Elden Ring

[Monocle]

Nope! I've found two sorcery stores already and one had some expensive shit so I went to get runes and then forgot where the store was. 

[Mr EliteL]

I haven't done enough to start thinking about my build, I mainly focusing on Vitality to get my HP up to a decent level, and putting some into Int so I can have some magic attacks handy. I suppose I'm going for a all-round build but I'll see later. I've only played on Wed and Thurs last week and nothing else yet. I might even restart again because I missed some things early on before as I just went exploring.

[Dragon Lord]

I'm going against advice and got for Dex/Int build because I'm a masochist and I deserve to hurt so good. I randomly sprinkle in a little End so I can carry heavier shit

Yes, as a brand new Souls player, it's a terrible idea to try to do a split stat build on your first playthrough. You should pick between either doing a melee build or magic. If you pick melee, you then decide if you're going to do STR, DEX or quality (even amount of STR and DEX), and then focus on that stat + Vitality + Endurance. Then once you've done your first play through, you can do more play throughs where you can do split builds, since you'll have the experience of knowing what you're doing. 

Dex/Int builds can be extremely powerful, but not if you don't have the experience to know what you're doing with them. An inexperienced player is just going to end up with a mess of stats that don't benefit you at all and just cause you to have lower Health and Stamina than you otherwise could have. 

As for myself, as usual I'm doing my first playthrough of a new Souls game with a DEX build. Thinking about switching to doing a Quality build though and using the Claymore instead, as I haven't really found many DEX weapons yet. Mostly STR and Quality weapons. Right now my main stats are DEX and END, with very minimal investment in VIT right now, as I tend to always stay at really low HP during my playthroughs of Fromsoft games.

[Monocle]

I'm going against advice and got for Dex/Int build because I'm a masochist and I deserve to hurt so good. I randomly sprinkle in a little End so I can carry heavier shit

Yes, as a brand new Souls player, it's a terrible idea to try to do a split stat build on your first playthrough. You should pick between either doing a melee build or magic. If you pick melee, you then decide if you're going to do STR, DEX or quality (even amount of STR and DEX), and then focus on that stat + Vitality + Endurance. Then once you've done your first play through, you can do more play throughs where you can do split builds, since you'll have the experience of knowing what you're doing. 

Dex/Int builds can be extremely powerful, but not if you don't have the experience to know what you're doing with them. An inexperienced player is just going to end up with a mess of stats that don't benefit you at all and just cause you to have lower Health and Stamina than you otherwise could have. 

Yeah but honestly, I'm enjoying how fucking hard it is. I think the difference between this and older souls is that I have waaaaaay more freedom. They're are definitely bosses I ain't ready for and I can just go another direction and improve myself before trying again. Kinda feel like older souls are more tunneled? like yeah you can grind and improve but still feels more like

[Dragon Lord]

Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 2 are extremely open and allow you to do things in many different orders. For example, in Dark Souls 1, you can choose to fight the Four Kings, one of the Lord Soul bosses, before ever going to Anor Londo, when normally you wouldn't even think about touching them until after the Anor Londo part of the game.

You can also dive down into the Catacombs right away. Very, very difficult for an inexperienced player, but a player who knows what they are doing can go down there and get some nice goodies super early (Great Scythe weapon, Rite of Kindling, Silver Serpent ring for more souls from defeated enemies/bosses). Dark Souls 2 also has two different starting paths that can lead you to various places, or the same place if you want. The only Souls games that is pretty much linear through the whole game is Dark Souls 3.

[Moonface]

Yes, as a brand new Souls player, it's a terrible idea to try to do a split stat build on your first playthrough.

Wait, this is @Monocle's first FromSoft game too like @Mr EliteL?

[Dragon Lord]

Yes. I tried to get him to play Dark Souls Remastered when I visited him back in 2018, even giving him my copy of the game in hopes that he'd continue to try it after I left, but he never did. Not sure if he was too afraid of the difficulty of the game or what, but it actually surprised me quite a bit when he picked up Elden Ring because of his refusal to play Dark Souls Remastered.

[Moonface]

Yes. I tried to get him to play Dark Souls Remastered when I visited him back in 2018, even giving him my copy of the game in hopes that he'd continue to try it after I left, but he never did. Not sure if he was too afraid of the difficulty of the game or what, but it actually surprised me quite a bit when he picked up Elden Ring because of his refusal to play Dark Souls Remastered.

Huh, I don't know why but I thought he'd played FromSoft stuff before. XD
I guess I'll ask this of both @Monocle and @Mr EliteL (plus anyone else who this can apply to), what about Elden Ring got you guys to pick this up as your first FromSoft game?

[Monocle]

Yes. I tried to get him to play Dark Souls Remastered when I visited him back in 2018, even giving him my copy of the game in hopes that he'd continue to try it after I left, but he never did. Not sure if he was too afraid of the difficulty of the game or what, but it actually surprised me quite a bit when he picked up Elden Ring because of his refusal to play Dark Souls Remastered.

Honestly, I think I could actually go back and play Dark Souls after this experience. I did try it after you left a few times and it just wasn't working out for me at all. Struggled so badly. 

Huh, I don't know why but I thought he'd played FromSoft stuff before. XD
I guess I'll ask this of both @Monocle and @Mr EliteL (plus anyone else who this can apply to), what about Elden Ring got you guys to pick this up as your first FromSoft game?

open world easily. I love open world games in general but also being able to choose, I don't want to fight him now. I'm going somewhere else. it is so appealing

[Moonface]

So someone has already slapped down a speedrun that comes in at less than three hours:

[Mr EliteL]

I guess I'll ask this of both @Monocle and @Mr EliteL (plus anyone else who this can apply to), what about Elden Ring got you guys to pick this up as your first FromSoft game?

For missing out on Dark Souls, I thought out about trying them out or at least one and Elden Ring became the one I wanted to start in, also after playing Code Vein too that I might be OK with a From Software game, and Elden Ring has proved to be challenging and that it's open world too. I'm kinda into open world, some of the games I've played recently have been. (Genshin, Dragon's Dogma, Xenoblade Chronicles sorta well the areas are big enough anyway, Code Vein had a long continuous area but still too confined and less open) I don't want too much of the genre or more From Software games anyway. It does annoy me I can't easily get into a fight unless they're weak enemies, I hit and run or cheese (haven't done much cheesing yet). I've beaten some more minor bosses now and can hold my own a bit better now in my progress.

[Moonface]

I find it interesting both of you (@Mr EliteL and @Monocle) both mentioned the open world as a big draw to this game over other FromSoft games. I wonder how many other new players picked the game up due to the open world approach over the typical linear one of the Souls games.

Also, the speedrun for this game has now gone to below 30 minutes: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-...33-minutes
I would watch it to see what they're doing (whether it's just simply bum rushing to the end boss or glitching their way to it) but I don't want to get spoiled too much on story bosses and especially anything to do with the ending. Does anyone here know if you can just go to the final boss/ending right away like in Breath of the Wild or are you supposed to meet certain criteria and defeat other bosses before you can reach the ending?

[ShiraNoMai]

Nah you definitely need to meet certain story criteria/quest lines to access the ending. I've seen the endings a few times now, very cool shit

[Moonface]

Never noticed Eurogamer had this embedded in their article. I'm not super versed on the bosses of the game but judging by the title of Godfrey and the use of the term "wrongwarp" (whatever that means in this game specifically) there's clearly skipping involved.

I did check Speedruns.com to see what the time was for no skipping but it seems they've not made any categories yet for anyone to submit runs at all.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah the game is fairly new so a moderation team and all that is still being debated over. "Wrong Warp" essentially means getting the game to load you into an unintended area upon an event like death or cutscene activation because it thinks you've checkpointed to the next event where it warps you to. That's pretty solid though, it was also a gold split meaning they did it better than any other time they've done it. That's very cool, though, and I'm really impressed with the speedrunning community for managing to figure this out so quickly.