Elden Ring Gameplay

[ZeroBG82]

I'll get to that mission once I level myself up a bit because I am level 73, and I am still having difficulty with Capital enemies

If you beat Rykard, you lose out on any unfinished assassinations completely.

[charliehustle415]

If you beat Rykard, you lose out on any unfinished assassinations completely.

ohhhh, thanks for that I was trying to gank him and I get wrecked during his second phase.

I'll hold off on them then

[ZeroBG82]

ohhhh, thanks for that I was trying to gank him and I get wrecked during his second phase.

I'll hold off on them then

No worries, happy to help.

The game doesn't make it clear, but once Rykard is dead the entire Volcano Manor will empty as everyone jumps ship. You can miss out on any of the unfinished assassinations, Rya's questline, even Patches' line. It makes sense from a lore and world standpoint, but it's kind of annoying.

On the plus side, Rykard will be a much easier fight after you finish the Capital. I feel like Volcano Manor Dungeon is of similar level to Leyndell, but Rykard seems like a higher level encounter to me. Also, you can totally upgrade the Serpent Hunter spear weapon you found in his boss room, it takes Somber stones. Get it to like +4 or +5 and you'll have a MUCH easier time mowing down the serpent spawned blasphemer.

Edit: If you're still having trouble, I can't recommend a +10 Mimic Tear Ashes summon enough. The thing is tankier than you, but otherwise you including your gear and spell loudout. So two Serpent Hunter weapons at once, for the low, low price of some HP to start the fight. You should easily be able to get one named Ash to +10 after a trip through Ainsel River Main/Nokstella, which you should have access to by now, I expect. (Beat Radahn, go through Nokron, get warped to Ainsel River Main after giving Ranni the key item you find in Nokron)

Mimic is S Tier, easily, even after the nerf in the last patch. Though there are other top notch ashes available to you as well if you don't have/want Mimic on the field. Find one that suits your style and let 'er rip. Just wait until you see how much dps a +10 Black Knife Tiche can put out. Yowzers. I call her out and basically just try to keep aggro while she shreds. She's elusive for being kind of squishy, as well. I tend not to use my spirit ashes often against bosses, I feel like they make the game a little bit easy mode, personally. But they're great for large mobs, and I think anybody struggling with bosses should feel no shame at all in grabbing the help.

[charliehustle415]

No worries, happy to help.

The game doesn't make it clear, but once Rykard is dead the entire Volcano Manor will empty as everyone jumps ship. You can miss out on any of the unfinished assassinations, Rya's questline, even Patches' line. It makes sense from a lore and world standpoint, but it's kind of annoying.

On the plus side, Rykard will be a much easier fight after you finish the Capital. I feel like Volcano Manor Dungeon is of similar level to Leyndell, but Rykard seems like a higher level encounter to me. Also, you can totally upgrade the Serpent Hunter spear weapon you found in his boss room, it takes Somber stones. Get it to like +4 or +5 and you'll have a MUCH easier time mowing down the serpent spawned blasphemer.

Edit: If you're still having trouble, I can't recommend a +10 Mimic Tear Ashes summon enough. The thing is tankier than you, but otherwise you including your gear and spell loudout. So two Serpent Hunter weapons at once, for the low, low price of some HP to start the fight. You should easily be able to get one named Ash to +10 after a trip through Ainsel River Main/Nokstella, which you should have access to by now, I expect. (Beat Radahn, go through Nokron, get warped to Ainsel River Main after giving Ranni the key item you find in Nokron)

Mimic is S Tier, easily, even after the nerf in the last patch. Though there are other top notch ashes available to you as well if you don't have/want Mimic on the field. Find one that suits your style and let 'er rip. Just wait until you see how much dps a +10 Black Knife Tiche can put out. Yowzers. I call her out and basically just try to keep aggro while she shreds. She's elusive for being kind of squishy, as well. I tend not to use my spirit ashes often against bosses, I feel like they make the game a little bit easy mode, personally. But they're great for large mobs, and I think anybody struggling with bosses should feel no shame at all in grabbing the help.

Just beat Margot, now to end this assassin but he's super hard.

I haven't beat Radahn yet, I feel like he's the hardest out of all of the major bosses I have encountered; so I haven't gotten access to the underground city.

I think I'm gonna spend some time leveling up, I'm level 83 maybe get to 90 before I continue.

I also still have to mop up minor world bosses too

[Xero Kaiser]

Elden Ring really AND I MEAN REALLY needs to re-balanced.

The late game enemies hit far too hard and far too fast (and that's with vigor powered up all the way to 60!). Seriously, bosses basically cheese you with infinite stamina, infinite poise and AOE attacks that melt your health away.

And the rune drop system needs to re-worked from the ground up. Case in point, that Crucible Knight f..ker hits so hard in the early game and he drops only 2100 runes but at Caelid those big birds drop 1781 runes! Those birds hit hard but they are nowhere near as tough as the Crucible Knight.

It's an amazing game but it has some flaws which FromSoft have been addressing lately but there's still a bit more to do.

Elden Ring is great, but these bosses are definitely some of FromSoft's weakest. There's no rhythm to the fights, bosses just go apeshit 100% of the time, their tracking is absurd and they're blatantly input-reading so they can instantly delay/extend/cancel their attacks based on what you do. Good luck trying to learn their attack patterns because that 3-hit combo with a huge opening at the end will turn into a 7-hit combo the second you get close and press R1.

The game got a lot easier once I dropped my usual sword-and-board playstyle, embraced the cheese and just DPS-race everything into oblivion, but it's the one part of the game that's a bit of a letdown since the boss fights are usually the highlights of Souls games.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Elden Ring is great, but these bosses are definitely some of FromSoft's weakest. There's no rhythm to the fights, bosses just go apeshit 100% of the time, their tracking is absurd and they're blatantly input-reading so they can instantly delay/extend/cancel their attacks based on what you do. Good luck trying to learn their attack patterns because that 3-hit combo with a huge opening at the end will turn into a 7-hit combo the second you get close and press R1.

The game got a lot easier once I dropped my usual sword-and-board playstyle, embraced the cheese and just DPS-race everything into oblivion, but it's the one part of the game that's a bit of a letdown since the boss fights are usually the highlights of Souls games.

It seems that way, but most bosses do have combos and rhythms to them. They are just more complicated and feature more delays. But they are all very learnable. Malenia is the really tough exception. But aside from that all the main ones have a dance. They are deceptive and often try to trick you into thinking an opening exists that isn’t there. But once you figure it out it gets easier and you can get close to no hitting a lot of them.

[ZeroBG82]

Elden Ring is great, but these bosses are definitely some of FromSoft's weakest. There's no rhythm to the fights, bosses just go apeshit 100% of the time, their tracking is absurd and they're blatantly input-reading so they can instantly delay/extend/cancel their attacks based on what you do. Good luck trying to learn their attack patterns because that 3-hit combo with a huge opening at the end will turn into a 7-hit combo the second you get close and press R1.

The game got a lot easier once I dropped my usual sword-and-board playstyle, embraced the cheese and just DPS-race everything into oblivion, but it's the one part of the game that's a bit of a letdown since the boss fights are usually the highlights of Souls games.

Did you play Sekiro? Obviously a different beast with only the one weapon moveset, but it's bosses could do the same tricks. They up the challenge by giving the boss a way to respond to you learning it's moves. Namely, altering timings and combos on the fly. And just like in Sekiro, once you learn the variations you can read when the boss commits to one move or the other and almost always punish or escape. Memorization isn't safety anymore. Now you have to be able to think quickly and respond in the moment.

I actually much prefer this approach. It feels less like solving a puzzle and just waiting/baiting the move you need. It feels much more like a natural fight, with each combatant adapting and changing their strategy on the fly. Not perfect, by a long shot. But soooo much fun. Black Knife Ringleader Alecto was so easy to read, but I kept screwing up her AOE plunge dive. Thinking I had it spaced correctly and eating 80% of my HP when I was wrong. She's more like old school From bosses, where it's less about meaningful strategy and more just execution. While on the other hand, Mohg, Lord of Blood is slow and easy to punish, but his combos were much more difficult for me to get the hang of. And he has half a dozen different "get off me" buttons that force you to decide in the moment whether to be aggressive or back off and let him recover. I absolutely love the moment to moment decision making of a fight like that.

[Username taken]

That Mohg fight was something else.

He's constantly spewing "lava blood" and he has that "blood ring" thing he does to regenerate health and drain yours at the same time.

A problem with Elden Ring is that it seems that some bosses are doing "input reaction" and basically spam combos and attacks when you try to attack. It's a little cheap and it comes across as the game cheating and ultimately when I beat some bosses it came across more like just getting lucky as opposed to applying my acquired skills.

Some bosses are constantly throwing out combos that you literally have to watch and/or dodge for upwards of 20 seconds (some folks have actually measured this). Depending on your build, this isn't fun and it feels like the game is pushing me towards a magic build where you can attack the boss by simply staying away and spamming them.

[ZeroBG82]

That Mohg fight was something else.

He's constantly spewing "lava blood" and he has that "blood ring" thing he does to regenerate health and drain yours at the same time.

A problem with Elden Ring is that it seems that some bosses are doing "input reaction" and basically spam combos and attacks when you try to attack. It's a little cheap and it comes across as the game cheating and ultimately when I beat some bosses it came across more like just getting lucky as opposed to applying my acquired skills.

There's a Wondrous Physick tear that completely negates the damage portion of Mohg's transition attack. Won't stop him healing, but saves your bacon.

If you are doing nothing but dodging for 20 seconds you are missing openings. They are 100% there, even with slow weapons. Space attacks rather than dodging, roll into enemies that leave themselves vulnerable, particularly if their attacks lead to one side or the other. Force the boss into committing to something and then punish. I haven't finished the game yet, so maybe there is a late game superboss that will convince me otherwise, but I have yet to see anything truly cheap in the game yet (with just Haligtree and Farum Azula to go). Well, unless you count duo bosses. Duo bosses suck.

[Username taken]

There's a Wondrous Physick tear that completely negates the damage portion of Mohg's transition attack. Won't stop him healing, but saves your bacon.

If you are doing nothing but dodging for 20 seconds you are missing openings. They are 100% there, even with slow weapons. Space attacks rather than dodging, roll into enemies that leave themselves vulnerable, particularly if their attacks lead to one side or the other. Force the boss into committing to something and then punish. I haven't finished the game yet, so maybe there is a late game superboss that will convince me otherwise, but I have yet to see anything truly cheap in the game yet (with just Haligtree and Farum Azula to go). Well, unless you count duo bosses. Duo bosses suck.

There are some late game bosses that spam and spam and spam and spam.

Yeah, there are openings but they are so few in between that the boss fight becomes a bit of a chore for me. I don't want to dodge a boss for seconds on end, that's pretty boring to me. I don't want to just cut down the boss but I also want the fight to be a fight and not just the "death by a thousand scratches" tactics the game is forcing me into. This is something Sekiro got very well, boss fights are like rhythm games and once you get the rhythm down, you and the boss go on a "deadly dance".

Elden Ring doesn't work like that, there isn't much rhythm to boss fights because the game can do instant 180 pivots in a functional rest state, meaning that even when you get an opening, 9 out of 10 times you get hit. Depending on the strength of the boss (your vigor doesn't mean much in the late game because the bosses are seriously buffed to melt away your health), this could lead to you losing about 40% of your health after a single hit. It just comes down to a boss not doing certain attacks at certain times which almost turns the game into a game of luck.

The input thing is also a problem. There's an early example with the Watchdog boss fight, that boss literally does an instant "frame pivot" to turn around to hit the player after you've successfully gotten behind it. The first time I saw this, I was like "WTF". I don't want to sound like I hate Elden Ring, it's a very good game but there are some flaws IMO that reveal themselves as one goes deeper into the game.

[charliehustle415]

That's why you gotta use the jellyfish and let them tank hits while you hit from behind, it works for me. I just spam my shiny blue spells from 100 yards away

[Xero Kaiser]

Did you play Sekiro? Obviously a different beast with only the one weapon moveset, but it's bosses could do the same tricks. They up the challenge by giving the boss a way to respond to you learning it's moves. Namely, altering timings and combos on the fly. And just like in Sekiro, once you learn the variations you can read when the boss commits to one move or the other and almost always punish or escape. Memorization isn't safety anymore. Now you have to be able to think quickly and respond in the moment.

I actually much prefer this approach. It feels less like solving a puzzle and just waiting/baiting the move you need. It feels much more like a natural fight, with each combatant adapting and changing their strategy on the fly. Not perfect, by a long shot. But soooo much fun. Black Knife Ringleader Alecto was so easy to read, but I kept screwing up her AOE plunge dive. Thinking I had it spaced correctly and eating 80% of my HP when I was wrong. She's more like old school From bosses, where it's less about meaningful strategy and more just execution. While on the other hand, Mohg, Lord of Blood is slow and easy to punish, but his combos were much more difficult for me to get the hang of. And he has half a dozen different "get off me" buttons that force you to decide in the moment whether to be aggressive or back off and let him recover. I absolutely love the moment to moment decision making of a fight like that.

You were a hell of a lot more agile in Sekiro, so it didn't feel as garbage as it does here. Bosses in Sekiro just seemed better designed in general, but that probably can't be helped since they only need to take one moveset into account.

ER bosses all turn into the same nondescript tornado of endless 360 attack spam and fighting them in melee feels like ass since they just slapped Sekiro/Bloodborne bosses in a Dark Souls game and called it a day. But at the same time...that's ALL they're good at. Do literally anything other than a 1v1 slapfight (i.e. nuke them with spells/weapons arts) and they just roll over in 10 seconds. They just feel sloppy all around. And for some reason, FromSoft is stuck on the idea of having you fight a giant boss and either putting it in a tiny room or refusing to pull the camera back so you can see something other than it's ankles.

I haven't walked away from any bosses thinking, "that was cool" like I did in their other games (except DS2)

[CliffHanger2]

Yeah the avi on this game is mad slow. I mean he rebuffs his health like he's taking a saturday stroll in the park drinking a pepsi. How the **** is that tactical? Meanwhile the npcs move mega fast and spam attacks. I do feel cheated sometimes especially when an npc wins with a 1-2 shot after being beaten down to an empty health bar. I mean that's some bs that needs to be fixed. Still having fun but yeah this game has some big flaws.

[charliehustle415]

You were a hell of a lot more agile in Sekiro, so it didn't feel as garbage as it does here. Bosses in Sekiro just seemed better designed in general, but that probably can't be helped since they only need to take one moveset into account.

ER bosses all turn into the same nondescript tornado of endless 360 attack spam and fighting them in melee feels like ass since they just slapped Sekiro/Bloodborne bosses in a Dark Souls game and called it a day. But at the same time...that's ALL they're good at. Do literally anything other than a 1v1 slapfight (i.e. nuke them with spells/weapons arts) and they just roll over in 10 seconds. They just feel sloppy all around. And for some reason, FromSoft is stuck on the idea of having you fight a giant boss and either putting it in a tiny room or refusing to pull the camera back so you can see something other than it's ankles.

I haven't walked away from any bosses thinking, "that was cool" like I did in their other games (except DS2)

also the game isn't as big as people think it is, a lot of reused enemies.

I bet if they made this as DS4 it would be average length, but I ain't complaining because I like exploring and coming to enemies super over-leveled

[Username taken]

You were a hell of a lot more agile in Sekiro, so it didn't feel as garbage as it does here. Bosses in Sekiro just seemed better designed in general, but that probably can't be helped since they only need to take one moveset into account.

ER bosses all turn into the same nondescript tornado of endless 360 attack spam and fighting them in melee feels like ass since they just slapped Sekiro/Bloodborne bosses in a Dark Souls game and called it a day. But at the same time...that's ALL they're good at. Do literally anything other than a 1v1 slapfight (i.e. nuke them with spells/weapons arts) and they just roll over in 10 seconds. They just feel sloppy all around. And for some reason, FromSoft is stuck on the idea of having you fight a giant boss and either putting it in a tiny room or refusing to pull the camera back so you can see something other than it's ankles.

I haven't walked away from any bosses thinking, "that was cool" like I did in their other games (except DS2)

Exactly.

Bosses don’t really react well AT ALL to being spammed by magic..

Lots of times they just stand there and take it and die. It’s a very curious game design that’s really punishing on melee players (particularly with quality builds because some enemies don’t even bleed at all…sighs).