My normal group does this intentionally. A few of us are proficient enough at the game to contribute for a bit without a backpack or without a support weapon. Either we pick up someone else’s spare or grab one off the ground.

Yeah B absolutely knew what they were doing. B probably pulled punches a fair bit until it was a near tpk too. I’ve done the same. Everyone hates a min maxer until they’re useful. They they’ll bitch about scene stealing or whatever.

Eh I’ll just take my time on this one. No need to grind really.

Honestly I’m Between that and the call downs

Same old shit. One guy knows how to build a character for combat and does, the other seems to not know how to but still hyper focuses on someone else’s numbers. It’s not B hogging the spotlight it’s A being a fuckwit and worrying about the wrong things.

Place your bets on which ones won’t work for a few weeks!

Best we can do is some small invisible modifier to defence missions on the bot front.

I legit thought that was an intentional thing with the DLC. I was like “damn they really gave every boss malenia ass HP regen moves”. You’re telling me it’s a bug and I should have beaten the DLC final boss on try 3 not…erm however many it was after I stopped counting.

At some point if you do it enough and your whole group commits enough it just stops feeling weird.

Helps to know your character inside out too. My guy is a whole little chunk of my brain, tiny little space that I can just slip into. Especially since he has a particular accent. Once the accents on it’s less weird for me.

Op seems pretty chill as a DM. If he’s anything like me he sincerely probably isn’t really that bothered either way if they take it or not but found the novelty of that putting them off quite amusing.

I’ve personally had no issues with silvery barbs. People love to use it, it’s easy to bait it out and make players use spellslots on that instead of other stuff that could be more effective long term. By the time you start getting up in levels spellcasters have way more egregious things in their back pockets to worry about. I don’t really care if my players use it to set up easy kills on enemies to line up their save n suck spells. If it’s an enemy that that doesn’t have legendary resistances to stop that kind of shit then it’s kind of whatever if they one or two round an enemy. They’d probably pull that off either way.

Everyone pointing out the Ranni stuff. Ranni was probably just doing Miquella a solid. You don’t actively factor into Rannis plans at this point in time. So I doubt she rates you at all.

It absolutely has to be intentional. I’ve never seen such an on the nose blatant reference in fromsoft.

No it isn’t “imperative”. If they want the content in the game they’ll make it a cake walk and tell us up front that doing so unlocks new content like they have with the strats.

It’s absolutely going to be this. I’ve long since given up on hype when it comes to this game. Even black hole bombing a planet was kinda soured by the missions to do it being busted.

Not taking the losses to heart is key. Your odds aren’t great right from the start you’re likely going to get ganked. Take the small victories even if you don’t get the big ones. You might not get the host. But if you’ve killed one or two of his summons you still did SOMETHING

150 is a soft cap set by a small minority of players who give a shit about the vestigial pvp aspects of the game. And I say that as one of those players. You won’t fuck your game by ignoring it.

I didn’t realise this was one folks considered tough

Judging by what you’ve said here and in the comments, a decent amount of your players just aren’t that into it. I’d drop the ones who don’t care and keep the ones who do. You’ll only make yourself miserable if you spend too much time trying to make people who don’t care, care. Communication and being a grown up about it is of course the key.

Acting like these problems are exclusive to Elden Ring is bonkers

Given it’s often the case that what the dm thinks is obvious, often isn’t. I wouldn’t worry about that part too much.

This is solid advice. Especially if your players are also new, they might need prompting.

Of course they aren’t going to expand on something that only comes up in one particular ending. What do you fucking want next. Travelling through the endless void with Ranni sim? Actually…

In a world where new games are dropping or dlc is coming out. Of course a game several months into its release is gonna see it’s numbers drop. This ain’t too bad considering the ongoing bugs and problems. I can absolutely see it getting lower but I can also see it rebounding if anything of substance drops.

Godwyn is an inciting incident. A plot point. If he was so easy to bring back from Total soul death that all it took was slapping Mohg about and becoming a god, do you not think Marika would have tried it…

Honestly them giving the players that same combo is priceless. Like mate if I’m invading in an area AFTER messmer…of course I’m gonna dodge your shitty combo ha