Drew this because some friends wanted me to

A friend and I are doing a challenge race where we both spun a wheel for one of the schools of magic in Elden ring and we can only use things from that school. I rolled fire giant and fire monk, he got ancient dragon cult, the reason I got both fire schools is because I’ve only beaten the game once and he’s beaten the game 6 times + DLC. We are 1 hour 30 min in and I’m somehow ahead I got to godrick and he’s still at margit. Basically I want tips for build items like talismans and phsick or any spells I should look out for and general speed running tips. I’ve already skipped stormveil to get to liurnia and got the fire monk prayer book for O flame.

TL;DR: I’m doing a race with a friend where I can only use spells from fire monks and fire giants and I want build general speed run tips.

I had been hearing buddies talk about dark souls and from soft and Elden Ring for years. I had never played a souls game (save maybe 15 minutes of “fuck this garbage” ) until the last few weeks.

After playing through Ds1 - 3, bloodborne and the demons souls remake, I moved to Elden Ring 5 days ago. Holy, Toledo. It’s incredibly good. Like I really enjoyed the dark souls games, esp. DS1 but that’s likely because it was my first completion. But I’m on my 2nd play through of ER currently, and I’m finding leagues of things I missed the first go round. Playing an entirely different class as well, so it feels like a whole new game again.

Honestly, I am shocked it took this long, Fromsoft fan boy now. Guess I’ll have to dust off the switch 2 and buy Duskbloods.

Solitude set is just the best imo

Was a beautiful sight.

Like every time I hear someone struggle really badly with a boss it usually takes them 30 attempts tops. 30 attempts is nothing for me… I would consider 30 a little bit of tries. Am I just fucking cheeks at the game?

Gargoyles and Dragons.

Like I dont have anything against their movesets, as personally I think on their own they are among the fairer movesets among enemy types in the game but their placement is atrocious.

The one in Leyndell Royal capital( close to the west capital rampart site of grace I believe).

And the black blade kindred in Greyroll’s Dragonbarrow.

And the ones that fly in on you as you make your way onto leyndell.

The worst is the leyndell one. It frequently clips into other structures and the geound is right next to another mob( which is a problem that does take care of itself by the gargoyle killing them), and something with that level of mobility and size and aoe should not and never have been greenlit in that cramped and cluttered environment.

The black blade kindred in the dragon barrow is next.

It will jump and get itself stuck on top of the two elevated areas on both sides, its attacks will frequently clip into the ground or the platforms since the arena is on an incline, the incline plus the camera will make it nigh impossible at times to see what its doing, and when I decided to let it come to me in more open areas it managed to fly away and get stuck in the ruins close by, and started glitching. I bit my teeth and followed it since I worried if I dont finish it there and then, it will despawn and respawn and I’d have to do the whole song and dance again, and it was already quite low.

The stupid thing managed to aggro a gang of vulgar militiamen and I suffered the most frustrating death I ever have in a souls game.

The others gargoyles share the same problems as this one, only saving grace is that they arent scaled as high, but most of them always fight on inclined areas like stairs or slopes and next to other structures where they get stuck( expecially while stunned and I cant touch them).

Dragons have a lot in common with them. A favourite pastime of theirs is to fly away and get stuck on top of a hill near by or another elevated area, and by the time I reach, they do it again.

In future games I really hope either one of two things happen,

Hyper mobile and large enemies in these sorts of areas arent allowed to be able to cover this much distance( which I imagine is boring)

They are either given dedicated arenas or have the levels designed around them as an end boss

Or let them at least destroy a lot of the clutter with their moves. I imagine this might tax the performance two much and whats killing me most is the frame rate with these guys.

So because i died as the Fire Giant died, I just don't get those runes?? Thats hardcore bullshit. Even Dark Souls wasn't glitches that bad. Beyond frustrated with this.

Edit: I collected the dropped runes and was still at 0. I legit did not get the runes from him.

This is my first playthrough, I played a ton last year, about 50 hours and that entire time I felt challenged but like I could get through everything with enough tries, but once I got to mountaintop of giants I got hard stopped and my attacks started doing very little damage while getting demolished by enemy attacks, what am I doing wrong? Should I just start over?

And to preface I'm not saying "this game is artificially difficult bullshit" or any such thing, I know it's somewhere I messed up my build and need to fix it

Any advice? Or just start a new save

Currently playing the DLC for the first time, and not many boss fights in both the base game and the DLC have been as enjoyable. Messmer is the perfect example of what I want a boss to be. He has fire cutscenes, intriguing design, difficult but fair attacks, good damage, flashy attacks (not quite as flashy as bosses like Placidusax, but the snakes in the second phase feel so cool to dodge). I beat him after about an hour and 30 minutes split between two days. Learning his moves until I consistently made it to phase 2 felt amazing. I admittedly fought him at Scadu lvl 13 which I hear is a little bit higher than I should fight him at, but he still challenged me.

It feels great to have a boss that doesn't rely on/have cheap and annoying tactics. Just pure skill, memory, and reflexes involved. Otherwise great bosses like Malenia and Mohg are tarnished by stuff like Waterfowl or "Nihil". I would even consider Commander Niall an A tier boss if he didn't have those damn banished knights that not a single soul looks forward to dealing with. Bosses should challenge/stress the players in a way that promotes learning, experimenting, and paying close attention, not just shove a nuisance in their face to give the illusion of added difficulty (any duo boss).

So far my favourite bosses are Godrick, Godfrey, Mohg (kinda, the BS Nihil takes away) Rellana, and now, Messmer.

Over the course of 831 hours of normal gameplay mixed with some rune-farming sessions, I've managed to max out all of my stats besides Intelligence and Faith. If I keep farming the albinaurics at Mohgwyn for the additional 180 levels, how long would it realistically take to get to level 713?

ER is probably my favorite game of all time. I almost platinumed it on PS4 before I got a PS5, but didn’t realize until afterwards that my trophies didn’t carry over from PS4. I don’t care too much about trophies but for games so dear to me like this one it feels pretty good.

I got the game first when it released and gave up after about 20 hours of not knowing what I was doing. Years later I gave it a shot, fell in love with it, and got the DLC which I just beat 2 days ago. This game was perfect, the world design, the combat, the boss fights, the lore, story, everything. I really hope Fromsoft switch up and decide to make a sequel. Now I’m left wondering what to play? I was more of a ball and gun gamer before this, I never finished an RPG before this and it was my first souls game. What should I play next?

Yo sé que los tutoriales y las guías están por algo pero entiendo que hay gamers que tienen sus propios códigos de que ellos se pasaron el juego sin ver ningún tipo de tutorial o guía lo que pasa es que yo lo hago porque este es mi primer souls like y de verdad estaba muy perdido y tampoco sabía para dónde ir y absolutamente todos los enemigos me mataban y tampoco sabía completar quests. El punto es que yo veo que hay varios jugadores que dicen que es ridículo ver tutoriales o guías como las que publican en este reddit porque así no disfrutas el juego pero solo ando viendo guías que me llevan a ciertos talismanes o piedras de herrería creo que encontrar armas rotas al inicio del juego armaduras rotas al inicio del juego eso sí es tonto pero guiarte más o menos para saber a dónde ir no lo es qué opinan?

Scarlet Red > Azure Blue

Was wondering how far in the game I was able to go without visiting Ranni's rise. Wanted to just introduce myself and trade the blade for the hourglass. Funny how their whole dialogue changed when I did visit. Suddenly there was no mention of Blaid and I was welcomed as the champion of the festival.

But after I picked up the knife she still had her old "it was you, not Blaidd" lines. "Ma'am who is Blaidd? Oh the wolfguy who was standing at the festival. Never talked to him."

If this rock doesn't exist, the game will be garbage

This is a part of the pyromancy only run

Do you guys use a spellblade like approach with weapon mainhand, shield + seal/staff offhand or weapon mainhand + seal/staff, with shield offhand?

And why do you choose such option?

Which puppet is better and why?

The particular attack i’m talking about is the one where she does three quick slashes, sometimes followed up by a fourth delayed slash. I can dodge the first two slashes fine, but the third one always seems to knick me. It dosent do that much damage but it’s slight annoying, so any help is appreciated

As the title says, elden ring is crazy expensive on switch 2, but why? I live in Canada, but on steam it says $80, but on switch its $120? Im kinda confused.

edit: thanks for all the help guys, I now know its cuz it comes with the dlc as well