players figure shit out themselves or go to a wiki/youtube video. The obscure style works in Souls because as interwoven as Souls games are, they are still pretty linear and there is a reasonable expectation that most players are going to stumble across your NPCs.

I mean fuck...I beat the game three times, and platinumed it which required most of the optional bosses, gathering all the legendary items, it sends you everywhere. But i never once met or even fucking SAW the Dung eater. Everyone on reddit talks about the Dung Eater, he is even in the intro cinematic, I never saw him. I have no clue who the fuck he is.

It’s interesting because I’m also playing The Witcher 3 and am enjoying the contrast of quest design there, but it doesn’t bother me if FROM has a bunch of missable content. As always they’ve done this by design. Same with how RDR2 has a shit ton of world building stuff most people never knew about unless they read newspaper clippings, notes from NPC homes, listened to NPC’s conversations, etc. It’s not an essential part of the game progression but still cool as hell to stumble across incidentally because it makes the game world feel like it exists regardless of the player’s motives or involvement.

 

[CriticalGaming]

It’s interesting because I’m also playing The Witcher 3 and am enjoying the contrast of quest design there, but it doesn’t bother me if FROM has a bunch of missable content. As always they’ve done this by design. Same with how RDR2 has a shit ton of world building stuff most people never knew about unless they read newspaper clippings, notes from NPC homes, listened to NPC’s conversations, etc. It’s not an essential part of the game progression but still cool as hell to stumble across incidentally because it makes the game world feel like it exists regardless of the player’s motives or involvement.

Do you think ER has the same level of world building as something like Witcher or RDR though?

FromSoft has always had great lore with great environmental lore as well in the past. But I feel like ER doesn't have the same type of moments as coming across Andor Londo for the first time or Irythell, or overlooking Yarnam. But that could just be me tbh.

The thing about the missable context of those games you mentioned is that the overall experience is directed. The Witcher clearly directs the player around and while you might miss side content and some things off the beaten path, i feel like both games do a good job of having missions send you to places that would force you to stumble into other shit, and then that side shit leads you to other shit and it's like falling into a Youtube spiral of crazy and after 4 hours you still haven't done the mission you got when you fist sat down to play.


Look it's quite possible that I'm crazy. I could be the only dickhead who thinks ER is overblown as fuck and everyone else loves it to death. I mean I dunno. i think i've laid out all I've got in my tank about why I think this whole thing was a flop to me. But hey, I don't fault people for liking it. People like Breath of the Wild too and I can't fathom why because I think that game is a pile of dicks. But I get that people can like it and i just don't have that kind of taste I guess i dunno. It's fine.

 

[EvilRoy]

Oh, FROM quest design. It doesn't hold your hand, it frustrates you until you give up and go check the wiki.

Quest NPC: *Important lore stuff, I will start on a quest, see you around, maybe drops vague hint as to next stop*
Me: Can you repeat that? I want to write that down.
Quest NPC: Fuck off, find your own answers, I'm not repeating myself.

I decided I wanted to contribute to the wiki for Elden Ring because I rarely buy games on release so I started screen capping each dialog line for transcription purposes.

It has helped me understand shit immensely. The amount of stuff they just casually slip in to conversation and just don't repeat is ridiculous and a lot of it really matters when it comes to understanding lore and in particular what they plan to do next. Yura has lines that hint at his plans but since there's no way the player would know what game areas are coming up they don't register as important. By the time a player might have enough context to understand what the lines mean, the NPC has moved and/or isn't going to repeat it.

I'm sort of impressed by that and sort of not. On one hand, that's more true to life. If you came to visit my city and said hi to me we might chat and I may say something like "I'll probably head south to my favorite coffee shop by the ravine later", which is a totally natural thing to say, but is effectively useless for you as a conversational partner to figure out where I'm going. Until you know that the only thing locals call the ravine is the massive creek ravine in the middle of town, and south means south of the river, you could never hope to find me.

On the other hand, I'm playing a game, and while this method of NPC guidance works in a largely linear game where there are only a few paths to search, it does not work in a huge open world. I missed Millicent at her Altus location because she blended into the rocks at a distance, despite being about 100m from the grace.

 

[sXeth]

Oh, FROM quest design. It doesn't hold your hand, it frustrates you until you give up and go check the wiki.

Quest NPC: *Important lore stuff, I will start on a quest, see you around, maybe drops vague hint as to next stop*
Me: Can you repeat that? I want to write that down.
Quest NPC: Fuck off, find your own answers, I'm not repeating myself.

In DS1/DS3 I could generally rely on exploring an area and moving forwards in sequence though. (DS2 I don't even remember an NPC questline existing)

In Elder Ring

Spoiler: Major Questlines

Ranni/Blaid
- Limgrave, Liurnia, Siofra, Liurnia, Limgrave, Siofra, Caelid, Limgrave, Liurnia, Nokron, Liurnia Tower, Deeproot, Ainsel/Nokstella, Liurnia (also a side trip ot limgrave to let Blaid out of the Gaol no one told you he was in)
- That first round of backtracking is at least directed, Blaidd sends you to Seluvis who sends you to Selenn, etc.
- That second round is insanity, they don't even tell you where the meteor actually landed (And the cutscene looks like its going north past Caelids minor tree).
Bonus Pt : this quest will kill Seluvis unexpectedly, terminating his quest

Goldmask
- Roundtable, Altus, Leyndell, Mountaintop of the Giants - I mean this goes in order, but if you miss the Altus wilderness ones, you break it by going to Farum Azula

Dung Eater
- I actually don't know. I just said LOLNope and offed him in the sewer gaol.

Shabiri/Frenzy
- Complete Edgar/Irina in the Weeping Peninsula. Hyetta (who appears to be a possessed/reanimated Irina, VA and all) appears even if you don't do this, but Edgar will never show up as the Revenger until you do making the quest incompletable if you skip this step.
- For that matter, Edgar's revenger invasion isn't even vaguely near where Hyetta is to give the grape too, unlike the other 3 stops.
- For bonus points, if you missed Bloody Finger Hunter Yura's questline, you'll have no idea wtf Shabriri is talking about when he shows up possessing his body
- Though hey, this does go all basically forwards. The only weird backtracking is from Mountaintop of the Giants where Shabriri explicitly is like "hey go sewer diving to find the Frenzied Flame before you go any further here"


Rogier/D/Fia
- Limgrave, Liurnia, Nokron ,Deeproot
- This one is mostly dodgy because there's several points where you have to just reload the grace point to get things to advance or you'd probably wander off particularly in Deeproot thinking it was over
- It also has a weird random crossover with Rannis questline, where you get Rannis half of the cursemark but no comment is ever made that this was needed

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Do you think ER has the same level of world building as something like Witcher or RDR though?

FromSoft has always had great lore with great environmental lore as well in the past. But I feel like ER doesn't have the same type of moments as coming across Andor Londo for the first time or Irythell, or overlooking Yarnam. But that could just be me tbh.

The thing about the missable context of those games you mentioned is that the overall experience is directed. The Witcher clearly directs the player around and while you might miss side content and some things off the beaten path, i feel like both games do a good job of having missions send you to places that would force you to stumble into other shit, and then that side shit leads you to other shit and it's like falling into a Youtube spiral of crazy and after 4 hours you still haven't done the mission you got when you fist sat down to play.


Look it's quite possible that I'm crazy. I could be the only dickhead who thinks ER is overblown as fuck and everyone else loves it to death. I mean I dunno. i think i've laid out all I've got in my tank about why I think this whole thing was a flop to me. But hey, I don't fault people for liking it. People like Breath of the Wild too and I can't fathom why because I think that game is a pile of dicks. But I get that people can like it and i just don't have that kind of taste I guess i dunno. It's fine.

Eh…several YouTubers have also shared your criticisms. I guess I was surprised to see it get as high praise as it did, at least next to their previous games. Definitely can agree on it being flawed i pursuit of “bigger and better”, but I think the vast majority of people praising it thought it clicked enough of the feel-good buttons vs its contemporaries which pushed it into the upper part echelon.

Opinions are fun assholes!

 

[CriticalGaming]

Eh…several YouTubers have also shared your criticisms. I guess I was surprised to see it get as high praise as it did, at least next to their previous games. Definitely can agree on it being flawed i pursuit of “bigger and better”, but I think the vast majority of people praising it thought it clicked enough of the feel-good buttons vs its contemporaries which pushed it into the upper part echelon.

Opinions are fun assholes!

I do think that a lot of praise is coming because this is people's first souls game. So what i do hope is that a lot of people who've never played a souls game will play ER and then go back to play the "real" souls experiences.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I decided I wanted to contribute to the wiki for Elden Ring because I rarely buy games on release so I started screen capping each dialog line for transcription purposes.

It has helped me understand shit immensely. The amount of stuff they just casually slip in to conversation and just don't repeat is ridiculous and a lot of it really matters when it comes to understanding lore and in particular what they plan to do next. Yura has lines that hint at his plans but since there's no way the player would know what game areas are coming up they don't register as important. By the time a player might have enough context to understand what the lines mean, the NPC has moved and/or isn't going to repeat it.

I'm sort of impressed by that and sort of not. On one hand, that's more true to life. If you came to visit my city and said hi to me we might chat and I may say something like "I'll probably head south to my favorite coffee shop by the ravine later", which is a totally natural thing to say, but is effectively useless for you as a conversational partner to figure out where I'm going. Until you know that the only thing locals call the ravine is the massive creek ravine in the middle of town, and south means south of the river, you could never hope to find me.

On the other hand, I'm playing a game, and while this method of NPC guidance works in a largely linear game where there are only a few paths to search, it does not work in a huge open world. I missed Millicent at her Altus location because she blended into the rocks at a distance, despite being about 100m from the grace.

I've not played Elden Ring (yet,) but this sounds like a problem if it has translated from traditional FromSoft games to a truly open world FromSoft game. At least in the Dark Souls titles, ambiguity was acceptable because there were only so many places one could go before hitting a brick wall and exploring elsewhere (except Dark Souls 2 which literally halted progress unless you thought to return to an area that was little more than an unnamed transition area between two other major areas after they've offered bonfire teleportation from the jump making senseless traversal completely pointless,) but if there's a completely open world and guidance isn't repeated, then... fuck?

Reminds me of Morrowind. While I love the game dearly, the journal being the only chronical of what you've learned, and often having to flip through dozens of pages to find clues of cardinal directions that someone somewhere mentioned hours ago in a place you're no longer standing was frustrating at times. There's difficulty, then there's manufactured difficulty; the former I don't mind; the latter just feels like a dick move for dick moves' sake. Wasn't there a Metal Gear title that required you plug your controller into the 2nd-player port to defeat a boss? Like, who'd think to do that??? Clever gimmick, but a cheap one nonetheless.

 

[Dalisclock]

In DS1/DS3 I could generally rely on exploring an area and moving forwards in sequence though. (DS2 I don't even remember an NPC questline existing)

In Elder Ring

Spoiler: Major Questlines

Ranni/Blaid
- Limgrave, Liurnia, Siofra, Liurnia, Limgrave, Siofra, Caelid, Limgrave, Liurnia, Nokron, Liurnia Tower, Deeproot, Ainsel/Nokstella, Liurnia (also a side trip ot limgrave to let Blaid out of the Gaol no one told you he was in)
- That first round of backtracking is at least directed, Blaidd sends you to Seluvis who sends you to Selenn, etc.
- That second round is insanity, they don't even tell you where the meteor actually landed (And the cutscene looks like its going north past Caelids minor tree).
Bonus Pt : this quest will kill Seluvis unexpectedly, terminating his quest

Goldmask
- Roundtable, Altus, Leyndell, Mountaintop of the Giants - I mean this goes in order, but if you miss the Altus wilderness ones, you break it by going to Farum Azula

Dung Eater
- I actually don't know. I just said LOLNope and offed him in the sewer gaol.

Shabiri/Frenzy
- Complete Edgar/Irina in the Weeping Peninsula. Hyetta (who appears to be a possessed/reanimated Irina, VA and all) appears even if you don't do this, but Edgar will never show up as the Revenger until you do making the quest incompletable if you skip this step.
- For that matter, Edgar's revenger invasion isn't even vaguely near where Hyetta is to give the grape too, unlike the other 3 stops.
- For bonus points, if you missed Bloody Finger Hunter Yura's questline, you'll have no idea wtf Shabriri is talking about when he shows up possessing his body
- Though hey, this does go all basically forwards. The only weird backtracking is from Mountaintop of the Giants where Shabriri explicitly is like "hey go sewer diving to find the Frenzied Flame before you go any further here"


Rogier/D/Fia
- Limgrave, Liurnia, Nokron ,Deeproot
- This one is mostly dodgy because there's several points where you have to just reload the grace point to get things to advance or you'd probably wander off particularly in Deeproot thinking it was over
- It also has a weird random crossover with Rannis questline, where you get Rannis half of the cursemark but no comment is ever made that this was needed

Yeah, some of these people I'm still trying to find. Eyeball Lady I've yet to encounter her again after seeing her for the first time near Stormviel. Rya it took me forever to find the 'Right down the road" house she was talking about.

At least Wolfy man Blaidd I can kind of track and i'm not gonna lie, I like hanging with him.

I bumped into Alexander the Onion Pot in a fucking dungeon somewhere(not even a required one) and just.....HOW THE FUCK DID YOU EVEN GET DOWN HERE MAN? And I have no idea where to go to find him again. I want to do ER organically but I also don't want to break these questlines because I kinda like these characters....well, some of them anyway. So there I go to the wiki again.

I keep telling myself I'm gonna storm bogwarts and demand to speak to their manager about why my wizard application keeps getting rejected(Something something vagabond can't do magic) but I keep getting distracted with the side stuff. I finally went down to the underdark because Blaidd was investigating down there and.....yeah, that's a whole area in itself. And Apparently a higher level one I'm still not quite ready for.

Oh, and since somebody is gonna post it eventually, Vaati has weighed in.

 

[Chupathingy]

So I'll pose this question to you.

Would you do the same thing on a second or third playthrough? Having experimented on what you found during your first playthrough, would you run around collecting all the random stuff on a second playthrough? Or would you decide what you want ahead of time, having found the stuff you liked the first time around?

See that's why the size of the world is poorly thought out imo. Because it's cool the first time, but once you know what's what, and what is pointless, so much of the game goes to waste. And I think it really falls into how many caves, mines, and catacombs are the same, it makes replaying the game so much less interesting because you aren't going to bother doing the same fucking dungeon for a reward you don't give a shit about.

I didn't even find/fight everything on my first playthrough, let alone test them. My second playthrough will probably involve focusing on the stuff I want, but I'll still make the effort to gather other stuff incase it doesn't work out all that well. This is how I've always played souls games, and it's even better now that we have respeccing. Just because something may be "pointless" on one playthrough doesn't make it so on other playthroughs. I don't even know why I need to point this out.

 

[Chupathingy]

Wasn't there a Metal Gear title that required you plug your controller into the 2nd-player port to defeat a boss? Like, who'd think to do that??? Clever gimmick, but a cheap one nonetheless.

One of the characters tells you to do that if you take too long to figure it out.