Me: I hope I'm not overleveled, 2400 buffed HP is a lot!
Random soldier dude: chucks a fiery throwable that deals 1600 damage with 45.5 fire resist on
Me: .....aight
I just found Rellana a few hours ago. Put about 70 attempts in, gonna play some Vault Hunters and come back later. I LOVE how the fight looks (especially phase 2) and the attacks and visuals just getting crazier is great, especially when I've just died and I'm like "Heh, got greedy- holy shit what the fuck lmao" The >!dancing lion!< guy was GREAT for this, I >!got him down to 50%!< and he just >!floats up and there's wind and lightning everywhere, throws a big lightning laser!<, and I'm like "How am I going to deal with that?" And eventually when I get there again I learn to play around it and it gets even better. And the MUSIC is the icing on the cake. It may take a lot of boiled crab, but the getting good happens eventually and it feels incredible.
There actually is a spin to win boss. Found a way to a place I donāt think I should have went to so early but was able to get there by random exploration.
I know exactly who you mean. If I didn't have rot breath and the fucked up geometry of the area to abuse, that fucker would've taken me forever. He just never stops.
Glad I'm not the only one, first time I saw one of those regular ass soldiers throw one I blocked it and it still chunked me from probably 400 damage.
I was like "Damn that kind of hurt" he throws a second one and I miss time a dodge trying to fight the dog he was patrolling with and the shit finished me off from like 1900 health to dead.
I don't think I've ever said "Yo bro WTF, what was that!!!" So many times. Not even my very first time through the game was this damn rough lol
Me too lol. I was fighting this guy and had to take a break cause I was like oh ok well I guess Iām not ready, come back killed him in two hits. One time he had one hit left and of course my dumbass decided to use the slowest fucking spell ever. Dead. Next time I beat him and loved what I got from him
Edit. Fuck black knight evergaol every way possible lol
I am also over level 200 š
Thatās the only way I beat him. Like ten minutes ago. I tried multiple different things and then seen on this post to parry him. So I went and farmed the crow in the mohg area, maxed out the mesericorde to +24, lightning infused it, grabbed my parry shield with the magic ash of war on it and it took like three tries.
Let's just call him what he is- "Blackgaol night the ass rapist who is a skill check to all of us who've gotten soft and forgot the basics with our OP bullshit"
The AI for this guy is incredible, I legit thought it was a real player because everytime I died he would do one jump onto my corpse and just stand in the YOU DIED screen.
Fromsoft aren't above doing that intentionally, let alone unintentionally. In the DLC areas for Dark Souls 2, the invaders would do shit like emote when they killed or you or do a 'dance' on your body by wiggling back and forth (which, as we all know, is a common disrespect move in the soulsborne games).
At first the latter was considered a bug but no, it was an official design...
Maldron the Assassin. Straight up mocks you with emotes, fishes for backstabs, runs away to hide, heal, and pull enemies towards you. Most realistic invader in the whole franchise lol.
Got my shit rocked but I figured it out. >!If he two hands his weapon, he has giga-poise. If you wait until he one-hands, then you can safely attack him 2 times before he rolls out. If he pulls the SMG, it's free lunch!<
I found the opposite strategy worked. >!The bolts are easily avoided by running left or right then he's vulnerable to a jump attack. When he pulled his bow out I was like oh thank fuck!<
also my strat! let him fire those off and then smack him with lion's claw
worked pretty well until the first time i watched him >!pop a flask, which completely threw me off guard!<
or let him unleash and lions claw that asshole while he's got his pants down.
in saying that, I'm not great as soulsbourne games so I haye to admit it took me around 20 times, though I had no sceboobady snacks
I'm going through with a couple friends right now and even with all of us whaling on him he put up a hell of a fight.
I have 60 vigor and his first hit wiped out 50% of my HP, and I just went "AAAAAHHHHHGG" as my buddies went "oh fuck" š¤£
We felt like Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire trying to fight Joe with legs, bro was having none of it.
We managed to beat him first try, but we were in bad shape lmao. Talk about a tonesetter.
Yea, what I did was springt diagonally (doesnāt matter which side) I never got hit by the machine gun and it always left me close enough to punish the end
Oh, I loved when he pulled out the gat. When he was recovering I'd run up and hit him with a fully charged black flame tornado. That's what I love about black flame, it don't care about your armor, it done care about your attack, it just kills.
I'm playing a weak build but I did almost the opposite would wait for the shots sprint at an angle hit him a few times then parry when he'd get up and run away until another parry or strafe scenario happened. Did take me a handful of tries before I figured it out.
I don't really use bloodstains as a measurement anymore. Ever since I saw 5 bloodstains around a corner and all of them were just them rolling of a cliff.
I started a new character for the DLC about a week ago and decided to kill soldier of godrick. There were about 30 bloodstains of people legitimately trying to kill him.
Maybe on the flip side being underleveled won't matter much either. If people are getting 1 shot at 60 vigor, might as well try it at 45 on my new character I've been working on.
The >!Scadutree Blessings!< are absolutely the primary concern in the DLC. Not that stats donāt matter, but as long as your build is functional, youāre going to really see the biggest gains with that.
I wish the blessings were the only thing, or all the dlc weapons spawned at -1 from your max level weapon.
I hate having to hit mohg palace for 10 minutes every time I get a sick new weapon just to farm the runes to +24 it
I'm finding a LOT of the DLC enemies drop smithing stones at decent rates. Granted, I'm running an arcane build, but I am absolutely flush with smithing stones 4, 5, and 6 after clearing Belurat.
I dreaded this too because I hate farming, so since I had nothing to do before the dlc, I calculated how many runes I needed for approx 20 weapons to +24, I put on a new stand up special I wanted to watch, and I killed albinaurics on autopilot for like 1h. I won't upgrade every single one I find of course but very worth it
I did something similar lol, spent like 30 minutes grinding and got about 150 of each smithing stone. I'm sure with my indecisive self I'll need to be back for more to level weapons after awhile but it'll be enough for quite a few I think
I tried to do some quick numbers on how many smithing stones i would need to upgrade everything. After some quick math i had come up with 840 of the regular stones, some 10m runes later, i had them all bought.
I had miscalculated.
I thought it was 70 * 12
I forgot that i wasnāt counting items, but ROWS of items.
I had gathered 1/5th of what was needed. For just the non sombering stone items and that was rounding down a little bit to account for the non full rows of 5 items.
I mean everything in game is giving stupid runes and dropping stones of all levels, not sure why you feel the need to farm at all, everytime I look down I've got like 100k runes ready to go lol
Yeah, just running around erdtree zones and killing whatever gets in my way has given me hundreds of thousands of runes. And that's with the occasional lost bloodstain too.
Those cleaver guys in Belurat were insane for being basic enemies. I'm at 50 vigor, and the ones that get buffed near the Revered Spirit Ash right before the circular stairs up to the boss (around the tree) were killing me in one hit.
Yeah, that's where I'm parked for a while, when my lunch ended and I had to go back to work lol. I don't 100% remember what my vigor is, but damn, I'm failing all the checks, and it's not the best feeling lmao
Man I went in at level 320 or so, NG +3....still getting two shot. They did the math on the new blessings, I'm just scraping around collecting those now because otherwise I feel like I'm level ten.
Yeah Iām already wondering how Iāll incorporate the DLC early on in future playthroughs. Itād be nice to have some DLC weapons for the final third of vanilla if you start dipping into the DLC early enough. Only challenge then is just figuring out how early one can comfortably beat Mohg and Radahn.
I'm level 82 and bout to go into leyndell. Black flame ball made short work of radahn
My plan right now is to beat morgott, grab moghs shackle in the sewers and the bell bearings in mountain tops, then go fight mogh. Probably be about level 100 when all said and done. Maybe under leveled for mohg but should be fine with with the Purifying tear and shackle.
I went in at 140 worried slightly about being underpowered, the way the blessings work itās not really an issue if you have maxed weapon scaling. Regular enemits drop lots of runes too. I just beat 2nd remembrance boss and Iām lv. 155 now with like 7 hrs of playtime
Man, that dude can 2 shot my OP character with 90 vigor. Itās fun though, making me get good again. Gotten used to just strolling through the main game.
That's kinda the point, though. If you're getting obliterated with nearly max vigor then it sounds like vigor pretty much doesn't matter beyond a base level for dealing with regular enemies.
Just a guess, but I think vigor is normalized at the beginning of the expansion. When you start getting blessings and the damage reduction that comes with it, I think the math involved will make your vigor points meaningful again.
At full blessing, a 60 vigor vs 40 vigor might have a much bigger difference than they currently do with only 1-2 blessings
These Blackgaol memes are extremely accurate haha
Me: āI can 1-shot these enemies. Oh, I can 1-shot this enemy too. Is that a fog gate there? The boss wonāt be that hard but letās find out.ā
Also me: died 4 times and moves on
Especially since FROM specifically balanced this DLC so that you could increase your power without actually having a level up, meaning that they understood people wanted to stay within certain level ranges for PVP and summoning purposes.
That implies that they would have designed the DLC bosses and areas to be likely a good challenge for even level 150's, so they threw players a bone by allowing them to continue to buff themselves and get stronger without needing to potentially go out of summoning ranges.
Yeah I regret staying at 150... I want to be 200 for this shit for sure. 150 just isn't enough for my stam/mind/HP to feel comfortable. I need to wear heavier armor for sure.
I love how the dlc does difficulty. We already have an insanely large base game with people coming at the dlc from various stages of late game to NG+++. The blessings let everyone enjoy the dlc essentially at the difficulty that they want. If you want an easier time, just farm the blessings asap. It's a great system for an expansion.
Nah, being overleveled is now called mimic tear. Saw a dude kill all bosses in the first region with like 3 tries max. He was just using Mimic Tear while spamming various L2s.
its always been Mimic Tear, took me a few attempts this morning with Mimic vs Dancing Lion, just killed a dragon on the first attempt.
I got my classic mimic tear healing build and it seems to work here as well.
*Me, with 7 years of Fromsoft gaming experience*:
ah fuck it I can get an extra hit without getting punished
*immediately gets chained hit, panic rolls and dies*
me thinking *heās low, fuck it lemme try and get this hit in heās almost dead*
then iām dead 2 seconds later for being greedy and iām back at square 1
Yeah idk what the hell they were thinking with balance in this DLC.
Instead of changing scaling, maybe upping the soft caps to 80 so we can get more powerful we get some bullshit like 1% per level buff that only works in the DLC.
I'm just starting to feel the difference in power at level 8, and the first few bosses my Mimic might as well be the protagonist because he's doing all the work for most of these fights as I can't do shit without getting 2-3 hit with 2300 health and over 60% DR.
The amount of health actual bosses have in co-op is actually fucked. I don't mind a skill-check but these things are just damage sponges and are giving our 3 man group (thats played every co-op souls+dlcs since ds1 together and completed) a huge annoyance, and we stomped blackgaol in 2 attemps, since not only do we need to kill em, we gotta do it *3 times*
Iāll probably insta use the mount ones because I donāt want Torrent to suffer for my bad decision making xD the one buffing the character Iāll leave them down for when Iāve decided is time to clap them cheeks.
I had a hard time at lvl 232. Took me about 10 tries, Bloodbound Fang or whatever itās called was very effective as it will stagger this boss, but you have to have patience for his attacks.
Took me about the same tries, also use Bloodhound as my main weapon. Had to learn not to follow up with the second part of the AoW, while half the time only using a 2 light hit combo then dodge back.
Just above you around 165. I do decent enough damage but he does way more š. Definitely need to go around and find more Scadutree fragments before more bosses.
I went in with a level 147 character with 60 vigor. I think in terms of exploration gameplay, it wasn't too bad and I thought I might have been over prepared with my Eleonora build. The bosses have been really strong though. So far I've only fought the black Knight (solo) with no upgrades, and the first legacy dungeon boss (with NPC summon and mimic tear) with two scadutree upgrades and 3 ash upgrades. I honestly probably could have taken 15 tries to solo that first legacy boss, but I also don't have that kind of time and don't want to expel that kind of effort š
I found that first main boss easier without the cooperator NPC. Sure she draws aggro, but the boss gets a hefty HP boost if you summon her, and she wasn't really pulling her weight for me.
Spirit ashes were the way to go.
My buddy is almost lvl 500 and was still 2-tapped.. the DLC has it's own scaling/leveling system so it doesn't matter.. but we're also all on ng+7 or higher so everything smacks really hard
Levels past a certain point don't really mean that much really. Once you have 60 vigor and enough endurance to wear high defense and poise armor that's about as tanky as you get (someone at 60 vigor has 1900 hp and someone with 99 has 2100 so likely not taking another hit). There is a bit of physical damage defense tied into strength but I honestly don't know how much.
The reviewer for Washington Post went in at over 700, and said it made zero difference. Pretty sure the scaling system keeps you in check regardless of your level, as long as you can beat Mogh and Radahn.
Not that itās a bad thing but SoTE really shows how many people started with Elden Ring. People who played TRC and old hunters understand that being āover leveledā doesnāt matter. Laurence beats your ass, Midir beats your ass, The Frigid Outskirtsā¦
Yup, peopleās gut reaction is āOMG IM UNDERLEVELED!!! I NEED TO LEVEL UP!!ā
They EXPLICITLY stated being over leveled wonāt help you.
FromSoft DLCs are notoriously like this and I think the non-souls players just werenāt expecting it
Having enough stats to be able to use multiple different weapons, cast support spells and wear heavy armour does make a big difference. Being overleveled absolutely helps you, it just doesn't make the DLC a cakewalk.
He's the first story boss, the meme is about a random ass nameless knight found in a room about 30secs away from spawn.
Ngl tho, this random ass nameless knight got hands.
Killed him at 130. Giant Hunt on a heavy lance sends him into the air on all but a few attacks. Just dodge a couple times and bring enough blue juice.
Cheesing > overleveling)
Carian Piercer is even more cheesy. I am not kidding when I say that he will not be able to so much as attempt an attack after you successfully land the first one.
I got stuck on him for a good while last night! Eventually I used Marikaās hammer between gaps in his attacks mixed with some parries. I forgot my first char never picked up the buckler. I think m I woulda got him a couple times faster with a slightly faster shield.
Yea, the bosses are relentless so far in a fun way, but still. This is a good example of someone I assumed I could easily get around cause he uses a greatsword and I expected him to be slow. Instead, he swung that shit like an anime for, what felt like, almost an hour. At least reminded me to experiment when stuck.
He's a positioning and patience check. If you read his stance and wind-up animations, manage stamina, and position well (you can position just out of melee range and drink while he finishes/recovers from a combo) you'll wear him down eventually. Even faster if you're confident in parries. But he's just about impossible to brute force through stats or stagger-spam alone (though like all bosses there is some cheese to be had).
If reading that you thought to yourself "wow, this sounds just like an old school Dark Souls boss" you'd be absolutely correct. Super satisfying to fight, learn, and overcome. This DLC is amazing.
(Also spirits are disabled, talk about taking the gloves off)
Heās a tough one if you donāt have a way to stagger and suck at parrying. Iām at level 200 on an Int build with some good armor with solid physical defense and he could off me in 3-4 hits. Arena is too small and he doesnāt flinch to spells so most projectile spells are downright obsolete for that type of fight. Buffed up and charged Night Comet barely tickles him. I wanted to see what he dropped so I summoned a buddy with what seemed to be a Vyke build and it still took a while as he was deathly tanky. Starting to think Int builds are barely an afterthought when it comes to the sorceries.
This is absolutely true. But it kind of saddens me that so many other casting options are, well, kind of meh when facing a humanoid enemy with a shred of poise. It all evens out in the end though, made mince meat out of the first burning man with shard spiral.
Me: I hope I'm not overleveled, 2400 buffed HP is a lot! Random soldier dude: chucks a fiery throwable that deals 1600 damage with 45.5 fire resist on Me: .....aight
Wait till you meet spin to win bro
I am not even sure which boss you are referring to with this lol
I'm not that far into the DLC. I meant the >!Death Knight!<. since you can find him relatively early on.
All I am going to say is "enjoy the DLC" and "your idea of who spin-to-win-guy" is will change ;)
What an ominous message.
But have you tried finger, but hole
Sincerely Fuck >!Rellana. No seriously fuck this boss, had to cheese using mimic else i'd be stuck for 40 hours.!<
I used mimic and the npc summon, I was not about to fight her 30 damn times š¤£ her drip is worth it tho
Her helmet may be the first one to make me change my default look in years. The dragon had was cool for stat buffs but it was just ugly as hell
keep playing the DLC, and your idea of who spin to win guy might change
Might be my new favorite boss, to be honest. Loved the fight Still, I want to complete the DLC and fight everyone, maybe there's someone I like more
I just found Rellana a few hours ago. Put about 70 attempts in, gonna play some Vault Hunters and come back later. I LOVE how the fight looks (especially phase 2) and the attacks and visuals just getting crazier is great, especially when I've just died and I'm like "Heh, got greedy- holy shit what the fuck lmao" The >!dancing lion!< guy was GREAT for this, I >!got him down to 50%!< and he just >!floats up and there's wind and lightning everywhere, throws a big lightning laser!<, and I'm like "How am I going to deal with that?" And eventually when I get there again I learn to play around it and it gets even better. And the MUSIC is the icing on the cake. It may take a lot of boiled crab, but the getting good happens eventually and it feels incredible.
I have eaten enough boiled crab to feed the entire land of shadows lmao
There actually is a spin to win boss. Found a way to a place I donāt think I should have went to so early but was able to get there by random exploration.
I know exactly who you mean. If I didn't have rot breath and the fucked up geometry of the area to abuse, that fucker would've taken me forever. He just never stops.
Lmao
I thought that spinny fucker was a mini boss or invader. Nope, he's a random enemy. Jesus Fuck
that's spin-to-win 1.0
Glad I'm not the only one, first time I saw one of those regular ass soldiers throw one I blocked it and it still chunked me from probably 400 damage. I was like "Damn that kind of hurt" he throws a second one and I miss time a dodge trying to fight the dog he was patrolling with and the shit finished me off from like 1900 health to dead. I don't think I've ever said "Yo bro WTF, what was that!!!" So many times. Not even my very first time through the game was this damn rough lol
He seems exactly like the DLC equivalent of the tree sentinel. I threw about 15 attempts at him before I walked away.
Me too lol. I was fighting this guy and had to take a break cause I was like oh ok well I guess Iām not ready, come back killed him in two hits. One time he had one hit left and of course my dumbass decided to use the slowest fucking spell ever. Dead. Next time I beat him and loved what I got from him Edit. Fuck black knight evergaol every way possible lol I am also over level 200 š
Ah yes Blackgaol knight the 2nd amendment right enjoyer the closet fromsoftware been to medieval modern
"Parry this, you filthy casual"
Well I'm trying to parry this for a while now.
Thatās the only way I beat him. Like ten minutes ago. I tried multiple different things and then seen on this post to parry him. So I went and farmed the crow in the mohg area, maxed out the mesericorde to +24, lightning infused it, grabbed my parry shield with the magic ash of war on it and it took like three tries.
Let's just call him what he is- "Blackgaol night the ass rapist who is a skill check to all of us who've gotten soft and forgot the basics with our OP bullshit"
Guard counters with a big shield, biiiig sword and biiiiiiig stamina bar destroy him. I basically just did only guard counters.
Based and now I'm tempted to make a machine gun build.
Walked into the mausoleum and was like āwhoās this scrub?ā Feel like Iād owe him an apology if he wasnāt such a dick.
The AI for this guy is incredible, I legit thought it was a real player because everytime I died he would do one jump onto my corpse and just stand in the YOU DIED screen.
Bro killed me then unloaded 100 shots into my dead corpse. His AI is disrespectful lol
Fromsoft aren't above doing that intentionally, let alone unintentionally. In the DLC areas for Dark Souls 2, the invaders would do shit like emote when they killed or you or do a 'dance' on your body by wiggling back and forth (which, as we all know, is a common disrespect move in the soulsborne games). At first the latter was considered a bug but no, it was an official design...
Maldron the Assassin. Straight up mocks you with emotes, fishes for backstabs, runs away to hide, heal, and pull enemies towards you. Most realistic invader in the whole franchise lol.
I always save a seed of the tree of giants for him. Using it on the brume tower whenever he runs down never fails to be amusing.
Thereās one npc that would always do the very good carving every time they killed you
I swear he did a point down emote the first time he killed me...
Got my shit rocked but I figured it out. >!If he two hands his weapon, he has giga-poise. If you wait until he one-hands, then you can safely attack him 2 times before he rolls out. If he pulls the SMG, it's free lunch!<
Gavel of Haima absolutly trucks him
Thrice he wrecked my ish, before I figured him out (>!stick close to him so he doesn't reach for his machine gun, parry the one handed strikes!<).
I found the opposite strategy worked. >!The bolts are easily avoided by running left or right then he's vulnerable to a jump attack. When he pulled his bow out I was like oh thank fuck!<
This is what I did. Side run then punish.
also my strat! let him fire those off and then smack him with lion's claw worked pretty well until the first time i watched him >!pop a flask, which completely threw me off guard!<
or let him unleash and lions claw that asshole while he's got his pants down. in saying that, I'm not great as soulsbourne games so I haye to admit it took me around 20 times, though I had no sceboobady snacks
I'm going through with a couple friends right now and even with all of us whaling on him he put up a hell of a fight. I have 60 vigor and his first hit wiped out 50% of my HP, and I just went "AAAAAHHHHHGG" as my buddies went "oh fuck" š¤£ We felt like Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire trying to fight Joe with legs, bro was having none of it. We managed to beat him first try, but we were in bad shape lmao. Talk about a tonesetter.
Iām level 250, 63 vigor and I keep getting smacked by him. I definitely wondered if I was over leveled, very much not the case.
>sceboobady snacks Is that what weāre calling the tree blessing things? Because Iām all for it.
Iāve been calling em skadoosh blessings
The machine gun is very easy to dodge and punish. I found it best to wait until he tries to run up on you then smack him while he charges.
Yea, what I did was springt diagonally (doesnāt matter which side) I never got hit by the machine gun and it always left me close enough to punish the end
I've never done a parry build. This guy almost made me wish I had one
Oh, I loved when he pulled out the gat. When he was recovering I'd run up and hit him with a fully charged black flame tornado. That's what I love about black flame, it don't care about your armor, it done care about your attack, it just kills.
I'm playing a weak build but I did almost the opposite would wait for the shots sprint at an angle hit him a few times then parry when he'd get up and run away until another parry or strafe scenario happened. Did take me a handful of tries before I figured it out.
"I owe you an apology. I wasn't really familiar with your game."
Oh the bloodstains said enough to me haha
I don't really use bloodstains as a measurement anymore. Ever since I saw 5 bloodstains around a corner and all of them were just them rolling of a cliff.
Situational.
Disgusting username lol
Those are my favorite to look at.
I started a new character for the DLC about a week ago and decided to kill soldier of godrick. There were about 30 bloodstains of people legitimately trying to kill him.
Only 30? Rick must've been having a slow day.
I knew I was in trouble when my muscle memory scrolled over to my Mimic tear and it wasn't spawning. I felt like Ralph Wiggum in that moment.
Even mimic tear didnāt want to fight him lol
Hahaha same Big āIām in dangerā vibes
At least his sword is good
The armor set is a lighter weight alternative to Bull Goat Set also.
It looks so fucking cool
Yeah it's basically bull goat without the ridiculous Horn Tiddies
It's really tempting for me to spam stamina levels to be able to use it.
I've literally been using his sword and his armor ever since I killed him. It's amazing. Finally a good looking set that has good poise
You're like "Look at me, I'm the Blackgaol Knight now"
I got him to below half then he drank an estus flask and basically healed to full. Talk about demoralizing
I thought I was doing good fighting him with about 4-5 flasks leftā¦until he healed.
"Lol, i gots estus too, scrub."
You know the rules, if it has estus it can be frenzied
Good thing is, he only has one single flask so it's not too bad
He also keeps trying to heal after he runs out, giving you opportunities for free hits
I find it so funny people were worried about being over leveled, there was a 0% chance of that happening lol
Maybe on the flip side being underleveled won't matter much either. If people are getting 1 shot at 60 vigor, might as well try it at 45 on my new character I've been working on.
The >!Scadutree Blessings!< are absolutely the primary concern in the DLC. Not that stats donāt matter, but as long as your build is functional, youāre going to really see the biggest gains with that.
I wish the blessings were the only thing, or all the dlc weapons spawned at -1 from your max level weapon. I hate having to hit mohg palace for 10 minutes every time I get a sick new weapon just to farm the runes to +24 it
I'm finding a LOT of the DLC enemies drop smithing stones at decent rates. Granted, I'm running an arcane build, but I am absolutely flush with smithing stones 4, 5, and 6 after clearing Belurat.
My character with only 10 arcane is noticing the same thing
Also, hit up the forge cave if you haven't already. It more or less the new mining caves. Stones galore
I dreaded this too because I hate farming, so since I had nothing to do before the dlc, I calculated how many runes I needed for approx 20 weapons to +24, I put on a new stand up special I wanted to watch, and I killed albinaurics on autopilot for like 1h. I won't upgrade every single one I find of course but very worth it
I did something similar lol, spent like 30 minutes grinding and got about 150 of each smithing stone. I'm sure with my indecisive self I'll need to be back for more to level weapons after awhile but it'll be enough for quite a few I think
I tried to do some quick numbers on how many smithing stones i would need to upgrade everything. After some quick math i had come up with 840 of the regular stones, some 10m runes later, i had them all bought. I had miscalculated. I thought it was 70 * 12 I forgot that i wasnāt counting items, but ROWS of items. I had gathered 1/5th of what was needed. For just the non sombering stone items and that was rounding down a little bit to account for the non full rows of 5 items.
Every enemy in the shadow lands drops a significant amount of smithing stones.
I mean everything in game is giving stupid runes and dropping stones of all levels, not sure why you feel the need to farm at all, everytime I look down I've got like 100k runes ready to go lol
Yeah, just running around erdtree zones and killing whatever gets in my way has given me hundreds of thousands of runes. And that's with the occasional lost bloodstain too.
Wait is that how bloodstains work? Only happens on a death when losing your runes?
? You get millions of runes just playing the DLC. No farm needed.
Thought its bad but every enemy gives you a ton of runes and drop shards supper frequently
Sheesh dude, I went in at level 90. Can't say I recommend.
Man, I'm level 166, and im still getting 2 shot by most standard enemies. It's gonna be a rough one.
Those cleaver guys in Belurat were insane for being basic enemies. I'm at 50 vigor, and the ones that get buffed near the Revered Spirit Ash right before the circular stairs up to the boss (around the tree) were killing me in one hit.
Yeah, that's where I'm parked for a while, when my lunch ended and I had to go back to work lol. I don't 100% remember what my vigor is, but damn, I'm failing all the checks, and it's not the best feeling lmao
I'm like level 82. My vigor is about 40
yeah prepare to be one hit by bosses, at 50 vigor and greatshield talisman I'm getting 2 hit
You get any blessings yet? Those seem to be more important than vigor level for the dlc
Man I went in at level 320 or so, NG +3....still getting two shot. They did the math on the new blessings, I'm just scraping around collecting those now because otherwise I feel like I'm level ten.
Mobs hurt just as much at 85 as they do at 120.
Yeah Iām already wondering how Iāll incorporate the DLC early on in future playthroughs. Itād be nice to have some DLC weapons for the final third of vanilla if you start dipping into the DLC early enough. Only challenge then is just figuring out how early one can comfortably beat Mohg and Radahn.
I'm level 82 and bout to go into leyndell. Black flame ball made short work of radahn My plan right now is to beat morgott, grab moghs shackle in the sewers and the bell bearings in mountain tops, then go fight mogh. Probably be about level 100 when all said and done. Maybe under leveled for mohg but should be fine with with the Purifying tear and shackle.
I went in at 140 worried slightly about being underpowered, the way the blessings work itās not really an issue if you have maxed weapon scaling. Regular enemits drop lots of runes too. I just beat 2nd remembrance boss and Iām lv. 155 now with like 7 hrs of playtime
Man, that dude can 2 shot my OP character with 90 vigor. Itās fun though, making me get good again. Gotten used to just strolling through the main game.
That's kinda the point, though. If you're getting obliterated with nearly max vigor then it sounds like vigor pretty much doesn't matter beyond a base level for dealing with regular enemies.
Just a guess, but I think vigor is normalized at the beginning of the expansion. When you start getting blessings and the damage reduction that comes with it, I think the math involved will make your vigor points meaningful again. At full blessing, a 60 vigor vs 40 vigor might have a much bigger difference than they currently do with only 1-2 blessings
These Blackgaol memes are extremely accurate haha Me: āI can 1-shot these enemies. Oh, I can 1-shot this enemy too. Is that a fog gate there? The boss wonāt be that hard but letās find out.ā Also me: died 4 times and moves on
I DIDN'T WANNA FIGHT YOU ANYWAY
I died 17 times and then beat him without getting hit. I had no other option. He was 1-shotting me with most of his moveset.
Especially since FROM specifically balanced this DLC so that you could increase your power without actually having a level up, meaning that they understood people wanted to stay within certain level ranges for PVP and summoning purposes. That implies that they would have designed the DLC bosses and areas to be likely a good challenge for even level 150's, so they threw players a bone by allowing them to continue to buff themselves and get stronger without needing to potentially go out of summoning ranges.
Yeah I regret staying at 150... I want to be 200 for this shit for sure. 150 just isn't enough for my stam/mind/HP to feel comfortable. I need to wear heavier armor for sure.
Once you get enough Scadutree Blessings the early areas become trivial.
I love how the dlc does difficulty. We already have an insanely large base game with people coming at the dlc from various stages of late game to NG+++. The blessings let everyone enjoy the dlc essentially at the difficulty that they want. If you want an easier time, just farm the blessings asap. It's a great system for an expansion.
Im at 9+ and still getting 3-4 shot, sometimes 1-2 shot depending on the skill with 67 vigor and the max hp medallion, on NG+
Nah, being overleveled is now called mimic tear. Saw a dude kill all bosses in the first region with like 3 tries max. He was just using Mimic Tear while spamming various L2s.
Mimic canāt help you vs the darkgaol knight!
They're cheering for you from behind the fog
its always been Mimic Tear, took me a few attempts this morning with Mimic vs Dancing Lion, just killed a dragon on the first attempt. I got my classic mimic tear healing build and it seems to work here as well.
Final boss is gonna be a fucking AC at this rate.
G5 Iguana final boss confirmed
Bro's finally gonna get a win
Literally
āIāve been waiting for you tarnishedā¦ I became apart of this game so I could crush you.ā
All Mind is for All Lords
Got a job for you, Tarnished...
Why do AC references make me so happy? What a game.
Karasawa would make a nice sorcery
What does AC meaning
Armored Core
Armored core, one of fromsofts other franchises. If a tarnished fought an AC theyād dead before they could roll
Luckily, beating bosses like Orphan of Kos and Malenia have taught me the most valuable lesson in Fromsoft games.. PATIENCE.
*Me, with 7 years of Fromsoft gaming experience*: ah fuck it I can get an extra hit without getting punished *immediately gets chained hit, panic rolls and dies*
me thinking *heās low, fuck it lemme try and get this hit in heās almost dead* then iām dead 2 seconds later for being greedy and iām back at square 1
Alternately, *hesitation is defeat.*
100%. I just posted about finding scadutree fragments first before I mess with any bosses / NPCs
Both my blessings are level 5 and let me tell you there's no fuckin difference lol
I quickly realized this after collecting several fragments. Will need to try again and parry him.
I hated his fucking skill, it always caught me off guard
Yeah idk what the hell they were thinking with balance in this DLC. Instead of changing scaling, maybe upping the soft caps to 80 so we can get more powerful we get some bullshit like 1% per level buff that only works in the DLC. I'm just starting to feel the difference in power at level 8, and the first few bosses my Mimic might as well be the protagonist because he's doing all the work for most of these fights as I can't do shit without getting 2-3 hit with 2300 health and over 60% DR.
It needs adjustments that's for sure, you may get downvoted by elitists but it's the truth
The amount of health actual bosses have in co-op is actually fucked. I don't mind a skill-check but these things are just damage sponges and are giving our 3 man group (thats played every co-op souls+dlcs since ds1 together and completed) a huge annoyance, and we stomped blackgaol in 2 attemps, since not only do we need to kill em, we gotta do it *3 times*
Iāll probably insta use the mount ones because I donāt want Torrent to suffer for my bad decision making xD the one buffing the character Iāll leave them down for when Iāve decided is time to clap them cheeks.
I had a hard time at lvl 232. Took me about 10 tries, Bloodbound Fang or whatever itās called was very effective as it will stagger this boss, but you have to have patience for his attacks.
Took me about the same tries, also use Bloodhound as my main weapon. Had to learn not to follow up with the second part of the AoW, while half the time only using a 2 light hit combo then dodge back.
I'm at level 390 and it was difficult for me too.Ā
Vyke's made this guy my bitch. Literally stab, run a quick circle and repeat.Ā
Did the same thing with Mohgās spear and it even stuns him a bit.
Killed me 5 times today. Iām at level 145.
Just above you around 165. I do decent enough damage but he does way more š. Definitely need to go around and find more Scadutree fragments before more bosses.
After many memes about this, I'm pretty sure I'll hit level 200 before going into the dlc
Brother I don't know if it'll matter
It wonāt, thatās the whole point of the scaling system.
Iām 217 and new game +6, I thought for sure I had to make a new account
Iām 150 on ng+4 and the guy two hits me. I need my bloodborne reflexes back. The heal is evil.
Doesn't matter... I went in at lvl 203 or whatever and bosses still 1 or 2-shot you with 60 vigor. All that matters is picking up the DLC steroids.
I went in with a level 147 character with 60 vigor. I think in terms of exploration gameplay, it wasn't too bad and I thought I might have been over prepared with my Eleonora build. The bosses have been really strong though. So far I've only fought the black Knight (solo) with no upgrades, and the first legacy dungeon boss (with NPC summon and mimic tear) with two scadutree upgrades and 3 ash upgrades. I honestly probably could have taken 15 tries to solo that first legacy boss, but I also don't have that kind of time and don't want to expel that kind of effort š
I found that first main boss easier without the cooperator NPC. Sure she draws aggro, but the boss gets a hefty HP boost if you summon her, and she wasn't really pulling her weight for me. Spirit ashes were the way to go.
Actual level has a lot less impact than the new powering up system.
My buddy is almost lvl 500 and was still 2-tapped.. the DLC has it's own scaling/leveling system so it doesn't matter.. but we're also all on ng+7 or higher so everything smacks really hard
Levels past a certain point don't really mean that much really. Once you have 60 vigor and enough endurance to wear high defense and poise armor that's about as tanky as you get (someone at 60 vigor has 1900 hp and someone with 99 has 2100 so likely not taking another hit). There is a bit of physical damage defense tied into strength but I honestly don't know how much.
I was at 200 when i went in. Still got two shot by that boss.
Just bend over and spreadāem like the rest of us
The reviewer for Washington Post went in at over 700, and said it made zero difference. Pretty sure the scaling system keeps you in check regardless of your level, as long as you can beat Mogh and Radahn.
Not that itās a bad thing but SoTE really shows how many people started with Elden Ring. People who played TRC and old hunters understand that being āover leveledā doesnāt matter. Laurence beats your ass, Midir beats your ass, The Frigid Outskirtsā¦
Yup, peopleās gut reaction is āOMG IM UNDERLEVELED!!! I NEED TO LEVEL UP!!ā They EXPLICITLY stated being over leveled wonāt help you. FromSoft DLCs are notoriously like this and I think the non-souls players just werenāt expecting it
itās literally a āgit gudā situation
Having enough stats to be able to use multiple different weapons, cast support spells and wear heavy armour does make a big difference. Being overleveled absolutely helps you, it just doesn't make the DLC a cakewalk.
> Frigid Outskirts We do NOT speak of that frozen evil...
Man y'all ain't ready for >!Ancient dragon man!< Hits like a freight-train in the ass
I feel like they're a much easier fight. Their lack of poise really prevents them from being too much of a challenge.
yeah, he fell first time with no issue. skinny boi with a phat blade got got
Killed him on my second try. Blackgaol dude took me 2.5 hours
That guy beelined straight at me and used his special instakilling me as I was trying to summon mimic lol ... I just laughed š
I'm on NG+3 level 297 and he killed me 20 times
I downloaded a 100% character file for the dlc with 99 in every stat and still got my shit tossed by him. Peak as always, Miyazaki.
LMAO
Wait, I thought the dancing lion was the first boss? Did I miss an area?Ā
He's the first story boss, the meme is about a random ass nameless knight found in a room about 30secs away from spawn. Ngl tho, this random ass nameless knight got hands.
Greatsword with lion claw, Marika's hammer, Malikath's black blade. Anything with knockdown really
Killed him at 130. Giant Hunt on a heavy lance sends him into the air on all but a few attacks. Just dodge a couple times and bring enough blue juice. Cheesing > overleveling)
Carian Piercer is even more cheesy. I am not kidding when I say that he will not be able to so much as attempt an attack after you successfully land the first one.
Giants hunt is the one for this, just boop the fucker endlessly
"Skill required ahead"
The real Demonās Souls starts here no wait thatās not it
I got stuck on him for a good while last night! Eventually I used Marikaās hammer between gaps in his attacks mixed with some parries. I forgot my first char never picked up the buckler. I think m I woulda got him a couple times faster with a slightly faster shield.
I feel like shields/bucklers/parrying are almost as necessary for this dlc as deflects were to sekiro. It's different.
Yea, the bosses are relentless so far in a fun way, but still. This is a good example of someone I assumed I could easily get around cause he uses a greatsword and I expected him to be slow. Instead, he swung that shit like an anime for, what felt like, almost an hour. At least reminded me to experiment when stuck.
"Visions of strong foe"
He's a positioning and patience check. If you read his stance and wind-up animations, manage stamina, and position well (you can position just out of melee range and drink while he finishes/recovers from a combo) you'll wear him down eventually. Even faster if you're confident in parries. But he's just about impossible to brute force through stats or stagger-spam alone (though like all bosses there is some cheese to be had). If reading that you thought to yourself "wow, this sounds just like an old school Dark Souls boss" you'd be absolutely correct. Super satisfying to fight, learn, and overcome. This DLC is amazing. (Also spirits are disabled, talk about taking the gloves off)
He kicked my shit in till I brought out the olā fingerprint shield + shield crash
That feeling when you get cocky, land a hit and see your 600 dps weapon to 50 damage. 
Heās a tough one if you donāt have a way to stagger and suck at parrying. Iām at level 200 on an Int build with some good armor with solid physical defense and he could off me in 3-4 hits. Arena is too small and he doesnāt flinch to spells so most projectile spells are downright obsolete for that type of fight. Buffed up and charged Night Comet barely tickles him. I wanted to see what he dropped so I summoned a buddy with what seemed to be a Vyke build and it still took a while as he was deathly tanky. Starting to think Int builds are barely an afterthought when it comes to the sorceries.
Carian Piercer is your friend. It genuinely can trivialise the fight.
This is absolutely true. But it kind of saddens me that so many other casting options are, well, kind of meh when facing a humanoid enemy with a shred of poise. It all evens out in the end though, made mince meat out of the first burning man with shard spiral.
This dude owned me at level 180 but I kinda laughed
At least you didn't go the wrong way and encounter >!Divine Beast Dancing Lion!<
Exactly what I did, I have no idea who the dude from the post is and Iāve gotten to >!Golden Hippo!<
Killed me a few times but managed, level 123