I'm in agreement with the subreddit.
Ya'll REALLY need to use youtube/google and find those damn Scadutree fragments man.
Getting one shot by the final boss when I'm wearing the heaviest armor and the best amulets for damage resistance is entirely YOUR fault.
Sitting at less then 6 blessing levels means you ain't got a snowballs chance in hell of clearing that fight without some seriously practice and patience.
FIND YOUR DAMN FRAGMENTS.
Dude I tried to help with Mohg but it was just impossible. Out of 15 attempts not a single one was successful because the host always fucking died within 20 seconds. Like I'm not trying to be a dick here but how did those people even get that far? They can't evade anything and are probably severely underleveled/underequipped.
I mean you can get to Mohg after only fighting an npc if you go straight to Liurnia, do Varre’s quest invasion and then get the maiden blood from the 4 belfries teleporter
You need to kill one great rune boss to trigger varres quest, but yeah…
Edit: guys, I get that every great rune boss is easy, lol, I didn’t say it was hard just that it is required to kill them, not just an npc
Rennala is really easy, especially if you summon someone to help you. Her dog is probably the more challenging of the two.
She's one of those hit or miss bosses. I've always considered her the easiest boss in the game; sure she can hit hard but she telegraphs clearly and isn't too hard to avoid. My two buddies hate her and would rather fight any of the other great rune bosses.
Fighting her as a filthy caster is difficult. Fighting her as basically any other class is much easier.
Fighting her as Oonga boonga big weapon go bonk she is the easiest in the entire game.
Amusingly enough both of my friends were talking about how much easier she was on their caster builds than their str builds when we made new characters for the DLC. I was like 'idk what you guys are smoking but pass it over'.
Probably just experience carried over vs the first playthrough.
They smoking the rock sling from Caelid
She have very low poise and health.
If you are using great weapon and can stagger her, she is dumb easy.
If you are using light weapon and it's not "meta build" with substantial dmg to melt her, she is nightmare.
I've noticed an inverse difficulty based on if you're running a bonk build versus a dex build. I walk all over her with a bonk build. Literally the easiest shit ever. The minute I go at her with a dex build, I don't know what happens to me, but I simply can't. She steamrolls me, and it takes me way longer to finally get that win. I have no idea what's going on with that, but I THINK it could be a lack of stagger?
Rennala is actually quite tough if you’re running a pure caster build.
For physical builds she’s a piece of cake because you can bum rush her and stun lock her to death, but for any non physical damage types she has very high resistance. Especially for early game caster builds, she’s actually kind hard.
I’ve fought her in early game (sub level 50) both ways, physical vs magic, and she was way harder for the magic build.
Funny thing, by her dog I don't know if you mean Red Wolf or Parry God.
God I think I died to that moonknight dude more than I died to Renalla herself. 😂😂
People that don't know how to avoid falling for parries or stop panic-rolling have a hard time with Moongrum.
He does a good job roll-catching with Carian Piercer and will consistently parry anything he can, so relying on jump attacks/colossals/flails/whips/weapon arts is key until he goes "phase 2" and brings out the staff.
People need to kill Radahn to enter the DLC. So one could assume they killed him already if they want to get past Mohg. Though tbf the summons can kill him alone if you're patient enough and you resummon the strong ones.
Radahn is charmin ultra baby soft ass toilet paper compared to mohg on a new character. After nihil x3 one attack sends a noob straight to reddit cryin. Carrying them past that fight so they can get dunked in the DLC was doing them a disservice.
Why don’t people just use the purifying tear
Lol, right? It's literally designed to deal with a phase of his that is supposed to kill you otherwise, although obviously you can heal through it. Also doesn't limiting his nihil damage also limit how much healing he does during it?
Literally the tear is so easy to get and just nullifies an OP move of his.
i remember i went into rennala just after killing Margit feeling all confident. it was very early game and i didn’t know shit about builds, levelling/stats and talismans. i was definitely severely underpowered and had no knowledge, but i got my ass kicked for 2 days straight. most frustrating boss ever at the time
Right? On my first playthrough she was seriously difficult. I had like a level 1 axe i found somewhere in stormhill castle and some trash armor i got from killing soldiers in limgrave. Talismans? I just used whatever i had with no real understanding of their impact. Rennala was seriously quite difficult at first.
But now with my current knowledge of builds, proper usage of talismans and farming runes i almost always first try her.
Yeah but then you apply the same train of thought as always, with all the games:
As a general rule of thumb, If you're not meant to be somewhere yet, you will get your arse handed to you on silver plate.
Anyone getting to Moghwyn Palace too early should be realising that they aren't ready for that area yet. It's the same for Caelid, you can get there straight away, but it should be immediately apparent that you should turn around as the enemies will wreck your shit, safe in the knowledge that you can come back later.
The tree sentinel outside first step is basically meant to teach you this, if you're new to FromSoft games.
Broke: "this area is too hard, why did they make it like this"
Woke: "this area is too hard, I should explore and come back later"
Ascended: "this area is too hard, time to loot everything and get OP"
Where is "this area is too hard, time to bash my head into it for the next 23 hours"?
That's just the haligtree
As a general rule of thumb, If you're not meant to be somewhere yet, you will get your arse handed to you on silver plate.
This is a good rule of thumb in most games (not just fromsoft), but the problem is that fromsoft games have a reputation for difficulty, so a load of new players come and get their shit pushed in by tree sentinel or caelid or whatever and go "Wow, they weren't kidding about the difficulty". There was a dude on one of the subs ages ago who spent 8 hours fighting tree sentinel at the start of the game because he thought that was the point.
And Tree Sentinel shouldn't be teaching you you're in the wrong area - it's the starting area. It should be teaching you that you don't have to fight every boss as soon as you see it
You need to kill Scion in Belfries, though, so they possibly run to the church of inhibition instead.
The main question is wtf are they going to do once they get access to DLC?
You could also kill Irina in Weeping Peninsula since she counts as a maiden you can use. The dead maiden in the Church of Inhibition also works.
I have killed her and\or she has been killed already and never once geot the prompt to use her blood for maiden blood.
Only the church way up north that is, for some reason, the MOST IMPOSSIBLE place fo me to get too, I always get lost looking for frenzied flame villiage, or the start of the game, the body in the room where you start game.
Did they patch out using Irina?
I just did it like two weeks ago when I was rushing my character for the DLC and wanted to farm runes early. I went down, killed Irina and got the blood. You may need to do it when you have the item in your inventory though, I've never tried after she was already dead.
You also have the option of going to the Church of Inhibition on the eastern side of Liurnia. You have to defeat Vyke (invasion NPC) but I didn't find him too challenging, and there's a dead maiden in the church.
I don’t think you have to kill Vyke, you can just juke him and touch grace behind him
Serious answer: Most of those people very likely have not played the game in 2 years.
This was my experience of picking the DLC up, realising I was horribly out of practice and getting wrecked by basic enemies a lot.
I decided to start the game from scratch because of this. It's clear From intends the DLC to be an extra challenging end-game zone for people who have mastered the base game. So I need to master the base game again.
I don’t find it that out of line with the rest of the end game tbh. I’ve fought most of the big DLC bosses and so far the only that’s giving me a lot of trouble is the final DLC boss. I think the biggest difference is it’s easier to overlevel in the base game than it is to find scad fragments.
That's been my thought after hearing about peope dying over and over to the blackgaol knight at the start of the dlc.
Honestly with blackgaol knight I think the issue is more that it's a pvp fight and people that don't know pvp don't understand how different it can be
In pvp you can't stagger anything to get a crit, so anyone relying on that to punish is sol
He's using a two hand colossal weapon at most times, so he's mostly unparryable
Pvp jump attacks give iframes to the bottom half, I've seen people unfamiliar with pvp complaining they can't hit him, it's because he's using jump counters like an experienced pvp player would use
I beat him in 3 tries at scadu 0, but I also pvp a ton and he's not as hard as g9 or steelovsky (I've actually run into both in the colosseum)
I forced myself to do a full all-great runes replay just to refresh my memory of how everything worked. Also went out of my way to max out my flask and get a decent build together and I dumped 60 points into vigor first thing. It's still pretty hard but it's very doable.
Idk if I’m an exception but I haven’t played since release and since coming back to beat the standard game (I hit 100hours and got to the snowfields and lost momentum and direction, then bailed) I’m playing vastly better than when I first started. Maybe the 2 years has just made me more patient and willing to wait for openings but I was able to beat a couple over world bosses with almost no issues (killed the ice dragon without getting hit, killed Astel the nature it. First try, killed Alecto the black knife leader in maybe 4 tries)
I have no doubts the dlc will humble me but I’m finding the base game to somehow be much easier than it was before
And that's exactly why I started a new playthrough to get ready for the DLC.
I’ll do you one better: 115 attempts at the final DLC boss as a summon. How many successes, you ask? 0. 0 out of 115 attempts.
I contributed to quite a few of those I could not get to the kamikaze part of the final boss with an AI summon, so I could not practice how to properly evade it. I would summon, and a person would be absolutely melting the boss and I don't understand as my katana would barely show yellow when hit. But needless to say, about 20 online summons in a row, watched me die to that move. I finally equipped four health talisman, boosted a great rune for health, and held down the shield with 100 physical, and barely survived the attack, to finish it out.
But I'm not the target audience for this type of thing. I enjoyed exploring, and the lore. I stayed a solid 15 levels above recommended in my main play through when it launched. I've never played a souls game before, nor am I interested in playing another unless it's in a similar open world aspect.
Sorry to the countless summons over the year where I die on one attack cycle 🥲 (sometimes near end, sometimes literally walking through the mist 🤡)
Nah man, that’s part of the game. Struggling to win/having to find a way around tough moves is just the basis of the game. I’ll be honest, the attempts I had as a summon were all over the place, but even people with 18+ Scadutree levels, full plate, and tower shields using meta builds still lost against his second phase.
I hands-down think the funniest disappointment I ever bestowed on somebody was the area boss. I summoned somebody on the cliff, and they are just popping shit left and right. I have no idea what they were pulling out, but they were glowing every color of the rainbow in someway or another. I thought that surely they are done after these five things, so I start the drop-down. I land, and even though I have dodged this bosses introduction dozens of times by now, I miss all 4/5 dodges, and get one cycled. As my death animation plays, fucking super Saiyan tarnished lands on my corpse and I'm sure they said some real mean things about me.
I had someone embarrass themselves worse on the final boss. For reference, I legit have been using a monk build with all unarmed attacks and only rags as armor. I’m light rolling and I’ve done the last boss so many times that I can dodge pretty much everything (plus with 60 vigor and the great shield talisman I can get up to about 60 resists anyway with decent Scadu levels, the only thing I lose out on is poise).
Anyways, I am absolutely solo tanking the first phase. Dodging almost every attack, landing solid damage, etc. All while the host spams magic from safety. Anyway, the second that the boss changes aggro to them, the host fails to dodge a single attack and gets one-hit swept.
Not to mention them just doing nothing while nihil takes chunks out of their hp..
Those are people that need two nannies to escort them through Stormveil Castle. They never did anything in the game by themselves and then comes a time when the overleveled phantom with Radahn cosplay just isn't enough anymore.
Carried by others on every single mandatory boss. I have a work friend who is proud he cleared all of elden ring but i doubt he has killed even 1 boss with the abomination of a build he is rocking.
Because they keep summoning people to beat the game for them.
They have their friends carry them through the game. You'll learn this if you invade the average host and their summons because the host always uses the first week IGN build with moonveil and every talisman that boosts damage/stats but raises damage taken and they have like 20 vigor. They get carried so they dont know how to roll, dont know when fp is depleted, dont know how hyperarmour works, minimum stat requirements etc.
I know there is no correct way to play but at some point you actually engage with the game mechanics and what the game is trying to teach you ffs.
How these dudes even managed to kill Radahn and Mohg to access the DLC is beyond me
By hopping into a backpack, the same that they're doing now.
To be fair there is a like "failure" bias when it comes to summoning. The people that have explored and upgraded and might just need a little help usually get through in a few attempts while the others just keep failing and continue summoning. That pool just keeps getting bigger as more of those people get to the boss so your so much more likely to get summoned by them instead of someone who is a little bit competent.
This is kind of like the inverse of a parable/metaphor I heard about in WWII,
the air force engineers noticed planes that would come back from battle would have damage in the same couple areas, so they decided to reinforce/add shielding to the parts that were not damaged on all the planes, as it meant if a plane got hurt there it wouldn't come back at all
The phrase for this is survivorship bias
Here's a link for those who are curious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
I know.... it was people getting clapped because they didnt heal during nihil, or they hid behind the gravestones expecting me to solo him... i did.... but now these same players are stuck in one of the most unforgiving places i have ever witnessed. I love the dlc, but i am sure some players are really frustrated
To be fair, nihil is by far the most bullshit attack in the game. Literally the entire game is "dodge the immediate threat, then heal", and then nihil just guaranteed triple hits you with a strong attack that requires you to just flask like there's no tomorrow. I wasted so much time trying to figure out how to dodge that attack and finally gave up and googled it. I was pissed when I found out the "correct" way to deal with it is to go do some random quest line on the other side of the world. It's absolutely not something I'd expect someone to figure out on their own.
Surprising thing is most of these hosts are more aggressive than Radahn himself. No matter how much you try to keep the boss's agro away from them, they are relentless.
You worry about stamina management and finding openings, but they are not burdened by any such concern. And sure enough, 5 seconds after the boss's attention turns to them, they're dead.
I’ve tried to use Shabriri’s Woe, but it just doesn’t seem to work.
I usually use parts of the Duelist set, but I swear it's like a placebo.
Though I was wearing it as I rolled up to a ghostflame dragon fighting a bunch of mobs, and the one of the knight archers would target me every time without me doing anything. That stopped when I took it off, so it's doing something.
I never played any dark souls like game and Elden Ring was the very first game I experienced which makes me not that good. This is the reason why I don't ask for co-op help because I am afraid to waste people's time because I know I am gonna die a lot and its gonna be frustrating. I just grind to gain some levels and trust the process that I will die a lot in this game but I know I will eventually beat the boss.
Today I was so high in dopamine because after many many tries and cursing the input queue (because I was getting impatient and spamming attack and dodge) I was able beat Mohg on my own without any summon.
Speaking as someone who has been spending time throwing the summon sign down a lot lately, don't worry about wasting our time. It's fun trying to help people beat the odds.
You guys are heroes. I'll keep that in mind when I play thr DLC and I promise to level that scadutree hehe
Trust me, unless you are doing something completely stupid like letting the summon do all the work (I didn't sign up for that) or doing stupid shit like spamming flies on EB and then doing literally nothing for 5 minutes until I severed myself out (true story), you aren't wasting anybody's time. Many of us just want to jolly cooperate.
Though, if you are doing a no VIT build, you might as well commit to that and try soloing everything because summons would defeat the point to me, but you do you.
I had a Mogh delete build at 150 to help. It took me 22 seconds from entering the arena to have him dead.
I killed Mogh over 100 times. At least 10 tarnished found a way to immediately die within those 22 seconds.
I mean they just face checked him to a one shot.
You obviously weren't one of the two that helped me the day before the DLC dropped. Two full Arcane builds, and one bleed BONK build. He didn't even get to the second Nihil. Shout out to people like you, his phase two is a chaotic cluster fuck solo.
I put my name as “Let Me Solo Him” yet hardly anyone respected my wishes :/
Mogh is nothing compared to some of these DLC bosses, man they are having me scramble. It probably took me 40 tries to take down just Rellana alone!
I came back to mohg super rusty. Dude is actually pretty tough of you're not running heavy strength or bleed.
What about heavy strength and bleed? The Great Stars perhaps?
BIG BONK. I did a little bit of a strength build once and it was definitely my favorite strength weapon. The straight smash r1 makes my unga bunga brain happy
I’ve been helping for THREE DAYS now
Most of the time after the Hosts get hit for 800-1200 dmg they just go and sit in a corner and let me solo the boss since I’m just cheesing with Fingerstone Shield and Antspur Rapier
I’ve probably helped about 75 hosts now finish the final boss
Yeah I probably helped around 150 hosts for Mohg in a week which was quite surprising honestly. At least I have a fat stack of Rune Arcs now (that I’ll never use)
Mohg is easy because he's bugged and seems to apply the Nihil Rings to each player separately, so he has way more openings in Co-Op. Extremely easy to one-phase with a decent 120+ build or two
I refuse to do Maliketh, Radagon, Malenia co-op in base game. Hosts just get obliterated in one hit, sometimes one that isn't even directed at them. Waste of my time. feels that way too in the DLC, only co-op I've done so far there tho.
Also I think players should learn to leave an area and come back later if they feel that they are doing zero damage and getting one shot. I left the area where the Death Rite Bird was because I realised that it was literally doing half my health, so I knew that while I could maybe win, it would be more frustrating than fun.
Well that's just what death rite birds do too
Truth be told, Death Birds and Death Rite Birds are actually some of my favourite bosses in the base game. To me, they’re incredibly fair for a melee character, and they’re also fair for mage players too. Their attacks are at most 3 hit combos, and they’ve got a great variety of attacks
See they wreck me every time. Their damage is kinda bonkers
The kid named Sacred Blade:
This is the point of an open-world RPG. It's like Fallout New Vegas and heading directly north through the deathclaw sanctuary and crying about it being too hard. I've had a lot of fun circling back through areas and then finding huge new areas to explore I missed. When those areas are clearly above my capabilities, I leave a few markers and move on. I've loved this DLC and only just finally got the final map piece. I tooted the finger horns and burned the impenetrable shadows - but I'm going back before I push what I presume to be the final area. I think I'm at 16 Erdtree Blessing level and 8 on spirit.
You mean the area in Fallout New Vegas I sneak through with my charisma build? I just ask to get into the strip. That or luck build and gamble across the Mojave
The game teaches you to do this from the very beginning. Some people ignore the lessons and bash their head against a wall, complaining the entire time
I don't understand why people want to torture themselves
People say that Elden ring was the first one that you could go explore and get stronger if you got stuck
At least dES, DS1 AND DS2 had tons of available paths from the start
I remember being stuck at the twin gargoyle in ds1, leaving, finding the grass cress shield and coming back and folding them
The stamina regeneration on the shield mitigated my panic rolls from being a new souls player
Think about all the posts in the early days along the lines of "every time I try to heal, Margit throws daggers to stop me! So I immediately try to heal again, and he throws more!"
Some people ignore the lessons and bash
their head against a walleverything with 2H jump attackscomplainingwinning the entire time
Surprisingly the strategy seems to still work in the DLC.
This has been happening since Demons Souls and its funny every time. They go the wrong way, and instead of taking the hint and going somewhere else, they complain its too hard.
ofcourse Elden Ring grew much bigger than Demons Souls or Dark Souls ever did so the complaints are just much higher in volume now.
I struggled with that bird at Scadu level 5, and again at level 20
On a second character, I learned how fucking good sacred damage is against those birds, and I beat it with no Scadu upgrades at all by just using Sacred Blade on my sword.
Yep, it's the same in the base game
If you aren't using a holy weapon you are really handicapping yourself
You don't even need to level fth, a pure str build using sacred blade will get enough out of it
Could also do holy water pots. They take 4x damage from those.
Holy water pots are insane against undead tbh. They stop skeletons from respawning, too. Best craftable in my opinion
Crafting in general is very much slept on.
Status effects and damage types are slept on.
I feel like FS was expecting players to utilize crafting a lot more but I'm one of those hoarder people that hate using materials/consumables in games.
Yeah, anytime you're fighting anything undead, you want to break out the holy damage.
I literally discovered this area last night after I killed Bayle, went back to the dragon communion spot and decided just to explore a bit around the altar. Crazy how the entrance to a new area was right under my nose this whole time...if only I had a map I mightve noticed.
Well I missed the bird XD. Where is it?
Charo’s Hidden Grave, there’s a lake with a lot of gravebirds, close to the opening where you enter the area, the Bird spawns
In the south.
The place is very red
I think the problem on release was that a lot of the early bosses were too powerful for the average scadu tree level of the player when they face them. The scaling changes they made helped a lot with that I believe.
And level Vigour. You are not going through Rellana with 700 HP my dudes.
"Who needs health? I just won't get hit" - Those players.
Immediately gets oneshot upon the fight starting - Also those players.
Tbf I was kind of that asshole in the base game, but every one of the main game bosses I believed I could get through them only taking minimal hits. And eventually I would pull it off. The dlc I respecced to 60 vigor at Rellana and kept it there the rest of the way. It also forced me to stop playing fashion souls too smh.
Nah, the way scadutree fragments work, imo it makes fashionsouls still viable. Unless you are actively minmaxing defense, you can use it and not feel like you're losing out. Im able to get to 60/70% resist easily with very little investment. Slap on the dragoncrest talisman and the appropriate +3 element one and you'll be shrugging off almost anything. You'll only need heavy armor if you wanna face tank the final boss or something.
The solution to Fashion Souls is the Beast Champion Armor (Unaltered) with the Navy Hood. Absolute baller cape and ornate silver armor, but its also one of the heaviest armor sets in the game that doesn't make you look morbidly obese.
Immediately complains on reddit that the fight is overtuned
*vigour and endurance. Being able to take more than 2 hits from a boss is very important, but so is being able to dodge thru their entire attack chain and have enough stamina to get an attack in
I helped a host the other day against Rellana who had 415 hp. Idek how that’s possible lol
Did he save edit to get 3 fucking Vigour?
Holy shit. Is there anything in the DLC that deals less than 500 damage?
Messmer can sneeze and kill him lmao
"Those stripped of the grace of health shall all meet death... In the embrace of Messmer's flu"
He was basically spamming night maidens mist and running away the entire fight, which is probably the only strategy he can get away with lol.
I thought maybe it was just the amount of hp he had left, but no, he got 1 tapped at full health with 1 more hp than wretch starts with. somehow.
There is a talisman that lowers health and reduces fp cost of spells, maybe he had that on
I find it funny when getting summoned for putrescent knight and the host dying before i even get to see the boss
Edit: misspelled putrescent
that boss is prob my favorite one (I'm still missing maybe one or two bosses, including the final boss), but it had orphan of kos vibes, and I loved his attacks, jumping over the blue fire, the chain attack with the horse felt so good to dodge and punish with little in between attacks, I'm actually sad I won pretty fast cause idk how I went ultra instinct and got pretty lucky. I'm gonna put my sing there after I beat the last boss
I couldn't for the life of me get the timing for the horse rush down. I accepted that whenever it left the knight, I was getting slapped.
I kinda feel like I missed out now because I smashed his face in with bayles lightning strike while he was going phase 2 and killed him
it happens man, when i was fighting Messmer I got a good fight on like my third/fourth attempt and I could have close it out but I was legit hesitant cause the fight seemed so much fun so I didn't lose on purpose, but I stopped focusing 100% haha
Legit had that happen yesterday, and the host even spent like 15 seconds buffing up before dropping down lmao
The kind of people who summon for every boss and who don't pick up any fragments are also mostly the kind of people who don't hang out on Reddit or have anything to do with the ER community so your cries are likely falling on deaf ears.
I love co op but I don't understand the people who just rush through every area, never pick up any items or explore, and just run straight to the bosses. Like I get it if you're doing subsequent playthroughs but isn't the entire point sorta....exploring and whatnot...((because sometimes you find really important items that prevent you from getting killed so yeah..))
Those players just aren't interested in the exploration part of the game. They just want to complete the game without wasting time and then move on to another game
I don't like summoning people for exploration because I feel rushed to get through the level and to the boss as opposed to thoroughly exploring. I feel like some people who do summon for normal exploration probably end up getting through to the end with very few fragments just from not exploring the world.
I usually play with my husband and best friend so we always take our time lol. And if it makes you feel any better, I throw out my effigy a lot, like I maxed out how many rune arcs I can carry type of helping, and it doesn't bother me at all when I get a thorough host. I can usually tell right away when they're exploring every nook and cranny that they're the completionist sort and I sort of like those because it extends how long I get to help them for. As a summon I always keep in mind that I'm there to help the host and I'm not the main character lol.
I qas 18/20 and 9/10 on tree buffs didnt struggle till i hit last boss which took me a solid 30+ tries
Only 30+? That's amazing, I'm well over 150 at this point. Although I'm learning parry timings.
And yes since it's the topic, 60 VIG / 20 & 9 scadu levels.
The last boss is way harder than anything else in the DLC or the base game lol.
Way harder than anything else in the From library, IMO, except maybe Sword Saint Isshin. Orphan of Kos looks practically lethargic by comparison.
SSI has the advantage, though, of being an incredibly fun fight, which this one... is not.
He’s way, way harder than Isshin, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s frankly ridiculous
I took wayyy longer beating Isshin than Radahn 2.0. But I also didn't really mind, because Isshin is actually really satisfying to fight. Radahn is a massive disappointment, especially as the final boss.
This was my experience as well. Took me 4 days or something to beat Isshin; but it felt fun. Final boss of the DLC took me about 3 hours and is decidedly not fun. The dodge roll / block combat system is being stretched way past its limit with 30+ second long combos and delayed swings.
“How did these people get this far” because of you lol, yall are wondering how they got through the game while talking about helping them beat a boss
EXACTLY.
Some people need help from summons, ashes, players, etc., so they never optimized.
This has been the case since the game came out. I remember I used to help people with Radagon and 9 times out of 10 the host would get one tapped by any stray hit. Other times I would get scaled down to oblivion. I don’t understand how they made it this far in the game with 3 digit health bars. Not to mention these guys just run straight to their death, balls deep with their eyes closed. I didn’t even bother trying to help people with the DLC because I know it will be much much worse.
I had been helping people with Malenia at RL130 before the DLC came out and the amount of people who had 600-900 health was unreasonable
Malenia is out of the question for me because if the host doesn’t get one tapped they just become a healing pot for her. And there was this one patch where she was bugged and would heal from the ghosts of other players which made me never go there again.
Not just getting the fragments people still don't have nearly enough hp
I legit just leave when I see my negations and damage got downscaled too much for a specific boss fight.
Being summoned by these underleveled hosts is like being forced to equip soreseals and scorpion charms, but without any benefit for taking extra damage and doing less damage.
Which is my only complaint about this new leveling system when it comes to co op. Like I would’ve thought Fromsoft would’ve made a Scadu level matchmaking, but it doesn’t seem like there is one. Could be wrong.
Or they wouldn’t scale us exactly to the host’s SL. I mean I’ve been scaled up to a host’s SL a few times.
All I know is the difference in difficulty trying to help and co op with hosts in the dlc vs the base game is substantial. It’s really not balanced right now without proper matchmaking.
They needed to do something
It's not communicated to anyone you are being downscaled so I'm sure the host just thinks your garbage and you think the host must be on ng7 or something
I caught the explanation here on reddit
I turned off every summon pool in dlc because I've yet to be summoned by a host that's at a respectable level
Step 1 would be showing the player thier progress on Scadu level instead of just [5]. Like how good is 5? Is it low? Is it high? How high does it go? Is 5 the maximum? Did I find them all? There is no barometer, the player needs to go to the wiki to get any idea of what progression should be.
Just add a percentage of power next to the number so you know "I am 1/4 as strong as I could be".
That way when people get killed immediately and they rest at a bonfire they go, "Oh, I'm literally doing 1/8 of the damage I should be doing because I picked up 2".
This is a good point, I was playing blind with some exceptions
I made an exception to looking up what max blessing level was
You have no way of knowing there are 20 levels beforehand so yeah, the system is pretty vague
I first assumed Max was 10, and 3 was good but nope
If they had matchmaking, those of us at +20 would never get summoned for anyone except the final boss, though.
I'm missing 5 fragments, but I don't want to go to every single location to check if I got that specific one😭
I'm missing one. one
No idea where it might be, if I find it, I find it.
make sure you’ve killed all those skeleton enemies carrying pots on their heads, that’s where my last one was, after checking the wiki
Yeah, I've been doing that.
I'm sure it's probably a pot carrier or some mini-boss I haven't found yet.
Just wait until NG+ and hit cap easily by finding the obvious ones again. I am a little worried about the balance of doing the DLC in Ng+ cycles will be skewed because you’ll basically start with +20 for every cycle after NG.
Tempted to do NG+ but I only have so much free time as a parent. These games are LONG.
Okay but that doesn't really make a difference. The boss is definitely beatable on lvl 18 scadutree, which is roughly what you should be at if you're only missing 5 fragments.
5 fragments will barely make a noticeable difference anyway so ur not missing out on anything
Since I finished the DLC I'm helping people fight Rellana since she's the boss I've memorized the best. The problem is not only Scadutree Fragments but the inability or unwillingness to learn. People think that having a multiplayer summon will make the fight automatically easy. It's not.
The amount of players who refuse to learn patterns and play defensively, or with a tactical approach, is insane. Sometimes there will be one host who will summon me several times in a row because they keep dying. Why do they keep dying? Because every single try they will just charge headfirst into the fight, try to hit three times or more, then panic roll like a rabid dog, try to heal in the middle of a boss combo and die. Two minutes later, next try, same host, AND THEY DO THE SAME SHIT AGAIN. I can't help you beat the boss if you do that. Learn the pattern at least enough to stay alive please.
Next, builds. I'm convinced that a large portion of players are utterly uninformed about how to build a proper character in this game. People are fatrolling around the arena with heavy armor, Rivers of Blood and Fingerprint Shield. They try to block through combos but apparently don't have many endurance points and get cooked quickly. Others play naked, maybe because they think it's funny and it makes them look like Let Me Solo Her, but are unable to dodge properly and die in one hit. Now, I don't expect everyone to study build guides and have the perfect meta build. But if you made it so far as the DLC, how can you not know how to make a functional character for this game?
I have fun helping people, honestly, but it's frustrating if players are refusing to learn how the game works.
As someone who has platniumed all the soulsborne games and finished the ER DLC - I really struggle to learn patterns. Some people are really good at it and can pick up on things, and some people like me really struggle. I can generally pick out the big moves, like Rellana's moons and the sword slashy magic shot. But something like when she's going to do a sword combo, totally lost on me.
That being said - I will try to accommodate so I'm not just throwing my face at the boss until I get a lucky run. I'll switch out gear, talismans, or spells or leave and come back when I've leveled up some more.
TLDR: not everyone can memorize movesets. But I sympathize with joining the same people and them not doing anything differently.
You may think its funny, but when I'm fighting a new boss, I describe out loud the moves: "Okay, this combo is a five hit combo where I have to dodge to the left, then dodge out and then dodge in again to punish. Got it." It helps me a lot to build the knowledge faster.
I am getting into the habit of checking my AR as soon as i get summoned in, if it's too low and the boss is late in the dlc then I'm severing.
You can make it funnier by stocking up on the sleep potions from Thiolier and drinking those instead of severing
Sleepy time gang rise up
What do you mean by use google or youtube?
Just opening your eyes and going to places you haven't been to guarantees like 15 levels. These hosts just rush through the game like it's a speedrun
I played blind, thoroughly explored the world. Got to level 18. I didn't even know that the pot guys dropped these fragments, otherwise I would have at least 19.
Wait, which pot guys? I finished the dlc and feels like explored literally everything in it, though sitting at level 18.
Sometimes you'll come across a shadow person carrying a pot on their head that they'll throw at you. Killing them usually gives a semi-rare drop, but certain unique ones will drop a Scadutree Fragment the first time they are killed. The first one you are likely to come across is at a Gravesite on the Gravesite Plains, just slightly to the North East of the Scorched Ruins.
The shadow guys which are carrying a large sparkling pot on their heads. 90% of them drop scadutree fragments from what I've seen.
I only killed one at first and he only dropped rare crafting materials so I ignored every other one because I don't craft anyway. Found out way too late that they can drop fragments too.
yeh I just got a couple from the rauh ruins or whatever they're called always pay attention to the sparkly pot guys
I hate that only some of them do. I made it to the final boss with 18 fragments after having explored the entire DLC area. I ended up looking them up online: 2 of them were in places I hadn't explore thoroughly and the rest were from pot guys in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
I keep going through and exploring looking for these fragments and keep accidentally stumbling into boss arenas....damnit lol
Yeah, no, some of us are just that dense. I wouldn't even have access to like half of the areas if I hadn't googled it.
Wait, the amount of Scadutree fragments the hosts has also affects summons?
Yep. If they're lower level then your level is also lowered.
When you join a game, your scadutree level is scaled to the hosts’.
You can check whether a host has enough or not by going into your stats and comparing them to your own stats when you’re not in coop, they’ll most likely be low as a fuck because people don’t grab scadutree fragments
I went to 16 SB without google. I had 2 more Fragments.After facing the final boss i looked up for a guide and found the rest of them.
I don't get it. I know I suck so I over prepare. If there's something out there to negate my suck, I'm going to get it.
Is it's just to say you finished the game? Is it even fun for these people?
"But I saw a guy on YouTube fight Radahn at rune level 1 with no armor and a pot on his head."
Ok but you're not that guy, pal.
The problem is I didn't keep track of which ones I already got and scouring a map only to find ones I already got sounds like the opposite of fun
The best co-option partner on Elden Ring is always your Mimic Tear.
No lies detected. Even if they can be braindead from time to time, least they can take a hit.
6 blessings means you haven't explored a 3rd of the dlc.
Go play the fuckin' game. You paid for it.
Had a host message me because I died quickly on the last fight, even though I literally saw him die 5 seconds later. Like bro it's not my fault we don't have enough defense to take one single hit, it's yours! But whatever I just said sorry and moved on. All I really do on the game now is get summoned to help people, but doing it on the dlc is so much worse cause you never know if you're getting summomed somewhere you'll get one shot and do no damage regardless of what you actually have.
I know, I'm one of them. Turns out my +3 skadoodle tree fragments escapade vs Bayle was not optimal.
Honestly people are going to refuse to listen here just as they refuse to level vigor in the base game. Hopefully From patches in a Scadutree level matchmaking system and doesn't allow you to be summoned by people far lower on than yourself. Maybe that'd encourage players to actually engage with the game and systems in place rather than refusing to use what's not really an optional mechanic for all but the best of the best players.
While most players are morons, I love being able to be summoned to hosts at any Scadu level. I like that I can be summoned for earlier bosses instead of leveling out of summoning range like base game. I'll take the tradeoff of "Occasionally joining underleveled hosts" if it means always being able to be summoned anywhere.
I think a LOT of people have this skewed view of what the scadutree blessing is.
They think its like the mimic tear, something beyond leveling or "getting guud" that is a crutch or "insincere" way to win
When in reality, the dlc enemies scale according to your actual level, making regular level ups largely pointless. Scadutree Blessings are the DLCs equivalent to runes. To leveling up.
Seeing people say that you're wrong to use the blessings because its just a crutch makes me laugh. Its like theyre saying "if you go above level 1 at any point in the base game you're cheating!"
It is actually true that enemies scale with your level?
As I understood it, that's a myth. It's just that the tree fragments matter more than your level, making it look like your level matters not.
fragments matter more than your level
Even that is not exactly true.
Scadutree fragments are just incoming/outgoing damage multiplier.
You have 600 hp? Taking half of damage won't save you.
You normally deal shit damage? Twice of shit will still be shit, because DLC bosses are basically twice as tanky.
You run around naked? Yes, now your damage negation is 50 (=taking half), except that if bosses deal twice as much damage as outside DLC, you're essentially in your normal paper state. You didn't become tanky as armored characters are.
Fragments are very important, but they are not a replacer for usual stats and equipment (as some people say, this is not addressed to posted I'm replying to).
Just to clarify some misinformation, the DLC enemies do NOT scale with player level. Enemies will only scale with your NG+ cycle, that's it.
As far as I know, enemies have never scaled with player level in any Fromsoftware game or dlc.
I’ve been helping people all week and the number of people who are only scadu level 8/9 was driving me insane. You have straight up missed half of the DLC if that’s the case.
However even when they were at the soft cap of 12, I would very often see people not using a single buff, go in before I’m done buffing, then get one shot by the opener. Like dude, the reason I’m stood out here for 15 seconds is to basically half the damage I take and deal a shit load more damage. I think a lot of people just don’t realise the value of buffs and then struggle to learn the bosses move set.
I’m had level 7 Scadu blessing before Rellana and my mimic and I beat her easy.
I just use the little blade to go home now if I check my fragments and see the host has way too few. Sorry but if you’re not even going to try, you don’t need my help.
Gotta Scad 'em All!
No amount of scadu fragments can change some of the bosses terrible movesets though
After beating the entire DLC (and most of the bosses before the patch), I really like the difficulty level overall - my only gripe in that regard is the frame drops on the final boss with some of their attacks.
However, I HATE that there aren’t any extra scadutree fragments scattered around like there are with golden seeds. I think I got to around +16 on my blessing before needing to consult the wiki for the last several, and I don’t know how you’re expected to find all of them without going online (I know some people obviously will, but I felt like I was pretty thorough and still missed a good bit).
I'm of the opinion that more Scadutree fragments should be placed alongside the main progression path, akin to Golden Seeds/Sacred Tears in the main game.
This way, even if you don't explore the entire map, you still have a fair chance against bosses and have a more natural feeling of progression in terms of damage dealt/received.
Imposing a somewhat mandatory mechanic, in an open world, no less, is a bit questionable, in my opinion. I think it's important to leave a real choice to players in how they want to tackle a challenge.
It's like they had no faith people would explore the map if they didn't scatter them everywhere. Dawg, I LIVE for exploration. I was way more disappointed by the fucking cookbooks being the exploration reward most of the time. All they had to do was add way more weapons and other stuff to find. The DLC overworld is way too big for how empty the areas are. Finger ruins? Only one of them has anything worth finding/doing. Abyssal forest? One tiny legacy dungeon with an amazing boss. That's it. Dragon's peak? The lead up to Dragon's peak was more interesting to me than the lead up to Bayle.
There's just nothing to find 90% of the time, and that feels like ass coming off of the base game, where it felt like there was something to reward your exploration every time. See something cool in the distance? Go there. There will be something there to make it worth your while. See something off in the distance in SOTE? Might as well just admire it from a distance because it will either have upgrade materials you already have, or cookbooks. If you're insanely lucky, you'll find a weapon or AOW.
But i guess they want you to explore.
I like that they reward exploration, however hiding scadu fragments in generic shades with pots on their heads feels like a stretch. Instead they should be rewarded from dungeon bosses and other important enemies.
There doesn't need to be more, they simply need to lower the amount to level up, which naturally would create excess. so at +10 for example, you'd only need 2 fragments to level up instead of 3, up to 15 where you would then need 3, and this should equate to there being around 5-10 excess fragments, but most players being able to reach max around rouh region before enir illm.
in the base game you could max out a weapon well before reaching the final boss area, whereas here you quite literally CANNOT max until you get to the final boss area, its dumb. has nothing to do with exploring, otherwise they wouldn't have put so many shitty cookbooks and lv4 stones in every area, actively making people NOT want to explore because 80% of the item pick ups are shit.
I'm seriously glad to help anyone struggling with the bosses but I must agree. Sometimes I don't even have the time to enter the fight and the host is already dead. Find your damn fragments, there are already a number of guides if you can't find more of them.
When putting myself in the summoning pool for Mohg before the dlc came out, I though, “Surely it’s not that bad right?”
It was that bad.