Yes, I know what I’m asking is basically sacrilege in the ‘Soulsborne’ community but I’ve played quite a few Souls games and I am kind of over the whole ‘challenging myself’ thing. Part of the reason I was originally drawn to the Souls franchise was the difficulty but now I just want to play Fashion Souls with a cool-ass character in a cool-ass world doing cool-ass shit. The game has so much lore and such a beautiful world and just so much creativity in general that the difficulty seems like a distraction from enjoying it.
I’ve heard using summons is a good way to alleviate some of the difficulty. Are there any other effective ways?
Simple, just get a mod that slashes all enemy damage done to you by half or even less.
I’ve noticed most of the difficulty in Soulslike games comes from the fact that enemies can do quintillion billion damage in rapid succession at anytime while you’re forced to roll around all the time and can only strike when they let you; and your damage always pales in comparison to the damage they can do to you.
If you’re going to 1-hit, 2-hit or 3-hit a player to death, what’s even the point of keeping a Life Bar? Just keep a Hit Bar instead.
inb4 “git gud”: i beat all 3 souls games without mods so get fucked.
Mods are a suggestion I hadn’t thought about much. Sometimes I do forget thay I’m on a PC.
that’s the joy of playing games on PC - you can modify it to your liking
If you’re going to 1-hit, 2-hit or 3-hit a player to death, what’s even the point of keeping a Life Bar?
Because different equipment and stats can make you tankier
i guess, but then you can’t do fashion souls and the game would feela bit more boring to play because you’re limited on certain equipment to keep you from dying in 1-2 hits.
also the fact that you’d become slower (full havels for example, while making you tanky, also makes you slow af).
I wouldn’t say you’re functionally limited, unless you want to make a min-max build of sorts.
I’ve only played DS3, but I assume the following is the case for the other games too. The stat patterns are what you expect from a game with RPG characteristics. Choose attack speed or attack damage and lightweight armor with little protection or sturdy but heavy armor.
You only become slow if you maximize your equipment load. If you keep it under 66% (iirc) then your roll is the standard one and has i-frames. This means that you can become tankier if you choose a light weapon, like an one-handed sword or a dagger.
If you keep it under 66% (iirc) then your roll is the standard one and has i-frames.
There are 3 kinds of rolls, actually: Fast Roll, Medium Roll and a Fat Roll.
The roll you’re talking about is the “Medium Roll”, which you get by keeping your equip load within 30-70% in both DS2 and 3. In DS1 though, it’s within 25-50%. Yeah. Very strict.
And in DS2, you’ll need to waste your levels/souls on ADP (Adaptibility) to increase your Agility stat so that you have decent enough iFrames because some bastard thought it would be genius to make iFrames a fucking stat and give you shit iFrames regardless of your rolls at the start.
first of all, fuck all the git gud crowd. im team game.should have a easy mode and a hardcore mode to keep this people busy.
as for elden ring, the game itself begs you to be exploited, summons, insane arts and etc…
if you are looking to cheat, use cheatengine and give yourself infinite runes to level up and buy itens from the npcs
Git gud crowd are firmly in the top three worst groups of G*mers, with minmaxers and no-fun brigade (often they are the same people since all three overlaps heavily), fuck them, they actively ruin games. Games are supposed to have difficulty levels.
Yes! I still enjoy a challenge but if a game has many other attractive gameplay elements, I may just want to enjoy everything else
If you’ve played Souls games already, you’ll know that a lot of the difficulty and perceived threat of Souls games is illusory. That hasn’t changed in Elden Ring, and you have more tools than ever before.
You can still run past almost everything except bosses, and with the open world you can just avoid hard bosses until you’re extremely overleveled. You can summon spirits now to help you in most tougher fights for the cost of some energy, you can craft all sorts of pots and items, guard counters make shield turtling better than ever, and as always you can summon players to get past anything if you’re really stuck. There’s respawn points right at the door of a lot of boss rooms now too, so more often than not, if you die you can just try again immediately or with a very short jog compared to previous games. The game isn’t afraid of throwing mean and cheesy shit at you (so many dual bosses and mini bosses), so exploit your full arsenal.
Just go in with an open mind and don’t be too hardheaded about how you approach things and you’ll probably have a good time. It’s likely both the easiest and the most cheesable of the Soulsborne games. Maybe don’t try a hybrid melee/caster build without a guide though if you’re going in blind.
Yeah I think after playing Dark Souls games with the mindset of having to beat bosses and enemies “the right way” I forgot that there’s so many tools to use to cheese. There’s no need to put imaginary constraints on myself
I hate even calling it “cheese” because it’s very intentionally added game mechanics that are perfectly reasonable, but…well if you’ve played Souls you know what that word means in this context I think, lol.
Summons are the way to go. Especially when combined with spells/incantations. You can kill most bosses by just summoning and using Rot Breath and just running away. Some bosses also have weaknesses that you can exploit.
But if all else fails, summoning other players is probably the easiest way.
If you fail at a boss mark it on your map and go explore for some time and come back later and 2 hit them.
What aspects of the game are you finding difficult?
Some general advice:
If you’re still getting your head around dodging attacks, it might be worth using sorcery to give yourself some range in fights while you’re still getting your head around combat mechanics.
There’s a world boss in limgrave called “Tibia Marina” it drops a spirit summon that makes two skeletons. Since the skeletons can revive themselves (as long as they aren’t hit when down) they can be useful to keep bosses distracted.
After you best the first boss in Raya Lucaria academy, there’s an item you can give the sorcerer at the church near the start of Liurna of the Lakes. After he’s left there’ll be a scarab where he was. It drops Thop’s Barrier ash of war. This is a really helpful ash for learning to parry, because it flashes a symbol when during parry frames so you have some visual feedback with your parry timing.
Don’t be afraid to summon other players to help you. :)
Had no clue there was an ash of war to help with parrying. How have I never heard of that?
I don’t find any aspects of the game any more difficult than previous souls-likes that I’ve played. It’s just that I want to be much lazier when I play now.
Thop’s Barrier kinda gets overshadowed by the other parry ashes, Carrian Retaliation makes a glintblade phalanx when parrying spells, and Golden Parry does an aoe parry that makes spacing less important.
Still a really useful ash for learning to parry though (anecdotally, I’ve been playing Dark Souls since the awful PC port of DS1 but only got my head around parrying thanks to Thop’s Barrier).
Make a character that can fight at range and melee competently. This can mean making a swordsman that knows some type of offensive magic or a mage that is not a glass cannon or at least having a bow with arrows. Level VIT (the only thing that actually makes you harder to kill) and use summons/ashes for bosses. A good ash of war to use is the mimic tear or the bow puppets.
Using weapons that have some range is also a good idea, like spears.
Depends on how you like to play. Summons (human or otherwise) can make most boss fights easier, but aren’t common for the levels themselves and may sometimes basically play the game for you.
You can also use magic since IIRC it’s pretty strong in this game, so you just stay back and shoot at most enemies from outside range.
If you can rollback to a previous patch, mimic tear is basically a super strong summon disguised as one of those spirit thingies you can summon. You can look up how to get it early (or hack it into the game).
And if you like mods, there are plenty of easy mode mods like this one:
https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/146
I remember there also being a “slow mode” mod that decreased enemy speed like in Sekiro, but I can’t find it.
Difficulty is part of the fun, but the keyword is part. Don’t feel guilty if you enjoy the other parts more.
Edit: Oh, and and there are some rune farm guides on the steam forums that teach you the most efficient ways to farm depending on your progression. You never get unkillable, but it can make a lot of the game easier.
If youre on PC there’s an easy mod you can install, I think you can change the difficulty to your preferences when installing it
Use summons for bosses. You can look up a tier list to find which ones are good. Don’t forget to level them up!
Level vigor. A lot. Take it to 40 as early as feasible, and then get it to 60 by the end game. It makes the game so much easier.
Don’t carry so much equipment that you slow roll
Generally, roll towards attacks, not away from them.
I feel you man. Elden ring is so much larger than those other games, it gets kinda exhausting in comparison. I got tired of git gud at the fire giant and started looking to mods. Got myself a cheat engine and the ‘seamless co-op’ mod, having a much more chill time now.
If you mod tho you can’t connect to fromsoft servers or you risk being banned so be careful and have fun!
Sorcery and co-op
It’s been nerfed but if you play on an earlier patch, dagger with high crit and “flame of the red mane” weapon art is fairly busted. Most enemies stagger in 1 or 2 casts and the weapon art is spammable. Then you land a free crit for big damage.
Casters are also fairly strong. They get access to some great aoe later in the game which makes dungeon crawls a lot easier. They have access to physical damage too through gravity sorceries too which helps a lot vs the magic resistant enemies. The caster katana also has a great weapon art.
As far as summons, the mimic is by far the strongest. It copies you and has all the same equiped consumable items too so it can throw sleep and freeze pots which can be really busted in some fights. It also has estus which is huge for a summon.
Mimic is good at first, but Tiche is way better by the end
I was a big fan of Redmane Knight Ogha, gravity greatbow fire support and a tanky bastard in melee if you need him to be. Truly, an ash for all seasons.
