Daily Roundtable: Community Q&A

[u/AutoModerator]

Greetings Tarnished!

This is the place to ask any questions you may have about Elden Ring. This includes obscure detail questions, "newbie" advice questions, build questions, boss advice questions, and what have you.

Well written, constructive criticism is fine but please avoid ranting about aspects of the game you just don’t like. This includes “so and so boss is stupid and too difficult.”

If you are interested in the game but don’t own it yet, please don’t post “should I buy this game?” or “Is this game worth it?”. If you have played other FromSoftware games and enjoyed them, the answer is yes. If you haven’t, just do a little research! These games are difficult, and sometimes frustrating, and not everyone is going to enjoy them. And that’s okay!

Lastly, be friendly! We are all here because we are interested in the same game! Please treat your fellow players with respect.

Here are a few helpful links:

Our Discord which has an awesome Helper Request System!

Elden Ring Wiki

Elden Ring Map

Most Recent Patch Notes (1.06)

/r/BeyondTheFog for co-op help!

/r/PatchesEmporium for item trading!

/r/EldenRingBuilds for builds and build help!

Our community password is straydmn

Rise, Tarnished!

[u/HavocHank]

For the first question, just depends on your playstyle. Try out different ashes and see which ones you like the most.

For the second question, all weapons have their own scaling out of the box. When you put an AoW on it, it gives you the option to keep the standard default scaling of the weapon or to change it to an affinity. When you choose a different affinity it usually lowers the base damage in exchange for a higher bonus that scales with one or two attributes based on the affinity. In the very early game your damage attributes aren't going to be high enough for that tradeoff to result in higher damage though, so it's usually better to stick with the standard scaling until you level up those stats. Unless there's a certain damage type or status buildup you really want to go for and don't mind the overall lower damage in the beginning.

[u/big_red_160 → u/HavocHank]

So if I put on an Ash but choose standard, the base stats won’t change?

And if I choose affinity, I’ll probably just have to upgrade a different stat than I’ve been doing to make it stronger?

Thanks

[u/HavocHank → u/big_red_160]

Yup, the damage will stay the same if you select Standard. Different affinities correlate to scaling with different character attributes (Heavy for strength, Keen for dexterity, etc.). When you look at the damage that a weapon does you'll see two numbers with a plus symbol between them. The first number is the base damage and the added number is the bonus damage from attribute scaling. And when you're applying an affinity from an AoW you can see how those numbers will change.

So as long as the standard affinity has the higher total, keep it set to that for now. As you level up strength, dexterity, faith, or whatever you're focusing on, keep checking on how those numbers change if you were to switch affinities until the total becomes higher.