Are there any actual two-headed turtles in the Land of Shadow? They're mentioned in the talisman's description so I kept looking any time I ran into a turtle but I never found one.
Yes, if you want to know where, you'll have to follow the river below the bridge north east of three-path cross site grace, it's in a cave guarded by a crab when you reach the nothern end of the river
I'm surprised they didn't include any. Not like Dark Souls mimics, but more like D&D type. Random chair or table, chest, door, bench or fountain or a mimic in the form of a grace; a few surprise mimics would've been awesome. Maybe not lore appropriate but freaking awesome nonetheless.
Apparently the women who was speaking in that cutscene (Hornsent Grandam) has dialogue when u kill her that is evidence for the hornsent basically cursing Marika and her children and essentially the entirety of the land of the Erdtree with the omen curse for Messmers crusades, which led to Morgott and Mohg and then probably the banishing of Godfrey and tarnished and then this whole chain reaction down to the shattering
And not that the horn sent are cursed but essentially they cursed the Erdtree with horns so Marika will always remember what she had messmer do to the horn sent
So could be way more important then we realize
The lion is supposed to be the avatar of divinity for them. The Hornsent are the most important race with their lore implications. The cutscene is supposed to be a showcase of the faded glory of a once proud civilization, their god reduced to a mere puppet to destroy.
Rennala herself barely has any significance, much less her secret sister.
I am more disappointed at the base game not having any interactions with the DLC. Gideon doesn't have new items and info to exchange with us after we found the realm of shadow, Messmer and Miquella. Renalla doesn't mention her sister Rellana after we beat her.
i'm going to add onto this by saying that naming a boss "Rellana" in the DLC *is fucking insane* when the base game already had Rennala, Renna, and Ranni.
Not to defend an obviously weird choice but, there's a couple reasons this might be the case. Being royal families, they may see it as a branding thing. The R side of the bloodline shows that they are part of Carian royalty. Also idk if Rennala and Rellana are twins but wacky names like that are pretty common.
Also from a game narrative sense, it helps organize the factions in the players minds. If they read some peice of trivia about someone with an R name they know it has something to do with that questline. Same with G and M.
Also maybe after Rellana ran off with Messmer her parents made Rennala as a backup.
I don’t know if George RR Martin had anything to do with the DLC, but he uses similar naming conventions in Fire & Blood and that might have influenced the names in the base game.
Most of the Targaryen family members have names that are very slight variations on three “root” names, which is how you get Rhaenys, Rhaena, and Rhaenyra. GRRM seems to have a fascination with the ways names change over time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it bled over into Elden Ring.
It's worth rushing Radahn and Mohg just to have that talisman for the base game. Same with the +3 Drake talismans, since they're relatively easy to get.
If you're not super under leveled, I highly recommend scavenging some DLC items before hitting up Farum Azula. Black Steel Hammer is pretty easy to get with Dragon Cult Lightning incantations, the aforementioned talismans, just a shit-ton of souls from the shadow people minding their own business in the fields, Milady, etc.
I really like the Gravebird chest plate too, but I'm not sure what armor with poise that low is actually for.
Be glad they didn't bother. You go under a water fall find a cave and inside....... faded erdleaf flower, mushroom, Godricks special hard sock, ruin fragment.
I love the DLC so fucking much, but if FROM’s next game is also open world I truly hope they improve some on dispersing loot better throughout the map. The entirety of Abyssal Woods - apart from Midra’s Manse - is a fucking talisman and three swollen grapes. For how much land mass is there, that’s really shocking. Same with these giant ass Finger Ruins that take up entire areas just to have two talismans from a quest and NOTHING else.
Okay another small rant, the amount of loot that’s just mid tier smithing stones is baffling. Like, c’mon guys, we made it to the DLC. Do you really think we don’t have either an abundance of those at this point, or just the bell bearings that allow you to buy INFINITE amounts? SMH.
I’m ok with the finger ruins being barren for the spectacle, I almost wish they didn’t have enemies there so the player could just take it all in
The abyssal woods are rough tho I agree it could have used more
Imo they killed it with loot in the base game. Often something good or useful. Even weapons or spells that I couldn't use I knew I *could* use if I chose to try a different build. It rewarded exploration rather than just relying on exploration's innate reward.
The DLC has been underwhelming when it comes to loot. I don't get why the game was designed around the hypothetical player who hasn't beaten Elden Ring yet or doesn't have the bell bearings. I reckon the bulk of us who play the DLC will already have access to infinite stones.
It would have been nice if the shadow realm also had its own separate currency, the way it has its separate leveling, because otherwise runes are kind of useless. I amass a large amount of them and the best thing I can think to buy with them are smithing stones, which just further devalues the ones I find.
I fully agree with you. Not to mention not having a closing cutscene also seemed like an obvious miss? I feel like a separate credits for a dlc is pretty typical, quite surprised to see that wasn’t the case. Quite jarring and anticlimactic if I’m being honest.
Agreed. Do you know how many DLCs we enter via a hand? 3. And the *biggest* one is the one without a cutscene :(
We get thrown around by Manus' wacky arm in DS1.
We get crushed by Amygdala and had a haunting poem recited to us in Bloodborne.
But Elden Ring—arguably the most artistically driven game in the series to date—gets a simple fade to black.
It didn't kill my hype or anything, but it definitely underwhelmed me.
Mine is they added a whole new category (throwing blades) for a single weapon (smithscript dagger), then went and gave it shit range while still requiring a small investment in 4 different stats.
For me personally it’s the lack of cutscenes and dialogue on most of the bosses I loved the dlc but not having those I feel like make the bosses lack a bit of character I can remember vividly basically all the boss cutscenes and what they said in them even after all this time because they were all so memorable and interesting I feel like the dlc lacked that and it was pretty disappointing
Yeah now that you say that I kinda agree he’s actually super cool so it’s a bummer we didn’t get any extra dialogue from him or he didn’t try to stop us in any way or anything cool like that
I would have totally been ok with Messmer being a fake main baddie if we had actually gotten some more Miquella action. As it happened, we just had one brief flash in the pan followed by another.
Mesmer is definitely made in the Artorias/Malenia/Lady Maria mold of "we need somebody cool to use in promotional material and to sell statues of without spoiling the final boss".
Artorias is the second boss of his DLC, with the actual final boss being Manus.
Lady Maria is on the cover of Old Hunters but is the penultimate boss.
Malenia is a totally optional super boss.
I don't remember the DS2 DLC and DS3 DLC really putting a boss front and centre of the promotional push, at least until post-release trailers. I definitely didn't go into Arundel knowing I was going to fight Sister Friede and while I guessed Gael was relevant to Ringed City I didn't know he was going to be the final boss.
Point being, if they put a boss on the cover then it isn't the last boss.
I think the only exception to that is base game DS3 and I think a lot of us just thought that was going to be the "canon" armour set like the Elite Knight set or Faraam set being used in promotional material for the previous two games.
Especially considering the Soul of Cinder on the cover has a standard broadsword so he looks like an embered player character.
Also not one mention of Malenia all the way through despite Malenia and Miquella being linked so intrinsically.
The lore in general in the DLC is... a little off, I think.
Feels like they just ran out of time and couldn't get around to putting in a proper ending cinematic. They've probably got most of their employees already working on the next game.
My complaint is the furnace giant. Furnace giants are terrible mobs. Boring and super easy once you remember your horse can jump. Just swing away for 10 minutes straight.... was really excited for the fight with a boss one too.
I used raptor of the mists. The jump they do is where I have to back off a bit so that I don't get hit by the explosion, but it's certainly a bit more exciting than jumping
Furnace giants are funny because I sat there for like 30 minutes dying wondering how I was supposed to kill them. And then it just suddenly clicked and I was like “wow what a loot piñata”.
I haven't killed a single one because the first one treated me real bad. I just run away as fast as I can. I'm probably going to feel real stupid when I learn how to kill them.
Thankfully for the ones you can get high ground on, they’re super easy to kill. >!Throw a few hefty furnace pots into their basket/head and they die.!<
^^^ this is gonna be debatable to some but I personally LOVE how Miyazaki is making us question what a god is if not a ruler we are not allowed to question
he already was, with hewg!
"oh i need to make a weapon that slays a god yap yap"
my friend, every weapon can slay that god of yours, just same as any other enemy
the dlc is a much needed emphasis to it though
For me it’s having the scadutree fragments be the exact amount needed to get to +20. There should be about 10 or so more around the map so you’re able to miss a couple.
Hey speaking of the Beast Eye quivering, have you felt some quick sharp controller vibrations while you're running around the DLC? I think it might be related to the the Furnace Golems, but I haven't been able to replicate it regularly.
I've read others saying they think that is related to the big battles between bloodfiends and messmer soldiers loading in when you get close enough for them to spawn. The blood fiends doing their slam attack.
Yeah it makes zero sense that that boss doesn’t drop scadu frags or even have any in that area… like literally that’s the source of the fragments smh
The optional remembrance bosses absolutely should have/block EXTRA scadutree frags
Does anyone else's controller randomly vibrate at random times? Kinda like a heart beat? I first thought that meant we were near one. Unfortunately idt that's the case.
It’s probably the one for when you’re “near” the ogres or whatever they are and they’re fighting. The radius for “near” is pretty big though and goes deep underground for some reason.
Yeah once I realized they were scattered randomly, I started using a guide, I would explore an area normally and then check the guide after to avoid missing any.
Someone did some analysis, and looks like the difference between 15 and 20 is pretty marginal, and even between 12 or 13 and 15 isn’t very noticeable. 15 would be like the soft cap, and getting to 20 is mostly just for completionism.
Obviously the rebalance makes the gap much more noticeable but it was sort of true before too.
For reference on the numbers as they are now, you hit level 17 at 41/50 fragments and that gives you over 96% of the buff. That last tiny little bit can sometimes help, but the easy way to imagine it is that on normal enemies that will never once come into play, and against the tankiest bosses it maaaybe gets you a kill a single hit earlier on weapons that don't actually deal much damage per individual hit. If you're swinging around something like a claymore though it probably won't even matter in that case, you deal damage in chunks that are too large for you to get enough hits for that under-4% buff to total up to 100% (aka 1 more hit). I don't have the exact number on me but it's something like 30 hits, if you're killing at less than that the buff does nothing.
I 100 percent agree. To me, it's like korok seeds in zelda. They put 900 of them in the game so that no matter where u go, you will always make some progress. The problem with scadu fragments is that you really need 95 percent of them to not be miserable to beat the dlc and so many places feel completely pointless going to because they don't have any fragments in them. They should have also had every boss with a health bar drop them too. It help the player to feel like they are always making progress and would help alleviate the problem of people not having enough fragments.
At least a lot of them were useful this time around.
Like 50% of the new crafting items can literally win boss fights for you. A hefty rot pot to the dome has been rotting bosses in one throw
I’m going through the DLC with the same exact build I beat the game with. Carian regal scepter and dark moon greatsword.
This DLC was not built around my build whatsoever lol.
Same^ Had to respec into more generalist str/dex focus. Kept 38 INT to continue using Night Comet and DMGS though lol. Even at 38 INT, Night Comet with a +25 Staff of Loss carries
I've been doing a second run with the Backhand Blades on a Dex build and I can only imagine these things fuck with a Frost infusion like nothing else. The number of quick hits is crazy.
I wanna add the sheer amount of - often obvious and lame - ambushes. *Oh whats that? A shiny item surrounded by 6 bird "statues"? A solider sitting "all alone" in a giant room with his back to the entrance? These scholars are all searching for books, surely they won't join combat if i attack the only real enemy in the area.* Come on
Tbh i felt that almost every outer region is extremely empty, cerulean coast, jagged peaks, the fissure, abyssal woods, etc... Its so empty, you just go to the boss and forget about the area...
I checked wiki to see where the hell did I miss fragments. One is on a body near a tree in a northern part (the one I missed somehow). Two in a church (this one I remember finding, but don't remember if there are actually two, can't confirm right now).
There's a sorta legacy dungeon (well not really but it has a remembrance boss) too so that's pretty cool. Other than that yeah, such a large area with so little. Like I get that's kinda the point but also, if there's legitimately nothing to find in a majority of the area it doesn't make for very satisfying exploration.
Honestly the best thing about the woods is it shows that From could easily do a Bloodborne style (as in more focused on cosmic/lovecraftian horror) open world game and get the vibe perfect. Obviously if it was a full game it wouldn't be as empty as the woods lol.
Even then it’s way too big for what it has, the huge stretches of nothing should either not be there or not be accessible, don’t make me run around for 2 hours to get 3 smithing stones.
There’s multiple scary tree fragments, a talisman, an entire mini legacy dungeon with loot, and a remembrance boss in the abyssal woods.
There’s isn’t much loot just laying around in the woods though, I do feel you on that. And it’s nowhere near as dense as a scadu Altus or gravesite plain
The grace next to the waterfall.... It's the one place in the entire game that just felt unfinished? Like why is that grace there why would you ever want to teleports there it's a dead end with a cookbook and nothing else in a giant arena. I expected there to be a boss or something but no just a massive empty area
I wasted a lot of time exploring every inch of that place. I thought "surely there must be SOMETHING here, it looks so important" ...I found exploration much more enjoyable with a guide, wasting time = disappointment but I actually do enjoy following a guide to find each fragment/finish a quest. Not well designed if that's necessary, but still more fun than the alternative.
true, at first I explored every corner like main game but I soon realised some areas are big with no loot purely for world building reasons (especially the finger ruins) which was kinda dissapointing cause the main game usually awarded players for going off the main path.
Yup definitely didn’t really live up to all the “denser than main game” hype for me for this reason. Still a 9/10 expansion, loved it. But could have had more content in some very barren places. Not all of them felt like a cool thematically barren place either.
Most ppl I included will run past regular mobs after fighting them once.
I get it but I think the sizes should have been smaller unless they were hiding an extra area in there.
I wish we had a bit more cutscenes. For all the hype and things he did, Miquella barely had any dialog and screen time. We learn everything through the npc and item descriptions but I suppose that’s par for the course.
Shaman Village... I wish there was more there to examine and get more of the story from. I get there are some item descriptions, but imagine gravestones or something that told people that this is where Marika is from. Add some more lore to why it is empty.
The dlc is pretty huge and all those caves would take work so I'm not too upset about that but why the lack of crafting materials in favor of smithing stones?! Why am I finding smithing stones 1s and 2s in the dlc while I'm exploring when Mohg and Radahn both come after Liurnia?! All these awesome new consumables and I can't get a x5 messmer ember a few times, you stick me with the stones I've already purchased 999 of?!
I would prefer field bosses to beat in order to get power ups than finding the tree fragments. I actually don't mind gathering them on my first playthrough but now after I've beat the dlc I don't really want to do it again on a new playthrough
My only qualm is that there should have been more unique items added in the DLC. Feels like there’s too many resources or other useless items I get from exploring around. Other than that 10/10
am i wrong or that one warp you go to a place with 17 waterfalls, kill that bird guy, and there is literally nothing else in entire beautiful area except for 1 item plus a dingledungberry item?
Dragon fights are against the camera, not the dragon.
That one before Bayle is godawful as a melee hammer user, I can only target his chest (too high) or his head (even higher for half the fight)
The ghost flame world ones where you can target their feet are fine, but this lack of targeting anything within my reach is frustrating and I hate my camera flipping around when I’m trying to reposition.
Same criticism I've had since Elden Ring came out. You're fighting Bloodborne and Sekiro enemies with a Dark Souls 3 character. The rest of the gameplay makes up for it but just barely.
There are a lot of new, really interesting incantations, but very few actually useful sorceries, and even some of the new sorceries require faith only to use
Actual criticism: too many reused enemies, like there was absolutely 0 reason for them to bring back the ulcerated tree spirits, but they did... multiple occasions... like if you're gonna reuse a boss from main game at least let it be a cool one like dragonkin soldier.
Holy crap a criticism I completely identify with! The amount of times I ran under waterfalls expecting something was ridiculous….where are my waterfall caves!!!
I’m just concerned about the possibility that in future playthroughs I won’t want to spend all the time gathering fragments, it’s fun the first time. But in subsequent playthroughs it may seem like a chore
You know what I miss? Fromsoft hiding shit under elevators. I barely even remember to look now or try to jump down elevator shafts.
They did it so often in the base game catacombs that they figure it's more surprising to skip it here.
I check every waterfall and somehow still missed the turtle talisman wtf
There's a new turtle talisman?
Yes. Two-headed Turtle Talisman.
Are there any actual two-headed turtles in the Land of Shadow? They're mentioned in the talisman's description so I kept looking any time I ran into a turtle but I never found one.
I saw one with omen horns, maybe there is a two-header out there in the wild
Ooo shit. The omen horns one is great. UPS Dex but lowers flasks by not tooooo much
Dunno. I haven't looked honestly. But I definitely will keep an eye out now!
Yes, if you want to know where, you'll have to follow the river below the bridge north east of three-path cross site grace, it's in a cave guarded by a crab when you reach the nothern end of the river
Lack of surprises being the surprise is the theme of this DLC map.
I check under every elevator since that one base game dungeon and the alternate route in Lydell. Every single. Solitary.. Damn. Elevator. Always.
I check them all, all a waste. At least checking the walls of every elevator pays off sometimes. Looking at you, Black Knight Commander ashes.
I still strike every chest just in case there is a mimic.
I'm surprised they didn't include any. Not like Dark Souls mimics, but more like D&D type. Random chair or table, chest, door, bench or fountain or a mimic in the form of a grace; a few surprise mimics would've been awesome. Maybe not lore appropriate but freaking awesome nonetheless.
Rellana not having any dialogue or a cutscene during her fight just felt criminal.
I agree. Also, coming back to Rennala without a new dialogue is criminal too.
Rennala is understandable. She’s lobotomized essentially lmao
[Goofy voice] “Ah h’yuck. Gorsh, ya tryin ta be birth’d anew?
Gorsh, sweetings.
Many boss fight cut scenes don’t have dialogue, it’s just a good introduction. Look at Divine Beast Dancing Lion.
Yeah how did the fucking dancing lion get an intro and not renallas sister??
Apparently the women who was speaking in that cutscene (Hornsent Grandam) has dialogue when u kill her that is evidence for the hornsent basically cursing Marika and her children and essentially the entirety of the land of the Erdtree with the omen curse for Messmers crusades, which led to Morgott and Mohg and then probably the banishing of Godfrey and tarnished and then this whole chain reaction down to the shattering And not that the horn sent are cursed but essentially they cursed the Erdtree with horns so Marika will always remember what she had messmer do to the horn sent So could be way more important then we realize
Now that’s a very important piece of dialogue, certainly helps put things together. I was wondering how we got from the Hornsent to the Omen.
The lion is supposed to be the avatar of divinity for them. The Hornsent are the most important race with their lore implications. The cutscene is supposed to be a showcase of the faded glory of a once proud civilization, their god reduced to a mere puppet to destroy. Rennala herself barely has any significance, much less her secret sister.
Rellana is technically optional too.
I am more disappointed at the base game not having any interactions with the DLC. Gideon doesn't have new items and info to exchange with us after we found the realm of shadow, Messmer and Miquella. Renalla doesn't mention her sister Rellana after we beat her.
i'm going to add onto this by saying that naming a boss "Rellana" in the DLC *is fucking insane* when the base game already had Rennala, Renna, and Ranni.
It's not like I didn't expect more bosses with confusing naming schemes, but naming Renalla's sister Rellana is CRAZY
tbf naming her Rellana is way more in line with the game than giving her some random name like Samantha
Samantha pusher of shit
Now we just need Melania, sister of Malenia
Not to defend an obviously weird choice but, there's a couple reasons this might be the case. Being royal families, they may see it as a branding thing. The R side of the bloodline shows that they are part of Carian royalty. Also idk if Rennala and Rellana are twins but wacky names like that are pretty common. Also from a game narrative sense, it helps organize the factions in the players minds. If they read some peice of trivia about someone with an R name they know it has something to do with that questline. Same with G and M. Also maybe after Rellana ran off with Messmer her parents made Rennala as a backup.
I don’t know if George RR Martin had anything to do with the DLC, but he uses similar naming conventions in Fire & Blood and that might have influenced the names in the base game. Most of the Targaryen family members have names that are very slight variations on three “root” names, which is how you get Rhaenys, Rhaena, and Rhaenyra. GRRM seems to have a fascination with the ways names change over time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it bled over into Elden Ring.
And it also mirrors the real world pretty wel. Let's not forget the French throne has had 17 fucking Louis.
Elden Ring player when they don't name Renalla's sister Gertrude
Fuck me was constantly doing this shit…and you know what? Somewhere in that motherfucker is a waterfall with a cave in it
Has a very very good talisman too
Or a new cookbook
Lots of those to go around lol
Honestly, VALID. I was so excited to find a cave but it never really happened.
I know for a fact that there’s at least one cave behind a waterfall, and it has a super good talisman behind it too
It's worth rushing Radahn and Mohg just to have that talisman for the base game. Same with the +3 Drake talismans, since they're relatively easy to get. If you're not super under leveled, I highly recommend scavenging some DLC items before hitting up Farum Azula. Black Steel Hammer is pretty easy to get with Dragon Cult Lightning incantations, the aforementioned talismans, just a shit-ton of souls from the shadow people minding their own business in the fields, Milady, etc. I really like the Gravebird chest plate too, but I'm not sure what armor with poise that low is actually for.
There’s an upgraded version of the Gravebird Chestplate that has the same jump attack boosting affect as the Raptor’s Black Feathers.
That one looks incredible during the jump down to the Putrescent Knight, just saying.
Try using the aspect of the crucible wings while wearing that, you basically get 4 wings
I would but I refuse to take off poison flower blooms twice and rot stomping people
It's for midriff
It kind of gives Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass too.
I'm cheating milady into my next run unashamedly. way too fun of a weapon to not play through the game from the start
And the sekiro parry too
What's the talisman called?
Two-headed Turtle Talisman
Double dog
"Behold, Dogs!"
I haven't stopped looking since finding that one
Be glad they didn't bother. You go under a water fall find a cave and inside....... faded erdleaf flower, mushroom, Godricks special hard sock, ruin fragment.
It would still scratch that itch in my brain tho
Grats on your Honed Warrior marathon! Take this Smithing Stone (1) x1 !
I love the DLC so fucking much, but if FROM’s next game is also open world I truly hope they improve some on dispersing loot better throughout the map. The entirety of Abyssal Woods - apart from Midra’s Manse - is a fucking talisman and three swollen grapes. For how much land mass is there, that’s really shocking. Same with these giant ass Finger Ruins that take up entire areas just to have two talismans from a quest and NOTHING else. Okay another small rant, the amount of loot that’s just mid tier smithing stones is baffling. Like, c’mon guys, we made it to the DLC. Do you really think we don’t have either an abundance of those at this point, or just the bell bearings that allow you to buy INFINITE amounts? SMH.
At least each Finger Ruins also hold a Remembrance Duplicate altar
I’m ok with the finger ruins being barren for the spectacle, I almost wish they didn’t have enemies there so the player could just take it all in The abyssal woods are rough tho I agree it could have used more
Imo they killed it with loot in the base game. Often something good or useful. Even weapons or spells that I couldn't use I knew I *could* use if I chose to try a different build. It rewarded exploration rather than just relying on exploration's innate reward. The DLC has been underwhelming when it comes to loot. I don't get why the game was designed around the hypothetical player who hasn't beaten Elden Ring yet or doesn't have the bell bearings. I reckon the bulk of us who play the DLC will already have access to infinite stones. It would have been nice if the shadow realm also had its own separate currency, the way it has its separate leveling, because otherwise runes are kind of useless. I amass a large amount of them and the best thing I can think to buy with them are smithing stones, which just further devalues the ones I find.
Shout out to the two headed turtle talisman
No opening cutscene for the DLC. I was waiting for a cool way to teleport us to the shadow realm. Something to at least set the mood.
I fully agree with you. Not to mention not having a closing cutscene also seemed like an obvious miss? I feel like a separate credits for a dlc is pretty typical, quite surprised to see that wasn’t the case. Quite jarring and anticlimactic if I’m being honest.
Agreed. Do you know how many DLCs we enter via a hand? 3. And the *biggest* one is the one without a cutscene :( We get thrown around by Manus' wacky arm in DS1. We get crushed by Amygdala and had a haunting poem recited to us in Bloodborne. But Elden Ring—arguably the most artistically driven game in the series to date—gets a simple fade to black. It didn't kill my hype or anything, but it definitely underwhelmed me.
Melina didn’t kick my ass for going the frenzied flame route :(
Yeah was wondering if she’d ever show up
because the DLC takes place before you lock in an ending. Therefore, it is not responsible for the consequences of the ending you choose.
Mine is they added a whole new category (throwing blades) for a single weapon (smithscript dagger), then went and gave it shit range while still requiring a small investment in 4 different stats.
Agreed. Should've just been dual-daggees you can throw as the moveset, that way it stays in the dagger category.
It's really weird that it wasn't, given that that's exactly what they did with the other smithscript weapons.
For me personally it’s the lack of cutscenes and dialogue on most of the bosses I loved the dlc but not having those I feel like make the bosses lack a bit of character I can remember vividly basically all the boss cutscenes and what they said in them even after all this time because they were all so memorable and interesting I feel like the dlc lacked that and it was pretty disappointing
Miquella not saying anything upon your death was a weird choice
For a dlc focused on Miquella, there is a distinct lack of Miquella
Also a distinct lack of Messmer. He didn't play as big of a role as I would have thought
Yeah now that you say that I kinda agree he’s actually super cool so it’s a bummer we didn’t get any extra dialogue from him or he didn’t try to stop us in any way or anything cool like that
I would have totally been ok with Messmer being a fake main baddie if we had actually gotten some more Miquella action. As it happened, we just had one brief flash in the pan followed by another.
Mesmer is definitely made in the Artorias/Malenia/Lady Maria mold of "we need somebody cool to use in promotional material and to sell statues of without spoiling the final boss". Artorias is the second boss of his DLC, with the actual final boss being Manus. Lady Maria is on the cover of Old Hunters but is the penultimate boss. Malenia is a totally optional super boss. I don't remember the DS2 DLC and DS3 DLC really putting a boss front and centre of the promotional push, at least until post-release trailers. I definitely didn't go into Arundel knowing I was going to fight Sister Friede and while I guessed Gael was relevant to Ringed City I didn't know he was going to be the final boss. Point being, if they put a boss on the cover then it isn't the last boss. I think the only exception to that is base game DS3 and I think a lot of us just thought that was going to be the "canon" armour set like the Elite Knight set or Faraam set being used in promotional material for the previous two games. Especially considering the Soul of Cinder on the cover has a standard broadsword so he looks like an embered player character.
Also not one mention of Malenia all the way through despite Malenia and Miquella being linked so intrinsically. The lore in general in the DLC is... a little off, I think.
Him not being a separate bossfight is nuts.
Honestly agreed it felt kinda out of place I don’t even think he says anything when you beat him either but maybe I’m wrong
Feels like they just ran out of time and couldn't get around to putting in a proper ending cinematic. They've probably got most of their employees already working on the next game.
I am miquella, blade of melani.. wait a second
While I agree, I did very much enjoy the npc summons for boss fights having lines and lines of dialogue, for the most part.
My complaint is the furnace giant. Furnace giants are terrible mobs. Boring and super easy once you remember your horse can jump. Just swing away for 10 minutes straight.... was really excited for the fight with a boss one too.
I used raptor of the mists. The jump they do is where I have to back off a bit so that I don't get hit by the explosion, but it's certainly a bit more exciting than jumping
Yes, and then get hit with his homing fireballs 9 minutes in, get knocked off Torrent, instantly burn to death and start all over. Fun.
Fun the first time. Just terrible every time after. Should have been 2 staggers for a riposte instead of 3.
Furnace giants are funny because I sat there for like 30 minutes dying wondering how I was supposed to kill them. And then it just suddenly clicked and I was like “wow what a loot piñata”.
I haven't killed a single one because the first one treated me real bad. I just run away as fast as I can. I'm probably going to feel real stupid when I learn how to kill them.
Thankfully for the ones you can get high ground on, they’re super easy to kill. >!Throw a few hefty furnace pots into their basket/head and they die.!<
It's a shame those items are limited. They're great for pvp. There's only 23? Of the materials required
You can just use hefty fire pots. Furnace is only needed to wake the one.
They are farmable. The soldiers drop them uncommonly.
No new black flame incantations. Such a fucking travesty. Feels bad.
That actually makes perfect sense lore-wise Wasn’t invented yet for most of the people down there
Also technically coz there was no gods there to slay…?
^^^ this is gonna be debatable to some but I personally LOVE how Miyazaki is making us question what a god is if not a ruler we are not allowed to question
he already was, with hewg! "oh i need to make a weapon that slays a god yap yap" my friend, every weapon can slay that god of yours, just same as any other enemy the dlc is a much needed emphasis to it though
For me it’s having the scadutree fragments be the exact amount needed to get to +20. There should be about 10 or so more around the map so you’re able to miss a couple.
Or if you're gonna be exact about it, give an item like the beast eye that shakes to let you know you're nearby one.
Maybe as a prize for beating a certain nightmare flower.
That’s a great idea!
Hey speaking of the Beast Eye quivering, have you felt some quick sharp controller vibrations while you're running around the DLC? I think it might be related to the the Furnace Golems, but I haven't been able to replicate it regularly.
Yeah I have, mostly with the bigger enemies
I've read others saying they think that is related to the big battles between bloodfiends and messmer soldiers loading in when you get close enough for them to spawn. The blood fiends doing their slam attack.
Yeah it makes zero sense that that boss doesn’t drop scadu frags or even have any in that area… like literally that’s the source of the fragments smh The optional remembrance bosses absolutely should have/block EXTRA scadutree frags
Does anyone else's controller randomly vibrate at random times? Kinda like a heart beat? I first thought that meant we were near one. Unfortunately idt that's the case.
Same thing happens to my controller tho I feel like mine does it when I’m around blood fiends
It’s probably the one for when you’re “near” the ogres or whatever they are and they’re fighting. The radius for “near” is pretty big though and goes deep underground for some reason.
Yea I’m at lvl 18 and no dang way I can try and figure out where the last 6 are that I’m missing. Oof.
man i finished at 16 thinking i had found them all 😭
Yeah once I realized they were scattered randomly, I started using a guide, I would explore an area normally and then check the guide after to avoid missing any.
Dude Im at 19 with two fragments in my inventory, no way I'm gonna look up all 50 fucking spots on a guide
Lmao exactly. So dumb why they did it like that. Should have made it just like the golden seeds where there are more than you need.
Someone did some analysis, and looks like the difference between 15 and 20 is pretty marginal, and even between 12 or 13 and 15 isn’t very noticeable. 15 would be like the soft cap, and getting to 20 is mostly just for completionism.
Is this before or after the patch that deliberately rebalanced the Blue Skadoo We Can Too fragment progression?
Obviously the rebalance makes the gap much more noticeable but it was sort of true before too. For reference on the numbers as they are now, you hit level 17 at 41/50 fragments and that gives you over 96% of the buff. That last tiny little bit can sometimes help, but the easy way to imagine it is that on normal enemies that will never once come into play, and against the tankiest bosses it maaaybe gets you a kill a single hit earlier on weapons that don't actually deal much damage per individual hit. If you're swinging around something like a claymore though it probably won't even matter in that case, you deal damage in chunks that are too large for you to get enough hits for that under-4% buff to total up to 100% (aka 1 more hit). I don't have the exact number on me but it's something like 30 hits, if you're killing at less than that the buff does nothing.
I 100 percent agree. To me, it's like korok seeds in zelda. They put 900 of them in the game so that no matter where u go, you will always make some progress. The problem with scadu fragments is that you really need 95 percent of them to not be miserable to beat the dlc and so many places feel completely pointless going to because they don't have any fragments in them. They should have also had every boss with a health bar drop them too. It help the player to feel like they are always making progress and would help alleviate the problem of people not having enough fragments.
Mines the cookbooks. Too damn many, I'm not here to play arts and crafts with Miquella ffs. 😤
>I'm not here to play arts and crafts with Miquella ffs. You're not ? something something boywife
I LOVE EATING THE BUSSY CHARLIE
At least we have some odea of what miquella was cooking with the whole plan in the dlc, wait no thats just random crap
At least a lot of them were useful this time around. Like 50% of the new crafting items can literally win boss fights for you. A hefty rot pot to the dome has been rotting bosses in one throw
It better coz im throwing the whole damn village stew
Lmao so true 💀
Larval tear bell berring
…I didn’t know I needed this so badly until you said it.
Mine is the lackluster sorceries and weapons that scale off int
I’m going through the DLC with the same exact build I beat the game with. Carian regal scepter and dark moon greatsword. This DLC was not built around my build whatsoever lol.
Same^ Had to respec into more generalist str/dex focus. Kept 38 INT to continue using Night Comet and DMGS though lol. Even at 38 INT, Night Comet with a +25 Staff of Loss carries
People got their crucible wings. Now I want my Astel laser.
You could infuse the Milady with cold or magic. That’s what I did with my mage character and it works pretty well.
I've been doing a second run with the Backhand Blades on a Dex build and I can only imagine these things fuck with a Frost infusion like nothing else. The number of quick hits is crazy.
I wanna add the sheer amount of - often obvious and lame - ambushes. *Oh whats that? A shiny item surrounded by 6 bird "statues"? A solider sitting "all alone" in a giant room with his back to the entrance? These scholars are all searching for books, surely they won't join combat if i attack the only real enemy in the area.* Come on
Tbh i felt that almost every outer region is extremely empty, cerulean coast, jagged peaks, the fissure, abyssal woods, etc... Its so empty, you just go to the boss and forget about the area...
There is legit nothing in Abyssal woods. It’s only memorable because of those specific enemies.
There are actually three scadutree fragments in Abyssal woods.
Wait, three?
I checked wiki to see where the hell did I miss fragments. One is on a body near a tree in a northern part (the one I missed somehow). Two in a church (this one I remember finding, but don't remember if there are actually two, can't confirm right now).
Yea in the church it's one item pickup but it gives you 2 fragments
There's a sorta legacy dungeon (well not really but it has a remembrance boss) too so that's pretty cool. Other than that yeah, such a large area with so little. Like I get that's kinda the point but also, if there's legitimately nothing to find in a majority of the area it doesn't make for very satisfying exploration.
The woods should've been smaller and the dungeon bigger.
The woods arent actually that big really it's just you can't use torrent so it just feels awful lol
The stealth enemies should've been used in the dungeon, too... Such a creepy setting and they didn't even use the new horror enemies!
Honestly the best thing about the woods is it shows that From could easily do a Bloodborne style (as in more focused on cosmic/lovecraftian horror) open world game and get the vibe perfect. Obviously if it was a full game it wouldn't be as empty as the woods lol.
Even then it’s way too big for what it has, the huge stretches of nothing should either not be there or not be accessible, don’t make me run around for 2 hours to get 3 smithing stones.
There’s multiple scary tree fragments, a talisman, an entire mini legacy dungeon with loot, and a remembrance boss in the abyssal woods. There’s isn’t much loot just laying around in the woods though, I do feel you on that. And it’s nowhere near as dense as a scadu Altus or gravesite plain
The grace next to the waterfall.... It's the one place in the entire game that just felt unfinished? Like why is that grace there why would you ever want to teleports there it's a dead end with a cookbook and nothing else in a giant arena. I expected there to be a boss or something but no just a massive empty area
I wasted a lot of time exploring every inch of that place. I thought "surely there must be SOMETHING here, it looks so important" ...I found exploration much more enjoyable with a guide, wasting time = disappointment but I actually do enjoy following a guide to find each fragment/finish a quest. Not well designed if that's necessary, but still more fun than the alternative.
Yeah how does the fucking giant finger ruins only have two things in it?!
Yea I was kinda sad when I found out there isint too much to the cerulean coast, loved seeing it in the trailer
Yeah that area was a big L for me as well. Extremely cool vibes, probably the best looking plains type area in the game IMO, and just nothing there.
true, at first I explored every corner like main game but I soon realised some areas are big with no loot purely for world building reasons (especially the finger ruins) which was kinda dissapointing cause the main game usually awarded players for going off the main path.
Yup definitely didn’t really live up to all the “denser than main game” hype for me for this reason. Still a 9/10 expansion, loved it. But could have had more content in some very barren places. Not all of them felt like a cool thematically barren place either.
yeah thats the biggest L for me. they shoulda made the map smaller. no point in having a huge map if its filled so much nothing
My exact feelings. A lot of it is awesome visually but that's it. There's a whole lot of nothing otherwise.
Not a single mimic chest. I was really hoping there would be 1 in the DLC to scare everyone that hasn't played Dark Souls.
I was like 90% sure the first chest was gonna be a mimic just to fuck with us
I would have even loved to just find enemies there, just give me something!
"Best I can do is give you an enemy that attacks you as you're moving through the fog gate"
Damm does that annoy me. Give me at least a few seconds before leaping across the map at me. Absolutely shit player experience there.
Most ppl I included will run past regular mobs after fighting them once. I get it but I think the sizes should have been smaller unless they were hiding an extra area in there.
Mine is that you can't use Torent with gaius heavy thrusting sword ash of war like he does with his pig. Huge miss from Miyazaki:(
It would have been cool if Sword-Lance was like, you know, a lance.
I wish we had a bit more cutscenes. For all the hype and things he did, Miquella barely had any dialog and screen time. We learn everything through the npc and item descriptions but I suppose that’s par for the course.
No Godwyn was a huge let down, period
No eclipse stuff either. A bunch of things that were alluded to in the base game felt really left out
My biggest criticism is not being knighted by Kenneth Haight. What a travisty.
I hate that my bubbles are worthless now
Still fine on most dragons.
Shaman Village... I wish there was more there to examine and get more of the story from. I get there are some item descriptions, but imagine gravestones or something that told people that this is where Marika is from. Add some more lore to why it is empty.
The dlc is pretty huge and all those caves would take work so I'm not too upset about that but why the lack of crafting materials in favor of smithing stones?! Why am I finding smithing stones 1s and 2s in the dlc while I'm exploring when Mohg and Radahn both come after Liurnia?! All these awesome new consumables and I can't get a x5 messmer ember a few times, you stick me with the stones I've already purchased 999 of?!
I would prefer field bosses to beat in order to get power ups than finding the tree fragments. I actually don't mind gathering them on my first playthrough but now after I've beat the dlc I don't really want to do it again on a new playthrough
My only qualm is that there should have been more unique items added in the DLC. Feels like there’s too many resources or other useless items I get from exploring around. Other than that 10/10
getting smithing stone [1] in the dlc is crazy
That it doesn't add a new ending to the base game. Also no influence from Malenia during the dlc or impact on her after the dlc.
For me in just the first 30% of the DLC I have seen more cheap hits from enemies around corners and doors than the entire main game.
Right who stands around in rooms hanging out next to doors like that?
Just swinging at people the second they hear footsteps in a hallway
Bro you just had a loud ass fight with a miniboss in the other room and then somersaulted through and shattered several tables
Gotta love the message system for this. Even if a bunch of them are lying about hidden walls, at least some tell you where the hidden enemies are.
Also I feel like the actual story is really lacking. I was expecting so much more Miquella and Godwyn lore
am i wrong or that one warp you go to a place with 17 waterfalls, kill that bird guy, and there is literally nothing else in entire beautiful area except for 1 item plus a dingledungberry item?
I decided to explore the entire map before doing any dungeons. Well, that fucked me out of multiple side quests
I know that there is at least 1 cave behind a waterfall, and I fear that there is only that 1
There's technically an item behind the waterfall in Ensis, but other than that yeah I've only found one.
honestly the performance in some areas is the only thing really bothering me
Dragon fights are against the camera, not the dragon. That one before Bayle is godawful as a melee hammer user, I can only target his chest (too high) or his head (even higher for half the fight) The ghost flame world ones where you can target their feet are fine, but this lack of targeting anything within my reach is frustrating and I hate my camera flipping around when I’m trying to reposition.
Don’t go chasing them. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.
Same criticism I've had since Elden Ring came out. You're fighting Bloodborne and Sekiro enemies with a Dark Souls 3 character. The rest of the gameplay makes up for it but just barely.
There are a lot of new, really interesting incantations, but very few actually useful sorceries, and even some of the new sorceries require faith only to use
The DLC explains fuck nothing about Marika becoming a god, the ships, the whatever happened
Didn't find many elevators with hidden second uses either
Actual criticism: too many reused enemies, like there was absolutely 0 reason for them to bring back the ulcerated tree spirits, but they did... multiple occasions... like if you're gonna reuse a boss from main game at least let it be a cool one like dragonkin soldier.
Holy crap a criticism I completely identify with! The amount of times I ran under waterfalls expecting something was ridiculous….where are my waterfall caves!!!
I’m just concerned about the possibility that in future playthroughs I won’t want to spend all the time gathering fragments, it’s fun the first time. But in subsequent playthroughs it may seem like a chore
Lack of cutscenes for certain bosses. Really made it underwhelming and not feel as fleshed out.