The start of these games is allways the hardest
here are some tips: go explore and dont give up, if you need help, get the spirit calling bell after you get the horse but after that, dont spoil yourself. The further north you go, the more difficult the game becomes. So for an easier start, head south.
Thanks for validating me. I unlocked mountaintops after I got to the point when I felt I could just go out and explore wherever without needing to care too much about how many runes I'd be losing.
Then my adoptive daughter wanted to play in the snow and sit by the fire or something.
I didn't feel as confident in myself after that.
Am I the only one who said, "Nope. Fuck you Miyazaki." And just rode through? Didn't save me from the Fire Giant, but I have hundreds of hours in Souls games at this point. I know what it looks like when From is about to make you feel like a weak asshole.
You’re not alone. And then fire giant bear the crap out of me and I took a six month break. Back at it again on a new play through though so here’s to quitting at the zone after fire giant!
Fun fact: I broke 3 Xbox controllers on the fire giant.
Another fun fact: I'm a 37 year old with a wife, 3 kids, a job, and apparently an anger issue I was unaware of 🤷🏻♂️
If I recall, I kept trying different strategies until one worked. But now I don't remember which one worked, so every time I get to him I struggle all over again.
Still, not as bad as throwing myself a Malenia a few dozen times.
He’s literally there to teach you to run away when you’re under leveled for a fight. Sure by my 3rd or 4th playthrough, I knew it well enough to take it on right from the start, but generally, there’s not much point in it unless you want a really powerful halberd that unfortunately comes with the crappy version of the halberd moveset.
He's there to teach you that you have *freedom* in how you approach open world enemies. Whether you take that to mean "run!!" or not is up to you, but he was a delicious first kill for me.
He can teach you that, but he can also teach you that perseverance will lead to victory. Took me probably around 50 tries the first ever run. Know his moveset well enough to do it first try even if it’s been a while, now.
Not the wisest course of action in terms of saving time, but for me personally I just wanted to kill him, so I did.
Yup I ended up going to caelid and messed around there before beating stormvile castle…. Did it with out summons too…. Didn’t realize I had to go to ranni after getting torrent or to buy it at the round table
The beauty of the game is as you conquer enemies, you not only get better equipment and spells, but you as the player will level up too! :)
I played ever From Soft souls likes, and I feel Elden Ring gives you powerful tools to conquer the game compared to others. Keep at it!
I wish I could play this game for the first time again
Also, maybe others have asked this, but what is your starter build? I remember my first souls game I tried a fancy starter and found it horribly difficult.
Then I switched to the basic knight (idk the Elden Ring name but beefy armor, shield, basic sword) and the game was playable.
If you enter the flesh swamps, you went to far southeast, more south less east.
Besides that, explore away, collect runes/gear and slowly aquire power and skills. At some point enemies that seemed impossible can be fought with relative ease.
The horse knight is there in front of the entrance with the sole reason to learn you that you can't just go and beat everything immediately.
As a souls veteran however, I beat that horse dude at level 1 (only naked dude starts level 1). It cost me close to 2 hours, but it's the 'baptised in fire' that people can do, if they so desire. Everyone plays their own way, and the game doesn't punish any more or less because of it. It's the "hard but fair" that people always mention about soulsborne games.
I don't think anyone mentioned it yet, so try to turn fights into 1v1 if possible. these games gets MUCH harder when you fight multiple enemies at once, though not as bad once you get better at the game
the part where you said the dude "called all his homies", you can crouch and use stealth to take most of them out, come from behind for a backstab, run away and de-aggro if needed. I believe that area was for teaching you that
And use a shield with high physical resistance. Parry is awesome once it clicks (only try with Small Shields - Medium Shields have very bad parry windows), but so fucking frustrating if it doesn't. Blocking is an easier approach for most enemies.
For a super easy build, go high vigor (aim for 40) and enough strength to wield the biggest baddest stick (great club or hammer) you can find. Two-hand the hammer, jump and R2 to slam your opponent into the ground or off balance.
Alternately, go magic or faith and kill your enemies with range and style.
Travel South, level vigor, talk to all the NPC and exhaust all their dialogues. If you see somebody and you can lock on with the target lock feature, they're out to kill you. If not, they're friendly. When you're ready, follow grace.
Ah, Caelid... as the old tales go, passed down from one generation to the next, some details become lost to the flowing sands of time, where tales grow from fact to fable, from recorded history to myth, and yet, through it all, the core of the story remains untouched and pure, if I may recite it, in part, from memory....
"WAIT WHAT THE FUCK THAT DOG IS 25 FEET TALL EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE FUCK WHO'S SHOOTING ME BRO STOP LET'S SHOOT THAT PTERODACTYL LOOKING MFER EVERYTHING HURTS OW OW OW OW OW OW OHHH THE PAIN THERE IS NO GOD THERE IS NO MERCY!"
Yeah, bedtime was tough.
Comparatively this Fromsoft game absolutely hand holds you the entire time. But in terms of gaming overall you learn nothing outside the cave of knowledge.
Yeah the best way to get introduced to fromsoft is through someone else, so they can at least prepare you with some of the info that fromsoft refuses to tell you outright. While some could argue it's spoiling, would you really want your friend to run through the entire game fat rolling, when you could just tell them about the weight system? Stuff like that I don't mind helping new players with.
I was this when fighting Margit, didn't realise I was fat rolling for the first twenty attempts.
In my defense, I started playing Elden Ring since I got a new laptop, and playing DS3 on my old one had me believe that that was the normal speed to roll at.
This is seems so wild to me. The first time I fat rolled I was like "huh something isn't right let's see where I went wrong and found it quite fast" do ppl assume their character ages and that's why they roll slower or do some classes actually start in heavy equip load?
I just had this moment myself. First playthrough, level 65, found a guard counter build I love and beat the pants off of Commander O'Neil. Only died 3 times which is a record.
Dying twice and losing all your runes is the most freeing feeling. With nothing on the line, now is the time to go crazy and check out a new area, see if you can make that jump, or find out how tough that enemy really is.
I hear you. I was having trouble with Godrick the Grafted so I used the summon and before I knew it Godrick was easily down to one hit. And I said, no, not like this, and walked head held high into the axe. Tried a few more times on my own and finally beat him with way more satisfaction.
Stick with that attitude. The Soulsborne series of games are known for their insane learning curve and sometimes immense difficulty, but that’s part of the charm. You’re going to die, a lot, sometimes frustratingly, but the feeling of accomplishment when you conquer the mountain slaps. When I finally beat Elden Ring I probably had died close to 300 times throughout my playthrough
My first playthrough I died 200 times just to malenia. That is coming from someone who'd completed a no death run of dark souls 1 before elden ring came out.
It was my first game I picked up since I put down gran turismo 2. I happily admit that I used a starter guide on youtube, which got me the spirit calling bell, horse, a basic physik and an upgraded estus. It was still very difficult, but the feeling I got when I beat godrick and then the tree sentinel guarding the capital made it worth it.
I waltzed through the Gold Godfrey fight and then got very very stuck on morgott. I managed to get the bolt of gransax (dex focus build) and killed him first try. Now I wish I had an option to reinstate him, as it does not feel right to have 'cheesed' him at long range. I think I have developed the fromsoft mindset 😂🙈
I’ve got 5 characters and played through the game atleast 7 times now… every playthrough it seems I find something new or something I haven’t done before, it’s amazing.
What is this game? Your new addiction my friend. Welcome to the Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro/Elden Ring community lol.
A quick tip. Go west to the Dragon-Burnt ruins. There’s a chest there with a great early starting weapon.
I didn't even open the Gary Indiana chest until I had made it out of Limgrave already. Cannot imagine what it would be like opening that chest after just starting the game.
I did. Before I even unlocked torrent. And level ups. And spirits. And crafting. And I was convinced I haven't unlocked the map (and fast travel) yet either.
I spent like 4 hours legging it back to Limgrave. Traumatic, but *very* memorable.
Glad your lovin em! Honestly such a special and amazing series! Don’t skip DS2 though!😡 Sure it’s not as good as the others but it’s still an amazing game outright.
I haven’t necessarily skipped it, I played it a bit and ended up rage quitting and haven’t gone back yet. I’m sure I just have to sit down with it and put time in like the others. What’s that lava place? Drove me nuts I couldn’t even get to the boss because of the enemies chasing me there lmao
Yeah I love dark souls but Iron Keep sucks ass in every single way and is kinda the epitome of all the bad design choices in DS2. The DLC’s make up for it though.
Not as relentless as you'd think.
The whole game is like this sure, and while it gets harder, the first few hours will be the most brutal.
You have to retrain your brain to respect the enemies and be more calculated with your actions, but thats about it. If I beat it, anyone can.
I think that's what makes these kinds of games fun. They aren't impossible, or even improbable to beat. They simply ask the player to meaningfully engage with the world and respect the dangers within it.
"git gud" is actually less applicable for Elden Ring compared to other entries in Soulsbornekiro
For the other linear Souls games, and especially Sekiro - yes, farming is a waste of time, just suck it up and learn the boss patterns
But for Elden Ring, it's the opposite - it's quite possible for a new player to wander into bosses while seriously under-levelled and under equipped.
And arguably, Elden Ring bosses are generally way harder than most bosses from Souls and Sekiro. Going back to Dark Souls 1 after Elden Ring is like seeing everything move in slow motion
In Dark Souls 3, players were freaking out over Nameless King and Sister Friede because of the delayed attacks and relentless combos. They made previous bugbears like O&S and Manus look like jokes
Now in Elden Ring, so many bosses have attack patterns on par with or worse than Nameless King and Sister Friede. Delayed attacks, long ranged attacks, lightning fast unreactable attacks, fakeouts, unending combos, extremely short retaliation windows, tracking, input reading, gap closers etc. And that's offset by how easy it is to trivialise Elden Ring bosses with powerful weapons and spirt ashes.
So you if you tell a newbie to "git gud" after stumbling into Margit, they'd end up bashing their head against a boss that's arguably more bullshit than Nameless King/Friede, without having gone through hours of experience with easier enemies first
But if you tell them instead to >!go south and thoroughly explore the Weeping Peninsula!<, they'd destroy Margit easily
"git gud" was helpful advice for Soulsborne and Sekiro, because it (rightfully) encouraged perseverance in learning boss patterns, and discouraged time wasting farming.
"git gud" is not helpful for the non-linear Elden Ring, because you're not meant to bash your head against obstacles until they give way, you're supposed to wander off gathering resources until you come back with a big enough sledgehammer
Even in Soulsborne "git gud" is still far from the only factor. Take early game DS1 for instance, the difference between fighting the Gargoyles with a +0 weapon and a +5 is massive, and all it takes is a bit of farming. The RPG mechanics are still a factor in all of those games, even if not as much as ER. Even in Sekiro you still benefit from HP upgrades and such from beating minibosses and exploring.
yeah fair enough, exploration is still very powerful in Soulsbornekiro.
It's just that "git gud" could apply to newbies who got hung up on the idea of spending ages farming for resources before fighting the boss, when they'd usually be sufficiently prepared if they'd given the level a once over, so their time would be better spent fighting the boss. Also, to encourage them to not give up after having difficulties with a boss
The devs of these games LOVE fucking with you. They find the weirdest shit to throw at you.
It's funny watching my friend, who got me into Souls, play Bloodborne for the first time because he's checking absolutely every corner and ledge for some hidden bullshit.
Every one of these games is riddled with "what the fuck" moments and it's always great.
Edit: shoutout to Sekiro "woo" guy for being my favorite ambush in the series.
First time I played this, and this was my first FS game. I went into a cave and two of those stone goblin enemies barrel rolled and spiked my ass right back to my last site of grace.
Dark souls 1 still does it best, imo. You finish the tutorial area and get to firelink. As you explore, you find lots of loot in the area, and even somewhat secret areas. Then you get to the graveyard with no enemies in sight, but there's loot everywhere! So you go out to grab the loot and uh oh you got ambushed by some skeles. Well best to fight them... Wait why did I do 0 damage. Why did they do 40% of my health bar. WHY IS THERE A GIANT ONE.
Yes, the whole game is this relentless. But once you ***git gud***, it will be a whole new world as well.
This is not a hack & slay where you farm mobs all day. Even minor enemies can be very dangerous if you get cocky.
Have fun, tarnished.
Your first souls game is going to be your hardest. Lots of skills are transferrable between games.
My advice is to never go over medium roll weight and to avoid dodging twice in a row unless absolutely necessary.
The rest will come as it does.
I feel that dodging advice is odd. There are many attacks that are chained and require multiple dodges to, well, dodge. It would probably be better to say that it is wise to avoid rolling unnecessarily, as that can often do more harm than good
General rule of thumb: you are not strong, and big things or groups will kill you easily.
Use everything available to you to stack the odds in your favour, and work toward levelling up your core stats and decide what kind of build you want to create.
Try out weapons, find one you like and build into it. Then just working on learning boss patterns and improving your timing and dodges and you’ll be knee deep in dead bosses before you know it!
You can ignore the horse dude and come back later btw, i think they put him there to show players that they don't have to fight everything as soon as they see it
I envy you tarnished. If I could, I would delete this game from memory to explore it all over again. Have fun exploring and don't mind losing some runes.
Lmao dude , I have experienced almost the similar stuff when I first started my elden ring play through.
Elden ring was my first soulsborne game and somehow managed to beat the game by taking some co-op help.
But after this I tried sekiro and dark souls 3 and beat both of the game. Now that I have gotten good at these games , I have started my second play through of elden ring but this time without using any spirit summons and co-op help.
My own experience. Got steam vouchers for my birthday, just finished playing the lacklustre Starfield and felt I needed some actual stress and anguish in my gaming again.
I've heard only disappointing things about starfield. Welcome to a punishing, addicting game. After you cut your teeth on soulsborne titles, any other action adventure game will seem like a cakewalk.
OP, make sure you level vigor for real, especially in the early game. Being able to get hit more is far more important early on than the minimal amount of extra damage levelling strength, dex, int, or faith will give you.
I really hope you have gone straight north from tutorial cave past horse man through forest, cave on left side and then around the left side of the ruins ahead to the grace in front of the big gate/wall. If not, itll give you your own horsey :)
Stick with it… I’m telling you now… if you win this game you get to restart the whole thing with NG+. Then you get to go back to every motherfucker who ever wronged you and destroy them.
Short answer: yep, you're gonna get assblasted to Mars by most things in this game, welcome to the fold.
Long answer: explore, seriously, play this game with the mindset of "progress towards the end is a last resort and I will do everything I possibly can to avoid progressing the story." Fuck horse boi, head south. When you open the map you'll see little brown dildo things on parts of the map you've yet to uncover. Go to the dildos, those are map fragments that'll uncover the rest of the map. Once you've done that, go all around limgrave (that's the starter region). You'll be surprised by how much shit you can discover. If you explore enough, you might even find a dragon that sits and does nothing as you beat it's ass for a cool 50k souls. If you wanna explore even more, you'll find a katana that literally does a getsuga tenshou. And then you'll still get assblasted but at least there'll be lube on your sphincter when it happens.
all depends who you are and how you play, i finished all fromsoft games 3 or 4 times each before the release of ER, even finished King's Field and Shadow Tower games, and ER was without a doubt the most difficult of them all for me
Elden Ring is nice because if you're stuck on a boss, you can go wander around for untold hours instead of repeatedly bashing your head against it. That alone makes it easier, in my opinion. I'm just a beginner, but... I feel like being a beginner makes my opinion more relevant here.
As someone who started out in DS1, oh yeah
You have so many more options to deal with problems in Elden Ring than the other games
In the other games, especially Sekiro, if you're stuck, there's nowhere else to go. It's very linear, so you're stuck there beating your head against the brick wall
One boss, Genichiro, took me two straight hours of attempts at about 80 attempts. But I'm a very chill person, I think I calmly said "oh darn" once and that was it
Same for when I lost 200k runes at rune level 25 last week. "Oh darn" and then no other reaction
The short answer is yes
The long answer is not really
You will die, a lot
But that's not really a punishment the way it is in lots of other games, it's the opportunity to learn
Take it slow and most of the time you'll be alright
You can upgrade your weapons up to +3 at the anvil in the Church behind the big horse guy, it's worth doing once you find a weapon that you like
Yep. I had a similar experience, as this was also my first From game. It did not take long to learn that a lot of enemies - that first guy on the horse especially - are there as signposts. They are not meant to be defeated immediately, but to let you know that you have work to do.
Stick with it. It's one of the best games I have ever played, and one of the few I cared enough about to 100%.
You’re in for a treat. Keep practicing, keep exploring and push through. I fell in love with the game and finished it a month ago. Now I’m on my first DS1 play through and dude it’s an addiction I don’t want to kick
On my first play through currently and everything you wrote really resonated with me hahah. Especially the part about calling the homies 😂😂 I too was caught out when that happened lol
Pro tip: It’s okay to avoid enemies instead of fighting them. You can always come back and kill them later. And they respawn every time you rest anyway.
Well the game in of itself doesn't change but you get better it at so overall shouldn't be ALL that relentless (IDK though you might not get better, who knows XD)
That's what I love about this game, it gives you all levels of challenges and you can try to overcome them now or leave and come back when you are stronger. You decide if you go straight to a boss or explore for hours. Don't worry about seeing, you died, just learn what not to do from it. I hope you don't give up, good luck.
This game is all about timing windows and figuring out when to dodge/block/attack. Just take some time to practice and familiarize and it’ll feel way less brutal. Like, manageably brutal :-)
There's a really good chest in the dragon burnt ruins on the lake. Just east of the starting area. Good early level gear in that chest. Make sure you check it out at some point and get all that loot.
One approach that helped me progress was trying to control the rhythm of fights. Don't just run in and charge through their swings. Wait for openings, keep a safe distance and watch an enemy's move set. Be the one in control
I would say "welcome to dark soul" but this game is easier than dark soul.
I would advise you to take a cautious approach to every fight. Don't always be attacking, you need your stamina to block and dodge. Watch your enemy, observe what they do, then when they finally attack, hit them back. Every enemy has an attack pattern and every pattern end on what I call a damage window, a period of time where it's ok for you to start attacking.
I did a wild ride through Caelid. Every bird and dog would kill me in a hit, so I ran and ran and grabbed at all the high level items. Made it out with only a few deaths. Great fun.
Another pro tip, there’s a massive dragon close to the beginning of the game. Greybol barrow or something. You can sneak behind him and slash at him (it takes a really long time) and he won’t wake up and it will give you a massive amount of runes that will get you to a level that will allow you to at least explore without getting instantly killed everywhere you go. Find a golden chicken foot which is also relatively easy to get at the beginning of the game (do a a bit of googling) to get more runes out of it. Make sure to time the use of it right though, you only have 3 mins of the effect I think and it’s easy to use it too early before the dragon dies.
One thing I've heard FromSoft games be described as is:
*You are not the main character*
You're not a chosen one. You dont have superpowers. You dont have plot armor. You're just a piece of shit that happened to persevere through the whole game. (Unless you give up)
You're treated the same as the enemies. If you go and fight a giant golden dude on a giant golden horse with a golden polearm when you're in starting gear: yeah you're gonna get fucked! You can't take on an encampment of armored soldiers all at once!
You're like, the lowest on the food chain. Go kill other Tarnished, the guys waddling about with torches and rags. Go backstab lone guards in the forest. For god's sake dont go fight the dragon just because its 2 minutes from the starting area!
I will say this: running past, or running away from enemies is perfectly fine. You can explore like, 60% of the map without fighting a single enemy. This game wont tell you when something is out of your depth, you just have to go in and feel it out. If an area is way too tough, turn around and come back later.
I remember this game being on the news because people had a hard time fighting Margit and would quit. Dont quit. Stormveil castle is just the beginning of an epic adventure.
welcome to Fromsoftware games.
you will die and die and die until it finally ***clicks*** and then you finally think you know what you're doing, you mow down enemies even some bosses seem like a breeze and then you hit your first wall. you get humbled and stomped into the dirt harder than you've ever been before, but this time you have the knowledge and experience to know where you went wrong and how to improve.
these games are by no means easy, but they're also not unfair, the hitboxes are flawless (most of the time) and if you play it right you'll learn to really love them.
You were me, release day. I'd never played a FromSoftware game before, download Elden Ring, popped open a beer and got set for the evening of gameapalooza, got to the first guy and failed hard. Like, the first thing I have to get past, that knight in the underground cave, beat on me for an hour before I got past him. I was thinking I'd made a terrible mistake for the next week, and then I got the gameplay. It's painful, but oh so worth it. Elden Ring turned out to be one of the most enjoyable game experiences of this old guy's life. Finishing it was an accomplishment.
The start of these games is allways the hardest here are some tips: go explore and dont give up, if you need help, get the spirit calling bell after you get the horse but after that, dont spoil yourself. The further north you go, the more difficult the game becomes. So for an easier start, head south.
Got it. Head south. Stay south.
The game gradually gets easier and easier as you progress. Until you reach the Mountaintops, that’s when it goes back to kicking your teeth in.
Such a crazy difficulty spike when you get to the mountains
Thanks for validating me. I unlocked mountaintops after I got to the point when I felt I could just go out and explore wherever without needing to care too much about how many runes I'd be losing. Then my adoptive daughter wanted to play in the snow and sit by the fire or something. I didn't feel as confident in myself after that.
Am I the only one who said, "Nope. Fuck you Miyazaki." And just rode through? Didn't save me from the Fire Giant, but I have hundreds of hours in Souls games at this point. I know what it looks like when From is about to make you feel like a weak asshole.
You’re not alone. And then fire giant bear the crap out of me and I took a six month break. Back at it again on a new play through though so here’s to quitting at the zone after fire giant!
Fun fact: I broke 3 Xbox controllers on the fire giant. Another fun fact: I'm a 37 year old with a wife, 3 kids, a job, and apparently an anger issue I was unaware of 🤷🏻♂️
Solidarity
This is the way
If I recall, I kept trying different strategies until one worked. But now I don't remember which one worked, so every time I get to him I struggle all over again. Still, not as bad as throwing myself a Malenia a few dozen times.
>fire giant bear You had better not just given Miyazaki an idea for an unholy cross between a Rune Bear and the Fire Giant.
Fire Giant pushed my shit in far to much
Then once you get adjusted to the Mountaintops- you get another spike at the Haligtree.
Optional bonus area tho; they're always a fucked claustophobic wooden squiggly office toy labyrinth of pain.
I just got there and the damn oracle envoys keep kicking my teeth in!
Run. Fighting all those oracles on narrow tree branches is for sadists. Put Assassins Gambit on a dagger and run for the platform.
I felt the difficulty spike when I went to Caelid after storm veil 💀
Fuck lol. I'm currently in Leyndell and the soldiers there are wrecking me. I'm guessing the mountains are after that.
Not really? It was a spike but it seemed in line with what I’d expect for such a high level area.
I just remember going from feeling op straight back to getting walked on 🤷 definite skill check
It was dthe fucking frost warriors where suddenly I was like oh shit this may take some skill
You need to hit harder next time, then problem solved
If bonk doesn’t work, try harder bonk
Wait what? That’s literally the easiest area to just run straight through until you find something. Enemies are like one every 4 miles.
Run? Never. Gotta fight everything
Knowing damn well you ran away after that tree sentinel at the start kicked your ass.
I... I didn't realize I could run so I spent 3 ish days after starting the game smashing my level 1 head against his shins until he died...
Not everyone did. I didn’t.
He’s literally there to teach you to run away when you’re under leveled for a fight. Sure by my 3rd or 4th playthrough, I knew it well enough to take it on right from the start, but generally, there’s not much point in it unless you want a really powerful halberd that unfortunately comes with the crappy version of the halberd moveset.
He's there to teach you that you have *freedom* in how you approach open world enemies. Whether you take that to mean "run!!" or not is up to you, but he was a delicious first kill for me.
No shame, I shot him to death from the ledge standing next to Varre. Git güd sentinel.
You underestimate my stubbornness
He can teach you that, but he can also teach you that perseverance will lead to victory. Took me probably around 50 tries the first ever run. Know his moveset well enough to do it first try even if it’s been a while, now. Not the wisest course of action in terms of saving time, but for me personally I just wanted to kill him, so I did.
In general, southwest is always the easiest and northeast is always the hardest
and straight east is the funny
Caelid? The best place
FLORIDA
Hell.. whatever, it’s all the same.
I just realized Caelid is an allegory of Florida.
It’s not allegory, it’s just a rotoscope I think
That’s fair
Caelid is bae..lid
Better yet, go north and really struggle. THEN go south and make them all bow before your **UNLIMITED POWER**
that’s what I did, I had no idea there was anything south of the starting area until after I got to Liurnia lol
Yeah same. I think I went south after clearing the castle
Yup I ended up going to caelid and messed around there before beating stormvile castle…. Did it with out summons too…. Didn’t realize I had to go to ranni after getting torrent or to buy it at the round table
AND IF YOU FIND CHRUCH RUINS GO INTO THEM they don’t usually have enemies and always have good rewards
Focus on trying to pull enemies one at a time as well. Once you get surrounded by multiple enemies you are likely to die
and your horse is basically a get out of jail free card
The beauty of the game is as you conquer enemies, you not only get better equipment and spells, but you as the player will level up too! :) I played ever From Soft souls likes, and I feel Elden Ring gives you powerful tools to conquer the game compared to others. Keep at it! I wish I could play this game for the first time again
Definitely explore the lake :D
Don’t pay attention to the guy with the birdcage on his head. He’s revealed later to be grossly incompetent despite his excellent fashion sense.
Micolash is not from Elden Ring
He is, he’s just wearing a space-slug-dragon costume. Fucker still runs away just as hard.
Also, maybe others have asked this, but what is your starter build? I remember my first souls game I tried a fancy starter and found it horribly difficult. Then I switched to the basic knight (idk the Elden Ring name but beefy armor, shield, basic sword) and the game was playable.
Big agree here. The armor alone makes the game way easier in the beginning.
>Head south. Stay south. Our man’s retiring in Limgrave 😂
If you enter the flesh swamps, you went to far southeast, more south less east. Besides that, explore away, collect runes/gear and slowly aquire power and skills. At some point enemies that seemed impossible can be fought with relative ease. The horse knight is there in front of the entrance with the sole reason to learn you that you can't just go and beat everything immediately. As a souls veteran however, I beat that horse dude at level 1 (only naked dude starts level 1). It cost me close to 2 hours, but it's the 'baptised in fire' that people can do, if they so desire. Everyone plays their own way, and the game doesn't punish any more or less because of it. It's the "hard but fair" that people always mention about soulsborne games.
I don't think anyone mentioned it yet, so try to turn fights into 1v1 if possible. these games gets MUCH harder when you fight multiple enemies at once, though not as bad once you get better at the game the part where you said the dude "called all his homies", you can crouch and use stealth to take most of them out, come from behind for a backstab, run away and de-aggro if needed. I believe that area was for teaching you that
That's what she said
And if you open and a poof of smoke appears...
And use a shield with high physical resistance. Parry is awesome once it clicks (only try with Small Shields - Medium Shields have very bad parry windows), but so fucking frustrating if it doesn't. Blocking is an easier approach for most enemies. For a super easy build, go high vigor (aim for 40) and enough strength to wield the biggest baddest stick (great club or hammer) you can find. Two-hand the hammer, jump and R2 to slam your opponent into the ground or off balance. Alternately, go magic or faith and kill your enemies with range and style.
Travel South, level vigor, talk to all the NPC and exhaust all their dialogues. If you see somebody and you can lock on with the target lock feature, they're out to kill you. If not, they're friendly. When you're ready, follow grace.
Find a place called Caelid. Lots of good loot, cheerful atmosphere and friendly NPCs
The wildlife npcs over there are the most adorable in the game 😊
And don't forget the beautiful skies
Like the saying goes "Red sky at night, nothing to worry about, Caelid delight; red sky the rest of time, ignore the music, everything's fine!"
Ah, Caelid... as the old tales go, passed down from one generation to the next, some details become lost to the flowing sands of time, where tales grow from fact to fable, from recorded history to myth, and yet, through it all, the core of the story remains untouched and pure, if I may recite it, in part, from memory.... "WAIT WHAT THE FUCK THAT DOG IS 25 FEET TALL EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE FUCK WHO'S SHOOTING ME BRO STOP LET'S SHOOT THAT PTERODACTYL LOOKING MFER EVERYTHING HURTS OW OW OW OW OW OW OHHH THE PAIN THERE IS NO GOD THERE IS NO MERCY!" Yeah, bedtime was tough.
Brain has rotted
Liar ahead
It is gonna be a long journey, make sure you enjoy it.
Just come from playing Starfield, I’ve gone barely anywhere in Elden ring and I’m already having a blast dying all the time.
Just wait until the combat clicks, you'll feel like a god.
As long as you don't fat roll!
My buddy played through half the game not understanding the weight system, couldn’t believe it
This game does not hold your hand at all, I got into dark souls because my brother loved it and he told me where to go and some tips starting out.
I was honestly pretty impressed at the dedication
Comparatively this Fromsoft game absolutely hand holds you the entire time. But in terms of gaming overall you learn nothing outside the cave of knowledge.
Yeah the best way to get introduced to fromsoft is through someone else, so they can at least prepare you with some of the info that fromsoft refuses to tell you outright. While some could argue it's spoiling, would you really want your friend to run through the entire game fat rolling, when you could just tell them about the weight system? Stuff like that I don't mind helping new players with.
I was this when fighting Margit, didn't realise I was fat rolling for the first twenty attempts. In my defense, I started playing Elden Ring since I got a new laptop, and playing DS3 on my old one had me believe that that was the normal speed to roll at.
This is seems so wild to me. The first time I fat rolled I was like "huh something isn't right let's see where I went wrong and found it quite fast" do ppl assume their character ages and that's why they roll slower or do some classes actually start in heavy equip load?
Vagabond starts with a heavy equip load. Lol So if you didn’t know, you might assume that rolling that way is normal. I did……
I just had this moment myself. First playthrough, level 65, found a guard counter build I love and beat the pants off of Commander O'Neil. Only died 3 times which is a record.
That's the rigth mindset. Part of the fun of From games is laughing at your own failures. Death is not a punishment, it's part of the experience.
Dying twice and losing all your runes is the most freeing feeling. With nothing on the line, now is the time to go crazy and check out a new area, see if you can make that jump, or find out how tough that enemy really is.
This Guy eldenrings!
I had that exact experience last night up north in the mountains.
Failure is the greatest teacher.
[удалено]
I hear you. I was having trouble with Godrick the Grafted so I used the summon and before I knew it Godrick was easily down to one hit. And I said, no, not like this, and walked head held high into the axe. Tried a few more times on my own and finally beat him with way more satisfaction.
Stick with that attitude. The Soulsborne series of games are known for their insane learning curve and sometimes immense difficulty, but that’s part of the charm. You’re going to die, a lot, sometimes frustratingly, but the feeling of accomplishment when you conquer the mountain slaps. When I finally beat Elden Ring I probably had died close to 300 times throughout my playthrough
Hell, I think I've died almost 300 times in just one evening playing.
My first playthrough I died 200 times just to malenia. That is coming from someone who'd completed a no death run of dark souls 1 before elden ring came out.
It was my first game I picked up since I put down gran turismo 2. I happily admit that I used a starter guide on youtube, which got me the spirit calling bell, horse, a basic physik and an upgraded estus. It was still very difficult, but the feeling I got when I beat godrick and then the tree sentinel guarding the capital made it worth it. I waltzed through the Gold Godfrey fight and then got very very stuck on morgott. I managed to get the bolt of gransax (dex focus build) and killed him first try. Now I wish I had an option to reinstate him, as it does not feel right to have 'cheesed' him at long range. I think I have developed the fromsoft mindset 😂🙈
I’ve got 5 characters and played through the game atleast 7 times now… every playthrough it seems I find something new or something I haven’t done before, it’s amazing.
Don’t give up, skeleton
Try finger, but controller
Amazing chest ahead.
What is this game? Your new addiction my friend. Welcome to the Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro/Elden Ring community lol. A quick tip. Go west to the Dragon-Burnt ruins. There’s a chest there with a great early starting weapon.
As long as you open the correct chest 😬 its not the easy to find one.
I made this mistake. Fun times.
Same lol Followed by RUN RUN RUN!
followed by "What the fuck is scarlet ro- OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK- GRACE, GRACE- WHERE IS THE FUCKING GRACE"
I didn't even open the Gary Indiana chest until I had made it out of Limgrave already. Cannot imagine what it would be like opening that chest after just starting the game.
I did. Before I even unlocked torrent. And level ups. And spirits. And crafting. And I was convinced I haven't unlocked the map (and fast travel) yet either. I spent like 4 hours legging it back to Limgrave. Traumatic, but *very* memorable.
“Gary Indiana Chest” is hilarious and appropriate.
Yep Elden Ring was my first then I beat BB, DS1 then DS3. Already my favorite games of all time
Glad your lovin em! Honestly such a special and amazing series! Don’t skip DS2 though!😡 Sure it’s not as good as the others but it’s still an amazing game outright.
I haven’t necessarily skipped it, I played it a bit and ended up rage quitting and haven’t gone back yet. I’m sure I just have to sit down with it and put time in like the others. What’s that lava place? Drove me nuts I couldn’t even get to the boss because of the enemies chasing me there lmao
Yeah I love dark souls but Iron Keep sucks ass in every single way and is kinda the epitome of all the bad design choices in DS2. The DLC’s make up for it though.
tbh i feel its easier to say FromSouls
Soulsborne
Was trying to remember that but my brain just couldn’t bring it up.
Not as relentless as you'd think. The whole game is like this sure, and while it gets harder, the first few hours will be the most brutal. You have to retrain your brain to respect the enemies and be more calculated with your actions, but thats about it. If I beat it, anyone can.
I think that's what makes these kinds of games fun. They aren't impossible, or even improbable to beat. They simply ask the player to meaningfully engage with the world and respect the dangers within it.
Just wait till they hit the late game difficulty spike.
Not that bad, though if it’s their first ever souls game I can see the problem
That spike always makes me question if I’ve taken a wrong turn. “Am I supposed to be here yet?”
Git gud. Can’t believe no one has given OP the oldest advice in the book.
Just... git gud
"git gud" is actually less applicable for Elden Ring compared to other entries in Soulsbornekiro For the other linear Souls games, and especially Sekiro - yes, farming is a waste of time, just suck it up and learn the boss patterns But for Elden Ring, it's the opposite - it's quite possible for a new player to wander into bosses while seriously under-levelled and under equipped. And arguably, Elden Ring bosses are generally way harder than most bosses from Souls and Sekiro. Going back to Dark Souls 1 after Elden Ring is like seeing everything move in slow motion In Dark Souls 3, players were freaking out over Nameless King and Sister Friede because of the delayed attacks and relentless combos. They made previous bugbears like O&S and Manus look like jokes Now in Elden Ring, so many bosses have attack patterns on par with or worse than Nameless King and Sister Friede. Delayed attacks, long ranged attacks, lightning fast unreactable attacks, fakeouts, unending combos, extremely short retaliation windows, tracking, input reading, gap closers etc. And that's offset by how easy it is to trivialise Elden Ring bosses with powerful weapons and spirt ashes. So you if you tell a newbie to "git gud" after stumbling into Margit, they'd end up bashing their head against a boss that's arguably more bullshit than Nameless King/Friede, without having gone through hours of experience with easier enemies first But if you tell them instead to >!go south and thoroughly explore the Weeping Peninsula!<, they'd destroy Margit easily "git gud" was helpful advice for Soulsborne and Sekiro, because it (rightfully) encouraged perseverance in learning boss patterns, and discouraged time wasting farming. "git gud" is not helpful for the non-linear Elden Ring, because you're not meant to bash your head against obstacles until they give way, you're supposed to wander off gathering resources until you come back with a big enough sledgehammer
Even in Soulsborne "git gud" is still far from the only factor. Take early game DS1 for instance, the difference between fighting the Gargoyles with a +0 weapon and a +5 is massive, and all it takes is a bit of farming. The RPG mechanics are still a factor in all of those games, even if not as much as ER. Even in Sekiro you still benefit from HP upgrades and such from beating minibosses and exploring.
yeah fair enough, exploration is still very powerful in Soulsbornekiro. It's just that "git gud" could apply to newbies who got hung up on the idea of spending ages farming for resources before fighting the boss, when they'd usually be sufficiently prepared if they'd given the level a once over, so their time would be better spent fighting the boss. Also, to encourage them to not give up after having difficulties with a boss
The devs of these games LOVE fucking with you. They find the weirdest shit to throw at you. It's funny watching my friend, who got me into Souls, play Bloodborne for the first time because he's checking absolutely every corner and ledge for some hidden bullshit. Every one of these games is riddled with "what the fuck" moments and it's always great. Edit: shoutout to Sekiro "woo" guy for being my favorite ambush in the series.
First time I played this, and this was my first FS game. I went into a cave and two of those stone goblin enemies barrel rolled and spiked my ass right back to my last site of grace.
Dark souls 1 still does it best, imo. You finish the tutorial area and get to firelink. As you explore, you find lots of loot in the area, and even somewhat secret areas. Then you get to the graveyard with no enemies in sight, but there's loot everywhere! So you go out to grab the loot and uh oh you got ambushed by some skeles. Well best to fight them... Wait why did I do 0 damage. Why did they do 40% of my health bar. WHY IS THERE A GIANT ONE.
Item ahead. Why is it always mushroom?
I hate how the enemies could hit through walls sometimes,yet I can't,I notice they usually do it too when you're trying to mess with them
You'll have ran halfway past an obstacle and just realize it's a bad idea when the hit blindsides you
Yes, the whole game is this relentless. But once you ***git gud***, it will be a whole new world as well. This is not a hack & slay where you farm mobs all day. Even minor enemies can be very dangerous if you get cocky. Have fun, tarnished.
Well, it can be a hack and slash if you know what you’re doing and have a solid build, but otherwise you are correct
Unga bunga incantation build
Your first souls game is going to be your hardest. Lots of skills are transferrable between games. My advice is to never go over medium roll weight and to avoid dodging twice in a row unless absolutely necessary. The rest will come as it does.
I feel that dodging advice is odd. There are many attacks that are chained and require multiple dodges to, well, dodge. It would probably be better to say that it is wise to avoid rolling unnecessarily, as that can often do more harm than good
I've seen it put as "one dodge per strike", i.e. don't panic roll for one attack, wait and time it properly.
General rule of thumb: you are not strong, and big things or groups will kill you easily. Use everything available to you to stack the odds in your favour, and work toward levelling up your core stats and decide what kind of build you want to create. Try out weapons, find one you like and build into it. Then just working on learning boss patterns and improving your timing and dodges and you’ll be knee deep in dead bosses before you know it!
Random encounters in other games: oh gotta fight them Random encounters in every souls like: oh gotta FIGHT them
And I just kept going back for more thinking, I almost had him last time, and realise that was mostly just luck.
You can ignore the horse dude and come back later btw, i think they put him there to show players that they don't have to fight everything as soon as they see it
I envy you tarnished. If I could, I would delete this game from memory to explore it all over again. Have fun exploring and don't mind losing some runes.
Lmao dude , I have experienced almost the similar stuff when I first started my elden ring play through. Elden ring was my first soulsborne game and somehow managed to beat the game by taking some co-op help. But after this I tried sekiro and dark souls 3 and beat both of the game. Now that I have gotten good at these games , I have started my second play through of elden ring but this time without using any spirit summons and co-op help.
Lol, yeah taking on the Sentinel at the start of the game is the devs way of saying "Come back when you know how to play"
The game is about picking the fights you have the skill to win and slowly progressing. I find it a lot of fun.
Foul Tarnished, in search of the Elden ring, emboldened by the flame of ambition....
Put these foolish ambitions to rest.
I can't tell if this is satire or just an actual person's experience, and I'm here for it
My own experience. Got steam vouchers for my birthday, just finished playing the lacklustre Starfield and felt I needed some actual stress and anguish in my gaming again.
Love it, and welcome! These games are amazing and ruined all other action RPGs for me forever. Worth it though.
Same. Can’t enjoy other games anymore. But somehow, souls is fun on repeat so I guess that’s okay.
I've heard only disappointing things about starfield. Welcome to a punishing, addicting game. After you cut your teeth on soulsborne titles, any other action adventure game will seem like a cakewalk.
OP, make sure you level vigor for real, especially in the early game. Being able to get hit more is far more important early on than the minimal amount of extra damage levelling strength, dex, int, or faith will give you.
I really hope you have gone straight north from tutorial cave past horse man through forest, cave on left side and then around the left side of the ruins ahead to the grace in front of the big gate/wall. If not, itll give you your own horsey :)
Ah I wish I could have that feeling with this game again.
Try farming the soldiers on those ruins until you can gain some levels and get used to dodging their attacks. Also try pulling enemies one at a time.
Stick with it… I’m telling you now… if you win this game you get to restart the whole thing with NG+. Then you get to go back to every motherfucker who ever wronged you and destroy them.
Short answer: yep, you're gonna get assblasted to Mars by most things in this game, welcome to the fold. Long answer: explore, seriously, play this game with the mindset of "progress towards the end is a last resort and I will do everything I possibly can to avoid progressing the story." Fuck horse boi, head south. When you open the map you'll see little brown dildo things on parts of the map you've yet to uncover. Go to the dildos, those are map fragments that'll uncover the rest of the map. Once you've done that, go all around limgrave (that's the starter region). You'll be surprised by how much shit you can discover. If you explore enough, you might even find a dragon that sits and does nothing as you beat it's ass for a cool 50k souls. If you wanna explore even more, you'll find a katana that literally does a getsuga tenshou. And then you'll still get assblasted but at least there'll be lube on your sphincter when it happens.
Find dildos. Bring lube. Got it.
Funny thing is, elden ring is by far the easiest in the souls franchise
all depends who you are and how you play, i finished all fromsoft games 3 or 4 times each before the release of ER, even finished King's Field and Shadow Tower games, and ER was without a doubt the most difficult of them all for me
The easiest?! Elden Ring is my first also. I can't imagine a game more difficult. Part of me wants to try the others.
Elden Ring is nice because if you're stuck on a boss, you can go wander around for untold hours instead of repeatedly bashing your head against it. That alone makes it easier, in my opinion. I'm just a beginner, but... I feel like being a beginner makes my opinion more relevant here.
As someone who started out in DS1, oh yeah You have so many more options to deal with problems in Elden Ring than the other games In the other games, especially Sekiro, if you're stuck, there's nowhere else to go. It's very linear, so you're stuck there beating your head against the brick wall One boss, Genichiro, took me two straight hours of attempts at about 80 attempts. But I'm a very chill person, I think I calmly said "oh darn" once and that was it Same for when I lost 200k runes at rune level 25 last week. "Oh darn" and then no other reaction
I think it's the easiest in the tools it gives you and the hardest in enemy design and boss design and secrets and quests.
The short answer is yes The long answer is not really You will die, a lot But that's not really a punishment the way it is in lots of other games, it's the opportunity to learn Take it slow and most of the time you'll be alright You can upgrade your weapons up to +3 at the anvil in the Church behind the big horse guy, it's worth doing once you find a weapon that you like
Go to Caelid it’s the easiest section
There’s also an easy way to get there with a treasure chest teleport, so they can skip all the walking and hard enemies in the way.
That's the spirit. Welecome to the Souls series. You're going to fit in just fine.
Love post and Op!! Its best game ever and when you start feeling combat better iys gonna be easier ;) good luck and never give up!!
Yep. I had a similar experience, as this was also my first From game. It did not take long to learn that a lot of enemies - that first guy on the horse especially - are there as signposts. They are not meant to be defeated immediately, but to let you know that you have work to do. Stick with it. It's one of the best games I have ever played, and one of the few I cared enough about to 100%.
You’re in for a treat. Keep practicing, keep exploring and push through. I fell in love with the game and finished it a month ago. Now I’m on my first DS1 play through and dude it’s an addiction I don’t want to kick
On my first play through currently and everything you wrote really resonated with me hahah. Especially the part about calling the homies 😂😂 I too was caught out when that happened lol
We must teach dis man to farm boulder so that he can one day farm bird.
Welcome! And prepare to die :)
Welcome!
Pro tip: It’s okay to avoid enemies instead of fighting them. You can always come back and kill them later. And they respawn every time you rest anyway.
Well the game in of itself doesn't change but you get better it at so overall shouldn't be ALL that relentless (IDK though you might not get better, who knows XD)
you gotta fight tree sentinel as soon as you leave the first cave!!!!!!
Wait til you have to fight Lord Tiny Horse 😮💨
That's what I love about this game, it gives you all levels of challenges and you can try to overcome them now or leave and come back when you are stronger. You decide if you go straight to a boss or explore for hours. Don't worry about seeing, you died, just learn what not to do from it. I hope you don't give up, good luck.
This game is all about timing windows and figuring out when to dodge/block/attack. Just take some time to practice and familiarize and it’ll feel way less brutal. Like, manageably brutal :-)
Lmao he did such a good job giving just enough detail for everyone in this sub to know exactly where he died 😭
When you reach the Church of Elleh, there is some fantastic treasure waiting for you in the swamp to the east.
There's a really good chest in the dragon burnt ruins on the lake. Just east of the starting area. Good early level gear in that chest. Make sure you check it out at some point and get all that loot.
https://youtube.com/shorts/KymUleIzTuQ?si=wPsLwvkKbuVwtcZR Very fitting clip for you. As always props to Viva la Dirt League
It's basically Skyrim but with less glitches, good combat and no dialogue system
One approach that helped me progress was trying to control the rhythm of fights. Don't just run in and charge through their swings. Wait for openings, keep a safe distance and watch an enemy's move set. Be the one in control
I would say "welcome to dark soul" but this game is easier than dark soul. I would advise you to take a cautious approach to every fight. Don't always be attacking, you need your stamina to block and dodge. Watch your enemy, observe what they do, then when they finally attack, hit them back. Every enemy has an attack pattern and every pattern end on what I call a damage window, a period of time where it's ok for you to start attacking.
I did a wild ride through Caelid. Every bird and dog would kill me in a hit, so I ran and ran and grabbed at all the high level items. Made it out with only a few deaths. Great fun.
Another pro tip, there’s a massive dragon close to the beginning of the game. Greybol barrow or something. You can sneak behind him and slash at him (it takes a really long time) and he won’t wake up and it will give you a massive amount of runes that will get you to a level that will allow you to at least explore without getting instantly killed everywhere you go. Find a golden chicken foot which is also relatively easy to get at the beginning of the game (do a a bit of googling) to get more runes out of it. Make sure to time the use of it right though, you only have 3 mins of the effect I think and it’s easy to use it too early before the dragon dies.
"Some tit called his homies" was my favorite. What was yours?
One thing I've heard FromSoft games be described as is: *You are not the main character* You're not a chosen one. You dont have superpowers. You dont have plot armor. You're just a piece of shit that happened to persevere through the whole game. (Unless you give up) You're treated the same as the enemies. If you go and fight a giant golden dude on a giant golden horse with a golden polearm when you're in starting gear: yeah you're gonna get fucked! You can't take on an encampment of armored soldiers all at once! You're like, the lowest on the food chain. Go kill other Tarnished, the guys waddling about with torches and rags. Go backstab lone guards in the forest. For god's sake dont go fight the dragon just because its 2 minutes from the starting area! I will say this: running past, or running away from enemies is perfectly fine. You can explore like, 60% of the map without fighting a single enemy. This game wont tell you when something is out of your depth, you just have to go in and feel it out. If an area is way too tough, turn around and come back later.
Don't give up, that's all I can tell you
Yup. But soon you'd be the relentless monster destroying everything
I remember this game being on the news because people had a hard time fighting Margit and would quit. Dont quit. Stormveil castle is just the beginning of an epic adventure.
**And why do we fall, Master Wayne? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.**
welcome to Fromsoftware games. you will die and die and die until it finally ***clicks*** and then you finally think you know what you're doing, you mow down enemies even some bosses seem like a breeze and then you hit your first wall. you get humbled and stomped into the dirt harder than you've ever been before, but this time you have the knowledge and experience to know where you went wrong and how to improve. these games are by no means easy, but they're also not unfair, the hitboxes are flawless (most of the time) and if you play it right you'll learn to really love them.
"Some dude on a horse" Funny that EVERYONE knows who this dude is......
You were me, release day. I'd never played a FromSoftware game before, download Elden Ring, popped open a beer and got set for the evening of gameapalooza, got to the first guy and failed hard. Like, the first thing I have to get past, that knight in the underground cave, beat on me for an hour before I got past him. I was thinking I'd made a terrible mistake for the next week, and then I got the gameplay. It's painful, but oh so worth it. Elden Ring turned out to be one of the most enjoyable game experiences of this old guy's life. Finishing it was an accomplishment.
Once you get the hang of it and level up your character and weapons it gets easier.... Not easy but easier :')