What games are you playing now?

[Couchpotato]

Finishing up Grim Dawn and after that The Legend of Heroes Trails from Zero.

 

[bkrueger]

It's unbelievable how fights with those knights can go from hero to zero, on a dime. Some fights I somehow manage to block and stun-lock them with my Estoc. Other fights they manage that whirl-ability and just pounce on me and pound me into the ground. Sometimes I use too many of my health potions on one knight, and can't progress further. Another time I managed to fight 2 knights without using having any potions at all. It's all a toss-up. But it's intense as hell.

And I double my curses at those taloned falcons. Whoever designed those is just evil.

EDIT: Also, why the f am I recovering less runes than I'm sure I had when I died? Is there some sort of mechanic for that?

EDIT2: hm, seems the "gatekeeper" is stealing them? Is it the dude from the entrance of Stormveil? Weird mechanic. He stole like 30% of them.

Note that some of the falcons sit on explodable barrels. So if you have fire arrows...
With regard to the knights: I have to admit, that in my first playthrough I shot them with my bow from places they couldn't reach (or by kiting). Fortunately, the Samurai class has a bow as starting gear (but you can also find a great crossbow in roundtable keep).
As @JDR13's link says, you shouldn't kill the gatekeeper because you will otherwise miss a goodie as reward after you completed a specific side quest.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

As @JDR13's link says, you shouldn't kill the gatekeeper because you will otherwise miss a goodie as reward after you completed a specific side quest.

So it's a specific quest reward, and not just one of the items he sells later on? I watched part of a playthrough for Stormveil, and the dude killed Gostoc and took his bell. Then took it to the old ladies in Roundtable Keep, to access his store inventory. So the reward you're talking about can't just be bought?

 

[bkrueger]

So it's a specific quest reward, and not just one of the items he sells later on? I watched part of a playthrough for Stormveil, and the dude killed Gostoc and took his bell. Then took it to the old ladies in Roundtable Keep, to access his store inventory. So the reward you're talking about can't just be bought?

It can be bought later, but it appears in his inventory only after the end of that side quest. That will be missed if you kill him before that. Anyway I personally wouldn't kill him for role-playing reasons anyhow, because he has helped me to get into the castle. (Edit: In general I would never attack somebody, who doesn't attack me...)
By the way, once you have activated a certain elevator by reaching its lower end and using it once, you do not need to get past those knights again and again, even if you die later on. (I assume you are at a site of grace high up in the castle right now.)
That is a general strategy I follow in such dungeons: Find either the next site of grace as fast as possible or find the next shortcut (elevator or door, which is only opened from one side, but afterwards usable from both sides) back to the last site of grace. Once you have found enough of these, you can explore in detail without having to repeat the same ways and fights again and again. It may also make sense to simply avoid hard fights by sneaking or running, while you are trying to find the next site of grace or shortcut. You can avoid several of the knights by timing their routes and sneaking. TLDR: First explore the infrastructure for fast travelling in a map and clear everything in detail later.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

It can be bought later, but it appears in his inventory only after the end of that side quest. That will be missed if you kill him before that. Anyway I personally wouldn't kill him for role-playing reasons anyhow, because he has helped me to get into the castle. (Edit: In general I would never attack somebody, who doesn't attack me...)

Well, he does steal your runes. And locks you in with that knight, and laughs about it.

 

[bkrueger]

Well, he does steal your runes. And locks you in with that knight, and laughs about it.

That is a joke among friends, don't be a sissy!
On a serious note, I believe that he just wants to find out, whether you are really strong enough to free the castle. And the money is his compensation for helping you (or not, in fact you can watch him loot other corpses too).

 

[JDR13]

Anyway I personally wouldn't kill him for role-playing reasons anyhow, because he has helped me to get into the castle. (Edit: In general I would never attack somebody, who doesn't attack me...)

Pfft... I'd beat him down in a heartbeat if he didn't sell that Dragon Stone later on.

 

[bkrueger]

Pfft... I'd beat him down in a heartbeat if he didn't sell that Dragon Stone later on.

That adds evidence to my theory that in role playing games everybody plays himself in the end. If somebody likes killing weak old men, he will not hesitate to do this also in a game.

 

[JDR13]

That adds evidence to my theory that in role playing games everybody plays himself in the end. If somebody likes killing weak old men, he will not hesitate to do this also in a game.

Well, there are certainly no weak old men in Elden Ring, and even if there were, they would probably still kill you with a few hits.

 

[bkrueger]

Well, there are certainly no weak old men in Elden Ring, and even if there were, they would probably still kill you with a few hits.

There are many small groups of old men in the open world who look similar to the gatekeeper and who you can easily kill. They are probably civilians from the time before everything broke down. They often walk around with torches and flags or are on all fours and gathering up things from the ground. Yes, they can kill you in a few hits if you don't do anything. But since they usually attack first...
(Edit: typo.)

 

[duerer]

Long time no see, but anyway:
I have a blast with the recent strategy rpg spree, namely:

The Diofield Chronicle (XsX, also on everything)
Gut reactions after 10 hours:
A breath of fresh air. Don't let the reviews fool you, try out the demo. The gameplay is a blast, IMHO the best RTS on consoles (somewhat straightforward, but I don't mind... see below). The "bad story" is nonsense - the story is good, but you have to invest in it. Do not expect any epic Final Fantasy-esque cutscenes - this is a modest title and I like it this way (sick and tired of super flashy, gazillion dollar boredom titles)

Triangle Strategy (Switch, also on PC)
Gut reactions after 20 hours:
This is no FF Tactics, and this is fine. Contrary to Diofield, the story is very involved, somewhat overwritten, but great. Don't let the cutesy 16 bit sprites fool you: this is adult entertainment (finally!)
As for the gameplay: while Diofield is straightforward, Triangle is all about experimentation. Do not listen to the whiners that you cannot change your unit's classes - this is a virtue, not a defect: you can still customize'em to death, but within a general template, so you'll won't get lost (think of FFXII's original free-form character growth vs the new FFXII Zodiac job templates).

All in all the two games nicely complement each other, and I highly recommend them to light strategy game fans (this ain't no Matrix games, after all...).

(Also, just recently realized: now that we are at the edge of global political chaos, intrinsically I started playing politically charged war tactics games... hmmmmmmmmmmm )

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Seems while exploring the open world around Limgrave I completely missed one particular encounter that completely eases the fights against knights in Stormveil. There's a corrupted knight or something that has a curved snake-like sword, where it's attack has a great swing forwards and then a backwards retreat. I saw it in a playthrough, and it seems it's mandatory against knights.

The only encounters that still give me serious grief are the fucking vultures, the fire-breathing ones especially. Holy shit. I think I tried 2-3 times to kill 2 of them, that are right before the entrance to Godric. And each time I find some way to get myself killed by those. And it would be fine, unless I was also carrying 10k runes, of which I kept losing 3k on death due to that fucking gatekeeper.

I also managed to cheese that multi-arm creature similar to the one you die just upon starting the game. I spammed it with bolts from outside a door-frame it couldn't get through. And I'm not even sorry. I'll take any opportunity to lessen the frustration.

I still have one or two stone-key areas to unlock, but otherwise I think I'm ready for Godrick.

 

[JFarrell71]

Seems while exploring the open world around Limgrave I completely missed one particular encounter that completely eases the fights against knights in Stormveil. There's a corrupted knight or something that has a curved snake-like sword, where it's attack has a great swing forwards and then a backwards retreat. I saw it in a playthrough, and it seems it's mandatory against knights.

Exactly the weapon I favored against them.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Well, I managed to clear all of Stormveil. After doing most of it by myself I also looked over a 100% guide for anything else I missed. And I missed quite a bit. You really have to keep your eyes peeled constantly for any ledge or any point that feels like you could push to get out of your way. And it was great. If they keep this sort of puzzly design throughout it'll be great.

I also managed to kill Godric the Grafted on my second try somehow. I used everything I had, summons and the AI tarnished. Swung around quite a bit. And right towards the end I got a godsent of a poise break on him, and then somehow his health jumped from the last 15% to zero. I'm not sure what happened. Either me or the AI tarnished hit a critical or something. And he was gone.

Anyway, 2 bosses down, dozens more to go? Yeah, at this rate I'll take me forever. The worst thing would be to get burned out, and then have to drop it. And there's no way I'm picked it up again from wherever I drop it. Having lost all practice in the meantime.

 

[JFarrell71]

Anyway, 2 bosses down, dozens more to go? Yeah, at this rate I'll take me forever. The worst thing would be to get burned out, and then have to drop it. And there's no way I'm picked it up again from wherever I drop it. Having lost all practice in the meantime.

We're not the same person, obviously, but you might be surprised. I've often come back to FROM games just because they scratch a gameplay itch that nothing else does and it never feels like I'm starting over.

I played Elden Ring for over a 100 hours but I didn't finish it. I hope to revisit someday. Not to finish it necessarily, just to play it. I don't care that much about the ending in these games. It's the journey that interests me.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

We're not the same person, obviously, but you might be surprised. I've often come back to FROM games just because they scratch a gameplay itch that nothing else does and it never feels like I'm starting over.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like me. In these sorts of games, that have a high skill ceiling or a lot of systems knowledge, if I take a long break I just forget too much and become rusty. And if I try to just resume I end up having an awful time. Theoretically, if I were to push through, enough to get acclimated again, I should be able to get back up to date. But most of the time I just restart.

In this game though, that might not be feasible. Since so much is exploration. And that's done the first time you do it. On the other hand, given enough time off I might just forget enough about it, that it sort of still warrants exploration. But I'm getting ahead of myself. No plans to quit just yet. But I am feeling a bit direction-less. I'm thinking of doing the Weeping Peninsula next, and postponing exploring to the north for later, since that direction seems way more open, and I like to wrap up areas if possible.

 

[bkrueger]

I am in my third Elden Ring replay with the same character (something like game++). Also briefly started from scratch with a different character in between, but for some reason found that not as fun as replaying with the old one. Hour count is 600 now. I am still missing one dragon and one ending, then I will have all achievements (which is no end in itself for me, but a consequence of trying to do everything in the game).

Must be some kind of weird addiction...

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I am in my third Elden Ring replay with the same character (something like game++). Also briefly started from scratch with a different character in between, but for some reason found that not as fun as replaying with the old one. Hour count is 600 now. I am still missing one dragon and one ending, then I will have all achievements (which is no end in itself for me, but a consequence of trying to do everything in the game).

Must be some kind of weird addiction...

Holy smokes, 600h.

I've also done some progressing of my own. I've killed the dragon in the swamp, on my third try. Took a bit of learning the ropes with the horse, but it felt great. They really did wonders with how well the horse controls and how you have to use it in certain fights.

I've also clear a bunch of new side dungeons, but almost all of them still pretty superficial. Except for 2 or 3 of them which were pretty deep caverns. I loved those. I also cleared around half of Weeping Peninsula, and apparently even though I thought I didn't progress the lady's quest (the ones on the side of the road asking you to go to castle Morne, I believe), this time when I went that way I found her dead. I guess there's either a time limit, or something did trigger her death. Anyway.

Something weird did happen, which I'm not sure how to explain. I'd been using Bloodhound's fang for some time now (still at +2 for a long time). But I hadn't used its default ash of war in a long time. Since clearing Stormveil, where I made a lot of use of its animation; that allowed me to slash forward and then jump back out of the way. Well, I tried it again and the whole animation seems to have been replaced with a new attack animation. A forward jump spin and slash or something, and I can't seem to get the old animation. Did the animation change due to upgrading the weapon? Or what the hell happened? I think I tried it with both light and heavy? But now I'm not so sure.

 

[JFarrell71]

The Fang was/is one of my main three weapons and nothing ever changed about its attack for me. You can change the abilities on weapons. Are you sure you didn't do that, perhaps by accident? Upgrading the bonus doesn't do that.

 

[bkrueger]

Holy smokes, 600h.

I've also done some progressing of my own. I've killed the dragon in the swamp, on my third try. Took a bit of learning the ropes with the horse, but it felt great. They really did wonders with how well the horse controls and how you have to use it in certain fights.

I've also clear a bunch of new side dungeons, but almost all of them still pretty superficial. Except for 2 or 3 of them which were pretty deep caverns. I loved those. I also cleared around half of Weeping Peninsula, and apparently even though I thought I didn't progress the lady's quest (the ones on the side of the road asking you to go to castle Morne, I believe), this time when I went that way I found her dead. I guess there's either a time limit, or something did trigger her death. Anyway.

Something weird did happen, which I'm not sure how to explain. I'd been using Bloodhound's fang for some time now (still at +2 for a long time). But I hadn't used its default ash of war in a long time. Since clearing Stormveil, where I made a lot of use of its animation; that allowed me to slash forward and then jump back out of the way. Well, I tried it again and the whole animation seems to have been replaced with a new attack animation. A forward jump spin and slash or something, and I can't seem to get the old animation. Did the animation change due to upgrading the weapon? Or what the hell happened? I think I tried it with both light and heavy? But now I'm not so sure.

There was a patch to 1.07 yesterday and in fact they made a lot of changes to weapons for balancing reasons. May be you check the patch notes, whether you weapon was affected.

W.r.t. the dead lady: Did you kill the lion-like boss at castle Mourne? That triggers it iirc. You should talk to her dad in order to meet him again later.

The dragon in the swamp: You mean the one near the starting area? I have to admit that I killed the poor beast with my bow from a cliff as one of my first enemies in the game, since he has no chance to hit you there; in the later ones I did it in melee, but I had the mimic tear ash now, so that also wasn't really fair....

Yes horse fighting is surly worth learning, but I always confuse right and left swings. So I use the horse mainly for quick hit and run attacks if I don't have the patience to fight a slow melee enemy on foot.