I'll be honest, this DLC's boss roster make me think that I'm starting to fall out of love with the Souls formula. I found very few of them actually enjoyable to fight. Sipping the Sekiro juice helped, but ultimately it just made the experience tolerable enough to finish, where as before I was ready to drop it entirely.

From's next game with the Souls skeleton went from a "must buy" to "I need convincing." It doesn't feel like these games are for me anymore. I at the very least know that the shine has worn off Elden Ring for me and I'm unlikely to play it again outside of dedicated coop runs.

Igon's screaming at Bayle is great though, best part of the DLC.

Here's my take as someone who's beaten Shadow of the Erdree solo.

From's Souls bosses are becoming faster and more aggressive, and as a result are becoming more twitch-reflex based. Prior to DS3, From's games had always been rather slow and more about punishing misplays and greed than doing the correct, rapid inputs. Even Bloodborne, which is faster than it's predecessors but who's speed is largely an illusion created by how the dodge works.

Elden Ring is the peak of this trend (Sekrio and AC6 are fundamentally different beasts), but it also has build diversity that changes the way these fights play out is increasingly drastic ways. The difference between dodge rolling and greatshield tanking is so vast that it is creating experiences that feel unintentional. One can just stand there and poke from safety, while the other requires at times actually frame perfect rolls now, which is a degree of precision that these games have never demanded before.

The Souls games never demanded a high degree of mechanical acumen, which is a major reason they gained such a large following over the years. They are challenging, but not demanding and they make you feel accomplished. But Elden Ring, especially the DLC, has become both challenging and demanding, which is pushing people away. And the fact that the solutions to that difficulty is increasingly becoming "bypass it with a different build" is causing a lot of friction now because of that large disparity in experiences between builds.

I really want Bronya's E4 follow up to benefit from her crit trace and get her boss animation.

I'm a man that works a public facing position. I regularly get compliments. Sometimes inappropriate ones!

I don't think I'm especially remarkable looking, but I do take care of my appearance. I have long hair that I shampoo, condition, and blow dry. I have a beard I maintain and I wear clothes that actually fit me.

I think part of it is that I'm in a position where people can disengage. I'm more or less stuck at my service point, so the patron can control the conversation. But also I think a lot of guys just give off bad vibes that make people feel uncomfortable engaging with them, both from their appearance and attitude.

It's an absurdist antfarm and I love it.

In my current colony, my cook caugh gut worms while he was getting married. And because of the gut worms now he keeps food poisoning everyone, including himself, which makes him even worse at cooking. And there's a toxic fallout going on. So everyone is locked inside during a nuclear winter, vomiting all over themselves.

I don't play life sims, farming sims, or base builders.

I'm near 500 hours in Rimworld.

Jiaoqiu would only flex to a DoT team if you need Ruan Mei on the other side for Firefly.

More Ults vs better ults mostly comes down to your relics. If you are already at or near 100% crit rate, and are at or over 200% crit damage, then more ults from Jiaoqiu will mostly likely have you clearing faster. If your crit damage is lagging, then Sparkel's buffs will probably be more valuable.

If all you care about is Acheron, then Jiaoqiu is a no-brainer. But if you are also investing in other teams, his value proposition gets much more dicey.

On the other hand, if you have an E1S1+ Bronya, Sparkle's value also does drop a lot as well.

Sparkle is probably the better pick up for you, since you are already satisfied with your Acheron running her in a sub-optimal comp.

I really enjoyed Dune, even though it shows it's age in a lot of places (how do you communicate the Barron is evil? Make him a fat, gay, pedophile!).

I can't really say the same for the extended canon though. I had to put Messiah down about a quarter of the way in because Spoiler

The most clear and obnoxious version of this is the fact that basically every remembrance boss attacking you in someway as soon as you enter the arena. This is clearly a method to counter terra magicka, buffing, and spirt ashes. Which isn't a bad thing itself, but the frequency of it makes it very transparent.

But what really struck my when fighting the final boss is that it has a few elegant, almost dancer-like moves mixed in with the more direct, brutal attacks. I realized that this was done to combat summons. Most of the bosses do a lot of circular attacks to hit in an AoE around them to hit summons and ashes while fighting the player.

Sometimes this works well. Rellana's fighting style hides this behavior so effortlessly that I didn't even notice it at first. But once I notice it on the last boss, I started to notice it basically everywhere when I thought back.

These sweeping, circular attacks also serve a double function of roll catching. Combined with the bosses all having reaches that are ass long, or longer than, your roll distance, and I can feel the hand of the developer chastising me for rolling. Which is fair! But the long strings and heavy damage discourage blocking (outside of great shields), and they discourage parrying by having it take multiple times to get a critical.

Notice how every DLC boss charges your ass the second you walk through the fog door? Wonder why that is...

This is my biggest criticism of the DLC, combat wise. To me, it feels like From has lost the thread in their quest for ever-escalating difficulty. I feel more like I am fighting the developers than characters. That boss design is more about countering meta player behavior than storytelling though game design.

Sometimes reading in games is physically difficult. Not all games have great accessibility options for text and even if they did, a lot of people's set-ups aren't made to accommodate large amounts of reading comfortably. There are plenty of visual novels that I'm sure I would dig but I get a migraine just thinking about reading something that dwarfs some of the longest novels on my computer.

Ideally, difficulty should push players to engage with game systems more broadly. If difficulty narrows what feels like are viable options for the average player, then it's probably too hard.

E2 Acheron is "future proof" in that it allows you you use her with any current and future harmony units. However, we don't know when Acheron's rerun will be. At the very least, it's not likely to be for several months. Are you willing to effectively put our account in stasis for it?

Jiaogiu will be a huge upgrade for E0 Acheron, a big boost for E0S1, and still strong but not a big deal for E2S1.

Acheron doesn't need him, strictly speaking, though. We're all doing fine now without him.

Combat wise, Elden Ring expects you to be using a much wider range of tools than Souls games. You can see this clearly in ashes of war. Not only are there plenty of ashes that are powerful in their own right, but they also give non-caster builds access to powerful spells and buffs. Then there are the ton of buyable and caraftable consumables that are extremely strong as well, both offensive pots and buffs. And there's also the physik, which you can customize per fight. Elden Ring's combat is offering and expecting a degree of flexibility that Souls players don't typically engage with because they like to do runs with particular builds.

But if you don't like these systems or otherwise don't want to engage with them, there's a lot of stuff in Elden Ring that can feel really unfair, because the expectation was never for you to roll-stab your way though.

Boss damage is high because every player has access to boiled crab and golden vow, regardless of build. Boss health is high because every player has access to weapon enchantments, including bleed and frost, regardless of build.

You're welcome, no problem. Happy to help. You'll probably be able to get those last few stars just by finishing building Ruan Mei.

I think a major contributor to what's happening with the Shadow of the Erdtree discourse is that a large number of people (and I include myself in this group), with time and distance, have realized that they didn't actually like Elden Ring. What we liked was Dark Souls: More. And the base game lets you play it like that.

But the DLC is really, really, really pushing you to engage with Elden Ring on it's own terms, and that's causing a lot of friction and cross-talk as a result.

I've had the exact opposite experience. I was absolute miserable through Lion dancer and Relanna on my sword and shield spell caster. I switched to my Zweihander build character and the difference is night and day. Most of the stuff I fight, including bosses, barley get a chance to fight. It's crazy how much the game punishes you for letting the boss basically do anything.

I've found that asking "vaugley specific" questions can be a good way to split the difference. When I want to get my partner jewelry, I'll asker her stuff like gold or silver, clear or colored gems, and hoop or stud. Things like that. She knows she's probably getting some kind of earring, but it'll at least be in the general zone of her wants and/or taste while still preserving some surprise.

It also giver her an opportunity to just say no.

Spoiler

Like it or not, we've been going in this direction since Manus.

Despite the size of the DLC map, it's pretty barren at times, especially in the early game where a lot of people still are. This means that there's not much to talk about besides the bosses, and the first two major bosses you run into crank up some of Elden Ring's most prominent design choices up to 11. The barren nature of the early map combined with the sacurdtree fragments also means that "go explore and come back later" is less of an option than it was in the base game because there's a pretty hard cap on how strong you can be.

I will say, there's a lot in Shadow of the Erdtree that makes me think that Miyazaki is paying attention to the modding scene, and I'm not a fan.

Jiaoqiu would replace Pela, as he'll serve the AoE debuff role. If you already have SW built, then you should be able the slot her in to the Acheron team. The only thing you may need to change is her planars if she's using Penacony, but even then it's not a huge deal. All that matters is having a high enough EHR to reliably land her bugs and high speed.

Unless you have her built crit, in which case yeah change that. Crit SW doesn't "work" until E2.