Back at it again! In the last post, I was talking about all the things I’ve missed in the game, even though I feel like I’ve been so diligent. I probably have found more than many people, but I just have a hard time with the verticality. Plus, FromSoft is very good about making the entrance to some of these places not obvious. I have started to do some limited Googling, but I really don’t want to because they always tell me more than I want to know.
I’m including the Friends Per Second (FPS) podcast with guest, Mitchell Saltzman, from IGN talking about Shadow of the Erdtree. I am still listening/watching, and it’s pretty much spoiler-free. There will be a bit at the end of this section where they get into spoilers, but I will skip that. What I’ve listened to so far has been really cool.
On a different note, I have stopped reading the comments in the Elden Ring forum for the most part because there are way too many spoilers. Someone has left the forum for now because he got spoiled on what’s probably the final boss. I try to give enough context when I spoiler tag something, but it’s still hard to be precise about it. I will say if I’m talking about a boss or a weapon on whatever, but it’s still a crapshoot.
Putting these two threads together, if I have a question, I will ask in the forum rather than Google. I can trust the slugs to give me tips only for what I’m asking rather than tips that lead to spoilers. I can ask for vague tips or specific tips, and I had a slug give me screenshots of the areas in which I needed to look for a certain item.
It’s really helpful, and I am grateful for them. They are endlessly patient with me, even when I’m being thick. I have found so many things with their help, which is terrific. I miss being able to chat about the game, though. I know it’ll settle down in a few weeks, but for now, it’s pretty much me not reading the comments at all.
Back to the game. Here is the standard *SPOILER WARNING*. I finally went into Shadow Keep, which is the next place I need to go for the main storyline. I had previously went in the side door because it’s another area–though I don’t think you need to do it. I really hated getting in the side way beacuse you had to go up on the roof and do a platforming bit. We all know how I feel about that. Not great is the answer. The side area felt a lot like Aldia’s Keep from Scholar of the First Sin (the second Dark Souls game).
Why was I procrastinating so hard before going into Shadow Keep proper? There were several reasons. One, I wanted to soak up the atmosphere. I tend to always do the sidequest stuff before advancing the main storyline. Two, I got caught up in Ymir’s questline, which meant looking for ruins he vaguely hinted existed. And when I finally learned that the bit to the south I thought I could not get to until later was actually something I could already access, I went to check it out. It turned out to be a fairly big-sized chunk of map with three or four sub-areas. It’s gorgeous, too, by the way.
Side note: The wickermen, called Furnace Golems, are an interesting idea that I don’t think worked well in practice. They are huge and spew lava as they walk. They can kill everything in front of them with one fiery breath. The ones with a closed top (which is the first one), you just fight it by attacking its ankles repeatedly until you break its poise. Then, you crit it. Avoid the fire (double jumping when it sends out the shockwaves of fire), and keep doing this until it dies.
The ones with the open tops? This is a little more fiddly. You have to lure them over to a place where you can stand so you are above them. Then, you throw hefty cracked pots filled with fire and hefty furnace pots into their open skulls. You have to craft these, naturally, and you can carry four of the former and one of the latter at one time. You need to throw all of them into the skull in order to do enough damage to kill the furnce golem. If you miss (as I have), then you have to hastily craft more pots to throw in its head. Fortunately, it will stand there patiently as you do it, but it’s still nervewracking to have to do.
In addition, there are very limited materials to make the hefty furnace pots, so I got really frustrated when I misthrew one. I have one more wickerman to take care of and I can see another in an area I cannot yet get to. I don’t know if there are more than that. I have killed three of them and have yet to try out the tears.
Back to the DLC in general. One thing I had forgotten because I had gotten to the point in Elden Ring where I did not fear many things is how it feels to be in a completely new area. My latest character (other than my loose playalone character with Aunty Finchy from RKG Retry) was a strength character, and it’s the only other character I have who can step into the DLC right now. I was thinking of doing it again with this character, but I’m not sure I have it in me to do it right again after this playthrough.
It’s so stressful to creep around, tensing up as I round a new corner, wondering what is going to jump out at me. I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to find a new Site of Grace or a shortcut that leads me back to a prior Site of Grace. I think they reverted to less Sites of Grace for the DLC (so more in line with, say the first Dark Souls) than there are in the main game.
In the podcast I included, they were laughing about how Miyazaki lies about the time it takes to play these games. For the base game, a rep from FromSoft said you could get through the main storyline in 30 hours. Apparently, Miyazaki said it was similar to how long it took to play Dark Souls. Neither of these were remotely true. Then, for the DLC, he said it was about the size of Limgrave (the opening area). Skill Up (on FPS) or Mitch (think it was Skill Up) laughed and said that it was give Limgraves stacked up.
They touched on whether or not Shadow of the Erdtree can be considered for GOTY. I think it should be in the conversation, but Ralph (Skill Up) had a good point that it’s more Elden Ring. He wasn’t saying it in a negative way, but he wished they would have tried some new things with it. I get it, but at the same time, it’s a DLC. It’s not as if they branched out into something completely different in any of their DLCs.
I suddenly hit the wall. I’m done for now. More later.