Elden Ring

[briareos_kerensky]

So, a fourth of the map,

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the Cerulean Coast,

is basically optional, though you need to explore it to continue some NPC quests...and honestly, without a guide, I wouldn't have guessed what to do. I've explored most of the

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Coast, and now facing Jagged Peak (technically not part of the Coast but still part of that map section)

and the local uber-boss. I like the NPC associated with that quest, I don't particularly like that NPC lies on the ground dressing in a cloak the same colour of the terrain though.
I think I've messed up a couple of NPC quests as their progression seems even more convoluted than FromSoft's standard...oh well. I'd like to say there's always NG+, but considering I'm at around 150 hours and there still are things I have to complete, I doubt I'll start NG+ soon.

[briareos_kerensky]

Man, Furnace Golems look awesome but they're so damn boring to fight...and they don't really give that many runes in return.

The uber-boss

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at Jagged Peak was a bit of a disappointment. Getting there is a real threat, but the hardest part of the fight is to find the summon sign for a NPC...which in my case was covered by someone else's message. Way to go, dude, whoever you are.

[Finsbury Girl]

I'm at what I think is the final dungeon

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Enir Elim

I've fought most bosses I think haven't managed

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Bayle as yet. I got him down to about a third a couple of times will come back with more scadutree blessings

. The exploration is still top notch. The only problem as you say above Briareos is that a lot of the time it is not intuitive to locate how to get somewhere. Mostly it is by luck (at least for me).

Still absolutely loving this

[Tobal]

Found a Shadow Keep exit close to the main entrance which

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takes you to the valley/cliff floor for central area and proceeds south

, so I've been exploring around there, did the Gaol down there which after countless deaths against Rakshasa

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needed to change my playstyle for, there was no way i could keep up perfect dodging and striking a couple of times for pitiful damage.. so out comes the wooden parry shield as it appears i never bought the ash of war parrying (plus i'd need to level up a dagger or scimitar, from what i remember, to be able to use it on a weapon). About 15 odd deaths later i get the timing down and parry/critical attack his ass to death... so now i have his maxed out great katana, the thing is a beast with the FP attack.

Explored abit more around there and found the Darklight Catacomb,

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quite large, plenty of fun platforming and sneaky traps, the next boss fight which was quite fun against a summoning/teleporting mage, wasn't quite expecting such battle area from a catacomb but it now i have new area behind it to explore as well as the other path from grace close to the Gaol to go down

.

I do like they've added alot of common crafting items on to various shop bells to be found, just hoping they give us a meat version at some point.

Current load out is
Right side: Great Katana, Smithscript dagger (middle range and horseback fighting), Pulley Bow (cheese, agro pulls and puzzles)
Left Side: Danes Fists (for strike and a good standard human stunner), Dragon seal and Fire Perfume

Can sub in Poison Perfume, Frost Katana, RoB Katana and now a wooden shield.

[briareos_kerensky]

Got up to 60 in STR, DEX, and INT, with 50 in VIG and END. Pretty tanky build. Mind is at 20, so I can't cast many spells, and FTH and ARC are 15 and 12 respectively. I think I'll pump arcane now so bleeding from the Bloodhound's Fang will be more effective.

Progressing through

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Ymir's questline now. Cleared two of the ruins and staring at the entrance to the boss room in the third.

Finsbury Girl IIRC you were searching for an INT weapon, right? Have you found the Star-Lined Sword? Not as pure INT as the Darkmoon Greatsword but it's a katana (with bleed) and scales with INT, DEX, and STR. There's also the Spirit Sword but doesn't scale as good.

[Finsbury Girl]

briareos_kerensky Yep I've been rocking that sword ; I love the weapon art ; I'm switching between that, Moonveil and the new Renalla Sword ; the weapon art for that is sick. Running up to a mob and using the fire one and watching them burn is awesome ; channelling my inner Ronnie from Backdraft

I'm thinking of respeccing to an Arcane/Dex build and trying out the new thorny spell before the nerf! Will test it out on Malenia as well.

I've levelled from about 165 ish to 200 now ;; with I think 18 scads and 8 or 9 spirit ash ; no idea where the remaining ones are ; I've found a lot of the secret spots ; though that just reminds me I need to go back to the scary

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Arcane Woods

as I kept on going

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mad and insta dying from those horrible madness enemies

.

I think I'm at close to the final boss. It is suitably epic ; I haven't attempted myself, just been summoned to lend my fellow ashen onesforsaken brothers and sisters a hand We have no fared well thus far

I also might respec to dex and strength and lay down some kung fu at some point. Might even do a NG+ as Kain if it is a fun build to play.

[Tobal]

I've levelled from about 165 ish to 200 now ;; with I think 18 scads and 8 or 9 spirit ash ; no idea where the remaining ones are ; I've found a lot of the secret spots ; though that just reminds me I need to go back to the scary

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Arcane Woods

as I kept on going

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mad and insta dying from those horrible madness enemies

.

I think I'm at close to the final boss. It is suitably epic ; I haven't attempted myself, just been summoned to lend my fellow ashen onesforsaken brothers and sisters a hand We have no fared well thus far

I spent last night and this morning on Arcane Woods boss

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Midra

, such a cruel mfer. 180'ish with level 10 scad, level 6 summon, and after countless tries and gear refinement i finally beat it

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with a mixed armour set of high focus defence, though with my END level being 32 i could only wear the chest piece of the Solitude set, rest was noble gear and white mask for blood attack up, set the rings pure defence for focus and flame, ended up going back to the RoB/frost dual katana set up with frost proccing mid way in the fight when i needed that little bit of slow down.

Refined my fight down to... stage1 kill animation pop a boiled crab, set summon(ancient dragon knight), spam the activation and then dodge the opening 3 flame attacks, pop FP flask, attack food and get stuck with close range rolls towards him, getting in a 1 rivers of blood or a dual strike for frost build up, running away and a last second roll when the jump up tracking exploding fireball move happens, pop my defence based physick, run in before the lasers or mega flame sword swipes happen and wail on RoB combos, after that it was getting dodges right, letting the summon get agro to repop crabs and fp flasks. Using that i was constantly getting Midra HP down to about 2 inchs, i just needed to "get good" along with a few luck of the draws when it came to his close range ball explosion, which only happened once on the winning run when i had 3/4 HP. Phew...

As far as missing scads go, they are not always in secret spots,

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i've found a few from just normal enemies dropping them out in the world, just look for the player messages amassed around them

[briareos_kerensky]

I spent last night and this morning on Arcane Woods boss

Oh, that boss for me was incredibly easy...but then again I was 17 Scadrutree levels and CL 248ish...it still hit hard, but I was expecting a third phase which never came. If I have to say something negative about this DLC, is that this character/summon collectible mechanic makes some bosses absolute jokes, even if the gae marks them as "legends". Bosses in the base game scaled up much nicer, and proved a more interesting challenge.

I think I closed as many NPC sidequests I could, and because I don't want to redo it in NG+, I'm gathering all remaining Fragments and Revered Ashes. I did the latter (with the exception of the ones found in the last dungeon), missing a total of 5 Fragments. Completely forgot I didn't collect the one on the statue's hand in Shadow Keep.

[briareos_kerensky]

Finally found my way to the

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second Dancing Lion, not all too different from the first, but damn I was surprised that for its first elemental phase summoned three basilisks and started spewing petrification gas...go Mimic Tear, I'll stay here and ride the petrification meter out.

[briareos_kerensky]

Staring down the door to the DLC's final boss...with one Scadutree fragment missing. Aaaaaargh.
The dungeon preceeding the boss wasn't as elaborate as the previous legacy dungeon, which was disappointing. Plenty of drops and jumping required for secret stuff but I did prefer the more elaborate design of other dungeons.
Honestly though, without following a guide I would have probably ended up in an event concerning NPCs with absolutely no idea about why it happened; it's nice to the FromSoft tried something a bit more elaborate with NPCs, but some steps are incredibly obtuse, and missing a line of text could mean even understanding even less of what was going on.

[Finsbury Girl]

Final boss down ; not gonna lie I certainly don't feel like trying to beat this guy again. Had to completely respec to save time ; I don't like my new build at all ; but the

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Radhan sword Lord version

you get from the remembrance is sick.

Got to beat

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mega dragon

and finish off Arcane woods and then I shall search for the rest of the fragments & maybe try and kill the rest of the fire giant dudes ; they are just annoying. Oh there are also some ruins and stuff that I didn't fully explore yet. I will probably now consult a guide to find stuff. The NPC quests were weird and didn't make much sense to me, I probably didn't pay enough attention but I did get some very cool weapons and armour.

The ending was

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pretty much non existent

The major criticism is that this DLC does not gel very well with the main game, I wish it did but it is too disconnected in my opinion. I still loved it but I think if it had have been planned better it could've elevated it even more. The verticality and connectedness reminds me of Dark Souls but I feel it could have been more compact and we would not have lost anything.

[briareos_kerensky]

The last Scadutree fragment wasn't at the end of a difficult catacomb, at the edge of a broken staircase, or protected by a boss...it was right next to a site of grace I somehow forgot to collect. Urgh.
Tried my hand at the final boss, and, yeah, it's difficult

[briareos_kerensky]

Phew, final DLC boss down! Took quite a few attempts, and I had to summon cooperators. One of the failed attempts had a madness-based build that did impressive damage to the boss but was a glass cannon...a botched roll (and the boss completely ignoring my aggro and target the poor fella with an AoE) and the guy's dead.
The successful attempt saw a guy with a two-handed thrusting shield...I read that those are overpowered right now, but it did as much as my greatsword! Time to invest something into a thrusting shield before beginning NG+.
Also, during my attempts alone (well, with two NPCs), I died to the boss' grab attack and that rewarded me with one of the most peculiar ways to die in a Souls game and a gesture.

[Finsbury Girl]

Phew, final DLC boss down! Took quite a few attempts, and I had to summon cooperators. One of the failed attempts had a madness-based build that did impressive damage to the boss but was a glass cannon...a botched roll (and the boss completely ignoring my aggro and target the poor fella with an AoE) and the guy's dead.
The successful attempt saw a guy with a two-handed thrusting shield...I read that those are overpowered right now, but it did as much as my greatsword! Time to invest something into a thrusting shield before beginning NG+.
Also, during my attempts alone (well, with two NPCs), I died to the boss' grab attack and that rewarded me with one of the most peculiar ways to die in a Souls game and a gesture.

I shamefully admit that grab attack triggered me (especially the few times when he was almost dead)

[Tobal]

Beat Messmir in 2 goes as i was massively overlevelled (192, lvl13scad) seems you're suppose to come here after the Lion, and i just messed around everywhere else instead. Followed the grace path through places i've already been and undid the thorns which seems to be the final area, so i've turned back looking to get into places i have not been in like the south east upper cliff area and north east behind Shadow Fort (which i've now got access to). Still not found how to get to the north west area where the map pick up is... annoying, probably shadow castle related, still plenty in the water area i've not touched.