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S3 Ep200: Elden Ring - Full Spoilers
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FULL SPOILERS: ELDEN RING
Join Dave and Jake about everything Elden Ring in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Join Dave and Jake about everything Elden Ring in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Intro & Banter
00:00:27
Speaker
Let's get to it. How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Substone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going pretty good. I would say I'm zooming at this point. Hmm. We record with Zincaster, not Zoom, so. Oh. I award you no points. Oh, okay. But cocaine, I assume.
00:00:54
Speaker
Well, no, it's just today was more stuff happened than usual. It was arguably positive stuff. And I also got like a Wegmans hoagie for dinner. So that's good. Got some caffeine going at the moment.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, which I now realize is later than I should be just in caffeine, but I'm going to finish this. I wasn't going to join. I wasn't going to judge you, um, at our, uh, for the post 6 PM caffeine, but it's always a risk for me as we've discussed.
Gaming & Podcasting Background
00:01:27
Speaker
I'll try and counterbalance it with some depressants later by just looking at my life as a whole. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. Still settling into the homeownership. We started back up Cyberpunk, so it's nice to have that back in the life. Nice.
00:01:44
Speaker
taking care of stuff day to day and figuring out, you know, what we need to improve or fix or we should have at least one of those type questions, like toilet paper holder or something like that. Do you guys not take turns for each other or just holding it? Putting the fingers together kind of like Shiley, but also so it can like spin. Like Chinese finger trap type toy in there. That's what you do. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's the advanced strap, but your butt napkins, my Lord. But now it's been good. Um, played, you know, a few games, uh, recently. Yeah, probably not, uh, as many as I otherwise would have if there wasn't as much going on, but still nice when we find the time. Are there any that you want to mention before they get steamrolled? No.
00:02:42
Speaker
Elden Ring week two, baby. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, it's Elden Ring, Elden Ring week two. So that first one, um, which I'm sure everybody's listening to this one, definitely also listen to is the spoiler free one.
00:03:00
Speaker
Um, so if you don't want to be spoiled on the Elden ring, get the fuck out of here. Cause, um, we have, I think at different points in our recording podcasting careers, um, had separate careers. It was a while before we joined up and started this podcast.
Elden Ring Overview & Spoiler Alert
00:03:20
Speaker
This is our goal from a different like history of background of different, uh, topics of expertise in different podcasts.
00:03:27
Speaker
This is basically just like a jam session, but it's gone on for three years. Um, but yeah, we played around with like how to portray spoilers in different ways. In some cases, it was like, say it verbally and part of the podcast. And other times it was like, all right, let's just put it in the description right now. I'm kind of just doing both, but it works.
00:03:53
Speaker
That's enough preamble though. We're talking about all of everything Elden Ring. Yeah, we've both beaten the game at this point. By the time you're hearing this, I've beaten it twice. I'm starting my third playthrough.
00:04:08
Speaker
But there are still things that I'm sure Jake has not encountered or I have not encountered that we might discover along the way. But very much, this is a no holds bar. We just want to talk about the exciting, cool parts of the game, regardless of what you found. If you didn't find everything, that's fine. That's on you. If you want to experience it without finding out through here, do that on your own time.
Exploring Elden Ring's World
00:04:33
Speaker
I would take one pass before actually jumping into the full spoilers. I would take one pass through the game with minimal information and then come back second pass, just be like, I'll open the wiki. I'll do whatever I want.
00:04:50
Speaker
Honestly, any of the Souls games, I feel like, it's a pretty good policy. It's fun to go through an NPC's quest line and finding out things on your own. Like, oh, they're over here now. OK, that makes sense. But there's some other things.
00:05:05
Speaker
I didn't encounter the NPC Dialis for quite some time. And now I'm looking at this thing. I'm like, what the fuck is his deal? And now I've already learned something about Dialis in my third playthrough. I'm like, OK, he's the brother of Juno, that guy I killed. But I didn't realize that he has an overlapping quest with Jarban, who is an NPC I literally never met until yesterday. Uh-huh.
00:05:32
Speaker
Is he the jar that like becomes a warrior or is it somebody else? That's Alexander. He's the one who helps fight you or helps you fight against General Radon. Jar Baron is just like a little, little pot dude who lives down in Jar Berg. Uh-huh. So you know, like on the Eastern side of Lyurnia, there's, you know, the inverted tower.
00:05:54
Speaker
Hmm, I don't know. Did you do Ronnie's quest line? I did but not the ending Because I couldn't I guess or I didn't get the ending I did everything up to the ending But per quest line has like a bunch of optional parts and I didn't do all of those Okay, huh? So, you know the eastern side of Lirina there's like a tower Where you fight like a mage who's like shooting at you from like a mile away with like a giant great bow It's bullshit
00:06:23
Speaker
Vaguely, that sounds kind of familiar, but I'm not sure. Well, basically there's that area right next to it. There's some platforms you can jump down. And that's where Jarberg is. Is that a location or a person? That is a location. Oh, okay. It's a little village of pots and jars.
00:06:45
Speaker
That's kind of cute. It really is. They also have like a lot of flowers you can collect and they're very chill. It's really funny from like a gameplay standpoint like the jar people off obviously thing I think they like they showed.
00:06:57
Speaker
Um, I guess it must've been Alexander and like, that was some of the first footage we saw of Elden Ring in gameplay was like freeing him and then talking to him and stuff. I did like none of his quest. I saw him two times like in the entire game and he's like, fancy meeting you here, like adventurer. And I'm like, I have no idea who you are. And he's like, I'm trying to be stronger. And I'm like, great, whoever you are. Um, and then showed up at the end of the game.
00:07:27
Speaker
Not the end of the game, but like the dragon area, like an area I can't remember what it's called. Crumbling fair Missoula. Yeah, that sounds right. Uh, we'll go with that. Anything that you put in like vague would be like, here's the exact thing that it is. It's like, that's how neurotic I've become about it. Um, but it was really funny cause I'd literally talked to that guy one other time and he's like, I knew you would make it here to the end of time and be like my ultimate opponent. I'm like, guy, we.
00:07:53
Speaker
We met, like, at a drive-thru. Right? Like, there's another thing. And you caught the lasting impression, Jake. That's pretty good. Yeah, but I did get the impression he was very interesting in PC. I just missed all of his content.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, his character seems very much like a Siegmeyer type. Yes, exactly. And I like that archetype. It's always like very, I don't know, wholesome. I like it. The jars are kind of funny because they have like, so they drop the mystery meat. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it's mystery meat.
00:08:28
Speaker
And it's one of the better healing items in the game. Like it instantly poisons you, but it's a ton of health and you can immediately cure the poison with like a standard cure, consumable, which are really easy to get for poison in particular. So the game kind of encourages you to just kill all these jar folk. And then there are also these types of NPCs and apparently there's a village of them.
00:08:53
Speaker
I really liked the jar design. Also their lore, like, cause they're essentially like quote unquote battle pots. Um, I can't think of the actual name, but like they're filled with human viscera. Yeah. And that's really their thing is like they put strong warrior remains inside them to like strengthen them. Yeah. And Alexander's whole quest line is like becoming more tempered and stronger.
00:09:21
Speaker
That's where I saw him, is he's standing in lava trying to harden himself. Yeah, it's great. It's really funny. Were there any NPCs, let's say non-Main Questline that you were really fond of? Or you followed their stuff outside of Main Questline?
00:09:41
Speaker
I mean, it's a cheating answer and we can actually just come back to it. So I'll come up with another one. Here's the cheating answer. Ronnie, great character. I'm sure we'll talk more about it. This will also answer the question later, who is Bay? Right, I actually saw that. I was like, yeah, I mean, that one. But there's like this British guy in the swamp, like Lake Laernia or whatever it is.
00:10:09
Speaker
And he's like, he's got a cook fire and like a bunch of prawns or something. Oh, yeah. And I think you can like kill him for a quest. Blackguard. Blackguard. And he was just really funny.
00:10:22
Speaker
I like that the game was straight up like a lady, a blind woman's like, hey, this guy took my stuff. Go get the stuff back if you want to help. You're like, all right, I will be the white knight of the situation. Go like talk to the guy. And he's like, what's it to you? You're like, well, I want the stuff back. He's like, I'll sell it to you. And now you're at the impasse. You're like, I literally just kill this guy that I could probably just kill or literally buy back the thing that he stole.
00:10:51
Speaker
which you can do. And if you do that, then he sells you food, like for the rest of the game, I guess, like consumables.
00:10:59
Speaker
Which is hilarious. He doesn't like backstab you or do anything. He literally just sells it to you and then acts as a mission. Yeah. He likes that you appreciate the taste of crab meat or shrimp. And he's like, I can respect that. You're a good guy. And I was like, yeah, all right. I'm a fan of when the game kind of twists that a little bit. Like you expect everybody to betray you. And sometimes they do.
00:11:23
Speaker
Oh yeah. You don't expect anything to ever go well in these games. It's always like, Oh, what's the doomed outcome for this? Yeah. Oh, they're finally getting married. Oh, they, they both separately poisoned each other. Cause the other one was asleep. Cool. Yeah. I also like the seamster. He's got a very short name.
Game Mechanics Deep Dive
00:11:42
Speaker
Bach. Bach. Yeah. I think he's fine. Like he's, he's, he's cute and nice, but like, Mm-hmm.
00:11:49
Speaker
Of the NBCs, I feel that he's not as interesting for me. Yeah. Versus like- Did you do his full quest line? I don't know what his full quest line is. I got him up to like the Capitol and then I didn't see him anywhere else. Yeah. So it's like find him in a bush or he is the bush as an illusion, hit the bush. He's very like mild mannered and subservient. It was like some of his main character traits.
00:12:18
Speaker
You get his tools, which I did like really freaking late in the game, or I found the tools, but I didn't remember where he was until they actually patched the game to show where NPCs were. Great patch, by the way. Right, and then I was like, we should talk about that too.
00:12:34
Speaker
I was like, okay, there's a guy here. Let's go talk to him. Give him his tools that I had gotten like two months back and in game time at this point. And you give him like all of the needles that allow close alteration, removing capes, essentially.
00:12:52
Speaker
It's adding and removing capes. If I were to gripe about it for a second, I sort of just don't like the feature. If it was legitimately recolors, I would have appreciated it way more. I don't ever want to remove the cape from something.
00:13:10
Speaker
Cause I played the dark, the soul series before they had capes with physics. Okay. And why would I go back to that? That's fair. I think the point is like, you can kind of like trim the armor, make it a little bit lighter and maybe you don't want to cape. Yes. You want to be more sleek, hard bodied. I'm sure that there would be really cool to have the recolor or something else. Yeah. Cause like, that's what I would love. I really liked some of the.
00:13:36
Speaker
more main character armors like NPC stuff like D Vampire 100D like so fucking cool. It's like the twin armor of like there's another body in the armor attack like really fucking cool design. Maleketh the Black Blade. Super badass armor. Oh, yes. Very trim, very edgy. Who else? Juno Haslow.
00:14:01
Speaker
Who is Dialis's brother who you can kill as part of like the, uh, mountain gail mere shit. Um, super bad-ass. I don't know. They just have like a lot of, a lot of cool designs. I was going to say real quick, but we're still on the, the, the needles though. The seams, seamster stuff. Teamster work. Um, uh,
00:14:23
Speaker
He, if you give him the needles and eventually the golden needle, which as far as I can tell, you can't really use for anything, then it allows him to tailor boss armor, legendary armor that you otherwise can't change at all. Really? Yeah. Okay. Minor gripe for the game. Not all boss armor can be tailored. So.
00:14:48
Speaker
I actually spent a fair number of runes buying different boss armor pieces trying to figure out which one could be tailored because it's actually the trigger to getting him to accept the golden needle is you have something in your inventory that he can't normally tailor.
00:15:06
Speaker
Um, but if you do that, then it goes into this whole thing of like, um, he's like a demi human and he wants to be a real boy. Um, or something like that, you know, basically, and you can like give him the, uh, rebirth resource. It's a, uh, larva or whatever it's called. Um, can't remember what those are called actually. I'm thinking about it.
00:15:33
Speaker
I want to say crystal tier and that's very, very wrong. That's the Estus upgrade. No, it's like sacred tier. Fuck, it's like larva rebirth or something. Yeah, it's something. Yeah. Yeah. And apparently that like put into his quest line. But if you don't do that, then eventually he
Epic Boss Fights
00:15:51
Speaker
goes there and dies anyways, which is what happened in my game. And the sad thing is I was very close to the next phase of his quest.
00:15:58
Speaker
which was finding the your beautiful, uh, voice line. And if you use that next to him after he's having all this self-doubt, it like changes the outcome of his quest because he's accepted. Yeah. So I, I really love that. What has been like specifically a PVP and multiplayer item. Uh, in this case, the prattling pates, which by the way, if you like the old dark souls, like one, two, and three, like, hello.
00:16:24
Speaker
It's infinitely better than that. If you disagree, I'm sorry that you're wrong, but that's my very heartfelt opinion. But I like that it's actually tied into a side quest at all. The same way like gestures will like open some stuff. Like, oh, use Irradation to go forward. You have to do Thop's side quest to get it, but it's like that head explosion emote. And then that opens certain doors. Yeah.
00:16:50
Speaker
No, it's great. I missed so much of that. The only existing precedent for that I feel in this whole series was like, I think there was a gesture for Blade of the Darkmoon to unlock something at some point. No, it was actually a ring. It wasn't even a gesture. Yeah, it was the ring. If you're talking about the dark sun. Yeah.
00:17:10
Speaker
Um, and they use that I think in one and three, but I guess they did kind of like in dark souls three have the draconic gesture. Oh yeah. Yeah. The dragon peak. Um, I don't know. I like stuff like that. I don't like where it's so obfuscated where if I'm just exploring, I would never figure that shit out unless I looked it up in a Wiki. Yeah. Um, there's a lot.
00:17:36
Speaker
of that in this game, which is fine with some of it for sure. Um, cause like, I'll look it up later. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that was a thing. And I don't need to like have that fresh experience for myself. Um, yeah.
00:17:51
Speaker
We're jumping around a lot because like my brains immediately like oh Something I missed but should have fucking seen cuz there was a button prompt and no other options for me Was down at the bottom of crumbling Faram Azula. I was like, where do I go from here? Where do I go? And then eventually I saw like a little thing. It's like oh, it's a little ghost lying down here Okay, miss the prompt
00:18:14
Speaker
I accidentally hit that because I was like jumping around and stuff. Okay. And so the prompt came up and I immediately took the prompt and like, I was like, why am I laying down? And then got to the, uh, dragon Lord boss fight. Dragon Lord P. Cause I don't know how to pronounce his name. It's like a joke when Phoenix or whatever the name is, the Joker.
00:18:39
Speaker
Joaquin. Joaquin. There you go. That was such a cool boss fight. Sorry, I'll let you talk about the dragon fight. It is one of my favorites.
00:18:51
Speaker
I didn't even know about it because Jake mentioned it to me. I was like, what are you talking about? Is it called the Dragon Lord? I'm like, I fought a couple of different dragons. Which one do you mean? Right. But he has some of the... I like the black static smoke. It's just so edgy and cool. Oh, yeah. And the big windups into the hits and it feels good when you dodge because there's such a big windup.
00:19:15
Speaker
Also, if you miss you, you'll probably die. But one of the coolest, if not the coolest, to me at least, arena in the game. It's like a gigantic coliseum outside of time. Like, that's the most anime not, like, I don't think there's anything more anime nonsense. The whole game is fucking anime.
00:19:39
Speaker
Anybody says this game is not anime is wrong. Yeah. And his moveset, like I know you're talking about his moves, but the particular one that got me where I was just like, I freaking love this boss. It's he like, he teleports vanishes. A lot of the bosses do that. The bigger ones do.
00:19:56
Speaker
like appear somewhere else and we'll do like a charge attack with like red lightning because like having lightning associated with dragons wasn't enough for Elden Ring they're like no no now it's red right which is a completely different thing and there's red lightning spells on top of just lightning spells and they look cooler
00:20:15
Speaker
But there's also ice lighting, which also looks really badass. It also does look really good. And he's got this move where he like attacks through you like multiple times with like slashes from all these different directions, teleporting like Yukiro Komei all around you. And it's insane. It's such a cool fight.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, it I really like it. Also, because like a lot of those cool cooler bosses will have a remembrance where to be like, hey, here's a weapon that'll do a weapon art that'll be kind of off of one of my moves or like a spell for one of the moves. Yeah. And the one for Dragon Lord Placid, Placid Cox is like,
00:21:02
Speaker
You kind of like fade into like this storm cloud and then like lunge at something. Oh, that's awesome. It's so cool. Did you click the video I linked you for that? Uh, I clicked a video. I probably missed this one. Doesn't sound familiar. I think it was the last video link I sent to you. Nope. Two, two back. Ah, okay. No, I actually missed this. Um,
00:21:29
Speaker
I missed this one. A couple links. A lot of people send me Elden Ring stuff for some reason. Oh, my bad. But yeah, I really liked that fight. Oh, yeah. Also for talking like full anime. Redon.
00:21:48
Speaker
Redawn is literally it's literally fate zero Or fate stay night, I guess like it's You're on a beach tons of weapons strewn about shooting an area at you from a mile away. You're like hmm
00:22:03
Speaker
Yeah. Summoning heroic spirits and then he's riding his horse, which by the way, did you? It's a baby pony. It's the smallest thing. Did we talk about the reason why he can do that? I actually, this is one of the few pieces of information that I know. Okay. It's literally because of his gravity magic. He learned gravity magic so he could still ride his horse.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, and it looks like the stupidest thing. Like I didn't know that when I was fighting him and I was like, why is this giant general guy that's clearly one of the major bosses of the game right in like a pony around that is a tenth of his size? It looks absurd. It looks really funny. But which is a really cool fight, I actually like.
00:22:54
Speaker
I like his fight because it's not even, I don't know. There's so many like difficult traditional fights in the soul series that sometimes they mix it up and it's okay. Moonlight butterfly, not anyone's favorite fight at all. It's just a ranged boss that occasionally comes in. Then you hit it. This fight has a gimmick and I love the gimmick because it's not like anything else they've done in the game or like the series.
00:23:20
Speaker
I say as a seguester, Dave, can you explain the gimmick? As I'm taking a sip. I have. So as you go through, there are summon signs you can summon in-game NPCs. You can't summon your own spirits, where you normally can for a lot of boss fights. And if you're me, because of the network, you can't fucking summon any other players to help. So you're dashing through the sand, and you're mashing Y and dodging arrows to be like, come help me.
00:23:50
Speaker
Also, if you summon patches, he's like, all right, I'm going to peace. Like he leaves immediately. Whereas everyone else is like trying to like fight Redawn alongside you. Yeah. So it feels really cool and epic because it's like this all out battle. Yeah.
00:24:08
Speaker
Not to be fair, they're very much distractions and you really have to carry the weight of the team. But you can just beat, I'm pretty sure you just beat the fight resummoning them because you can continue to find theirs. That was the thing. I was like, okay, I summoned them in once. Wait, is this the second time I summoned them in? And then I didn't see the summon sign anymore. So like for the early attempts, I thought that was it.
00:24:29
Speaker
I was like, Oh, you get like two summons. That's interesting. It's unique concept that you can only bring them in like two times. No, you have to find them. So you play like battlefield commander running around, bringing all these people into the fight.
00:24:43
Speaker
Did you end up beating him that way or did you? Yeah, pretty much. I did not man mode him. Now, I did fight him like I was throwing black flame fireballs at him. Yeah. But I found that like particularly for the second phase, if his ire was entirely focused on me, I had a really bad time. It it sucked. Like I could dodge some of the abilities, but he's like, hey, I'm going to throw these magnetic rocks at you. Mm hmm.
00:25:11
Speaker
in series. And I was like, oh, I can't dodge four times instantly. And it usually ended my death. But I really enjoyed the fight. And each attempt, I'm like, oh, this motherfucker. And I'd go back into it. Very excited. He's also got an opener, like the long range, the great arrows that are straight up like, do you know what my move set is? If not, I'm going to kill you till you figure this one out, right?
00:25:40
Speaker
And then the reign of arrows that follows you if you're at long range. Yeah, it's like, hey, run dodge, run dodge, run dodge, get on your horse, outrun the arrows. And I didn't even know for the longest time that you could use the horse. The battlefield is so gigantic, I should have been like, oh, that makes sense. But it wasn't until somebody mentioned it, I'm like, horse would be a good idea. That's one of the trade-offs, though. If you do play with people, then the horse is always out of the equation. True.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I have fought that boss with people. I think I co-oped it. And it's a very different counter. You can still kind of raffle stomp them. If you bring multiple people in, you can still bring all the phantoms in.
00:26:27
Speaker
It's very much like Radon is at a reverse birthday party and all the people have come here to take his stuff. Yeah, it was fucking cool though. I remember making a mixed physics just for the start of phase two.
00:26:42
Speaker
Hmm for anybody who doesn't know I mean you should at this point if you're listening but he fucking like dive bombs out of the sky and like Sweeps this whole area with like flame and it can do a lot of damage and possibly kill you You can't avoid it, but I was bad at that So I'd get a mixed physic of like hey this next instance of damage. You won't die I'm like yep sip sip. Let's go. Oh
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We haven't talked about mixed physics at all. And we couldn't in the previous episode, because it would have technically been spoilers. Yeah. It's awesome. It's amazing. It's so fucking cool. And this one, yeah. Because you have your health potions, your mana potions, and those are pretty straightforward. You mix and match based on what you need. Maybe you go more spell casting. Maybe you're like, I'll never use mana. Fuck it.
00:27:27
Speaker
And then a mixed physic is like, hey, what, what do you need? Do you need like damage reduction? Do you want like, uh, yeah, it's a fucking, it's going to, uh, where were we for lunch the other day? Panera. It's a pick too. It's a soup and a salad. It's like, do you want stamina regen? Do you want, this one's actually really strong free, uh, manna use, like no cost to manna for like 20 seconds. Yeah. Holy shit.
00:27:55
Speaker
It's really crazy. I use using that in conjunction with like, um, some of the breath spells that just like drain manna really, really rapidly. And I'm just like, what if I just stood here and breathed at you for 10 seconds? Normally would have exhausted the entire like FB bar, but Nope. I'm Jake flexed on the asthmatics over here. Yeah, it's a really strong. Um, so you did free manna and what was the other half of your mixed physics?
00:28:23
Speaker
So I mixed it around a lot. So this is the boring answer. Most of the game I had it on heal half health region. Just because I was like, this is kind of useful. And it was actually also really good on the...
00:28:42
Speaker
The mimic uh the tier tier mimic the what summon um But then for part of the game I had it on the uh Half again kind of boring half fp bar restore and then free fp But I did play around with some of the other effects apparently it is Incredibly powerful for certain phases of boss fights to have mix in one of the defensive options and I actually used the um
00:29:11
Speaker
And I think this could be a strategy and a run that's like optimized. Um, where you, for some reason are carrying runes, but there was the effect that's like, you can't lose runes on death. It's a short lived twig talisman effect.
00:29:26
Speaker
Yeah, but it's even more free than the Dark Souls 2 ring, which you could literally repair with Souls because this one is like every bonfire you get it back, right? Or every grace, Dutch grass.
00:29:42
Speaker
I feel like the best use for it is like specifically a death run. You got really far, you lost like 100,000 runes, which, depending on how far you're in the game, might not even get you a level. But you're like, fuck. Okay, I know how to get back. I want to make sure I don't lose anything. So you put that on as a preventative, do a quick sip and just book it.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's, I didn't end up using that. Um, cause I'm again, very brute force now I approach things. Um, but it, it seems like a really strong thing and there's ones like make yourself explode, which I see using PVP videos a whole bunch. Right.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's like increased damage of different element types, better dodges. Like most of the effects, maybe not most of the effects, tons of the effects you can get through other items. You can also include in your mixed physics. Now the caveat is it has exactly one charge. This is your magic moment where you use it. And then you have to rely on everything else in your bag of tricks.
00:30:51
Speaker
It's so powerful. It kind of doesn't matter. I actually, I like that ability so bad that it makes the rest of the, or I like that, I like that potion mixed physics so much that it makes the rest of the consumables disappointing to me. Um, cause like they're better than they've ever been. And none of them are nearly as I'll actually use this in a situation as mixed physics.
00:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, like the only time I ever use other consumables is specifically for
00:31:25
Speaker
It's like my fourth time doing a boss. And I'm like, OK, what are they doing? A lot of fire damage? OK, I need to do like a fireproof liver. Do I have one on my inventory? I'll put it on my equipment bar. And then I can D-pad down, mash to it to use it in a fight. Yeah. And like, that's when I would do it. Or like, again, same thing for weakness is like a magic grease. Oh, I'd want to put a certain element type on my weapon. Cool.
00:31:53
Speaker
other than that i'm rocking potions and mimic tier and the rest can fuck off because i don't think about items in a moment i'm like dodge hit sip sip
00:32:04
Speaker
And it's almost disappointing because they've clearly put like, so the game I would most easily compare this to is like the Witcher and the series, the Witcher and how they handled potions.
Combat Styles & Strategies
00:32:14
Speaker
Like in every entry in the Witcher, especially in the Witcher three, they're like simplify potions, simplify potions. And the Witcher one, this isn't about the Witcher, but for comparison, you had to gather every ingredient for every potion.
00:32:33
Speaker
You wanted to make. Fuck no. Or buy them in the Witcher three, the ingredients are more rare, but if you find it once and you craft the potion, you have it forever. If you run out alcohol, that's in your inventory magically becomes the potion when you next rest. Now how you took like one dwarven lager and refilled 25 potions with all of these ingredients in your inventory. The game doesn't care and you don't either. Cause it's way more convenient.
00:33:03
Speaker
Um, but then Elden ring use this introduces the crafting system and lets you make all this stuff. I mean, I like it. I just, I didn't leverage it as much as I probably could have. Cause what did you craft?
00:33:23
Speaker
anti-poison or anti-rot if I found out I was either poisoned or rotted. Yeah. But again, that was entirely dependent on did I have a great dragonfly head? And no, because I wasn't going out and killing like non hostile mobs. So it was very much to attack you.
00:33:44
Speaker
You have to get close and you have to call them some bad names, but they do attack you. I mean, if you wait for two hours and you put your button there, yeah, sure. But I didn't find myself in a lot of situations where.
00:33:58
Speaker
I felt I needed to craft a lot of stuff. Yeah. Unless again, it was like that, Oh, they're doing a lot of fire damage. I can technically make fire resistance for time. I'll do that resistance. Yeah. I wasn't, I found myself in a similar boat. I made a bunch of like fire pots at the beginning of the game. And they literally, it's almost like.
00:34:17
Speaker
I mean, a Legend of Zelda comparison, it's so impossible to avoid. But finding empty bottles in Legend of Zelda, so you could store more resources. Finding empty pots here, so you could make more pots. I like that a lot as far as you're increasing your max capacity. They have the memory stones, they have the talisman pouches, they have the different pots or perfume bottles.
00:34:40
Speaker
It was all really cool. Um, I just, my play style does not adapt at all. Um, so I don't think about like using a throwable that actually might be really convenient for like a ranged option. Yeah. I'm like, I'm going to get in and bonk you and I'm going to dodge your projectile to bonk you. I did notice that like, and this might actually be unique to Elden ring, like some of the consumable scale off of your stats.
00:35:08
Speaker
Um, I know like that the, the holy damage earns and things like that. They actually scale off faith. Hmm. Um, like that would make sense. Cause I kukiri, which is like a heavier throwing knife at prox bleed is usually off of strength. So that would track.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that like, if I wasn't running a caster build, maybe I could have had a little bit more use out of some of those consumables. But I found there's like, there's so many sources of poison, for instance, right? And I basically need one. And so I used arrows.
00:35:46
Speaker
Like now maybe, maybe as an efficiency, the pots or throwing knives or something like that that has poison actually builds it up faster. And I could have saved a little bit of time in some situations, but I didn't need that. Right. Well.
00:36:00
Speaker
So when we did the fire giant, I was throwing some poison knives because I had some already made. And you can throw them so quickly, which is really nice. Because you're offhand. We're just one and the other. But also, it doesn't take any item weight.
Story Depth & NPCs
00:36:18
Speaker
Whereas what you're talking about with a bow, that now goes against my equip load. That's true. And usually I try and...
00:36:26
Speaker
put as much weight as I can as possible where it's still medium roll. Yeah. And then if I like have to equip a bow because I'm in a dungeon, I want to shoot a flame pillar from a mile away or like a burning pot, I'll switch to it. But then I got to unequip it immediately. Right. Because I'm already like at that.
00:36:44
Speaker
at that threshold. That's fair. I did find that that was the situation though. I actually, um, I recently learned and I haven't played Elden Ring that much recently because of other things like yesterday that there were Scarlet raw arrows in the game. Again, as Dave said, I beat the game.
00:37:03
Speaker
And I use poison arrows on a lot of bosses. For anybody who doesn't know, poison is just the shittier version of rot. Yeah. It's essentially like poison and what would it be, toxic. Toxic. Yeah. So which is better poison. Yeah. I really only found myself abusing toxic with like the breath. The reason I sword the prox toxic, but it's
00:37:32
Speaker
specifically in Mikala's halig tree. And then- Scarlet rot, right. And it's like, when am I going to use this specific short sword? I mean, I used it in PvP against you. Right. It took a while to build up the bar. Yeah. Which is fair. You don't want to instantly get hit with something. Let's just- If it instantly procced, or toxic rot, you'd be like, Scarlet rot, Jesus. Yeah, that would suck.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's an entire link of that Mimicked here we got to talk about yeah, cuz we didn't fucking talk about it There's a whole bunch of cool spirits and stuff but every single playthrough I went from
00:38:15
Speaker
Oh, I have wolves. Oh, I have a jellyfish. We're going to rock jellyfish. Oh, I found a ranged option of the skeletal marionettes or whatever those are called. I have to interject. Did you complete the jellyfish quest? I looked it up, but yes. You summon your jellyfish next to another jellyfish and they become friends. Well, it actually replaces your phantom.
00:38:39
Speaker
Cause you now don't have, if you look at the description, it's not Aurelia anymore. It's just a jellyfish because Aurelia went with the other one. I didn't even realize your jellyfish was named. Yeah. It's actually like the last line in it. And that's.
00:38:57
Speaker
It doesn't actually, so sometimes like in lore, they just throw a line in there and there's like, why is this here? And this is one of those lines. It's literally like, it describes the jellyfish. And then I think there's a full paragraph break and then it's like, it seems its name is Aurelia.
00:39:15
Speaker
And that's it. That's the end of the Phantom description. I'm like, what? Do you remember like old King's Quest games where like, someone's like, I sure wish I had this one specific thing. You're like, that's really vague, but I feel like that's gonna be a key item I need for later. You jot it down on literally pen and paper. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like one of those. It's like, this is a flaming sword shaped hole in the wall. And you're like, wait, what?
00:39:41
Speaker
I have a sword. I have a flame. Wait a minute. Mashes items together. You're talking about Phantom though. Right. Yeah. So like Marionette was like my ranged option because they had...
00:39:53
Speaker
They're so cool because they'll just shoot arrows, but they also have four arms, and occasionally they'll panic and they'll just shoot arrows all throughout their body, like in a 360-degree arc. But it was really useful for a while because it was a ranged option and it would build up some good damage. But then Mimik tier existed. You're not using Mimik tier.
00:40:13
Speaker
I think either your build sucks or you're confused because it's it's so strong They could they could be listening in the future where mimic tier has been nerfed another three times To the point of being anywhere near the tier of the other I saw one of those classic memes of like if you didn't like me at my One point if you didn't like me at my one point three, you don't deserve me at my one point two Yeah, so it's
00:40:40
Speaker
Mimic tier, it literally copies your character. Instead of you using FP to summon, it uses a good chunk of your health. So you summon, you're a clone of yourself, you heal back up. But then it has your moves, your gear, your stats, your abilities. So when I was doing endgame bosses on my first playthrough, I had a big-ass bleed cleaver. So I'm doing heavy swings. And I also had a poison weapon thing.
00:41:10
Speaker
So I'd spew poison, get poison on the boss and then hit him a bunch with bleed. Yeah. And my mimic here would do the same. So like we're guaranteed bleed and poison procs. And so Milania phase one.
00:41:26
Speaker
You didn't do this fight, but I'm going to describe it a little bit. It's a relatively circular arena, and then like a bit of a... It tapers off a little bit towards where you enter the arena. So I wait for it to come up, and then I let her aggro on the Mimic Tier, and then we take turns doing R1s.
00:41:44
Speaker
It was like we were in sync and we literally stagger locked her a couple of attempts through phase one and just got to phase two. And I was like, this is choice gameplay. And it felt good to pull off because I built a mimic tier around that.
00:42:00
Speaker
Yeah. How did you build your mimic tier? It's basically Dark Link. It's like it copies what's in your inventory as your weapons. Mine was, I mean, obviously, so my, my playthrough was like faith and strength for like half the game and then respect to full faith. And that was just it for like the end of the game.
00:42:24
Speaker
So it did, it did pretty well with his Y hander, but I switched to the, what is it? Cypher. I can't remember the name of the street sword. It's just a hundred percent magical words in the air. You had like an invisible blade. Is that the one?
00:42:45
Speaker
Well, there's the one, there's like, there's the arm, the assassin like arm blades, which is just the fist weapon you can get. And it like requires 30 faith. It's in a round table hold. But then there's a straight sword you can get that is also just literally words in the air and then the hilt of a sword. And that's where the weight is. It's an incredibly light weapon because it's literally just the hilt and it requires faith.
00:43:13
Speaker
And it was really good, but it doesn't have the impact of the Zweihander. None of that matters too much because I had enough spells on my bar that the Mimic preferred to use those.
00:43:26
Speaker
I had to optimize it a little bit, so it didn't like waste too much on spells, but like dragon breath attacks, both frost and scarlet rot. Um, and a full heal that basically like brought it to full health if it ever decided to use it. And me, if I was nearby, which was nice. Um.
00:43:47
Speaker
and an item, some items it would duplicate. For a while I had like the healing rocks, the warming stones, which would generate PBAOE healing areas. It's the equivalent of like warmth from previous games in the series, but I don't believe it heals enemies. I think it's just friendlies.
00:44:06
Speaker
and cursed blood pot. I keep one in my inventory I never threw. The effect is if you throw it, then your spirits or your spirit that's in play will be buffed against whatever it's fighting. But I didn't throw it.
00:44:24
Speaker
The mimic would copy one, throw it, buff itself, and continue to like wail on the enemy, which I thought was hilarious. For anybody who doesn't know, Jake used to play a fuck ton of Arc Warden back in the day. I actually played Arc Warden for a while. That's what I'll say. But yeah, it's that same type of thing where
00:44:44
Speaker
You're just setting up like, you know, it'd be good to have two of this shit. Yeah. Um, it also has your, like the health flasks alone makes it better than, you know, so many other spirits. It can sustain. Yeah. Also because like you've probably built fairly beefy into like the later game. Cause you have to, um, it was really nice to have it pull aggro for more than like two seconds. Yeah. Um.
00:45:08
Speaker
And it scales based off of upgrades, just like all the other spirits, so it actually gets more health than you, I think, at a point. Oh, shit. It's crazy. It's also immune to certain status effects, depending on how they're being applied, like in the approach to, who is the Lord of Blood? Mo. Mo. Mo! Is that with a G and an H? Yeah, it is. But it is Mo. Gotcha, okay.
00:45:31
Speaker
Like on the approach there, there's all these enemies that are just like walking undead. They're very similar to the enemies in the graveyard in Dark Souls 3 that just like walked around. They're kind of like chilling zombies for the most part. Yeah, pretty much. And then occasionally one of them will just like freak out and run at you and then explode in a cloud of bleed, which I just realized that doesn't make any sense if you say it in English. It's a fog that inflicts bleed, which is a status effect.
00:46:00
Speaker
Um, but your spirit is immune to that and there's an area with like 30 of these enemies and every time one of them dies, they explode in a cloud of bleed, which your mimic is immune to and straight up wipes them all out as I watch and I clap from the sidelines. Yeah, it's so good. It's oppressively good.
00:46:25
Speaker
It's so good. I feel like the game was balanced around that existing because I cannot imagine doing some of the later game stuff without it. They've changed the difficulty a couple times, right? They actually reduced
00:46:40
Speaker
And they're like one of the first patches. They made some of the bosses easier. Oh. And then, you know, later, this might be evidence for your argument. They reduced the difficulty of some of the other processes. They're like, maybe they're not using the mimic tier. And then they actually reduce the strength of the mimic tier when they've realized like, yeah, they are actually using the mimic tier. I want to talk about like some bosses and like NPCs and stuff. Cause we are, we have not touched on anything. I feel it's already been like 45 minutes.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, I got to mention my runner-up spirit and I can swap. Yeah, go ahead. I was looking her up real quick because I actually couldn't remember her name. Latenna the albinoric. It was the stationary archer. OK. That you find next to like Lobo, her wolf, and she has her own storyline and stuff like that because she's just like a legit archer. Like she fires magical arrows that split and just do tons of damage.
00:47:40
Speaker
And I wish she was viable and more boss fights. But if she ever gets aggro, she freaking dies because she can't move. She's like literally paralyzed. She is. But I wish I could have played. I actually do want them to just nerf, mimic tear into the ground for a whole lot of reasons.
00:48:01
Speaker
But the main one is there are so many cool spirits that I didn't even bother trying to use. Yeah. Yeah. Like, again, like pot boys, I love the pot boy design. And they have like a little horde of pot boys, never going to use it because white.
00:48:21
Speaker
Outside of like trying it for shits and giggles, why would I? Yeah. There's one guy, Redmane Night Oga. I'm looking, I'm cheating, right? Like this is, I haven't magically learned how to recall their names. I'm looking at the Wiki. I used him a lot. He's got glowing red eyes and he shoots like gravity arrows and they were super cool. It was like super awesome, but the problem was it was not as effective as mimicked here. Yeah. You got to go for words.
00:48:48
Speaker
Next topic. I want to talk about some of the bosses. Let's just burn through this list. Okay. Margit. Still actually kind of hard. Like I went back and played him again. I did the cheese strat of like I went to the dragon. I bled the shit out of it. The soul farm. Yeah. And then it came back with literally 40 vigor.
00:49:13
Speaker
And Justin was watching me play and he's like, what are you doing? I'm like cheesing. Um, but I had trouble with it still because like my weapon sucked. My health flask helped heal for like 50 health, which I had way more than that. So it didn't do anything. Um, did you see the, the Yampa broken in just a few minutes video?
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I did my second playthrough. Okay. I literally I did the Godric skip I went up through like part of the Ronnie stuff. I'm like, oh sort of night and flame Hello, and then I was doing like faith magical bullshit with my laser sword He released a new one but like has a different weapon on it and that's why I was curious The weapon is incredibly powerful. I'm like, I haven't tried that one. I did watch that video though. It was cool Yeah, it's like a staff
00:50:04
Speaker
Uh-huh. With like a hook on it? I don't know. It's from a death breed. I don't know. It's weird. But yeah, uh, Margate. Margate's fine. Game boss. Gogic was cool. That was like the first MSQ boss in my opinion. And anybody that has like a phase transition, I'm on board for. Mm-hmm.
00:50:26
Speaker
just very cool thematically and like it got me like oh this is peak Dark Souls, we're in it. Yeah, it's peak Bloodborne because it's rolling, right? The requirement for this fight is rolling a lot. I guess you could block a lot too until Holy comes into play. Also, Unrelated, shields are really good and I haven't really used them as much as I should have
00:50:47
Speaker
But they do so much. I honestly, I remembered and then I forgot about like the shield counter attack. Yeah. I actually still don't. People are like, it's super great. And I'm like, I don't really know if it is. It's good against like trash. I couldn't use it. It can be. It depends on if your attack's going to be faster or not. I also can't judge because I was running like.
00:51:09
Speaker
the medium low stability shields for most of the game. And didn't get enough strength to use any of the big ones that are straight up just like, I'm behind this. You are not relevant to this conversation, right?
00:51:30
Speaker
How did you feel about Renala? Which is funny, because when you got to Renala, they were like, oh, I found the gimmick fight in the game. I'm like, OK. OK, sure. So I have two answers. First answer, boss fight as it was intended. It's really cool. I like the gimmick. I like running around fighting the things. I found that I cared more.
00:51:59
Speaker
There's two things I really liked about boss fights, boss fights that had like really cool theming, really cool like moves and things like that, cool new sets or just like an awesome environment and set up for the fight. And we're in all a heads like a really cool set up. You're just fighting a bunch of little girls, killing them in mass. Mm hmm. And it can style. Yeah, right. Ignites lightsaber. I mean, literally, the the holy weapon is basically a lightsaber. So it's funny.
00:52:28
Speaker
It even kind of sounds like a lightsaber when you swing it. A little more shing than the lightsaber. But anyways, her fight's really cool. I like the phase two. Reminds me a ton of Bloodborne.
00:52:39
Speaker
second opinion when it's bugged, it's the worst fight in the game. I'll recount my experience. I mean, yeah, because I don't know what you mean by bugged, nor does anybody else who's listening. I had two attempts where I was the co-op someone being brought into the fight. And what happens, and it's probably even patched at this point, but if you brought two summons into the fight, not just one person, but two people,
00:53:04
Speaker
um she does not have a visible shield around her in the first phase it's still there but you can't see it okay that would be fine none of her children are ever picked as the singer
00:53:22
Speaker
that break her shield when they're killed. Oh, she's functionally invulnerable in the shield unless you have a spell that would reach through the shield. So what I did is over the course of all of my mana flasks, threw black fireballs at her where the like on hit damage didn't do anything, but the dot did. And I was the only person in the entire fight that could damage her.
00:53:54
Speaker
until we got to phase two and literally it's you've skipped the whole thing. She never fell from her shield at all. You just go to phase two and the host died twice. So I gave up. That sounds shitty. That being said, I'm sure that's been patched at this point, but it was a funny experience.
00:54:13
Speaker
so i will say that this balances out for what you're describing because i watched you do the rykard fight where you summoned in like i swear it was like three cooperators who all had the gimmick weapon which is like a giant spear to stab a snake and you just staggered the ever-living fuck out of it uh so you didn't really get to see any of like the attack animations or anything um but rykard i also enjoyed as a thematic fight because
00:54:42
Speaker
The cut scene in the voice acting was fucking silly. It's enjoyably silly. Yeah. I find as I get older, I appreciate some of those more than the straight up like
00:54:57
Speaker
This is just a super, super difficult fight. I'm just like, Oh, is it enjoyable? Yeah. For other reasons. Well, like, I really enjoyed, um, I'm just going to pick all the major bosses now, like, Oh, Lord of blood. Because like the, you don't really know anything outside of like, Oh, and some guy named the Lord of blood. You're like, okay. Yeah. But then you go there and then you see them refer to Micola, who was a character you've heard of. And it's like,
00:55:23
Speaker
literally comes out of Mikala's hand that's just bleeding. Yeah, it bleeds him on the ground. Yeah, bleeds him into existence. And then he's like, he kisses Mikala's hand. He's like, dearest Mikala, abide by thyself a while. And it's like, oh, we have a guest. And I was like, oh, I like this theming already. It's kind of crazy.
00:55:44
Speaker
There's a little thing in that transition too where he's like covered in blood first and then he like turns around towards you and all of it like his armor and like this is armor that's trimmed with like furs and stuff like that and it's all like pristine and it's just such a cool like it's a stupid cool artistic transition. I just really liked it. Yeah, it's all of the cutscenes for like the major bosses are super hype. So even like Mo who like I didn't really follow too much of him like
00:56:14
Speaker
Oh, I'm on board with this, cool. I really like that. For Dawn, obviously it's cool as fuck. Milania, Blade of Mykola, just, so before we were talking about like the Millicent quest line a little bit. Yeah, which unfortunately I didn't complete in my play through, but. I'm gonna spoil for you, because I'm gonna spoil for everybody else, but that's cool. It spoils for everybody. All right, it's off, yeah. So, Millicent is actually not Milania.
00:56:43
Speaker
I learned. I had a theory for a very long time that it was because like both their names begin with M. Well, that's actually a naming consistency as far as like, um, generationally. So like Radon, um, blanking, uh, Ronnie and well, they are children of Radigan. Yeah.
00:57:06
Speaker
That's actually part of the thing. That's really funny. It's like, well, my name will like Godfrey. So my kids have to be James and James. Well, I mean, like that was a naming convention for a long time with older cultures. That's true. Yeah. Where you have like a prefix. But like Godfrey is the parent of Godwin. That one's very explicit. Yeah. That's not just G. That's God. God in everybody's name. That one I actually.
00:57:36
Speaker
That one wrapped back around to being silly for me. It's just like, why'd you name all of your kids gods? Sorry, but like Milania, Blade of Mykola, that Millicent quest line, she is actually a daughter of Milania.
00:57:54
Speaker
But I thought it was interesting that she had all of these similarities of the red hair. She didn't remember how she got infected by rot. She's missing an arm as well and gets a prosthetic. This reminds me of somebody from the first cutscene, but apparently not actually the same person.
00:58:12
Speaker
She's just so fucking cool. Oh, yeah. And like master swordsman, et cetera. And then you get the phase two and she's like Melania, goddess of rot. And the theming for that is so cool because everything in Michaela's halo tree is like full autumnal themed and like rotten. And it feels so good. And then the music kicks in and then she starts off with like a dive bomb and like a rot lotus.
Narrative & Themes
00:58:45
Speaker
Really, really love the theming for that. I recommend a subsequent play through, checking that out for sure. I'm going to cheat because we're talking about the bosses. Yeah. And you also asked about cool NPCs. So going back to answer that question. When did I? It looks at Roger. Yeah. Yeah. It was about an hour ago. But Gideon, or Sir Gideon Ofnir, the all-knowing. Yeah. Love that character. One, the voice actor is amazing.
00:59:04
Speaker
The whole thing is fun.
00:59:14
Speaker
Like Sean Bean. Yeah, he's good. Yeah, yeah straight up. Uh, it's not actually Sean. No, no, no. It's Bean Sean. This is body double. It's been Sean and have a good night. Um, but really cool. I like his theming. I like how he's just this guy that's he's basically the sidelines character. Like, uh, there's kind of a trope almost like, um,
00:59:40
Speaker
He's on the same quest as like the main character, but he's not overcoming all of the obstacles of the main character. But there comes a point where there can only be one. This is Highlander rules. So there's a conflict. And then you just like face stomp him because he's not the main character and he didn't overcome all of that. Yeah. Like that was granted every time I was up to that point, I was like rocking a lot of health and believe and would just shit on him.
01:00:09
Speaker
But he's very spell casty because he's getting off near the all-knowing. He's been studying for millennia probably. He's really disappointed when you burn down the hole. He's just like, guess I'll get all the information out of these books since you're ruining my home.
01:00:32
Speaker
quietly puts books in bags while staring menacingly on it. This guy. No, that was a cool NPC. I mean, shout out to Ronnie for being bae. And I'll be honest, I do simp for Ronnie. I don't know what it is, but it's something about like I had this discovery of myself.
01:00:58
Speaker
I like shorter, more demanding women. That's something that I'm into, all right? There you go. Four hands, too. Yeah. Dave just gave me a knowing nod. Finally, somebody who can grab the whole thing. But she's a really cool character. For hugs, Dave. For hugs. Oh my gosh. Are you cheating on Fia's hugs? You fucking whore.
01:01:24
Speaker
But no, like, Ronnie's theming is really cool. I like her outfit too, because you can get like the big magic hat. Oh, yeah. But like, I really like her voice acting, her storyline and her lore of like why she's doing what she's doing. Because she's actually the one who like triggered the events. She triggered a lot of people. Right. Fucking white nights. But she actually organized the Night of Black Knives.
01:01:54
Speaker
Okay. That's kind of a big deal. Yeah. Um, so she stole the rune of death from her half-brother Malaketh. Oh, right. Cause that's fashioned that into the black knives and then.
01:02:09
Speaker
All of the black knives are also women. That's a fact. That's a fact. That's a fact. Then they killed Godwin. Then because of that, America broke the Elden Ring.
01:02:28
Speaker
because she was very upset. And that was the end of the age of the retreat, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the whole thing was really cool with Ronnie and it's very complex and you get to go underground a whole bunch. And all of the areas underground are cool as fuck.
01:02:46
Speaker
And you don't even realize how big the game is until you also go underground 13 different times. I think I remember it culminates in like the fight with Astel. Astel? Astel. Natural born of the void, which is just it's bloodborne, the boss. That's it's a full bloodborne boss. It's like, hey, did we have like a space centipede? Did you want to kill like elder gods? You're supposed to be fighting. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:11
Speaker
It's literally that and I was very high level. I was watching Dan actually fight him and He ultimately did overcome astal I was like can I like see your stats and he beat him at like half the level? Like 70 levels earlier, but I I also didn't find the area until like the end of the game. I was doing this Home run thing around but I'm not gonna fight to find everything else
01:03:37
Speaker
Anything that has a, hey, we're going to add some effects. I'm like, oh, how are you going to do these effects? Are you going to red tint them? Are you going to blue tint them? They're like, oh, we're going to take space palette and put this shit here. You're like, oh, OK. Eldon Beast does that too, right? Yeah.
01:03:52
Speaker
I very much literally space gradient across the screen and then it explodes. That was just really fucking cool. Yeah, it looks it looks really cool. She's definitely go back to Harani for a second, though. Like it's very obvious that she's one of the characters that.
01:04:10
Speaker
They spent a whole lot of time on the quest. Like specifically, there are, there are some NPCs in these games where like their quest just comes into play and then it results. Yeah, exactly. And Ronnie's is straight up like, we're just going to draw a circle around the main story. And this is all of it. And all of it belongs to me in some aspect. And she's involved in the whole thing. Yeah, pretty much.
01:04:36
Speaker
Like also, I was gonna say, I don't know if you did anything for a gold mask. Is that the guy with the sunflower?
01:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, the guy who's always like T posing somewhere. I killed him and then he came back and I was like, I don't know what else to do. I tried. This is the one tool in my head. Murder didn't work. But like his thing is very much like a. It kind of colors the world a little bit as far as like a side quest story, but like it's not.
01:05:12
Speaker
It's not fundamental in the same way. Whereas Ronnie's very much like, again, very integral to the overall plot of the game. Yeah, not necessary, but I actually forgot like her association with Torrent and all of that. Like she's all the way back there at the beginning of the game. She's like, hey, we probably won't ever meet again. Um,
01:05:34
Speaker
But I wonder how long the Tarnish will pay Obesions to the two fingers. There's apparently a point where like, like you can attack an illusion of her or something. And she's just like, it's like torrent, sure. Like, I don't understand torrents, like interest in like a wild master or something like that.
01:05:58
Speaker
But it's like it's it's all of this like it's non aggressive so much, but she trusts torrent the horse. Yeah. So much that you should feel bad in this moment for being being a dick. Yeah. A murder hobo.
01:06:13
Speaker
And I don't know. And she also just, like, she helps you out at the beginning without inducting you into her plot of anything. You have to find her later in the game and be like, sure, I'll work for you. Well, the other thing is, like, when you go find her, she's like, hey, what are you doing here? You're like, no, no, she's kind of dicking around, just looking for requests. And she's like, OK. Right.
01:06:37
Speaker
She's like, I remember inking you an invitation, but here you are. You know, I'm just kind of exploring up in this castle for no fucking reason. Right. I'm clearing a fog of war. Really good. I was going to say, I realize we're talking a lot about Ronnie, but also the least fanservicey romance in any game because there's nothing. You're just like.
01:07:05
Speaker
Uh, here's the ring. You want to be a consort? Sure. All right. Let's leave this reality and then they left. There you go. Yeah. Also plot wise is going to say real quick. The whole plot of the game is for like you to become the consort of America and to restore the golden order. Interesting.
01:07:29
Speaker
I haven't, I've only gotten like the insanity ending cause I'm a psycho path apparently. Well, I'm just saying like they say like the finger readers will say that like the whole point is like they want you to restore the golden order. That's why the tarnished have now received the long lost grace. Cause you're like, Hey, somebody fucked some stuff up. All right, tarnished. We'll even let you guys try and help out. Right. So they want an Elden Lord as a consort to queen America because the greater will is essentially actually rebound.
01:07:59
Speaker
Pretty much. Yeah, the Elden Ring, a hundred hour plus game that can be summarized as you're the rebound of America. Why did they keep you out of the tree then? That was the part I didn't figure out. The erd tree is blocked off by thorns. Is that outside of America's will?
01:08:24
Speaker
So I don't think Merica necessarily has will. This is speculation at this point because I'm out of lore ideas. But Merica is just kind of there as like a fixture of the greater will at this point. I don't think she really has will or the ability to move at this point so much. Yeah, she's kind of tied up on it. Yeah. The actual Elden Ring. I don't know though. I think it's
01:08:55
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. I'm blanking on this. Because to restore that order, you do have to burn the tree, right? I think they changed their mind along the way. They're like, hey, we'll give some grace to the tarnished. But then they see what you're doing and trying to do. They're like, oh, no, fuck this guy. Gotcha. That's my guess. That's too risky. He's been killing NPCs and stuff. He's been killing everybody.
01:09:23
Speaker
Kind of making his way through the map. Nonstop murder spree. We'll see how he interacts with the first four managers. And you're like, managers? You mean bosses? I'm supposed to kill bosses, right? It's like, all right, well, he picked combat for Margit, but maybe when he gets to some of these shard bearers, he'll choose the diplomatic option. He's not doing that. He hasn't done that yet.
01:09:53
Speaker
Let's just close my fist with it talking. Let's close the door. The vines just creep over. Go home. Change your minds. Get out of here. What for you did you enjoy the most as far as like thematic and I'm going to say
01:10:13
Speaker
Let's say boss. What was your favorite boss as far as like design and thematics or just a highlight one if you can't pick a favorite? I mean, so obviously, uh, Astel stood out amazingly visually. Um, the golden beast was okay. Not amazing. I don't, I don't think he's my favorite, but he's, he's definitely up there. I liked Malekith, but his arena is kind of non. There's nothing really special about his arena.
01:10:40
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I was going to say, like, you know, who has a boring as fuck arena, but like a really fucking cool fight? Radigan. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's just literally a platform. I don't know if I wasn't sober at the time that we were, that I was playing or doing that fight, but I think they actually do like tilt the screen a little bit, three points.
01:11:02
Speaker
Which made it felt cool like um Like when he like laid down the fucking hammer like it was actually shifting the the plane that you were on a little bit He was hitting my mimic with that more so I might yes much I was kind of just like watching it like eating popcorn. You got him
01:11:18
Speaker
But it's just like a really cool like decayed but also still having some of like the golden order design. Oh, yeah. Really like that. That one specific move where he like he sets the AOE on the ground with the first hit. Yeah. And it's like the golden spreading AOE. And then he just smiths.
Final Reflections & Highlights
01:11:36
Speaker
Like the move is just him smithing with hits. Yep. To the ground repeatedly is so cool.
01:11:46
Speaker
It's so cool. Cause it's like, it's not even like a conventional attack. It's just like, Oh, he's a blacksmith. What's he do? He's a blacksmith. Um, I just really enjoyed that. Yeah. I liked that a whole bunch. How about areas? What was your.
01:12:08
Speaker
highlight area or what was an area like you're like fuck this i hate it so much yeah i mean i actually didn't hate the scarlet lake because i had so many ways to mitigate it by the time i got there but i'm sure that's very obnoxious for a lot of people especially if they don't have like oh flame cleanse me to just remove scarlet rot whenever they feel like it yeah i didn't have that um obviously the uh the river we talked about the river i see off for a river well
01:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, that whole hollow earth type setup with like basically constellations beyond you almost like in the in the sky and all these platforms and a lot of those areas you can get to throughout the game. It's like for sense of wonder.
01:12:56
Speaker
That's pretty high up there. There were a couple of times in my first playthrough I just sat back and I was like, wow. Like a small child who typed boobs into Google for the first time. And one was when you first get on the horse and you have one of those jump pads and you really get launched up above a lot of the scenery and get to see like, hey, here's this beautiful world we've crafted for you. I'm like, oh, holy shit. And that was just in limb grave.
01:13:25
Speaker
And then when you get into like Siafra and you go down like this giant elevator, you're like, how long is this elevator going to go? And then you see like underground and then you see like the sky is lit up with all of these stars. And then as you go to like various points, you're like, oh, this area is fucking gigantic.
01:13:42
Speaker
And you still access from like different points. Like you go up to like noxtra and you're like, Oh, that's still the same fucking place. Um, which is another really cool, the, the like, sorry, not nocturne, not Stella. Jesus. I really like that area too. It was so gorgeous. Like, yeah, I really enjoyed it a lot. So cool. Fuck ants, by the way. Fuck ants. But that's fine.
01:14:09
Speaker
How about enemy design? Was there any enemies that really stood out to you as like, this is a really cool design or this creeps me out a whole bunch?
01:14:19
Speaker
Oh, well, I mean, the hands are the creepiest thing imaginable. I agree with that. Anybody who says the hands aren't creepy, I think can tolerate spiders more than me. Yeah. It's just like, what is this enemy? Well, it's a human hand. You're like, okay. That means Zelda's done it. We doubled the fingers. All right, I'm out. Oh, two fingers. Oh, I got you. Actually, they, fingers come up a lot in this game. Have you tried finger?
01:14:49
Speaker
Anyway, I'm not finished in your message. There's the two fingers, there's the hands, there's the fact that all of the co-op items are fingers. Did you watch the last video I sent of young Maestro?
01:15:04
Speaker
I haven't gotten to it yet, I'll be honest. Okay. I need to. So, brief spoiler. He goes like to invade some people and they're both set up as like, oh, we're prepped for if people come to invade us type thing. Yeah. And they both have like the finger weapon of the bigger hands. Right. Like the giant finger with like the ring and the weapon arc for that is it it's kind of like a
01:15:30
Speaker
Literally, I disembodied large finger, but then it grows bigger and then does like a flick and that's the move. But the one character's name was Finn and the other character's name was Gir. And they both just ran out. It was really comical. This weapon is the equivalent of like the dildo bat from Saints Row. Yeah, it really is absolutely absurd.
01:15:55
Speaker
I will also say as far as like creepy enemies, the, uh, the crying, I'm just going to say worm faces up in Altus plateau. Yeah. That like had like little skinny legs and like long bodies and then like Cthulhu faces. And then when the name for them, cause there's a boss there, one of the one boss, it's called worm face. Yeah.
01:16:18
Speaker
They're just very unsettling too. Yeah, I didn't really like them. There's a lot of some of the larger enemies in the game. They're very clearly like, you're not really supposed to fight these, the dogs, the crows, the those guys. Yeah.
01:16:33
Speaker
Fuck Caleb. Yeah, Caleb, Caleb doesn't have, there's like one enemy you should kill for souls and everything else you just employ. I saw the dogs and birds, I'm like, no. I don't think I killed any of them, honestly. And it's not out of like my humanity. It's more of just like not investing the time for this payoff.
01:16:54
Speaker
And it'll like, they'll demount you super fast, because they'll just sweep or something and they'll take you off tour. Funny story though, since we're still early in the episode, the first bird that I saw, I came up from like the back way, because I got trapped in Lilliernia and warped up to like the crystal cave. And so I was like making my way back down through Magic Town.
01:17:22
Speaker
And I was like, oh, this was a big thing over there on the cliff. And I was like, just come up from behind it. It was just like gigantic there. I'm like, huh, weird. It's like not really doing anything. And I'm also sneaking up so it hasn't really seen me. And I got up like right beside it, like right behind it, just to the side. And it finally turns around and it's this giant freaking bird. And I'm like, I don't like that. And then it starts to attack. And to start this attack,
01:17:50
Speaker
It like leaps back to attack me and it falls off the cliff and it dies. I was like, that was a lot of runes. That was my first interaction with the giant birds. I mean, it seems like that really panned out in your favor for a first time encounter. It was really funny. It couldn't pull it off again. I tried again and then it killed me.
01:18:12
Speaker
I feel like a lot of times you encounter somebody, Hey, what is that? And it's like an abductor Virgin. You're like, Oh,
Gameplay Tips & Tricks
01:18:21
Speaker
yeah. There is a lot of like, so many of the bosses here feel like they're just like, you absolutely have to beat this boss to progress. And then there's just like a teleport somewhere that completely skips it. Yeah. Um, like I'm curious, I think you can make it.
01:18:38
Speaker
Like to the Atlas plateau without beating any bosses or close to it maybe one so Because I know the first my third playthrough. I'm like, let's say five hours in this is literally just yesterday in the day before I had to face the magma worm boss to go up through the back route instead of taking the deck this lift Okay, gotcha, but that's it
01:19:02
Speaker
Because you can do the Godric skip. You just literally ride your horse around the castle, done. You're now in Liurnia. Yeah, that's not a glitch. I know, but how many people have skipped it before they found out you could just go around? I don't know. I didn't know for a long time. Yeah. No, that's crazy. Very open game. Well, that's like the halfway point for spoilers. Yeah. Do you want to take a peak break and continue?
01:19:31
Speaker
Right. We should record part two of the spoiler episode next time.
01:19:41
Speaker
Are we actually still going? In this Elden Ring podcast? I don't even know. We can talk about that offline. We'll see. If you guys see Elden Ring pop up again as the next episode, then you'll know that we've given up in general. You've just given up. So any closing rambling thoughts?
Game Review & Future Speculations
01:20:04
Speaker
Um, Oh man, next episode, she should be the critical evaluation of some of the stuff in this game. I thought we, we haven't just circle jerked about it basically for like three hours across two episodes. Um, there, I don't think that it's absolutely perfect. It is, it is a really good game.
01:20:25
Speaker
I definitely think it has some issues, but for me, a lot of them are minor. There's definitely room for improvement. A lot of them are like stuff in general, like. Oh yeah. It's still an amazing open world game. Yeah. And if you like Dark Souls, you've already played this. If it's not game of the year, I will riot. Like I will start working for riot games. Yeah. It's.
01:20:52
Speaker
I don't know. I'm still having a lot of fun with it. It's still going to be my main go to game. I'm pretty sure. Oh yeah. And I will not stop talking about it until someone's like, dude, you've got to start checking out the dating pool or something. Like it's getting annoying. The one question I still have, I don't know. Maybe you have the answer to it is does anything change a new game plus besides runes beam and enemy health and damage being increased?
01:21:24
Speaker
They've done that in the past and Dark Souls 2 is If you new-gamed a couple times you started getting the souls of the bosses from Dark Souls 1 When you start killing the main bosses Oh
01:21:40
Speaker
I didn't do too much of New Game Plus. I probably played like an hour on one of the playthroughs just to check it out. Definitely higher damage and health. Couldn't really say much more beyond that, haven't played around too much. I'm sure they probably do have better versions of some of the talismans. I would hope. Oh, that's the other thing they did, yeah.
01:22:00
Speaker
I mean, for Dark Souls 3 it'd be weird if they didn't continue that. I definitely found up to plus two items throughout just new game, not even new game plus. So some of the stuff's already there. Curious to see. I would kind of be surprised if
01:22:17
Speaker
Like literally in an open world game, you can put as much effort and development time into everything as you want. It's very, very difficult and you have to pick places to copy paste catacombs is that place.
01:22:34
Speaker
Um, for this one, one of the things, some of the bosses, the urge tree fights, obviously very similar or exactly the same. Um, but I would be surprised if they held too much of that back for new game plus. And they're like, okay, secret ending, right? Like there's something like that. Um,
01:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really think they need to change up too much. I would like a DLC area. Yes, I'll pay money for it, I'll give a shit. But I like this direction they're going in, as I've said, if that wasn't fucking obvious.
01:23:07
Speaker
You do seem excited about the game overall. It's okay. At least it's okay. But it's taking a lot of things I love about Dark Souls and FromSoft and that game design and then just making it into a huge swath of a world that is so, so detailed and layered. Again, the game is huge.
01:23:30
Speaker
It is literally huge, but it's so cool. It is. It is pretty absurd. It feels very much like you're on an adventure of like this grand scale and I love it. Love it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I would say that I also enjoy the game. Maybe I love it. We'll see. We'll see.
01:23:52
Speaker
I probably do. I think that's for sure. It's the best game they've ever made, like by a very crazy margin. And it's the reason for that is because it's like built on everything else. The backs of everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're using, like obviously we've seen crab animations. You've seen the, what were the little hat guys called from Dark Souls 3?
01:24:16
Speaker
uh the imps the imps that then became like the the little statue goblins yeah but they're the exact same um actually they're called imps in this actually that might be the one i'm thinking of okay what are they called in three i don't know i'm gonna go yeah i know you're saying but yeah
01:24:35
Speaker
I don't know, they took the whistle from Sekiro. Remember that whistle? Yeah, they used that sound. It was a lot of effort. Zuly actually had a video she released not too long ago, going over how some of the resources that clearly existed in 3, they're like, why does this statue of a dog for the Watch Dogs of Farin
01:24:58
Speaker
Why does it have combat animations and all this stuff? Well, because it was, you know, unused into something else. And I'm fine with them doing that. But like you really do see it like things are all kind of coming together. I don't know. It's nice to be along for like the lineage of FromSoft and like the Souls type games. Oh, yeah. But again, very cool directions going in. Really like it.
01:25:26
Speaker
It's kind of like, it's like you're coming home and it's a surprise party. This is not the anti-birthday party, but this is like the actual birthday party. And all of the people are there are people that you've interacted with for how many years of your life across all of these souls games. Um, that's what Elden rings like and you've killed most of them. So it's kind of weird that they're there, but that's Elden ring.
01:25:53
Speaker
I don't know how to go with that analogy. That's my Indian analogy, Dave. I would also be very surprised if it's not game of the year. I can't imagine anything else is even close to being a contender.
01:26:06
Speaker
Is it one of the AAA things that they have essentially done the exact same thing for? And they just put like a new coat of paint on it? Okay. They, they, they do have to nominate some other games just so that there's something for this one to like push over. Just be like, eh, but it was me, right? Like I was going to be the game of the year the whole time. I heard that was pretty good. Yeah.
01:26:29
Speaker
What was that? What was Phantom? It was my joke. Oof, the bioware. Um, yeah, I don't, I think that one might've missed. It's one do. Yeah. That one didn't come out this year. That's the only reason. Geez. Hey, maybe two and it will be a contender. I don't know. Haven't checked it out yet. Yeah. Or three Nick for Nick. Who's, who's to say I wouldn't even five Nick. Maybe that's, that's a lot of Nick. That's arguably too much Nick. Um,
Listener Engagement & Farewell
01:26:59
Speaker
But yeah, if you guys have any Nick, you can feel free to send that in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com. We haven't changed the name to the Eldren Ring podcast at gmail.com. That's somebody else for now. But we will see them and we'll take it. soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook. It's been a while since I've logged in, but I assume that they're only talking about Eldren Ring on that platform at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast.
01:27:27
Speaker
And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a lovely evening. You deserve it.
01:28:01
Speaker
you