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

[sXeth]

It’s


Lol I’d like to see what my death count is. Still straddling between INT/Dex but mostly playing melee outside of a few bosses. Can assure you I’ve died a similar amount to prior games but they’re probably more spaced out and concentrated mostly around bosses.

Think I was around maybe 20 by the end. 4 or 5 of which was just the divine tower of Caelid because add a jump button all you want, the weird non-animated, momentum physics not based in any logic of Souls remains.

Notable other highlights were Rennala and Astel just opening up with an instakill move the second a cutscene/loading screen ended.

And the Spiritcaller cave Apostle/Noble fight, which takes away all vulnerabilties those two enemies have to basically make the most annoying fight in the game.

(Worth noting, the Faith spells "Swarm of Flies" and "Pest Threads" (for larger bosses , or ones that don't bleed) basically stunlock everything in the game.)

 

[Dalisclock]

I just finished magic school, and by that I mean I "beat" the lady, Rennela(?), couped up in the library which was really interesting but I also felt bad because she wasn't really bothering anyone. It was trippy how it felt like going from Deacons of the deep into Rom the idiot spider in one fight.

I guess I'm still not done because it feels like like there's a big chunk of the academy I missed somehow but at least I have a 2nd rune. And as I already have the two halves of the medallion that lets me use the big lift I guess I'll be hitting the Atlus plateau tonight.

 

[EvilRoy]

I just finished magic school, and by that I mean I "beat" the lady, Rennela(?), couped up in the library which was really interesting but I also felt bad because she wasn't really bothering anyone. It was trippy how it felt like going from Deacons of the deep into Rom the idiot spider in one fight.

I guess I'm still not done because it feels like like there's a big chunk of the academy I missed somehow but at least I have a 2nd rune. And as I already have the two halves of the medallion that lets me use the big lift I guess I'll be hitting the Atlus plateau tonight.

She's still there if you want to chill and talk to her. The fight conceptually is weird but as near as I can tell you pick on her for a little while, and then some individual, or facsimile thereof, gets pissed about it and that is the actual bossfight and who you get the rune from. There are definitely points in the game where I wish they made the cutscenes more clear - my immediate reaction to seeing her in the library was "no, I killed you!" and then I rewatched the scene a couple times before realizing what went down. That is very much not touched on in the lore either as far as I can tell which is annoying.

 

[sXeth]

I just finished magic school, and by that I mean I "beat" the lady, Rennela(?), couped up in the library which was really interesting but I also felt bad because she wasn't really bothering anyone. It was trippy how it felt like going from Deacons of the deep into Rom the idiot spider in one fight.

I guess I'm still not done because it feels like like there's a big chunk of the academy I missed somehow but at least I have a 2nd rune. And as I already have the two halves of the medallion that lets me use the big lift I guess I'll be hitting the Atlus plateau tonight.

You'll probably want to poke around that big courtyard you jumped over to the rolly ball staircase on. There's 3 or 4 important things there or directly from there.

 

[sXeth]

She's still there if you want to chill and talk to her. The fight conceptually is weird but as near as I can tell you pick on her for a little while, and then some individual, or facsimile thereof, gets pissed about it and that is the actual bossfight and who you get the rune from.

From best I gather

Spoiler

Rennala is just upset that her husband f'd right off to be Marikas consort aburptly. So she just cradles the rune in that egg he left her before leaving. Making her kind of pathetic. (Also her other kids are kiind of rough. Rykard is Rykard and Radahn is an insane rot zombie now.

Speaking of her kids. Ranni, the sane one. Is the one that shows up (or an illusion of her shows up) to super-saiyan Rennala. Whether out of love for her mother, or ot defend that chest next to her. Or maybe she doesn''t want you grabbing that rune and having a reason to go to the Divine Tower of Liurnia. Without delving too much into spoiling Rannis questline)

Of course, in the "canon" order, the game loosely can be organzied into (By natural cues and NPC questline orders). The fighting with Rennala occurs before Carian manor, so could also just be Ranni testing you, though she never references the encounter.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Think I was around maybe 20 by the end. 4 or 5 of which was just the divine tower of Caelid because add a jump button all you want, the weird non-animated, momentum physics not based in any logic of Souls remains.

Notable other highlights were Rennala and Astel just opening up with an instakill move the second a cutscene/loading screen ended.

And the Spiritcaller cave Apostle/Noble fight, which takes away all vulnerabilties those two enemies have to basically make the most annoying fight in the game.

(Worth noting, the Faith spells "Swarm of Flies" and "Pest Threads" (for larger bosses , or ones that don't bleed) basically stunlock everything in the game.)

20 deaths total?? FFS…I haven’t played a Soulsy game yet where at least one or two bosses alone didn’t that many lives up and then some. Maybe DS1 Artorias came close. Or fuckin Capra demon before I figured out the cheese ledge.

 

[sXeth]

20 deaths total?? FFS…I haven’t played a Soulsy game yet where at least one or two bosses alone didn’t that many lives up and then some. Maybe DS1 Artorias came close. Or fuckin Capra demon before I figured out the cheese ledge.

I mean, I've always asserted that its fairly easy to play Souls games safely. And ER does'n't really manage to break away from dodge-light-light-dodge always working (I think in most cases they've actually made the rolling light attack quicker/safer).


I"ve also beaten... like, 7 of these at this point? All 4 Soulses, BB, both Surges. And have a bajillion hours of Monster Hunter (fun fact, intended or coincidentally. Rune bears in Elden Ring have an identical moveset to Nergigante minus spike launches)


But also see my final line. Malenia the rotting butterfly queen of BS spent the entire fight tweaking out from flie bites halfway across the arena from me and hemhorraging blood. Anything bigger then a midsized human gets hit about 93 times by Pest Threads (you mgiht know it as the annoying homing missiles from the bug-men) and staggers almost instantly.


Hence the only challenging one past that middlish point of having both those was the Spiritcaller Godskin pair, because they're iimmune to status effects.

 

[Dalisclock]

She's still there if you want to chill and talk to her. The fight conceptually is weird but as near as I can tell you pick on her for a little while, and then some individual, or facsimile thereof, gets pissed about it and that is the actual bossfight and who you get the rune from. There are definitely points in the game where I wish they made the cutscenes more clear - my immediate reaction to seeing her in the library was "no, I killed you!" and then I rewatched the scene a couple times before realizing what went down. That is very much not touched on in the lore either as far as I can tell which is annoying.

I rested at the bonfire just after I beat her to cash in the runes and noticed she was back and the area was now a "safe" zone. Interestingly you can still get her clothes from the finger maiden at roundtable, you get her "soul" but she doesn't seem to care at all you tried to off her.

 

[EvilRoy]

From best I gather

Spoiler

Rennala is just upset that her husband f'd right off to be Marikas consort aburptly. So she just cradles the rune in that egg he left her before leaving. Making her kind of pathetic. (Also her other kids are kiind of rough. Rykard is Rykard and Radahn is an insane rot zombie now.

Speaking of her kids. Ranni, the sane one. Is the one that shows up (or an illusion of her shows up) to super-saiyan Rennala. Whether out of love for her mother, or ot defend that chest next to her. Or maybe she doesn''t want you grabbing that rune and having a reason to go to the Divine Tower of Liurnia. Without delving too much into spoiling Rannis questline)

Of course, in the "canon" order, the game loosely can be organzied into (By natural cues and NPC questline orders). The fighting with Rennala occurs before Carian manor, so could also just be Ranni testing you, though she never references the encounter.

Spoiler

The whole Rennala/Renna/Ranni thing confused me quite a bit honestly, that might be why I'm struggling to pick up on what is happening in Hogwarts. It seems like Renna is an alter-ego that Ranni made for the purposes of... I dunno, giving the Tarnished a bell? Renna has a tower at least. Maybe Renna was a the dolls original name. Or the name of the egg? But regardless of what goes on there, like you said, Ranni doesn't give a good god damn what you did when you go talk to her. She makes deals no matter how mean you were to her mom. That's kind of cold blooded, and so is the age of stars thing on one level or another I guess. Considering how straightforward the Rennala stage 2 fight is particularly relative to the other shardbearers I kind of wonder if Ranni was just giving the player a consolation prize and a slap on the bum to send us on our way so we would stop bugging her mom.

I rested at the bonfire just after I beat her to cash in the runes and noticed she was back and the area was now a "safe" zone. Interestingly you can still get her clothes from the finger maiden at roundtable, you get her "soul" but she doesn't seem to care at all you tried to off her.

She doesn't seem to be playing with a full deck, yeah. Still, thanks to the rune you nicked you get to be reborn without turning into something just awful. So that's cool. You just have to hear her talk about sweetings, really creepily, in order to respec.

 

[Silvanus]

I think this just highlights how much Miyazaki needs to tackle a different setting. He needs something that mixes up his approach because all the games are looping the same shit.

Here's the castle, here's the posion area, here's the lava area, the gameplay zone progression feels very much the same in game to game. I can't help but think he is either reclutant to break away from the formula, or he is in a rut design or premise wise.

It's hard to say because Sekiro didn't really follow that map. So he CAN break out and do different things, I just don't know why he doesn't. He didn't want to make another dark souls game so he went ahead and made another dark souls game with a different name. Doesn't make sense.

I would fucking adore a sci-fi setting Miyazaki game.

 

[Dalisclock]

I would fucking adore a sci-fi setting Miyazaki game.

Supposdly Armored Core might come back in the near future. Not having ever played one I'd love to see how that works.

Also, it would be nice if some of the older ones would get rereleased/ported to current hardware. The last one is a PS3 and XBOX360 title which means you can only really play it if you emulate it for the PS3, having a working PS3, or have an XBOX(which would be preferable in this case).

I swear VG makers need to shut the fuck up about Piracy if they refuse of actually make their older games available. The longer they wait to port or remake them, the more they become locked to dead hardware but apparently emulating them is bad because.....they can't sell them or something(except they aren't selling them now either). This could be solved by having backwards compatibility be more of a thing or just providing console emulation on the newer consoles but they'd rather whine that people are touching their stuff or something(the stuff that's currently sitting in a metaphorically box in the corporate attic).

 

[sXeth]

Spoiler

The whole Rennala/Renna/Ranni thing confused me quite a bit honestly, that might be why I'm struggling to pick up on what is happening in Hogwarts. It seems like Renna is an alter-ego that Ranni made for the purposes of... I dunno, giving the Tarnished a bell? Renna has a tower at least. Maybe Renna was a the dolls original name. Or the name of the egg? But regardless of what goes on there, like you said, Ranni doesn't give a good god damn what you did when you go talk to her. She makes deals no matter how mean you were to her mom. That's kind of cold blooded, and so is the age of stars thing on one level or another I guess. Considering how straightforward the Rennala stage 2 fight is particularly relative to the other shardbearers I kind of wonder if Ranni was just giving the player a consolation prize and a slap on the bum to send us on our way so we would stop bugging her mom.

She doesn't seem to be playing with a full deck, yeah. Still, thanks to the rune you nicked you get to be reborn without turning into something just awful. So that's cool. You just have to hear her talk about sweetings, really creepily, in order to respec.

Spoiler

So... this one gets silly becaue of the goofy naming

Ranni is the Lunar Princess, allegedly a daughter of Radagon and Rennala. And a demigod. (Radagon is a full god, because Radagon and Marika are some kind of split entity.

Radagon married Rennala whose is the Queen of Raya Lucaria and the Academy bossfight to end a war between them and Leyndell.

Ranni uses the name Renna when first meeting us, presumably as some sort of alias because the Tarnished are generally mandated to hunt down the demigods for their rune shards.

Actual Renna is a Snow Witch who either raised or trained Ranni in magic. Seemingly she was part of the Carians who were being attacked at their manor by Rennallas Cuckoo knights, so theres some sort of strife there.

Noticeably, Rykard and Radahn, Ranni's brothers have runes. Ranni does not appear to have one.

This would imply that either Rannis rune is the one you get from Renalla, or she was never given one for some reason. So she may have already been in hiding when the Shattering occurred. (Miquella also doesn't have a Great Rune apparently, or at least we never need it to repair the Elden Ring, so maybe the twins shared one)


This would indicate potentially that Ranni was born, went to learn Carian magic. But then the Carians rebelled and kept her from getting tied up with the rest of the Golden Lineage before the Shattering occured.


Theres another bit of weirdness where Ranni is also an Empyrean, which are children of a single god who are destined to become gods and have Elden Lords as consorts. Melania and Miquella are as well, being born of Radagon and Marika who are one person. But theres no indication on who Ranni's parent would be, other then this would mean not Rennala. Possibly another outer god designates her, because we see her fingers in the background when we finish her quest (Very very dead because we gave her Fingerslayer), but not how many fingers they have, so it could be another case like the 3 Fingers and the Frenzy God.

Melina is also identical in appearance to Rannis physical non-doll form (and the spectral form on her side) and shares a VA. So Ranni and Melina may be a split aspect similar to Radagon and Marika. Still leaving their parentage unexplained though. They could potentially be offspring of Marika of course, who was actively defying the Greater Will by removing the Death Rune and being eternal, even while still stuck inside the Erdtree.

 

[Silvanus]

Spoiler

So... this one gets silly becaue of the goofy naming

Ranni is the Lunar Princess, allegedly a daughter of Radagon and Rennala. And a demigod. (Radagon is a full god, because Radagon and Marika are some kind of split entity.

Radagon married Rennala whose is the Queen of Raya Lucaria and the Academy bossfight to end a war between them and Leyndell.

Ranni uses the name Renna when first meeting us, presumably as some sort of alias because the Tarnished are generally mandated to hunt down the demigods for their rune shards.

Actual Renna is a Snow Witch who either raised or trained Ranni in magic. Seemingly she was part of the Carians who were being attacked at their manor by Rennallas Cuckoo knights, so theres some sort of strife there.

Noticeably, Rykard and Radahn, Ranni's brothers have runes. Ranni does not appear to have one.

This would imply that either Rannis rune is the one you get from Renalla, or she was never given one for some reason. So she may have already been in hiding when the Shattering occurred. (Miquella also doesn't have a Great Rune apparently, or at least we never need it to repair the Elden Ring, so maybe the twins shared one)


This would indicate potentially that Ranni was born, went to learn Carian magic. But then the Carians rebelled and kept her from getting tied up with the rest of the Golden Lineage before the Shattering occured.


Theres another bit of weirdness where Ranni is also an Empyrean, which are children of a single god who are destined to become gods and have Elden Lords as consorts. Melania and Miquella are as well, being born of Radagon and Marika who are one person. But theres no indication on who Ranni's parent would be, other then this would mean not Rennala. Possibly another outer god designates her, because we see her fingers in the background when we finish her quest (Very very dead because we gave her Fingerslayer), but not how many fingers they have, so it could be another case like the 3 Fingers and the Frenzy God.

Melina is also identical in appearance to Rannis physical non-doll form (and the spectral form on her side) and shares a VA. So Ranni and Melina may be a split aspect similar to Radagon and Marika. Still leaving their parentage unexplained though. They could potentially be offspring of Marika of course, who was actively defying the Greater Will by removing the Death Rune and being eternal, even while still stuck inside the Erdtree.

Spoiler

Ranni definitely did have a Great Rune in the past; Gideon Ofnir mentions that she has cast it aside, and as a result he's uninterested in hunting her down.

 

[Dalisclock]

So I am confused about one thing(ok more then that but let's keep it simple here)....and maybe it's in the lore somewhere.

When I got the 2nd rune and went back to the two fingers, I was told "Good, now that you have two runes you can got to the erdtree and mend the Elden Ring" and I mean, okay but aren't there a bunch of these runes? How does 2 runes out of like 6 or 7 count as being enough for fixing the damn thing? I get them not wanting to require you to get all of the runes to proceed(and I presume there's a door somewhere that checks if you have 2 runes before you can open it) but I keep feeling like you'd think such as important thing as the ER would require more then just "You got 2 pieces, that's good enough".

 

[CriticalGaming]

When I got the 2nd rune and went back to the two fingers, I was told "Good, now that you have two runes you can got to the erdtree and mend the Elden Ring" and I mean, okay but aren't there a bunch of these runes? How does 2 runes out of like 6 or 7 count as being enough for fixing the damn thing? I get them not wanting to require you to get all of the runes to proceed(and I presume there's a door somewhere that checks if you have 2 runes before you can open it) but I keep feeling like you'd think such as important thing as the ER would require more then just "You got 2 pieces, that's good enough".

I think this is due to the open world design. They wanted people to be able to complete the game without having to hunt every major boss down. So the requirement is only two bosses, and then you are free to "beat" the game.

It's a stupid fucking design choice considering how that the big bosses are the most interesting fights in the game.

BTW the speedrun is down to under 7minutes now.

 

[Dalisclock]

I think this is due to the open world design. They wanted people to be able to complete the game without having to hunt every major boss down. So the requirement is only two bosses, and then you are free to "beat" the game.

It's a stupid fucking design choice considering how that the big bosses are the most interesting fights in the game.

BTW the speedrun is down to under 7minutes now.

Does it affect the endings if you only have the minimum number of runes or is that entirely based on NPC stuff you do?

I know FROM games have some wierd citeria for unlocking endings other than the standard one but it would be interesting if you had more options for endings if you got more runes because theoretically the ring would be more "Complete" when it was reforged.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Does it affect the endings if you only have the minimum number of runes or is that entirely based on NPC stuff you do?

Not directly. The endings are related to questlines, and those quests will have you kill more bosses naturally. So the extra bosses are just because of the quests not because of ending requirements specifically.

 

[EvilRoy]

So I am confused about one thing(ok more then that but let's keep it simple here)....and maybe it's in the lore somewhere.

When I got the 2nd rune and went back to the two fingers, I was told "Good, now that you have two runes you can got to the erdtree and mend the Elden Ring" and I mean, okay but aren't there a bunch of these runes? How does 2 runes out of like 6 or 7 count as being enough for fixing the damn thing? I get them not wanting to require you to get all of the runes to proceed(and I presume there's a door somewhere that checks if you have 2 runes before you can open it) but I keep feeling like you'd think such as important thing as the ER would require more then just "You got 2 pieces, that's good enough".

There isn't a lot that can be said that wouldn't be a spoiler, but I guess the fundamental thing going on there is that the Elden Ring is way less straightforward of a thing than we are lead to believe at the start of the game. And what you're doing could be construed as fixing in some endings but it isn't necessarily that clean cut, and different endings play with that.

Spoiler

So... this one gets silly becaue of the goofy naming

Ranni is the Lunar Princess, allegedly a daughter of Radagon and Rennala. And a demigod. (Radagon is a full god, because Radagon and Marika are some kind of split entity.

Radagon married Rennala whose is the Queen of Raya Lucaria and the Academy bossfight to end a war between them and Leyndell.

Ranni uses the name Renna when first meeting us, presumably as some sort of alias because the Tarnished are generally mandated to hunt down the demigods for their rune shards.

Actual Renna is a Snow Witch who either raised or trained Ranni in magic. Seemingly she was part of the Carians who were being attacked at their manor by Rennallas Cuckoo knights, so theres some sort of strife there.

Noticeably, Rykard and Radahn, Ranni's brothers have runes. Ranni does not appear to have one.

This would imply that either Rannis rune is the one you get from Renalla, or she was never given one for some reason. So she may have already been in hiding when the Shattering occurred. (Miquella also doesn't have a Great Rune apparently, or at least we never need it to repair the Elden Ring, so maybe the twins shared one)


This would indicate potentially that Ranni was born, went to learn Carian magic. But then the Carians rebelled and kept her from getting tied up with the rest of the Golden Lineage before the Shattering occured.


Theres another bit of weirdness where Ranni is also an Empyrean, which are children of a single god who are destined to become gods and have Elden Lords as consorts. Melania and Miquella are as well, being born of Radagon and Marika who are one person. But theres no indication on who Ranni's parent would be, other then this would mean not Rennala. Possibly another outer god designates her, because we see her fingers in the background when we finish her quest (Very very dead because we gave her Fingerslayer), but not how many fingers they have, so it could be another case like the 3 Fingers and the Frenzy God.

Melina is also identical in appearance to Rannis physical non-doll form (and the spectral form on her side) and shares a VA. So Ranni and Melina may be a split aspect similar to Radagon and Marika. Still leaving their parentage unexplained though. They could potentially be offspring of Marika of course, who was actively defying the Greater Will by removing the Death Rune and being eternal, even while still stuck inside the Erdtree.

Spoiler

Its definitely interesting how the play with the physicality/reality of the demigods. Given what's going on with Melania and how she wakes up with no idea what's going on but eventually becomes certain that she needs to burn the tree, and herself, to the ground makes me think that this may have been a plan by Ranni to get the tree burnt so the play for the ring can proceed. So maybe she split a chunk of herself off with the intent of torching it, but Melania wakes up with no idea what's going on because Ranni really didn't care to give up any of her brains to what would definitely end up being a sacrifice. We know from other failed Tarnished that for some reason their maidens lose the way every time they get close to the end point, so maybe Ranni recognized that outside intervention was needed to get things moving and intervened. Not sure who iced our maiden at the start, but that certainly served Malenia's purposes, and Mr. The Grafted certainly tried to stop us from proceeding before we even got out of the church, so there's some kind of disagreement regarding what the Tarnished should be allowed to do.

From that perspective I guess the Tarnished would more or less be a useful idiot, working to get Melania to the fire, and then hopefully tripping on a branch and falling somehow into our own asses so Ranni could keep on with the plan. Maybe that's why Ranni doesn't give a shit about how the Tarnished responds to her mom - yeah okay, put an end to the bullying, but otherwise don't care. There is a questline where you can piss Ranni off and she stone cold kills you without an option to fight back which belies a willingness to get rid of people in her way, and a significant amount of power.

 

[Drathnoxis]

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".

I'm a bit behind in the thread, but you can skip a fair share of Dark Souls if you start with the master key.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I'm a bit behind in the thread, but you can skip a fair share of Dark Souls if you start with the master key.

Well that's usually a choice done by a player who already knows what they are doing. And the master key doesn't let you skip THAT much of the game really. It let's you access areas earlier than you otherwise would, but you aren't really doing any skipping.