First Elden Ring playthrough

Decided to give this another chance since one of my old friends from school is playing and wants to co-op.

It's been on my mind for ages too. Bought it full price and gave up pretty fast when bows weren't cutting it.

This time I looked up where to find stuff that could help. I got the Serpent Bow pretty much right from the start. Got the horse, used the trap to warp to Caelid and located the Abandoned Cave. Got the bow and required stats.

Looked up where to get Serpent Arrows and good farming spots. Farmed runes on the Vulgar Militia. For now this is where I go to get runes for arrows.

I'm up to the Academy now and so far every boss has been poisoned. Even the large creatures on the world map. I killed the dragon guarding the crystal by poisoning it then running behind the big rocks it was sitting beside. The one in Dragon-Burnt Ruins can't even detect me. It looks around and freaks out a bit while I hide in the ruins. It doesn't even move in this direction.

There's a lot of places where enemies can't reach you. Or they stop chasing and run back to their original positions, being poisoned all the while.

I have the arrow talismans that boosts range and damage. I boost dex and arc. I don't fully understand stats yet. Like when I level up with dex, sometimes different stats are raised.

Anyway I've been enjoying poisoning stuff and watching them die.

Surprised it can carry you this far, that's good to hear. Curious how you'll deal with some of the later bosses.

Bosses are a nightmare. I hate being locked in a room with them.

The second boss was ok because of the tombstones and two large trees which slowed him down and blocked his projectiles. I beat the wolf in the Academy with my friend so no idea how that would go solo.

I usually start by sending out my jellyfish, then poison, then kite with normal arrows.
Looks like Scarlet Rot arrows can only be crafted. Unlikely I'll bother with those unless the materials are easy to get.

Jump shot is really good because you can do it in any direction as a dodge.

There's a talisman I want that gives a damage boost if poison or rot is active.

I've progressed quite a bit since my last post. Up to the snow area now.

Mostly been playing co-op with my friend. We've killed quite a few invaders. He engages them up close then I fire bleed or poison arrows while they're attacking.

Going for the Black Knife set.

I still don't understand stat growth. I know what each stat does but why does it change each time I level up?
I got dex to 60 and now it's randomly boosting something it didn't touch before.

Snow Area is pretty late game IIRC.

> stat growth
You mean how much souls it takes to level up?

No I mean what goes up per level. It changes and is now doing something totally different.

Yeah basically every stat starts to give less of a boost after 20 I think. So going from 1-20 in Strenght is a bigger boost than 20-60 if you get me.

Dragon's Dogma does this too after level 100.

But what's happening here in ER is completely different stats are being boosted when I level dex.

Like you have R and L armament it seems to randomly select one now and then. Then sometimes doesn't. Maybe it's set to only boost certain things every few levels.

All the Souls games have soft caps like that at certain thresholds. IIRC, Elden Ring puts them at 20/60/80.

>Like you have R and L armament it seems to randomly select one now and then. Then sometimes doesn't. Maybe it's set to only boost certain things every few levels.
That sounds like the AR rounding to a whole number. Even if increasing Dex doesn't visibly increase the AR of a Dex-scaling weapon, it will move closer to the next point of AR, as you can see when your weapon scales with multiple stats.

I'm not aware of any stat providing new bonuses after a certain threshold, but I checked out of Elden Ring really quickly so I dunno enough to dispute it.

Yeah basically after a specific point, you might only see a damage increase per 2 or 3 ups in a stat. Going from 1-20 in strenght might give you about as big of a boost as going from 40 to 99 if you get me.

New bonusses doesn't happen.

Got the Black Knife armor set and Concealing Veil.

Level 180-something now.

Bow is still pretty weak compared to everything else.

Poison works on nearly everything, as does bleed.

Most bosses one shot me.

Feels like the devs hate bows. Limited arrows, super slow, low attack power, no way to switch between all your arrows, can't rest at grace sites to access your stock in co-op, Raptor armor bonus for jumping attacks doesn't work with bows. Wtf? Why?

Yet these super melee dudes can run around with dual lightning spears swinging forever.

A lot of enemies dodge arrows once they're aware of you. Not that they need to. Do you know how many shots I've missed just from an enemy moving out of the way unintentionally due to their basic walking animation?

The first form of the final boss actually knocks arrows out of the air if he's not in an animation (or dealing with your co-op partner). WHY. My friend can run up and hit him for like 900 but the devs were worried about my sub 200 shots?

They hate bows.

Oh well. At least I've shown how dumb the AI is. I've taken out pretty much all the big scary stuff on the map with poison and running away so they lose interest or standing in places they can't go.

Trying a dual dagger build. Right now using two bleed daggers, or one rot and one bleed.

Need to get a second rot one. I'm in ng+ now but will be a while before I reach that area.

Enemies can still kill me in a few hits. NG+ has boosted them.

I'm level 194 now I think. Main stats are dex and arc. Blood daggers scale with arc.

Have some equipment that boost attack power when bleed is in effect. Have one for rot too.

Was going to Swarm of Flies but it requires weapon switching.

Can't seem to do much against tough shield type like Crucible Knights. They attack so fast and block everything. Can't find a window to attack.

> daggerbuild
> not a bow
Alright hands up, who are you and why have you stolen Birdman's account.

Hahaha.

I guess I really like how good the status effects are in this. And the bow just stopped working. I still have it though. Serpent Bow scales with dex and arc same as the daggers so nothing needed to change except for my accessories. I don't use the range and damage arrow talismans anymore.

I've fought a lot of invaders.

I don't know how to deal with these double spear players. They do this running stab that gets me every time. Might see if I can jump over it. The range is massive and tracks too. Maybe dodge towards them?

PvP in general is a mess, always has been. That said I'm unfamiliar with the meta in this game's pvp so not sure if he's rocking a broken build or not. Like in Demon's Souls there was a setup with two katana's that meant if you got hit once, you were dead as it'd lead to an infinite combo.

This game sucks.

Every interesting build I try goes nowhere. It's like they tried to make the interesting things as bad as possible.

It's really just a damage output game.

Of all people, Dunkey was pretty on the mark about this game when he said you've got this game filled to the brim with options that reward creativity...but they lock it all behind upgrades and high damage values which feels super weird.

This made me think though, whatever happened to Jackie? He was all up on Elden Ring and I checked his old topic, and he removed all his posts and he's now named 'dot'? Whatever happened there.