Elden Ring

[Finsbury Girl]

Yeah some of the mini dungeons are brutal ; I did that same

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spikey

catacomb that kept on going and going, at least there is always a statue of marika near the boss but damn I only made it there with 1 flask left.

[briareos_kerensky]

Found the

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Dragon's Pit. On the way there I was invaded by the Ancient Dragon-Man, who, despite the scary-sounding name, went down really easy. The Dragon's Pit is small, but it's full of those undead half-dragons from Farum Azula; there's a fork that leads to one of those lava-spewing wyrms, and the other to a DS3-like drop to the boss version of the Ancient Dragon-Man...who is no different than the invader version, or so I think considering it went down almost as fast. He dropped a great katana, time to see if it's better than the Bloodhound Fang.

I think I explored everything in the starting location, so I went to the next area,

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Scadu Altus. Found the map, and headed straight for a church. There I got invaded a second time by Fire Knight Queelign, who went down like a little bitch just like in our first encounter.

[briareos_kerensky]

Somehow I thought the DLC started in the southwest part of the starting area, where the map shows a building, and completely ignored it...so I traced my steps back and found

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an hostile NPC. Half naked, wandering in a forest, black mutton chops, attacks with fists, drops claw weapons, named Logur The Beast Claw...a clear homage to Demon's Souls' Big M.

Anyway, I think that was one of the first locations to visit because you find

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two Scadu seeds, a bunch of soldiers (and a knight who drops a Faith-based greathammer), and even a powerful consummable health item.

[Finsbury Girl]

Yeah lol that

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Wolverine dude

kicked my butt a few times

[Tobal]

Got up to clearing the first castle Belorat Gaol, had some trouble doing damage to boss with only 1 personal upgrade so went off to explore the beginning area around the giant wickerman thing to collect the 1 more of the 2 upgrades i needed which beefed my attack to 713 (level165, 648att in main game) and made it so i could survive 2 big hits from the boss with a slither HP left.

As for the boss -

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i enjoyed fighting the Dancing Lion with all his elemental changes mostly hoping he'd avoid going into Frost mode... after about 20 attempts and resorting to using a spirit to buy time for potion chugs (Lhutel the headless as his lightning spell has 100% acc to get hate and shield to soak up damage) i got him down. Went back to old woman in Belorat and used the Lion head to get her to talk which got me a faith spell i can't use

After that i went across the bridge and into the solider camp from the starting area, learned the hard way about the red lightning cannon fodder soldiers not being the pushovers i thought they were. Ended up going into the dark forest instead of past the helmet giant and found my first catacomb, so i'll have that to explore next time.

[briareos_kerensky]

I have another stupid question to ask - how do you kick in this game? Or has that been removed now?

The kick is now a skill, you either need to find a weapon with it, or find the kick ash of war and equip it to a weapon that allows it.

Got to the

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Shadow Keep today, entering from the Church District on the east side. I liked the initial impression, a flooded area where you have to run and jump on falle tree trunks, small ledges, and building roofs; there's also a mysterious monster stalking you from below the water, knocking down trees and making buildings rumble. Nice atmosphere, plus you have new enemies in the area. But, yeah, it's a flooded area...and it doesn't take long to find how to drain the water and explore the rest of the area.
The mysterious monster is one of those giant Erdtree worms, there are plenty of giant crabs, and one long elevator rides brings you to the Specimen Storehouse...that's going to be fun. Also considering a minor dungeon shown me something I didn't really wnated to know: what's inside the living jars.

[Tobal]

Got my hands on the new fist weapon that was in the trailer... alot of fun jumping and fly kicking enemies in the face, stun locking normal enemies with a flurry of punches, roundhouse and thrust kicks, and has now replaced my flail as the strike weapon.

Also have 2 of the smithscript weapons a dagger and spear, they have a really board set of 4 stats needed, which i only have 2 of levelled up decently, so i don't really want to waste stones levelling them up see what they can do, but having

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infinite range attacks which use neither ammo or FP seems

alot of fun.

Tried out the festive grease which gives souls on every hit... on trying it out

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only gave +25 souls per hit so it's not worth it even if the recipe is a very cheap to make

[briareos_kerensky]

The

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Shadow Keep is immense! I think it's as large as two of base Elden Ring's legacy dungeons combined. I entered it from the east, and after more an hour of wandering, I reached what I think is the southern, main entrance...and I still don't see the gate from the site of grace I found! The flooded part is like an appetiser, the Specimine Storehouse is the real meat of the dungeon, a maze of jump, beams, drops, and levers. The layout is rather chaotic, a mix between DS3's Grand Archives and Bloodborne's Research Hall, so here you can jump and FromSoft went a bit crazy with all you can do.

[briareos_kerensky]

A word of warning for those approaching the location I'm talking about in the previous posts from the east:

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if you approach the southern entrance coming from the upper floors of the Keep, you will reach a boss arena. There is no site of grace or stake of Marika approaching from this side, and the arena itself looks like a normal part of the Shadow Keep: if you die, you're back to the last site of grace and you cannot enter the boss arena from the entrance found this way. You need to approach the boss from the Keep's main entrance to the south. I would actually suggest you first approach the Keep from the south/main entrance, kill the boss, and then enter from the east, you will approach a lot of enemies from the back.

Anyway, the

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Shadow Keep has a total of four bosses: the first isn't that hard, but the other three...I think two of them are optional, and the boss at the top of the keep is probably the more manageable of the three.
The remaining two are more difficult, with oe of them being more an endurance battle with three phases, and at the start of each phase the boss recovers 75% of its health.

To defeat one of them I tried a coop sign, but was summoned instead...I didn't remember which item was used to reveal summon signs :P To my surprise the summon was not to defeat the boss, but to travel west of the Keep. The other summon seemingly knew where to go, and after he dropped into a pit, I followed him...and we were both killed by the fall. Laughed for a good minute. Ooops.

[Finsbury Girl]

I've done about half of

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the shadow keep but somehow found the boss Messmer or something like that, me & Tiche plus the other NPC summon took him down - first part of the fight is not bad second half of fight is a joke I got extremely lucky with my rolls to be honest. The farking hippo took longer for me. I found a secret entrance to some scary Abyss area where these dudes insta kill you ; I noped out and will go back later ; also from Shadow Keep I found the way to get to the north west part of the map I haven't explored it at all. I also need to explore the flooded bit at the bottom I need to get through there for a quest I'm doing exploring some ruins and blowing horns!

I'm really bummed I haven't found any great int weapons yet ; all of the weapons so far seem ok I guess I need to try some out. It seems a dex or faith build are having all of the fun so far. The map really is amazing. This is so much bigger than I thought.

[briareos_kerensky]

Cleared the

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Shadow Keep. First I Commander Gaius back to Twilight Princess, which opened up an area with plenty of Scadutree fragments which allowed to upgrade my character's "shadow level" to 13 (out of 20, I'm told) and Torrent's/summons' up to 6 (out of 10). Then I tried the Scadutree Avatar, and that was easier than I thought. Messmer was easy once I equipped the +3 fire protection talisman...in the run before the successful attempt I died before delivering the final hit, only for the Mimic Tear to kill Messmer, but it was too late and my death registered well before the boss'. Oh well.
I started exploring the area west of the Keep, then realised I didn't find a way to the "finger" east of it, the one with the map looking like a sandworm from Dune. I guess that will be my next step.

[briareos_kerensky]

Got to the

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"finger-worm" east of Shadow Keep...damn those pink leeches! They cast a long-range, nearly undodgeable spell that stops you for what feels an eternity and then a second one teleports in a sucks half of your life away. I'll get back to it later.