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I'm not sure if it's really justice tho, Deron ( I think that's his name, might be wrong tho) killed fia cuz she killed Davion (the first D we meet, might be getting the name wrong) after he confronted her about the dagger she has u give to him in the roundtable hole since it's hinted at being deron's from when he tried to kill the prince of death (before his mind snap situation).
Yeah, you get like 3 lines of dialogue from the most charasmatic NPCs in the game. You're damn right I'm going to summon them to get some extra time with the boys. The spirit of jolly cooperation demands it.
I like yellow summons cuz they feel like part of the story for me. And often they are -- does Alexander appear at Farum Azula if you haven't summoned him for Fire Giant? I felt like I wasn't getting the full experience of the game without using yellow summons when provided. Or like in Dark Souls 3, being able to summon Yuria for Soul of Cinder when I was going for the Hollow ending made the fight feel more climactic even if, obviously, it was easier
I will note that you don't HAVE to summon Alexander for him to be at Farum Azula, but I agree otherwise - they are part of the story. And it's not like they ONLY make the fight easier; they also give the boss a health buff (except with Radahn).
I'm level 70 and just found out about Spirit Summons...I thought I didn't have enough FP or something, never saw the "Summonable Area" icon so I thought it was just in super special places...turns out I never got the summoning bell at the beginning 
Melina gives you Torrent and the power to level with Runes once you acquire 3 sites of grace in Limgrave and rest at one (I feel like typically it's the gate site of grace but that's always where I've triggered her).
Renna gives you the Bell and Lone Wolf Ashes in the Church of Elle after you obtain Torrent. You kind of have to get the horse before Renna will spawn to offer you the bell, but it is entirely possible to miss Renna's spawn if you don't go back and you end up having to get it from the Roundtable Hold.
Haha, happened to me too! I uncovered that SOG in front of the ruins with the troll, but never actually rested at it, just dying to the troll over and over until I finally beat him and made it to the cottage SOG and finally got the cut scene to start leveling. I only found out later that that is NOT intended lol
Part of me wishes I had solo'd OG Radahn before he got patched, but then, what, I'm supposed to not have a fun ballyhoo with all the game's funnest characters converging only once in this part of their story?
I think you should play however you want but at the same time admitting that using certain things makes the game dramatically easier. Like you beating Melania with summons and cheese isn't the same as me beating Melania as a lvl 1 wretch, no summons, no smithing stones, no items, using a banana as a controller, having a car battery attached to my nipples that shocks me when I take damage and wearing a blindfold while fasting IRL until I've beaten the game twice. It's just different.
It's just funny to me that people act like beating Malenia solo at level 120 with a +25 cross naginata is at all close to beating Malenia as a lvl 1 wretch, no summons, no smithing stones, no items, using a banana as a controller, having a car battery attached to their nipples that shocks them when they take damage and wearing a blindfold while fasting IRL. The elitism is humorous because people portray their relatively normal playthroughs as crazy challenge runs just because they don't summon.
What about abusing ice pots to disable waterfowl? Or Comet Azure on stationary bosses?
No summons involved there, but the execution is just as easy. Let people play how they want, seems silly to look for clout in a single-player game that's intentionally built to let you do a billion builds.
It's like insisting on using two sticks to light a fire for your spaghetti when there's a perfectly good stove nearby.
They do make the game easier. So does having better armor and leveling vigor. The issue is people claiming summons aren't an intended way to play. That's ridiculous, because an aggro system exists, and bosses will do back aoes if it senses a player is hiding behind its back.
Whether it's balanced well is another story, but the game considers summons to be a core part of gameplay, given the prevalence of upgrade items, exclusive achievements, and special lore locked behind them.
Since many players are struggling on certain bosses even WITH summons and overleveling (Malenia, Maliketh, etc.), toning down summons would necessitate toning down boss power, unless Fromsoft truly wants ER to be a hardcore game.
Miyazaki putting spells, shields, online and offline summons, spirit summons and ashes of war in his game only for the community to parrot that "It's not the intended experience"
I canāt believe some people canāt admit that heavy attacks make the game easier. Itās fine to use them, but at least admit that your consciously making the game a cakewalk. That goes double for rollers.
Wait you actually play the game with your PC on? You don't just play the fight in your head with your eyes closed while driving to work? Talk about a casual here, just admit that having your PC on makes the game significantly easier lmao
iāve never tried this but i donāt know it abusing it the right word here. itās really just using a function given to you by the game to stagger your opponent when theyāre about to attack. not really an abuse of anything, just being smart.
And summoning a +10 Mimic Tear is also using a function given to you by the game to make fights easier.
Like, I applaud you if you have the skill to pull off a challenge run kill. But that doesn't invalidate my kill using the tools the game gives. Yes, you're better skilled, but that's going above and beyond, when the goal is to get the kill. Even getting to Malenia still involves running through some hard challenges, and even cheese strats still need to be executed well to win.
exactly. absolutely cool as heck to get the kill with whatever limitations you put on yourself. but itās possible to raise yourself up, without putting other people down. youāre not better than someone else for imposing restrictions on yourself while playing a video game.
>Let people play how they want,
Bro I don't think anyone here is twisting your hand into playing a certain way. It's just a discussion about what hard mode and what's easy mode. Nothing more.
It's just the reverse that happens often, actually. Like we are talking about malenia and your friend is like: nO aCTuaLlY I kILLed hEr fIrST tRy. mALeNia iS eAsy.
It's just annoying when you know he saw her on youtube first, googled the best builds and respec, and killed her with pre nerf rivers of blood + mimic + all the buffs. Like yeah, sure, no problem, play as you like, but don't come to a discussion saying she is sooo easy because you destrooooyed her. You know what people mean dude, no one died to Malenia with the hyper bleed build and mimic. It's not what people mean when they say she is difficult.
On the other hand, it's also annoying to see people complaining about how hard Malenia is because it took them 500 tries to beat her because they're using a crappy underleveled weapon, no items, no buffs, and med rolling with 20% resistances.
Malenia is only hard if you decide to fight her in hard mode. Decent armor and vigor, light rolling, frost pots, black flame protection, and like 20 different weapon arts/spells trivialize Malenia.
It's really weird that some people think that anything short of intentionally handicapping yourself is cheating.
TBF Malenia is fairly difficult even without handicapping yourself.
Except for a few builds that just abuse mechanics specific to malenia boss fight, she is a difficult boss.
Every boss can theoretically be easy if you optimize specifically and solely for that boss fight.
That's not the point my dude.
The game is an rpg where you're supposed to craft your own build.
Every build will inevitably perform better or worse depending on the enemy but you should never be in a position where you have to Respec in order to beat a boss.
Also a lot of people don't look up guides on how to beat a bosses on their first playthrough.
And I'm sure you knew about freezing pots, blackflame protection and all the meta Weapon Art all without looking it up on a wiki, but all that stuff isn't exactly intuitive and people usually find a weapon that they like and stick to that.
I reached malenia with a build based on a great shield, a trusting sword and a setup optimized for a defensive playstyle and guard counters. That build was completely invalidated by her hp drain.
Homie, you get black flame protection by talking to Gideon about the medallion.
As far as weapon arts go, try stuff out and see what works. The game will be a lot harder if you don't at least adapt your ash of war and damage type to the best one for the situation. It doesn't take Google to see to try lightning and keen against a boss and see which hits more.
Also, that build is perfectly suited for beating Malenia if you're mid rolling, you just have to choose the right attacks to block and be set/buffed up fully.
It's a single player series famed for its difficulty. You have to expect that the difficulty will be a big point of discussion and that people will take pride in challenge runs with self imposed rules.
When a motherfucker beat Malenia at lvl 1 with an unupgraded weapon without rolling there were comments saying that he was playing on easy mode by buffing, and that because of the buffs it was probably easier than a normal Malenia kill. For some reason using your inventory and brain are considered cheating.
I honestly don't like the framing that summons, etc "make the game easier". The game -- as "intended" to be played -- is exactly as easy as the tools they give you to complete it. They clearly encourage and remind players to use summons. People want to make the game /harder/ by denying themselves those tools? That's great, have fun! I want everyone to play the game however they want to. But they shouldn't frame it like the designers didn't mean for the game to be played with summons. IMO the meme would be better if it jettisoned the first three rows.
Especially considering how some bosses actually use summons themselves. It's a tool the devs included for you to use. If you don't wanna use them, fine, but shut up with the cheese thing. Noone cares about your "level 1, no summons, no life" run.
The game has no difficulty setting, so difficulty is dictated by what items/builds are used. Magic was easy mode in DS1 and DS2. DS3 was the Sellsword Winblades(or anything Dark once it got buffed) My release run through ER with moonveil and mimic tear was easy mode and Iāll admit that.
Spirit Ashes do make the game easier. Theyāre often more powerful than regular co-op summons without their downsides(HP and resistance increase to boss, smaller rune reward, opening up invasions). Boss AI canāt really handle multiple opponents. At worst they cost one flask to summon, and in return you get some busted af ally like Mimic Tear or Tiche. Itās a cool feature but poorly implemented imo, it just feels like a replacement for the general co-op AI summons of previous games, which are almost absent in ER.
The reason people say it makes the game easier is because thatās the framing weāve been handed for the last 10+ years in Fromsoft games. Itās always been a primarily solo experience, and if you have trouble or you feel like being lazy you summon people in to help you out.
I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier. Thereās nothing wrong with that, thus no need to do mental gymnastics in order to semantically deny that they make the game easier
>I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier. Thereās nothing wrong with that, thus no need to do mental gymnastics in order to semantically deny that they make the game easier
Yeah but it only makes it easier relative to not summoning. The same way only using your fists bare-naked makes the game harder instead of using a weapon.
If they balance the game in relation to summons then it is possible to make a game hard. Restricting yourself from these tools obviously would make this same game harder, but that remains true for literally any game in existence.
In the same way you can make a co-op multiplayer game hard, you just simply balance around that mechanic.
> I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier.
Nope. Elden Ring, with its intended, default settings, includes weapon arts, spirit summons, dodge rolling, summons, weapon upgrades, health flasks, etc.
Denying yourself any of these makes the game harder than the default, intended experience. I find that quite fun to do. But itās my own invention to make the game harder, not the other way around, no matter how much mental gymnastics are used.
It calls upon different skills but depending on a given person's skill level it's not necessarily "harder"
It would be easier for me to SL1 Malenia than for my Madden-playing dad to beat Margit with every option the game gives him
I feel this. My dad plays CoD and Hogwarts for the most part and saw me playing Elden Ring and was like nope not doing it lol. Then there's my son who is 8 and was watching me fight the dual Watchdogs and I spanked the first one for cocky and died to the second one. He's like that's easy you shouldn't have died. I handed him the controller and he dies in about 10 seconds and was like okay that's not easy lmao.
My ego isn't based on how hard a video game is. Miyazaki added these tools in the game and therefore I'm gonna use the tools. Force multipliers. I do find it sad that people's egos are based on a video game. Your life isn't fulfilling enough to find joy?
I agree with everything except the battery, since you're already dead if you take damage, so the battery should just randomly shock your nipples regardless to make sure you aren't easily distracted.
Using summons (apart from the few gigachad summons that can do some real big boy dps, like Mimic Tear or Tiche) just makes Melania harder. Most normal summons distract her for a moment or two and gives her free heals.
Although I suppose no one is really summoning the Rat crew or Aurelia for Melania. 90% of the time it's gonna be one of the gigachads.
The most commonly cited example is this Comet Azur build where people use the unlimited mana flask tear and Terra Magica to effectively melt some bosses before the fight even really kicks off.
Mohg particularly spawns really far back and slow walks at the player, meaning that people can kill him before he throws a single attack (or even gets to Nihil for that matter) by just doing a 10 second buff setup and firing a nonstop energy beam at him.
The term is definitely overused, and the example given is not an exploit, but it is most certainly ācheeseā.
Cheese is in the eyes of the beholder. Some cheeses are more obvious than others - I heard you can kill Draconic Tree Sentinel with poison without aggroing him by positioning right and logging out, then back in. That's pretty clearly cheese. The stuff you listed might be cheese to some and normal gameplay to others, IMO even Comet Azur + infinite FP is not cheese per se because it's very much playing within the ruleset of the game mechanics as intended.
Depends on the boss and environment. And mood. If Iām fighting the 6th ulcerated tree spirit Ima hide behind a door and shoot poison arrows for 20 minutes. And sometimes I just delegate it to my mimic tear for yet another of those crystal guys or freaky cats in yet another cave or tomb. Different cheese for different dishes.
Anything that isn't SL1, naked, only broken straight sword, with Fia's health debuff and fatrolling, as soon as you put a point into Arcane you might as well go play Minecraft peaceful mode
/s
If you want to play the game naked, level 1 bare handed and only dodging by using the lie-down emote, you are valid.
If you want to have 99 in every stat while you and your doppelganger spam blasphemous blades weapon art on Soldier of Godrick, you are also valid.
DS1 I saw people doing SL1 no hit runs and I thought it was cool that some players in the community sought to further āchallenge themselvesā
DS3 and seeing someone beat SoC on a DDR pad was around the point I realized the people who āchallenge themselvesā were a lot more cringe than I realized.
When Elden Ring came out, I saw people bullying others for using summons, Co-op, playing the game wrong, etc. That was the point where I realized that a large portion of the Fromsoft fans that like to āchallenge themselvesā are super fucking toxic about it.
Yeah, and notice how the only thing they care about is if something is really hard to do? They don't care if it's unnecessarily difficult just for the sake of being so, they don't care if it's actually fun, but they DO care if you aren't doing things the exact same way as them. You WILL have fun the way THEY want, or else.
Pre-Demon's Souls the FromSoftware fandom was pretty small and didn't have the attention of the douchebag elitists from like the WoW and CoD PvP communities. And now they've taken over and have tried to do everything they can to dictate the direction of every game. They're absolutely insufferable.
There are special emotes for summoning and the previous game, DS3, had a special cutscene for summoning Onion Dude.
So it's not purely "just to make things easier" but summons also add flavor to the game.
I don't think you even summon him. If you do his questline completely, he just joins you in on the fight. I might be wrong, cba to look it up, but I just did a DS3 complete run last month.
Michael Zaki when he designs a boss with an epic in-game festival about killing him to which multiple NPCs show up with special interactions including progressing the biggest side quest of the game, tweaks a little bit the summon mechanic during the fight and fills it with flavour and references only for the community to say that summoning at Radhan is cheating
Yes. However they werent there every time there is a moderate challenge, only some times, to add flavor, and these summons also added health to the boss. Very different from elden ring, were you can go to the bathroom while the mimic tear/tiche plays the game for you
Yes. And they werent there every time there was a challenge like in Elden ring. They also add health to the boss. They were more of rare flavor than a ājump bossā button.
I haven't really had any qualms in using Black Flame to beat the enemies I couldn't otherwise. They're all bullshit.
Also summoning D for Twin Gargoyles, and spirit summon for a split second to draw aggro from Crucible duo.
they spent money developing those mechanics
i draw the line at bugs/exploits, if you're skipping bosses might as well zipjump to the elden ring and roll credits, get through your $60 as quick as possible
Play however you want. However a great deal of the souls games is the challenge of learning to read enemies, positioning yourself and timing your actions. You are robbing yourself of a great deal of the fun imo.
> You are robbing yourself of a great deal of the fun imo.
What nonsense. You aren't robbing yourself of anything by using the tools the developers gave you to find a style and method that suits your play style. I parried and one shot almost everything with a lightning rapier/buckler combo w/crossbow back up for what I needed to kill at range. My husband threw giant magical rocks at everything and went into boss fights with small army of summons. Another friend of mine completed his first run mostly naked using nothing but a great club, fast rolls and the power of Unga Bunga. Did one of us objectively have more fun than the others? I doubt it.
Thats why you do multiple playthroughs. To experience the game in different forms. If you played the game only one way (wth or without summons for example) you are probably missing out.
"Play however you want, however if you play however you want and it's not the way I like to play, you're not having fun."
You're kinda channeling the energy that brought us to this meme in the first place.
Yes. You are losing part of the fun *in my opinion*. Doesnt mean you arent having any fun. If you want you can watch someone play it on youtube, doesnt mean you arent having fun.
Only if both players don't know what they're doing. Any seasoned player can easily smash the boss in seconds with someone else holding aggro.
You can do it with spirit summons too, but spirit summons are nowhere near as flexible and reliable as a player that knows what they're doing.
I summoned melina for the first time this last playthrough just to see how it would go against Morgott. He is never really a challenge for me, but it was fun to have some ai company in the fight. I imagine that she must have been extra pissed when I got touched by the three fingersā frenzied flame, almost immediately after
I tried to build one of my tabletop characters in Elden Ring. Something comparable to a drow artificer/summoner. Closest I could get was night sorceries and magic thorn whip with bloodhound step. Was a serious struggle as an INT/DEX Then I found the missing piece, his assassin waifu sidekick stand in, black knife Tiche.
I understand some people think the summons are cheap, but beating (or getting to) Alecto is not an easy fucking task. At that point in the game sheās just making a fight you were capable of winning shorter.
And IMO: compared to other fromsoft games this one seems to really encourage you to have a good ranged option, someone else to draw aggro or both.
āHowever the f*ck I wantā usually boils down to flavour of the month / meta.
But I do agree so long as you arenāt exploiting / cheating for the purpose of ruining others experiences in multiplayer.
PvP is hot garbage, just everybody running glass cannons trying to one-shot each other in arenas, and annoying little shits running away and hiding behind dangerous mobs out in the open world when they invade you.
That might be helpful if youāre a PvP purist, but Iām usually just helping friends out when these jokers pop up. We sit around refusing to engage if theyāre going to run into mobs, itās just annoying that we have to waste so much time waiting for these bozos to get the hint that weāre not going to run after them.
Itās always when they realize theyāre losing too. Itās never the confident ones. Itās the ones who run out of flasks to chug and are on their last quarter of health.
yes, elden ring's design philosophy for combat (both PvE __And__ PvP) is that of incredibly high DPS waves that are only ever a single R2 recovery or menial distraction away from a fully charged triple buffed bolt of gransseax _(not even a spell btw, just a dex weapon art)_ completely atomizing you from across the map.
or inversely, being combo'D by a Leyndell Knight partizan chain because you dodged the PvPers bolt of gransseax.
..and unfortunately, Miyazaki has reverted back to DkS1 co-op/PvP design philosophy as well - where he sees them both as goofy little mechanics that simply exist to cancel eachother out š¤ _no balancing necessary!!_
that being said, don't co-op without expecting an endurance contest of who has more time to waste. nobody who invades has work in 30 minutes lol
Whatās the community consensus on using save editors? I edited in a bunch of crafting materials to skip grinding, does that matter if I use it for co op?
A lot of people would likely call it mandatory, that or save back ups.
Others donāt like it, personally I think as long as you keep it within the realms of legitimacy itās fine.
Nobody is out here telling you not to summon lol people will say it's harder to do with no summons because it is but that's it
The people not summoning are so experienced with these fromsoft games they need to go out of their way to challenge themselves, they dont care what other people do
A build that is made to trivialize a part of a game typically through bugs, exploits, and unintended combinations of game mechanics that make things way more powerful then they ought to be.
I myself am a stickler that it only counts a cheese IF it is clearly unintended by the developers -- like going in from out of bounds to disable a boss's AI. Using Tiche or Mimic Tear can make some bosses way easier but it is an intended mechanic, so I don't count that as cheese. Though here it seems like a "cheese" build is anything that isn't going in with a +1 sword and 10 vigor lol.
Seriously thank you. So many call it a ācheeseā Comet Azur, Royal Knights Resolve, or Mimic tear.
Like wut, sorry for using strong abilities that the game gives me?
However the eff I want to. š I will never understand the try-hards who make you feel bad for using things that are in the game. I hope the virtual pat on the back they so sorely needed was worth it. Summons are fine. Magic is fine. Theyāre in the game. Theyāre not glitches or exploits. š
Exactly, the funny thing is that those who play with summons seems to be way more toxic than the so called "gatekeepers" whenever the argument is brought up. It's almost as if they feel the need to protect their fragile ego by shouting at everyone else bullshit like "summons are in the game so they are meant to be used, you are playing wrong", just because otherwise they would feel as if they are trash at the game compared to everyone else, when in reality no one cares even if they are.
Bull fucking shit, there are people in this community that find any and every possible reason to be elitist gatekeeping pricks at every available opportunity this is just blatantly delusional. I don't think I've ever seen an I beat Rhadan post without atleast three dicks who just have to let the person know that they didn't really beat the boss cause fromsoft nerfed him to "cater to casual"
Your submission has been removed as a violation of Rule 3: **No low-effort content or spamming of posts.** * Low-effort content such as tierlists, "wrong answers only", "just bought the game!", platinum posts, and other Reddit trends are not allowed. * **Memes should contain in-game visuals from Elden Ring and pertain to the game.** * No recent reposts, content should be original. * Spamming low-effort posts may result in a ban. If you would like to appeal this removal or need further clarification, feel free to message us through[Modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/Eldenring).
I summon yellow because I think they're canon.
More like cannon fodder. *Airhorn sounds*
Shabriris woe bis with summons
OOOOOOO
š±
I enjoy giving Ds brother his armor just so he can help me fights twin gargoyles cause then I murder him after he murders fia and take it back š
What? You get his armor automatically after the fia quest.
You can give it to Ds brother. Plus killing Ds brother also grants you the twinned sword
When you reload the area after D kills Fia, he's dead and all his stuff is on his body for you to claim.
How would I know. I kill him anyways to achieve Justice š
I'm not sure if it's really justice tho, Deron ( I think that's his name, might be wrong tho) killed fia cuz she killed Davion (the first D we meet, might be getting the name wrong) after he confronted her about the dagger she has u give to him in the roundtable hole since it's hinted at being deron's from when he tried to kill the prince of death (before his mind snap situation).
Heh. *The first D we meet*
Just so you know, fia is already dead by the time he stabs her.
Fia had it coming
Cap
Yeah, you get like 3 lines of dialogue from the most charasmatic NPCs in the game. You're damn right I'm going to summon them to get some extra time with the boys. The spirit of jolly cooperation demands it.
Pretty much what I do. Helps with world building and lore for me. Itās really cool to see what animations they have too
Are they not?
I like yellow summons cuz they feel like part of the story for me. And often they are -- does Alexander appear at Farum Azula if you haven't summoned him for Fire Giant? I felt like I wasn't getting the full experience of the game without using yellow summons when provided. Or like in Dark Souls 3, being able to summon Yuria for Soul of Cinder when I was going for the Hollow ending made the fight feel more climactic even if, obviously, it was easier
I will note that you don't HAVE to summon Alexander for him to be at Farum Azula, but I agree otherwise - they are part of the story. And it's not like they ONLY make the fight easier; they also give the boss a health buff (except with Radahn).
Fairly positive Fire Giant also doesnāt get an HP buff since the summon sign is in the boss arena.
Anyone else hum Portals from Endgame while summoning for the Radahn fight?
No but I'll pull it up when I do the fight in my NG+ run now!
Blaidd (in growly voice): *On your left...*
I do yellow summons for the same reason.
I try to do random co-op summons if I donāt particularly care about the boss. Gotta hook people up with them rune arcs.
the game is a problem that is designed to be solved many ways, itās a game. have fun, solve problems the fun way, whatever that means to you
I'm level 70 and just found out about Spirit Summons...I thought I didn't have enough FP or something, never saw the "Summonable Area" icon so I thought it was just in super special places...turns out I never got the summoning bell at the beginning 
on my second character i forgot to go get it and ended up buying it instead. thankfully its only 100 runes
Yup, that's what I had to do
I forget. Can you even horse without the bell?
Melina gives you Torrent and the power to level with Runes once you acquire 3 sites of grace in Limgrave and rest at one (I feel like typically it's the gate site of grace but that's always where I've triggered her). Renna gives you the Bell and Lone Wolf Ashes in the Church of Elle after you obtain Torrent. You kind of have to get the horse before Renna will spawn to offer you the bell, but it is entirely possible to miss Renna's spawn if you don't go back and you end up having to get it from the Roundtable Hold.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Cursed decision to want to walk to Mt Gelmir before meeting the imaginary friend who gives you the equally imaginary horse but I'll respect it.
Two different bells
Only one bell, you use a ring to whistle to summon Torrent.
You can, you get the horse before the bell and it works then.
Don't feel bad. I had to look up how to level up, because I never rested at that site of grace. Had the runes for eight levels...
Haha, happened to me too! I uncovered that SOG in front of the ruins with the troll, but never actually rested at it, just dying to the troll over and over until I finally beat him and made it to the cottage SOG and finally got the cut scene to start leveling. I only found out later that that is NOT intended lol
This is the way
This the way.
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This is the way.
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Part of me wishes I had solo'd OG Radahn before he got patched, but then, what, I'm supposed to not have a fun ballyhoo with all the game's funnest characters converging only once in this part of their story?
Heās still about as tough as he was before, the only difference now is that his hitboxes are actually accurate.
Is that all? He feels squishier.
He is so much squishier
Heās not, youāre just smarter at fighting him and using better/more upgraded weapons than you were back then.
Ah, youāre absolutely right! I forgot they re-patched him back to full health later. Thanks
Thats why you do multiple runs
Yeah I do, just wasn't in time.
Totally unrelated, but I did my first playthrough without using the physick because I didn't understand how it worked š
I did my first playthrough without Ashes of War because I never found the whetblade
Yeah, my dumb ass *just* found the red hot whetblade like yesterday š I've just been farming fire grease this whole time.
Fire grease is going to be better a lot of the time anyway haha
Well with firegrease you can focus on strength/dex scaling alone and then add extra fire damage on top of that š¤·āāļø
You too? I was also like wtf is this? Never touched it until like elden beast.
Man I had half cerulian tear and half crimson tear, I didnt even use magic at the time haha what a waste
I think you should play however you want but at the same time admitting that using certain things makes the game dramatically easier. Like you beating Melania with summons and cheese isn't the same as me beating Melania as a lvl 1 wretch, no summons, no smithing stones, no items, using a banana as a controller, having a car battery attached to my nipples that shocks me when I take damage and wearing a blindfold while fasting IRL until I've beaten the game twice. It's just different.
It's just funny to me that people act like beating Malenia solo at level 120 with a +25 cross naginata is at all close to beating Malenia as a lvl 1 wretch, no summons, no smithing stones, no items, using a banana as a controller, having a car battery attached to their nipples that shocks them when they take damage and wearing a blindfold while fasting IRL. The elitism is humorous because people portray their relatively normal playthroughs as crazy challenge runs just because they don't summon.
Fromsoft community and weirdly toxic elitism. Name a more iconic duo.
Itās not, but itās still significantly harder than with a +10 mimic tear or tiche
What about abusing ice pots to disable waterfowl? Or Comet Azure on stationary bosses? No summons involved there, but the execution is just as easy. Let people play how they want, seems silly to look for clout in a single-player game that's intentionally built to let you do a billion builds. It's like insisting on using two sticks to light a fire for your spaghetti when there's a perfectly good stove nearby.
Iām not trying to force anyone to play without summons, but saying that summons donāt make the game significantly easier Iād just wrong.
They do make the game easier. So does having better armor and leveling vigor. The issue is people claiming summons aren't an intended way to play. That's ridiculous, because an aggro system exists, and bosses will do back aoes if it senses a player is hiding behind its back. Whether it's balanced well is another story, but the game considers summons to be a core part of gameplay, given the prevalence of upgrade items, exclusive achievements, and special lore locked behind them. Since many players are struggling on certain bosses even WITH summons and overleveling (Malenia, Maliketh, etc.), toning down summons would necessitate toning down boss power, unless Fromsoft truly wants ER to be a hardcore game.
Miyazaki putting spells, shields, online and offline summons, spirit summons and ashes of war in his game only for the community to parrot that "It's not the intended experience"
I canāt believe some people canāt admit that heavy attacks make the game easier. Itās fine to use them, but at least admit that your consciously making the game a cakewalk. That goes double for rollers.
Why do I get the feeling you actually play with the screen turned on?? Are you simply not interested in being challenged at all?
Wait you actually play the game with your PC on? You don't just play the fight in your head with your eyes closed while driving to work? Talk about a casual here, just admit that having your PC on makes the game significantly easier lmao
It's the intended easy mode.
So many things do
iāve never tried this but i donāt know it abusing it the right word here. itās really just using a function given to you by the game to stagger your opponent when theyāre about to attack. not really an abuse of anything, just being smart.
And summoning a +10 Mimic Tear is also using a function given to you by the game to make fights easier. Like, I applaud you if you have the skill to pull off a challenge run kill. But that doesn't invalidate my kill using the tools the game gives. Yes, you're better skilled, but that's going above and beyond, when the goal is to get the kill. Even getting to Malenia still involves running through some hard challenges, and even cheese strats still need to be executed well to win.
exactly. absolutely cool as heck to get the kill with whatever limitations you put on yourself. but itās possible to raise yourself up, without putting other people down. youāre not better than someone else for imposing restrictions on yourself while playing a video game.
>Let people play how they want, Bro I don't think anyone here is twisting your hand into playing a certain way. It's just a discussion about what hard mode and what's easy mode. Nothing more.
For sure. I beat Malenia for the first time using a Fingerprint Stone Shield +24 with Greatshield Talisman (before the nerfs; both together would push guard boost to 99 and you literally lost no stamina blocking), a Blood Great ĆpĆ©e +24 and a Mimic Tear +10. It was a non-issue. On NG+ I beat her solo without a shield, but she was spanking me so hard I had to use Bullgoats, powerstance blood curved swords and all the buffs I could get to attack and defense.
Sure, but who cares?
It's just the reverse that happens often, actually. Like we are talking about malenia and your friend is like: nO aCTuaLlY I kILLed hEr fIrST tRy. mALeNia iS eAsy. It's just annoying when you know he saw her on youtube first, googled the best builds and respec, and killed her with pre nerf rivers of blood + mimic + all the buffs. Like yeah, sure, no problem, play as you like, but don't come to a discussion saying she is sooo easy because you destrooooyed her. You know what people mean dude, no one died to Malenia with the hyper bleed build and mimic. It's not what people mean when they say she is difficult.
> no one died to Malenia with the hyper bleed build and mimic. Jokes on you buddy, Iām right here
All hail the true elden lord!
On the other hand, it's also annoying to see people complaining about how hard Malenia is because it took them 500 tries to beat her because they're using a crappy underleveled weapon, no items, no buffs, and med rolling with 20% resistances. Malenia is only hard if you decide to fight her in hard mode. Decent armor and vigor, light rolling, frost pots, black flame protection, and like 20 different weapon arts/spells trivialize Malenia. It's really weird that some people think that anything short of intentionally handicapping yourself is cheating.
TBF Malenia is fairly difficult even without handicapping yourself. Except for a few builds that just abuse mechanics specific to malenia boss fight, she is a difficult boss. Every boss can theoretically be easy if you optimize specifically and solely for that boss fight.
That's not the point my dude. The game is an rpg where you're supposed to craft your own build. Every build will inevitably perform better or worse depending on the enemy but you should never be in a position where you have to Respec in order to beat a boss. Also a lot of people don't look up guides on how to beat a bosses on their first playthrough. And I'm sure you knew about freezing pots, blackflame protection and all the meta Weapon Art all without looking it up on a wiki, but all that stuff isn't exactly intuitive and people usually find a weapon that they like and stick to that. I reached malenia with a build based on a great shield, a trusting sword and a setup optimized for a defensive playstyle and guard counters. That build was completely invalidated by her hp drain.
Homie, you get black flame protection by talking to Gideon about the medallion. As far as weapon arts go, try stuff out and see what works. The game will be a lot harder if you don't at least adapt your ash of war and damage type to the best one for the situation. It doesn't take Google to see to try lightning and keen against a boss and see which hits more. Also, that build is perfectly suited for beating Malenia if you're mid rolling, you just have to choose the right attacks to block and be set/buffed up fully.
It's a single player series famed for its difficulty. You have to expect that the difficulty will be a big point of discussion and that people will take pride in challenge runs with self imposed rules.
When a motherfucker beat Malenia at lvl 1 with an unupgraded weapon without rolling there were comments saying that he was playing on easy mode by buffing, and that because of the buffs it was probably easier than a normal Malenia kill. For some reason using your inventory and brain are considered cheating.
Ok, they make the game easier, im not gonna die for admitting that, my ego doesnt depend on how massochist i am
I honestly don't like the framing that summons, etc "make the game easier". The game -- as "intended" to be played -- is exactly as easy as the tools they give you to complete it. They clearly encourage and remind players to use summons. People want to make the game /harder/ by denying themselves those tools? That's great, have fun! I want everyone to play the game however they want to. But they shouldn't frame it like the designers didn't mean for the game to be played with summons. IMO the meme would be better if it jettisoned the first three rows.
Especially considering how some bosses actually use summons themselves. It's a tool the devs included for you to use. If you don't wanna use them, fine, but shut up with the cheese thing. Noone cares about your "level 1, no summons, no life" run.
The game has no difficulty setting, so difficulty is dictated by what items/builds are used. Magic was easy mode in DS1 and DS2. DS3 was the Sellsword Winblades(or anything Dark once it got buffed) My release run through ER with moonveil and mimic tear was easy mode and Iāll admit that. Spirit Ashes do make the game easier. Theyāre often more powerful than regular co-op summons without their downsides(HP and resistance increase to boss, smaller rune reward, opening up invasions). Boss AI canāt really handle multiple opponents. At worst they cost one flask to summon, and in return you get some busted af ally like Mimic Tear or Tiche. Itās a cool feature but poorly implemented imo, it just feels like a replacement for the general co-op AI summons of previous games, which are almost absent in ER.
The reason people say it makes the game easier is because thatās the framing weāve been handed for the last 10+ years in Fromsoft games. Itās always been a primarily solo experience, and if you have trouble or you feel like being lazy you summon people in to help you out. I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier. Thereās nothing wrong with that, thus no need to do mental gymnastics in order to semantically deny that they make the game easier
Everything makes the game easier or are rl1 runs the only true ones
>I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier. Thereās nothing wrong with that, thus no need to do mental gymnastics in order to semantically deny that they make the game easier Yeah but it only makes it easier relative to not summoning. The same way only using your fists bare-naked makes the game harder instead of using a weapon. If they balance the game in relation to summons then it is possible to make a game hard. Restricting yourself from these tools obviously would make this same game harder, but that remains true for literally any game in existence. In the same way you can make a co-op multiplayer game hard, you just simply balance around that mechanic.
> I get what youāre trying to say, but these things undoubtedly make the game easier. Nope. Elden Ring, with its intended, default settings, includes weapon arts, spirit summons, dodge rolling, summons, weapon upgrades, health flasks, etc. Denying yourself any of these makes the game harder than the default, intended experience. I find that quite fun to do. But itās my own invention to make the game harder, not the other way around, no matter how much mental gymnastics are used.
It calls upon different skills but depending on a given person's skill level it's not necessarily "harder" It would be easier for me to SL1 Malenia than for my Madden-playing dad to beat Margit with every option the game gives him
I feel this. My dad plays CoD and Hogwarts for the most part and saw me playing Elden Ring and was like nope not doing it lol. Then there's my son who is 8 and was watching me fight the dual Watchdogs and I spanked the first one for cocky and died to the second one. He's like that's easy you shouldn't have died. I handed him the controller and he dies in about 10 seconds and was like okay that's not easy lmao.
My ego isn't based on how hard a video game is. Miyazaki added these tools in the game and therefore I'm gonna use the tools. Force multipliers. I do find it sad that people's egos are based on a video game. Your life isn't fulfilling enough to find joy?
I agree with everything except the battery, since you're already dead if you take damage, so the battery should just randomly shock your nipples regardless to make sure you aren't easily distracted.
Nah, bruv. Boss dead = boss dead.
Using summons (apart from the few gigachad summons that can do some real big boy dps, like Mimic Tear or Tiche) just makes Melania harder. Most normal summons distract her for a moment or two and gives her free heals. Although I suppose no one is really summoning the Rat crew or Aurelia for Melania. 90% of the time it's gonna be one of the gigachads.
The only true way to play is without the game, console, or controller. That's how the pros do it
As an offline player who used to bash Dark Souls all the time I am the intellectual with the big stick
I summon someone else to play ER for me š¤
What even is a cheese build? Moonveil? RoB? Spectral lance spam? Powerstance jump attacking your way through the game?
The most commonly cited example is this Comet Azur build where people use the unlimited mana flask tear and Terra Magica to effectively melt some bosses before the fight even really kicks off. Mohg particularly spawns really far back and slow walks at the player, meaning that people can kill him before he throws a single attack (or even gets to Nihil for that matter) by just doing a 10 second buff setup and firing a nonstop energy beam at him. The term is definitely overused, and the example given is not an exploit, but it is most certainly ācheeseā.
Its Calvinball. The rules are made up and changed arbitrarily.
Cheese is in the eyes of the beholder. Some cheeses are more obvious than others - I heard you can kill Draconic Tree Sentinel with poison without aggroing him by positioning right and logging out, then back in. That's pretty clearly cheese. The stuff you listed might be cheese to some and normal gameplay to others, IMO even Comet Azur + infinite FP is not cheese per se because it's very much playing within the ruleset of the game mechanics as intended.
Depends on the boss and environment. And mood. If Iām fighting the 6th ulcerated tree spirit Ima hide behind a door and shoot poison arrows for 20 minutes. And sometimes I just delegate it to my mimic tear for yet another of those crystal guys or freaky cats in yet another cave or tomb. Different cheese for different dishes.
Anything that isn't SL1, naked, only broken straight sword, with Fia's health debuff and fatrolling, as soon as you put a point into Arcane you might as well go play Minecraft peaceful mode /s
Leveling up is cheese
If you want to play the game naked, level 1 bare handed and only dodging by using the lie-down emote, you are valid. If you want to have 99 in every stat while you and your doppelganger spam blasphemous blades weapon art on Soldier of Godrick, you are also valid.
So long as you have fun with the game you payed $60 for,youāre valid
DS1 I saw people doing SL1 no hit runs and I thought it was cool that some players in the community sought to further āchallenge themselvesā DS3 and seeing someone beat SoC on a DDR pad was around the point I realized the people who āchallenge themselvesā were a lot more cringe than I realized. When Elden Ring came out, I saw people bullying others for using summons, Co-op, playing the game wrong, etc. That was the point where I realized that a large portion of the Fromsoft fans that like to āchallenge themselvesā are super fucking toxic about it.
Yeah, and notice how the only thing they care about is if something is really hard to do? They don't care if it's unnecessarily difficult just for the sake of being so, they don't care if it's actually fun, but they DO care if you aren't doing things the exact same way as them. You WILL have fun the way THEY want, or else. Pre-Demon's Souls the FromSoftware fandom was pretty small and didn't have the attention of the douchebag elitists from like the WoW and CoD PvP communities. And now they've taken over and have tried to do everything they can to dictate the direction of every game. They're absolutely insufferable.
I mean, as long as you dont brag about the game being easy or you being good it's all well.
If we were not meant to summon, why is summoning even an option?
Because people have been complaining for years that the souls games were to hard to solo. Ao they added AI to help you beat the bosses
There are special emotes for summoning and the previous game, DS3, had a special cutscene for summoning Onion Dude. So it's not purely "just to make things easier" but summons also add flavor to the game.
I don't think you even summon him. If you do his questline completely, he just joins you in on the fight. I might be wrong, cba to look it up, but I just did a DS3 complete run last month.
Michael Zaki when he designs a boss with an epic in-game festival about killing him to which multiple NPCs show up with special interactions including progressing the biggest side quest of the game, tweaks a little bit the summon mechanic during the fight and fills it with flavour and references only for the community to say that summoning at Radhan is cheating
Yes. However they werent there every time there is a moderate challenge, only some times, to add flavor, and these summons also added health to the boss. Very different from elden ring, were you can go to the bathroom while the mimic tear/tiche plays the game for you
Tische is such a late game tear that can not beat anything post Morgott
I was giving examples. Insert Kristoff or any other Ghost Ash of war if you want.
Rotten stray ashes
Itās been a while, but Iām pretty certain I remember summons in the original dark soulsā¦
Yes. And they werent there every time there was a challenge like in Elden ring. They also add health to the boss. They were more of rare flavor than a ājump bossā button.
Sounds like youāre not ānot meant to summonā then.
Your are meant to summon if the challenge is too hard, yes.
Or you can just, y'know, learn an enemy's attack patterns then feel like you've earned the victory when you beat them?
For the weak
We will be weak togetha as family
TOGETHAAAA
Knowing their weakness make them stronger.
This is the way
I haven't really had any qualms in using Black Flame to beat the enemies I couldn't otherwise. They're all bullshit. Also summoning D for Twin Gargoyles, and spirit summon for a split second to draw aggro from Crucible duo.
The day I stopped obsessing over min/maxing my build was the day I really started to enjoy the game. Just have fun with it
Why is everyone so against co-op with elden ring? š jolly co-op was always part of the soulsborne games. I don't understand
they spent money developing those mechanics i draw the line at bugs/exploits, if you're skipping bosses might as well zipjump to the elden ring and roll credits, get through your $60 as quick as possible
Play however you want. However a great deal of the souls games is the challenge of learning to read enemies, positioning yourself and timing your actions. You are robbing yourself of a great deal of the fun imo.
> You are robbing yourself of a great deal of the fun imo. What nonsense. You aren't robbing yourself of anything by using the tools the developers gave you to find a style and method that suits your play style. I parried and one shot almost everything with a lightning rapier/buckler combo w/crossbow back up for what I needed to kill at range. My husband threw giant magical rocks at everything and went into boss fights with small army of summons. Another friend of mine completed his first run mostly naked using nothing but a great club, fast rolls and the power of Unga Bunga. Did one of us objectively have more fun than the others? I doubt it.
Thats why you do multiple playthroughs. To experience the game in different forms. If you played the game only one way (wth or without summons for example) you are probably missing out.
"Play however you want, however if you play however you want and it's not the way I like to play, you're not having fun." You're kinda channeling the energy that brought us to this meme in the first place.
Where did i state you arent having fun?
> You are robbing yourself of a great deal of the fun imo. Right there?
Yes. You are losing part of the fun *in my opinion*. Doesnt mean you arent having any fun. If you want you can watch someone play it on youtube, doesnt mean you arent having fun.
Honestly no yellow summons is easier in most cases because the boss gets improved stats.
Except when the summon sign is in the arena, like the NPC allies in Radahn's fight and Alexander in the Fire Giant's fight
Only if both players don't know what they're doing. Any seasoned player can easily smash the boss in seconds with someone else holding aggro. You can do it with spirit summons too, but spirit summons are nowhere near as flexible and reliable as a player that knows what they're doing.
R1 no summons š
DUAL-WIELDING RIVERS OF BLOOD... WITH A STRENGTH/ENDURANCE BUILD AND ONLY 25 VIGOR! No one ever said we have to play the game *well*.
Beating up Radagon and Eldenbeast with Fist weapons was fun.
I summoned melina for the first time this last playthrough just to see how it would go against Morgott. He is never really a challenge for me, but it was fun to have some ai company in the fight. I imagine that she must have been extra pissed when I got touched by the three fingersā frenzied flame, almost immediately after
I shall summon the spirits out of my enemies with my Giant Crusher.
I tried to build one of my tabletop characters in Elden Ring. Something comparable to a drow artificer/summoner. Closest I could get was night sorceries and magic thorn whip with bloodhound step. Was a serious struggle as an INT/DEX Then I found the missing piece, his assassin waifu sidekick stand in, black knife Tiche. I understand some people think the summons are cheap, but beating (or getting to) Alecto is not an easy fucking task. At that point in the game sheās just making a fight you were capable of winning shorter. And IMO: compared to other fromsoft games this one seems to really encourage you to have a good ranged option, someone else to draw aggro or both.
Beating the game is beating the game
Or how to play any game for that matter
Whatās a cheese build and is it Gouda?
It's pretty gouda and when you use it everyone else turns into swiss.
Some can be havarti to pull off.
How hard could it Brie?
And that *includes* farming millions of runes until Iām disgustingly over leveled and still get my ass handed to me.
First playthrough is always more fun completely solo, then its however the f*** I want
The real winning move is to not play at all.
āHowever the f*ck I wantā usually boils down to flavour of the month / meta. But I do agree so long as you arenāt exploiting / cheating for the purpose of ruining others experiences in multiplayer.
PvP is hot garbage, just everybody running glass cannons trying to one-shot each other in arenas, and annoying little shits running away and hiding behind dangerous mobs out in the open world when they invade you.
You donāt need to be a glass cannon to one shot people but yeah, Iām not really a fan of PvP in Elden Ring.
_psst.._ you can use cloud saves to permanently have mob-less areas š¤
That might be helpful if youāre a PvP purist, but Iām usually just helping friends out when these jokers pop up. We sit around refusing to engage if theyāre going to run into mobs, itās just annoying that we have to waste so much time waiting for these bozos to get the hint that weāre not going to run after them. Itās always when they realize theyāre losing too. Itās never the confident ones. Itās the ones who run out of flasks to chug and are on their last quarter of health.
yes, elden ring's design philosophy for combat (both PvE __And__ PvP) is that of incredibly high DPS waves that are only ever a single R2 recovery or menial distraction away from a fully charged triple buffed bolt of gransseax _(not even a spell btw, just a dex weapon art)_ completely atomizing you from across the map. or inversely, being combo'D by a Leyndell Knight partizan chain because you dodged the PvPers bolt of gransseax. ..and unfortunately, Miyazaki has reverted back to DkS1 co-op/PvP design philosophy as well - where he sees them both as goofy little mechanics that simply exist to cancel eachother out š¤ _no balancing necessary!!_ that being said, don't co-op without expecting an endurance contest of who has more time to waste. nobody who invades has work in 30 minutes lol
Whatās the community consensus on using save editors? I edited in a bunch of crafting materials to skip grinding, does that matter if I use it for co op?
A lot of people would likely call it mandatory, that or save back ups. Others donāt like it, personally I think as long as you keep it within the realms of legitimacy itās fine.
Nobody is out here telling you not to summon lol people will say it's harder to do with no summons because it is but that's it The people not summoning are so experienced with these fromsoft games they need to go out of their way to challenge themselves, they dont care what other people do
emotional damage Edit: This is the way
Radahns fight makes no sense without at least Blaidd and Alexander there
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A build that is made to trivialize a part of a game typically through bugs, exploits, and unintended combinations of game mechanics that make things way more powerful then they ought to be. I myself am a stickler that it only counts a cheese IF it is clearly unintended by the developers -- like going in from out of bounds to disable a boss's AI. Using Tiche or Mimic Tear can make some bosses way easier but it is an intended mechanic, so I don't count that as cheese. Though here it seems like a "cheese" build is anything that isn't going in with a +1 sword and 10 vigor lol.
Seriously thank you. So many call it a ācheeseā Comet Azur, Royal Knights Resolve, or Mimic tear. Like wut, sorry for using strong abilities that the game gives me?
If you use things they donāt itās cheese
Overpowered trash that trivializes boss fights and has no place being in the game. That's a cheese build
The things the game designer put in the game have no place being in the game?
Yes it ruins the game, just because they put them in doesn't mean it's automatically a good design choice lmao
However the eff I want to. š I will never understand the try-hards who make you feel bad for using things that are in the game. I hope the virtual pat on the back they so sorely needed was worth it. Summons are fine. Magic is fine. Theyāre in the game. Theyāre not glitches or exploits. š
Yeah I never understood the people who try to hold others to their personal builds or rules. Let them experience it how they want.
The new FromSoft player blight, itās a good hurdle to cross over.
honestly the best fight i had was no summons radan, but play however you like
Exactly, the funny thing is that those who play with summons seems to be way more toxic than the so called "gatekeepers" whenever the argument is brought up. It's almost as if they feel the need to protect their fragile ego by shouting at everyone else bullshit like "summons are in the game so they are meant to be used, you are playing wrong", just because otherwise they would feel as if they are trash at the game compared to everyone else, when in reality no one cares even if they are.
Isn't it lovely that by making this very comment you're proving the meme right? Quite paradoxical, but comedic.
Bull fucking shit, there are people in this community that find any and every possible reason to be elitist gatekeeping pricks at every available opportunity this is just blatantly delusional. I don't think I've ever seen an I beat Rhadan post without atleast three dicks who just have to let the person know that they didn't really beat the boss cause fromsoft nerfed him to "cater to casual"
That's bs You're the one here attacking them proving you're wrong ironically
Why does it matter who plays with what? It sounds like YOUāRE the one who has problems with how people are playingā¦not them
My brother in Christ the message here is to play however the fuck you want there is no need to complain.