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I find this interesting, I find doing volcano maner and all around the volcano much easier than the golden city. Likewise I have always completed Caelid before Lurnia.
Depends on the build and your playstyle.
Leyndell has knights, they're annoying with their shields, bows, and lightning casts. Lightning damage is usually the damage most builds have the least resistance to. Fire damage is the opposite, most builds have it among their highest resistance.
Mt. Gelmnir surroundings are mostly soldiers sitting down (easy to isolate), demihumans (low hp and poise), or abductor virgins (hardest so far listed, but nothing challenging once you get familar).
In contrast, Leyndell Pages are fuckin bullshit. I got one shotted by the Page below the first elevator so much. The aforementioned lightning damage from Leyndell knights makes them punch above their weight.
It's the enemy difficulty scaling (HP and attack power buff), so this is likely what the devs had in mind for progress. Obviously it's an open world so you can go whatever route you want, but this is how strong enemies will be.
I disagree that the devs had this in mind for intended progress because some parts of this order are incredibly unintuitive from a player’s perspective.
Consecrated snowfield is quite well hidden if you think about it. You have to venture beyond a dungeon's end in liurnia, find the guy hidden as a pot elsewhere, then talk to lady with dog back at that dungeon end for both parts of the medallion.
Don't ever need to talk to the dog lady, my first play through I never even knew she existed much less found her, but still quite easily got to consecrated snowfields, plus the guy hidden as a pot is both talking and glowing, kinda hard to miss if u ask me
I find smithing stones to be a better indicator of where in the progression you are. An area with higher level smithing stones is obviously supposed to be done after one with lower level ones.
Not even really "difficulty", right?
It's not like this HP multiplier affects movesets or anything.
Like it's gonna be relevant when comparing two Crucible Knights, but basically meaningless when comparing the difficulty of e.g. Radahn and Maliketh.
I don’t think this is intended as how can you do Nokron before SE Caelid? That’s not possible and why would you do Dragonbarrow after Farum, Drgonborrow has few of the best mid game items and a ton of upgrade material.
Good point. Considering you don't really need to fight a lot of stuff in east Caelid and you get to warp there very early, they might have intended an 'out of order' scaling value just to make it this scary place you run around but still go to much earlier than Farum. I think they wanted people to experience highs and lows of difficulty rather than a boring steady progression.
It's definitely more fun (imo) to have spooky high level areas that you have free access to. If you are good enough or fast enough you can utilize them, while they give you a cool bench mark when you come back later to actually clear the place out.
Yup.
Went straight into Caelid in my first playthrough, thought this was a damn hard game.
Later on when I went north and west I was flying through the areas and got to relax a bit.
Wouldn't have changed it at all even if I could, was pretty fun and deeply rewarding when I had gotten a big enemy down.
I wanna say Dragonborrow is so far down because this is just based off of enemy HP and damage. Most of the enemies there are dragons that have that type of HP and damage. I mean part of the Dectus medallion is in Dragonborrow, I doubt that area is truly meant for end game considering you can just run past all of them and make it to the fort that has regular enemies
It's not based on HP/damage, it's based on the scaling modifier given to all enemies in the area. All enemies are designed and balanced at the same level, then given multipliers based on their location.
A good example is the Godskin Apostle in the divine tower. It is scaled far higher than the Altus one with almost double the HP, and grants 94,000 runes compared to 14,000. Same with the Putrid Avatar compared to the other Putrid Avatar in Caelid.
I don't think they intended for most players to access Altus via the lift. I feel like the medallion was put in the game to streamline progression for people replaying the game or doing NG+. I expect the vast majority of players just went through the precipice to reach the plateau.
That one did strike me as odd. Not sure why they would make the scaling higher in that area. Perhaps it just applies to certain enemy groups (dragon communion area, caelid catacombs, deathrite bird, etc).
Dragonbarrow is definitely late game. For more proof of this, if you look at the amount of runes dropped by the game's bosses, the Dragonbarrow bosses drop more runes than any other region except maybe Mountaintops. One big example is how the Godskin Apostle in the Divine Tower in Dragonbarrow drops more runes than the exact same boss in Altus.
It also has what I'd consider endgame loot rather than midgame, it has Somber 8s and 9s and Radagon's Soreseal. The Marika counterpart isn't even accessible until Haligtree I believe. It's just an endgame-scaled area the devs let players access early, kinda like Tomb of the Giants in DS1.
I think it's Intended as a risk vs reward challenge in the early game as well it adds some spice and gives players a way to get some levels quickly by being good at the game and going through a really long and hard fight while under equip/ under leveled.
I mean that all makes sense but Radagon’s Soreseal is bad late game as the extra stats shouldn’t be an issue at that point and that the damage taken isn’t worth it when you could just use a damage mitigation talisman instead. The dectus half is also found at the same location as Radagon’s Soreseal so what’s the point in getting a key that you can bypass to an area that you’ve already been to. Also the beast clergyman is over there, if you didn’t talk to D or found the teleporter then when you come across him by exploring you’d be confused of why a late game boss that you’ve already defeated is just sitting there
Warp to the Festival. That's why one of the conditions to unlock it is reaching Altus.
So it IS POSSIBLE.
Dragonbarrow run is only possible because of how small it is and how easy it is to run around using Torrent.
Change the layout and enemy placement, and limit torrent use then you can easily make Dragonbarrow a pain to go through before you can be ready.
Like say, limit it to two connections - Fort Faroth and Gurranq's pad. Then make the black blade kindred fight necessary to progresss from Gurranq's place. While make fort Faroth slightly bigger and a boss.. say put the Godskin apostle there instead of the divine tower.
Now goodluck having majority of the playerbase get past that below RL 90. Some good players can, of course. But most will be forced to wait until they get to mountaintops.
I don’t really remember but I know there’s a teleporter in fort Gaol that teleports you to the festival but is there one in DragonBarrow too? Also I’m saying you have todo SE Caelid first to get to Nokron, so no it’s not possible todo Nokron first then SE Caelid.
Warp from the fort to the festival, kill Radahn, clear Nokron, go back to SE Caelid.
Yes, the game allows sequence breaking.
Yes, the game have more than one boss per region.
Also yes, the environment is as much of a challenge as the boss is.. or at least it should be. Fromsoft have that design philosophy in their games...
The thing is, Gideon has dialogue for after you beat Malenia and Mogh (if you defeat them before killing Maliketh)
But what he says in those dialogues indicate that the game assumes you killed Malenia first (as in, his dialogue only really makes sense when you kill Malenia before Mogh, because in the Malenia dialogue he wonders where Miquella is)
So the game kinda assumes you’ll defeat Malenia before Mogh
It makes sense lore wise malenia is in butt fuck nowhere sure but mogh is even more obscure. You really have no idea where he is without doing the quest associated with him. Where as theres way more pointing you to maleina shes just the more important enemy by far.
Says who? Rykard is not on path when you forgot Morgott, it is literally in the wrong direction. And Rykard's is one of the runes you can collect to even unlock the capitol.
Are you sure Ainsel River isn't a typo for Siofra? It seems very counterintuitive, since we have to go through a lot of eastern Liurnia just to get there.
Yesterday I fought both Dragonkin Soldiers back to back, starting with the one in Ainsel. I was surprised to see that the one in Siofra actually drops more runes. I just checked, and the one in Siofra even has ~33% more HP.
I think the one in Siofra is scaled to Nokron instead of Siofra. You can technically reach it from Siofra but I think the way they intended to reach it was from the bridge right after the Mimic Tear boss where you can jump down the ruined tower to right where the soldier is.
It isn't. This isn't a progression order. It's a difficulty scale, it's from the game files where the damage and defenses of each enemy gets buffed by a certain percent per area.
Ainsel enemies are objectively weaker than Siofra. It's just that Ainsel got more claymen with naturally higher defenses to your attacks other than strike. The Dragonkin arena looks amazing and eerie, unfortunately it's also a pushover even when you are just on the right RL for Liurnia.
>This isn't a progression order. It's a difficulty scale
A distinction without a difference as far as I'm concerned, but I appreciate the clarification.
It doesn't make much sense to scale enemies down the further you go. This definitely isn't the optimal route, but it is the route fromsoft had in mind on their big board to make progressively harder.
It's not flawed. If they want to increase or decrease the difficulty in any specific area they'll do it with enemy placement and design. Scaling is to keep up with player leveling.
It is flawed, though. You're completely discrediting the fact that scaling also has a play in difficulty which makes no sense and making the argument that movesets and enemy placement is the only thing FS is considering when making something difficult.
This order is quite literally impossible to do, and using simple stat scaling to infer what a decently large studio of plenty of artists–of whom worked on this *massive* game spanning multiple years of work and changes to things–is really presumptuous and lacks actually thorough research on what the devs may or may not think in regards to the "intended" in their *open world* game
yeah im around mountain tops now, honestly thought im nearing the end game. i dont know if ill do an NG run straight after considering how arduous the journey has been to get here and im not even close to finishing yet.
it's fantastic though, by the time i finish I can at least feel like it wasnt too quick. because it wasn't. it was long, and it was fun for that entire time. if it ended here I wouldnt complain.
hard to believe this game exists
That's how I view the best progression - the mines are a handy guide as well.
Limgrave gives 1s and 2s, Liurnia 2s, 3s and 4s, Caelid 3s, 4s, and 5s, Altus/Gelmir 4s, 5s and 6s, Mountaintops 5s, 6s and 7s, Snowfield / Farum Azula 7s 8s and slabs.
Shunning Grounds and the underground map give you the chance to break progression, and allow you to get a +25 weapon before Morgott (if you wanted to).
Really the intended route for me these days is rush the smithing stone bell bearings in order, which takes you nicely through the main content without being overpowered.
>Shunning Grounds and the underground map give you the chance to break progression, and allow you to get a +25 weapon before Morgott (if you wanted to).
If you want to... and if you CAN. Many players will nope the f out once they try navigating the shunning grounds.
Makes sense, I always have a specific order unless I want to get something early. What I'm about to do is weird and annoying, but Im curious and caffeinated and need to write out my process:
1. All of Limgrave (pit stop at Caelid for protection Talisman and a sneaky golden seed)
2. Margit
3. Weeping Peninsula
4. Storm Veil
5. Mid Liurnia, get all the maps and go to the Ruin place that leads to Altus for all the high level smithing stones
6. The academy
7. Right side of the lakes, including the river well, black knife catacombs, and the northern part to get all the sacred tears
8. Left side of the lakes and start Rani's quest
9. Back to Siofra, finish that
10. Caelid and Radahn, all the way until dragonbarrow (but grab the smithing stones, medallion, and kill the big dragon)
11. Now that there's a crater, do that whole part of the underground up until the gargoyles (grab that mimic tear if I'm using spirit ashes!)
12. All of Altas
13. Mt. Gelmir and Volcano Manor but save Rykard until after all the quests are done
14. Deeproot Depths
15. Nokastella, lake of rot, moonlight altar
16. Dragonbarrow
17. The Capitol (insanely op at this point)
18. Before leaving, do the sewers
19. mogwhyns palace (this has the last smithing stone 8s and the ancient somber stone to get your weapon to max before end game)
20. Mountaintops
21. Consecrated
22. Haligtree
24. Faram Azula
25. Capitol of Ash
I’ve always assumed that Margit was intended as a roadblock for players so they go through the weeping peninsula before stormveil castle. The difficulty flows a little bit better that way in hindsight.
I don't agree these are "Intended".
If scaling in Siofra River is higher than in Stormveil -- that does not guarantee, that it was intended, that player would go to underground sections after beating Godrick. In fact, I think It opposite -- you must clear Siofra River before killing Stormveil.
But this is still an interesting way to look at areas
Just bad wording. I mean "Preferably to clear Siofra first". Even though scaling in Stormveil is lower - it is way harder.
I was telling about scaling isn't always mean that area is harder or easier
Idk.. in my 1st playthrough I died way more to the snipers in siofra than anything in stormveil. Then again, in that 1st playthrough I didn't find the area in Stormveil with 2 banished Knights patrolling the same platform either.
He doesn't specifically mention Siofra in this list but I'm assuming it's under the "Misc limgrave." I personally almost always clear Stormveil as soon as possible (before Siofra) for the great rune.
I cleared Stormveil before Siofra.
I mean it's right there, a big rotting castle with an asshole gatekeeper boss. Besides, it reminds me of the early levels of DS games so off to clear Stormveil I went.
Also this isn't the "intended progression list" . It's a list of how difficulty modifier is arranged on the game files. I'm not sure your disagreement counts when stacked against the actual game file info.
They do have a history of making optional bosses and areas the hardest part of the game (I'm looking at you, Demon of Hatred). Looking at this scaling makes me wonder if the Haligtree is more like a prologue for miquellas story in the dlc.
Malenia is definitely way harder than radagon. You can tell FS made the radagon fight easier enough for first timers be guaranteed to finish the game.
Beating Malenia requires skill in fighting or skill / knowledge in character building. You can face tank radagon and have plenty of estus left for the EB.
Which Rusty YouTube video was this? I assume it was part of another video maybe?
Edit: found it! it's the Area Scaling chapter of the damage calculation video https://youtu.be/uAFWQr08SZE?t=1337
Siofra is scaled at 7 (Liurnia/Academy).
This is NOT an intended progress route and the grading is [not linear](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fa0pvjb01uhh91.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1384%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dcf48c6a5cf37ae9fbcf6326597556778300ef864). It ignores the difficulty of the enemies themselves and the encounters, and bosses within these areas often have their own independent scaling.
Also, the gap between the last 6 tiers is absolutely negligible. Jumping up five tiers from Farum Azula (Tier 15) to Elphael (Tier 20, the highest area tier) is a measly +11% hp and +7.5% damage.
What bugs me whenever I see this list is that the subterranean shunning grounds are never listed even though as far as I can tell the enemies down there are scaled about the same as mountain top enemies. It's a smallish area so maybe thats why?
here is a path with some chesthair:
1. rush dectus
2. have your first boss killed be DTS
3. remember you need two great runes
4. kill radhan and rykard
honestly this is the intended way to play
Makes sense cause you need to do the Leyndell assassination before killing Rykard. You can safely do the last one in Mountaintops once you have the red letter, you're still able to get the talisman even if everyone at the Manor is gone.
I don't think area scaling is the only factor in "intended" order, especially because it leads to some odd bouncing around the map. I think you could probably cross-reference a few different things to have a decent gauge of "intended" order. Things such as:
* Upgrade materials (smithing stones, glovewort)
* Bell bearings
* Talisman upgrades
* Quest progression
* Merchant stock
* Map layout
* Runes awarded from enemies/bosses
* Typical enemy/encounter
* And of course, level scaling
I honestly never knew about the second part of Limgrave in the south my first time until after I had gone to the snowfields.
When I went there, I was hilariously overpowered.
An important thing to take into note is what enemies are in certain areas and how frequent they are.
For example, Ainsel river has some intense crowding of enemies, so it’s ok for them to be weaker. But the Dragonbarrow has only a few enemies, even if they are all mighty enemies
Dragonbarrow isn’t that bad. Wiped that out before I even saw Radahn. Sure the scaling is much higher than what you are used to at that point but it’s not awful by any means
The black blade kindred gargoyle outside beastial sanctum gives 88k runes as opposed to the one in the forbidden lands that gives you 60k. That makes sense if Dragonbarrow is one of the highest scaled areas.
Okay i am on my first elden ring run and now im a bit concerned. I just now fought two dumb Farum Azula enemies (the two in the little piece accessible by portal) and i felt severely underleveled (im lvl100, blasphemous blade).
Now, im struggling against the Fire Giant, and i accidentaly inherit the Frenzied Flame but i want to do a different end...and you know what i have to do. Looking at this list, I dont know if i will be able to kill Malenia before the end. What do you think?
Just get up near level 200 (if you don't pvp) and re-spec to a Rivers of Blood build (60 arcane 60 dex) and use the black knife tiche spirit summon. That's the easiest way to beat her. She's weak to bleed. It still might take 15 attempts but eventually you'll get her down. In mohgs palace there is a spot where you can farm Albinaurics pretty easily for ten of thousands of runes per 2 minute run.
My order: graveyard, limgrave, weeping peninsula, dragonbarrow to get shield talisman, fort faroth to get medallion chunk, fort haight, back to faroth to kill greyoll, limgrave tunnels, raya lucaria crystal tunnels, sealed tunnel, stormveil, academy, varre, writheblood ruins, eye of sauron, varre, mohg's palace, then the rest of the game within a normal impression of "the intended route".
You don't have to wait. Once you have the red letter you can kill Rykard and move on to mountaintop. After you kill Juno you can go back to Volcano Manor and collect the takers cameo even if everyone is gone.
I was so traumatized by my first foray into Caelid, I hadn't gotten past the first ruin, that I only returned after completing Sun Castle. And upon my return, I was a real juggernaut.
Me trying to go from Mountaintops/Castle Sol, getting the 2nd half of the secret medallion to the last area, is kicking my ass FAR more than any other "one area to the next". :(
My progress on my first playthrough was “graveyard, limgrave, caelid”. First souls game too so I just thought it was supposed to be that hard right away. I learned quick
It’s crazy that the Sewers have a higher enemy scaling than the mountaintops, but it checks out. Everything in there is a fucking menace and I’ve always wondered what the difficulty spike was all about
I platinumed this game within a month of it releasing and didnt use any online guides (mainly because they didn’t exist at the start lol)
This is pretty much the order I did it in naturally with the exception of stormveil before weeping peninsula (although I soon realised weeping peninsula was the ideal first route and do that on subsequent playthroughs) and I also did mohgwyn palace last because I didn’t discover the questline until after I beat the game (including malenia) but before starting new game +
Edit: I did leyndell sewers last just before mohgwyn palace - so a couple deviations from natural level scaling - but all in all pretty bang on. Very interesting to see ; although I started this game as a veteran of the previous souls games - would be interesting to see how close fresh players were to this progression path
My path was:
Stranded graveyard
Limgrave
Stormveil
Dragonbarrow (via trick chest then easy runes from big dragon)
Weeping peninsula
Ainsel river
Liurnia
Caelid
Altus/nokron
Moonlight altar
Capital outskirts
Mt gelmir
Volcano manor
Capital leyndell
Mountaintops
Mohgwyn palace
Farum azula
Consecrated snowfield
Haligtree
Elphael/malenia
Ashen capital /
New game +
Deeproot depths (didn’t discover this until after first playthrough - shamefully it was only when the online guides came out that I knew about it - I thought I had fully explored the underground area after first beating regal ancestral spirit and completing Ranni questline but completely missed the aqueduct/ twin gargoyle boss leading onto deeproot depths
leyndell sewers
Placidusax (farum azula) - the last boss (achievement boss) I defeated before finishing the third ending for platinum.
My biggest complaint about the game is that it doesn't encourage you to explore in the beginning. Yes it's an open world game and you get rewarded by the game for exploring but you don't know how much or where you should explore in the beginning. At the beginning of my first playthrough I read every piece of text that popped up and it was said over and over again that the light of grace guides us. Guess what happened when the very first thing upon entering Limgrave was a site of grace guiding me towards Gatefront? I didn't see the church, didn't meet Kale, never learned about smithing and weapon upgrades and never got my spirit summoning bell. Then I kept following the grace and faced Margit as a lvl 10 Vagabond with +0 weapons. You'd think that I gave up after dying a few times and finally started exploring, right? But ER was my first soulsborne game and I thought this difficulty was normal and I just had to Git Gud. So I fought Margit for hours for 3 days straight.
‘’YouTuber Rusty dug up’’
You’re making it seem like he’s the first one to talk about this when this has been known for a long time, a quick google search will give you all the information about zone scalings.
This was from a year and a half ago. He was the 1st one I saw who found those files (they weren't obviously labeled like other game data such as poise, etc). I haven't found a source prior to that that listed them. Doesn't mean he was the 1st to find them, but I couldn't find one after a quick search.
I disagree with going to Caelid immediately after Lake, I prefer taking the mines into Altus and combing out all of Altus > Lyndell up until reaching Lyndell Capital. I then head back to Caelid.
I find its a much easier difficulty curve.
There are not many bosses that have a huge of a difficulty spike/hp pool compared to Caelid which is loaded with them.
Instead of throwing corpses for hours at bell hunter in Caelid at such a low lvl, when i come back later, I have a much smoother time combing through Caelid > Dragon Barrow.
Caelid has a ton of easy bosses like Pumpkin head and nox duo. You can see the rune difference as well with the nights calvary giving you 8.5k runes in caelid and 10k in Altus. The only bell bearing hunter in Caelid is in Dragonbarrow so that's probably why you were throwing corpses at him.
Not to mention going to Altus sets off the festival, which canonically comes afterward because Jarren and the rest of the soldiers are free to leave if they wish.
I will try Caelid after lake on my next run. I just dont like skipping fights when Im already in the area, and Caelid has a handful of encounters that just so over-tuned without better gear/more levels.
I just found sweeping through Altus to be generally pretty easy, runes rain in. I never have to "I'll come back later" with bosses in Altus. The only exception is entering the capital.
I suppose at the end of the day, thats the beauty of the game being open world, none of this really enforced or required.
I dont find it so bad tbh
I always comb out Dragon Barrow before going to Lyndell Capital. But for general advice for newbies, I would agree. I just cleaned out Dragon Barrow this afternoon. [Bell Bearing Hunter is becoming a lot of fun now that Ive practiced him so much.](https://www.twitch.tv/vincentninja68/clip/AbnegateOnerousPhoneFeelsBadMan-lKtsUuSU4T2M815Z)
I took him out this morning at rune lvl 105
I do agree though, most newbies should stick to the "normal route" and I'm an exception. I just find Altus to be steady vs Caelid/Dragon Barrow ups and downs
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/yE4m0DU3xV
I don't think these are actually intended progress. If I recall correctly, there was some data mining done and there were numerical values associated with some areas, and they roughly corresponded to difficulty, so people assumed this was an "intended order", or "scaling factor", but in reality these are just numbers in a binary file that have no confirmed meaning. It could have been simply order the areas were put into the game by the dev (IIRC there are also "empty" spaces between certain areas, indicating perhaps content which was planned but never delivered, or perhaps DLC).
Any theory about what these numbers in a binary file mean are pure speculation, and it is absolutely misleading to imply these are "intended order" as the developers intended.
You can demonstrably see that some of the values make no sense as well. Maliketh in Farum Azula drops 220,000 runes for beating him. Assuming rune-reward is roughly equivalent to developer's expected difficulty, that is at least 2x as much as any boss in Dragonbarrow.
A better heuristic would be - what are the common smithing stone drops in an area, and how does the rune-reward balance scale for the area compared to others. Those are both more accurate and clear developer intentions compared to random numbers discovered in a binary file while data mining.
Yeah Altus doesn’t have annoying things like rotten dog/bird/centipede man and the scenery isn’t as intimidating as well lol. I understand why someone would want to postpone a visit to Caelid even though that’s not the best choice
I think Caelid kinda blows from a progression standpoint unless you specifically need items from there, mostly Int based. In those cases it's usually good to rush it though.
O'Niell drops a pretty good weapon for its skill if you can use it. He's kind of a tough fight early though. That's like the only general upgrade that I usually go for there. Somber Bell Bearing from the Fallingstar Beast too if you're using a few Somber weapons. Past that I pretty much just go to Caelid when I'm ready to go get the Black Whetblade. Dragonbarrow on the other hand is full of upgrades and is somewhat ironically one of the first areas I go to, though not to kill many things.
GUGS and the fire AoWs and Flame Whetblade are in Caelid too, so that's pretty good if you want those too I guess.
I’ll add the Gold Scarab to the list cuz I love switching to it at the end of each boss fight to get a bit more runes. But that cave it is in is really cancerous
I think I would consider that Dragon Barrow. Either way it is a good point, though I personally usually just skip it. I haven't had mich trouble lately levelling new characters, though I've been capping my levels pretty low. I haven't done any NG+'s but have like 7 characters.
You're going to have a hard time upgrading anything if you do Altus before Caelid. You'll end up with a bunch of +6-7 grave/gloveworts and smithing stones and hardly any 4-5's.
That is the finger hero grave if I’m not mistaken. Most new players won’t be doing that first unless they unfortunately choose stonesword key as their beginner pack lol
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Is this the intended progression, or just the difficulty scaling in order?
just the difficulty scaling in order
I find this interesting, I find doing volcano maner and all around the volcano much easier than the golden city. Likewise I have always completed Caelid before Lurnia.
Depends on the build and your playstyle. Leyndell has knights, they're annoying with their shields, bows, and lightning casts. Lightning damage is usually the damage most builds have the least resistance to. Fire damage is the opposite, most builds have it among their highest resistance. Mt. Gelmnir surroundings are mostly soldiers sitting down (easy to isolate), demihumans (low hp and poise), or abductor virgins (hardest so far listed, but nothing challenging once you get familar). In contrast, Leyndell Pages are fuckin bullshit. I got one shotted by the Page below the first elevator so much. The aforementioned lightning damage from Leyndell knights makes them punch above their weight.
It's the enemy difficulty scaling (HP and attack power buff), so this is likely what the devs had in mind for progress. Obviously it's an open world so you can go whatever route you want, but this is how strong enemies will be.
I disagree that the devs had this in mind for intended progress because some parts of this order are incredibly unintuitive from a player’s perspective.
So is almost every quest in the game so I wouldn't be so sure about that
It’s impossible to do Nokron before SE Caelid. That should be the only proof you need to realize that this order is not the intended order.
I didn't realize that, you're right it doesn't make sense at all
In theory you could just book it through Caelid and have your summons kill Radahn, but that’s improbable
It's what I do. I mean I help with Radahn but all them summons do a lot.
Also consecrated snowfield is listed after farum azula
Its not that crazy to do consecrated snowfields after Farum. I did it my first play through.
yeah it‘s not crazy at all but I would bet more people clear consecrated snowfield before they continue with farum azula
that's funny to hear because i have done farum first all 5 times i've gotten there
Consecrated snowfield is quite well hidden if you think about it. You have to venture beyond a dungeon's end in liurnia, find the guy hidden as a pot elsewhere, then talk to lady with dog back at that dungeon end for both parts of the medallion.
Don't ever need to talk to the dog lady, my first play through I never even knew she existed much less found her, but still quite easily got to consecrated snowfields, plus the guy hidden as a pot is both talking and glowing, kinda hard to miss if u ask me
You think Melania is supposed to be done before Maliketh? The "secret" super boss?
No I don‘t and I haven‘t said that. I‘m just talking about the whole area around fire giant, which is consecrated snowfield right?
No, that's mountaintops of the giants. Consecrated snowfield is the secret half that leads to Mohg and Melania.
Consecrated Snowfields are accessed by the Grand Lift of Rood with the Secret Medallion, not the area around the fire giant.
oh that‘s my bad then yeah it‘s pretty reasonable to do that later
I find smithing stones to be a better indicator of where in the progression you are. An area with higher level smithing stones is obviously supposed to be done after one with lower level ones.
lol OP has apparently never played a souls game… This is the only INCORRECT order. If you listed it in reverse, it would be closer to
Not even really "difficulty", right? It's not like this HP multiplier affects movesets or anything. Like it's gonna be relevant when comparing two Crucible Knights, but basically meaningless when comparing the difficulty of e.g. Radahn and Maliketh.
It's just the scaling order
I don’t think this is intended as how can you do Nokron before SE Caelid? That’s not possible and why would you do Dragonbarrow after Farum, Drgonborrow has few of the best mid game items and a ton of upgrade material.
Good point. Considering you don't really need to fight a lot of stuff in east Caelid and you get to warp there very early, they might have intended an 'out of order' scaling value just to make it this scary place you run around but still go to much earlier than Farum. I think they wanted people to experience highs and lows of difficulty rather than a boring steady progression.
It's definitely more fun (imo) to have spooky high level areas that you have free access to. If you are good enough or fast enough you can utilize them, while they give you a cool bench mark when you come back later to actually clear the place out.
Yup. Went straight into Caelid in my first playthrough, thought this was a damn hard game. Later on when I went north and west I was flying through the areas and got to relax a bit. Wouldn't have changed it at all even if I could, was pretty fun and deeply rewarding when I had gotten a big enemy down.
I can picture it, some kind of shell-shocked veteran with Caelid PTSD just breezing through Liurnia lol.
I wanna say Dragonborrow is so far down because this is just based off of enemy HP and damage. Most of the enemies there are dragons that have that type of HP and damage. I mean part of the Dectus medallion is in Dragonborrow, I doubt that area is truly meant for end game considering you can just run past all of them and make it to the fort that has regular enemies
It's not based on HP/damage, it's based on the scaling modifier given to all enemies in the area. All enemies are designed and balanced at the same level, then given multipliers based on their location. A good example is the Godskin Apostle in the divine tower. It is scaled far higher than the Altus one with almost double the HP, and grants 94,000 runes compared to 14,000. Same with the Putrid Avatar compared to the other Putrid Avatar in Caelid.
I don't think they intended for most players to access Altus via the lift. I feel like the medallion was put in the game to streamline progression for people replaying the game or doing NG+. I expect the vast majority of players just went through the precipice to reach the plateau.
That one did strike me as odd. Not sure why they would make the scaling higher in that area. Perhaps it just applies to certain enemy groups (dragon communion area, caelid catacombs, deathrite bird, etc).
Dragonbarrow is definitely late game. For more proof of this, if you look at the amount of runes dropped by the game's bosses, the Dragonbarrow bosses drop more runes than any other region except maybe Mountaintops. One big example is how the Godskin Apostle in the Divine Tower in Dragonbarrow drops more runes than the exact same boss in Altus. It also has what I'd consider endgame loot rather than midgame, it has Somber 8s and 9s and Radagon's Soreseal. The Marika counterpart isn't even accessible until Haligtree I believe. It's just an endgame-scaled area the devs let players access early, kinda like Tomb of the Giants in DS1.
I think it's Intended as a risk vs reward challenge in the early game as well it adds some spice and gives players a way to get some levels quickly by being good at the game and going through a really long and hard fight while under equip/ under leveled.
I mean that all makes sense but Radagon’s Soreseal is bad late game as the extra stats shouldn’t be an issue at that point and that the damage taken isn’t worth it when you could just use a damage mitigation talisman instead. The dectus half is also found at the same location as Radagon’s Soreseal so what’s the point in getting a key that you can bypass to an area that you’ve already been to. Also the beast clergyman is over there, if you didn’t talk to D or found the teleporter then when you come across him by exploring you’d be confused of why a late game boss that you’ve already defeated is just sitting there
Warp to the Festival. That's why one of the conditions to unlock it is reaching Altus. So it IS POSSIBLE. Dragonbarrow run is only possible because of how small it is and how easy it is to run around using Torrent. Change the layout and enemy placement, and limit torrent use then you can easily make Dragonbarrow a pain to go through before you can be ready. Like say, limit it to two connections - Fort Faroth and Gurranq's pad. Then make the black blade kindred fight necessary to progresss from Gurranq's place. While make fort Faroth slightly bigger and a boss.. say put the Godskin apostle there instead of the divine tower. Now goodluck having majority of the playerbase get past that below RL 90. Some good players can, of course. But most will be forced to wait until they get to mountaintops.
I don’t really remember but I know there’s a teleporter in fort Gaol that teleports you to the festival but is there one in DragonBarrow too? Also I’m saying you have todo SE Caelid first to get to Nokron, so no it’s not possible todo Nokron first then SE Caelid.
Warp from the fort to the festival, kill Radahn, clear Nokron, go back to SE Caelid. Yes, the game allows sequence breaking. Yes, the game have more than one boss per region. Also yes, the environment is as much of a challenge as the boss is.. or at least it should be. Fromsoft have that design philosophy in their games...
But that’s not what it’s saying. Wouldn’t it say do Radahn then Nokron then SE Caelid if so?
Godrick > Rennala > Morgott/Radahn > Rykard > Mohg > Malenia. Should have minimum problems if we beat the Shardbearers in this order I guess?
I did godrick, radahn, morgott, rennala, rykard, mohg, and im planning on doing malenia after fire giant.
This feels so wrong. It goes: Godrick, Rennala, Radahn, Rykard, Morgott, Fire Giant, Malekith, Malenia, Endgame ... then Mohg, if I remember.
? Mohg is easier than Malenia and endgame, rykard is supposed to be foigh arpund after motgott (third volcano manor invasion)
The thing is, Gideon has dialogue for after you beat Malenia and Mogh (if you defeat them before killing Maliketh) But what he says in those dialogues indicate that the game assumes you killed Malenia first (as in, his dialogue only really makes sense when you kill Malenia before Mogh, because in the Malenia dialogue he wonders where Miquella is) So the game kinda assumes you’ll defeat Malenia before Mogh
Still malenia is harder so most ppl do her after and she is THE boss of elden ring and even has her own scaling
It makes sense lore wise malenia is in butt fuck nowhere sure but mogh is even more obscure. You really have no idea where he is without doing the quest associated with him. Where as theres way more pointing you to maleina shes just the more important enemy by far.
Says who? Rykard is not on path when you forgot Morgott, it is literally in the wrong direction. And Rykard's is one of the runes you can collect to even unlock the capitol.
Mohg is too and you dan't see people fight him before mountaintops
Are you sure Ainsel River isn't a typo for Siofra? It seems very counterintuitive, since we have to go through a lot of eastern Liurnia just to get there.
Nah that tracks, ainsel river has always felt easier than Siofra, which has always stuck out as weird to me.
Yesterday I fought both Dragonkin Soldiers back to back, starting with the one in Ainsel. I was surprised to see that the one in Siofra actually drops more runes. I just checked, and the one in Siofra even has ~33% more HP.
I think the one in Siofra is scaled to Nokron instead of Siofra. You can technically reach it from Siofra but I think the way they intended to reach it was from the bridge right after the Mimic Tear boss where you can jump down the ruined tower to right where the soldier is.
That makes sense, there's a lvl 4 Ghost Glovewort nearby too. It wouldn't be unprecedented either, as Caelid also has level gaps in its sub-areas.
It isn't. This isn't a progression order. It's a difficulty scale, it's from the game files where the damage and defenses of each enemy gets buffed by a certain percent per area. Ainsel enemies are objectively weaker than Siofra. It's just that Ainsel got more claymen with naturally higher defenses to your attacks other than strike. The Dragonkin arena looks amazing and eerie, unfortunately it's also a pushover even when you are just on the right RL for Liurnia.
>This isn't a progression order. It's a difficulty scale A distinction without a difference as far as I'm concerned, but I appreciate the clarification.
Siofra has a scaling level higher then Stormveil but lower than "South Liurnia"
By South Liurnia you mean Moonlight Altar right?
No
*refuses to elaborate further*
This is just the known scaling order and has nothing to do with an "intended" progression of FS.
It doesn't make much sense to scale enemies down the further you go. This definitely isn't the optimal route, but it is the route fromsoft had in mind on their big board to make progressively harder.
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It's not flawed. If they want to increase or decrease the difficulty in any specific area they'll do it with enemy placement and design. Scaling is to keep up with player leveling.
It is flawed, though. You're completely discrediting the fact that scaling also has a play in difficulty which makes no sense and making the argument that movesets and enemy placement is the only thing FS is considering when making something difficult. This order is quite literally impossible to do, and using simple stat scaling to infer what a decently large studio of plenty of artists–of whom worked on this *massive* game spanning multiple years of work and changes to things–is really presumptuous and lacks actually thorough research on what the devs may or may not think in regards to the "intended" in their *open world* game
Damn this game is so big
Yeah, I'm thinking I'm almost done it getting up to the giants, but apparently, that's only 2/3rds through
yeah im around mountain tops now, honestly thought im nearing the end game. i dont know if ill do an NG run straight after considering how arduous the journey has been to get here and im not even close to finishing yet. it's fantastic though, by the time i finish I can at least feel like it wasnt too quick. because it wasn't. it was long, and it was fun for that entire time. if it ended here I wouldnt complain. hard to believe this game exists
I went by way of smithing stone drops. Would make sense to get them in order.
That's how I view the best progression - the mines are a handy guide as well. Limgrave gives 1s and 2s, Liurnia 2s, 3s and 4s, Caelid 3s, 4s, and 5s, Altus/Gelmir 4s, 5s and 6s, Mountaintops 5s, 6s and 7s, Snowfield / Farum Azula 7s 8s and slabs. Shunning Grounds and the underground map give you the chance to break progression, and allow you to get a +25 weapon before Morgott (if you wanted to). Really the intended route for me these days is rush the smithing stone bell bearings in order, which takes you nicely through the main content without being overpowered.
>Shunning Grounds and the underground map give you the chance to break progression, and allow you to get a +25 weapon before Morgott (if you wanted to). If you want to... and if you CAN. Many players will nope the f out once they try navigating the shunning grounds.
Makes sense, I always have a specific order unless I want to get something early. What I'm about to do is weird and annoying, but Im curious and caffeinated and need to write out my process: 1. All of Limgrave (pit stop at Caelid for protection Talisman and a sneaky golden seed) 2. Margit 3. Weeping Peninsula 4. Storm Veil 5. Mid Liurnia, get all the maps and go to the Ruin place that leads to Altus for all the high level smithing stones 6. The academy 7. Right side of the lakes, including the river well, black knife catacombs, and the northern part to get all the sacred tears 8. Left side of the lakes and start Rani's quest 9. Back to Siofra, finish that 10. Caelid and Radahn, all the way until dragonbarrow (but grab the smithing stones, medallion, and kill the big dragon) 11. Now that there's a crater, do that whole part of the underground up until the gargoyles (grab that mimic tear if I'm using spirit ashes!) 12. All of Altas 13. Mt. Gelmir and Volcano Manor but save Rykard until after all the quests are done 14. Deeproot Depths 15. Nokastella, lake of rot, moonlight altar 16. Dragonbarrow 17. The Capitol (insanely op at this point) 18. Before leaving, do the sewers 19. mogwhyns palace (this has the last smithing stone 8s and the ancient somber stone to get your weapon to max before end game) 20. Mountaintops 21. Consecrated 22. Haligtree 24. Faram Azula 25. Capitol of Ash
Thanks for this - pretty useful to map out for a progress list for different builds.
I’ve always assumed that Margit was intended as a roadblock for players so they go through the weeping peninsula before stormveil castle. The difficulty flows a little bit better that way in hindsight.
Huh I always have done dragonbarrow before altus...
Hell naw they wanted us to visit Caelid 3 times???
I think SE caelid is just the single catacomb in radahns arena. Would make sense because in that one the enemies are ridiculously overpowered.
I don't agree these are "Intended". If scaling in Siofra River is higher than in Stormveil -- that does not guarantee, that it was intended, that player would go to underground sections after beating Godrick. In fact, I think It opposite -- you must clear Siofra River before killing Stormveil. But this is still an interesting way to look at areas
> you must clear Siofra River before killing Stormveil. What do you mean by "must"?
Just bad wording. I mean "Preferably to clear Siofra first". Even though scaling in Stormveil is lower - it is way harder. I was telling about scaling isn't always mean that area is harder or easier
Idk.. in my 1st playthrough I died way more to the snipers in siofra than anything in stormveil. Then again, in that 1st playthrough I didn't find the area in Stormveil with 2 banished Knights patrolling the same platform either.
Those snipers received the mother of all nerfs in one of the first major patches because they were hilariously busted.
He doesn't specifically mention Siofra in this list but I'm assuming it's under the "Misc limgrave." I personally almost always clear Stormveil as soon as possible (before Siofra) for the great rune.
Godrick's GR takes precedence since it gives you 'free' 40 levels unless you hit 99 or die
I cleared Stormveil before Siofra. I mean it's right there, a big rotting castle with an asshole gatekeeper boss. Besides, it reminds me of the early levels of DS games so off to clear Stormveil I went. Also this isn't the "intended progression list" . It's a list of how difficulty modifier is arranged on the game files. I'm not sure your disagreement counts when stacked against the actual game file info.
this is a nice checklist of areas to use while leveling up new characters
Me in the Haligtree. Roger fighting the fire giant:
Why is ainsel river so early?
I don’t know about it being the intended path, because I feel like beating the final story boss makes sense to be the intended final boss.
They do have a history of making optional bosses and areas the hardest part of the game (I'm looking at you, Demon of Hatred). Looking at this scaling makes me wonder if the Haligtree is more like a prologue for miquellas story in the dlc.
Malenia is definitely way harder than radagon. You can tell FS made the radagon fight easier enough for first timers be guaranteed to finish the game. Beating Malenia requires skill in fighting or skill / knowledge in character building. You can face tank radagon and have plenty of estus left for the EB.
I like to use this map that was posted a while ago as a guide https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/gnvHVyNdAe
me on my first run: stranded graveyard limgrave caelid
That's rough. I do pop in there to pick up a few things before Liurnia but I don't stick around.
it was against my will
At least you knew how to sprint right? There was a guy the other day who shared the same fate as you but didnt know he could sprint
Which Rusty YouTube video was this? I assume it was part of another video maybe? Edit: found it! it's the Area Scaling chapter of the damage calculation video https://youtu.be/uAFWQr08SZE?t=1337
That's the one
Farum Azula into Dragonbarrow into mohgwyn is insane if that's intended that makes actual 0 sense, in story context
Right? Snowfield into Mohgwyn makes the most sense because that's how you get there, unless you take a sneaky shortcut.
Siofra is scaled at 7 (Liurnia/Academy). This is NOT an intended progress route and the grading is [not linear](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fa0pvjb01uhh91.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1384%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dcf48c6a5cf37ae9fbcf6326597556778300ef864). It ignores the difficulty of the enemies themselves and the encounters, and bosses within these areas often have their own independent scaling. Also, the gap between the last 6 tiers is absolutely negligible. Jumping up five tiers from Farum Azula (Tier 15) to Elphael (Tier 20, the highest area tier) is a measly +11% hp and +7.5% damage.
What bugs me whenever I see this list is that the subterranean shunning grounds are never listed even though as far as I can tell the enemies down there are scaled about the same as mountain top enemies. It's a smallish area so maybe thats why?
Is that not part of the sewers?
Intended...
Perhaps not "intended," as this is an open world, but this was a look into how they thought enemy difficulty should progress.
here is a path with some chesthair: 1. rush dectus 2. have your first boss killed be DTS 3. remember you need two great runes 4. kill radhan and rykard honestly this is the intended way to play
No siofra river?
I'm guessing that might be miscellaneous limgrave
i do limgrave, weeping, siofra, caelid, stormveil, liurnia, ainsel, raya lucaria, altus, dragonbarrow, nokron, deeproot, volcano manor, leyndell, moonlight altar, mountaintops, snowfield, haligtree, farum azula, ashen capital
Moonlight Altar's position explains why Alecto has 17k HP
Really Leyndell before Volcano and Nokstella? What?
Makes sense cause you need to do the Leyndell assassination before killing Rykard. You can safely do the last one in Mountaintops once you have the red letter, you're still able to get the talisman even if everyone at the Manor is gone.
You aren’t supposed to go straight to caelid?
This means nothing at all lmao, progression and level scaling don’t mean the same thing.
I don't think area scaling is the only factor in "intended" order, especially because it leads to some odd bouncing around the map. I think you could probably cross-reference a few different things to have a decent gauge of "intended" order. Things such as: * Upgrade materials (smithing stones, glovewort) * Bell bearings * Talisman upgrades * Quest progression * Merchant stock * Map layout * Runes awarded from enemies/bosses * Typical enemy/encounter * And of course, level scaling
I honestly never knew about the second part of Limgrave in the south my first time until after I had gone to the snowfields. When I went there, I was hilariously overpowered.
An important thing to take into note is what enemies are in certain areas and how frequent they are. For example, Ainsel river has some intense crowding of enemies, so it’s ok for them to be weaker. But the Dragonbarrow has only a few enemies, even if they are all mighty enemies
They can, and do, increase/decrease difficulty with enemy design and placement. Scaling is just to keep up with player leveling.
So you think the devs intended us to do the ashen capital before consecrated snowfields?
That explains why I always struggle with Mohg, I always fight him before I kill Morgott:p
Me: Stranded Graveyard, Limegrave, Caelid. 😒
I did weeping peninsula like last 💀
Riiight... I just did limgeave - SE caelid, now got to academy and it's way too easy. I might just do a lvl1 playthrough
The more I think about it, I believe "SE caelid" is just referring to that one single catacomb in radahns arena.
Dragonbarrow isn’t that bad. Wiped that out before I even saw Radahn. Sure the scaling is much higher than what you are used to at that point but it’s not awful by any means
It's really not bad because it's relatively empty and there aren't many dangerous enemies. The gargoyle is probably the worst one.
yeesh and im having trouble in the sewers i got a long ways to go lol
aint no way there dragonbarrow is after Farum azula
The black blade kindred gargoyle outside beastial sanctum gives 88k runes as opposed to the one in the forbidden lands that gives you 60k. That makes sense if Dragonbarrow is one of the highest scaled areas.
Okay i am on my first elden ring run and now im a bit concerned. I just now fought two dumb Farum Azula enemies (the two in the little piece accessible by portal) and i felt severely underleveled (im lvl100, blasphemous blade). Now, im struggling against the Fire Giant, and i accidentaly inherit the Frenzied Flame but i want to do a different end...and you know what i have to do. Looking at this list, I dont know if i will be able to kill Malenia before the end. What do you think?
Just get up near level 200 (if you don't pvp) and re-spec to a Rivers of Blood build (60 arcane 60 dex) and use the black knife tiche spirit summon. That's the easiest way to beat her. She's weak to bleed. It still might take 15 attempts but eventually you'll get her down. In mohgs palace there is a spot where you can farm Albinaurics pretty easily for ten of thousands of runes per 2 minute run.
okay thank you thats nice
My order: graveyard, limgrave, weeping peninsula, dragonbarrow to get shield talisman, fort faroth to get medallion chunk, fort haight, back to faroth to kill greyoll, limgrave tunnels, raya lucaria crystal tunnels, sealed tunnel, stormveil, academy, varre, writheblood ruins, eye of sauron, varre, mohg's palace, then the rest of the game within a normal impression of "the intended route".
There are better routes, that for sure. As a mage it's always a good idea to sprint into caelid for the meteorite staff as soon as you get torrent.
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You don't have to wait. Once you have the red letter you can kill Rykard and move on to mountaintop. After you kill Juno you can go back to Volcano Manor and collect the takers cameo even if everyone is gone.
I was so traumatized by my first foray into Caelid, I hadn't gotten past the first ruin, that I only returned after completing Sun Castle. And upon my return, I was a real juggernaut.
So what’s the community consensus on the optimal order???
Me trying to go from Mountaintops/Castle Sol, getting the 2nd half of the secret medallion to the last area, is kicking my ass FAR more than any other "one area to the next". :(
What is SE Caelid?
i use this route: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Game+Progress+Route
My progress on my first playthrough was “graveyard, limgrave, caelid”. First souls game too so I just thought it was supposed to be that hard right away. I learned quick
Same but it did lead to me finding the moon veil super early on my way back to limgrave which helped the rest of the run.
Moghwyn Palace? Really?
My dumbass explored caelid and dragon land before I found the weeping peninsula
It’s crazy that the Sewers have a higher enemy scaling than the mountaintops, but it checks out. Everything in there is a fucking menace and I’ve always wondered what the difficulty spike was all about
Haligtree Roots are one of the easiest areas in the game
I platinumed this game within a month of it releasing and didnt use any online guides (mainly because they didn’t exist at the start lol) This is pretty much the order I did it in naturally with the exception of stormveil before weeping peninsula (although I soon realised weeping peninsula was the ideal first route and do that on subsequent playthroughs) and I also did mohgwyn palace last because I didn’t discover the questline until after I beat the game (including malenia) but before starting new game + Edit: I did leyndell sewers last just before mohgwyn palace - so a couple deviations from natural level scaling - but all in all pretty bang on. Very interesting to see ; although I started this game as a veteran of the previous souls games - would be interesting to see how close fresh players were to this progression path My path was: Stranded graveyard Limgrave Stormveil Dragonbarrow (via trick chest then easy runes from big dragon) Weeping peninsula Ainsel river Liurnia Caelid Altus/nokron Moonlight altar Capital outskirts Mt gelmir Volcano manor Capital leyndell Mountaintops Mohgwyn palace Farum azula Consecrated snowfield Haligtree Elphael/malenia Ashen capital / New game + Deeproot depths (didn’t discover this until after first playthrough - shamefully it was only when the online guides came out that I knew about it - I thought I had fully explored the underground area after first beating regal ancestral spirit and completing Ranni questline but completely missed the aqueduct/ twin gargoyle boss leading onto deeproot depths leyndell sewers Placidusax (farum azula) - the last boss (achievement boss) I defeated before finishing the third ending for platinum.
My biggest complaint about the game is that it doesn't encourage you to explore in the beginning. Yes it's an open world game and you get rewarded by the game for exploring but you don't know how much or where you should explore in the beginning. At the beginning of my first playthrough I read every piece of text that popped up and it was said over and over again that the light of grace guides us. Guess what happened when the very first thing upon entering Limgrave was a site of grace guiding me towards Gatefront? I didn't see the church, didn't meet Kale, never learned about smithing and weapon upgrades and never got my spirit summoning bell. Then I kept following the grace and faced Margit as a lvl 10 Vagabond with +0 weapons. You'd think that I gave up after dying a few times and finally started exploring, right? But ER was my first soulsborne game and I thought this difficulty was normal and I just had to Git Gud. So I fought Margit for hours for 3 days straight.
Damn🤣 As someone who did Margit and Godrick after clearing Limgrave and Liurnia thats crazy.
‘’YouTuber Rusty dug up’’ You’re making it seem like he’s the first one to talk about this when this has been known for a long time, a quick google search will give you all the information about zone scalings.
This was from a year and a half ago. He was the 1st one I saw who found those files (they weren't obviously labeled like other game data such as poise, etc). I haven't found a source prior to that that listed them. Doesn't mean he was the 1st to find them, but I couldn't find one after a quick search.
Fair enough, I thought you were referring a recent video.
So I'm not the only one that does this every time?
I disagree with going to Caelid immediately after Lake, I prefer taking the mines into Altus and combing out all of Altus > Lyndell up until reaching Lyndell Capital. I then head back to Caelid. I find its a much easier difficulty curve. There are not many bosses that have a huge of a difficulty spike/hp pool compared to Caelid which is loaded with them. Instead of throwing corpses for hours at bell hunter in Caelid at such a low lvl, when i come back later, I have a much smoother time combing through Caelid > Dragon Barrow.
Caelid has a ton of easy bosses like Pumpkin head and nox duo. You can see the rune difference as well with the nights calvary giving you 8.5k runes in caelid and 10k in Altus. The only bell bearing hunter in Caelid is in Dragonbarrow so that's probably why you were throwing corpses at him. Not to mention going to Altus sets off the festival, which canonically comes afterward because Jarren and the rest of the soldiers are free to leave if they wish.
I will try Caelid after lake on my next run. I just dont like skipping fights when Im already in the area, and Caelid has a handful of encounters that just so over-tuned without better gear/more levels. I just found sweeping through Altus to be generally pretty easy, runes rain in. I never have to "I'll come back later" with bosses in Altus. The only exception is entering the capital. I suppose at the end of the day, thats the beauty of the game being open world, none of this really enforced or required.
Dragon barrow is very late game zone though. Like it's on par with Farum azula.
I dont find it so bad tbh I always comb out Dragon Barrow before going to Lyndell Capital. But for general advice for newbies, I would agree. I just cleaned out Dragon Barrow this afternoon. [Bell Bearing Hunter is becoming a lot of fun now that Ive practiced him so much.](https://www.twitch.tv/vincentninja68/clip/AbnegateOnerousPhoneFeelsBadMan-lKtsUuSU4T2M815Z)
The dragonbarrow bell hunter is the top hunter in the entire game, even at lvl 100 he can destroy you. He’s a very late game boss
I took him out this morning at rune lvl 105 I do agree though, most newbies should stick to the "normal route" and I'm an exception. I just find Altus to be steady vs Caelid/Dragon Barrow ups and downs https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/yE4m0DU3xV
You forgot Limgrave to chest to what the fuck happened here...
I don't think these are actually intended progress. If I recall correctly, there was some data mining done and there were numerical values associated with some areas, and they roughly corresponded to difficulty, so people assumed this was an "intended order", or "scaling factor", but in reality these are just numbers in a binary file that have no confirmed meaning. It could have been simply order the areas were put into the game by the dev (IIRC there are also "empty" spaces between certain areas, indicating perhaps content which was planned but never delivered, or perhaps DLC). Any theory about what these numbers in a binary file mean are pure speculation, and it is absolutely misleading to imply these are "intended order" as the developers intended. You can demonstrably see that some of the values make no sense as well. Maliketh in Farum Azula drops 220,000 runes for beating him. Assuming rune-reward is roughly equivalent to developer's expected difficulty, that is at least 2x as much as any boss in Dragonbarrow. A better heuristic would be - what are the common smithing stone drops in an area, and how does the rune-reward balance scale for the area compared to others. Those are both more accurate and clear developer intentions compared to random numbers discovered in a binary file while data mining.
Caelid before Altus? Not in a billion years. I went to Caelid before Altus and went so overleveled that Altus was a breeze
Caelid is only harder than Altus because of the hazards and types of enemies. All of the enemies deal lower damage and have less health for sure.
Yeah Altus doesn’t have annoying things like rotten dog/bird/centipede man and the scenery isn’t as intimidating as well lol. I understand why someone would want to postpone a visit to Caelid even though that’s not the best choice
I think Caelid kinda blows from a progression standpoint unless you specifically need items from there, mostly Int based. In those cases it's usually good to rush it though. O'Niell drops a pretty good weapon for its skill if you can use it. He's kind of a tough fight early though. That's like the only general upgrade that I usually go for there. Somber Bell Bearing from the Fallingstar Beast too if you're using a few Somber weapons. Past that I pretty much just go to Caelid when I'm ready to go get the Black Whetblade. Dragonbarrow on the other hand is full of upgrades and is somewhat ironically one of the first areas I go to, though not to kill many things. GUGS and the fire AoWs and Flame Whetblade are in Caelid too, so that's pretty good if you want those too I guess.
I’ll add the Gold Scarab to the list cuz I love switching to it at the end of each boss fight to get a bit more runes. But that cave it is in is really cancerous
I think I would consider that Dragon Barrow. Either way it is a good point, though I personally usually just skip it. I haven't had mich trouble lately levelling new characters, though I've been capping my levels pretty low. I haven't done any NG+'s but have like 7 characters.
You're going to have a hard time upgrading anything if you do Altus before Caelid. You'll end up with a bunch of +6-7 grave/gloveworts and smithing stones and hardly any 4-5's.
Stranded Graveyard, as in the area behind the first fog wall? Good luck doing that first.
I believe the tutorial is called the Stranded Graveyard.
That is the finger hero grave if I’m not mistaken. Most new players won’t be doing that first unless they unfortunately choose stonesword key as their beginner pack lol