Continuing on discussing the end game of Elden Ring. There will be SPOILERS all over the place. Yesterday, I made it up to the Fire Giant, who is the gatekeeper to the end game. So much so that you should make sure that you have all your bits and pieces in order before proceeding past him. Seriously. Everything will change at this point, and you will not be able to go back to certain things.
Ok. I’ll just say it. Once you go past this point, then the capital city will fall to ashes. You will be cut off from certain areas. To be more specific, Leyndell Royal Capital turns into Leyndell, Ashen Capital. Also, if you have chosen to do the Three Fingers before this point, Melina will not assist you at the Forge of the Giants. You can still go forward, but you will have lost her.
At least that’s what I remember and got out of it. Anyway, I will own again that a lot of this is the fact that I inhaled the game as quickly as possible. Not only because it was so fucking good, but because that’s my personality. If I get into something, then I GET INTO SOMETHING. I becmoe obsessed and can’t let it go. I was playing it four to five hours a day in the beginning because I could not get enough.
And maybe I had too high of expectations going into the end game as well. I’m trying to remember when I did the last optional area. Probably after the Fire Giant. Or at the same time (jumping back and forth).
I had heard about Malenia, of course. But what I hadn’t heard about was how terrible the lead up to her was. I am going to be brutally honest about this. The area is hot trash. I’m doing it currently in NG+ and summoned two humans for her. Here’s the weird thing, and I don’t know if this is just on PC, but once we got to the end of her first phase, one person peaced out, and then the other did.
I’ve had this happen to me so many times for the end bosses in NG. I have no idea why. I think it might be the first summon leaves to be a jerk and then the second leaves becasue it’s too hard with the added boss health and defenses with one summon down. But I had it happen so many times. So many fucking times. I just let her kill me because there was no way I was going to beat her on my own, not when she was so buffed up. Well, not at all, but especially not then.
The second two summons and I took care of business. She got me in one of her combos (because I got arrogant, I’ll be honest), and I had a pixel of health left. First time I’d had the benefit of the invisible pixel! I was shouting some really nasty things as I backed up, and we dismissed her posthaste.
I got 750,000 Runes for defeating her. Then my internet cut out and went back to the menu. I held my breath, and the flower (which had just appeared as my internet cut out) was still there. It was such a relief, and i quickly sat down at the Site of Grace to make sure it stayed that way.
I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy, honestly. Even with two summons. It was NG+, so I was expecting a bit more of a fight. Especially with how hyped she’d been. Here’s the thing. Basically, my method in NG was to step backwards and constantly spam Swarm of Flies. I used my Mimic Tear, and we got it done in about a dozen real tries.
That was basically the same thing I did this time around. I added some Wolf’s Assault for funsies, but it was mostly Swarm of Flies. That both broke her poise easily and took big chunks of health off her. It really is a boss killer. My summons used magicks, too, but also whaled on her with weapons. My reason for using Swarm of Flies is that I could keep a safe distance from her and not worry about her regening her health (which she does from every hit on you).
I think at some point, I’ll try to fight her solo again (with a spirit summon), but I was happy to do it with two human summons this time.
A weird thing about me. There are certain things in the game I could not make myself do. One was with Millicent, one of my favorite NPCs in the game. Her questline is very elaborate and intricate, and it’s easy to miss her. At the very end of her questline, there is a point where you can help her kill her four sisters or invade her and help her four sisters kill her. I did the former in my first playthrough, and I had planned to do the latter in this one.
Except. When it came down to it, I just couldn’t do it. She’s one of my favorite NPCs, and there was no way I could kill her. What you get for doing it wasn’t really useful to me, and it was not needed for the plat. So I helped Millicent again using a different cheese this time. The first time, I used Shabriri’s Woe (a talisman that draws aggro) and Hoarfrost Stomp after not succeeding a dozen times or so. I was trying to do the jump on the pillar in the middle of the scarlet rot swamp cheese, but i could not get up there for the life of me. Turns out I was trying to jump from the wrong place.
This time, I watched a video (I did last time, too, but still fucked it up, apparently) and then was able to hop up on the island. I really thought about helping the sisters, but I just could not do that to Millicent. I put on Shabriri’s Woe and then spelled her sisters with Night Comet, I believe. The Night sorceries are stealth sorceries and not seen by the enemies. They are fantastic.
After killing her sisters, Millicent decides that she does not want to be a Scarlet Rot goddess after all. She takes out the needle (long story) and then dies. It’s an intense questline and I really hope that there’s more about her in the DLC.
I would have been happier if the whole area had been dumped and Malenia was just put somewhere in one of the other areas. Maybe in the Lake of Rot. Miquella’s Haligtree is the worst area in the game. I’m going to flat-out say it. I’m done for now, so I will continue this tomorrow.