Saturday Morning Gaming: Revisiting Elden Ring after Being Gone for a While

I talked about getting “gud” back in 2022. After beating the game in 2023, I reminisced about the journey from being a n00b to being able to beat the game.

Well, I’ve returned to the game in order to prep for the upcoming DLC after not having touched it since January of last year and…

Holy cow. It feels like all of the monsters have been nerfed. I’m playing through and just slaughtering everything like a threat to the natural order.

I don’t *NEED* a walkthrough, exactly… I know where most of the good dungeons are for the first few hours of the game and I wandered through them boggling at how they used to be so difficult and now I’m able to just beat the bosses up. (One major exception was the first Erdtree Burial Watchdog boss… but then I remembered the ashes and picked up the wolves to play with and, suddenly, the game was easy again.)

After beating up a good chunk of the various dungeons and wandering around the map and picking up various sites of grace, I realized that… maybe it was time to check out Margit? Not to beat him, of course… but just to check and see where we were. He killed me the first encounter, of course… but I got him down to 75%. “Holy cow…”, I thought. “How did *THAT* happen?”

So I got the necessary items to upgrade my sword to around +3 and then went back and THEN I BEAT HIM.

The same boss I banged my head against for 5 or 6 hours back in 2022 became a boss that I was able to beat nigh-effortlessly! I continued playing and keep continuing to boggle at how this game that was so very difficult way back when was suddenly easy. I defeated my first Erdtree Avatar on the second attempt after re-learning its timing.

Seriously, I don’t *FEEL* like I am any better at playing the game than I was in 2022. If anything, I feel like I got rusty and had to relearn stuff in order to get back into the groove.

The only logical explanation is that they nerfed all of the monsters.

I can’t wait until the DLC comes out.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured Image is the Elden Ring menu screen. Screenshot taken by the author.)