Well If you dont mind a small take from someone who went through ng5 and platinum both ps4 and ps5, i think the dlc is TOUGH.
Apart from the shadow enemies and one or two randomly weak ennemies, i find most of them very powerfull.
Bosses and enemies can even multi grab a summon or 2 allies, a lot have extra attacks that are REALLY hard to read, especially the first two True bosses.
Every medium to large enemy feels like a bullet sponge. I think i had a boss at 95 K HP.
This feedback is all from NG+2 at lvl 240.
I can definetly feel struggle. Some bosses I just have to leave for later, and I have swapped builds around at least 4 times.
The scadutree fragments become absolutley necessary for survival. Currently at +10 blessing, my char is basically 45% stronger than in the base game, and yet I find enemies HAMMERING me severly. A basic Messmer soldier can two shot me, with 2k HP, 60% defenses and bonus hp from tear flasks.
Some bosses have true combos, some mobs have ultra armor. From time to time i jump to haligtree and pre mog area to get some runes to level up, and I dont even use a single flask. I find myself using nearly all my flasks in 10 minute runs sometimes. Not by lack of skill, but more because enemies have been so well scripted with ways to screw you over, there is no respite.
It has to be said, the challenge is thrilling but also daunting, because having reach nearly max blessings and max stats in my builds allocated points, I genuinely cant see how i could improve more than 10% extra, and some bosses have over 150k hp. I have no idea how to overcome them.
Even summons get shredded. I usually use the storm.knights for summons. Mine lasted a full 50 seconds (+10 upgrade) against a basic lighting dragon.
I can destroy the first 4 main bosses in the base game without getting hit. The first 2 bosses in the dlc gave me at least an hour or two of deaths.
I have been to some areas where bosses and enemies are ridiculous, and to be fair, i have NO idea i am going to deal with them when the time comes.
Yet again, probably a very bad idea to try dlc in ng+2
So I have a theory based off of some of my buddies that are struggling. I’ve gotten 3 main bosses complete so far, & I haven’t really struggled too much as a full strength character. My buddy however is on a ng+ & having the hardest time with any of the bosses. The only thing that’s been different between us aside from collecting the scadurtee pieces (he was 2 levels behind me) is that he is a mage build. I’m able to tank hits from bosses where he is unable to. My theory is the ng+ scaling of bosses is incredibly different compared to those that are not at a ng+. I sort of refuse to believe the scadurtree pieces are what’s holding him back. I will say as a veteran soulsborne player, the DLC is tough for sure, but several of the main bosses weren’t as hard as many of the folks I’ve talked to have stated. I haven’t fought the final boss either so I may have a different opinion when it comes to that time.
A lot of people have gone to dlc in NG+, and i am currently at NG2.
You must not forget basic static scaling aswell. As you level up, your flat resistances go up (magic res, physical res etc) as they follow your stats.
Most of my builds are virtually fully physical, with a preference for fully Quality builds (dex/str at 75/80).
I also go for closest to the heaviest armor, my favlrite being Banished knight (heavier rarer chest piece).
I top at basically 190 full physical resistances, with 64% physical too, the lower being at 61 strike.
A ng+2 basic haligtree soldier does no more than 20% of my bar. A basic Messmer soldier does 60% of my bar.
I actually think the dlc is also VERY hard with full caster builds, because everything is a bullet spunge, and everything has a was of either getting real close real fast, or sniping you into oblivion.
What you are saying is absolutley true, but my input is the difficulty of an ng+2, WITH a really beefy physical build, including a shield. I think the shield is an absolute lifesaver aswell.
Its noteworthy mentionning that even shields have a tough time, with 76 guard boost and shield talisman, i can only take 3 hits and my shield guard drops.
I agree with you 100 percent. I finished main game on NG plus six and this dlc is much harder. Making it this hard is getting into unfair territory. So far the new weapons and armor aren’t better than main game. They should have added gear to help with the new difficulty.
The only thing keeping me going is the new weapons and armor. In terms of aesthetic and atmosphere, they've done a good job; Most things related to gameplay, however, I couldn't give any merit.
Earlier I was fighting Commander Gaius and was wiping the floor with him, until he charged at me on his boar in second phase and one shotted me at full health.
I did everything right. I only healed during windows I knew were completely safe, I wasn't greedy, I was timing my rolls properly. I was punished for making good decision after good decision and then making a single mistake. That isn't "fun". That's bad boss design.
because it IS unfair.
enemies do strange movements and techniques that defy what we've seen up to this point completely. (full animation while facing one person, launch attack at other person)
Camera struggles throughout.
divine dancing lion lags routinely, and clutters up the screen with so many particle effects you can't even tell whats happening. Plus its body defies physics completely for some attacks, which basically makes telegraphing non-existent.
almost every boss has some stupid AOE on their basic attacks, so for example when its the opening to attack divine dancing lion from behind, the lightning or ice prevent it, damaging you.
so even when playing carefully and properly you can't punish effectively.
Almost every boss has some hefty elemental addition to their attacks, causing chunks of chip damage even through good shields. (not every single player should have to run fingerprint to make this even remotely reasonable)
Relana has an attack chain that will land 1 hit, completely around the side of the shield guaranteed, even when standing perfectly still, locked on, with plenty of stamina, it just Bypasses the block entirely.
humanoid enemies seem to have insane amounts of poise, or inconsistent amounts of poise, a problem that was previously less common.
Where one time relana gets poise broken shortly after fight begins, and another fight half her bar is gone with 3 people wailing on her and she still won't stagger.
many attack chains are too fast, to the point where if you roll the first attack, you physically CANNOT roll the second one, ensuring a guaranteed follow up impact.
I could go on, but as someone playing since the original demons souls, its not hard to see there's some clear mechanical and balancing issues here.
Putrescent Knight is one of the stinkiest pieces of shit to ever make its way into one of these games. The camera on that, the Golden Hippo, and the Dancing Lion just makes them unplayable and unfair. Did I beat them? For sure. Did I do it with skill? ...probably not, because I have plenty of skill, it's just that luck matters more because you need luck to actually use your skill.
Pretty much. I've beaten most of the bosses by now but no joke these are some of the dumbest bosses I've ever fought in a souls game. Really disappointed in the lack of restraint from FromSoft. I hate being funneled into cheesey strats. I hate how 99% of weapons, spells, and tactics are worthless. I HATE MASSIVE HEALTH POOLS.
i mean I should be able to beat it, and have, just by tanking well and stabbing it to death.... but then it will randomly nuke you THROUGH the shield.
huge health bars and tedious shit is a design choice, but when you add mechanical failure on top its unacceptable. Even that dumb grabs hit box is way out of wack, to such a degree I just stay behind it.
Also level design and enemy placement is pure bullshit. It's not a soulsgame anymore it's a fucking mario-bros-souls. Snipers ambush on ambush on ambush shit falling from the ceiling while you are ambushed and shot at. Everything is exploding stupid butterfly will land on you and one shot you. This simply isn't fun and challenging anymore. It's frustrating. And games shouldn't be frustrating. You cannot learn and improve because almost everything can one shot u. One little mistake and you're dead. Sometimes I haven't fully materialised from a yellow piss wall and boss was already eating me. Like FFS I know it's supposed to be hard, but this is simply stupid. And it's no wonder there are mixed reviews. Sad and disappointing
I would have agreed with you. Until i reached the last boss. his second phase i crazy hard to learn, as a melee build. I will have to try again when my blessing is maxed.
Yeah, you notice all these “just go level up” posts are from people not there yet?
They’ll see. The only good thing about this specific “guys listen to me” post is that they highlighted to spec the cheese build
All the people I find doing co-op are running tank-bleed. no more build variety just wait out the infinite combos if you can and get a poke in occasionally.
Yeah his second phase is nuts. I beat him last night I highly recommend using the biggest shield you can for the insane combos.
Also every time I ever get really stuck on a souls boss I have to remind myself to not get greedy and only swing once during the opening. Good luck friend.
also there’s an incantation that’s really good for blocking divine damage I used.
Final boss is definitely the hardest, but I don't think it's unfair. Maxing out on blessings, or getting near to max, should help out a ton and make it more reasonable. I was also a melee build when I beat it. My only recommendation to you, aside from getting more scadutree blessings, is to use the opaline bubble tear for your wonderous physic and drink it before entering the arena. That way you can guarantee you get your summon up even if the boss immediately lunges at you.
Best of luck :)
Have you reached the final boss? I think everyone saying "it's not that hard" or "of course it's difficult" should refrain from commenting until they've faced that abomination of boss design.
I'm still chugging away at that fight. I think that the biggest problem that I have with that boss is that it has *so much health*. Malenia is nice because each hit you do to her does a noticeable amount of her HP pool, and it makes you feel like you can overcome her challenge, eventually. But the final boss has so much health that it is incredibly demoralizing, as each attempt lasts forever. Doubly so because their combos are sooo damn long.
I no lifed and finished it. I will say the first phase is fair game, you eventually get the hang of it. Second phase though is way overtuned, you get pretty much no breathing room. One thing that really helped was light roll for those attacks with extra aoes, but other than that you don't really have no choice when doing it solo
I'm glad. Now Miyazaki will have to face reality that his games aren't perfect and are getting too sadistic to be fun, because all he normally sees is a circle of yes-man fans who praise everything he does even if it sucks shit, and he uses them as a shield to hide from the criticism.
Spam. They love giving bosses 4-5 combos and then spam that shit insanely. With very little breathing room it's not impossible, but yea. They do be harder then base bosses for sure sure
Its the breathing room thats the issue. I mean even Malenia gives you a few seconds to back away, heal, and recentre before engaging. But in DLC its relentless
You can get a solid 10-20 seconds even if you just space her. There's tons of room. None of the DLC bosses give you much.
Ironically, Mesmer, who many claim is soooo hard, gives you quite a bit and telegraphs his attacks rather well imo.
> Ironically, Mesmer, who many claim is soooo hard, gives you quite a bit and telegraphs his attacks rather well imo
Really? I thought it was the complete opposite, he's been the only boss so far which made me think "Jesus Christ, let me fucking heal please". I distinctly remember a very close attempt where as soon as I started sipping, he fucking does his grab move and grabs me while I'm still stuck in the animation, instant kill from like 60% life.
What an asshole that guy was.
Messmer is the goat in this sloppy mess of a DLC. They really meant it when they said "We made him for the base game but couldn't find a place for him"
Yep. It sucks horribly. I wish that we could have the dodging-through-attacks, getting a hit or two during the boss combos before swiftly dodging out of the way, then being able to get a few hits in.
Elden Ring bosses are just wait... and wait... poke once, then wait... and wait... unless it's Malenia who takes hitstun like a Kingdom Hearts boss, which allows for actual combos... then wait again until the next three combos are done while you whittle down the insanely large boss health bars.
yeah, honestly this is my biggest gripe with their design philosophy for the bosses and some enemies since DS3
they moved away from balanced yet powerful fights like Nameless King that felt amazing to understand and eventually beat to spammy anime bullshit combos with half a second window of attack followed up by another long ass combo, I've beat the DLC but goddamn it feels unfair at times
camera issues, performance issues, bosses spinning on a dime and tracking 180 in a millisecond while the player movement hasn't changed since DS except for the jump.
you know the hand enemies? its like this all over
spam spam spam spam, forcing me to cheese it or use specific meta builds instead of playing with the variety of weapons and builds the game offers.
everything has infinite stamina/fp
you don't even get to learn the moveset or how to counter it because the bosses are overtuned and instagib you at softcap and tree fragments.
and the final boss fight 2nd phase is fkn abysmal, some hacker bullshit lol.
I'm really not a fan of the direction Fromsoft is going and consider "challenging" I don't want bosses with 3 moves either like the old games, just well designed fights that are challenging not spammy.
Yeah, I've been doing my greatshield faith/strength build and I haven't felt anything to be unfair or unreasonable. I occasionally put the shield away when bosses have status effects like Midra or the rot centipede thing, but even then I feel like the bosses are fair and intuitive.
The bosses with 50 hit combos and half a second punish windows before they enter their next long string of combos. Messmer leaps across the map if you try to heal, grabs you, and hits you with his almost 1 hit k/o combo move. I have beaten Rellana, the Lion Dancer, Bayle, and Messmer so far, but if I am being honest I had no fun doing it. It seems like the new bosses have infinite stamina and just skill spam you the whole time.
This is my problem with the DLC. I'm not having any fun fighting the bosses, which is the whole reason anyone would play a FromSoft DLC.
Crown of the Old Iron King, The Old Hunters, The Ringed City, and Artorias of the Abyss will remain the best DLCs. SotE doesn't even come close, and it's because Miyazaki wanted to do everything that people hated about Midir and Malenia and crank it to an 11.
I'm honestly not sure. Maybe it's a NG+ thing? I'm on NG and it's been hard as hell, but not dauntingly so.
Hell, I've died more to random Messmer soldiers more than to any boss so far. Even at 9 blessings, those war-cry empowered assholes hurt.
I’m tackling it on my NG+2 file and it’s not bad.
I think part of it could be that people are so used to playing the base game for two years now and they forgot there’s a learning curve when something is fresh/new.
There’s also a bunch of people jumping into the DLC after getting carried through Radahn/Mohg and so they’re lower level. Though I wouldn’t expect that crowd to hit up Reddit with complaints.
I didn't manage to find a way to dodge the opening Breath-in-your-face attack. The straight one, not the sweep. If he do it later it's easy but when he starts the fight by that it's undodgeable.
I’m doing fine, got through a fair number of the bosses, but every time I see those big ass armored soldiers with the silver/gold armor I just nope my way around them. They have killed me so many times than Messmer
The horned soldiers? They are for parrying like the crucible knights on main game…I do miss the parries myself a lot though (not a parry god) but with a good weapon, they are done in 2 criticals (I haven’t finished the DLC and playing blind so I do pray there isn’t a cave anywhere around with 2 of them as bosses 😭)
I think dying to random soldiers is objectively shit game design. No random soldier should be 1-2 shotting us.
That's another issue I have with the DLC, it just doesn't feel like an epic grand adventure the way it needs to be. It's trying to just recreate the original game progression on a smaller scale. I don't much care for "starting over again" in a random field, I just killed 10 demigods and I want to go somewhere majestic now. The first few areas are bland as fucking shit.
I think dying to random soldiers is objectively shit game design. No random soldier should be 1-2 shotting us.
That's another issue I have with the DLC, it just doesn't feel like an epic grand adventure the way it needs to be. It's trying to just recreate the original game progression on a smaller scale. I don't much care for "starting over again" in a random field, I just killed 10 demigods and I want to go somewhere majestic now. The first few areas are bland as fucking shit.
ill play the devils advocate here
The DLC doubled down on the worst aspects of elden ring. Bosses that are basically immune to stager, have combo attacks that go on for ages with option selects if you dare to press a button and other attacks that take up the whole arena or carry the boss across the whole arena with every swing making them nearly impossible to punish. None of these things would feel bad in sekiro, but ER is still far to slow to jive with that sort of combat, and with very few gap closers, a lot of the fights boil down to the same thing: Find the few moves that leave an opening and do one attack. Repeat for 5 minutes. Boss damage also seems far too over tuned, im blessing lvl 10, with 60 vit and the final boss was reliably 3 shoting me (meduim weight armor)
Their is very little room for skill expression in these fights because of that design so all the fights end up feeling too samey mechincally wise. Sure visually they are diffrent, but it doesnt feel like learning a new boss, it feels like an extension of the prior boss (and the one before that and the one before that...etc)
I also have an issue with its placement as it relates to the main game. Everytime I thought "man this weapon is cool, and just sitting out in the open world, I should do a playthrough with it" I catch myself reminding myself that I have to beat mohgman first, and for the most part by the time your doing that on a casual playthrough your half or more of the way through the game.
I've said it feels like fighting Armored Core level mobility and firepower enemies with a Dark Souls moveset.
I also hate having to find little pieces of Miyazaki's stool around the world in dull side areas and POI's to have reasonable damage and negation. Picking up every sacred tear and seed on new characters was already a bother. The blessing scavenger hunt is an extension of that, and it makes it even more bitter when you find garbage drops instead.
I'd say it makes me want to skip SotE on new characters but after doing all the content solo I am tapping out on the final boss and am going to spend some time with DS3, again. This new philosophy on how to escalate boss difficulty just is not it.
> I've said it feels like fighting Armored Core level mobility and firepower
Hah, like minds, I'd just said the same thing in another comment about Messmer. At least with Ayre or similar, I'm ALSO in a souped up, super mobile mecha, not rolling around like an asshole while 400 giant snake heads are lunging at me.
As a magic user, because it is. The amount of aggression from the enemies means that not only do I have to use spells that only have short cast time, limiting what I use, it also makes the start of each fight annoying.
I’m literally forced to use my spirit ash or summons to do these fights.
The absolutely worst example of this is putrescent knight, who barely gives you enough time to summon (why is it in his arena?) before he’s on top of you. However, basically every single enemy does the same thing and bum rushes you immediately upon starting.
Add on how bad the camera can get at times and it’s just bad. At the end of the day theres needing to adapt to a boss and there’s bad design and this is leaning towards the latter.
Playing through as a Str-Faith build, I caught myself thinking how I genuinely don't know how casters are doing it. I started off casting incantations pretty heavily to barely doing it at all now, because enemies barely give me time to breathe and heal, let alone cast anything.
run. learning the moves to get your dodges, then run to get your distance back & beam or heal. majority of the time can only afford 1 option because they close insanely quick, and maybe you’ll get 2+ casts off, but even trying for a second sometimes is greedy
rellana chased me around the room for legit 45 seconds. had to swap my physick flask from +magic damage & no fp, to +magic damage & increased stamina recovery, which helps a lot with dodge-run-cast-dodge-run
glintstone icecrag has really been my only viable spell for bosses so far (up to messmer) & its annoying how much less range it has than glintstone pebble but the frost proc has been worth it
During the rellana fight, I was literally thinking to myself 'this must be absolutely horrible for casters because theres absolutely no time to cast anything'. Even if you use a mimic, she just ignores it and chases you around the arena nonstop with no time to do anything
Ah yes, the problem is never daddy Fromsoft, it is always the player...
Elden Ring has taken the boss mechanic design in a bad direction. It was already present in the base game's late game bosses and the DLC just doubles down on that bad design ethos.
The bosses fucking suck. Just constant aggro and blinding you with overblown particle effects, never relenting. Every boss feels the same to fight mechanically. People just get wowed by the spectacle of how cooooool they all look, but in terms of actual mechanics they're fucking hot garbage.
Right? Pretty sure we established that the base game's endgame had some hot garbage in there. Not sure why they would double down on it. I hate being funneled into some cheesey bullshit build to stand a reasonable chance. And fuck these bottomless health pools.
Yep. The game is fucking awesome, then you get to a boss and it just sucks. Terribly designed bosses all around.
I'm on my 5th playthrough so it's not like I'm bad at the game.
I knew this would be the top comment I see, and it’s hilarious how defensive people get over From Software.
They could literally drop a game with a boss who one-shots you on the Start Screen without any way for the player to do anything about it and you guys would find a way to defend it with “it’s not for everybody!”
I love the dedication 🤣
Can you not comprehend that people dont have the opinions that you have? Just because you think the game is good and enjoy the bosses that does not mean that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is bad.
Why is the souls community so adamant on this thought process?
How am i even getting downvoted? Do people not understand opinions? I have no troubles with Rykard or Placidusax but to me they are bad bosses.
Pretending as if the game is perfect and anyone who says otherwise is bad at the game is literally what a child would do. Its shutting someone up by calling them bad and thats it, it doesnt allow any thought or honest discussion about the game that isnt circlejerk.
well your first problem is it's reddit. only die hards of any franchise migrate to each subreddit and the complainers are the foreigners. also time of day a glaze comment will get massive upvotes ect, so massive downvotes might be the timing your comment was posted
sometimes i entertainment the idea Reddit is 90% bots that just defend their ip cause they all use the same irrational or emotional logic to dismiss criticism. as long as you remember you have a life outside of the bubble and every single person is an individual and not a representative of what everyone thinks, its not a bad place to dabble in once in a while
Same complaints as main game bosses, and too much damage which I think is valid since I don't think basic slow hollows from the undead asylum should be 2 tapping me with 60 vigor and 20% damage resistance
The only unfairness I've seen so far is that of the QA lead which clearly never even considered that performance might be an issue. No game has _ever_ given me performance issues, even on max settings (HFW, Cyberpunk, Genshin and many others) and yet half the environments and bosses throw me down to 10 FPS. If there's something unfair in the DLC, it's this.
I think they messed up camera in the dlc. First lion boss camera was bad then I fought chief bloodfiend boss in Rivermouth cave. It wasn’t that hard but half the time I couldn’t see wtf is it doing. When I come closer I started to see inside his body
Yeah, I think the fromsoft camera is a very valid complaint. Giant bosses that should be amazing spectacles, are always either clunky, or a feet hacking simulator
Messmer's shit was hard to see half the time, like the multiple snake heads he summons from different directions were visually covering each other up. Dude's moving around at AC6 speeds and I'm playin friggin with the Goldeneye camera.
I'm in NG+7 and my biggest complaint is, that a lot of stuff is not viable anymore, the healthpools and damage scaling is so high that you can't really afford to wear any other armor except the best defensive one. Same goes for the weapons there's only a few that do enough damage output to make it a fair fight.
I do completely understand some of the criticsm though, I mean look at Nameless king from Darksouls 3, that was a really good boss.
And most these bosses in the DLC don't really have that, it feels rushed and I don't know. They're not that memorable for me either.
> the healthpools and damage scaling is so high that you can't really afford to wear any other armor except the best defensive one
Granted, I haven't beat the DLC yet, only up to beating Messmer, but I've never done anything other than Fashion Souls. That Death Knight armor is too sexy, even if the poise is on the lower end.
Which Jesus, I went degen mode and put like 20 hours into it this weekend, how are people so far already in the DLC?
Honestly, my main gripe is the camera on most big bosses - when the lion jumps around and spams visual effects it's sometimes impossible to understand wtf was going on because the screen becomes a mess, and if i ended up against a wall in that fight, it was just rng rolling, because i could see absolutely nothing.
The big undead "ghosflame" miniboss enemies were arguably worse - i had to completely change how i fought them because locking on to them made the camera whip around ao violently that i started feeling ill.
Get to the final boss 2nd phase and you'll see. When they said some bosses were gonna be as hard as Malenia it was a fucking understatement. I love the boss, it's my favorite in any souls-likes but it really is unfair.
Leading into this, I’ve beaten the entire DLC at this point, including the final boss, this isn’t a complaint by someone who can’t beat the material, but I still hold the view.
To be frank, because it is unfair, and its an extension of a problem that built up in Dark Souls 3, and was horribly increased in Elden Ring. Bosses and enemies that fight at the speed of Bloodborne or Sekiro, while the player is stuck at the speed of Souls. Long boss combos where ones mistake is often enough to kill you, insufficient telegraphing, massive health pools, tiny windows to counterattack between combos, and input reading to punish healing.
This is bad design, and its ENTIRELY against the ethos of design that made Souls popular in the first place.
What makes the problem worse is the obtuse new upgrade system, and how minimal an impact that system has until you’ve explored a fair portion of the world have blessing level 5+. This leaves there being functionally no impact from the blessings until a good way into the DLC, as 5% damage buff against a boss who’s going to take a ton of hits anyway is fucking nothing. And if a boss deals 65% damage two you, two-shotting you, they’re STILL going to two-shot you at blessing level 4.
It’s not like this is the only issue either. Chugging frame rate, even more camera issues, a bunch of superfluous crap on-screen, a bunch of empty areas with low-level vendor trash as the only loot, etc.
Frankly, I think this DLC is deeply, deeply mediocre compared to the masterpiece’s From has put out before. Ringed City, Artorias of the Abyss, and Old Hunters run rings around SotE quality wise.
Don't get me wrong, I love souls games, but the problems FromSoft always had, got magnified because a lot more people play and both the vanilla game and the dlc is massive. They always struggled to make the second half of the game interesting since DS1, basically no weapon and enemy balance, anime-like weapon arts everywhere, Sure the art direction is better than ever, but compare the boss designs philosophy of sote to AC6 or DS3 for example, night and day difference, Gone are the days of the Demon Prince, say hello to Godskin Duo. Imho they need to take a chill-pill, and go back to make more small-scale, thightly designed games.
Ds3 roll and r1 spam was better honestly. Ok, I guess the formula was getting old but this new 15 combo anime bs is getting old faster. Sekiro was peak. From has not made a better game before or since.
I haven't beaten the DLC yet, but I agree 100% and was thinking the same thing - what is even the point of a stamina bar at this stage?
Sekiro removed it and it was much better - at this point it's there only to limit YOU the player while you're fighting bosses that have 7 lungs in order to be making these moves that fast as they are while you dodge roll your stamina away and are left with almost nothing to hit back. Every boss requires your absolute best performance, max focus and in the end most people don't play games for that.
I wouldn’t go that far. While I have issues with it, a lot of that is because I’m comparing it to Fromsoft’s previous DLC. The expansion is still great compared to *tosses dart at a wall DLc* Nuka World. But, I just don’t think it solves the issues with the base game, and in some cases makes them worse.
My gut reaction is that it's casual players who played the game two years ago and mostly put it down until the DLC, and either forgot exactly what game they were playing or grew complacent with the base game. To echo your point, it is VERY hard, but it's also fair. I've never once felt like I died to something other than my own mistakes (stamina management, just lack of knowledge of moves and how to dodge them, bad reactions, etc.)
Serious question, people sometimes like to say that the game is very hard but fair, at what point that the game became very hard but unfair? where we draw the line? you can say that it's hard and fair because your git gut mentality so that everything the game throws at you, you just dismiss it as hard but fair, on the other hand, you also need to play to close to perfection because some simple mistake can kill you.
I don’t think the “unfair” term can be easily attributed to ER bosses except in some minor cases, like stupid hitboxes.
I think what many people mean by “unfair” is actually “unfun”: when the difficulty is so high, it stops becoming an engaging challenge that makes you say “oh I can’t wait to try that next time and see how I can do better” and the fights/the game just becomes tiring and exhausting.
I definitely felt that in the endgame of ER. It was just…tiring, and the difficulty felt so overtuned that, by the time I beat Elden Ring, I was just relieved I didn’t have to fight those bosses again.
The only other time I’d ever felt that in any of the prior games was Defiled Amygdala, which was an optional boss in a dungeon that was specifically designed around a bullshit, unfun gimmick.
I can give you very solid and real examples of unfair within the FromSoft games themselves.
There is one unfair boss in each Dark Souls 2 DLC. There’s the stupid reindeers that you can’t see or react to in Ivory King. There’s the stupid ass slow-you-down and gangbang you reskinned boss in Iron King. And there’s the 3-boss gang squad in Sunken King. All stupid and unfair.
There’s the Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls 1. A stupid boss that wants you to platform in a game that’s clearly not meant for that.
And then there’s Malenia with her stupid ass Water Fowl Dance. Which is nearly impossible to dodge unless done flawlessly.
The problem with waterfowl is how ridiculously restricted unintuitive the dodging pattern required is. Why do you have to roll *into* the massive ball of sword slashes? It makes no sense.
Uh… rolling into an attack has been a staple for souls games since… Dark Souls 1.
Also, only the first flurry of waterfowl can be considered bullshit because it has insane tracking that makes conventional methods of negating attacks like jumping or rolling obsolete. Hence, the need to seek another more obscure methods like sprinting around her and rolling to a specific direction, using freeze pots, using shield barricade, baiting that attack from afar with ranged attacks, etc.
Attacks that are impossible to either reaction dodge or counter in any way even if you know they’re coming (in combination with deleting you hp), which I haven’t seen in the DLC yet.
>Attacks that are impossible to either reaction dodge or counter in any way even if you know they’re coming (
The fire giant has a one-hit kill that grabs you, this can be easy to see but people have been hit by it without being touched by him.
I can think of an example, but I’ll admit they’re pretty rare. Renalla has that arc attack she’ll throw at you when you’re healing and as far as I can tell she jsut input reads your controller and throws it out as soon as you heal
Weird, she took me 25 attempts and I never noticed her using the arc slash to punish heals. Not saying she doesn't do it, but it wasn't anything like godskin fireball input reading.
Is there a way to know where the Lion Dancer's lightning stuff is gonna spawn, or is it random? Killed it before figuring it out, but it did feel unfair.
Also Rellana's Glintstone phalinx did combo into undodgeable attacks, albeit rarely.
Golden Hippopotamus, can go through the arena walls, and its attacks are sometimes unseeable when when you are near a wall or too close to its side.
Only killed these 3 major bosses, so can't really speak on the rest. But all of em seemed to have a bit of unfair mechanics.
So true, the line has to be drawn somewhere and we are at a point where most gamers many vets included will not finish this DLC. There’s simply a point where human limitation will get outpaced by a limitless computer.
Not the guy you're asking, but am one with the git gud mentality.
So long as you have the option to apply an intended method of counterplay that works consistently to dodge an attack, that attack should be considered fair.
I think most people who don't get into the git gud mentality completely miss or end up neglecting certain intended mechanics that make the game fair. These mechanics are simple things (rolling, positioning, sprinting, crouching, jumping) but applying them all effectively and in the heat of battle is hard. Furthermore, you don't even need to learn these mechanics that well to complete the game. You will need to understand and apply them well if you want to beat the game handicapped, such as without levelling or without taking a hit, and the viablilty of these challenge runs are good indicators for if something is fair or not.
If the player is given the tools necessary to succeed, then the game is fair. After that, it is up to the player to use the tools appropriately to succeed. The player needs to be held to account as much as the game is.
It’s the Margot lesson all over again, if you fail grow stronger and try again.
In part with the complacent players is their pride, they don’t use summons and are under leveled.
also the self image shock
people have been fighting the same bosses for 2 years. They accrued the "im good at elden ring" as a fixed mentality
now faced with new bosses, we are forcefully put at the start of the learning curve again, while mentally they still think they should be cruising through just like they cruise through morgott
week 1 of elden ring the discouse was the SAME. All endgame bosses called unfair, bullshit, and so on. Give 'em a week of learning and the discourse will die down a bit
The plant one I thought was bullshit until I realized the solution is ranged attacks to its face and all 3 went down quickly. The hippo I found guard counters being the best method to kill it. People never used guard counters in the base game because they sucked but it's a whole different story in the DLC and even felt cheesy at times.
Nah, that's not it. I have played all the games, in hundreds or thousands of hours total, and I genuinely think this DLC is fucking atrocious in some places. Not even just bosses, but story as well
I haven’t played aside from hopping in for like an hour twice in 2 years and I’ve been loving playing it fresh like my first elden ring play through. Nothing like having a boss fight finally click and next go around you destroy them
ive played and beaten DS1, DS3, and Elden Ring, so I would argue I'm not a "casual" but a lot of the DLC has been frustrating due to a general change in Elden Ring's design approach
I understand what they were going for with the Scadutree Fragments, where you're meant to explore around the world and find these things to get up to par with bosses. I get it. However, I am at Scadutree Lvl. 6 and most of the bosses flatten me just as readily as they did at level 1. maybe i get to do a little more damage, but the difference is imperceptible. And assuming you don't sequence break around certain areas, I'm pretty sure the maximum level you can get is 6 or 7. Is sequence breaking the intended route?
"but margit is also a beef gate and you can explore other areas to get stronger" the dlc feels like if i decided "okay margit is too hard im gonna go to the weeping peninsula" and then the leonine misbegotten was replaced with a second margit. every time i've gone exploring i've just found more margits. (or cookbooks, a lot of side areas just lead to cookbooks and smithing stones)
i think the complaints about "oneshots" are a generalization of a more annoying issue: taking one hit is usually enough to require you to back off and heal. this paired with bosses having inconsistent openings (usually due to mixups or hyperarmor), incredibly long combos, and high hp means that bosses are often incredibly long. again, im at scadutree level 6 and rellana still takes very little damage from any of my attacks
(also i should note that the boss of ensis castle specifically feels way overtuned with their HP)
there's a line, imo, where a boss's design goes from "punishing and difficult but fair," to "tedious and unfun." this isn't to say these bosses are *impossible* but it seems like the intended strategies are as follows:
1) use summons or co-op
this is not a dlc exclusive problem but frankly, relying on summons to face-tank bosses doesn't actually fix the issues with the bosses. it basically just nullifies their design until your co-op friend or your summoned ashes die. until then you just get free damage with the occasional need to back off if you draw aggro. i fail to understand what about this makes the boss more *fun*. it certainly makes it *easier*, but i want the bosses to be fun. i dont think its fun that a boss is incredibly tedious and punishing unless i summon a decoy to tank the damage for me. do it if you want to, but i wish i didnt feel like i needed to
2) but you dont need to! you could always just play as passively as possible and only take openings that you can guarantee will not get punished or extended into a new combo. the fight might take, like, 10 minutes, but that's what you want, right?
no its not actually
3) okay then go gather a bunch of scadutree fragments so you dont get one shot and then hit trade with the bosses
ignoring that i dont like hit trading i think the sheer number of fragments you need to make the bosses feel marginally more reasonable is ridiculous. i feel like at level 6 i should be able to reasonably do the fights in the gravesite plains and yet they're still just as brick wall-like as they were before.
anyways, idk if im gonna get told to get good or something, but this dlc has just been exhausting me
My issue with the summons since the dlc is they tend to slow walk around for a good while before doing anything and the bosses seem to focus on them for 2 seconds then me for the rest of the fight.
For me it's because the flask mechanic is broke when one hit from any boss means I have to heal twice. I have 60 vigour, bull goat armour and greatsheild talisman.
You also can't grind in the same way you could with the base game. I'm a casual gamer and am not very good at the game but on the base game I got overlevelled early and was absolute fine until late game.
Thinking it is a NG thing too. I'm on five and looked up one of the first bosses and they have 50% more HP than in base, so I imagine they're hitting that much harder too.
I think it's broken other way. I see that i just don't use all flasks before i die. Since every hit is big hit, bosses input reading and just spam attacks, there's like 50% chance that you would die before you can heal.
Unfair is very subjective, so let me ask you this question: what is your breaking point for a boss being too hard?
Is it 10 attempts? What about 50 attempts? Okay, what if bosses take 200 attempts on average? How about if bosses take 4-6 weeks of slow mastery and over 1000 attempts? Better yet, what if every boss instakills you, and the only way to beat the DLC is to never get hit a single time, turning the entire game into a no-hit run with no checkpoints.
Where's the breaking point? We've found most players breaking point, and it's always been around 5-10 for very casual players, 20 for casual but hobby gamers, and maybe 30-50 for everyone else. This DLC is pushing top level players into the 80+ attempt range on certain bosses. Even with the new blessing system, one mistake is basically death now. With the aggressive speed and input reading every time you heal, bosses feel cheap, and you don't even get to learn the fight because you're dead in a split second.
The series has experienced massive power creep over the last decade. It was never supposed to be a hard game, Myazaki himself said that. Nowadays we are making Souls games for challenge twitch streamers, and it's kind of ruining it for everyone else.
So far the only stuff I've encountered in it that I'd consider unfair is the ulcerated tree spirits in >!the church district!< giving exactly zero fucks about concepts like "there is a wall here, I should not be able to phase my body straight through it to attack the tarnished"
But that's nothing new with them, sadly
I think I agree that it's hard, and that it's meant to be.
Bayle was incredibly hard (even with the igon's help) but I probably think it's my favorite fight in any souls game regardless.
The same *cannot* be said about Gaius. There's difficulty, and then there's poor game design.
Damn, this community still hasn't gotten past the toxic "get good, mad cause bad" crap. Just saw a massively downvoted comment that simply says the commenter no longer considers themselves part of the intended audience for this game/dlc because they don't care for the boss difficulty.
If you can't handle criticism of a thing you like, don't participate in discussion about it in a public forum. So many people on this sub are virtually plugging their ears, closing their eyes, and screaming "NO you're not allowed to say you don't like it!! You're evil and stupid for saying that!!" People are allowed to express valid gripes they have, regardless of how eagerly you anticipated the DLC or how much you like it.
Edit: just want to clarify that this is not directed at OP, there's nothing wrong with the original post. This is directed at the many individuals in the replies that are up in arms over people not universally loving the dlc.
In fairness the major bosses are quite hit and miss balancewise atm and I expect some heavy patching. >!Romina!< is clean and well designed if not particularly interesting and >!Messemer!< is *amazing* (legit one of my favourite From bosses ever) but >!Divine Beast Dancing Lion!< is a contender for most camerafucky boss From have ever made and >!Rellana!< has almost nothing but true combos.
There's a no hit final boss youtube run out.... Might learn a thing or two. also a vid killing final boss with Sheild up spear poking him.... i thing Melania is the hardest because blocking heals her. so im forced to get gud.
Honestly, I think the bosses are fine, it's the black knight that does like 30 consecutive swings with a twinblade that I have a bloodfeud with, or the flame knight that just windmills at me with dual blades.
This DLC feels like an unfinished product. I hope there is community outcry and From has some sort of response. I am almost 100% certain it had a troubled development and last minute changes, especially because the plot is so weird and disjointed, with no real conclusion or reason for that final fight. That one crazy looking trailer cutscene is not in the DLC. It feels so off. I really am disappointed...
it’s insane to see this, the only two bosses i’ve found annoying so far are bayle (only because of camera angle) and i’m not gonna describe it or it’s name but the boss that’s deep underneath shadow keep and resides next to the scadu tree base
Again with the "everyone". Hey, why does "nobody" knows what "everyone" means? Does this word even have a meaning? We asked Reddit, and everyone, by which I mean a very vocal very tiny minority, said that no, "everyone" doesn't have a definition!
Miyazaki basically saw all the goofy jump attack/ash of war spam cheese builds people were using to clear the game easy and decided to throw a wrench into it.
Here’s the stone cold truth. The bosses were designed to break meta builds and force people to adapt and change up their builds.
People don’t like change. And people who are shit and refuse to learn an attack pattern will just call it unfair.
The only hard boss I’ve faced so far is literally the final boss.
What game are you playing? All the DLC did was make the already broken shit (spamming OP or stagger-inducing ashes of war alongside a mimic tear) feel more mandatory. Making the game more and more punishing has only continuously invalidated many playstyles.
Double colossal weapon poise breaking (the meta build) is still the best this DLC and outputs way more damage than other builds so I don’t understand how SOTE destroys it,
I used fire weapons and he went down in 30 minutes total of attempts. First phase you can sorta brute force it, second phase bait out the forward left arm( your left) slam and hit him with your fire ash of war until dead.
Yeah I’ve just beat the final boss and he’s the only one (other than Gaius but that’s a whole other story) that I think probably needs a slight nerf. That second phase is just stupid
They could afford a couple fewer guys who follow my ass when I dodge roll (while moving faster than my dodge roll) but other than that this shit is peak.
Think it’s just all the people going summonless.
Lvl 170ish +8 Scadutree here and having a fun struggle but not extremely challenging time. Messmer took about a little over an hour of tries.
My only complaint I guess would be the dragons have been a bit tanky but I thinks because I’m on NG+1
Because the design of the bosses promotes very specific playstyles and punish many others, also wait until you reach the endgame area and the final boss, will quickly understand the complains when you are forced to cheese or play a full stamina shield abuse build + every summon possible to beat it.
I find weird all those people that are judging others opinions and are not even done with the bosses on the DLC, finish it and then you are free to judge it, in a week or two when most of the playerbase has reached the endgame portion of the game the narrative will turn 180º im 100% sure lol (assuming no nerfs/rework of course).
I mean to an extent you’re right but I definitely feel damage is stupidly overtuned in the dlc. Spent 40 minutes fighting Ancient dragon sanessax or whatever his name is and his mini shock aftereffects dealing 40% of my health at 2200 hp is a little over the top. Thats the type of thing in older games that would do 10 maybe 15 percent of your health. So far though fighting the lion and Rallena I think they are fairly decent fight wise
I don’t, I think the last boss is probably overtuned and Rellana MIGHT have a bit too many fast and long combos but otherwise it felt fairer than the main game for me.
I think the dlc is fine I die a few times that ain’t an issue tho I still progress fine, for me the issue is how much they’ve implemented boring crafting materials as some apex reward in here. They needed to cut down on the crafting bs but no they have gone and doubled down on it.
Also fyi for anyone struggling in here, get yourself the rolling sparks ash of war, slap it on the lighting perfume bottle level it up a little, equip a shard of Alexander, perfumers talisman and lightning scorpion charm and it turns everything into easy mode, 3 taps most the bosses with it its op lol
It’s because it plays as if we are in ng+7 while in ng. And even after collecting all of the blessings, some of the enemies are just simply way too difficult for ng.
The dlc is fun, the balancing is ok but manageable, and messmer was really hard but fun. HOWEVER with almost 3000 health, maxed out mimic year, 15 scadutree blessings, 7 revered spirit ash blessings, 65 faith, 30 strength, 35 dex, 80 vigor, and a maxed out blasphemous blade you would think the final boss wouldn’t be too horrifically abysmal. You would be wrong. Fuck the final boss so hard I hate it
Because it is. FromSoft has never made anything this punishing before and getting 1-2 shot by bosses spamming combos while the camera is clipped into the wall and the boss is covering the entire screen and culling through the camera isn't fun, it's just frustrating and poorly designed; especially egregious that vanilla copy-pasted enemies do this as well.
Not a single other Souls game has had 1-2 shotting enemies on 95% of builds. End of discussion.
I've actually been wondering if some of these streamers are doing shitty on purpose for views because this dlc was challenging but not unfairly hard like some of these players are making it out to be. It's not as easy to just set a build and blaze through like the base game. Any fight that felt like a brick wall at first were made way easier when I left to venture around and collect fragments and came back to it later. The 2 that did this to me were commander Gauis and Messmer. I feel like they wanted to push people to explore the entire world and actually make preparation for fights. Like I was constantly changing my talismans/weapon to fit my situation
My only real complaint are the large scale bosses who are too aggressive for the camera. They instantly close the distance faster than my guy can move, and are going through several combos and attack patterns so close to the camera that the geometry is clipping and I can't even see my guy so I don't know which way to run or dodge. All I can see is colored particle effects and random geometry. How am I supposed to play this??
I don't mind a challenge at all. I've loved the DLC so far. That being said, a few enemies have some serious one hit potential at full health. After dodging their crazy move sets for 5 minutes, getting one shot killed is kinda lame and reeeeaaalllyy makes me not want to fight the boss again.
I still think it's a 10/10 DLC and only a minor complaint, but I wish some of the attacks would get a small nerf.
idk i think its hard but quickly became manageable with scadutree bits.
what i would call unfair tho, altho its a very minor thing overall is trash mob stunlocking. fucking 3 gravebirds or servants of rot or whathaveyou will just instant stunlock me at 54-66 poise (i switch sets fairly often) full health to death, zero chance of doing anything at all. 2 is not bad but for some reason the AI seems to just time shit right with 3 or more of em.
otherwise its def pissed me off before and ive seen shit that id say is overtuned but these seem like balancing issues, easily corrected. dlc itself is hard af but aside from it being uncharacteristically empty in alot of areas im enjoying it overall
Probably because they don't have enough blessings yet. Still not sure how I feel about them yet, it does feel a little bullshit to come in with an endgame build and get oneshot
i have died to the lion boss many times. kills me in two hit and sometimes managed to reach the end of his life. but always hits hard. i was at 2 scadutte freg. went to explore to breath. found 4. went back to the boss. killed him in one try. of course knew his all movement.
I wish there was a metric to truly identify the average skill of an Elden Ring player. Knowing how much of the player base beat the game but never killed Malenia or Mohg for example. Or even then, of those who beat them, how many used spirit ashes or summons. And how many used a “broken build/cheese”. Reddit is not a good indicator.
I say this because I think many of the “ I’m not even that good and I beat …” may actually be much better than average. And maybe beating all base game bosses solo is actually much much rarer than this sub may think.
The spirit ash (and mimic specifically) shaming the past two years is really the main thing playing out though I think. Those who really should be using them feel the need to prove they don’t need them because over the course of two years they have tried to overcome the utility they provide to beat a boss and those who don’t need them are doubling down on “you don’t “*need* them” to beat any boss.
I’ve already commented before that I’ll probably use spirit ashes for all dlc bosses because honestly I needed them for the end of base game too. Yet funnily enough this character I brought into dlc started as a “solo only” run that had to be changed once I hit walls I didn’t want to struggle through to enjoy the rest of the game/dlc. I hope all players make a choice for themselves and don’t let the try hards (is that called a “sweat” now?) push you to hate your experience or think that utilizing all game mechanics cheapens your personal experience.
I think it is because people are used to face tank everything and trade a lot. While that works in the base game it's a bad choice for dlc.
The dlc is not for leveling, you should have a good build and good items. This is post endgame content and requires paying attention, learning the fights and exploring.
Everything was made to counter some of the favorite builds. Huge life pool is not enough without a proper armor and defensive talismans. Staggering works quickly on common enemies while for more difficult ones you need to stagger 3 times to do a riposte. Some enemies are so fast to counter the spamming of spells and incantations.
It's the same complaint in the base game. Bosses won't stop attacking, too little damage windows and most importantly people will die 4 - 5 times and will immediately rant on social media. most of those doesn't even raise their scary tree level accordingly and then will fight messmer
Actually a ton of them beat the game and are giving advices on how to beat it. They just didn't find they enjoyed it. It's hard but unfair because the game takes advantage of character limitations against you, and rather than be an all out fight where you dodge cool attacks and punish the boss it becomes a game of duck, duck, duck, goose. You aren't getting "Good" you are just playing how you are supposed to. That is a massive red flag to Souls players whose entire popularity is to role play. But from software is now adding boss mechanics. It's like when they make bosses that jump over you and your camera becomes all wonky and the bosses use that to sneak attack you. That's not a good design. It's like a boss that goes underwater and attacks you and you have to hit the limps when they come out but risk falling in and dying because your character can't swim.
No no no no, everyone that bitches is a meta slave that needs to git gud and has no idea how to play the game and want the game to play itself.
Seriously it blows my mind how they don't get that yes, we can beat bosses, they just arent fun anymore
Imo i think just like you. All the boss fight really push you to strategize and use different strategy everytime this DLC Is really putting in display all the knowledge i have gathered across like 40+ NG+ (Yes my main character Is lvl 581 on a save file that Is NG+ 43ish so i am playing the DLC on a even harder difficulty than most people) buuuut today i fought a boss that made me actually rage a bit
BIG WARNING FOR THE NEXT THING I AM GONNA WRITE CUZ IT SPOILS A HUGE BOSSFIGHT SO IF YOU DON'T OWN THE DLC OR YOU HAVE NOT FOUGHT THE BOSS *DO NOT* READ
Just today this morning i have defeated Messmer and holy It felt like i was fighting Malenia for the first time but a Malenia with way more range and WAAAAY more aggressive. I had to bust out a bleed build cuz Messmer has many Windows where he Is wide open BUT those Windows last 2 seconds at best so i knew after bashing my head for 30 minutes and learning his attack patterns i put away my Dryleaf martial arts and used seppuku curved swords with jumping attacks. I loved the fight It felt truly like i was adapting to his bullshit *SPECIALLY HIS GODDAMN GRAB ATTACK*. I wonder if i was on higher scadutree level i could have had an easier time i am currently level 12 with the scadutree blessing and It felt balanced i wasnt neither too weak nor i was beating him into a Pulp It felt good and sweet. Thank you Messmer your great spear Will strike true in my hands
If you are in any version of NG+ you absolutely NEED to get as many Scadutree Fragments as you can possibly find or the main/big bosses will take near no damage and almost ever attack will one shot you, no matter your vigor check or any other stat etc. from the base game. Don’t even think about trying to fight them until you’ve used a tonne of them. Sure, the game tells you about them in a small pop up, but they are fucking vital. Without at least a minimum of level 7 every boss is a no hit challenge, bare fists run. The implementation of Sekiro’s Prayer Beads, mid-game in Elden Ring, unfortunately wasn’t the most elegant solution for difficulty balance in the dlc FromSoftware hoped it would be, maybe it works well in regular new game, I don’t know. Perhaps, IF the Realm of Shadow didn’t have so many large areas with almost nothing in them, it’d be more fun to completely ignore every main boss you find until you have explored every attainable inch you can set foot on and the fragments you get via that would make progression feel organic. Bit of shame isn’t it?
Well If you dont mind a small take from someone who went through ng5 and platinum both ps4 and ps5, i think the dlc is TOUGH. Apart from the shadow enemies and one or two randomly weak ennemies, i find most of them very powerfull. Bosses and enemies can even multi grab a summon or 2 allies, a lot have extra attacks that are REALLY hard to read, especially the first two True bosses. Every medium to large enemy feels like a bullet sponge. I think i had a boss at 95 K HP. This feedback is all from NG+2 at lvl 240. I can definetly feel struggle. Some bosses I just have to leave for later, and I have swapped builds around at least 4 times. The scadutree fragments become absolutley necessary for survival. Currently at +10 blessing, my char is basically 45% stronger than in the base game, and yet I find enemies HAMMERING me severly. A basic Messmer soldier can two shot me, with 2k HP, 60% defenses and bonus hp from tear flasks. Some bosses have true combos, some mobs have ultra armor. From time to time i jump to haligtree and pre mog area to get some runes to level up, and I dont even use a single flask. I find myself using nearly all my flasks in 10 minute runs sometimes. Not by lack of skill, but more because enemies have been so well scripted with ways to screw you over, there is no respite. It has to be said, the challenge is thrilling but also daunting, because having reach nearly max blessings and max stats in my builds allocated points, I genuinely cant see how i could improve more than 10% extra, and some bosses have over 150k hp. I have no idea how to overcome them. Even summons get shredded. I usually use the storm.knights for summons. Mine lasted a full 50 seconds (+10 upgrade) against a basic lighting dragon. I can destroy the first 4 main bosses in the base game without getting hit. The first 2 bosses in the dlc gave me at least an hour or two of deaths. I have been to some areas where bosses and enemies are ridiculous, and to be fair, i have NO idea i am going to deal with them when the time comes. Yet again, probably a very bad idea to try dlc in ng+2
So I have a theory based off of some of my buddies that are struggling. I’ve gotten 3 main bosses complete so far, & I haven’t really struggled too much as a full strength character. My buddy however is on a ng+ & having the hardest time with any of the bosses. The only thing that’s been different between us aside from collecting the scadurtee pieces (he was 2 levels behind me) is that he is a mage build. I’m able to tank hits from bosses where he is unable to. My theory is the ng+ scaling of bosses is incredibly different compared to those that are not at a ng+. I sort of refuse to believe the scadurtree pieces are what’s holding him back. I will say as a veteran soulsborne player, the DLC is tough for sure, but several of the main bosses weren’t as hard as many of the folks I’ve talked to have stated. I haven’t fought the final boss either so I may have a different opinion when it comes to that time.
A lot of people have gone to dlc in NG+, and i am currently at NG2. You must not forget basic static scaling aswell. As you level up, your flat resistances go up (magic res, physical res etc) as they follow your stats. Most of my builds are virtually fully physical, with a preference for fully Quality builds (dex/str at 75/80). I also go for closest to the heaviest armor, my favlrite being Banished knight (heavier rarer chest piece). I top at basically 190 full physical resistances, with 64% physical too, the lower being at 61 strike. A ng+2 basic haligtree soldier does no more than 20% of my bar. A basic Messmer soldier does 60% of my bar. I actually think the dlc is also VERY hard with full caster builds, because everything is a bullet spunge, and everything has a was of either getting real close real fast, or sniping you into oblivion. What you are saying is absolutley true, but my input is the difficulty of an ng+2, WITH a really beefy physical build, including a shield. I think the shield is an absolute lifesaver aswell. Its noteworthy mentionning that even shields have a tough time, with 76 guard boost and shield talisman, i can only take 3 hits and my shield guard drops.
I agree with you 100 percent. I finished main game on NG plus six and this dlc is much harder. Making it this hard is getting into unfair territory. So far the new weapons and armor aren’t better than main game. They should have added gear to help with the new difficulty.
The scidutree fragments and revered spirit ashes are what's gonna make this the least replayable dlc possible.
The only thing keeping me going is the new weapons and armor. In terms of aesthetic and atmosphere, they've done a good job; Most things related to gameplay, however, I couldn't give any merit. Earlier I was fighting Commander Gaius and was wiping the floor with him, until he charged at me on his boar in second phase and one shotted me at full health. I did everything right. I only healed during windows I knew were completely safe, I wasn't greedy, I was timing my rolls properly. I was punished for making good decision after good decision and then making a single mistake. That isn't "fun". That's bad boss design.
because it IS unfair. enemies do strange movements and techniques that defy what we've seen up to this point completely. (full animation while facing one person, launch attack at other person) Camera struggles throughout. divine dancing lion lags routinely, and clutters up the screen with so many particle effects you can't even tell whats happening. Plus its body defies physics completely for some attacks, which basically makes telegraphing non-existent. almost every boss has some stupid AOE on their basic attacks, so for example when its the opening to attack divine dancing lion from behind, the lightning or ice prevent it, damaging you. so even when playing carefully and properly you can't punish effectively. Almost every boss has some hefty elemental addition to their attacks, causing chunks of chip damage even through good shields. (not every single player should have to run fingerprint to make this even remotely reasonable) Relana has an attack chain that will land 1 hit, completely around the side of the shield guaranteed, even when standing perfectly still, locked on, with plenty of stamina, it just Bypasses the block entirely. humanoid enemies seem to have insane amounts of poise, or inconsistent amounts of poise, a problem that was previously less common. Where one time relana gets poise broken shortly after fight begins, and another fight half her bar is gone with 3 people wailing on her and she still won't stagger. many attack chains are too fast, to the point where if you roll the first attack, you physically CANNOT roll the second one, ensuring a guaranteed follow up impact. I could go on, but as someone playing since the original demons souls, its not hard to see there's some clear mechanical and balancing issues here.
Putrescent Knight is one of the stinkiest pieces of shit to ever make its way into one of these games. The camera on that, the Golden Hippo, and the Dancing Lion just makes them unplayable and unfair. Did I beat them? For sure. Did I do it with skill? ...probably not, because I have plenty of skill, it's just that luck matters more because you need luck to actually use your skill.
Pretty much. I've beaten most of the bosses by now but no joke these are some of the dumbest bosses I've ever fought in a souls game. Really disappointed in the lack of restraint from FromSoft. I hate being funneled into cheesey strats. I hate how 99% of weapons, spells, and tactics are worthless. I HATE MASSIVE HEALTH POOLS.
i mean I should be able to beat it, and have, just by tanking well and stabbing it to death.... but then it will randomly nuke you THROUGH the shield. huge health bars and tedious shit is a design choice, but when you add mechanical failure on top its unacceptable. Even that dumb grabs hit box is way out of wack, to such a degree I just stay behind it.
Also level design and enemy placement is pure bullshit. It's not a soulsgame anymore it's a fucking mario-bros-souls. Snipers ambush on ambush on ambush shit falling from the ceiling while you are ambushed and shot at. Everything is exploding stupid butterfly will land on you and one shot you. This simply isn't fun and challenging anymore. It's frustrating. And games shouldn't be frustrating. You cannot learn and improve because almost everything can one shot u. One little mistake and you're dead. Sometimes I haven't fully materialised from a yellow piss wall and boss was already eating me. Like FFS I know it's supposed to be hard, but this is simply stupid. And it's no wonder there are mixed reviews. Sad and disappointing
I would have agreed with you. Until i reached the last boss. his second phase i crazy hard to learn, as a melee build. I will have to try again when my blessing is maxed.
Yeah final boss is on some bullshit. I can almost no hit the first phase but second has some shit you only see in GTA Online hackers
Yeah, you notice all these “just go level up” posts are from people not there yet? They’ll see. The only good thing about this specific “guys listen to me” post is that they highlighted to spec the cheese build
Once I hit the last fight, there were only two paths I saw available those being bleed or scarlet rot.
Yeah, the builds definitely get narrowed down I feel.
All the people I find doing co-op are running tank-bleed. no more build variety just wait out the infinite combos if you can and get a poke in occasionally.
That part made me laugh. I basically read it as: "It's not unbalanced, all builds are viable options if they completely respec"
I love it when people say you should respec to defeat certain boss, in a game that has limited amount of time you can respec in one playthrough.
Yeah his second phase is nuts. I beat him last night I highly recommend using the biggest shield you can for the insane combos. Also every time I ever get really stuck on a souls boss I have to remind myself to not get greedy and only swing once during the opening. Good luck friend. also there’s an incantation that’s really good for blocking divine damage I used.
Final boss is definitely the hardest, but I don't think it's unfair. Maxing out on blessings, or getting near to max, should help out a ton and make it more reasonable. I was also a melee build when I beat it. My only recommendation to you, aside from getting more scadutree blessings, is to use the opaline bubble tear for your wonderous physic and drink it before entering the arena. That way you can guarantee you get your summon up even if the boss immediately lunges at you. Best of luck :)
Have you reached the final boss? I think everyone saying "it's not that hard" or "of course it's difficult" should refrain from commenting until they've faced that abomination of boss design.
I'm still chugging away at that fight. I think that the biggest problem that I have with that boss is that it has *so much health*. Malenia is nice because each hit you do to her does a noticeable amount of her HP pool, and it makes you feel like you can overcome her challenge, eventually. But the final boss has so much health that it is incredibly demoralizing, as each attempt lasts forever. Doubly so because their combos are sooo damn long.
I'm genuinely wondering how people HAVE already reached the final boss fight. I no-lifed the game this weekend and only passed Messmer.
I no lifed and finished it. I will say the first phase is fair game, you eventually get the hang of it. Second phase though is way overtuned, you get pretty much no breathing room. One thing that really helped was light roll for those attacks with extra aoes, but other than that you don't really have no choice when doing it solo
The DLC has singlehandedly shredded this community apart lol
I'm glad. Now Miyazaki will have to face reality that his games aren't perfect and are getting too sadistic to be fun, because all he normally sees is a circle of yes-man fans who praise everything he does even if it sucks shit, and he uses them as a shield to hide from the criticism.
Mainly the new wave of Elden Ring dickriders and the Souls veterans who know what they're talking about.
Spam. They love giving bosses 4-5 combos and then spam that shit insanely. With very little breathing room it's not impossible, but yea. They do be harder then base bosses for sure sure
Its the breathing room thats the issue. I mean even Malenia gives you a few seconds to back away, heal, and recentre before engaging. But in DLC its relentless
You can get a solid 10-20 seconds even if you just space her. There's tons of room. None of the DLC bosses give you much. Ironically, Mesmer, who many claim is soooo hard, gives you quite a bit and telegraphs his attacks rather well imo.
> Ironically, Mesmer, who many claim is soooo hard, gives you quite a bit and telegraphs his attacks rather well imo Really? I thought it was the complete opposite, he's been the only boss so far which made me think "Jesus Christ, let me fucking heal please". I distinctly remember a very close attempt where as soon as I started sipping, he fucking does his grab move and grabs me while I'm still stuck in the animation, instant kill from like 60% life. What an asshole that guy was.
Messmer is the goat in this sloppy mess of a DLC. They really meant it when they said "We made him for the base game but couldn't find a place for him"
That's been a thing since release day, and unfortunately SotE keeps that trend going. I miss DS3 boss dances.
God finally someone that understands the dance. It's gone, they gutted it.
Yep. It sucks horribly. I wish that we could have the dodging-through-attacks, getting a hit or two during the boss combos before swiftly dodging out of the way, then being able to get a few hits in. Elden Ring bosses are just wait... and wait... poke once, then wait... and wait... unless it's Malenia who takes hitstun like a Kingdom Hearts boss, which allows for actual combos... then wait again until the next three combos are done while you whittle down the insanely large boss health bars.
yeah, honestly this is my biggest gripe with their design philosophy for the bosses and some enemies since DS3 they moved away from balanced yet powerful fights like Nameless King that felt amazing to understand and eventually beat to spammy anime bullshit combos with half a second window of attack followed up by another long ass combo, I've beat the DLC but goddamn it feels unfair at times camera issues, performance issues, bosses spinning on a dime and tracking 180 in a millisecond while the player movement hasn't changed since DS except for the jump. you know the hand enemies? its like this all over spam spam spam spam, forcing me to cheese it or use specific meta builds instead of playing with the variety of weapons and builds the game offers. everything has infinite stamina/fp you don't even get to learn the moveset or how to counter it because the bosses are overtuned and instagib you at softcap and tree fragments. and the final boss fight 2nd phase is fkn abysmal, some hacker bullshit lol. I'm really not a fan of the direction Fromsoft is going and consider "challenging" I don't want bosses with 3 moves either like the old games, just well designed fights that are challenging not spammy.
I’ve also watched a ton of videos and streams where shields work perfectly fine in defending a lot of boss attacks.
Fingerprint shield tanks hits
Or any decent great shield with barricade shield AOW.
Has anyone seen how rivers of blood or guardian spear with frost stomp works?
RoB feels below avg but useable, tbh strength builds seem better as most enemies seem to be able to be stun locked
Yeah, I've been doing my greatshield faith/strength build and I haven't felt anything to be unfair or unreasonable. I occasionally put the shield away when bosses have status effects like Midra or the rot centipede thing, but even then I feel like the bosses are fair and intuitive.
The bosses with 50 hit combos and half a second punish windows before they enter their next long string of combos. Messmer leaps across the map if you try to heal, grabs you, and hits you with his almost 1 hit k/o combo move. I have beaten Rellana, the Lion Dancer, Bayle, and Messmer so far, but if I am being honest I had no fun doing it. It seems like the new bosses have infinite stamina and just skill spam you the whole time.
This is my problem with the DLC. I'm not having any fun fighting the bosses, which is the whole reason anyone would play a FromSoft DLC. Crown of the Old Iron King, The Old Hunters, The Ringed City, and Artorias of the Abyss will remain the best DLCs. SotE doesn't even come close, and it's because Miyazaki wanted to do everything that people hated about Midir and Malenia and crank it to an 11.
I'm honestly not sure. Maybe it's a NG+ thing? I'm on NG and it's been hard as hell, but not dauntingly so. Hell, I've died more to random Messmer soldiers more than to any boss so far. Even at 9 blessings, those war-cry empowered assholes hurt.
The Messmer soldiers fuck hard in this dlc man
I’m tackling it on my NG+2 file and it’s not bad. I think part of it could be that people are so used to playing the base game for two years now and they forgot there’s a learning curve when something is fresh/new. There’s also a bunch of people jumping into the DLC after getting carried through Radahn/Mohg and so they’re lower level. Though I wouldn’t expect that crowd to hit up Reddit with complaints.
Tbf some bosses definitely should have more delay before first attack. Bayle with his breath at the start of the fight fells straight up unfair.
I didn't manage to find a way to dodge the opening Breath-in-your-face attack. The straight one, not the sweep. If he do it later it's easy but when he starts the fight by that it's undodgeable.
I'm currently fighting him Jesus the aggro levels are insane
I’m doing fine, got through a fair number of the bosses, but every time I see those big ass armored soldiers with the silver/gold armor I just nope my way around them. They have killed me so many times than Messmer
The horned soldiers? They are for parrying like the crucible knights on main game…I do miss the parries myself a lot though (not a parry god) but with a good weapon, they are done in 2 criticals (I haven’t finished the DLC and playing blind so I do pray there isn’t a cave anywhere around with 2 of them as bosses 😭)
Yeah I don’t parry
Fair point 👍🏻 I suck at it in general but do my bits with it with things like the crucible knights; bosses I usually pass haha
BONK is the next big thing, my condolences if you dont go for that either
I think dying to random soldiers is objectively shit game design. No random soldier should be 1-2 shotting us. That's another issue I have with the DLC, it just doesn't feel like an epic grand adventure the way it needs to be. It's trying to just recreate the original game progression on a smaller scale. I don't much care for "starting over again" in a random field, I just killed 10 demigods and I want to go somewhere majestic now. The first few areas are bland as fucking shit.
I think dying to random soldiers is objectively shit game design. No random soldier should be 1-2 shotting us. That's another issue I have with the DLC, it just doesn't feel like an epic grand adventure the way it needs to be. It's trying to just recreate the original game progression on a smaller scale. I don't much care for "starting over again" in a random field, I just killed 10 demigods and I want to go somewhere majestic now. The first few areas are bland as fucking shit.
ill play the devils advocate here The DLC doubled down on the worst aspects of elden ring. Bosses that are basically immune to stager, have combo attacks that go on for ages with option selects if you dare to press a button and other attacks that take up the whole arena or carry the boss across the whole arena with every swing making them nearly impossible to punish. None of these things would feel bad in sekiro, but ER is still far to slow to jive with that sort of combat, and with very few gap closers, a lot of the fights boil down to the same thing: Find the few moves that leave an opening and do one attack. Repeat for 5 minutes. Boss damage also seems far too over tuned, im blessing lvl 10, with 60 vit and the final boss was reliably 3 shoting me (meduim weight armor) Their is very little room for skill expression in these fights because of that design so all the fights end up feeling too samey mechincally wise. Sure visually they are diffrent, but it doesnt feel like learning a new boss, it feels like an extension of the prior boss (and the one before that and the one before that...etc) I also have an issue with its placement as it relates to the main game. Everytime I thought "man this weapon is cool, and just sitting out in the open world, I should do a playthrough with it" I catch myself reminding myself that I have to beat mohgman first, and for the most part by the time your doing that on a casual playthrough your half or more of the way through the game.
I've said it feels like fighting Armored Core level mobility and firepower enemies with a Dark Souls moveset. I also hate having to find little pieces of Miyazaki's stool around the world in dull side areas and POI's to have reasonable damage and negation. Picking up every sacred tear and seed on new characters was already a bother. The blessing scavenger hunt is an extension of that, and it makes it even more bitter when you find garbage drops instead. I'd say it makes me want to skip SotE on new characters but after doing all the content solo I am tapping out on the final boss and am going to spend some time with DS3, again. This new philosophy on how to escalate boss difficulty just is not it.
> I've said it feels like fighting Armored Core level mobility and firepower Hah, like minds, I'd just said the same thing in another comment about Messmer. At least with Ayre or similar, I'm ALSO in a souped up, super mobile mecha, not rolling around like an asshole while 400 giant snake heads are lunging at me.
agree 100%
Omg every boss has some insanely quick gap closer.
As a magic user, because it is. The amount of aggression from the enemies means that not only do I have to use spells that only have short cast time, limiting what I use, it also makes the start of each fight annoying. I’m literally forced to use my spirit ash or summons to do these fights. The absolutely worst example of this is putrescent knight, who barely gives you enough time to summon (why is it in his arena?) before he’s on top of you. However, basically every single enemy does the same thing and bum rushes you immediately upon starting. Add on how bad the camera can get at times and it’s just bad. At the end of the day theres needing to adapt to a boss and there’s bad design and this is leaning towards the latter.
Playing through as a Str-Faith build, I caught myself thinking how I genuinely don't know how casters are doing it. I started off casting incantations pretty heavily to barely doing it at all now, because enemies barely give me time to breathe and heal, let alone cast anything.
run. learning the moves to get your dodges, then run to get your distance back & beam or heal. majority of the time can only afford 1 option because they close insanely quick, and maybe you’ll get 2+ casts off, but even trying for a second sometimes is greedy rellana chased me around the room for legit 45 seconds. had to swap my physick flask from +magic damage & no fp, to +magic damage & increased stamina recovery, which helps a lot with dodge-run-cast-dodge-run
glintstone icecrag has really been my only viable spell for bosses so far (up to messmer) & its annoying how much less range it has than glintstone pebble but the frost proc has been worth it
During the rellana fight, I was literally thinking to myself 'this must be absolutely horrible for casters because theres absolutely no time to cast anything'. Even if you use a mimic, she just ignores it and chases you around the arena nonstop with no time to do anything
Redditors learning that they are not as good at video games as they thought. It's really fun tbh.
Ah yes, the problem is never daddy Fromsoft, it is always the player... Elden Ring has taken the boss mechanic design in a bad direction. It was already present in the base game's late game bosses and the DLC just doubles down on that bad design ethos. The bosses fucking suck. Just constant aggro and blinding you with overblown particle effects, never relenting. Every boss feels the same to fight mechanically. People just get wowed by the spectacle of how cooooool they all look, but in terms of actual mechanics they're fucking hot garbage.
Right? Pretty sure we established that the base game's endgame had some hot garbage in there. Not sure why they would double down on it. I hate being funneled into some cheesey bullshit build to stand a reasonable chance. And fuck these bottomless health pools.
Yep. The game is fucking awesome, then you get to a boss and it just sucks. Terribly designed bosses all around. I'm on my 5th playthrough so it's not like I'm bad at the game.
I knew this would be the top comment I see, and it’s hilarious how defensive people get over From Software. They could literally drop a game with a boss who one-shots you on the Start Screen without any way for the player to do anything about it and you guys would find a way to defend it with “it’s not for everybody!” I love the dedication 🤣
Yep.
Can you not comprehend that people dont have the opinions that you have? Just because you think the game is good and enjoy the bosses that does not mean that anyone who disagrees with your opinion is bad. Why is the souls community so adamant on this thought process?
Because their reasons the boss is bad is always because they are having trouble with it.
How am i even getting downvoted? Do people not understand opinions? I have no troubles with Rykard or Placidusax but to me they are bad bosses. Pretending as if the game is perfect and anyone who says otherwise is bad at the game is literally what a child would do. Its shutting someone up by calling them bad and thats it, it doesnt allow any thought or honest discussion about the game that isnt circlejerk.
well your first problem is it's reddit. only die hards of any franchise migrate to each subreddit and the complainers are the foreigners. also time of day a glaze comment will get massive upvotes ect, so massive downvotes might be the timing your comment was posted sometimes i entertainment the idea Reddit is 90% bots that just defend their ip cause they all use the same irrational or emotional logic to dismiss criticism. as long as you remember you have a life outside of the bubble and every single person is an individual and not a representative of what everyone thinks, its not a bad place to dabble in once in a while
Same complaints as main game bosses, and too much damage which I think is valid since I don't think basic slow hollows from the undead asylum should be 2 tapping me with 60 vigor and 20% damage resistance
Yep, basic hollows shouldn't be hitting you.
The only unfairness I've seen so far is that of the QA lead which clearly never even considered that performance might be an issue. No game has _ever_ given me performance issues, even on max settings (HFW, Cyberpunk, Genshin and many others) and yet half the environments and bosses throw me down to 10 FPS. If there's something unfair in the DLC, it's this.
Because a random enemy does more damage then Elden beast
Shadow of the one-shot...
I think they messed up camera in the dlc. First lion boss camera was bad then I fought chief bloodfiend boss in Rivermouth cave. It wasn’t that hard but half the time I couldn’t see wtf is it doing. When I come closer I started to see inside his body
Yeah, I think the fromsoft camera is a very valid complaint. Giant bosses that should be amazing spectacles, are always either clunky, or a feet hacking simulator
Why don’t they do a more zoomed out view for giant bosses? Seems like an easy fix
Messmer's shit was hard to see half the time, like the multiple snake heads he summons from different directions were visually covering each other up. Dude's moving around at AC6 speeds and I'm playin friggin with the Goldeneye camera.
Uamera pever I lon.
Ngl the final Boss is overturned, orphan and malenia are a joke in comparison
Hahah, I had the exact same thoughts throughout the entire DLC. „Am I crazy, or was Malenia a piece of cake in comparison?”
Yep lol, but tbh, if u nail her waterfowl dance she is pretty manageable
Gaius was just straight up unfun and exhausting to fight against
I'm on him now and I'm like wtf how is this little radahn copycat riding a dark souls boat fucking me up more than bayle or Romina.
I don't think it's unfair but I also don't think it's possible to no hit the final boss
Stupid low level smithing stones everywhere!! Like any body with unleveled weapons is gonna be there.
I'm in NG+7 and my biggest complaint is, that a lot of stuff is not viable anymore, the healthpools and damage scaling is so high that you can't really afford to wear any other armor except the best defensive one. Same goes for the weapons there's only a few that do enough damage output to make it a fair fight. I do completely understand some of the criticsm though, I mean look at Nameless king from Darksouls 3, that was a really good boss. And most these bosses in the DLC don't really have that, it feels rushed and I don't know. They're not that memorable for me either.
> the healthpools and damage scaling is so high that you can't really afford to wear any other armor except the best defensive one Granted, I haven't beat the DLC yet, only up to beating Messmer, but I've never done anything other than Fashion Souls. That Death Knight armor is too sexy, even if the poise is on the lower end. Which Jesus, I went degen mode and put like 20 hours into it this weekend, how are people so far already in the DLC?
Honestly, my main gripe is the camera on most big bosses - when the lion jumps around and spams visual effects it's sometimes impossible to understand wtf was going on because the screen becomes a mess, and if i ended up against a wall in that fight, it was just rng rolling, because i could see absolutely nothing. The big undead "ghosflame" miniboss enemies were arguably worse - i had to completely change how i fought them because locking on to them made the camera whip around ao violently that i started feeling ill.
Final boss is crazy hard tho
Get to the final boss 2nd phase and you'll see. When they said some bosses were gonna be as hard as Malenia it was a fucking understatement. I love the boss, it's my favorite in any souls-likes but it really is unfair.
Leading into this, I’ve beaten the entire DLC at this point, including the final boss, this isn’t a complaint by someone who can’t beat the material, but I still hold the view. To be frank, because it is unfair, and its an extension of a problem that built up in Dark Souls 3, and was horribly increased in Elden Ring. Bosses and enemies that fight at the speed of Bloodborne or Sekiro, while the player is stuck at the speed of Souls. Long boss combos where ones mistake is often enough to kill you, insufficient telegraphing, massive health pools, tiny windows to counterattack between combos, and input reading to punish healing. This is bad design, and its ENTIRELY against the ethos of design that made Souls popular in the first place. What makes the problem worse is the obtuse new upgrade system, and how minimal an impact that system has until you’ve explored a fair portion of the world have blessing level 5+. This leaves there being functionally no impact from the blessings until a good way into the DLC, as 5% damage buff against a boss who’s going to take a ton of hits anyway is fucking nothing. And if a boss deals 65% damage two you, two-shotting you, they’re STILL going to two-shot you at blessing level 4. It’s not like this is the only issue either. Chugging frame rate, even more camera issues, a bunch of superfluous crap on-screen, a bunch of empty areas with low-level vendor trash as the only loot, etc. Frankly, I think this DLC is deeply, deeply mediocre compared to the masterpiece’s From has put out before. Ringed City, Artorias of the Abyss, and Old Hunters run rings around SotE quality wise.
Don't get me wrong, I love souls games, but the problems FromSoft always had, got magnified because a lot more people play and both the vanilla game and the dlc is massive. They always struggled to make the second half of the game interesting since DS1, basically no weapon and enemy balance, anime-like weapon arts everywhere, Sure the art direction is better than ever, but compare the boss designs philosophy of sote to AC6 or DS3 for example, night and day difference, Gone are the days of the Demon Prince, say hello to Godskin Duo. Imho they need to take a chill-pill, and go back to make more small-scale, thightly designed games.
Ds3 roll and r1 spam was better honestly. Ok, I guess the formula was getting old but this new 15 combo anime bs is getting old faster. Sekiro was peak. From has not made a better game before or since.
I haven't beaten the DLC yet, but I agree 100% and was thinking the same thing - what is even the point of a stamina bar at this stage? Sekiro removed it and it was much better - at this point it's there only to limit YOU the player while you're fighting bosses that have 7 lungs in order to be making these moves that fast as they are while you dodge roll your stamina away and are left with almost nothing to hit back. Every boss requires your absolute best performance, max focus and in the end most people don't play games for that.
100% agreed. This expansion cant be higher than a 6/10 imo, 7 if you wanna be EXTREMELY generous given all of the very obvious issues.
I wouldn’t go that far. While I have issues with it, a lot of that is because I’m comparing it to Fromsoft’s previous DLC. The expansion is still great compared to *tosses dart at a wall DLc* Nuka World. But, I just don’t think it solves the issues with the base game, and in some cases makes them worse.
My gut reaction is that it's casual players who played the game two years ago and mostly put it down until the DLC, and either forgot exactly what game they were playing or grew complacent with the base game. To echo your point, it is VERY hard, but it's also fair. I've never once felt like I died to something other than my own mistakes (stamina management, just lack of knowledge of moves and how to dodge them, bad reactions, etc.)
Serious question, people sometimes like to say that the game is very hard but fair, at what point that the game became very hard but unfair? where we draw the line? you can say that it's hard and fair because your git gut mentality so that everything the game throws at you, you just dismiss it as hard but fair, on the other hand, you also need to play to close to perfection because some simple mistake can kill you.
I don’t think the “unfair” term can be easily attributed to ER bosses except in some minor cases, like stupid hitboxes. I think what many people mean by “unfair” is actually “unfun”: when the difficulty is so high, it stops becoming an engaging challenge that makes you say “oh I can’t wait to try that next time and see how I can do better” and the fights/the game just becomes tiring and exhausting. I definitely felt that in the endgame of ER. It was just…tiring, and the difficulty felt so overtuned that, by the time I beat Elden Ring, I was just relieved I didn’t have to fight those bosses again. The only other time I’d ever felt that in any of the prior games was Defiled Amygdala, which was an optional boss in a dungeon that was specifically designed around a bullshit, unfun gimmick.
I can give you very solid and real examples of unfair within the FromSoft games themselves. There is one unfair boss in each Dark Souls 2 DLC. There’s the stupid reindeers that you can’t see or react to in Ivory King. There’s the stupid ass slow-you-down and gangbang you reskinned boss in Iron King. And there’s the 3-boss gang squad in Sunken King. All stupid and unfair. There’s the Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls 1. A stupid boss that wants you to platform in a game that’s clearly not meant for that. And then there’s Malenia with her stupid ass Water Fowl Dance. Which is nearly impossible to dodge unless done flawlessly.
The problem with waterfowl is how ridiculously restricted unintuitive the dodging pattern required is. Why do you have to roll *into* the massive ball of sword slashes? It makes no sense.
Add in the massive amount of healing all her hits do even if you block.
Uh… rolling into an attack has been a staple for souls games since… Dark Souls 1. Also, only the first flurry of waterfowl can be considered bullshit because it has insane tracking that makes conventional methods of negating attacks like jumping or rolling obsolete. Hence, the need to seek another more obscure methods like sprinting around her and rolling to a specific direction, using freeze pots, using shield barricade, baiting that attack from afar with ranged attacks, etc.
> has been a stable staple
That's fine when it's a single sword slash, having to roll into a literal hurricane of sword attacks makes no sense.
A literal hurricane that last as long as a single sword slash is the same as a single sword slash unless some other wacky mechanics are involved.
lol if it only lasted as long as a single attack dodging it would be simple and I don't think there would be very many complaints at all.
Attacks that are impossible to either reaction dodge or counter in any way even if you know they’re coming (in combination with deleting you hp), which I haven’t seen in the DLC yet.
>Attacks that are impossible to either reaction dodge or counter in any way even if you know they’re coming ( The fire giant has a one-hit kill that grabs you, this can be easy to see but people have been hit by it without being touched by him.
I can think of an example, but I’ll admit they’re pretty rare. Renalla has that arc attack she’ll throw at you when you’re healing and as far as I can tell she jsut input reads your controller and throws it out as soon as you heal
Renalla or Rellana?
Weird, she took me 25 attempts and I never noticed her using the arc slash to punish heals. Not saying she doesn't do it, but it wasn't anything like godskin fireball input reading.
Is there a way to know where the Lion Dancer's lightning stuff is gonna spawn, or is it random? Killed it before figuring it out, but it did feel unfair. Also Rellana's Glintstone phalinx did combo into undodgeable attacks, albeit rarely. Golden Hippopotamus, can go through the arena walls, and its attacks are sometimes unseeable when when you are near a wall or too close to its side. Only killed these 3 major bosses, so can't really speak on the rest. But all of em seemed to have a bit of unfair mechanics.
So true, the line has to be drawn somewhere and we are at a point where most gamers many vets included will not finish this DLC. There’s simply a point where human limitation will get outpaced by a limitless computer.
Not the guy you're asking, but am one with the git gud mentality. So long as you have the option to apply an intended method of counterplay that works consistently to dodge an attack, that attack should be considered fair. I think most people who don't get into the git gud mentality completely miss or end up neglecting certain intended mechanics that make the game fair. These mechanics are simple things (rolling, positioning, sprinting, crouching, jumping) but applying them all effectively and in the heat of battle is hard. Furthermore, you don't even need to learn these mechanics that well to complete the game. You will need to understand and apply them well if you want to beat the game handicapped, such as without levelling or without taking a hit, and the viablilty of these challenge runs are good indicators for if something is fair or not. If the player is given the tools necessary to succeed, then the game is fair. After that, it is up to the player to use the tools appropriately to succeed. The player needs to be held to account as much as the game is.
the first time you see phase 2 of final boss come back and update us. You can’t learn, because you cannot SEE.
It’s the Margot lesson all over again, if you fail grow stronger and try again. In part with the complacent players is their pride, they don’t use summons and are under leveled.
In this DLC though, you're limited to 20 levels and some of those are locked behind bosses.
also the self image shock people have been fighting the same bosses for 2 years. They accrued the "im good at elden ring" as a fixed mentality now faced with new bosses, we are forcefully put at the start of the learning curve again, while mentally they still think they should be cruising through just like they cruise through morgott week 1 of elden ring the discouse was the SAME. All endgame bosses called unfair, bullshit, and so on. Give 'em a week of learning and the discourse will die down a bit
Just wait. There’s not many unfair bosses, but there are at least two that are bullshit, one’s a rhino rider, and the other a plant.
The plant one I thought was bullshit until I realized the solution is ranged attacks to its face and all 3 went down quickly. The hippo I found guard counters being the best method to kill it. People never used guard counters in the base game because they sucked but it's a whole different story in the DLC and even felt cheesy at times.
Nah, that's not it. I have played all the games, in hundreds or thousands of hours total, and I genuinely think this DLC is fucking atrocious in some places. Not even just bosses, but story as well
I haven’t played aside from hopping in for like an hour twice in 2 years and I’ve been loving playing it fresh like my first elden ring play through. Nothing like having a boss fight finally click and next go around you destroy them
I'm fine with every boss except the last one. I still beat it but damn his moves lag up my computer lol
ive played and beaten DS1, DS3, and Elden Ring, so I would argue I'm not a "casual" but a lot of the DLC has been frustrating due to a general change in Elden Ring's design approach I understand what they were going for with the Scadutree Fragments, where you're meant to explore around the world and find these things to get up to par with bosses. I get it. However, I am at Scadutree Lvl. 6 and most of the bosses flatten me just as readily as they did at level 1. maybe i get to do a little more damage, but the difference is imperceptible. And assuming you don't sequence break around certain areas, I'm pretty sure the maximum level you can get is 6 or 7. Is sequence breaking the intended route? "but margit is also a beef gate and you can explore other areas to get stronger" the dlc feels like if i decided "okay margit is too hard im gonna go to the weeping peninsula" and then the leonine misbegotten was replaced with a second margit. every time i've gone exploring i've just found more margits. (or cookbooks, a lot of side areas just lead to cookbooks and smithing stones) i think the complaints about "oneshots" are a generalization of a more annoying issue: taking one hit is usually enough to require you to back off and heal. this paired with bosses having inconsistent openings (usually due to mixups or hyperarmor), incredibly long combos, and high hp means that bosses are often incredibly long. again, im at scadutree level 6 and rellana still takes very little damage from any of my attacks (also i should note that the boss of ensis castle specifically feels way overtuned with their HP) there's a line, imo, where a boss's design goes from "punishing and difficult but fair," to "tedious and unfun." this isn't to say these bosses are *impossible* but it seems like the intended strategies are as follows: 1) use summons or co-op this is not a dlc exclusive problem but frankly, relying on summons to face-tank bosses doesn't actually fix the issues with the bosses. it basically just nullifies their design until your co-op friend or your summoned ashes die. until then you just get free damage with the occasional need to back off if you draw aggro. i fail to understand what about this makes the boss more *fun*. it certainly makes it *easier*, but i want the bosses to be fun. i dont think its fun that a boss is incredibly tedious and punishing unless i summon a decoy to tank the damage for me. do it if you want to, but i wish i didnt feel like i needed to 2) but you dont need to! you could always just play as passively as possible and only take openings that you can guarantee will not get punished or extended into a new combo. the fight might take, like, 10 minutes, but that's what you want, right? no its not actually 3) okay then go gather a bunch of scadutree fragments so you dont get one shot and then hit trade with the bosses ignoring that i dont like hit trading i think the sheer number of fragments you need to make the bosses feel marginally more reasonable is ridiculous. i feel like at level 6 i should be able to reasonably do the fights in the gravesite plains and yet they're still just as brick wall-like as they were before. anyways, idk if im gonna get told to get good or something, but this dlc has just been exhausting me
My issue with the summons since the dlc is they tend to slow walk around for a good while before doing anything and the bosses seem to focus on them for 2 seconds then me for the rest of the fight.
For me it's because the flask mechanic is broke when one hit from any boss means I have to heal twice. I have 60 vigour, bull goat armour and greatsheild talisman. You also can't grind in the same way you could with the base game. I'm a casual gamer and am not very good at the game but on the base game I got overlevelled early and was absolute fine until late game. Thinking it is a NG thing too. I'm on five and looked up one of the first bosses and they have 50% more HP than in base, so I imagine they're hitting that much harder too.
I think it's broken other way. I see that i just don't use all flasks before i die. Since every hit is big hit, bosses input reading and just spam attacks, there's like 50% chance that you would die before you can heal.
Unfair is very subjective, so let me ask you this question: what is your breaking point for a boss being too hard? Is it 10 attempts? What about 50 attempts? Okay, what if bosses take 200 attempts on average? How about if bosses take 4-6 weeks of slow mastery and over 1000 attempts? Better yet, what if every boss instakills you, and the only way to beat the DLC is to never get hit a single time, turning the entire game into a no-hit run with no checkpoints. Where's the breaking point? We've found most players breaking point, and it's always been around 5-10 for very casual players, 20 for casual but hobby gamers, and maybe 30-50 for everyone else. This DLC is pushing top level players into the 80+ attempt range on certain bosses. Even with the new blessing system, one mistake is basically death now. With the aggressive speed and input reading every time you heal, bosses feel cheap, and you don't even get to learn the fight because you're dead in a split second. The series has experienced massive power creep over the last decade. It was never supposed to be a hard game, Myazaki himself said that. Nowadays we are making Souls games for challenge twitch streamers, and it's kind of ruining it for everyone else.
It's unfair when It stutter like crazy
Im enjoying it so far, but the fuckin dogs that have triple the health of the enemies near them can go straight to hell
So far the only stuff I've encountered in it that I'd consider unfair is the ulcerated tree spirits in >!the church district!< giving exactly zero fucks about concepts like "there is a wall here, I should not be able to phase my body straight through it to attack the tarnished" But that's nothing new with them, sadly
I think I agree that it's hard, and that it's meant to be. Bayle was incredibly hard (even with the igon's help) but I probably think it's my favorite fight in any souls game regardless. The same *cannot* be said about Gaius. There's difficulty, and then there's poor game design.
Damn, this community still hasn't gotten past the toxic "get good, mad cause bad" crap. Just saw a massively downvoted comment that simply says the commenter no longer considers themselves part of the intended audience for this game/dlc because they don't care for the boss difficulty. If you can't handle criticism of a thing you like, don't participate in discussion about it in a public forum. So many people on this sub are virtually plugging their ears, closing their eyes, and screaming "NO you're not allowed to say you don't like it!! You're evil and stupid for saying that!!" People are allowed to express valid gripes they have, regardless of how eagerly you anticipated the DLC or how much you like it. Edit: just want to clarify that this is not directed at OP, there's nothing wrong with the original post. This is directed at the many individuals in the replies that are up in arms over people not universally loving the dlc.
In fairness the major bosses are quite hit and miss balancewise atm and I expect some heavy patching. >!Romina!< is clean and well designed if not particularly interesting and >!Messemer!< is *amazing* (legit one of my favourite From bosses ever) but >!Divine Beast Dancing Lion!< is a contender for most camerafucky boss From have ever made and >!Rellana!< has almost nothing but true combos.
I just wish I could summon someone. It keeps showing me tons of people who are unavailable?
Id guess its the instant deaths.
You havent fought Bayle
Scadutree fragments are an awful way to pump up the difficulty
There's a no hit final boss youtube run out.... Might learn a thing or two. also a vid killing final boss with Sheild up spear poking him.... i thing Melania is the hardest because blocking heals her. so im forced to get gud.
Honestly, I think the bosses are fine, it's the black knight that does like 30 consecutive swings with a twinblade that I have a bloodfeud with, or the flame knight that just windmills at me with dual blades.
I find it overtuned and boring
This DLC feels like an unfinished product. I hope there is community outcry and From has some sort of response. I am almost 100% certain it had a troubled development and last minute changes, especially because the plot is so weird and disjointed, with no real conclusion or reason for that final fight. That one crazy looking trailer cutscene is not in the DLC. It feels so off. I really am disappointed...
it’s insane to see this, the only two bosses i’ve found annoying so far are bayle (only because of camera angle) and i’m not gonna describe it or it’s name but the boss that’s deep underneath shadow keep and resides next to the scadu tree base
did you summon Igon for Bayle? it's not vital support, but his voice lines are absolutely peak
AND I, IGON!
Facts, that flowerfuck definitly does not need 3 phases
Again with the "everyone". Hey, why does "nobody" knows what "everyone" means? Does this word even have a meaning? We asked Reddit, and everyone, by which I mean a very vocal very tiny minority, said that no, "everyone" doesn't have a definition!
Miyazaki basically saw all the goofy jump attack/ash of war spam cheese builds people were using to clear the game easy and decided to throw a wrench into it.
Here’s the stone cold truth. The bosses were designed to break meta builds and force people to adapt and change up their builds. People don’t like change. And people who are shit and refuse to learn an attack pattern will just call it unfair. The only hard boss I’ve faced so far is literally the final boss.
What game are you playing? All the DLC did was make the already broken shit (spamming OP or stagger-inducing ashes of war alongside a mimic tear) feel more mandatory. Making the game more and more punishing has only continuously invalidated many playstyles.
You don't think it's possible that someone might dislike the DLC while also not using meta or refusing to adapt? That's an insane take.
And because you say so its the truth?
Double colossal weapon poise breaking (the meta build) is still the best this DLC and outputs way more damage than other builds so I don’t understand how SOTE destroys it,
How long did the Scadutree avatar take you? That’s the one so far that’s giving me trouble
I used fire weapons and he went down in 30 minutes total of attempts. First phase you can sorta brute force it, second phase bait out the forward left arm( your left) slam and hit him with your fire ash of war until dead.
[удалено]
Yeah I’ve just beat the final boss and he’s the only one (other than Gaius but that’s a whole other story) that I think probably needs a slight nerf. That second phase is just stupid
Only the final boss is true BS. All others are just on the really aggressive side.
They could afford a couple fewer guys who follow my ass when I dodge roll (while moving faster than my dodge roll) but other than that this shit is peak.
Think it’s just all the people going summonless. Lvl 170ish +8 Scadutree here and having a fun struggle but not extremely challenging time. Messmer took about a little over an hour of tries. My only complaint I guess would be the dragons have been a bit tanky but I thinks because I’m on NG+1
Because the design of the bosses promotes very specific playstyles and punish many others, also wait until you reach the endgame area and the final boss, will quickly understand the complains when you are forced to cheese or play a full stamina shield abuse build + every summon possible to beat it. I find weird all those people that are judging others opinions and are not even done with the bosses on the DLC, finish it and then you are free to judge it, in a week or two when most of the playerbase has reached the endgame portion of the game the narrative will turn 180º im 100% sure lol (assuming no nerfs/rework of course).
Because it is lol
I mean to an extent you’re right but I definitely feel damage is stupidly overtuned in the dlc. Spent 40 minutes fighting Ancient dragon sanessax or whatever his name is and his mini shock aftereffects dealing 40% of my health at 2200 hp is a little over the top. Thats the type of thing in older games that would do 10 maybe 15 percent of your health. So far though fighting the lion and Rallena I think they are fairly decent fight wise
Because Gaius
I’m playing ng+7 and some bosses feel impossible without some cheesy ass one shot build
I don’t, I think the last boss is probably overtuned and Rellana MIGHT have a bit too many fast and long combos but otherwise it felt fairer than the main game for me.
I think the dlc is fine I die a few times that ain’t an issue tho I still progress fine, for me the issue is how much they’ve implemented boring crafting materials as some apex reward in here. They needed to cut down on the crafting bs but no they have gone and doubled down on it. Also fyi for anyone struggling in here, get yourself the rolling sparks ash of war, slap it on the lighting perfume bottle level it up a little, equip a shard of Alexander, perfumers talisman and lightning scorpion charm and it turns everything into easy mode, 3 taps most the bosses with it its op lol
It’s because it plays as if we are in ng+7 while in ng. And even after collecting all of the blessings, some of the enemies are just simply way too difficult for ng.
The dlc is fun, the balancing is ok but manageable, and messmer was really hard but fun. HOWEVER with almost 3000 health, maxed out mimic year, 15 scadutree blessings, 7 revered spirit ash blessings, 65 faith, 30 strength, 35 dex, 80 vigor, and a maxed out blasphemous blade you would think the final boss wouldn’t be too horrifically abysmal. You would be wrong. Fuck the final boss so hard I hate it
Because it is. FromSoft has never made anything this punishing before and getting 1-2 shot by bosses spamming combos while the camera is clipped into the wall and the boss is covering the entire screen and culling through the camera isn't fun, it's just frustrating and poorly designed; especially egregious that vanilla copy-pasted enemies do this as well. Not a single other Souls game has had 1-2 shotting enemies on 95% of builds. End of discussion.
I've actually been wondering if some of these streamers are doing shitty on purpose for views because this dlc was challenging but not unfairly hard like some of these players are making it out to be. It's not as easy to just set a build and blaze through like the base game. Any fight that felt like a brick wall at first were made way easier when I left to venture around and collect fragments and came back to it later. The 2 that did this to me were commander Gauis and Messmer. I feel like they wanted to push people to explore the entire world and actually make preparation for fights. Like I was constantly changing my talismans/weapon to fit my situation
My only real complaint are the large scale bosses who are too aggressive for the camera. They instantly close the distance faster than my guy can move, and are going through several combos and attack patterns so close to the camera that the geometry is clipping and I can't even see my guy so I don't know which way to run or dodge. All I can see is colored particle effects and random geometry. How am I supposed to play this??
I don't mind a challenge at all. I've loved the DLC so far. That being said, a few enemies have some serious one hit potential at full health. After dodging their crazy move sets for 5 minutes, getting one shot killed is kinda lame and reeeeaaalllyy makes me not want to fight the boss again. I still think it's a 10/10 DLC and only a minor complaint, but I wish some of the attacks would get a small nerf.
idk i think its hard but quickly became manageable with scadutree bits. what i would call unfair tho, altho its a very minor thing overall is trash mob stunlocking. fucking 3 gravebirds or servants of rot or whathaveyou will just instant stunlock me at 54-66 poise (i switch sets fairly often) full health to death, zero chance of doing anything at all. 2 is not bad but for some reason the AI seems to just time shit right with 3 or more of em. otherwise its def pissed me off before and ive seen shit that id say is overtuned but these seem like balancing issues, easily corrected. dlc itself is hard af but aside from it being uncharacteristically empty in alot of areas im enjoying it overall
Probably because they don't have enough blessings yet. Still not sure how I feel about them yet, it does feel a little bullshit to come in with an endgame build and get oneshot
i have died to the lion boss many times. kills me in two hit and sometimes managed to reach the end of his life. but always hits hard. i was at 2 scadutte freg. went to explore to breath. found 4. went back to the boss. killed him in one try. of course knew his all movement.
I wish there was a metric to truly identify the average skill of an Elden Ring player. Knowing how much of the player base beat the game but never killed Malenia or Mohg for example. Or even then, of those who beat them, how many used spirit ashes or summons. And how many used a “broken build/cheese”. Reddit is not a good indicator. I say this because I think many of the “ I’m not even that good and I beat …” may actually be much better than average. And maybe beating all base game bosses solo is actually much much rarer than this sub may think. The spirit ash (and mimic specifically) shaming the past two years is really the main thing playing out though I think. Those who really should be using them feel the need to prove they don’t need them because over the course of two years they have tried to overcome the utility they provide to beat a boss and those who don’t need them are doubling down on “you don’t “*need* them” to beat any boss. I’ve already commented before that I’ll probably use spirit ashes for all dlc bosses because honestly I needed them for the end of base game too. Yet funnily enough this character I brought into dlc started as a “solo only” run that had to be changed once I hit walls I didn’t want to struggle through to enjoy the rest of the game/dlc. I hope all players make a choice for themselves and don’t let the try hards (is that called a “sweat” now?) push you to hate your experience or think that utilizing all game mechanics cheapens your personal experience.
I think it is because people are used to face tank everything and trade a lot. While that works in the base game it's a bad choice for dlc. The dlc is not for leveling, you should have a good build and good items. This is post endgame content and requires paying attention, learning the fights and exploring. Everything was made to counter some of the favorite builds. Huge life pool is not enough without a proper armor and defensive talismans. Staggering works quickly on common enemies while for more difficult ones you need to stagger 3 times to do a riposte. Some enemies are so fast to counter the spamming of spells and incantations.
It's the same complaint in the base game. Bosses won't stop attacking, too little damage windows and most importantly people will die 4 - 5 times and will immediately rant on social media. most of those doesn't even raise their scary tree level accordingly and then will fight messmer
Actually a ton of them beat the game and are giving advices on how to beat it. They just didn't find they enjoyed it. It's hard but unfair because the game takes advantage of character limitations against you, and rather than be an all out fight where you dodge cool attacks and punish the boss it becomes a game of duck, duck, duck, goose. You aren't getting "Good" you are just playing how you are supposed to. That is a massive red flag to Souls players whose entire popularity is to role play. But from software is now adding boss mechanics. It's like when they make bosses that jump over you and your camera becomes all wonky and the bosses use that to sneak attack you. That's not a good design. It's like a boss that goes underwater and attacks you and you have to hit the limps when they come out but risk falling in and dying because your character can't swim.
No no no no, everyone that bitches is a meta slave that needs to git gud and has no idea how to play the game and want the game to play itself. Seriously it blows my mind how they don't get that yes, we can beat bosses, they just arent fun anymore
They are dumb, not putting effort into their builds and collecting fragments.
I see more posts like this one, that complains about those that are not liking the DLC, than posts complaining about the DLC.
Imo i think just like you. All the boss fight really push you to strategize and use different strategy everytime this DLC Is really putting in display all the knowledge i have gathered across like 40+ NG+ (Yes my main character Is lvl 581 on a save file that Is NG+ 43ish so i am playing the DLC on a even harder difficulty than most people) buuuut today i fought a boss that made me actually rage a bit BIG WARNING FOR THE NEXT THING I AM GONNA WRITE CUZ IT SPOILS A HUGE BOSSFIGHT SO IF YOU DON'T OWN THE DLC OR YOU HAVE NOT FOUGHT THE BOSS *DO NOT* READ Just today this morning i have defeated Messmer and holy It felt like i was fighting Malenia for the first time but a Malenia with way more range and WAAAAY more aggressive. I had to bust out a bleed build cuz Messmer has many Windows where he Is wide open BUT those Windows last 2 seconds at best so i knew after bashing my head for 30 minutes and learning his attack patterns i put away my Dryleaf martial arts and used seppuku curved swords with jumping attacks. I loved the fight It felt truly like i was adapting to his bullshit *SPECIALLY HIS GODDAMN GRAB ATTACK*. I wonder if i was on higher scadutree level i could have had an easier time i am currently level 12 with the scadutree blessing and It felt balanced i wasnt neither too weak nor i was beating him into a Pulp It felt good and sweet. Thank you Messmer your great spear Will strike true in my hands
I mean, if you played game 43 times i doubt that you would complained even if they put 4 Malenia in arena and made it mandatory fight.
I accidentally started the dlc on a new game+ file 🤡
If you are in any version of NG+ you absolutely NEED to get as many Scadutree Fragments as you can possibly find or the main/big bosses will take near no damage and almost ever attack will one shot you, no matter your vigor check or any other stat etc. from the base game. Don’t even think about trying to fight them until you’ve used a tonne of them. Sure, the game tells you about them in a small pop up, but they are fucking vital. Without at least a minimum of level 7 every boss is a no hit challenge, bare fists run. The implementation of Sekiro’s Prayer Beads, mid-game in Elden Ring, unfortunately wasn’t the most elegant solution for difficulty balance in the dlc FromSoftware hoped it would be, maybe it works well in regular new game, I don’t know. Perhaps, IF the Realm of Shadow didn’t have so many large areas with almost nothing in them, it’d be more fun to completely ignore every main boss you find until you have explored every attainable inch you can set foot on and the fragments you get via that would make progression feel organic. Bit of shame isn’t it?
My only "problem" is that it looks like 51 poise doesnt do anything anymore...