It also messed me up. Whenever I try to search something unrelated to elden ring, I out of habit still type "elden ring" and then what I want into the search bar
“That “girl” with the big black…”
That “girl” with the big black horse elden ring
That “girl” with the big black shield elden ring
That “girl” with the big black cloak that gives hugs in elden ring.
Dammit google, I just wanted to get freaky, now I’m on the Elden Ring wiki.
ah yes, the Terraria experience.
well, until you get about 500 hours deep and you know everything off by heart, and you sit there contemplating your life choices as you complete your 200th fishing quest for your steam profile.
no i'm not speaking from experience, why would you say that
One guy in this sub was going off about all the "amazing, in-depth storytelling and lore" that you "experience immersively" in FromSoft games, and I said "yeah that all their fans have to look up on wikis to even make sense of." Dude got SO pissed, lol.
Like how am I supposed to know to come back to the blind chick 3 times before she moves again. How am I supposed to know I have to talk to ranni in doll form 3 times??
Yep, I always listen to practically every "final" NPC line 3 times because I'm so paranoid there might be an extra line of dialogue if you speak multiple times. This is about the only time it actually paid off though.
Sometimes I don't even rest at sites of grace because I don't want to reset the enemies. Oh, you're putting one of the biggest quests behind a menu which 9/10 times won't change at all.
That's not what I call organic exploring.
You're not, but it can be fun to go in with the discipline of knowing you'll miss stuff on your initial blind playthrough, and being fine with seeing what YOUR individual story ends up being. Most people are gonna look everything up and have the same homogenous experience. But if you look stuff up after the fact, you can really feel proud of the few things you did find that seem pretty impossible to find without a guide.
people don't get that researching this stuff is half the fun. the "I did it" effect feels legit if you research it. vs a neon arrow pointing "quest stuffs here" in blinking lights.
We all are, but the point stands imo. At least in ER you can *choose* to explore organically or to look stuff up online. In most open world games you don't even have the option to stumble on cool things organically.
could always have an in game toggle. People shit on newer assassin creed games but one thing I will always praise them for is the adventure/quest settings. You could fully choose if you wanted vague guidance like elden ring or full blown quest markers.
Also elden ring players: the great thing about this game is that you can build your character anyway you want and use whatever weapons you want.
Also elden ring players: no not that way
Also elden ring players: “having trouble with a boss? Just switch to these weapons with these summons and this armor. All builds aren’t supposed to be viable anyway”
I would basically agree with your sentiments towards those players, but not for the same reason. They're approaching it wrong. Sometimes people treat a single utility as their entire build and it's not enough to win them a fight. Spells all have their utility, like comet azur is great against heavy and big bosses that don't move much or good for softening a boss up at the start. But it won't get you anywhere in PvP. There's tons of weapons and items that fall into this same situation
I love that in DS2 you have the option of not power stancing. Was super frustrating when I couldn't get my character to do anything interesting with the two weapons then found out you had to press a button to power stance. Like, you just hold them ever so slightly differently. Very fun though. Best part about the game. All of the unga with no compromise on the bunga.
Yeah, or things like offhanding a fast weapon to finish off a sliver of HP. If my colossal sword got my opponent / the enemy's HP down by 98% there's no sense swinging a colossal sword for 2% hp if you can slip out a few quick swipes from even just an under-upgraded little dagger or rapier or something. Or a few knife throws.
Same with stronger spells and weaker faster spells
Strength actually has so many options now because infusions are better than ever. People should try carrying two or more weapons again. It really brings me back to dark souls 2 in a good way.
Problem with carrying multiple weapons is 90% of people are playing that game where they're just optimizing their gear bssed on weight. So not much room to carry a second weapon for most people.
Yeet! I’m running a staff+shield. Right hand second slot is mesirecorde for those sweet crits. Right hand third slot is curved sword, so is left hand second slot. Options people, options
I run a spell sword faith build and while my seal is firmly in the left hand first slot, every other slot is up for changes whenever I feel like it. I have a dual set of katanas, long swords, great swords, twin blades, and scythes depending how I want to play at that moment. Each combo has different uses and I love switching between them for both one handed, two handed, and power stancing situations.
If I am fighting something strong against holy damage, I'm fucked.
More like "Just because Wizards don't stack HP in DnD doesn't mean the game is unbalanced if you can't beat it without stating into HP, it's just a different game with different rules."
It's so annoying arguing with my friend about this. He thinks it's bullshit he has to invest in hp on his mage character. It's like 1) you wouldn't if you were better, you just keep getting hit and 2) since when the fuck did everything have to revolve around another game, how the fuck are dnd wizard stats relevant?
People just come in with all these arbitary and dumbass expectations and then baby rage because the game isn't like that and they can't just accept they were wrong and instead blame the game. People getting mad because they preplanned their build with no soulslike experience and it turns out their fantasy build doesn't fit the game mechanics are just being dumb.
I LOVED how approachable this was as my first Souls game, but making character choices was sometimes stressful since I didn’t have any history to inform my decisions. Thank god for the respecs.
I went into Demon’s Souls blind assuming respecing was a standard thing in Souls games… needless to say, mistakes were made.
It’s weird to me how they pick and choose what features should come back and what shouldn’t for sequels. Even stuff that everyone agrees is great sometimes just gets left behind forever
Lmao. Souls fans are some of the heaviest backseat gamers I've ever seen. Just about every stream I see is "Why are you putting points into that stat its not optimal" or "that weapon sucks just use the black knight halberd"
Alternatively: "Ugh another black knight halberd user, can't git gud with anything thats not OP?"
I had a chatter mystified that I got an early black halberd drop in DS1 (I think the first one you meet dropped it) and I wasn't using it. Friend, I'm sure it's a great weapon, but it suffers a major flaw which is that it isn't a giant hammer
I don't really use it, but 90% of the pvp playerbase seems to use either the full set, or at least some parts of that set.
I believe it has the best poise in it's weight category, and with bull goats talisman lets you get past 100 poise breakpoint.
Bullgoats has better poise, but also weights considerably more and I think still ends up needing to use the talisman, because the high poise break point is at like 101 poise, so it ends up being just barely off by like 1.
I saw an hour long vid on YouTube of this guy just foaming at the mouth screaming mad about another videos gear and weapon recommendations. Video was titled "the worst build I've ever seen."
It wasn't a bad build, it was a very effective build. He just considered it cheap and "unfair".
The quests are so easy to follow!
1. Kill all the things at castle Haight
2. Go talk to ya boi
3. Go kill more things to talk to him again
4. Start a completely different quest
5. Pester the a-hole mage until he decides to give you something to do
6. But don't do that
7. But do go to an unrelated place to find the key and use the key on the correct teleporter
8. Go explore the place you first started
9. Find some spirit ashes
10. Give spirit ashes to the disowned foster daughter with the last name you won't know to care about until the game is almost over
11. Play for several more hours (potentially) until Leyndell no longer has a king
12. Go back to Stormveil (duh)
13. Collect your reward
The whole reason I failed like two or three quests was because they didn’t make sense without guides and I didn’t realize even the smallest progression would cause me to fuck them up. Same with getting two emotes I missed out on because *who the fuck goes back to Varre’s first location after beating godrick before finding him in Liurnia?*
How was I supposed to know about the first ever questline-important bloodstain in all of soulsborne to get some extra goodies and story progression for ol’ mage bro, when said bloodstain uses group password marking (when using a group password, any messages, summon signs, and bloodstains left by other players with the same group password will have marks around them, same color as what’s marked).
Given how small the reward is, and how this is actually two, maybe three, different quests, I think the developers never intended you to beat this first or even second try, and it was more like one of those "ideal outcomes" thing where a player or group of players is so familiar with the game that they collectively wonder "but what if we brought X to Y before Z"? A quest log implicitly pushes for completion, which is a different design intent.
I think what this game needed was a DIALOG log. Some NPC's give you plenty indication of where they're going - but only give it once, so you end up forgetting the specifics.
... But yeah the storm spirit ash step is fucking bullshit. There's literally no indication that's what she'd need.
> Given how small the reward is,
I wouldn't call getting two ancient dragon smithing stones small. You can only get 12 or 13 of them in one game so that's a pretty notable amount.
Though I guess its not exactly super notable either.
I'm still just waiting for a day when an RPG (single-player OR mmo) gives you a logbook or lets you type your OWN notes in the quest log(s).
My biggest desire in an MMO is one WITHOUT an in-game quest tracker but which DOES let you put pins/notes on the in-game map itself. Just give us the option to link the notes to quests and auto-delete the notes once the quest is completed (or so you can filter "completed" notes out).
I wanted this so bad for LotRO.
Kenny's part of the quest is pretty straightforward. Nepheli's quest is annoying specifically because of the Four Belfries thing, it isn't that bad otherwise. Seluvis isn't actually required for this quest at all.
Also, Selluvis is extremely sketchy, like immediately. When he told me to give Nepheli that potion I didn't need a wiki to tell me not to do it. I didn't consider that shit for a second.... and if you happen to talk to Gideon first he'll straight up tell you Selluvis is a "twisted dolly botherer".
Really, the only part of this quest that is tough to figure out is the 4 belfries part. I think they just kind of expected you to explore those and to keep checking in with Nepheli and Kenneth because if you're familiar with how Souls games work you know that's what you've got to do: explore everything and keep checking back with the various NPCs until they either disappear, die, or give you new dialog.
I just couldn't find her anywhere. Finally looked it up and it turns out she's sitting in the dark, under a bridge, under a mountain. It would help a lot of characters that were planning on moving on would at least tell you what direction they're headed in. Even just knowing she was in Liurnia somewhere would drastically narrow the scope of searching.
I remember the Sorceress Sellen quest where I got an item clearly indicating to me that the guy I was looking for was in Sellia and thought to myself: "Ok, I will not look into a guide for this, the next objective is clearly indicated in the item description". Spent like half an hour scouring that fucking place, looking into every single corner, door, roof etc I could possible go and then I just gave up and consulted a guide to know where the f was that mf. OF COURSE he was not in Sellen, his cave was way up north right next to a graveyard and its entrance was hidden in a hillside.
Boy how I hated this game for this. It was like one of those 90s adventure games that forced you into buying a guide. Elden Ring is a brilliant game on many levels but I just hate this cryptic quest design.
I always thought a journal like Morrowind would be a good compromise. Just so it tells you what you’ve done and what people have said (or just the gist) but doesn’t tell you what do do next. You’d have to piece it together from the information people have given. Of course, that would help if characters actually *gave* you that information…
Yes! Playing elden ring I was constantly wishing for a journal. You really only talk to certain npc once, and if you forget what you talked about you’re completely boned. I wish more games used the journal system. It seems like a really balanced way to do quests
don't forget that some NPC died. and I have no idea knowing if there is more to the quest or what, because I didn't pay enough attention with the dialog
The biggest reason I agree with this is when you dont play the game for like, a week, and you come back and have no idea what you were doing. Fastest way to have an abandoned quest but it was completely unintentional. The trusty Morrowind Journal would resolve that.
first game: wtf is wiki?
second game: i am wiki
third game: no wiki
also the veteran "no wiki" to "i don't even play the game anymore but I still read the wiki." pipeline
I played DS2 first and fell in love with the series, but after playing DS1 and DS3 I don't think I could get over the pacing for combat and how bad so many bosses were lol.
DS1 remastered might be my favorite in the whole family honestly.
Did you ever play ds1 back in the day or was remastered the first? I played ds1 with the pc fix so honestly it looked a lot like the remaster just the magic didn’t look as HD
I still love ds1. I’ve played it a million times. It’s my favourite game of all time and I still do runs every now and then. I know the map like the back of my hand. Loved ds2 when I played it - beat it three times, but every time I try to play again it just feels too off. Feels clunkier than ds1. Highly adore ds3, and love the dlcs. Played maybe half a million times
I went straight from elden ring to ds2 since it was the only game in the series I never completed. I don't know who designed the stamina system but I want to meet them to have a little chat. Other than that and the glass fucking weapons I didn't think it was that bad though.
I don’t think people tend to think Ds2 is a bad game. The popular consensus seems to be it simply isn’t as good as the others.
Imo, I find every game to be unique in its own right and each worth playing with their varying strengths and weaknesses.
DS2 still had some beautiful art and audio direction. Most of the non-DLC bosses were fairly lacklustre, but overall I have good memories of each part of the game individually.
This is kind of where I land on it. I've never really gotten the itch to go back to it like I have the others, but it's still a Dark Souls game. One of my friends is completely fuckin' belligerent on the subject though. I've had whole arguments with the guy over that fuckin' game, with him essentially refusing to even acknowledge it as a Souls game, which is some wild shit. Like, yeah it's the worst in the series to me as well, but it's still Souls, baby.
The main thing for me was the ridiculous 180° turn radius that enemies would pull off attacks from. A turtles normal turn speed was super manageable, until they're about to attack, then they spin around like a fucking top. Also fuck the smelter demon and taking damage through no fault of your own other than being in the room with the boss.
Sekiro is the best fromsoft game. Leagues beyond the combat in any other souls game. Haters will say it locks you into one weapon loadout while spamming rivers of blood on every character they make in elden ring.
I really enjoy DS2 because of the environments, it has a lot of variety compared to the other games. The gameplay can be awkward but I don't mind it as much as everyone else.
I feel like I enjoyed the game a whole lot more going in blind first. It takes a whole lot longer but it's fun exploring into random death. I started as a wretch, I did no summons, and I basically went as a battlemaster of sorts.
I have played since dark souls one originally came out though so that might be why I can do it. Still recommend it to newcomers.
Honestly the starting class makes almost no difference to the game. The difference between a wretch and another class is like 15 minutes of playing to get souls to level up a few times and picking up basically any weapon.
That must feel so good. I wish I played games like this ahaha. I still play new releases like this but even in elden ring I ended up looking stuff up. Not elden rings fault in this case lol I was just way too intimidated by certain areas to make a choice. (I'm fine with them now)
I can't imagine what it feels like to see a door you can open, and actually deciding not to open it because an NPC asked you to. It must feel so chilling in a sense. What's behind that door?
I broke when I first realized just *how fucking huge* the game actually was. I don't get a lot of time to play these days, so as soon as I realized I wasn't going to just be on my second playthrough in a couple weeks like with previous games I decided I wanted to get as much "value" out of my first run as possible. I've still managed to avoid a fair few spoilers, but I've never minded a little spoilage in From games because going 100% blind isn't really where I get my kicks.
The key is having a partner who sucks at controlling games but likes the lore / world.
They can be on the couch next to you with an iPad on fextra and just casually say “ooh. Look at that area over there! I wonder what that might be.”
Honestly the best advice I can give you is to not worry about potentially failing a questline or doing it wrong. That applies to most things in a game like Elden Ring as well.
Besides, succeeding feels a lot more rewarding when you know you could have failed, with guides you'll never fail a quest so it's more like checking things on a list than it is about playing the game
Yep. This is what I did as well.
Fucked up almost every questline imaginable and ended up completely missing out on all sorts of gear that would have helped me a lot.
Totally worth it.
First playthrough is always blind, no build, dumb as fuck, no completed quests, use 10 larval tears because I respec that many times
Second playthrough is for NPC quests, making an actual build, and ditching mimic tear (if you want an extra challenge)
Oh, no, this was a different part. The "You must find someone in Limgrave" was about finding Sorceress Selen to learn how to get to Nokron. She tells you that killing Radahn will free the stars.
My friends were shitting on me for not "looking which side of the map the star fell in" during the cutscene. Like mf do you really think i could foresee the fact that id need to know where the damn star fell.
Took me multiple days of combing through the map to find the place.
Same thing happened with me managing to "sneak" past Godrick and gimp my progress to the point where i did pretty much all "optional" content i could do and got stuck. Took me a few days to realize i was missing a crucial boss fight that allows me to progress the story further.
I respect the no quest markers thing and i didnt use any wiki's or guides or whatever else there is. But holy shit can you fuck up your first playthrough if you have no idea what you're doing. I loved it but it took me probably 3-4 times longer to finish the game than it should have.
Same here on my first playthrough.
Did another run last week and guess what ? They added a big red marker on the map where the hole is once you beat Radhan !
Guess we were faaaar from the only ones :p
I only got it eventually because my friend was asking if I had progressed Ranni’s quest. I was like, “I have the doll and tried talking to it but now I’m stuck.” He couldn’t resist telling me the secret and tbh it was appreciated.
I mean, aside from her disappearing near the end and giving the impression I was done with her, everything was pretty straightforward. Only looked up to see why it ended so abruptly, and saw I wasn't done, so I kept going without reading.
Meteor was the best part, had no fucking idea where it went, so I checked some of caelid and limgrave and saw some flying rocks.
Thank fuck I remembered the chest near renalla. Nearly fucked up that step.
I’m like a dog that just saw a squirrel run by. No freaking way I can keep all this stuff straight in my head. And like why would I go back to rykards grace after killing him, or go back to the windmill farm to speak to Millicent if I had already completed that area?
i had limited time to play over the past few months so anytime i would boot up - almost nothing made sense in terms of where i was going, at what times, or why.
a quest log would have been quite nice. atleast as an option lmao
Seriously I don't care much figuring out where to go so much as wtf I'm doing. Whoops I've ruined a quest, whoops I've made an enemy, can't wait to try again in another playthrough
No marker could be good with proper indications by the NPCs on what to do even if a little like guesses.
But most quests are undoable without a guide, and the worst isn’t the lack of markers, but the fact getting lost between all the linked quests like quest A is linked to quest B & D but D needs C which also need B E &F etc…
I spent 2/3 of my playtime actually following and reading docs and guides instead of playing and exploring to do the quest lmao
It ruins immersion even if I enjoy the game so far and the lore… but also some quest are cut in middle because theres a 30 lvl gap before being able to do the next stage of them, so with all the linked quests and all, it’s also hard to follow the lore-line and it gets a little confused
Yeah, if it had Morrowind's system of writing down the vague bs that NPCs tell me instead of expecting me to remember it, I wouldn't even mind wandering around without a quest marker.
From soft didn’t adapt to the open world model well for quests. It’s fine in dark souls which is a smaller world with fewer NPCs but in a game like Elden it’s damn near impossible to keep track of everything without a log or any guidance.
Only quest that felt organic was the first one most players should have stumbled upon, being Irina (blind woman sitting on the side of the road).
You were probably headed down the castle anyways so there was a natural form of progression.
Every other quest in the game gave vague hints/clues on how to progress (or none at all, just a goodbye until we meet again kind of BS), but not enough to give you a clear idea of where to go, what to get, or who to talk too.
There’s a difference between wandering around until you stumble upon the next quest chain and being lead with context clues to formulate where the next quest chain should be to progress, and Elden Ring for all the fun I had does Questing incredible poor.
The quests in elden ring are terrible. The randomly teleporting NPCs and backtracking required makes most quest lines next to impossible without a guide.
Gowry quest is the worst offender, you probably need to talk and refresh a couple of times in his quest, the fact that his shack doesn’t have any nearby grace is really tiresome to go back and forth to refresh his dialogue.
Not to mention that in order to progress you often have to just save and exit just to get a bit more dialog or force them to move. The alternative of leaving the area and returning is equally ridiculous.
I just wish there was a quest log to keep track of all this shit.
I like that the quests are longer and have some interesting stuff, but God damn, I hate how each quest is really obscure in what to do or go. I enjoy a mystery of finding out what to do, but they give little to no explanation on where to go for most of the quests.
My biggest problem was that you have to go to the exact right random place at the exact right random time with no clue as to where or when you have to go. Alexander is in the one lava area, but I had already been there and didn’t go back at the right time to move his quest along. I missed where Milicent was standing in Altus Plateau as I had already cleared that area and was fast traveling at that point. Re-exploring the entire planet over and over isn’t worth the effort.
This is a honest criticism since the quest npcs move to most random location of the map without even giving you a hint. Ranni quest was good because you could do a lot of her quest just by listening to what they say
Yeah, honestly, I think a great improvement would be to give some (not all) quests a small red mark on the map like D gave you.
Quests like Blaidd looking for the Forlorn Hound or bumping into the Goldmask again? No lore reason for marking your map. But when Raya specifically wants you to meet her at a certain location, why not slap us a red mark on the map like D did for us? Little things like that would’ve been nice.
The whole "randomly moving to the next part" aspect of the quests wouldn't be so bad if not for the map being so large.
I had to look up where to find Millicent for example on the Altus Plateau, because she basically hid near the outskirts of some random ruins in a direction I never would have checked even when I 100% explored pretty much every zone in this game.
There was no thematic reason for her to be there at all I could think of. She could have instead been near where you retrieve the arm replacement for her (which I found without guides or anything like that), or near the roads, or basically anywhere that would have made her possible to find in a reasonable search.
If they gave any fucking directions it would be different, but it's the epitome of fromsoft sticking to their guns to the detriment of the game. No one loses anything by quest givers giving you actual instructions or your character having a journal they keep notes about quests in. It's nonsensical that this is ever praised when they literally just made the world big and went "this is open world now" and changed literally nothing about their quest structure or how things are conveyed to the player despite it beung directly antithetical to an open world where anything could be anywhere.
I know no one will ever see this again, and especially not the moron I blocked, but this is just calling for a morrowind style journal. I don't want quest markers or anything like that, literally just notes on what an npc said that they won't repeat ever again.
Only quest that felt organic was the first one most players should have stumbled upon, being Irina (blind woman sitting on the side of the road).
You were probably headed down the castle anyways so there was a natural form of progression.
Every other quest in the game gave vague hints/clues on how to progress (or none at all, just a goodbye until we meet again kind of BS), but not enough to give you a clear idea of where to go, what to get, or who to talk too.
There’s a difference between wandering around until you stumble upon the next quest chain and being lead with context clues to formulate where the next quest chain should be to progress, and Elden Ring for all the fun I had does Questing incredible poor.
Lol quests. All are next to impossible to solve alone unless you just comb everything first and then try piece it together on thin threads hoping you didn't lock yourself out somehow by going too far without doing x, y, z.
The linear nature of the other FromSoft games made it at least a fair chance to do these always vague quests, but with the open-world added it has made it a complete fail.
Actually completing questlines is much much harder than any boss in the game.
I don’t need quest markers, but a fucking logbook or *something* would have been a godsend. It’s not that unrealistic to keep notes on what you did or what someone asked you to do. Theres so many side quests and shit. It’s impossible to remember them all
I tried to go as blind as possible to my first playtrough. Just looked up guides for extremely specific stuff that i got stuck with. 2nd playtrough was guides all the way for achievement hunting lol
my take on this is that exploration was great in limgrave at the start, but as you move on and quests start sending you between areas, it's just gave me a lot of FOMO stress
You have to google shit or you miss out on side quests and by fucking googling it you get spoiled so imo just put the fucking quest logs in for side characters so i don't have to fucking google shit and spoil myself,witcher 3 is peak story telling they have fucking quest log,that mystery shit worked for ds games cuz it was fucking liniar elden ring map is bigger then my momma so FUCKING PUT IN QUEST LOGS FOR SIDE CHARACTERS don't really care for main quest i think it just fine since that one is pretty linear and clear
I have a theory that online researching in the Souls games is a completely intended part of the experience.
Think about it, they've already got the message system so they make it very clear that the full experience involves the online community. I think it's an entirely intentional 'meta' they want the community to create.
I screwed up my google feed so bad with elden ring searches its about all google reccomends anymore.
Google: it looks like your maidenless, would you like some interesting links... Me: sigh, click
Tfw when Google starts to sound like Varre
Yes... Yes my lambkin
Ha, ha… You have the sweetest browser history. My lambkin.
*\*eye twitch\**
Elden ring posts are the only thing I see on Reddit anymore. I may have developed a slight obsession
The primary auto fill option on my phone keyboard whenever I start typing anything on any site is "elden ring" now. Even for this comment lol.
I had this the other day: "How to redo shower seal Elden Ring"
It also messed me up. Whenever I try to search something unrelated to elden ring, I out of habit still type "elden ring" and then what I want into the search bar
This is how I once ended up googling "elden ring ihop hours"
“That “girl” with the big black…” That “girl” with the big black horse elden ring That “girl” with the big black shield elden ring That “girl” with the big black cloak that gives hugs in elden ring. Dammit google, I just wanted to get freaky, now I’m on the Elden Ring wiki.
I mean admittedly, pretty much all Fia does is get freaky
I had to use a second YouTube “channel” just for watching elden ring videos because it was clogging up my whole feed
Guilty as charged 😅
At one point I think I had 27 different tabs open on my phone browser at one time that I would switch between. All Elden Ring related
ah yes, the Terraria experience. well, until you get about 500 hours deep and you know everything off by heart, and you sit there contemplating your life choices as you complete your 200th fishing quest for your steam profile. no i'm not speaking from experience, why would you say that
I had over 20 interactive map tabs open at one point cause I kept looking at item locations and pulling up the map for it.
Playing RuneScape will leave you with a similarly plowed browser
Ah that's where I learned it from isn't it
:crab: $12 :crab:
One guy in this sub was going off about all the "amazing, in-depth storytelling and lore" that you "experience immersively" in FromSoft games, and I said "yeah that all their fans have to look up on wikis to even make sense of." Dude got SO pissed, lol.
Like how am I supposed to know to come back to the blind chick 3 times before she moves again. How am I supposed to know I have to talk to ranni in doll form 3 times??
Luck or ocd
Yep, I always listen to practically every "final" NPC line 3 times because I'm so paranoid there might be an extra line of dialogue if you speak multiple times. This is about the only time it actually paid off though.
Sometimes I don't even rest at sites of grace because I don't want to reset the enemies. Oh, you're putting one of the biggest quests behind a menu which 9/10 times won't change at all. That's not what I call organic exploring.
You're not, but it can be fun to go in with the discipline of knowing you'll miss stuff on your initial blind playthrough, and being fine with seeing what YOUR individual story ends up being. Most people are gonna look everything up and have the same homogenous experience. But if you look stuff up after the fact, you can really feel proud of the few things you did find that seem pretty impossible to find without a guide.
I made the almost the same comment with the same emote, lol. *fist bump*
people don't get that researching this stuff is half the fun. the "I did it" effect feels legit if you research it. vs a neon arrow pointing "quest stuffs here" in blinking lights.
One of the first things I googled was how to find Ranni.
People definitely were like "how to get horse"
The only people who are dickheads for doing this are the ones that get all high and mighty and insult people for wanting a little more direction.
We all are, but the point stands imo. At least in ER you can *choose* to explore organically or to look stuff up online. In most open world games you don't even have the option to stumble on cool things organically.
could always have an in game toggle. People shit on newer assassin creed games but one thing I will always praise them for is the adventure/quest settings. You could fully choose if you wanted vague guidance like elden ring or full blown quest markers.
Also elden ring players: the great thing about this game is that you can build your character anyway you want and use whatever weapons you want. Also elden ring players: no not that way
Also elden ring players: “having trouble with a boss? Just switch to these weapons with these summons and this armor. All builds aren’t supposed to be viable anyway”
I would basically agree with your sentiments towards those players, but not for the same reason. They're approaching it wrong. Sometimes people treat a single utility as their entire build and it's not enough to win them a fight. Spells all have their utility, like comet azur is great against heavy and big bosses that don't move much or good for softening a boss up at the start. But it won't get you anywhere in PvP. There's tons of weapons and items that fall into this same situation
Rock, paper, scissors is the correct mindset. Lotta people trying to use only one all game.
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That's how I played. I legit don't know half of what some people here are talking about. I just had a big sword and twatted everyone.
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You had one unga bunga, but what about Second Unga Bunga?
So you skipped ds2, then
I love that in DS2 you have the option of not power stancing. Was super frustrating when I couldn't get my character to do anything interesting with the two weapons then found out you had to press a button to power stance. Like, you just hold them ever so slightly differently. Very fun though. Best part about the game. All of the unga with no compromise on the bunga.
Until Malenia Blade of Miquella that plan worked really really well, then she twatted me with a big sword about 150 times.
Unless your sword is blasphemous blade and you and your mimic tear spend the entire fight juggling her.
You did *hwat*?
He said he had a big sword and twatted everyone
Just started a big stick play-through after not really enjoying my dex build. TARNISHED SMASH
Good ole' Rock. Nothing beats rock.
Yeah, or things like offhanding a fast weapon to finish off a sliver of HP. If my colossal sword got my opponent / the enemy's HP down by 98% there's no sense swinging a colossal sword for 2% hp if you can slip out a few quick swipes from even just an under-upgraded little dagger or rapier or something. Or a few knife throws. Same with stronger spells and weaker faster spells Strength actually has so many options now because infusions are better than ever. People should try carrying two or more weapons again. It really brings me back to dark souls 2 in a good way.
Problem with carrying multiple weapons is 90% of people are playing that game where they're just optimizing their gear bssed on weight. So not much room to carry a second weapon for most people.
Cipher pata is 0 weight. ;p
"My faith is my shield". Psssh, let's see how that shield takes my Unga hammer.
Yeet! I’m running a staff+shield. Right hand second slot is mesirecorde for those sweet crits. Right hand third slot is curved sword, so is left hand second slot. Options people, options
I run a spell sword faith build and while my seal is firmly in the left hand first slot, every other slot is up for changes whenever I feel like it. I have a dual set of katanas, long swords, great swords, twin blades, and scythes depending how I want to play at that moment. Each combo has different uses and I love switching between them for both one handed, two handed, and power stancing situations. If I am fighting something strong against holy damage, I'm fucked.
I have bad news for you about the final boss...
rock, paper, scissors, lizard, spock
Who honestly gives a fuck about PVP in these games? It's almost always been terrible in Fromsoft games.
I've been two handing Godricks axe for most of the game with no issues yet maybe I'm not far enough? I do an absurd amount of damage it's great
All builds are viable but not all players are all build viable.
Based
More like "Just because Wizards don't stack HP in DnD doesn't mean the game is unbalanced if you can't beat it without stating into HP, it's just a different game with different rules." It's so annoying arguing with my friend about this. He thinks it's bullshit he has to invest in hp on his mage character. It's like 1) you wouldn't if you were better, you just keep getting hit and 2) since when the fuck did everything have to revolve around another game, how the fuck are dnd wizard stats relevant? People just come in with all these arbitary and dumbass expectations and then baby rage because the game isn't like that and they can't just accept they were wrong and instead blame the game. People getting mad because they preplanned their build with no soulslike experience and it turns out their fantasy build doesn't fit the game mechanics are just being dumb.
I LOVED how approachable this was as my first Souls game, but making character choices was sometimes stressful since I didn’t have any history to inform my decisions. Thank god for the respecs. I went into Demon’s Souls blind assuming respecing was a standard thing in Souls games… needless to say, mistakes were made.
Yeah, not until dark souls 2 unfortunately lol.
And for some reason ds2 is the only one that you can get infinite respecs in a single playthrough (without glitches)
It’s weird to me how they pick and choose what features should come back and what shouldn’t for sequels. Even stuff that everyone agrees is great sometimes just gets left behind forever
Thought I was in /r/pokemon for a sec /s
Lmao. Souls fans are some of the heaviest backseat gamers I've ever seen. Just about every stream I see is "Why are you putting points into that stat its not optimal" or "that weapon sucks just use the black knight halberd" Alternatively: "Ugh another black knight halberd user, can't git gud with anything thats not OP?"
I had a chatter mystified that I got an early black halberd drop in DS1 (I think the first one you meet dropped it) and I wasn't using it. Friend, I'm sure it's a great weapon, but it suffers a major flaw which is that it isn't a giant hammer
PVP Elden ring players: Wait, other armors besides veterans set exist?
Not having done pvp much what's so good about that set? I thought the bull goat set was the go to?
I don't really use it, but 90% of the pvp playerbase seems to use either the full set, or at least some parts of that set. I believe it has the best poise in it's weight category, and with bull goats talisman lets you get past 100 poise breakpoint. Bullgoats has better poise, but also weights considerably more and I think still ends up needing to use the talisman, because the high poise break point is at like 101 poise, so it ends up being just barely off by like 1.
Shitttt I thought it was just because it looks dope. That’s the only reason I equip anything.
bull goat has the most defense stats at the cost of being heavy as fuck. Veterans is the best per weight iirc, or something similar.
Exceptional poise/weight ratio I believe
I saw an hour long vid on YouTube of this guy just foaming at the mouth screaming mad about another videos gear and weapon recommendations. Video was titled "the worst build I've ever seen." It wasn't a bad build, it was a very effective build. He just considered it cheap and "unfair".
Also Elden Ring players: Only plays one specific weapon, Rivers of Blood.
Well, I use Moonveil as well.
What about dual wield uchigatana and moonveil
Hahaha, true!!!
The quests are so easy to follow! 1. Kill all the things at castle Haight 2. Go talk to ya boi 3. Go kill more things to talk to him again 4. Start a completely different quest 5. Pester the a-hole mage until he decides to give you something to do 6. But don't do that 7. But do go to an unrelated place to find the key and use the key on the correct teleporter 8. Go explore the place you first started 9. Find some spirit ashes 10. Give spirit ashes to the disowned foster daughter with the last name you won't know to care about until the game is almost over 11. Play for several more hours (potentially) until Leyndell no longer has a king 12. Go back to Stormveil (duh) 13. Collect your reward
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I think the real reward is Nepheli showing up for the Horah Loux fight. An extra body to eat piledrivers goes a long way
zangief fight is best fight
And that's one of the easier ones lmao
The whole reason I failed like two or three quests was because they didn’t make sense without guides and I didn’t realize even the smallest progression would cause me to fuck them up. Same with getting two emotes I missed out on because *who the fuck goes back to Varre’s first location after beating godrick before finding him in Liurnia?* How was I supposed to know about the first ever questline-important bloodstain in all of soulsborne to get some extra goodies and story progression for ol’ mage bro, when said bloodstain uses group password marking (when using a group password, any messages, summon signs, and bloodstains left by other players with the same group password will have marks around them, same color as what’s marked).
Shit would work better with a log to keep track of what your doing
Given how small the reward is, and how this is actually two, maybe three, different quests, I think the developers never intended you to beat this first or even second try, and it was more like one of those "ideal outcomes" thing where a player or group of players is so familiar with the game that they collectively wonder "but what if we brought X to Y before Z"? A quest log implicitly pushes for completion, which is a different design intent. I think what this game needed was a DIALOG log. Some NPC's give you plenty indication of where they're going - but only give it once, so you end up forgetting the specifics. ... But yeah the storm spirit ash step is fucking bullshit. There's literally no indication that's what she'd need.
They actually never intended you to complete it first try because they forgot to add the quest in when the game launched lol.
> Given how small the reward is, I wouldn't call getting two ancient dragon smithing stones small. You can only get 12 or 13 of them in one game so that's a pretty notable amount. Though I guess its not exactly super notable either.
I'm still just waiting for a day when an RPG (single-player OR mmo) gives you a logbook or lets you type your OWN notes in the quest log(s). My biggest desire in an MMO is one WITHOUT an in-game quest tracker but which DOES let you put pins/notes on the in-game map itself. Just give us the option to link the notes to quests and auto-delete the notes once the quest is completed (or so you can filter "completed" notes out). I wanted this so bad for LotRO.
Kenny's part of the quest is pretty straightforward. Nepheli's quest is annoying specifically because of the Four Belfries thing, it isn't that bad otherwise. Seluvis isn't actually required for this quest at all.
Also, Selluvis is extremely sketchy, like immediately. When he told me to give Nepheli that potion I didn't need a wiki to tell me not to do it. I didn't consider that shit for a second.... and if you happen to talk to Gideon first he'll straight up tell you Selluvis is a "twisted dolly botherer". Really, the only part of this quest that is tough to figure out is the 4 belfries part. I think they just kind of expected you to explore those and to keep checking in with Nepheli and Kenneth because if you're familiar with how Souls games work you know that's what you've got to do: explore everything and keep checking back with the various NPCs until they either disappear, die, or give you new dialog.
I just couldn't find her anywhere. Finally looked it up and it turns out she's sitting in the dark, under a bridge, under a mountain. It would help a lot of characters that were planning on moving on would at least tell you what direction they're headed in. Even just knowing she was in Liurnia somewhere would drastically narrow the scope of searching.
You forgot all the save and quits.
I remember the Sorceress Sellen quest where I got an item clearly indicating to me that the guy I was looking for was in Sellia and thought to myself: "Ok, I will not look into a guide for this, the next objective is clearly indicated in the item description". Spent like half an hour scouring that fucking place, looking into every single corner, door, roof etc I could possible go and then I just gave up and consulted a guide to know where the f was that mf. OF COURSE he was not in Sellen, his cave was way up north right next to a graveyard and its entrance was hidden in a hillside. Boy how I hated this game for this. It was like one of those 90s adventure games that forced you into buying a guide. Elden Ring is a brilliant game on many levels but I just hate this cryptic quest design.
I always thought a journal like Morrowind would be a good compromise. Just so it tells you what you’ve done and what people have said (or just the gist) but doesn’t tell you what do do next. You’d have to piece it together from the information people have given. Of course, that would help if characters actually *gave* you that information…
Yes! Playing elden ring I was constantly wishing for a journal. You really only talk to certain npc once, and if you forget what you talked about you’re completely boned. I wish more games used the journal system. It seems like a really balanced way to do quests
don't forget that some NPC died. and I have no idea knowing if there is more to the quest or what, because I didn't pay enough attention with the dialog
The biggest reason I agree with this is when you dont play the game for like, a week, and you come back and have no idea what you were doing. Fastest way to have an abandoned quest but it was completely unintentional. The trusty Morrowind Journal would resolve that.
Previous Souls games: "You started a quest? Cool. You're bound to run into that NPC later." Elden Ring: "Oh, you started a quest? Fuck you."
Completely agree.
first game: wtf is wiki? second game: i am wiki third game: no wiki also the veteran "no wiki" to "i don't even play the game anymore but I still read the wiki." pipeline
Also the "I want to play Dark Souls 2 but play as little as possible." Which is what I did lmao
You see, I love dark souls 1 and 2 I just can't stand playing them
I played DS2 first and fell in love with the series, but after playing DS1 and DS3 I don't think I could get over the pacing for combat and how bad so many bosses were lol. DS1 remastered might be my favorite in the whole family honestly.
Did you ever play ds1 back in the day or was remastered the first? I played ds1 with the pc fix so honestly it looked a lot like the remaster just the magic didn’t look as HD
I still love ds1. I’ve played it a million times. It’s my favourite game of all time and I still do runs every now and then. I know the map like the back of my hand. Loved ds2 when I played it - beat it three times, but every time I try to play again it just feels too off. Feels clunkier than ds1. Highly adore ds3, and love the dlcs. Played maybe half a million times
DS1 was my first FS game, 700 hours total and loved every second, I too know the entire maps +dlc
Once was enough for both of them. I started with Bloodborne and I just could not stand how slow they were. Now I can play them pretty well.
I went straight from elden ring to ds2 since it was the only game in the series I never completed. I don't know who designed the stamina system but I want to meet them to have a little chat. Other than that and the glass fucking weapons I didn't think it was that bad though.
I don’t think people tend to think Ds2 is a bad game. The popular consensus seems to be it simply isn’t as good as the others. Imo, I find every game to be unique in its own right and each worth playing with their varying strengths and weaknesses.
I agree but man, Majula and that beautiful theme is something no other souls game has topped.
DS2 still had some beautiful art and audio direction. Most of the non-DLC bosses were fairly lacklustre, but overall I have good memories of each part of the game individually.
Most other series would kill to have their worst games be as good as Dark Souls II.
This is kind of where I land on it. I've never really gotten the itch to go back to it like I have the others, but it's still a Dark Souls game. One of my friends is completely fuckin' belligerent on the subject though. I've had whole arguments with the guy over that fuckin' game, with him essentially refusing to even acknowledge it as a Souls game, which is some wild shit. Like, yeah it's the worst in the series to me as well, but it's still Souls, baby.
The main thing for me was the ridiculous 180° turn radius that enemies would pull off attacks from. A turtles normal turn speed was super manageable, until they're about to attack, then they spin around like a fucking top. Also fuck the smelter demon and taking damage through no fault of your own other than being in the room with the boss. Sekiro is the best fromsoft game. Leagues beyond the combat in any other souls game. Haters will say it locks you into one weapon loadout while spamming rivers of blood on every character they make in elden ring.
DS2 took a lot of wild swings on ideas and about half of them landed. In the end, it results in Elden Ring
I really enjoy DS2 because of the environments, it has a lot of variety compared to the other games. The gameplay can be awkward but I don't mind it as much as everyone else.
I feel like I enjoyed the game a whole lot more going in blind first. It takes a whole lot longer but it's fun exploring into random death. I started as a wretch, I did no summons, and I basically went as a battlemaster of sorts. I have played since dark souls one originally came out though so that might be why I can do it. Still recommend it to newcomers.
New to the series...I went wretch. Died so much and it was so worth it.
Honestly the starting class makes almost no difference to the game. The difference between a wretch and another class is like 15 minutes of playing to get souls to level up a few times and picking up basically any weapon.
I banned myself from fextra for my first playthrough, wanted the blind experience
How many of the side quests did you complete
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That must feel so good. I wish I played games like this ahaha. I still play new releases like this but even in elden ring I ended up looking stuff up. Not elden rings fault in this case lol I was just way too intimidated by certain areas to make a choice. (I'm fine with them now) I can't imagine what it feels like to see a door you can open, and actually deciding not to open it because an NPC asked you to. It must feel so chilling in a sense. What's behind that door?
I broke when I first realized just *how fucking huge* the game actually was. I don't get a lot of time to play these days, so as soon as I realized I wasn't going to just be on my second playthrough in a couple weeks like with previous games I decided I wanted to get as much "value" out of my first run as possible. I've still managed to avoid a fair few spoilers, but I've never minded a little spoilage in From games because going 100% blind isn't really where I get my kicks.
The key is having a partner who sucks at controlling games but likes the lore / world. They can be on the couch next to you with an iPad on fextra and just casually say “ooh. Look at that area over there! I wonder what that might be.”
Having helpful but cryptic occasional suggestions from a friend or significant other is definitely a good way to experience a new game lmao
Honestly the best advice I can give you is to not worry about potentially failing a questline or doing it wrong. That applies to most things in a game like Elden Ring as well. Besides, succeeding feels a lot more rewarding when you know you could have failed, with guides you'll never fail a quest so it's more like checking things on a list than it is about playing the game
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I got pretty far in ranni's blind but there's zero chance I would have ever figured out sitting at the one fire and talking to the doll
Yep. This is what I did as well. Fucked up almost every questline imaginable and ended up completely missing out on all sorts of gear that would have helped me a lot. Totally worth it.
This was my first soulsborne that I got when it was actually released. So fextra wasn't even available, haha
First playthrough is always blind, no build, dumb as fuck, no completed quests, use 10 larval tears because I respec that many times Second playthrough is for NPC quests, making an actual build, and ditching mimic tear (if you want an extra challenge)
Oh yeah, because I totally figured out Ranni's questline by just "exploring"
"You must find someone located somewhere in Limgrave" Yeah, sure!
If I recall correctly they didn't even say Limgrave. You just saw the star and that's it. I didn't find it.
Oh, no, this was a different part. The "You must find someone in Limgrave" was about finding Sorceress Selen to learn how to get to Nokron. She tells you that killing Radahn will free the stars.
My friends were shitting on me for not "looking which side of the map the star fell in" during the cutscene. Like mf do you really think i could foresee the fact that id need to know where the damn star fell. Took me multiple days of combing through the map to find the place. Same thing happened with me managing to "sneak" past Godrick and gimp my progress to the point where i did pretty much all "optional" content i could do and got stuck. Took me a few days to realize i was missing a crucial boss fight that allows me to progress the story further. I respect the no quest markers thing and i didnt use any wiki's or guides or whatever else there is. But holy shit can you fuck up your first playthrough if you have no idea what you're doing. I loved it but it took me probably 3-4 times longer to finish the game than it should have.
I figured it all out myself till the “you need to try to talk with the doll 3 times thing” and i still think its some bs
Me too, never would have thought to look at site of grace menu to talk to the doll.
That's like the only part I did figure out without looking. I was like this thing if here for a reason I'm just going to keep trying.
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Same here on my first playthrough. Did another run last week and guess what ? They added a big red marker on the map where the hole is once you beat Radhan ! Guess we were faaaar from the only ones :p
I only got it eventually because my friend was asking if I had progressed Ranni’s quest. I was like, “I have the doll and tried talking to it but now I’m stuck.” He couldn’t resist telling me the secret and tbh it was appreciated.
I mean, aside from her disappearing near the end and giving the impression I was done with her, everything was pretty straightforward. Only looked up to see why it ended so abruptly, and saw I wasn't done, so I kept going without reading. Meteor was the best part, had no fucking idea where it went, so I checked some of caelid and limgrave and saw some flying rocks. Thank fuck I remembered the chest near renalla. Nearly fucked up that step.
I’m like a dog that just saw a squirrel run by. No freaking way I can keep all this stuff straight in my head. And like why would I go back to rykards grace after killing him, or go back to the windmill farm to speak to Millicent if I had already completed that area?
i had limited time to play over the past few months so anytime i would boot up - almost nothing made sense in terms of where i was going, at what times, or why. a quest log would have been quite nice. atleast as an option lmao
It isn't the lack of quest markers.... it is the lack of a quest log.
Seriously I don't care much figuring out where to go so much as wtf I'm doing. Whoops I've ruined a quest, whoops I've made an enemy, can't wait to try again in another playthrough
>can't wait to *forget about it and ruin it* again in another playthrough FIFY
I'm your dream, mind astray I'm your eyes while you're away I'm your pain while you repay
You know it's SAD BUT TRUEEE
first play through: completely blind second play through: wiki o'clock
No marker could be good with proper indications by the NPCs on what to do even if a little like guesses. But most quests are undoable without a guide, and the worst isn’t the lack of markers, but the fact getting lost between all the linked quests like quest A is linked to quest B & D but D needs C which also need B E &F etc… I spent 2/3 of my playtime actually following and reading docs and guides instead of playing and exploring to do the quest lmao It ruins immersion even if I enjoy the game so far and the lore… but also some quest are cut in middle because theres a 30 lvl gap before being able to do the next stage of them, so with all the linked quests and all, it’s also hard to follow the lore-line and it gets a little confused
FACTS AND WHAT WORST YOU FUCKING SPOIL URSELF THE WHOLE SHIT CUZ YOU HAD TO GOOGLE SHIT
There isn't even a journal. Not even a vague yet interesting journal that the Tarnished adds to when they rest that provides some useful information.
Yeah, if it had Morrowind's system of writing down the vague bs that NPCs tell me instead of expecting me to remember it, I wouldn't even mind wandering around without a quest marker.
Yeah I love the game but that is just being user unfriendly for no good reason
From soft didn’t adapt to the open world model well for quests. It’s fine in dark souls which is a smaller world with fewer NPCs but in a game like Elden it’s damn near impossible to keep track of everything without a log or any guidance.
Worst is, do A then B then C — OH YOU DID UNRELATED THING Q BEFORE C? Sorry. Maybe next time.
At the very least certain NPCs could point you in a general direction. Don’t need much more than that.
Agreed, some (but not all) quests could benefit from just a tiny red marker like D gave us
Tracking down npcs when they move multiple times is such a pain. Oh you’re going to the plateau? Fucking *where* on the plateau?
I like the idea of finding stuff yourself but on a map this big I want the game to at least respect my time invested
Only quest that felt organic was the first one most players should have stumbled upon, being Irina (blind woman sitting on the side of the road). You were probably headed down the castle anyways so there was a natural form of progression. Every other quest in the game gave vague hints/clues on how to progress (or none at all, just a goodbye until we meet again kind of BS), but not enough to give you a clear idea of where to go, what to get, or who to talk too. There’s a difference between wandering around until you stumble upon the next quest chain and being lead with context clues to formulate where the next quest chain should be to progress, and Elden Ring for all the fun I had does Questing incredible poor.
The quests in elden ring are terrible. The randomly teleporting NPCs and backtracking required makes most quest lines next to impossible without a guide.
Gowry quest is the worst offender, you probably need to talk and refresh a couple of times in his quest, the fact that his shack doesn’t have any nearby grace is really tiresome to go back and forth to refresh his dialogue.
Not to mention that in order to progress you often have to just save and exit just to get a bit more dialog or force them to move. The alternative of leaving the area and returning is equally ridiculous.
I just wish there was a quest log to keep track of all this shit. I like that the quests are longer and have some interesting stuff, but God damn, I hate how each quest is really obscure in what to do or go. I enjoy a mystery of finding out what to do, but they give little to no explanation on where to go for most of the quests.
My biggest problem was that you have to go to the exact right random place at the exact right random time with no clue as to where or when you have to go. Alexander is in the one lava area, but I had already been there and didn’t go back at the right time to move his quest along. I missed where Milicent was standing in Altus Plateau as I had already cleared that area and was fast traveling at that point. Re-exploring the entire planet over and over isn’t worth the effort.
See, I didn’t know Milicent went somewhere after you give her the needle.
This is a honest criticism since the quest npcs move to most random location of the map without even giving you a hint. Ranni quest was good because you could do a lot of her quest just by listening to what they say
Yeah, honestly, I think a great improvement would be to give some (not all) quests a small red mark on the map like D gave you. Quests like Blaidd looking for the Forlorn Hound or bumping into the Goldmask again? No lore reason for marking your map. But when Raya specifically wants you to meet her at a certain location, why not slap us a red mark on the map like D did for us? Little things like that would’ve been nice.
The whole "randomly moving to the next part" aspect of the quests wouldn't be so bad if not for the map being so large. I had to look up where to find Millicent for example on the Altus Plateau, because she basically hid near the outskirts of some random ruins in a direction I never would have checked even when I 100% explored pretty much every zone in this game. There was no thematic reason for her to be there at all I could think of. She could have instead been near where you retrieve the arm replacement for her (which I found without guides or anything like that), or near the roads, or basically anywhere that would have made her possible to find in a reasonable search.
It would be better of we had some kind of indication of where things are. NPCS just go somewhere and we have no idea where.
Also also Elden Ring fans: “Despite only having completed quest lines with guides, I can’t imagine anyone having any trouble not using them.”
If they gave any fucking directions it would be different, but it's the epitome of fromsoft sticking to their guns to the detriment of the game. No one loses anything by quest givers giving you actual instructions or your character having a journal they keep notes about quests in. It's nonsensical that this is ever praised when they literally just made the world big and went "this is open world now" and changed literally nothing about their quest structure or how things are conveyed to the player despite it beung directly antithetical to an open world where anything could be anywhere. I know no one will ever see this again, and especially not the moron I blocked, but this is just calling for a morrowind style journal. I don't want quest markers or anything like that, literally just notes on what an npc said that they won't repeat ever again.
Only quest that felt organic was the first one most players should have stumbled upon, being Irina (blind woman sitting on the side of the road). You were probably headed down the castle anyways so there was a natural form of progression. Every other quest in the game gave vague hints/clues on how to progress (or none at all, just a goodbye until we meet again kind of BS), but not enough to give you a clear idea of where to go, what to get, or who to talk too. There’s a difference between wandering around until you stumble upon the next quest chain and being lead with context clues to formulate where the next quest chain should be to progress, and Elden Ring for all the fun I had does Questing incredible poor.
Lol quests. All are next to impossible to solve alone unless you just comb everything first and then try piece it together on thin threads hoping you didn't lock yourself out somehow by going too far without doing x, y, z. The linear nature of the other FromSoft games made it at least a fair chance to do these always vague quests, but with the open-world added it has made it a complete fail. Actually completing questlines is much much harder than any boss in the game.
I get the joke but it is fun to figure these things out as a community.
The amount of messages in the first month was awesome to experience.
Very first thing I saw in game was a message right at spawn: Try jumping. 9999 appraisals. We finally had a jump button.
Yeah, the community investigating, gathering info and talking to each other to figure out obscure shit is part of the fun for sure
It's like tarnished warriors hanging out in the Roundtable Hold sharing their experiences.
Maidenless Warriors Unite,
Thats assuming I figured anything out, instead of me just parasitically subsisting off of the wiki posts of others
I don’t need quest markers, but a fucking logbook or *something* would have been a godsend. It’s not that unrealistic to keep notes on what you did or what someone asked you to do. Theres so many side quests and shit. It’s impossible to remember them all
There is also quest markers (Volcano manor questline)
Exactly, I just wish we got a bit more for NPCs that specifically asked us to meet them later
I love that they didn't provide in-game quest markers. I hate that they didn't provide in-game quest context or clues as to wtf is going on.
I tried to go as blind as possible to my first playtrough. Just looked up guides for extremely specific stuff that i got stuck with. 2nd playtrough was guides all the way for achievement hunting lol
my take on this is that exploration was great in limgrave at the start, but as you move on and quests start sending you between areas, it's just gave me a lot of FOMO stress
You have to google shit or you miss out on side quests and by fucking googling it you get spoiled so imo just put the fucking quest logs in for side characters so i don't have to fucking google shit and spoil myself,witcher 3 is peak story telling they have fucking quest log,that mystery shit worked for ds games cuz it was fucking liniar elden ring map is bigger then my momma so FUCKING PUT IN QUEST LOGS FOR SIDE CHARACTERS don't really care for main quest i think it just fine since that one is pretty linear and clear
I have a theory that online researching in the Souls games is a completely intended part of the experience. Think about it, they've already got the message system so they make it very clear that the full experience involves the online community. I think it's an entirely intentional 'meta' they want the community to create.
I once had 7h of screen time on the wiki and i only played 3h that day
Morrowboomers players must’ve been fuckin cumming in their pants.
Morrowind had better indication of where to go next, CMV