This DLC is massive. That’s the Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC for Elden Ring. I think I’m around 40 hours into it with maybe 70% of it finished (probably closer to 65%(. Again, I’m slow, but I refuse to believe the people who said that they did everything in 20 hours. They did not. It’s simply not possible. They might have rushed their way through the game, blazing the mains story and being amazing at the boss fights. In this way, they might have been able to reach the last boss and beat them in that amount of time. Maybe? If they really hustled, perhaps. I will say that once I reached a certain point in the story, I veered wildly of the main storyline and did everything but instead. I’ve been doing that for the past three days, in fact. Maybe four.
Huh. I’ve fought dozens of bosses, and I think only two of them were nonoptional.
This is your standard *SPOILER WARNING*
I guess another way to say that is that two of them were mandatory. The Divine Beast Lion Dancer and the Golden Hippopotamus. I really liked the first boss and nearly got them on the first try (thank you 60 Vigor!). Plus, I got to summon Redmane Freyja, who is by far my new favorite NPC.
Rellana Twin Moon Knight is optional, I think? But most people are going to fight her. You can summon Needle Knight Leda for this fight, which I did. I don’t like her for reasons, but it was nice to have the extra help.
Here’s the thing. I suddenly hit the wall with the main storyline. I just did not want to do it–not because I was not interested in it, but because it was kicking my ass. Not the bosses so much, but the areas. One thing I really don’t like about the DLCs is how tuned up the scrub enemies are. It’s always been a thing in the FromSoft DLCs, and I just did not want to deal with it.
This brings up an issue I mentioned in yesterday’s post. The leevling system in the DLC. I recently found out there are 50 Scadutree Fragments to get you 20 Scadutree Blessings and 25 Revered Spirit Ashes to give you 10 levels for your spirit ashes and Torrent. FromSoft said that they urged players to explore to get the fragments and ashes. As I said, that’s well and good, but when I followed a guide yesterday to find them, I quickly gave up the guide for two reasons. One, it was a drag, reminding me of the plat grind in previous games and two, I got caught up in two sites of grace I was missing that the video I was watching had.
I spent several hours trying to find those sites of grace. They were in an area I had already explored thoroughly–or so I thought. I spent an hour trying to get there in several outlandish ways–and could not do it. I finally looked it up, and it was just that I didn’t go one of the million ways I could go. I feel like I’ve written this before, and it’s because this keeps happening to me. It happened to me again today!
A slug in the Discord showed off a video of him killing a base game boss who is a notorious pain in the ass (and quite the asshole) with his new build in less than thirty second. He did it with ease, and I noticed that his weaponry was very interesting beccause he kept throwing lighting sparks at the boss.
I asked him what the weapon was andwhere ho got them (if he could tell me without spoiling me), and he told me where they were. I did not have the first plcae because I assumed it could only be accessed after the Shadow Keep (which is where I stopped in the main storyline). I was informed that I most definitely could access it before the Shadow Keep. Well! I knew what I had to do, then. Find this new area. I got a general hint, and I made my way there. I found out that I had already gotten to the midway point another way, but, again, I hadn’t gone in the direction I needed to go for this item.
The reason why is because there’s a platforming section that I skipped. I assumed it was only to get the item on the middle pillar. Nope. You have to jump across all the pillars (yay so bad platforming much fun) until you get to the other side. Then, you just keep riding and platforming. Then, you get to the Cerulean Coast. Which is gorgeous, by the way. Simply stunning. But the whole DLC is, per yooz.
I missed the weapon, though ( Ichecked with the slug in the Discord) so I went back and found it. There was more further south, and I kept going. I found the other ruins I needed for a prominent questline–so I did that as well.
Oh, I did not even mention Commander Gaius and what happened with him. If you remember, I ran into him the last time I was trying to find my way to a different area. It was quite the surprise to walk out a door and to see him charging at me on his war boar. Even with 60 Vigor, he tore me apart in three hits or so. Depending on the attack, obviously.
One reason I have been staying away from the main storyline bosses is because they’re assholes. I mean, that’s true in general, but as with all the FromSoft DLCs, they are ridiclously hard. Usually, if a boss is big, they hit like a truck, but they’re slow. They may have a five-move combo, but it’s spaced pretty evenly. On the other hand, if they’re smaller, they’re nimble, but don’t hit quite as hard. And they get stunned more easily. You can break their poise with a few solid hits and then punish them.
With Commander Gaius, he is big, but he’s also fast. He has a five-hit combo that is quick, and his boar attacks you as well. He is weak to bleed, but I could not hit him enough times in a row and fast enough to proc the bleed.
I was really mad at this boss. As I said, I looked up ways to do it without cheesing (in part because I could not get the cheese to work reliably), and what I found out by watching videos was that it seemed better to fight him on foot. That went against everything I believed in because Torrent was my buddy! I depended on him for so much, but he was simply not fast enough to keep up with the boar.
So. I summoned him so I could get around the corner to summon the Mimic Tear and then I got off him to actually fight the boss. Believe me when I say that facing down the commander as he came galloping towards me on the back of his boar whilst I was on foot was more than daunting.
I quickly discovered, though, that rolling towards him as he attacked (and slightly to the side) made it so almost all his movess missed me. Strafing to the side worked for his gravity magic bullshit orbs (in the air) and when he did the big meteor stuff, I just ran away. Or used Torrent to get away.
Because I stayed relatively close to him, so did my Mimic Tear. I had them using the incantations most of the time, which meant we were both Rotten Breathing him. And Bloodborning him. Er, Bloodboon. An incantation you get from the Remembrance of Mohg.
I got him in four or five tries, and it was relatively easy–at least compared to my disastrous first half-dozen attempts. The biggest differences were that I didn’t use Torrent and I used a few blood incantations–plus a weapon that did bleed (and added a frost Ash of War to it). I don’t think I actually used the weapon on him, but it was nice to have. I also used a few incantations to buff my attacks and defenses.
I was trembling when I beat the boss, and it reminded me of how good it felt to beat a hard boss. Also, it showed in microcosm the five stages of beating a FromSoft boss.
Stage 1: “This is impossible. I’ll never beat this boss.”
Stage 2: Utter rage and disbelief.
Stage 3: Try, try, try again.
Stage 4: Doing well enough to think you have a chance.
Stage 5: Change things up, tweak, and adjust.
These stages don’t necessarily happen in sequence or only one time each. For me, it’s often hours to beat the boss. In this case, going from ‘I can’t beat this boss’ to ‘This is completely doable’ as soon as I didn’t use Torrent.
I have found so many areas that I should have found before, but I forgot I hadn’t gone in that direction. I love having the map, but it’s a bit misleading because once you get the fragment for the area, the whole segment of the map is filled out. Yes, the specifics won’t be identified until you go there, but it’s hard to know when a space doesn’t have anything written on it because there’s nothing there or because you haven’t found it.
I’m also feeling some kind of way about the fact that I hit a major story beat too early. That’s actually probably part of the reason I’m dragging my feet on the next part of the storyline. Plus, I know there are a ton of difficult bosses awaiting me on the critical path. That’s another reason I’m avoiding that so strenuously.