Elden Ring

[Wrathbone]

Once you’ve been to the giant’s forge, I’d say you could blitz through the main quest in about 10 hours, or maybe 15 with more exploration.

For the DLC you need to have defeated Radahn (which you will have done) and Mohg Lord of Blood (which I think is optional in the main game). It’s Mohg’s arena where you start the DLC. I don’t think you’ll be able to do the DLC after defeating the final boss of the main game though, so bear that in mind. I can’t remember if it retains a final save or anything.

Also worth noting that there are several optional areas which aren’t exactly secret but aren’t necessarily obvious, and they’re absolutely worth doing if you haven’t found some yet. Hard to say where / what they are without spoiling anything though.

[Raid]

I don’t think you’ll be able to do the DLC after defeating the final boss of the main game though, so bear that in mind. I can’t remember if it retains a final save or anything.

Wha? I don't know what happens at the end of the game admittedly, but I've never heard of a DLC that starts from a late part of the game, but that can't be started if you've finished it. They surely can't expect people to play 50+ hours again just to start it if they've beaten the original release.

[Wrathbone]

A bit of googling suggests that as long as you don’t start NG+ after the final boss, you should be okay. I’m just acutely aware of how obtuse some FromSoft DLC has been to access, such as Bloodborne where you have to go to a random railing in some corner of the city where an arm descends from the sky to scoop you up, or Dark Souls where you have to go through several obscure steps throughout the game and then head to a secluded area at the back of a lake. How did anyone find that without help?!

[Raid]

This is one of the things that fed into my dislike of the game back when it launched - it's *so* obtuse at times, and I suppose in retrospect, DLC being difficult to access shouldn't be a surprise. I actually remember watching the Ellen's Souls Academy series for one of the games where Luke mentioned the DLC access from the path behind the lake, and thinking at the time how daft that was. I feel like these things need to be played with a wiki. It was just sheer bloody luck that I noticed the button prompt to climb into a coffin in the underground for example, because I don't remember it looking like anything more than just another piece of scenery. I'd have looked at the wiki eventually, but Fromsoft take an almost sarcastic approach to level design sometimes - in what world is locking yourself inside a stone coffin which then somehow floats over a waterfall (without any visible means of propulsion) a valid method of progression?

[Mantis]

That's one of the things I love about these games. If certain significant features are hidden away like that it makes you wonder what other more optional hidden content there is to discover. It rewards you slowly going through each area and checking corners for hidden walls and buttons and encourages additional playthroughs to try out different paths for all the branching quests.

The world's actually feel dark and mysterious too. None of the rubbish you get with cliche Ubisoft open world titles.

[DjchunKfunK]

I think the obtuse stuff works in a more linear level design that the Souls games had. When you transfer that to an openworld I agree it becomes much more a pain and is one of the reasons why I had trouble gelling with Elden Ring. When you get stuck with a specific set of weapons because you didn't happen to wander to the right place on the map to pick one up it becomes a chore. I spent around 10-15 hours using a weapon that wasn't upgraded and that I didn't like because I was looking for a specific one for the build/character I was going but kept getting strength based stuff or dex ones that didn't gel with me. In a series that has taught you that upgrade mats are precious resources, you don't want to waste them on a weapon that you don't like using. I ended up looking up where I could find a weapon upgrade material merchant and beelined for them.

[Wrathbone]

That's one of the things I love about these games. If certain significant features are hidden away like that it makes you wonder what other more optional hidden content there is to discover. It rewards you slowly going through each area and checking corners for hidden walls and buttons and encourages additional playthroughs to try out different paths for all the branching quests.

The world's actually feel dark and mysterious too. None of the rubbish you get with cliche Ubisoft open world titles.

Yep, it's something I've appreciated over time. I never knew the Demon Ruins existed on my first run of Dark Souls 3 because the entrance is not telegraphed at all, and when I stumbled across it on a later run I was astounded that there was all this extra content hidden away. It really felt like I'd discovered something secret, and the only way to genuinely achieve that feeling is for the game to legitimately keep it secret.

[Raid]

That's one of the things I love about these games. If certain significant features are hidden away like that it makes you wonder what other more optional hidden content there is to discover. It rewards you slowly going through each area and checking corners for hidden walls and buttons and encourages additional playthroughs to try out different paths for all the branching quests.

The world's actually feel dark and mysterious too. None of the rubbish you get with cliche Ubisoft open world titles.

I agree on the dark and mysterious factor. These worlds are genuinely very creative and exciting, and they always feel dangerous when you're introduced to them, as there's no telegraphing of how difficult a new enemy is (no health numbers, no levels, no suggested level for a particular area etc.) until you actually engage one.

The reason I call them obtuse is that a lot of the ways you reach them are unrealistic and extremely easy to miss in a lot of cases. The stone coffins in the underground I've already mentioned are entirely counter-intuitive and the item looks like every other bit of crumbling stonework. Then you've got hidden areas where you have to run along angled rooftops which are steep enough to not look traversable at all. They're janky, for want of a better word - they're like the secretly traversable geometry that a speed runner would use to skip a section that the programmers just forgot to close off.

I don't dislike this as such, if anything they make you feel good for spotting something that others might miss, but I feel you have to be introduced to some of these design choices outside of your own experience as they're just not intuitive. I've watched multiple playthroughs of Dark Souls 1 and 3, and one of Bloodborne from Eurogamer and Outside Xtra, and that's where I picked up a lot of these quirks. Maybe this is something that's more obvious when you're using the online mode and there are notes and ghosts left from other players, but as I'm technically running a modded version of the game and have to run in offline mode (the only way you can get it to display in anything but standard widescreen which I'm still annoyed about), that's not available to me.

[Mantis]

I think a lot of the elements you're identifying as obtuse are just things that you kind of learn to spot intuitively the more you play these games. Having played through Demon and Dark Souls multiple times before even the second Dark Souls came out, I think experience of knowing what weird little quirks and clues to look for helped me immensely in dealing with some of the harder to find areas in the later games.

I played 100% of the content in Elden Ring on my first playthrough barring a couple of small side quests that I accidentally cut short and I didn't use a guide for any of it because it all felt relatively natural to find, including some of those very odd platforming sections across rooftops in places like Stormveil castle. As someone who has always tried to break game geometry since they first transitioned to 3D, having access to the jump button on Elden Ring was a licence to absolutely explore every nook and cranny of every edge in the game for me. It's an absolute delight when you are rewarded for that level of exploration. It brought back the child in me like when I used to grenade jump out of the maps on Halo 1 and 2 when I co-oped it with Bird.

Not being able to play in online mode is definitely going to be a big factor in you not gelling with some of the hidden content. Some of the messages are invaluable in certain areas and the social element of the community leaving each other little tips is another aspect of the franchise that I really love. It's a shame you can't get it to work due to having to use widescreen mods.

[Raid]

Aaaaaand rest.*



I'm in two minds about the game. Yes, it's an amazing, creative, generous game that I've been playing almost solidly for 6 weeks, but the first half of the game is better than the second, and the latter stages felt like a real slog. I was tearing my hair out with frustration fighting Maliketh, who I'd been one hit away from defeating on my first attempt and then never got even close to again for about four hours worth of trying. This was the end of probably my least favourite dungeon of the game (if I have to fight one more of those sodding eagles in the DLC I will burn Fromsoft to the ground); hell, I'd spent over an hour just trying to kill the Tree Sentinel directly outside of the boss room. And just after I'd done the Twin Crucible Knights.... and shortly after the Twin Gargoyles. All of that stuff in fairly quick succession absolutely broke my resolve and by the end I just wanted it to be over. I just dropped the controller on the desk after finally killing the Elden Beast (a boss fight I'd maybe have enjoyed were it not for needing to kill bloody Radagon every single time before I could attempt it) and didn't really feel much of a sense of accomplishment. But I never wanted to actually stop, and I'm not sure if it was sheer bloody-minded stubbornness or actual desire to finish it. I still don't want to stop; I'm now toying with a new build and will be making the trip to fight Malenia.

Build-wise, I spent the first half of the game using a Uchigatana and shield, then a few hours of the Bloodhound Fang to change things up a bit, then to the Nagakiba, then finally to Eleonora's Poleblade from about the third-way point to the end of the game. I did make judicious use of the Mimic Tear summon, which I suspect did dull my skills a little bit, but two Blood Loss poleblades (each doing around 120-160 bleed build-up in a single two-handed strike) is ridiculously powerful in places. I actually ended up purposefully not using the summon to fight Godfrey because it felt like I was cheesing too much of the game.

*I didn't actually rest, I immediately went and murdered Mohg, Lord of Blood to give me DLC access. First to last attempt in about 20 minutes, which was refreshing.

I suspect I'm going to dive straight into the DLC when it arrives. I missed experiencing the vast majority of this as a collective when it released due to giving up in Stormveil Castle, I'd quite like to see the DLC when everyone's having the same experience.

[Mantis]

I've just started a new character so that I can try the DLC with someone who isn't insanely over levelled. Going to quite the trip replaying this for the first time I imagine.

[Wrathbone]

I’ve also been prepping a DLC character. I’ve been playing a faith build, which has been decent right up until the late game where it now feels somewhat outclassed, so I may switch back to something more familiar like a quality build with dual katanas. Moonveil is such a fun sword to play with.

[Raid]

I'm certainly not going to level a new character for it at this stage, but regardless the DLC has some form of difficulty scaling (that you can apparently opt out of, but this was hinted at making the content more difficult rather than easier) that may make it unnecessary.

As said above I've respecced into a faith dex build, and am trying to get my head around spell use in this.

[Wrathbone]

I've tried spellcasting in From games (including about half of Elden Ring) and I've decided it's not for me. I find it much more fun to be up close in visceral terror, rolling about all over the place. Admittedly my reluctance to use spells is not ideal for a faith build, in which I've mainly relied on a great big faith-scaling scythe that does bleed damage.

[Raid]

I primarily want to be melee for the same reason, but there are certain enemies that are dreadful to fight that way (feckin' bords) that I'd like to have an answer for - just having one or two AoE abilities would be nice.