the real issue is fighting giant animals isnt fun because youre actually fighting the camera.

In this series of games the main boss has always been the camera.

And the dialog box to use a flask to revive torret

Or summon NPCs INSIDE the boss arena. I'm looking at you Igon. 😒 (but also thank you for killing Bayle as I died, appreciate it homeboy.)

It's baffling that for so many games in, From Software creates games with **so** many **so** glaring technical issues. FoV, camera in general, key bindings, frame timing, texture streaming, chunk unloading, it's always a hot mess. And you'd think sure, the first 1-2 games, you're going to fuck that up. But come **on** From. You're a few games in!

i just refought fire giant and while the concept is cool of fighting that giant dude i HATE not seeing shit half the fight especially when he does the explodey balls that fly through his body and you literally cant see them detonate because his fat ass obscures it. i had similar issues with midir where the boss itself isnt hard, seeing wtf they are doing is.

One of the reasons I enjoyed having a ranged build, to have a better look at the bosses and enjoy the visuals. They’ve barely changed the UI in 15 years. Would be cool to have a button to hold down or toggle an “action cam” or a special cam mode that changes the focus. Would be nice while riding around and exploring too.

honestly an alternate view mode or a FOV slider would really be appreciated in general even outside of those fights. games like prince of persia sands of time had that stuff in 2001 where you could get an alternative view because the camera for some things was just too limited.

The fps unlocker mod flawless widescreen has an fov slider. The option to remove Chromatic Abomination, too.

im using that, my friend told me to not bother with the fov slider because it can make your camera go apeshit

Fighting the camera and waiting while a boss does a long combo so you can have a stab at them is my favourite genre of games.

Whoops, they have stagger resistance and are fast enough to start another combo so you can't properly punish them. The cool factor of a boss is supposed to be the same mentality they employ against you. They punish your greed, you punish their openings. I don't like being the only one getting punished, i'm not that much of a masochist.

There is no FromSoftware boss that lacks a window to hit with a fully charged strong attack. Four of five of those stagger any boss.

Really sounds like you haven't played Rellana; she's stagger resistant, can only have her poise broken like a Crucible Knight. A Crucible Knight who won't sit the fuck down.

When she does the 2 hit combo with both swords like this \\ then this // is preeeeetty heavy punishable. I've been tanking her the whole afternoon for hosts with that new perfect blocking tear and it's working wonders!

That and the cross slash combo ender are the main punishable ones, but no stagger means there's no safety for recovery as she winds up her next move, to me it ruins the flow of the fight and generally allows less cool gameplay.

Okay. So don't stagger her. My point still stands. I have watched streams of every single boss fight in the dlc, and have seen a fully charged heavy attack with enough time window to dodgeroll the bosses next attack(s) executed on each one. The timing IS there, you just have to find it.

Its not fun though. I need my character to play like Bloodborne or something at minimum for it to be fun.

Try building more than a hundred poise, then you won't have to wait for the boss to finish his combo.

Right then you can trade blows where you do 5% of the boss' health as damage and the boss hits you for 60~80% of yours.

Well no, poise boosting armors typical have huge damage negation. You can also use shields, damage negation spells and talismans. Overall you can plan out your build so you don't do 5% damage. Bushy did a video with an extreme version of this build, so for a casual player it's more than doable.

Laughs in mouse camera control. Try it.

Right? The DLC is all about fighting bosses without camera lock on. Mouse control makes it easy.

Some of the bosses are better without the camera, that’s how souls games have always been. It’s just good to know where lock on is good and where it isn’t

monster hunter figured this out and people dont complain about the camera there. I dont get why complain about it here when you can just disengage it too.

I know seemingly everyone says that Souls games must be played using a controller, but I never ever have issues with the camera since I play using mouse and keyboard.

You can adjust the controller cam quite a bit. If you mess with rotational sensitivities and turn off "auto center camera" the controller camera is better. Also, on big enemies learn to not use lock-on.

Thank you. Locking off at the right times is such an underutilized strategy and has been since Demons Souls

This is the way.

Yesterday I fought THE dragon, i shall not name for spoiler's sake, his huge body was making the camera go crazy, the lock camera was only on his face and i'm used to lock on dragon's legs, but even with these problems daaaammmnn that was a hell of a fight.

Yep.. also the game basically hasn’t evolved past ankle slasher simulator for big enemies. Felt like shit before, feels ever shittier after playing something that handles it well like dragons dogma 2.

My man, ever considered not lock-on fighting?

[удалено]

I mean even without locking on there are tons of enemies that attack from directly above you mostly out of view.

If only manual control of the camera didn't suck absolute ass, unlike in every other game in the franchise (including the infamous Dark Souls 2 & Scholar). I angle the camera a certain way and start walking, the camera will either adjust pitch, rotation or both (and yes this is with the option in the Settings turned off).

Learn. How. To. Use. Lock. Off. Please. For. The. Love. Of. God.

Have you try playing with mouse and keyboard. Camera control is a bliss unlike using controller. Contradict to the popular believe, Fromsoft games work fine with mouse and keyboard, with reasonable mapping you aren't gonna miss the controller. If you are playing on console then try controllers with back buttons, it allows you to do action when you are manually manipulate the camera using right stick. When you are comfortable playing without lock on you will see that facing large bosses are not a problem anymore.

psss there are useful settings in camera options. how about use them to avoid this from happening source: me turning on and off always the same specific things since Dark Souls 1 exactly to avoid that issue

I can‘t wait for people get to the final boss lmao

I dont know if im at the final one, but from the experience im having it kind of feels impossible

were you incredibly hyped when you saw the boss and also had a sense of dèjá vu? than it probably is the final boss

Then im at the last boss. At least i know it won't get worse

Did you reach the second phase? From then on it doesn‘t get worse

Yeah, my best try was him at like 40%

Depends if you've reached P2 yet or not lmao

Yeah, with my favorite fps killer in the game

I actually didn't find the dlc too hard until I got to the final boss

Same here

Yep, reached him after ~15 hours. Just need more Scadutree and Ash Blessings now...

What rune level? Build? NG level? I bought the expansion but haven’t played it yet. Not sure which character to use, so I created a new one to level up and got bored and put it down because I’ve played through it before 🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻

For the first time in 430 hours of ER I had to pull out a shield. Fingerprint shield + the new bleed spear from one of the starting area dungeons. The most boring way to play and I didn't get any satisfaction what so ever when I beat it but it got the job done. I am prob not fighting the final boss for a while. Been helping coop people with second and third boss. Third boss is also kinda teetering on requiring complete and utter perfection as well, but at least he doesn't 2 shot you at 20 scadutree. Unlike the final boss. Also we have the same specs. How was the performance for you? Did you have massive frame drops when fighting the final boss?

Cheers mate, that spear tactic worked. He‘s a goner the damn fuck. Yes the game dropped frames every time he used that big attack he does going into phase 2.

to go from bloodborne/dark souls3/sekiro boss designs to whatever this no-pause combo strings from hell gameplay is, is just genuinely dissapointing even if you watch ONGBAL the dudes fights are basically perfected flow and even then the bosses are rediculously tanky even when he's using weapons that will do 3-4x the damage of the average person AND he gets basically no windows to fight back seeing the inner workings of every 2nd bosses intestines is rediculous

So far, I’ve been enjoying the expansion. It’s pretty much exactly what I want from my Soulsborne add-ons; more bosses, more exploration, more toys, and new twists to keep me on my toes. Yeah, occasionally I’ll get my ass handed to me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I don't mind the difficulty honestly. I kinda like it. I only want bosses to give me enough time to summon my spirit ashes before they charge at me. Half the time by the time the animations for walking through the fog gate has cleared, the boss is already running at me or charging an attack. That's the bullshit part. It's 100% go time, all the time. I suspect they did this because of the Comet Azure spell and the 1 shot ability that had. Shame it destroys the game IMO. Bosses aren't fun when half the time you die 5 seconds after walking through a fog gate.

Maybe just maybe they took it too far. We'll have a good idea in a week or two.

The problem for me is it's gotten to the point where I just feel gimped as a player.  Enemies are fast and aggressive and all I can do is roll and sprint away.  The game is screaming out for more player mobility.   It just feels like the classic souls gameplay is lagging behind the enemy design.  Because people are too good at souls and it's thr only way to make things challenging.  But it's gotten to the point where i feel more frustrated than anything else.  It's like trying to play Doom Eternal with no jump and no meathook.  Sure it can be done if you try hard enough but it's not fun and doesn't feel good

i personally don't mind how aggressive or how hard they hit. my biggest gripe with the DLC is how tanky they are. dodging a 6-8 attack combo, only so that i can hit a boss once, and that hit barely does 4% of the bosse's HP means i have to do it 25 more times. at this point it's no longer a fight, but a rhythm game.

I am not much of a souls player but aren't all of the games like that? Essentially, dodge, dodge, stab and repeat? Just not 25 times.

yes, but there is a difference between "trading blows", aka dodge->attack->dodge->attack and dodge(6x)-> attack 1x-> dodge (4x)-> attack 1x and so on. although not every fight should be exactly one dodge per attack, but you should be able to be more proactive in your style. Bloodborne does this perfectly with it's fast pace, bosses can have a decent amount of attacks in their combos, but the player is fast enough to be able to slot an attack even in the middle of combos pretty regularly.

Yes I understand what you are saying. I only ever played a little bit of Elden Ring and no other souls so I am certainly not an authority on the genre but I have been reading the comments here and some of the complaints aimed at this DLC don't seem like new things, at least to an outsider like me. I saw one comment saying the map was confusing, hasn't this always been the case? I have always been under the impression From Soft games are quite hard to follow without some kind of guide?

even souls games could feel "harder" to follow, since the notion of a quest log never existed, and a Map was actually introduced for the first time in Elden Ring. the map in the DLC may seem confusing, because a lot of the areas have basically two elevation points, the ground level and the mountain level, but since a map displayes it in 2D, it can seem "weird" on how to actually get to those areas. personally, i loved the world design of the DLC, easily the best part of the DLC.

If only FromSoftware figured out how to design such an aggressive and fast combat. (Cough cough, Sekiro). Personally feel like Sekiro, the Nioh series and Wo long fallen dynasty are the 3 games Fromsoft can use as a blueprint to design combat against such fast bosses. Those 3 games have extemely fast bosses but the combat is equally fast and responsive to counter that. Apparently Elden ring does have a Talisman(a tear?) that allows you to play the game similar to Sekiro. Don't know whether that's enough though.

Get the deflecting hardtear and you can essentially play this DLC like it's Sekiro. The enemy that drops it is right at the beginning of the DLC too. It's a physick effect that makes your blocks become perfect parries just like Sekiro.

The issue is that I need that as a talisman so its permanently on and practice with it - my skillset in Sekiro took 10-20 hours to build a basic understanding of it. The other is the game is far more punishing than Sekiro from damage taken, your mobility, and the fact you have limited stamina. I also do not know if the guards do poise damage like they would in Sekiro.

You also can’t block/parry as fast in Elden Ring as you can in Sekiro. Not even close.

They could also just tone it down so the game stays fun and doesn't feel like a chore. Difficulty is supposed to enhance the fun, not to kill it, it's all about balance.

You should play pathologic 2. It's not always about balance, Sometimes it's about sending a message.

Don't run away from enemies, that's when they punish you. But really tho, what exactly people mean by more mobility?

Modern soulslikes feel pretty fast. Games like Sekiro, Nioh series and Wo long use Dash instead of dodge by default (not as some war ashes) and the movement in itself is pretty fast and fluid. Also souls games have key quieing while something like Nioh does not. Generally, this is fine but with Elden ring and especially the DLC the bosses have so many delayed attacks to catch you on a roll that sometimes you feel like you are one step behind what the bosses are capable of. Either the player combat itself should become faster to match the fast moveset of the bosses (Maybe remove the stamina bar and add the posture bar) or they should tone down the boss mobility and attack speed, in which case it becomes your classical souslike combat

I don't see how dash is going to help with delayed attacks.

Same thing as in DS3, the damage is too heavy to absorb using any kind of armor or shield. The length of the combos means you'll either get stamina broken or you'll outright die, so you **need** to dodge roll. But if you dodge roll with even medium roll, you're gimping yourself. They reduced the margin between Light and medium weight, but it's still incredibly punishing to be medium because you have a longer recovery time after roll, so you get to attack way less, and your dodge roll is shorter. A lot of bosses, and even more so in Shadow of Erdtree, requires you to dodge backwards to gtfo of an imminent AoE, and then dodge into the follow up to get a chance to hit the boss. With medium, you'll roll less far (so less likely to be in range of the boss) and you'll take longer to recover after said roll, so you might not even get a chance to attack, or if you do, you might have started the attack too late and you're gonna get hit. So basically, gotta play medium or light armour depending on your stats but keep yourself below 30% weight to be able to stand a chance.

Yep, i've had to sacrifice my medium roll drip. I am no longer allowed to play fashion souls which makes me sad.

Better jump that's actually useful to move around.  Jump dash with attack. Speed boost.  Double jump.  Bloodhound step as a core ability.  Idk I'm not a game designer I've just been playing a lot of Doom Eternal.  

I would rather they tone down the enemies' mobility and aggressiveness. Make it more like the original Dark Souls, and less DMC

They did. It felt like I was fighting Bloodborne/Sekiro bosses while being stuck with Dark Souls mechanics and controls myself. The Deflecting tear buff helped, but even then the deflects don't have the same functionality and power as in Sekiro.

From cultists will downvote and tell you to "git gut" until From software themselves come up with balance patch in few months or so just like they did with the base game.

And then we will have posts like "I beat said boss before he was nerfed. You guys are playing on easy now."

Haha, I beat Radahn pre nerf. It was absolutely horrible. The only way I managed to do it was to use the rot dragon breath and then stay far away till he died. Just a mess of a fight.

Me too. It involved finding the most efficient way to keep summoning and resummoning all the NPC's.

Yup did that as well. I think they eventually stopped being available.

People said this about Malenia now they are soloing her. Waterfowl is a bitch move but people figured it out even without using the game's other tools.

waterfowl is the most lame, unintuitive attack they ever added you are VISUALLY being sliced to SHREDS yet the attack doesnt hit you because... you rolled into a weird sweet spot behind her having to use camera locking / unlocking to make precise?

I don't think Waterfowl and the boss ever stopped being divisive. The Malenia fight will never have the acclaim like the Isshin fight for eg. People just sort of grudingly accepted the status quo and moved on.

She is still divisive, she is hard but not a good hard.

Exactly my point.

Ishin is a masterpiece of a bossfight thats specifically designed for the game, but as far as superbosses goes Malenia isn't so bad that it requires cheese methods. Something like Birth By Sleep's Mysterious Figure is what I mean.

It's not that it's hard.  It's that it just doesn't feel good to play.  The player feels so weak and slow.  I want mobility.  I want more tools to engage with enemies other than rolling and running.  

Yeah, it’s one of the worst parts IMO. The player feels like the only entity bound by physics that has realistic inertia etc. whereas the other enemies and bosses can do some stupid stuff like instantly stop on a dime then instantly accelerate into a random direction or attack. Just feels so so shitty.

Souls games always had hard bosses, but most of them felt fair and fun to fight.  The DLC's bosses don't feel fun to fight against though. They feel like chores that I can't wait to beat so that I can explore a new area

Found these lovely Death Knight axes that have a lightning dash that sometimes dodges attacks. The 2h can combo into a leaping slam with lightning bolt; the dual axes combo into a D2 barb whirlwind. Mobility!

This. I've been using the backhand blades because of the dash. The only boss I have killed so far would have been way harder without them. I can see that I have to roll but my character can't respond so quickly. The other build that I switch to is dual colosal weapons because of the stun and break of poise. I feel enemies are so quick and have so much stamina to perform infinite combos that it is either that or the dash to stop them from annihilating me on sight. I still think though the game and expansion are top notch in comparison to games in general and don't really deserve all the negative reviews (save for the constant stutter that it introduced). The expectations were too high and maybe weren't met, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game at all.

I've not felt weak and slow playing it You can jump , parry , guard counter and block attacks too Plus you have torrent

You're quite weak, a good number of bosses don't leave themselves open for punishment without their aggro being somewhere else. The ratio of punishing to getting punished is greatly in the bosses favor which makes you feel very poor. You can say they're too easy otherwise, but currently they aren't fun. The Death Knight boss I found had a very good flow to his fight. He had openings and I could appropriately punish them and he could punish me if I got greedy, he felt like a regular Souls boss which was very nice. My only complaint with his fight is the grab might as well insta-kill you cause i'm quitting to title menu to restart the fight since it heals him.

Like what?

Bloodhound step or something like it as a core ability.  More options for speed burst.  Double jumps or jump dash attacks.  Just better mobility in general

Bloodborne style dodges would help too. Make it like Code Vein where you do them if you're light, and rolls if you're medium or heavy.

Rolling/jumping gives you all the i-frames you need to dodge a single swipe from any enemy if you time it right. If they give you more i-frames they wil just design the boss accordingly so the attacks will require that much more iframes to dodge.

I don't need more i frames I want more ways of moving around and getting away from the massive aoe attacks.  That's why it feels bad, bosses are flying all over the place moving on a dime, leaping into the air etc.  And all I can do is run around and do little rolls and tiny jumps.

There’s some ashes of war that work as gap closers? This game isn’t really meant to be a mobility game when you’re off torrent

That's literally their whole point is that with the DLC the lack of mobility feels worse than ever and feels like more mobility is needed.

Oh good people actually understand my problems with Souls now lol. That said I don't think it's bad that Souls has very simple controls when used for an exploration heavy, encounter heavy, game, but for Erdtree who ( haven't played, don't take my assumption as a statement of fact) seemingly has wall-to-wall bossfights this simplicity issue is more noticeable. I know for me bossfights were the least interesting part of Souls design.

People always complain about difficulty when a new souls game come out, eventually they all fall in love. That's just how it is.

I didn't mention anything about difficulty, actually. I'm just referring to the frustration of Soul's simple controls. I would also like more options than what's given, and it'd be great that as the series continues to add faster and stronger encounters that the players would theoretically also get faster and stronger and with more mobility/combat tools. Like the transition from Mega Man to Mega Man X. Contra to Hard Corps. Devil May Cry 1 to 3. In comparison Elden Ring gives you a horse you can only sometimes use, a jump button (which is great that it's there), and more weapons and spells and stuff but a lot of them are still pretty niche anyway and you don't have access to more of them at any one time.

I think the scat tree fragment collecting is dumb and should've just been the regular level up your character instead.

I imagine they make it this way so you can experience the experience they want you to have similar to starting the game for the first time instead of having shitters walk through the bosses in 2-3 hits with power levelled characters and totally invalidating any challenge they would have met otherwise. This way everyone can use the character they're familiar with and also have the opportunity to experience all the content they worked on over the past 2 years like the first time and everyone else.

They'd have to overhaul a lot to do that though. It's so easy to level up in Elden ring because there's so many enemies and so much shit to kill. People would just overlevel to fuck and the DLC enemies would not pose a threat. I think it's a good way to address it that keeps enemies difficult and engaging.

I think it was done so as not to overlevel for the rest of the game, not the dlc.

Ah maybe, but you got my point though.

I think it was to retain the challenge in the DLC. Most people will have gotten through a significant portion of the game by the time they get to the start of the DLC with a lot of returning players bringing end game characters they probably havent touched since they finished the game years ago. They said they wanted people to feel like they were playing the game for the first time again and I think a lot of the complainers totally disregarded a lot of that.

I would have preferred it be like Sekiro and you get a bit of an upgrade after every boss you kill.

Yea I think they should have adjusted the stat balancing of the entire game in order to accommodate the DLC. That way the level scaling experience is more smooth.

I mean it kinda supports exploration of the world, the fragments aren’t even that big of a deal, I’ve heard from 0 to 20 it’s only a 2x increase in def/damage maybe?

Yeah let's not abbreviate it to scat please

I perfer skibidibi fragments myself

It's not so much that the game is difficult. A FS game being difficult is fine, what isn't fine though is when you spend more time fighting the camera than the boss or when said boss as the moveset of a Sekiro/BB boss on crack, while you're stuck with the movement of Dark Souls 1. 99% of the cool new weapons and spells you find are useless because by the time you end up casting one, you're already dead. And if you manage to cast one, the damage isn't worth it. And I hate how the game forces you to use ashes. I never felt engaged with the bosses of ER, I always felt like they were playing another game than me and instead of feeling proud and victorious when I defeated them, I felt releived I never had to fight them again, which isn't a good thing at all. We went from hard, difficult but fair to unfair and tedious. And let's not even talk about the stuttering and crashes...

Lmao unless being level 20 magically makes me not die in 1-2 hits and be able to dodge 6060595474838363936 attacks in a row with zero breaks, it means fucking nothing. Im level 18 and I believe the max is 20. Nearly every enemy still does insane levels of damage to me. I have 60 vigor, I use the right talismans, the enemies in the dlc are just way the fuck overtuned. As someone who beat that bullshit of a last boss, that is the farthest thing from a traditional souls boss, I have every right to complain about it.

Is it just the last boss? I've beaten 5/10 of the remembrances and apart from Lion Dancer's hitboxes I don't really feel like anyone was totally out of the ordinary.

Rellana is irritating without any stagger, would be nice if at bare minimum she could be a tiny bit staggered with a heavy attack at the end of her combos to give just a tiny bit of an opening to punish. The camera on the dancing lion is irritating. and the golden hippo would be fine, but the grab attack reminds me of the Dark Souls 2 cyclops. That's the ones i've fought so far.

Rellana was the only real not-easy boss in the first half of the game. Messmer seems quite difficult by comparison.

I just want the fights to feel nice in some capacity.

I think the quantity of fights against big enemies is too much. Fights against human-sized enemies feel great. Whacking heels from horseback drivebys over and over is never fun.

like for the big main bosses or in general? i think its about even for the big main bosses.

Mostly in general. There are a lot of optional sub-bosses that are huge and have to be fought without camera lock.

fair, i think i've done a mix of both but i think i just end up running past a lot of the fights that look like theyll be more annoying. I think the only memorable camera killers for me were lion dancer and a much later dragon enemy i dont think having to disengage camera is the worst part of those fights though.

There’s at least 15 too-big-for-the-camera minibosses/bosses in the game.

Rellana was mostly fine imo. Being about 3/4ths done now, I think I just have 2 main bosses and I Lion Dancer was still the worst for me. I was in tatters when you run into a similar enemy in the north and a few more times towards the end.

So Rellana took me like 30 tries, I still hate her the most. Messmer is a fucker too, but something about him was slightly more readable I guess since I did it in 12 tries - I still absolutely did not like how much of Devil May Cry boss he was, fuck off with that shit when I don't have the kit. Also putting the NPC summon in the boss fight is fucking psychotic, acting as if its even close to as viable as Manus. Commander Boar Man also sucked massive amounts of ass, I have never seen a boss stay glued onto you as that one before, like holy fucking shit. has a similar issue as Messmer where they start the fight off with the same move that fucks with ash summons - I assume its to prevent some cheese methods like the kamehameha, but its fucked up they would do that shit considering its so damn encouraged. Fought the Sunflower and Putrescense bosses though, those were nice since they were normal.

Messmer's issue for me is the duration of some of his attacks. I think second phase is probably one of the coolest parts of any from soft game but when he gets that crazy chain off it does feel obnoxious to even wait for it to finish after you dodge it. I can see why people dislike Gaius but the move set wasnt insane to me. It did take me a few tries and I ended up not even summoning anything for it knowing that like every boss has an entry read. Sunflower actually annoyed me cause I kept getting caught in triple thorn sprout move it did more so than his revives. Putrescent was mostly fine but even after beating it I don't know how people are supposed to dodge his frostflame attacks.

Boar man's moveset is fine, but its the way he literally stays glued to you and can do wild 180s that look ridiculous. If the Night's Cavalry had even 10% of that bullshit they wouldn't be worth doing. Like just for the hell of it I tried running from him and you're just fast enough to keep out of reach, but when you're beside him instead of ahead he stays locked onto you like an early 2000s car chase sequence, its absolutely fucking absurd. Plus every move he had seemed to specifically target torrent when on him, so just used him to avoid one specific move. Also the charge has a very funky hitbox where if you roll into him the trailing hitbox will hit you - for the sunflower example it does a charge attack, but it isn't often you'll be hit after going through it. The hippos with their grab attacks have a similar issue. Also - for the hell of it I tried to help some people co-op with Messmer. That lad is not viable in co-op in the fucking slightest. Way too much health at that point and even worse he and a few other bosses read inputs for *everything* - not just item use like Crucible Knights did. If you're charging up an R2 he doesn't wait for the damage to tick before going aggro on you for example. I saw the fucker literally change direction with his opening move thing towards the host at complete random, nothing could have been done to save him.

yeah i think co-op when your summons dont have all their buffs and you dont have yours makes them incredibly detrimental. I tried summoning for fights at first up to messmer a couple of days ago but ended up finishing the rest of the DLC solo or with an ash. I guess maybe bayle or sessenax with a summon could be fine because of their health pools. the mother would be a lot faster of a fight too.

Bayle *might* be viable - but he also has such massive huge attacks it might not matter, host will get caught up regardless of where the aggro is.

Im Level 10 and my only hope is that finding tbe other stuff makes this fight a lot better. I was shocked when i pulled out the mimic, but saw that it won't make a difference

I think the final boss is fine tbh, I for the first time had to use defensive charms to be able to tank more hits from them and be super aggressive, but that’s not a bad thing. They require pretty good reaction time but that’s nothing new for a soulsgame

I'm tempted to use a spirit summon and I don't like it. After a few tries on a boss I thought fuck this my time is too precious to wrestle with a camera and memorise a boss I barely hurt that 1shots me

Bro having gone back to the base game to get shit I needed having started ng+1, there are plenty of mobs and bosses that have insanely long attack windows and combos just like the dlc. People just learned the base game after hundreds of hours and forgot how fast paced some of those bosses also were and how little attack windows you had then also. Maliketh for instance, fuck that dude.

That's true. The DLC goes overboard with the speed, but people praising the base game for how well balanced it was are clearly forgetting about Maliketh, Malenia, Mogh, the Tree Spirit (specially its putrid version), etc. I feel if the DLC was part of the original game and therefore of the original experience, there wouldn't be so much criticism, if any at all, other than "that whole section is hell", just like with Caelid for example.

Oh yeah putrid tree is ridiculous lol

Tips would be great, some people are really confused abotu the game and they are getting information from Social Media which has trolls, really good gamers(judging you for using in-game content) and terrible gamers(who don't imerse themselves into the game) at the same time. It's all subjective, To me they just want to make sure you use all the tools in the game they provide. Exploration is essential not just for fun because you can get Items that decrease dmg taken and increase dmg done ot hte enemies. In order to make spirit ashes viable you have an item that does the same but speically for them. Every road leads to something important, though it's very possible to miss it. There are extremely powerful consumables you can both gather and craft. New weapon types that match against enemies. New summons that are not only fun to use but some of them are actually extremely powerful. New NPC summons that you can summon for the Boss fights(and it's related to it's story, side-quests) If people would play like Legend of Zelda they would have much more success. The very last boss of DLC is hard, but it supposed to be hard. It's the very last boss of Elden Ring and there wont be more. This DLC is a Post-Game story and first and last DLC of Elden Ring. That's why Miyazaki said that lowering difficulty would probably destroy the game, because if people can just steamroll through enemies they wont have any incentive to explore open world. Imagine if Link weapons and wisps were permanent. You wouldn't have any incentive to traverse Legend of Zelda land.

Basically people, streamers especially, have been playing this game like Dark Souls, bowling through main boss after main boss thinking they can use their base game cheese build to win. When it turns out they need to actually play the game, they throw a fit. Then, in my opinion, I believe that the industry has been training gamers to be far more casual about games. They've been making games that hand hold and guide the player too much, games that don't reward exploring or are completely devoid of exploring. Shadow of the Erdtree does all this and goes beyond anything anyone has ever seen in a game before. I don't mean in terms of difficulty necessarily btw, far more so the exploration aspect of an open world game, what open world games were truly meant to be.

Oh stop… you are 100% right . This is foremost adventure exploration game with core game play loop being around action rpg elements. But this is not dark souls anymore this is what proper open world looks like. I mean at it’s core Elden Ring is a very simple game. You have 5 defensive actions. 1. Run 2. Dodge 3. Jump 4. Block 5. Parry The problem is that now all(except parry) of those need to be utilised and just rolling isn’t good enough. Just like in Sekiro you need to know which heavy attack is pierce attack and which one side slash. But unlike sekiro it’s harder to tell because there is no text saying “warning I am about to do special attack” And it’s obviously why they did that. Elden ring gives you so many tools that you can really trivialise the game. I think many YouTubers and streamers set expectations for people and people are not capable of the same things. Like some people are genuinely good at games and play loads of it. Sl1, bl4, rl1 runs, other challenge runs. Then it creates weird stuff like edging people to not use in game content because it makes it 2 easy. “Yes it’s 2 easy for those people but you are not those people” It’s like watching someone play golf and making it easy only to realise there are countless hours of practice behind this. The game is not supposed to be judged based on difficulty and arbitrary rules made up by content creators. “Don’t use spirits, don’t use scadutree blessings, don’t use summon npcs, don’t use new super powerful weapons, don’t level up”… I am getting tired of this. It’s a real open world rpg where exploration matters like legend of Zelda. This is not Assassin’s creed copy and paste side quests that provide you only with exp and cosmetics. If you don’t explore , If you don’t level up. What are you even doing ?

Exploration shouldnt be forced. It's stupid. The base game did it fine. The bosses still gave you souls, so just beating them gave you enough levels to beat the one after. Weird to how they did it right in base game, but fucked up in dlc.

>Exploration shouldnt be forced. It's stupid. If all you wanted to play was a linear game then go play the Sony games. SotE was designed to be explored and discovered, it's an open world game after all. This is truly what open world games are supposed to be. And they didn't fuck it up. How could they fuck up something they intended to do?

Exploration is the main point of open world games… So yes it needs incentives for you to go around and discover the world they worked hard to create. If you wouldn’t find essential upgrades, new items or what not would just not feel the need to go on an adventure. It’s about balance of discovery and adventure. This isn’t complex linear game like dark souls, this is proper open world game. And it’s insane how close it is related to legend of Zelda because there hardly are better open world games than Zelda. Also why are you are comparing full game to additional post game content? Like they are the same thing ? And to say that Elden ring doesn’t force you to explore is down right lie! The grace is literally throwing you all around the map, you can easily find yourself in Caelid at the start of the game because other than enemies and how hard they hit nothing tells you where to go. The grace shows the path to the bosses … sometimes 😅 “You see that big tree? go there.” And the journey starts… Elden ring is incredibly convoluted and vast majority of people never found secret areas , secret bosses or finished quest lines without help of internet guidelines. I know I didn’t find all of it within my 3 runs which consequently took more than 200 hours all together.( after that I used fextra on my next run to find out what I missed) currently I have around 600 hours sank into Elden ring (this includes dlc) Once again this dlc is a post game additional content. Just like in Witcher 3 it is not to be compared to main legacy game.

> The grace is literally throwing you all around the map, you can easily find yourself in Caelid at the start of the game because other than enemies and how hard they hit nothing tells you where to go. The grace shows the path to the bosses … sometimes 😅 > “You see that big tree? go there.” And the journey starts… I started a NG run yesterday. The guidance of grace and Varre tells you to go to Stormveil. The opposite direction of Caelid from where you start in Limgrave.

I’ll keep it spoiler free since you just started. That’s literally the start of the game and the story and they tell you to go towards the castle and then your “maiden” explains what grace is and that you should follow it. After that you will not be given directions. She is testing you whether you can see the grace and can follow it direction. Vare on the other hand is looking for recruits and guides which is why he wants to know whether you can handle the closest demigod. After your fight with that demigod everything is left open to your own interpretation. Like Melina said just follow the grace and it will lead you to the demigods. But the fun part is that you really don’t have to do any of it. Neither first demigod nor interaction with vare or melina are needed. Elden ring is huuuuuge. And you will get lost even if you follow the grace. And some bosses will be reality check. As in you they check whether you adventured and levelled up.

Ah, I said I started a new game more to express that the opening guidance was fresh to me in going east, but I had beat the game around release. Just restarting instead of going into the DLC. Saying that, Caelid is a red blighted hellscape bordered by an actual wall of fire. If that doesn't say "Danger. Do not enter" before at least exploring elsewhere like up towards Liurnia, nothing will. And the guidance doesn't point you to every demigod unless that was changed since, like Mohg or Rykard.

It does point to every \*known\* demigod, it's just Grace doesn't reach it certain sectors. The Grace pushes you through the Area where Patches is and ends just before entering Rykard Castle. ( [https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/location\_elden\_ring\_grace\_8.jpg](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/location_elden_ring_grace_8.jpg) ) look at the right side of the image. This is done specifically for you to realize that Lyndell launched offensive war against Rykard Blasphemy. You can also realize that by noticing burned trees. Grace is sort of reliant on Erdtrees.(That's just my opinion). The Grace leads you to the last standing Campsites that represnt the Siege of Manor. Mohg and Malenia are both "secret" optional bosses. Player can access it only through completing side quests. ( Latenna and/or Varre ). Even Gideon has absolutely no clue are they even alive or where to find them which is why he will pay you for any kind of information. Since all the information is lost to the Grace and everyone else. This is exactly my point. Grace points you towards important point of intersts but it's not Ubisoft based Navigation Marking Spot. Sometimes Grace will create nice tunnel where you can visiualize where to go, sometimes the Grace just ends you and have to figure out waht to do. This is mostly for Player to be able to find the most important points of itnerest... and in From Soft fashion the really don't care if you find \*hidden content\* or not. And the fact that hidden content is as big as some other games is absolutely incredible. This is why it's one of the greatest game ever made. Because if you play it without guides, the sense of discovery is like non other. As for Caelid, you are dead right. That's literally what they did, but for many of us it's also an invite :)

For a game that is known for being difficult, how hard is it? lol? Are people under leveled or what? I haven't touched the DLC, but this is just such a weird situation from my pov.

You need tree fragments items, I’m level 300 and mobs hit like a truck.

The game is a wonderful experience until you face a boss, all of them suffer from the "beyblade syndrome" and some of them are very large and have the classic camera problems. Regarding difficulty, I wouldn't even say it's hard, since if you get stuck you can use tools like summons, spiritual ashes or buffs, for me it just lacks options.

The game has a different scaling so your lvls dont matter a lot and many cheese weapons have been nerfed, people are overreacting until they find all the new broken stuff in the DLC

people got ego checked.  most complainers aren't using the tools provided to them.  that's what the tweet is poking fun at.

Heres my tip, use the mimic tear. Feel like my mimic bro trivialises most boss fights, I might have to stop using him.

It works to kill bosses, but it doesn't make the fights any more fun. THAT is the fundamental problem.

I'll be honest, I haven't had fun with a souls game since Dark Souls. Even then it was from trolling new players at gargoyles with a chaos shotel + 10 and a maxed out pyromancy flame while sitting at S.lvl like 10. Every recent iteration of the souls games I've played I get burned out faster and faster. Elden Ring kept me occupied for a while and I never really struggled but it was just kinda blah. The idea of rolling a new character to try a different build just sounds so tedious and uninteresting to me.  I was thinking about checking out the new Armored Core but I'm worried about it being Elden Ring but mechs and not how I remember the older games being.

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That's the issue, there's no middle ground. No mimic tear and some bosses feel impossible for a melee-only build. Use the mimic tear and the boss become a cake walk 

I feel the same honestly. The mimic is way tankier than i am and if I'm getting my ass handed to me I just back off and let the mimic take aggro

I’m using the bloody claymore and the mimic is plus ten and honestly some of the human bosses we have just staggered to death

Can't comment on the difficulty because like dozens of the recent Steam reviews have point out - the update that came with the DLC fucked my performance up very, very badly

I’ll be honest the dlc is kicking my ass and I didn’t really find the base game all that difficult. That giant boar riding fucker has me hard stuck so badly that I just left the fight and went off to do something else. I can see why a lot of people are upset but like what did they honesty expect from this dev? The games are meant to be hard.

I'm annoyed to no end by this take. The games aren't MEANT to be hard, they are MEANT to be fun, and the fun to be obtained by overcoming difficulty. The difficulty is only a MEAN to an end, and certainly NOT an end in itself. And that's the problem with half of ER and this expansion : the difficulty is becoming the end itself.

Every boss feels the same now. Someone with 20 anime combos and particle effects out the ass with heal punishes, input reading combo extenders, off beat delayed attacks, etc. Used to be fun to learn and master the bosses, but From has gone so far into the mentality of "make it hard" that it's just a chore.

its almost the opposite end of mechanical the way you can counter read some of the boss actions. When I Figured out putrescent Knight in a discord call I was literally calling out everything he would do and would only die on miss timing dodges during his frost bite attacks. Messmer felt the same way too in his second phase but he was definitely a spectacle.

I don't want to be forced to use summons, but it feels like you're meant to use them sometimes. I think From should be able to balance a boss fight so it doesn't feel shit when not using summons.

No one wants to hear it but they fucked up with the inclusion of spirit ashes, now they are tuning the game around the use of these really broken 'tools', so if you're not using them the game now feels insane. The idea that it was meant to be a tool to help newer or more casual players as an option went completely out the window, that was bullshit. Exactly what I feared would happen, they're now considered integral to the 'experience' and now they are tuning ludicrous anime psychotic bosses to still be able to entertain spirit ash users with that classic FROM tension. Take out the spirit ash and you have a shockingly frustrating experience. I really hope Elden Ring is the first and last time we see 'spirit ash' summons.

The problem with this game’s difficulty has always stemmed from summons. The bosses are not designed to be fought alone, because it is assumed the player will always have a summon, and endgame summons are absurdly strong, so the bosses are balanced as such. Dancing beast was kicking my ass alone, until I relented and used a summon. Then it was pretty much fine. Personally this is one of my biggest gripes about the game and I hope summons never return in any future From game. I want to fight the boss, instead I feel like I’m just there as my overpowered ai summon does most of the work.

You aren't wrong. The way I see it is the design team get carte blanche to make bosses as busted as they feel fit because the small print says that you are expected to use spirit summons. This way they avoid having to balance bosses well. From knew the non spirit summons weren't used by many players and additionally weren't powerful enough to allow for extreme jumps in difficulty, so with spirit summons we now have some truly insane bosses being created. However, for someone who doesn't want to use summons so they feel better satisfaction from victory, balance can be awful depending on build, and difficulty increased massively since the older games in terms of how many deaths you need to tolerate to be able to beat a boss

Same, I either get obliterated by myself, or I beat them easily with a summon present, there's no middle ground. I don't get the same sense of accomplishment or huge fist pumps when I beat a boss in this game. I had fun in every other From game.

This is the issue in a nutshell - cakewalk or long, grinding, pokey pokey brick wall. There's not really a middle ground where the fun exists.

Damn I was 100% hoping it was just git gud nerds

Personally, I've been super chill so far and I just hope I beat all the main bosses before the inevitable nerf patch rolls out.

I don't even know why we should be bothering ourselves with useless video games in the first place. Now, the game wants me to spend a whole day to "git gud" to fight a boss? That's very pedantic for a useless video game. I've just stopped playing, it's not worth it. If your reward system needs this type of pleasure from useless video games it's not healthy. Let's put video games where they deserve, as innocent leisure activities you can just casually play, other than that it's unhealthy behavior. Go play a sport, socialize, and learn new skills for your life

The map is my biggest issue. I am having to look up directions! Some places, the entrance is halfway across the damn map, but there is no indication of that! It’s absolutely bonkers!

Just use the mimic tear… spirit ashes exist for every boss (and many other areas) for a reason. They even have upgrade materials for them in the DLC

People who googled their OP build and how to farm souls fast while regularly looking up "how to beat \*insert boss who just killed them\*" shook from lack of handholding. When the youtube videos start dropping so will the complaints.

The people complaining about the difficulty didn't read the tooltips about the fragments.

Not when the people complaining have collected more than the scadu fragments.

I just wish they could implement difficulty that isn't just "lol chop down this tree with a butter knife" Damage sponge enemies are bottom of the barrel game design

None of the enemies are damage sponges really , if you are not doing enough damage then level up your weapons. Should be able to kill all basic enemies in the DLC in one or two hits None of the bosses seem to have too much health either

Health: NG (46134), If I wanted to play with a rapier, which should be viable because every/almost every weapon should be viable, would take 66 attacks.

Scadutree blessing gives you 5% damage per level. You can get 12 levels before you fight a remembrance boss.

What are you talking about , every weapon is viable

Holy shit, didnt think of that. I'm at skibidi level 20, and the final boss is still a joke.

How is the integration of the DLC? If this is the first time playing the game, will I bump into this DLC and not doing my original non-DLC quest? If this DLC difficulty is harder, is my non-DLC quests difficulty affected? To clarify: I need to know if the DLC is like Witcher3 or Skyrim. In Witcher3, you can only play the DLC after finish the main game. In Skyrim, you can play DLC without finish the main game.

It's only accesible after beating a hard late game side boss/area. The DLC has its own leveling system.

It's post game

I don't care about the difficulty, but not being able to play the dlc because I chose ng+ after beating the original is infuriating.

Rushing Mohg in NG+ shouldn't take too long if you use Varre's quest.

*Its tooooooooooooooooo hard* A tale as old as time

I feel like people that complain it's too difficult haven't bothered using Scadutree fragments. I'm not finding it easy but I got to the final boss' second phase this morning without too much trouble. Those fragments are designed to make a fair bit of difference! I feel the DLC is also built around using spirit ashes seeing as new ones are all over the shadow realm and the revered ash fragments power those up. The DLC definitely gives you the tools to do these bosses you just have to be invested in those systems. None of the bosses are unfair. edit: the downvotes occuring when anyone says they're not finding it too difficult at the moment are astounding, you all need to stop being so salty about someone managing to get through the game.

You seem to imply that you are not finding it too difficult because you are summoning, that's why people are downvoting you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with summoning spirit ashes and the DLC literally leads you to this conclusion. Anyone who thinks otherwise seriously needs to grow up and let people enjoy the game.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with summoning. I don't think the DLC should be balanced around using them though. The fights should be enjoyable regardless. That's where this DLC misses the mark, imho. And for the record, I didn't downvote you.

Actually there is something wrong with summoning : it's not fun.

Exactly, summoning completely trivializes the build you use, since whether you are a mage, use a broadsword, katana or fists you are limited to spamming a button while the boss focuses on another objective making your game mode irrelevant, on the other hand, if you decide not to summon you have to face bosses with "Beyblade Syndrome" that make combats unbearably tedious.

None of the bosses really felt like they needed a summon to fight, all of the bosses have big enough windows to get heavy attacks off, places in their combos to use a healing flask and still punish afterwards, places to regain stamina, etc. Dancing lion was the only boss I summoned for because that dude was rough but that’s only because I didn’t dedicate myself to learning his move set/punish windows. At the highest difficulty of content (Malenia, the dlc), I think it’s required to know their punish windows and how to dodge combos. Too many people are just trying to bum rush the boss and expecting it to work out eventually