In the last post, I was talking about
*SPOILER WARNING*
going into Shadow Keep. Then I went into dueling/dualing summon signs (red/gold) and completely lost my way. Hey, there’s a lot in this game. I will talk about whatever is on my mind. I have had a stroke. I am neurospicy (in non-diagnosed ways). My memory is shot because of said stroke. Even before my medical crisis, though, my mind skipped all over the place, and it’s even worse now.
Anyway. Hornsent or Needle Knight Leda? That was the inital question I was pondering in the last post.
Side note: Here’s one issue I have with FromSoft games, especially this one. Every choice is a bad one. Or rather, a complicated, stressful one. There are no good choices in a FromSoft game–only less bad ones. So I will sit there for several minutes and just ponder which choice to make. The bigger problem with this game is that it’s so damn huge. Not problem, per se, but an issue. I play the FromSoft games several times each. We’re talking dozens of time each. I have started Elden Ring about seven or eight times, but I have only finished it four times.I need to finish it two more times to get all six endings. There are four ‘normal’ endings (one vanilla ending, Fia’s ending, Dung Eater’s ending, and Goldmask’s ending), and two special ones (Ranni’s and Frenzied Flame)–so six in total.
Most of the time, I’ll just choose the ending I like better (or dislike yes). In this case, though, I really hesitated. Not beacuse I didn’t have a clear-cut choice (Hornsent), but because I didn’t know if I would play the DLC again–or when. I do have my strength character ready to go, but I don’t know how close I am to the end. Also, I really don’t like Needle Knight Leda, so I don’t want to help her. Even though Hornsent invades me further down the line. I can’t really be mad at him, but I’m still mad at him. Even though I defeated him.
In the main game, I never chose Millicent’s sisters over her until–wait. I’m not sure I ever have. I just checked. I have not. I have fought that fight three times (that I can remember) and chose her every time. It’s way late in the game so I am not there with the rest of my characters. And, as I said in the last post, it’s a very elaborate and twisting questline that makes it difficult to get to the end. I had to Google it to make sure I got there eventually.
Side note to the side note: This is when I usually give up and start Googling during a From game. In Dark Souls III, there came a moment when I had to make a choice. Or rather, in that case, there was a new mechanism in the game that I needed to try. “New thing, who dis?” was my attitude. If it was new, then I had to try it, right?
Side note to that side note: There is an NPC, Yuria of Londor. I won’t get into how I met her, but I immediately fell in love with her when I did. She was into the dark magicks, and I would go to the end of the earth for her.
When I did the new thing in the game–which is healing the Dark Sigil, it turned out to be a bad decision. For me, anyway. Doing it means giving a ton of runes–er, souls, to the Fire Keeper to get rid of the Dark Sigil. The problem is that if you do that, then Yuria will be furious with you because her whole thing is you becoming the Dark Lord. You do that by getting Dark Sigils. Of course, this is not explicitly explained to you, so you go around blundering hither and yon, not really knowing what the Dark Sigil does.
This was the first time I had played a FromSoft game in real time, by the way. With the first two Dark Souls, I played much later so I was able to look things up with ease. This was also when I realized that I had to be really careful when I look things up, but that it could also be really useful. I was devastated when Yuria left. So much so, I was thinking of restarting. This was roughly a fifth of the way through the game (maybe a fourth), so it wasn’t super-early. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do the dark magicks, but I couldd. Yuria not being there did not affect that aspect of the game at all.
It did teach me to look that shit up, though, if I really wanted to do the best thing for an NPC. The problem with that, obviously, is that I may see things I don’t necessarily want to see. I was looking something up (about a boss in a dungeon) in the DLC of this game, and I think I might have gotten a massive spoiler in doing so. It’s a boss that I expected to be in the DLC, but I wasn’t expecting where said boss was.
I was unhappy with that, but at the same time, I was resigned. If I was going to look things up, then I had to accept that I may see more than I wish to know. I’m made my peace with it, mostly, but I really wish I hadn’t seen that.
Where was I? Oh yeah. I chose Hornsent because I really don’t like zealots, especially bigoted zealots. It gets my back up, and I was more than ready to aid Hornsent in his quest. Therefore, I was surprised (though shouldn’t have been) when he invaded me later down the road. He wasn’t so bad himself, but he was in an area filed with Scarlet Rot (one of the two nastiest status effects in the game) and Lesser Kindred of Rot, the really fucking annoying shrimp men who shoot out silken threads that home and piecre through your shield/armor. The ones in the DLC do massive damage with their upgraded Pest Threads (an incantation I used frequently in the base game). It’s called Pest-Thread Spears, and I found it in the area. It’s markedly better than the base version, but not that great with mini-bosses and bosses. At least not yet.
I really did not like that area. There was one of the Furnace Golems, but I could not find–ok. Another quick backstory. There are spiritsprings in the game which allow you to woosh straight up in the air and land somewhere completely different. You can also jump down in them and land safely at the base. In the DLC, you have to find an adjacent spring (that doesn’t actually take you anywhere) and hit the core of it to shatter a seal before you can use the actual spiritspring. Most of them are not hard to find, but this one was impossible. I went around and around and could not find it. I had to Google to get to it, and that allowed me to use the spritspring. Once I was above the Furnace Golem, I had to bow him to get him to come over to me. Then I had to find the right spot to hurl a heavy pot in his head. Then I had to run away as he did his fire dance, otherwise he would have killed me.
Oh, and I had to farm Furnace Visages beforehand because you need them to make the Hefty Furnace Pots. Which are the pots that kill the Furnace Golems with the open tops much quicker than using just Hefty Fire Pots. What I didn’t realize is that they use the same pots and since I always craft Hefty Fire Pots first, I made four of them, which meant I had one pot left for the Hefty Funance Pots.
I just feel it’s too fiddly to kill these assholes. Find a way to get above them. Lure them over to yor spot. Let them do on fire spew as you race away. Make sure to get back to them before they lumber back to their original spot. Toss in a pot or two before running away as they do the hula (how you know they’re about to spew). Rinse, lather, repeat until it’s dead. I don’t find the rewards to be that useful (though, to be fair, I have yet to try one), but I like getting them out of the way.
That’s all for today.