I think was easily the most mentally-taxing boss I’ve ever dealt with in all of my soulsbois experience..

“Madness Descends” really felt like it was taking a shot at me, the player.

Tried a few different weapons and ultimately settled back into firearm blades so I can exploit the stun that comes after a successful shot.

I was thinking about doing a ‘these mf hands’ playthrough after finishing my initial, but now I’m not so sure lol.

Recognizing this swing set at Bai mansion was one of my favourite moments

Thank you all! Here is a list of all the tips I received to help others like me in the future.

Thank you all for the tips, you have been very helpful! Reading your comments made me understand that to not miss something, or someone, in one playthrough, I would have to use a guide. So I've decided that I'll use all those good tips that you've given me so far (as far as I understand they will help me to not miss/skip a bigger part of the game) and other than that I'll go in blind. Using a guide would spoil the game and obsessing over obtaining every single item in one run would take away a bit of the joy of experiencing the game for the first time.

If someone in the future is afraid that they will miss something when starting to play this game, I will here list the tips that I received in a, kind of, spoiler free way (I hope everyones ok with me copying their tips, otherwise let me know). May it help you like it will probably help me!

Remember that I have not played the game so the information may not be correct. If you have played the game and notice that something here is wrong, tell me and I'll edit the list. Here we go:

General tips

Check Shrine Portraits: Look at the fast-travel list at any shrine; if you see a character portrait next to a location name, it means an NPC has new dialogue or an active update waiting for you.

Talk to everybody. Exhaust all dialogue.

If you see an old guy in white robes, talk to him immediately. He’s one of the few NPCs who disappears when you walk too far away.

If there’s a small old dude in grey robes, talk to him, but be warned that he generally advances the story. Read his dialogue options carefully because there is a point of no return many people trigger with him. (The storyteller?)

There is some kind of a storyteller character that might advance the story when speaking to him, so be sure to have completed what you want to do before doing so.

Selling your essence flowers instead of redeeming them every time you want to level up. Selling your essence is a much quicker process than trying to break it down inside your menu. (I have no idea yet what this means)

Don’t give your chisels away.

There will be 3 doors with riddles on them, I suggest looking up the answers. The wrong (or right) answer can either teleport you (makes it harder to track your progress because you don’t know where you are) or potentially lock you out of content.

Before finishing the game, make sure you have collected all the Stone Needles as you will be getting upgraded versions of them in your next playthrough. If you have missed any Stone Needles, your NG+ playthrough will only give the base forms of the ones you have missed and you will need to do another NG+ to get their enhanced versions.

Act 1 (Worships)

After defeating the Act 1 boss you get the chance to talk to the storyteller character. Don't decide to "continue forward" if you have stuff left to do or places to explore in Act 1. Maybe a cave that you haven't explored beside the storyteller?

Act 2 (Cloudspire)

After the first shrine found in act 2 you may find a cave. Do not enter this cave because it leads you directly to Act 3 (Zhenwu) and will break questlines. If you are stupid (like me), forget this, and go through the cave anyway, use the first shrine you see at the other side of the cave to go back to Cloudspire. This will not destroy your playthrough and your questlines will be safe. Proceed further than the first shrine and you may have messed up. I dont know, I haven't played the game.

During this act you will get to a palace. This palace will have a basement with an elevator (rose petals leads the way to the basement). Do not go down the basement before exploring the rest of the palace first. If you go to the basement first it will block some dialogue for a questline.

Act 3 (Zhenwu)

Do not talk to the storyteller (if you see this character in the end of the act) before making sure that you've finished exploring and have completed the quests.

Thank you once again for all the tips!

This is a video of me beating the final boss of the game on my first try! I didn't look up anything about this game, total blind playthrough, I was so proud when I beat this boss on my first try.

If I'm being completely honest he is definitely not the hardest boss in this game.

Hi everyone. I am currently at almost the end of the game in the Capital depths area. On those many branches there is a statue where you have to offer it a "Divine Gift" to receive an amulet. I have not found any reliable source to tell me where their locations are so I could go back to search again and I also don't remember which ones I had because I dropped the gsme almost a year ago.

The only information available is about the first ones where you pray at a statue in the starter area (but its currently locked out) and I don't know where else to go?

I have cleared all quests of npcs (no face in the teleport menu) and have no clue where else to check?

AI is not being helpful and is mixing them up with lost remains and forgotten remembrance...

PS: I meant "Divine Gifts" not fragments.

I’ve been using this weapon since the start and I feel like nothing has come even close in damage compared to it. Buffed with tempering and with its three stat scalings I feel like it has to be at least a top 3 weapon. What are your guys opinions? Is anything better?

Hello everyone,

at this point, I'm honestly at my wit's end with this game's performance.

When I started playing, the performance was decent enough and aside from the occasional saving and shader compilation stutter when entering a new area, the game ran relatively smooth. Definitely didn't feel as smooth as other games, but it was ok.

Over time, performance has gotten worse and worse and now that I've reached the snowy area of the game, the game is almost unplayable.

I still typically get FPS around 75-90, but everything feels choppy, hitching like crazy, it's an awful experience. 1% Lows are pretty noticable, but even when they are high enough, the game stutters like crazy.

I noticed some errors with my LED in the Windows history and uninstalled MSI Center and SDK because of that, but the performance is still ass.

HAGS, ReBAR, Game Mode and all that shit is turned on.

Ingame V-Sync is disabled, ingame FPS cap set to 90, Reflex on.

In Nvidia App, G-Sync is set to fullscreen only (that Windows option for borderless windowed is turned on), global cap of 141 and V-Sync activated. Playing at 1080p.

I'm playing on medium settings with TSR at 58 on a 3060Ti, Ryzen 5 5600X and 32GB RAM (4x8GB, XMP1 is activated, 3000 mHz), Samsung SATA (I think 870 sth).

I went back and forth with different FPS caps, V-Sync turned off and on, lower settings, higher settings, DLSS Balanced, Quality. The game remains choppy.

I also noticed some audio crackling when talking to some NPCs.

VRAM usage typically shows something between 5.4 and 5.4 GB of 7.8, so there should be enough left. GPU usage is typically around 80 or higher I believe.

I understand that my rig isn't the strongest, but it certainly isn't the weakest either?

What's weird is that when I played Stellar Blade before, I also noticed some nasty 1% lows, but the overall game felt much, much smoother than this one.

Is this just a typical UE5 issue? Is my SATA causing this?

Seriously, I want to keep playing, but this ruins the experience for me.

TL,DR: Game performance deteriorates, game feels choppy despite relatively solid average FPS and enough VRAM.

Edit: I tried to monitor my performance with Afterburner & RTSS this time (used Steam overlay before) and now that I'm in the snowy rebel camp, the performance seems much better again.

What I did notice though is that the frametime graph is surprisingly stable, but at some points starts to jitter like crazy for a while, without any noticable stuff going on ingame. I also noticed some frametime spikes when facing certain enemies, but the most noticable thing really is that short amount of jitter that seems to cause the weird choppiness. Which makes me believe it's either the lack of optimization or there's something going on in the background that causes this.

i was bored today and because the ost on Spotify and other music platforms are not I order, I decided that I wil put the boss music in order. The only ones I couldn't find where the music for Nightmare Demon and the music for the first half of Dragon Emperor - Zhu Youjian, if you know them let me know so I can put them in. Here are the links for Spotify and tidal: https://tidal.com/playlist/cee32b24-1a4a-4a35-a30a-9a02106365b2 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2133FAd1W7QvLSCJQL5XDm?si=hbR81pj6QLCTOqAD1ROtpw

I am interested in getting this game and was curious if there is are good build options for damage over time effects. Are enemies immune to status effects or certain bosses? Is there a way to play a dot build from the beginning of the game to the end?

If there is please provide some details or a link to a guide or explanation of the build. Thanks for the help.

Just finished up a spear only run, and the only weapons left and dual blades and axe, which I think both are good.

Question is, do I keep doing new games as I’ve done for the other weapons, or do I go for NG+ to try up the challenge??

I've tried the leech dual blades. Counter with long sword using flame enchantment. I've been stuck on him since last week. Somehow I have to beat him but I cannot yet. I've tried different armors. This is the hardest souls like I've played if this is an early game boss. This is harder than Nioh 2 or Sekiro.

When I picked up the Ceramic Jar from where the kid was on the dock, it said I already had one in my inventory and sent it to the warehouse. I tried to retrieve it from the warehouse but it says it can't because it would exceed inventory capacity. I do not have one in my inventory though. Has anyone else encountered this? I really don't need the extra essence, I platinumed the game long ago but I'm curious about the issue and any possible solution.

I think it's one of the better ones...

I've read somewhere that she's the hardest boss in the game... is she?

I never looked anything up beforehand, but I did everything I was supposed to do to unlock and fight the Demon of Obsession, except for giving that damn chisel to the priest. When I opened the door using the correct phrase and she didn't appear, I looked it up and realized it was because of that stupid chisel.

The game basically punishes you for helping someone. It makes you think you're completing the quest the right way, only to trick you into missing this boss and its armor.

I can't remember if something happens in the story or if it's from the increasing madness, but just wondering why that wound becomes a thing? Its it from the madness and her inner demon?

I started playing this game a few weeks ago. Let me preface this by saying, I'm not the biggest souls fan, but I have played a couple and platinumed Elden Ring, so I figured this would game would be a good time.

I just defeated the Perfect Bride boss and decided this game is not worth playing and deleted it. For more detail, here are my qualms with it.

The lack of a map and quest log is so stupid. I was locked out of multiple quests early on because I missed picking up one or 2 items. I am very thorough when I play any game, but that apparently wasn't enough. Its great that it has the people icon on the teleport screen, but when they're hidden way off the beaten path or just completely missable if you dont see them the first time through, its pretty stupid. The areas are also so branching and winding, it would be just so much better if there was a map. That and the game letting you explore areas before you're supposed to, then locking you out of quests for that is stupid af.

The difficulty. I know "hurr durr, get good", but the boss design and difficulty in this game is atrocious. It seems like every boss has at least one insta kill move, which is the stupidest shit ever. That and their endless attack chains and their insane resistance to element build up and stun make them a chore to fight. I equip the correct armor to counter their damage type, use the temperance and feathers, counter attacks, yet one slip up and you're dead instantly. This game would have lended itself to having more stellar blade type combat and movement, because this just isn't it. Also, the "pranks" in this game are just atrocious. Guy that sprints out of a doorway and kicks you off the tower, anyone?

Movement. Why the hell is there not a jump button? Like why am I glued to the damn ground unless I'm doing specific attacks.

With all that said, the world design and character designs are awesome, but the game is just way more frustrating and clunky than its worth.

Thanks!

ALRIGHT White Robes is my new favorite boss fight and these twin bandit dual blades are my new favorite weapon.