The Shattered Elden Ring Thread: Tarnished Edition - (Shadow of the Erdtree p. 85)
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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I assumed the golden Godfrey was set up by Morgott as an extra line of defense. We've seen before and during his bossfight that he's quite capable of conjuring up and projecting things.
And Gideon Ofnir.
I assume Critical is also assuming the player would go for Godrick and Rennala, meaning we can also add Margit and Red Wolf of Radagon.
But yeah that makes 10-12 depending on route.
Edit: Oh I think you also need to beat Draconic Tree Sentinel to get into Leyndell. So 13 if you go Godrick and Rennala.
Nah theres other ways into Leyndell.
Though yeah, I forgot the sub-bosses, whether that be Margit for Godrick, Red Wolf for Rennala, Godskin Apostle for Rykard, or ???? for Radahn (Radahn and the festival is really derped out in my game. But I had to beat Loretta to get Rannis quest to send Blaidd and start the festival. Idk how it goes if you don't have that. And despite Radahn's corpse being 100 hours into the ground the festival refuses to end in my game). (You can also backdoor into Rykard by doing the volcano manor assainations, but then you have to beat Morgot first and will have to have one of the others)
If we were going in a less speedrunnish route. Then there's way too many Godskins as the main standouts. And again.. while they have lore, nothing in their lore seems to connect their appearance points.
Well they served the Gloam-Eyed Queen, who was killed by Maliketh, which could explain the ones at Farum Azula. They were probably with her when she was killed and became stuck there. The ones at Volcano Manor and the Divine Tower of Liurnia are probably there as a sort of 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' alliance that Ranni and Rykard had going on. Ranni and the Gloam-Eyed Queen both wanted to hold onto/acquire Destined Death, so I guess it made sense for them, and by extension Rykard, to work together. That said, they're primarily looking after themselves which is why they attack you despite working for Ranni. The Apostle at Caelid is either retrieving/guarding the Godslayer greatsword. The only one I'm not sure about is the apostle at the Windmill Village.
As for the ones in the dungeon...I don't think many of the dungeon bosses had much logic to their placement.
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The Gloam Eyed queen seems to pretty definitely be a past tense to the Shattering. If not the whole Golden Order.
I wouldn't put it beyond being a DLC point, but the Godskins seem so heavily smattered about the baseline of the game.
- Appearing before Rykard, although we're not given a definitive answer that Prison Town is actually Rykards authority and not just a floating trash barge prison situation where sure, a Godskin Apostle might establish his little church dealy). Granted, if we follow the Volcano Manor quest rather then sneaking in, Tanith skips you past Prison Town entirely to fight Rykard (though that requires reaching Mountaintop of the Giants for Juno Hoslow, thus meaning you don't use Rykards rune as one of your Leyndell access)
- Divine Towers of Caelid and Liurnia. Caelid, the Apostles seem to have established some kind of root there. It feel like it could have been more fleshed out. But it kind of fits. They don't have to worry about Radahn as he's insane, and his army in the south is more concerned about killing him then enforcing the religious wars. Its also got the non-boss Blackflame Monks there as well. But yeah, dodgy platforming substitutes for any kind of full dungeon with worldbuilding. The one in Liurnia just seems to be bat-s**** random. We know Divine Towers are usually guarded by the Tower Knight-golem dudes. Those are nowhere to be seen there even as corpses. The other exception is Morgot has elite Omen Killer mercenaries guarding his, which makes sense because he's an Omen.
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.
Farum Azula sure, since thats where classic Dark Souls timey-wimey melting pot occurs. And enemies from another era make some sense.
All thats really said was that the Gloam Eyed Queen was an Empyrean, and had the power of Destined Death (unclear how, since it was part of the Elden Ring/Rune before Marika shattered it). Empyreans are... contradictory in lore as it is. But the living ones are Ranni, Melania, Miquella (maybe) and Marika/Radagon themselves. None of whom match up well with the theory. Ranni uses cold, not fire, and also had to do the elaborate nonsense to get the fingerslayer blade, and seems to have no connection with Destined Death at all (her cursemark is used to make Mending Death),, and Cursemarks are new components (like Dung Eaters). With the most logical but complete fan-spec I've seen being that the Gloam Eyed Queen was Melina's mother and thats why she explicitly guides us to kill gods, burn the tree and recover Destined Death
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Wait, how else can you get into Leyndell? I know there's a teleporter to the great bridge, but that doesn't actually let you progress.
You don't need Blaidd for the festival. Radahn can be done without fighting anyone else. Though it certainly sounds like your Radahn festival is bugged.
Also is Godskin Duo unavoidable when doing Farum Azula?
Correct, I got Destined Death and Mending Death mixed up. I do still think the Apostles continue to serve the Queen and either revive her somehow or at least try to take down the Greater Will, hence why they show up all over the place.
Yes, they need to be beaten to finish Farum Azula.
I used the wiki and got that number, which I'm assuming that they factor the player would take the easiest route. And unless you are doing a challenge of some sort i doubt you would skip Renala and Godrick in favor of Rhykar and Rhadan, as Caelid sucks and volcano manor is obtuse and tricky to navigate.
And yes the Godskin Duo is a required boss, another strange fact considering Noble and Apostle are not. They could have added two mandatory bosses to the run right there by funneling the players....you know what nevermind.
The more I think about Elden Ring the more the overall design of the game just doesn't make any fucking sense. From the sheer janky of balancing on both weapon arts and boss mechanics (joseph anderson highlights just how unfair some bosses actually are when you analyse them, from things like near impossible to avoid attacks, to the fact that Melenia's heal mechanic is unfair against melee build players because she heals even if you block, so if you did a shield run with heavy armor your main damage mitigation is fucked because she heals the same amount whether you block her attack or get hit outright.) From the badly designed exploration motive.
I mean open world games are going to suffer some copy and paste, but Elden Ring takes it to the extreme, and this adds to the problem that 90% of what you'll find while exploring will be useless to your current gameplan.
Those of you that finished the game, how many of the ashes did you use? How many different weapons did you use? Once the player settles on their build approach, you might as well stop exploring because you aren't going to find anything to really help your build.
Another problem is the pointlessness of Armor. I get that they don't really want poise to be a thing, but why not have special effects on armor to help players with various builds then? There are a couple of items like the mask that increases damage when the enemy is bleeding, and the armor that slowly regens health uselessly. But if you want armor itself to not matter, then why? If i put on the heaviest fucking armor and get one shot by a boss, then what's the point of having armor sets in the game at all? Fine fashion souls, but that's such a shitty leftover thing it makes armor drops meaningless. Also armor almost always drops as a complete set. There isn't a lot of collecting or farming different pieces in different places, 9 times out of10 you just get the whole set when you find it.
It feels like they sat down and said, "GIANT WORLD!" and that was the whole idea. No thought about where shit is, what enemies go where, gameplay balancing, nothing. It's all pretty bad.
But when you first play the game, it's all very cool. Your first playthrough is crazy because you are so overwhelmed by the scope of the map that you dont really register that every cave and catacomb are the fucking same. That there are only like 4 locations in the world that feel like real Dark Souls levels. That killing enemies on the world map are 99% pointless because they reward trivial runes. And that's I think the biggest thing that sticks with me, is how much of the game is absolutely trivial.
I constantly changed my build and equipment as I went through the game and found new stuff. And now I'm already thinking of new builds I can do with new characters. hell I'm thinking of new builds for characters in older Souls games. At one moment I was going full UNGA BUNGA SMASH, then I acquired the Hoslow whips and changed over to those which was night and day.
Damn straight.
The problem is that most players aren't going to respec to go from Unga Bunga to Pew pew magicks. And even then the moment you switch anything not for your current set up becomes useless. And while it's true for other souls games as well, you aren't drastically exploring too far out of your way to find shit. Every side path is minor in a Souls game so the time lost versus investment is minor.
Sure, but some players, like me, do like finding new shit and experimenting. If there are people who find a weapon, like it, spend the rest of the game using it and don't bother looking for anything else then that's fine, but don't use that as an excuse to punish other types of players.
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.
Maybe that’s why though. The size is to give more variety to the content and progression options. On the same token, it would become equally tedious if there was only a “one stop shop” kinda world layout for every build type, no matter how convenient it was. It would actually make more sense in that case just to literally make everything available in a hub area after beating certain bosses or whatever.
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Yeah in my haphazard attempts at a second go.... much of it seems kind of pointless. Except knowing I'll be underlevelled (or have to use some sillyness like the Blood Palace ledge farm) to patch in missing souls from those dungeon bosses.
I did experiment with a variety of weapons, although mostly staying inside the Faith group to go with my build. I think I ended up with Godslayer, Winged Scythe, Coded Sword, Erdtree bow, and one of the Envoy Horns because I needed a strike weapon lol. Very much in the mid to early lategame the smithing stones just bottleneck though and experimentation dies as a result. Which is only un-bottlenecked by getting the multiple tiers of bell bearing in Farum Azula, effectively the final dungeon of the game with Ashen Captial being a sightseeing tour, and depending when you do the Haligtree.
A special note would be that you never find a seal that surpasses the Godslayer seal from Stormveil Castle. The Erdtree seal near Leyndell on its Ancient Dragon upgrade finally just barely nudges its incant scaling out. But the Black Flame incantations are the most consistent so the 10% boost on the other one makes up for a few points (also the Erdtree one only even becomes better at 70+ faith).
Ashes are a good note. Not the weapon ashes, because those're mostly to taste. But summoning Ashes... there's a lot that are just subjectively better. And thats your main reward item for most of the catacomb type dungeons. Like is anyone summoning generic soldiers when you can get the skeleton greatshield crew with ghostflame bombs.
I suspect Melania's lifesteal could be beaten by a shield build because Viscerals will overpower the trickle heal. But full turtling is not a good plan in this game in general. Its more a way to step through one or two hits to do a punish, not full on ignore an attack combo.
I did experiment with a variety of weapons, although mostly staying inside the Faith group to go with my build. I think I ended up with Godslayer, Winged Scythe, Coded Sword, Erdtree bow, and one of the Envoy Horns because I needed a strike weapon lol. Very much in the mid to early lategame the smithing stones just bottleneck though and experimentation dies as a result. Which is only un-bottlenecked by getting the multiple tiers of bell bearing in Farum Azula, effectively the final dungeon of the game with Ashen Captial being a sightseeing tour, and depending when you do the Haligtree.
A special note would be that you never find a seal that surpasses the Godslayer seal from Stormveil Castle. The Erdtree seal near Leyndell on its Ancient Dragon upgrade finally just barely nudges its incant scaling out. But the Black Flame incantations are the most consistent so the 10% boost on the other one makes up for a few points (also the Erdtree one only even becomes better at 70+ faith).
Ashes are a good note. Not the weapon ashes, because those're mostly to taste. But summoning Ashes... there's a lot that are just subjectively better. And thats your main reward item for most of the catacomb type dungeons. Like is anyone summoning generic soldiers when you can get the skeleton greatshield crew with ghostflame bombs.
I suspect Melania's lifesteal could be beaten by a shield build because Viscerals will overpower the trickle heal. But full turtling is not a good plan in this game in general. Its more a way to step through one or two hits to do a punish, not full on ignore an attack combo.
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".
That's my take. Honestly it's really nice to be able to fuck around in the Lakes region before even tackling Stormviel, or go visit Caelid before deciding to NOPE on out of there. Hell, I just found the prawn dude shack......after searching for it for HOURS! I stumbled across the Albinaric village on pure accident looking for a totally different area. Shit like that makes up for the copy pasted caves and catacombs for me.
Don't get me wrong, I do love DS3 and BB having tight focused worlds but there's something wonderful about being able to poke around the map and find shit for the sheer love of exploring. It's one of the things about BOTW I adored and ER does it beautifully, even if sometimes it's just another cave or shrine.
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?
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.