Still thinking about Elden Ring. I probably will be thinking about it for a long time–maybe for the rest of my life. Yesterday, I took care of two field bosses, one that gave me so much trouble when I tried to fight it earlier. Again, spoilers for end game content. This was the Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast that is just out in the middle of nowhere after you use a sprit spring in Mt. Gelmir. You can rush past it, of course, but it’s a bit tricky because it’s in a crater . There is one way out from the situation (rushing to the right and galloping over a beam, then jumping). Before, I was barely making it to the second half of the fight. This time, if I could make it past it killing me in the very beginning (because I’d summon my Mimic Tear and then it would gore me before I could heal), I was making it to the end of the fight with ease. It only took two real attempts to kill it and to get a really badass weapon in return. What was the difference? Swarm of Flies and Pest Threads, and more health. That’s it. Pest Threads wrecked it. I could have had it much earlier, but I just didn’t think to go back to Gowry to get it.
I was just talking with Ian as to the joys of finding cheese for a particularly difficult boss as an accessibility option. I will admit that I was not above Googling the cheese options, as evidenced that I used the Radagon cheese to do the first half of that fight. But, my proudest moment was fighting Malenia and figuring out the cheese on my own–spamming Swarm of Flies (before it got nerfed) and keeping my distance until she died. That’s basically what I did for Beast Clergyman/Maliketh, too–and I figured that out on my own.
Do I feel guilt about cheesing the bosses? No. Would I before my medical trauma? Probably. I used to buy into the toxic mindset that if I didn’t beat the boss solo and in a true fashion (which includes spells), then I was not doing it the right way. So in that case, how I beat Beast Clergyman/Maliketh and Malenia would not have bothered me, but how I cheesed Radagon would have. And I flat-out summoned for some of the boss fights, including Placidusax. I just couldn’t be bothered at the time. I did look up cheese, but there wasn’t any that was actual cheese. Funnily, just now, I found one that involves poison arrows, but I did not find it at the time.
Look. My whole goal in playing Elden Ring was to enjoy the journey. I’m just grateful that I was able to experience another FromSoft game. I didn’t see any reason to put meaningless limitations on myself. In the RKG group, there was a thread about whether or not spirit summons was cheating. Or made the game too easy (in context of whether Rory should be allowed to use them when they do the Elden Ring playthrough). I think gatekeeping of any kind is nonsense, but this is especially so since FromSoft specifically added it to this game! Like, it’s totally new. It’s clear they expected people to use them! And it’s also clear that they’ve tuned many of the boss fights to include spirit summons.
Ian just beat Rennala and we were talking about her. She was particularly hard for me in the early game because she’s in an abyss so it’s difficult to gauge how far away she is. With my spatial issues, that made for a VERY frustrating boss fight. In addition, she can summon spirits of her own–except hers are HUGE and hit ten times as hard as mine do. She can summon a dragon, an assassin, and a wolf (if I remember correctly). One time, she summoned them one after the other so I had all three attacking me at the same time. My paltry little wolf summons seemed pitiable in comparison.