Two bosses at once. One that felt almost impossible.
The real gamechanger was switching from Unsheathe to Bloody Slash. Bloody Slash is broke af. I went from doing chip damage to the Crucible Knight to taking off 10% of his health per hit from a distance (a short distance, anyway). Of course, this louse has his shield up pretty much any time he's not attacking and you barely have any time to punish an attack you dodge before he stomps the ground and does an obnoxious AoE skill that's difficult to avoid, but I discovered it's possible to exploit a platform in the arena that makes him way more open to attacks. Of course, Bloody Slash takes off some of your HP every time you use it, but the losses are minimal if you combine it with a flask of wondrous physick that heals you continuously after use. This flask ability can also be used to counteract the effects of poison if you don't have any antidote items on you, btw.
Still a BS encounter, though. Honestly, I'm just glad they're dead.
Friendship ended with Unsheathe.
Now Bloody Slash is my best friend.
@Ralizah Congrats! Glad to see you overcoming what genuinely looks like a bloody annoying fight. I always hated duo bosses though, can’t be bothered with the crystalians in the Academy Crystal Cave for example. Unfortunately(?) it looks like I won’t be able to fight that duo boss due to my wanderings, apparently taking the big lift meant that an NPC went a bit kill happy inside that castle 😂
@nessisonett I could see this fight being way easier for someone who opted for a magic (or hybrid) build, since the Crucible Knight is apparently easy to cheese with magic damage. As a purely melee/physical ranged fighter, though, he was a nightmare. I did grab a seal and an incantation to try and damage him magically, but my stats are so low on that end that I basically did nothing to him.
Thankfully, the other boss is super easy to stagger, so he goes down easily if you're able to continuously interrupt his attacks. Although mess up your timing and even he'll claim almost your entire life bar with only a couple of hits.
Well, I just hope future boss fights are less annoying. Other than this one, ER's bosses haven't been too overwhelming.
I'm currently playing around with Weapon Arts/Skills, currently still working on pure DEX build and wielding dual Uchi katanas...
I was debating trading out 'unsheathe' on one of my Uchi swords for something else - could you explain Bloody Slash? I understand that the Uchi has 'bleed' as a passive skill, so does Bloody Slash stack with that?
And is it a 'one-off hit' skill like Unsheathe? Or is it a temporary buff that lasts for x-seconds after you trigger the art?
I'm still pretty in love with Unsheathe, but wouldn't mind having more options up my sleeve now that the difficulty is ramping... thanks!
30 hours in and I've barely even left Limgrave, other than to gather more map pieces and see what's out there. I feel like I've done about all there is to do in Limgrave though (I'm probably wrong)
@CJD87 I don't think Bloody Slash adds a bleed effect. You're coating the blade with your own blood (thus the small bite taken from your own health pool when using it) and then slashing it at enemies. The blood slash actually travels a couple of feet in front of you before dissipating, so it has pretty good range. The main thing is that it does great damage, though. So does the R2 ability on Unsheathe, but this cuts right through heavily armored enemies as well.
So, yeah, it seems to be purely damage-based like Unsheathe. Probably worth experimenting with if you're finding yourself struggling against knights and whatnot. I wish I'd equipped this earlier in the game, as a lot of heavily armored characters have given me grief in this game.
Worth mentioning that the Dex scaling on the keen affinity is better for bloody slash than unsheathe was. I have a B-rank on dex with this ash of war.
@danlk1ng Same here dude, I've only just ventured into Weeping Peninsula. I have done a bit of Stormveil Castle and Caelid, when I got transported to the latter.
@Ralizah Thanks for bloody slash reccomendation. I do have that but when I went to equip it all my stats went red, so I kept Unsheath. Will defo give it a try later though.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
30hrs in and I’m just enjoying this game more and more. This is so good! I freaking loved played the first Dark Souls. The sense of wonder and unknown, so good. I tried Dark Souls 2, Blood Born and Demon Souls but none were as enjoyable as the first time I played Dark Souls. But Elden Ring is giving me same feeling I enjoyed so much about Dark Souls, but more. I love riding Torrent around on the open map, rain, sunshine, thunderstorms, the far stretching fields and all the little nooks and crannies to explore. The jousting matches with other riders, helping out and getting help from other people. Beautiful vistas, amazing monsters, the feeling of accomplishment. SO GOOD!
@Mega-Gazz I went with Keen affinity, since it scales well with Dexterity.
I’ve been playing around and cloned the Bloody Slash AoW… applying it to each of uchi katanas - I then selected ‘blood affinity’ and have been using dual-wielding combos to achieved phenomenal bleeding on enemies! Throw in the slash itself and the damage is brutal
Of course the DEX scaling for base damage is far less desirable when doing this, but it seems you can tweak the AoW affinity any time you visit a grace point? Nice flexibility to be able to alter before a boss
Ive also just got the Bloodflame Blade incantation but my ARC and Faith stats are too low to use…
@Mega-Gazz I went with Keen affinity, since it scales well with Dexterity.
I’ve been playing around and cloned the Bloody Slash AoW… applying it to each of uchi katanas - I then selected ‘blood affinity’ and have been using dual-wielding combos to achieved phenomenal bleeding on enemies! Throw in the slash itself and the damage is brutal
Of course the DEX scaling for base damage is far less desirable when doing this, but it seems you can tweak the AoW affinity any time you visit a grace point? Nice flexibility to be able to alter before a boss
Ive also just got the Bloodflame Blade incantation but my ARC and Faith stats are too low to use…
I played around on a low level bandit quick, with blood you do get AR from arcane stat, but the bleed number doesn’t change with arcane.
Tempting to go full arcane when I can respec so discovery is high, damage scales with arc and poison is good.
Okay, sadly, I think the STR build with heavy uchigatana has to take the cake, because of how 2h stance increases effective strength by a percentage but not dex. Buffing the weapon with magic doesn’t make up for the huge loss in damage, and a bow can work well enough when range is required.
Honorable mention to Gravitas AoW, which almost made me go magic. It’s really good when int is high, a PBAoE for 280dmg. Goes down to much less damage on the str build, but still stuns all in an area, works through walls.
Sounds like everyone here has made really good progress. I'm only level 32 at the moment but I'm really enjoying it, what an excellent game. I've not done any multiplayer yet, curious to see if I'll get invaded at some point.
Looks like I will be putting more into Intelligence than planned, as some of the better Katanas require at least 18 in that stat. Also means I'll be able to dabble into some magic which I've only done briefly when I first played Dark Souls.
@LieutenantFatman Same here, and I've only seen NPC summon signs too. I'm playing online, so there is probably something I missed to activate it. Not that I'm terribly bothered about either way lol.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
@JohnnyShoulder
Looks like there's all sorts of consumables for anything related to online play including seeing summon signs. I haven't used one yet but seems like a good idea.
Fought my way through the Academy last night in a classic Soulsborne session of blood, sweat and tears. All for some magic-related items that I'll never use. It was fun though.
I got much more use out of my trip to Castle Morne. This is my favourite location so far, and I came away with a fiery torch weapon, which is wrapped in barbed wire, and has a fire-breathing special attack! The boss down on the beach was superb
@johncalmc Every time I start to think this, I get my arse kicked, so I've tried to stop thinking it. But this game certainly seems free of the sheer mental trauma of the Souls games of old, given you can just walk away from a boss who's bullying you, and go and play with someone else.
@LieutenantFatman I've never been invaded personally, but there's an item you can find/buy which lets you be "on standby" and auto-summons you to other people's worlds if they get invaded (there's a corresponding item that you can use to auto-summon a player if you get invaded). I've been summoned into other people's worlds to kill a few invaders - you get a Rune Arc if the invader is defeated too, just never been invaded myself (except by NPCs)
I had a go at invading earlier, but I spawned right in the middle of the host and their two co-op buddies, and by the time I'd had time to react to that I'd already been flattened
I suspect invasions might pick up a bit, once everyone's had time to actually finish the game and got bored of wandering round the open world, haha
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