Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Podcast with Ratatoskr [Khan’s Kast] 

The Stone Sheath Sword can be picked up from either of three altars: - Fog Rift Catacombs - Ruins of Unte - Rauh Ruins If its picked up from any of the altars, it disappears from the other two altars and the other two altars become altars of Light and Dark respectively. You can go to any altar and keep switching between Light & Darkness (there is no set number of times you can do). So its best to grab the initial sword from the Catacombs and have the other two ruins for switching for ease of access.

Often my reward of exploration are the beautifus vistas the game has - and i also look in every corner in every playthrough.

Always dig your collab with Ratatoskr can't wait for this one as the DLC as been absolute fire for me.

This happened to me 8min RIGHT AFTER THE LAUNCH TRAILER was put on youtube. I saw the notification and wanted to watch it. So i searched on youtube, and THE VERY TOP RESULT WAS the last boss on the thumbnail and his full fight and the Last cutscene. That ruined a lot of thing for me.

Dark Souls 2 - March 2014 Bloodborne - March 2015 Dark Souls 3 - March 2016

That is actually a very good comment ratatoskr brought up. Tbh, i kinda felt a bit like that on Radahn. I ended up switching from dex, or maybe i was quality i dunno to strength just so those windows for hits were actually doing decent amounts of damage. I didn't summon and didn't want to use something that to me would've taken the enjoyment out of it like AOW spam, bleed stacking, being a wall with a greatshield etc. Now that doesn't mean anyone that does is playing it wrong or something along those lines that people like to say. This is just the way i enjoy playing these games I do feel like maybe the VFX could be toned down on some bosses, but again, if it doesnt its whatever, unless it's actually a detriment to performance.

Day 1 spoilers is exactly why the industry needs to stop giving early access to rich streamers

I too, found the exploration to be incredibly fun and rewarding.

I cant believe how much I enjoyed this podcast, The discourse between you two is pure gold, the open mindedness and how much I resonate with everything you've said, Props to both of you and I hope for much more like this to come, you deserve all the success that awaits your future

2:02:00 THANK YOU RURI! As someone that loves challenging games were skill is equally or more important than stats, I find Sekiro and Elden Ring's enemies and bosses satisfying to pure melee. I've consistently fougt solo every boss because I can consistently counter any boss by learning the movesets, and everything has been reasonable to me. Heck, I like Radahn, even if I agree they should lower the light intensity. It's fine if you don't like this level of challenge, but the reality is that some players don't find it as difficult nor unreasonable. A game doesn't have to cather to me if it's too hard or easy, it's on the developers to do what they see fit.

Finally caught up and just gotta say I always love your talks with Rata! Thanks for this Ruri, keep being awesome!

My hope is that the next souls like from FromSoft is not open world. I'm tired of running around on Torrent. I'm ready for more of the tight level design of the older titles.

One thing to consider about Smithing Stones is that a lot of enemies also drop them. So finding a Smithing Stone [4] x3 on the ground is kind of crappy. Admittedly, it's still way better than a random flower, but I get why people were crapping on them. As far as Scadutree Fragements, they really need to drop from bosses so you aren't forced to ride around the whole map on every character. They needed to be like Golden Seeds as in that there needed to be extras. It takes 30 Seeds to fully upgrade you Flasks. There are 41 of them in the game. Scadutree Fragments require 50 to fully upgrade. There are 50 of them in the game. It's an obvious (imo) oversight. Adding a Fragment or two to bosses would even it out perfectly. The upside is it would bring back the freedom Rata was talking about. You wouldn't have to search every corner of every map, but if you did, you'd still get a power bump early which will help. Edit: That quote Rata read from the other video is exactly where I think I am on Radahn and Fromsoft's trends. I love the dance. Only I'm not allowed to dance anymore. I have to use Ashes of War and summons, ideally just bypassing the mechanics of the fight entirely. I can do it, sure, but I don't find it fun. I want to dance, to give and take, not watch a Shonen anime for 15-20 seconds and then get a single light attack in and do it all over again.

I thought the exploration was amazing and the verticality was awesome how it bends and weaves over itself. But I do wish there was at least one cave in every area, for example the cerulean coast and the finger ruins. Such incredible areas and it looks like there would be some insane lore to find there and there was practically nothing. Still awesome areas but when I do the quest do be able to blow the finger horn thing I was totally expecting some boss to spawn or something insane would happen lol Regardless the dlc was incredible and I think shadow keep is one of my favorite areas in the whole game but I just wish there was a tiny bit more in certain areas.

The Spoiler issue is 100% a new FromSoftware fan thing. These people dont care about finding or trying things organically and will, day one, search up "All weapon and armor showcase, top 10 broken DLC weapons, all boss cutscenes" they just simply dont care.

I do think that they have just about reached the height of what the base Souls formula can provide in terms of difficultly without the games becoming actually broken. I hope that all their future titles will start to add in more unique mechanics. Like they did in Sekiro, Bloodbourne, and Armored Core.

My take is that Radahn is the perfect choice for a consort when gods can sometimes crash into your planet; you'd want someone who could halt and call stars.

I'm really glad Ratatoskr was on this episode to bring up a counterpoint to the difficulty argument. I feel like people who get frustrated by the difficulty of Elden Ring often get misrepresented as old farts who can't get over the fact that new tools have been put into the game to overcome its challenges. In reality I think the enjoyable part about the fights in these games is engaging with the bosses moveset and "dancing" with them. A lot of the time people focus on the "if it's too hard just use spirit summons" argument but that does nothing for the people who are into these games for the back and forth of a fight. Spirit ashes break the flow and immersion of the dance with the boss so they simply stop having fun when using spirit ashes. This has nothing to do with the validity of the tactic, just the intrinsic motivation for people playing the game in the first place. The game's design is increasingly moving in a direction that limits the amount players are doing a "back and forth." I think it's reasonable to be upset that one of your favorite game series of all time is now different in an irrevocable way. I've been increasingly frustrated with this type of criticism being stawmanned into "these players are trying to play a game in a way that no longer exists. Fucking gatekeeping losers can't keep up with the times" and I'm really glad to hear some pushback in the community against that from someone.

You DONT have to 100% explore and get all 50. Level 12-13 is plenty. 13 to 20 is barely a boost with how the blessings scale. 13 to 20 is like a 6% boost. 0 to 1 and 1 to 2 are 8% boosts alone.

I feel like Ratatoskr's idea of mimic Radahn would have been a better way to handle tha callback. Or at least have it be either more imperfect in some way that makes it more distinct than "The Radahn you did fight, but stronger"

Rise up Ironbreakers ganng, get ready for another great collaboration!

The grab attack in P2 of the fight with Consort Radahn makes me think it could also be a completely one-way “promise” and Radahn could or could not have known about it, agreed to it or not, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. When grabbed the first time Miquella promises us “a thousand year voyage guided by compassion”. Obviously we don’t want anything to do with it, but we are marked by him anyway. When grabbed again Miquella fulfills that promise regardless of our desires, stealing our heart and keeping his deal that we never agreed to.

I feel like the thing with Rellana is that her dungeon is comparatively so much easier than her that it's shocking. Belurat had some parts that were hard if you weren't prepared/didn't just run past, but Castle Ensis really didn't have many spots that were notably hard so fighting against Rellana ends up being a shock of cold water to most people. I think it's reasonable to assume that you're not even going to fight a remembrance boss with how that dungeon is structured.

it is weird that there were no extra scadutree fragments since the base game had extra seeds and stuff for flasks.

I'm glad someone talks about the amount of scadu fragments in the dlc. i think there's a lot of empty space they could just add 15 extra to make them less annoying in new playthroughs

My favoritr part of the dlc was wandering around and seeing stuff in the distance, just going everywhere but where I was supposed to 😂. It reminded me of ds1 and breath of the wild a bit honestly in the regard.

As for Radhan, I think killing him to bring on an eclipse to ressurect and horrid zombie version of Godwyn would've been crazy. Like Miquella just couldn't let him go as his consort and plan for a new godly rule

I really wanted more on Godwyn. I think the stealing of and desire for Mogh's body needed a little more clarification

Also for the record Spirit Ashes on Radahn are almost completely useless. Anything other than Mimic Tear dies in roughly 30 seconds. That's not an exaggeration btw. I tried one of the Fire Knight summons from the DLC. +10 with a 9 Ash Blessings. She died in the time it took me to cast 2 spells and drink a mana flask. People have reported Tiche just getting one shotted in a single combo. Added to that is that his aggro swaps instantly and he freakin teleports. So Phase 2, Mimic Tear has aggro, you go to cast a spell. Radahn does his triple teleport into slam attack. Only he changes targets on the 3rd teleport or the final one and hits you for 1300 damage because you were drinking a potion or casting a spell. Same with Ansbach if he lives that long. It feels like Ashes aren't actually intended for that fight. Most of them can't live even a single minute and they do no damage. Mimic Tear brings your defenses in and a giant mountain of health so it can live a little bit, but unless it's helping you stack bleeds or something, it quickly becomes a liability because of no-warning aggro swap issues. Maybe it's a scaling issue with non-Mimic Tears, but I think only MT and maybe Tiche is worth it. MT because it wont die instantly and you can hope Tiche lives long enough to delete a lot of health with her blackflame attacks. I don't know that anything else would matter at all. Their health/defenses are just too low to stand up to what he's putting out if they draw his attention at all.

35:30 I've recently become a proponent of what I call the "Over my dead body" theory. Basically stating that in response to the memory of Miquella we see Radahn said "Over my dead body," and meant it literally as in if you want me to bend the knee to you you must defeat me in combat (also theorizing that Miqy couldnt charm Radahn). Would explain why Malenia fought him & her whisper to him, as well as why he needed to put Radahn's soul in to Mohg's body (he couldnt charm Radahn & clearly could Mohg).

I can’t imagine that From Software would ever make a coop only souls game. A large part of their fan base only plays these games solo and probably wouldn’t enjoy trying to do that in a game designed for coop. I really can’t see them wanting to disappoint half their fan base in that way.

Honestly fully agree with Ruri's take on difficulty. Please let souls players have their' one game series, if people are SL1 level running it, it's not too hard, its just too hard for YOU. That's when you summon someone to help you, not say that the thing is bad. Obviously if there's hitbox issues that's it's own issue that needs to be fixed. But a good, beatable challenge in the way that souls does it is a special thing that should not be fucked with, ISHIN is one of the greatest fights ever and honestly was much harder than radahn as there were no summons or build options.

I can't represent every persons opinion, but at least for me. The "empty world" complaint I share isn't a case of "the other open-world game does it better", its more of "this is problem with open-world games". I, at the very least, am not comparing open world games, I'm comparing other adventure/rpgs and previous FromSoftware games.

Love hearing Remnant 2 mentioned. Those games are so slept on.

Frejya is like of they made Nepheli Loux actually interesting, even if she is quite annoying in the Specimen Storeroom when she won't shut up even after you've spoken to her.

I think something that gets ignored in the difficulty discussion is how varried attempts can be. Most bosses have some easier and harder to deal with combo strings, but because of how much damage any of these strings can do and how fast they come out, it will also take much longer to learn them. But, since bosses have some level of randomness to them, fights all too often end before complete mastery is acheived because you are more likely to get and win a lucky attempt with more familiar attacks before you can reach full mastery of the harder ones. In my own experience, both times I've beaten Messmer, he did a minimal amount of snake attacks in phase 2. When I beat Radahn, he got staggered out of his meteor crash and generally stuck to his phase 1 attacks, not doing any of the gravity ones. When I beat Malenia, she only did her waterfowl dance once. Rata mentions that his first Messmer win he basically killed him as soon as the second phase started. This sort of win to me does not feel satisfying. It feels like a dice roll wether I will win on the next attempt or not and so it feels less like a test of skill. I still found Sekiro and even Lies Of P harder than Elden Ring but I can come back to any of the bosses in that game and have no trouble. For Elden Ring and especially SOTE, I cannot say the same.

I absolutely love Rurikhan but after listening to many of his podcasts I’ve come to realize he’s the person that says, “guess what?” And actually waits for u to guess 😅 great podcast and so glad u have Rata back on here 👏

Just some input on smithscript weapons after the nerf. I found a winner for me. Beat the final boss for the first time with this build as well. Fire Smithscript Cirque with Blind Spot. Fat B strength scaling for this infusion is relatively rare and has great dmg. Definitely underrated IMHO. Lvl 150 - 54 strength, 14 Dex, 25 Faith (for Golden Vow and other weapon requirements), 60 Vigor, 18 Mind (mainly for buffs etc.), 11 Int. Full Rakshasa armor set. Which is “essentially” free dmg. It does NOT give reduced resistances like scorpion charms. Talismans were Dragoncrest Greatshield, Shard of Alexander, Smithing Talisman and Rotten Wing Sword Insignia. Fire dmg tear and Crimson Bubbletear in flask. Boiled Crab and Well-Pickled Turtle Neck for consumables. All stack with Golden Vow and I’m a big fan of how it feels.

1:58:00 I think the Radahn fight is too hard. I play as a Spell Sword character. I basically have a staff in my left hand and sword on my right hand. I don’t like blocking. I like learning how to dodge everything. I’ve beaten every Fromsoft hard boss including Radahn. But I could not beat him my way. I had to repec into Bleed Sorcery. Which might get nerfed later. He gives so little openings to throw out any spell. I have zero hyper armor on any of my spells. I would like to see a pure caster build beat Radahn because how are you supposed to beat him.

The NPC gank fight drove me insane. I decided to not use npcs because i killed anschbach with leda and tollier died somehow, so I fought it alone id kill freyja then as dryleaf dane and moore chased me i slowly dwindled there healths down by running away constantly till there split. took me over 45 per attempts. I hate moore cause he heavy rolls but is the most agressive and fastest running speed for some unknown awful reason.

Let’s gooooo!!!!

Wow insane. Dude used a normal shield in a DLC boss battle. That should tell u something. Dlc bosses funnel players into using meta builds so much that in the event someone strays from a meta build, it’s almost unreal

rurikhan's face when ratatoskr says strength builds are easier is gold

Love the aspect of crucible wings. My strength character is role playing as a valkerie, so that ash with a twinblade is perfect! I do use bloodflame blade with it though to increase damage

2:00:10 Ruri, you just described Consort Radahn

49:50 Problem with that theory is that Godwynn was still alive when the theory was made, so Radahn had to have been the first choice 1:02:30 In Norse Myth, Thor's weapon was supposed to be two handed but Loki sabotaged its forging

I think one of the things that helps point to the shadow realm being separated later on in the time line is that rellana is part of messmers invasion force. If it wasnt after caria and the golden order were at war then i dont see how how a carian royal and her soldiers would be allowed there. And why the messmer soldiers outside and inside the castle wouldnt be attacking the carians if they were enemies. Also i think radahn was always miquella's chosen primarily because when you enter the arena he initially says "my loyal blade, and champion of the festival. Forever your deeds will be praised in song" To me implies that both his loyal blade (malenia) and the champion of the festival (the tarnished) helped him to see his goal through by killing radahn so he could resurrect him. Malenia rotted him and we finished him off. I also feel like that kind of implies radahn didnt really want to be his consort.

I agree with Ratatoskr on the subject of "difficulty" in souls games being related to the "dance" between the player and the boss, for many people. A lot of people claim that souls bosses are not "hard" because there are so many ways you can cheese them and avoid mechanics, but people who value these games for the challenge they present are not interested in fighting the boss that way-- bosses have specific mechanics and move sets that are intended to be possible to directly engage with and overcome through practice, and doing so can be quite difficult but very rewarding; that is primarily what most of the aforementioned players are interested in. My goal when fighting a boss is to get to the point where I can confidently dodge and attack the boss with proper timing roughly 80% of the time or more (for their trickiest combos/abilities), and if I beat a boss before getting to that point, it is usually because my character was at least a little overpowered and I wasn't forced to fully learn the fight, which is not very satisfying to me. I don't have anything against players who want to beat the bosses by any means necessary, but that isn't what I typically play these kind of games to do. To me, it's not even a matter of being "good" at the game; it's about the willingness to be persistent and to embrace the process of learning each new fight-- that is what I appreciate so much about a good soulslike game.

The seamless coop mod has me believing they can make the coop way better

Part of the reason areas like the coast felt so empty to me was that not only was there not really a lot of items in that location but there where no NPCs, no real structures, and 90% of the enemies where just spirit worms, shadow people and birds. There was one little patch of skeletons and one little patch of demi humans and that was the only real variety to the whole area. Compare that to Limgrave or Liurnia for example and the variety of things there and the amount of structures and unique little camps or encounters all over. You spend 5 minutes in the coast and you've seen everything it has to offer basically. Same goes for the finger areas. There where lots of lamprey aliens and that was it. No fragments, no unique items or interesting encounters protecting something. The dlc had no Night encounters. Enemies weren't effected by the night like demi humans. The rest of the locations where much better but even then, they all just had the same enemies as all the other areas for the most part. 90% of all areas enemies are just Shadow people & birds.

Hope they talk about npc. All of them in the dlc are fire and are honestly very fluid and easy to complete blind.

Achieving the dance is max hard level. At that point, managing your own frustration and patience is part of the game. Gotta level that up just like you would strength to use your desired greatsword or something. I’ve raged at times myself, enough to question game design just like everyone else but I’m getting so much better in that regard since I realized rage management is part of the game. I still have things I would like for them to stop doing, such as multiple boss boss fights, but whatever

I totally get Ratatoskr's annoyance with a person coming into the chat at the start of the DLC and saying there was no new lore on a particular character. That's one of the most annoying kinds of spoilers imo and it often seems like people don't consider that kind of thing to be a spoiler. They think that just because they only mention things that weren't included, that they didn't spoil anything, but telling me that something I am hoping to possibly see isn't gonna be there just makes me disappointed from the start and detracts from any anticipation I might feel about it going forward, which is part of the enjoyment of experiencing lore/story regardless of what it actually ends up being.

I believe Rhadan is just a vesel for Godwyn's spirit, because Miquella calls him "lord brother", and also says during the second phase "At long last you have returned", I dont think he would refer to Rhadan like that, also if you do one of the NPC's quest lines, cant remember his name, guy that knows allot, and find a sealed scroll, he does talk about using him as a vesel.

I want fromsoft to make a dank, dark blade runner/cyberpunk atmosphere game. Rainy, dirty, techno priests, and Eldritch horrors of the future.

I'll be honest, Annihilation has nothing on the final boss's lightshow. Annihilation is a lot of red but you can learn to ignore most of it and just look at its sword. The final boss's lightshow is always on screen and it destroys my framerate.

Hello- I never went out of my way to find shadow tree fragments and beat the dlc at 165lvl. I never felt compelled to seek more fragments to make things easier. Those on the beaten path seemed more than enough. It seemed evident which bosses were gatekeepers of progress, mainly Rellana, Hippo, Messmer and Radahn. Everything around this was just amazing adventuring!

I had a pretty crazy experience fighting the fume knight from dark souls 2 dlc first time i fought him. I took down most of the bubbles around the arena, and i found him around 6 at night. Played until 11 or so that night and failed to kill him. I go at it the next day. Play from noon to 6 at night, and my gf bless her heart has been watching me fail over and over, and she turns on "eye of the tiger" to cheer me up. And for some reason, his swings almost perfectly matched the music (or it felt that way), and i beat him that try... it was glorious and exhausting.

The Chair even haunts Rata here! That's so hilarious

One thing about the shadow tree fragments that I don’t think many people know (and for good reason there’s no way you could unless you checked) but once youve reached scadutree level 12, you have between 85-90% of the total buff the scadutree fragments give, from levels 1-12 you gain substantial buffs each level, but starting at level 13 and up you gain less than half a percent attack and defense, based on that I feel like fromsoft expected people to miss some of them but what they didn’t convey is that you don’t HAVE to have all of them, the difference between say level 12 and level 18 is less than a 5% difference in attack rating and defenses

1:07:45 @Rurikhan you can duplicate remembrances even after you use em. My only issue with ash summons is they make the fight very very very trivial. I really don't believe that the bosses are balanced/designed with summons in mind, let me explain. Let's say if you don't summon the difficulty is like 10, but if you summon it sits between 1-3, so yeah I don't believe it is balanced, and ashen summons are OP. But I'm not saying this to invalidate people's wins. A win is still a win.

For anyone that wants more clarification on the final boss, I highly recommend Paspaya's video on Mogh Matters. It shows you plenty of discoveries and foreshadowing of Promised Consort and Miquella being disrespectful. Ash Lake also has a great video on Radahn being a slave rather than a willing consort.

I think a big problem with the open world exploration is the lack of enemy variety, and especially the lack of NEW enemies. You meet almost all the new basic open world enemies in the first region - shadow people, Gravebirds, Hornsent Inquisitors, Messmer soldiers and Bloodfiends - and then they're just repeated throughout the whole map. Part of the reason I adored base game Elden Ring's exploration is the constant barrage of new enemies and new bosses. There aren't actually any new bosses out in the field in the DLC iirc (the dragons have some changes to them, but they're still dragons). I don't think the DLC could've ever lived up to the first playthrough of the base game for me, because the game and its formula are too familiar to me now, but I also don't think its rose tinted glasses to say the open world just isn't as good. The cool exploration moments are finding new regions and seeing how the map connects, but exploring those regions isn't as fun as I hoped. Its not just down to enemy variety, I have other complaints, but I think thats the biggest one. I wish they'd cut some of the remembrance bosses (though they're awesome) and put that work into creating new enemies instead.

Messmer voice actor is really good in the trailer too I thought

Not sure if you guys discussed it but I wanted write this before I forgot 😂 The way Miquella "asks" Radahn to be his consort is extremely similar to the prayer that is referenced in the Golden Epitaph sword description, even down to how he refers to his brother. I've been kicking around the idea of Radahn being a second choice for a few days and it's good to hear I'm not the only one (first time I hear it mentioned on the Internet).

Ruri, love you guys. Sometimes even a bit to cheesy lol but one of the reasons ill forever be a die hard fan, is that this is a SPOILER cast. And you guys STILL respect us enough to not name every little thing an use work around words as to not spoil certain things. Its just awesome

The only bosses that truly pissed me off trying a no shield, no spirit summons, no scadutree fragments run were that Tongue Knight (mostly the arena and the endless agro of the soldiers around him) and Shadow Keep Golden Hippo. With the latter it was instadeath if I was eaten or if he did the second phase jump, so I summoned Freya and Hornsent and just spammed Ancient Lightning Strike with every buff possible. Gaius was also tough with the broken hitboxes but Torrent and ranged options made it manageable and not nearly as rage-inducing as Golden Hippo. I died more to the other major bosses, but I felt a sense of growth that I could actually do it, unlike Golden Hippo where I couldn't stay behind him and do/avoid enough damage. Radahn I had to just swallow my pride and upgrade myself because I couldn't get anywhere in his second phase after hours.

Not only should there be more scadutree fragments, we should be able to trade any extras for decent consumables like bewitching branches. Same with the golden seeds and tear upgrades.

I love this podcast, you guys are both awesome, thank you for putting this together. I resonate so much with that comment you read out close to the end of the cast regarding difficulty, it beautifully puts in to words something that can be hard to get across. Personally i loved the DLC, i did find a lot of the bosses really challenging. the main thing i really wished they added though was a way to respawn the bosses, without having to go through the playthrough again. I so often try to search for that sweet spot in boss fights between too hard and cheese, that beautiful sweet spot where things feel reasonably fair and it can (hopefully) play out a bit like a dance. But that can be hard to find and sometimes after a bunch of losses i get frustrated and sometimes I just blow the boss away with something that leaves me feeling unsatisfied afterwards. Sometimes after a bunch of losses i just need to know that i CAN win. After that i want to go back in and effectively play with the settings a bit by adjusting my gear/talismans/ash of war etc. Especially while i am still in the head space of that bosses moveset etc. It's not something i see people talk about so i wonder if anyone else feels the same way. Thanks again for the amazing content :)

i think we can always ignore litty bitty criticisms. the conclusion is so far i love the dlc

The empty spaces and big area with noting in it they can remove it , the loot places are bad

I’m under the impression that Miquella tried to revive Godwyn for two reasons. First and most boringly he simply cared about his brother’s death. He’s all about compassion right so not outside his ball park. But what I think is a more convincing theory is that Godwyn was the initial vessel for Radahns soul when he perished and Mohg’s corpse was his back up. I don’t know though, 2 years later I still don’t know what the eclipse means or the duskborn ending implications but these were my first impressions on Miq’s intentions with Godwyn.

Would’ve been cool if the mausoleum bosses gave scad frags.

49:01 we were telling you all for a long time that Rune of Death was removed while establishing Golden Order, so when Radagon got together with Marika. I think it was then that Marika was supposed to be supplanted by her daughter Melina as a God, but she fought her off, killed her and removed Rune of Death for her rule to never end.

I’m disappointed you guys didn’t mention a single time Abyssal Woods and Midra. Epic creepy moment.

I hope that Miyazaki takes the message that the community sent with the review bomb and takes it to heart and uses it to inform his future game design decisions. But by that I don’t mean that he should never make a game harder than the ER DLC. He should absolutely do that if that’s what he wants to do. But at least he knows that if he does that he will be exceeding a skill gap that many of his players aren’t comfortable with contending with and that will, of course have certain consequences.

It's now canon that metyr is pronounced as mater, the truck from Cars

Dude, i was in the exact same boat as Rata's friend. I loved demon of hatred since i just finished a ds3 playthrough and glock saint isshin hard walled me for the longest time.

Elden Ring: Shadow of Ratatoskr's Chair .... if you know you know 😅

The chair incident!

I personally found myself getting burnt out exploring for scadutree fragments. I explored a lot and eventually got to level 17, but when I was exploring I did so with the fear in the back of my mind of missing a fragment. It made me comb through areas a lot more thoroughly than I preferred to and was more stress-inducing than I think was intended.

Speaking of fragments, somehow I was missing just 1 when I got to the final boss to be at lvl 20, and it was in the spoopy forest, cant blame me for that xD

The DLC would be a lot better if there was at least 10 more Skibidi tree fragments scattered around, so you could get lv10 without going that far out of the way.

I was fine with the smithing stones, but I think adding more consumables as drops would have been fun. Maybe more rune arcs, starlight fragments, or other similar things. And possibly create new consumables and make them more available, such as the golden vow item.

Messmer's voice better in the game than in the trailer? Not a chance

Honestly part of the problem with the final boss spoilers is that it’s reached outside of the elden ring player base. I’ve seen so many people who don’t play the game/don’t like the game shit on the dlc under the impression that it’s a straight up boss reuse and go out of their way to spoil it

the only problem with Radahn it's flashy alot..my eyes hurts

The problem with the scadutree fragment system is that you never truly knew if you were intended to fight any boss you came across. You didn’t know if you were underleveled or if that was indeed the intended difficulty. And it just added an extra layer of complications to a boss that was already going to be nightmarish to solve.

The only area I felt truly empty and like I wasted my time was the abyssal woods. Because aside from the main path, exploring around tended to just end with nothing and obviously since there was no torrent that exploring took longer.

1:55:50 - with respect to this observation by the commenter, they (From) has already made those games. They're already made mostly choreographed boss fights around the constraints of the game in terms of what stats, what weapons, what items, and what assistance the player might have. Then in Sekiro (which I do not consider a souls game) they narrowed the scope of combat forcing you into a specific play style with a specific mechanic in mind. They went from that extreme to the extreme of Elden Ring which provides the player the most amount of freedom to craft a build since Dark Souls 2, but gives more tools than ever provided before. And it seems like overall that this has been their most popular gameplay model in terms of sales. I fall into the a camp that definitely prefers the boss battles of Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne to the ones in Elden Ring and the DLC from a straight up action/combat perspective, but from an RPG perspective I prefer Elden Ring's freedom for me to solve the problems more so with tactics and strategies rather than outright skill. Though the game still allows you to play with outright skill, it just doesn't demand you perfect dodge everything, it doesn't demand you block, block, dodge, counter, repeat, it's way more open in the way you approach things meaning players can have wildly different experiences based upon what play style they favor and while that will leave some disappointed that freedom to me sets Elden Ring apart from everything else they've done in the best way possible. While I love Bloodborne's combat and adore trick weapons, I prefer the various combinations of weapons and items along with the overall flexibility of Elden Ring way more. I'm glad they went in this direction, I much rather the player base be the ones to determine how much they want to dig into the tool bag to solve a problem. You get to have a challenge-run game and you get easy modes all at the same time. There seems to be a notion that player experience has to have some sort of parity but that seem counter to what From has built with these games. That Elden Ring was so successful hopefully means they don't regress, but instead build in new mechanics to allow each segment of player to manage the fights in a way that is fun to them. I love Dark Souls 3 but there's too many segments of the game that aren't fun for me. The Chalices of Bloodborne are aggressively unfun to me. Backtracking in DS1 gets heavily romanticized but can more often than not be extremely unfun. The progress of Elden Ring seems to be mitigating some those slogs and lulls in the game by having an abundance of diversity. I'm not a fan of the sentiment that something was lost going in this direction. They did their own formula to death and then some. I only hope that they take the next game even further.

1:53:55 You can 100% dodge it all and certainly enough to kill him. I run Dual Great Spears and I just was dodging most of the things. Yeah, I had a lot of health and a lot of defence, but I was able to dodge enough to kill him.

They need to add some more support sorceries, all the buffs and healing are faith incantations. I'd love something that buffs my frost or something using sorcery instead for magic or moonlight builds.

Staggering enemies with strength really makes it easier for sure

Damn, PK was 2nd best after Midra for me. He's just so different with really chill and nice music, like a nice slow dance.

Você já leu "Intermitências da Morte", Rurikhan? Elden Ring me lembra muito esse livro do Saramago, principalmente a temática da morte; e como interrompê-la seria absolutamente catastrófico (como aconteceu quando Marika removeu a runa da morte do anel). Eu sempre entendi a "Lands Between" como uma espécie de purgatório, um "lugar" entre a vida e a morte, e acho que o livro talvez tenha inspirado um pouco GRRM/Miyazaki. Abraços do Brasil (devolve nosso ouro) 😁

53:03 is the reason I left the like on this video xD F**king hilarious and true at the same time xD

I really have to watch some other people play ER one day because I've watched a bit of Ratas stream and his "roomba" style just looks like regular ole gamepay to me I cant image how someone plays otherwise.. Do they just rush from "main" area to area? Guess I'll find out haha

12:30 The reason the other games have a pass is because the games literally has less. Less space, less filler. In the others games, you would be hardpressed to go hours only grabbing crafting materiels. While in Elden Ring, its common.

40:00 ish, you can swap between them whenever, no need to go through ng+ just to get another, the upgrade level stays as well, so no need to worry about that either

Need more of yall together