Ok. Here’s yesterday’s post. Let’s get to the end of the game. Except, I can’t because I forgot that there was another section that is in the second half of the game that….
Look. Ok. I have to explain that there is a whole underground section. This is easily the wow moment of the game. You take this unassuming lift downwards…and you just keep going. There are two of these and they eventually connect. It’s an amazing area, and then you get to the real true underground by beating a big boss in a particularly spectacular fashion.
And it keeps going. There are other offshoots of this that are not connected, but also underground. The underground is nearly as large as the above-ground, which I’m fine with. I don’t need it to be as big, but I will say. I was just watching a video about the however many more secrets in Elden Ring you may not know, which I have included below. I was watching and nodding along because I knew the things he mentioned until he hit the one about reaching part of the underground (Deeproot Depths) in a completely different way–through another area of the underground. This blew my mind because I have pput in hundreds of hours, at least five-hundred, I think, and I never knew this. As always, *SPOILERS* will be ahead.
When you reach Leyndell Royal Capital, you have the opportunity to go underground to the Subtarrean Slumming-Grounds. Which, I will say, I did not love because it’s littered with the imps who do an incredible amount of damage at any level. They are the absolute worst. And you have to walk on pipes (from which you can fall off of) while fighting them. Plus, there are fell omens who are really strong as well. And oversized slugs. And lobsters. And, and, and. Again, no new enemies. Plus, they are just tossed in there willy-nilly. My guess is that it is supposed to indicate that all the shunned were tossed down there, but it feels very haphazard.
And, I will be honest with you. I do not like the constant difficulty of these areas that make me grim and unhappy. This is why I use Hidden Body/Slumbering Dargoncrest Ring, er…what is it called in this game? Unseen Form/Crepus’s Vial. I used it freely to get around when I did not want to be battered by things that could one-shot me. Which was nearly everything in the second half of the game. It makes it much more bearable for me to be able to interact at my discretion, and that makes it a much more enjoyable experience for me.
By the way, this is my biggest gripe about gatekeepers. Well, second-biggest. The biggest is that they’re being dicks and actively making it harder for people to enjoy the thing they profess to love. (But only in the right way! You must enjoy it exactly as I do! Name the five hardest bosses you soloed!) The second-biggest is that, well, I actually wrapped it into the first thing–how if you dare to use anything that makes the game easier, then you’re not a real gamer. You’re soft. I don’t care. I will cheerfully admit that I’m terrible at these games and that I will do anything to get by–cheese included.
I maintain that if it’s in the game, then it’s meant to be used. I feel no guilt about it–including the glitches. If they don’t want you to do it, they can take it out. For example. In the first game, there is a boss who is in a postage-stamp sized arena with two rabid dogs. The dogs will most likely kill you before you can even blink. If they don’t, the Capra Demon will one-two you with its two meat cleavers.
There is a cheese I have never used, but apparently, you can stand outside the arena and use the bow’s scope to aim so you’re facing inside the arena–above the fog gate–and then you can chuck firebombs into the arena and kill the Capra Demon that way. By this point, FromSoft has to be aware you can do this. And yet, they have not taken it out. I was prepared to do it on my onebro run, but I didn’t have to because I got lucky in killing the dogs on my way in. If you can do that, the Capra Demon himself is not that hard for a caster. There’s a ledge that you can go on and spell him from. He will go up there as you spell him, but if you hug the wall, he won’t get you when he falls. Or of he does, it’ll mitigate the damage.
Back to Elden Ring‘s underground. I’m considering Leyndell Royal Capital to be the midpoint of the game. So the Subterranean Slumming-Grounds is barely in the second half. You can do it at any point in the second half of the game. Some of the underground is early in the first half, but much of it is skewed towards the middle/end. And it just keps going. The purpose of it is for three of the different endings. Which I just realized was the case as I typed out the last sentence. There are six endings in total, and three of them have to do with the underground. That’s wild. Wait. FOUR of them have to do with the underground. The vanilla ending is the one where you just continue the cycle. the alternate to that (which you have to finish a questline to achieve) is just a rife on the first ending.
The favorite ending is Ranni’s ending, which is becoming her consort and leaving the Lands Between with her. There’s a lot involved with it, but it’s the one that everyone loves the best and it has a very elaborate travail in the underground to achieve it. It is a great questline and a great ending, but it is not my favorite. It will probably surprise no one to know what my favorite ending is, but I’ll get to that later.
I am very impressed that the underground has as many diverse and varied areas as the above-ground. I have marveled about how you can tell different areas in the above-ground by the different colors, and it’s similar underground. Each area is evocative and immediately recognizeable. Overall, it’s quite a feat visually; I just wished some of it wasn’t quite so brutal.