Saturday Morning Gaming: Elden Ring DLC First Impressions
Shadow of the Erdtree was released on Thursday, June 20th at around 4PM Colorado Time. I downloaded it as soon as I was able and, of course, a co-worker was having her going-away-to-another-company party downtown and so I walked downtown to tell her so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. After wishing everybody well, I walked home and sat down and realized that, in my recently restarted game, I was *NOWHERE* near cracking the egg necessary to get to the DLC area. So I shrugged and figured that when I opened up my level 165 character and opened that game up that I’d be able to play with that.
When I got over to my bud’s house, we booted up the PS5 and I downloaded my save games from the cloud and we quickly discovered that my level 165 character had kicked off New Game Plus… and I stalled out pretty early in NG+. Like, I was further along in my level 60 game. I resigned myself to playing the first game until unleashing the DLC when my bud told me “I’m pretty sure that my level 160 character never went to NG+” and we checked and HE HADN’T.
We went to the region in question, opened the portal, and walked on through.
(Warning: Mild spoilers follow.)
The dinky nameless monsters we encountered did a fair amount of damage in the fights but they weren’t particularly interesting until we met our first monster with a name. And he tore us to shreds. Smithereens. We enjoyed our reloading screen and then he did it again.
“THAT is the Elden Ring I remember”, my buddy said. We fought again a couple more times, figured out the timing, and moved on to the next little region and got ourselves a look at the map. We had maybe one, maybe two sites of grace on the map when we looked at it and we were impressed by the scope. The DLC seemed big. We pointed out landmarks on the map… a city here, a ruin there, something that looked like it’d have something interesting on it over there. We found a ghost town and ran around trying to find everything of note when we decided to just give up and go straight to the walkthrough. It told us to go over to a little area on the map in the middle of a bunch of stuff beyond some white trees and we could encounter our first miniboss of the DLC.
Dude, he *SLAUGHTERED* us. “Okay, when you walk into the room, you have to do something other than what we did”, we established.
“Let’s try looping in from the left”, “Let’s try running dead on and opening with our strong attack”, “Let’s try running dead on and opening with our *SPECIAL* attack”, and so on and so forth. All followed by “Okay… *THAT* didn’t work.”
So far, this boss has killed us 20 times.
“This game is B.S.”, we found ourselves saying… but wasn’t that what it was like to play it the first time?
So, so far, the game has captured the whole “this is B.S.!” sensation of playing Elden Ring.
Which is pretty much what we came for in the first place.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is promotional art for Shadow of the Erdtree.)
I’m mostly playing Helldivers 2 with the boys. Youngest is back from college for the summer so he’s connecting his gaming laptop to the big TV and we’re all playing within shouting distance of each other. It’s been mostly a blast scattered lightly with frustration when they want to play the higher difficulties and I’m…just…not…fast enough to keep up. But they very graciously carry me from objective to objective and I contribute as best I can.
Reading about Knights in Tight Spaces has got me messing around with Fights again and…I used to be good at this game!Report
Yeah, I’ve been playing that on occasion thinking “hey, I’ll beat it again and maybe check out the DLC” but I can’t get past prison now! No matter which deck I’m using!
I used to be good at this!Report
Trying to avoid spoilers: There was an entity within a structure who was difficult.
Like… Margit-the-first-time difficult.
We just defeated this entity.
It tasted sweet.Report
After all the chat about the DLC (here and elsehwere, there’s no escape), I finally dove back into Elden Ring over the weekend. I started a new character, but this time I am spending much more time exploring instead of following the golden trail from one site of grace to the next. I have found a lot of the little mini-dungeons I didn’t find before and beat their mini-bosses. I found the dragon at the lake, which I never even triggered in my first game, so I had no idea it was there. This time around, I was just running around when it showed up unexpectedly. I muttered a curse, hopped on my horse, and got out of dodge. I was not ready for a dragon.
Last night, I decided I was ready to give it a go. It took me several tries on my horse as a melee guy. On the last run, things finally clicked when the dragon was just over half-way down and I was down to a sliver of health with no flasks. I avoided getting hit and got him down to the end of his health. I almost botched it when I saw the golden swirl of runes and thought it was dead, but it was just some small monsters the dragon had killed. I rode back toward it for the final blow, and it was very satisfying.
In my first run I got to Stormveil Castle. I beat Margit, but I felt like I just got lucky more than I felt like I really figured out what I was doing. I look forward to a rematch, and hopefully it will feel more accomplished. I think I still have plenty to do first, though.Report
My main complaint about Elden Ring is that the game is more fun when you use a walkthrough.
The walkthroughs, thank goodness, don’t lie to you.
The game? “Your next goal is Margit!”
The walkthrough? “Oh, yeah. Don’t even *THINK* about Margit. Here. Fight some other stuff instead. Go up levels! Collect some runes!”Report
I bounced off Elden Ring after maybe 15 hours, and I had tried to beat Margit a dozen times or so. I had a ton of fun exploring. The oh shit moment when I was in that flooded ruin and I started hearing (and feeling in the haptics) the dragon running at me across the lake was a top five video game moment for me. It was followed up by me running down a stairwell into a cave for cover, finding a treasure chest, opening it up, then getting transported by a trap all the way across the map to a section I’d never been to where the enemies were much harder.
But I got so frustrated when I decided to buckle down and try to beat Margit that I just quit. It also didn’t help that there are SO MANY mechanics and systems in the game, and it’s extremely opaque if you don’t have a walkthrough or guide open for you the whole time. Crafting, how ashes work, should I use these greases or save them, leveling up weapons, etc. I made it into that round table hold area, where the good guy knights are and the better blacksmith, but then I couldn’t remember how to get back there later. I spent an hour trying to kill the big guard on the horse that you first encounter when you get into limgrave…
All the talk about the DLC makes me want to give it another try.Report
Go here. That’s the best walkthrough I’ve encountered and it is directly responsible for me beating the game.
I don’t know that it helped me with a whole lot of “how to beat so-and-so” as much as it helped me understand that, seriously, I need to go up and other 10 levels and put 10 more points into Vigor. No, not Strength. Vigor.
Oh, and you get a *LOT* of bang for your buck for upgrading your weapons. So turn that sword into a +3 or +4 sword as soon as you can. It is a *MUCH* better return than putting points into strength.
Use the greases. Don’t hoard them, you’ll collect a ton of them and you’ll eventually get the ability to make or buy them. Just use them.
As for Ashes… fiddle about with them and find ones that you like. I like the wolves because they help with breaking stances (or interrupting attacks) and I like the jellyfish because it’s a damage sponge that does poison damage and I like the archer lady because she’s an archer lady. But you should figure out which ones that you like best with how you play.
And then you should upgrade the ever-loving crap out of them too.
The first time I beat Margit is probably a top ten gaming experience for me.
I hope you go back to the game after using a walkthrough. It’s, seriously, an amazing experience start to finish.
But only if you use a walkthrough, which is kinda b.s.Report
STEAM SUMMER SALE JUST STARTED THIS IS NOT A DRILLReport