First opinions on Elden Ring?
First opinions on Elden Ring?
Until I hit level 80, the only complete armor I ever discovered was the Carian Knight set. The second set I came across was the Crucible Knight set. So far, these are the only two full sets I've encountered. Traders occasionally sell a set, but they mostly just offer other starter armors—nothing particularly exciting. As expected, +10 is the cap for special weapons and +25 for regular ones. It wouldn’t be such an issue if I could afford the upgrade materials, but up to now I’ve only found bell bearings for Tier 6 content (+18 / +6). I kept using the Bloodhound Fang because it felt right at first and, through upgrades, always seemed to be my best weapon. Still, I didn’t really enjoy its playstyle and hoped to find a better one later. But if I knew this game forced you into one weapon path this way, I’d have chosen differently from the beginning...
Yeah, it's kinda weird. I'm guessing they will be more liberal with the higher level upgrade stones in NG+, or that they will change this in a patch. You'll find plenty as you progress in the game. For example, the Volcano Manor invasion questline gives you 3 full sets (one is the raging wolf starter set, two are completely new). There's also a full set of heavy armor next to the small church bonfire in the capital, a full set in the church of isolation, another full set if you do the (short) Dung Eater questline, a darkwraith set if you do the wolf lady questline and then go back to the firelink shrine, and so on. All of the different knight and soldier types also all drop their own unique armor pieces that you can farm. You can also get the full set + axe if you kill those dudes with yokai demon masks and dual axes in different locations (one drops the mask, another the axe, and the 3rd the set). I think the mages in the mage academy also drop their unique sets. These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. IMO the game really has a decent variety of weapons and armor so far, and I expect to find a lot more as I progress.
Love that weapon. To me it makes sense that you can't upgrade everything even late game. All the materials feel common enough to me that you can upgrade a bunch of stuff easily, but I feel you shouldn't go in expecting to get a lot of stuff to +10, which again makes sense to me. I'm just over 30 hours in now and I'm loving it. The open world is done spectacularly well. Every corner you turn reveals something new it feels like. Even when I think they have topped of I discover a new surprisingly big area again. Damage (both taken and dealt) seems to vary quite a bit. I'm at Vigor 25 now and while I'm often "fine", sometimes you get absolutely obliterated. Fine in this case meaning I can take 1, maybe 2 hits from a boss and just about survive. Stuff is starting to hit hard now though. I'm definitely going back and forth between "this is bullshit, they programmed it to attack when you heal giving you no chance" during the fight and "that was great" after the fight.
I believe a zooming camera feature could significantly reduce frustration during encounters with powerful enemies. Currently I'm facing one of the final bosses, which is so large that its actions become hard to see when you're close enough to engage. With heavy armor, anti-magic charms, and high vigor (around 1900 HP), I still take a few hits from most attacks. In late-game scenarios, they often increase difficulty by using massive health pools, powerful AoE attacks that are nearly unavoidable, and one-hit kills. It's tough to picture how players with lower vigor or less armor cope when facing classes that don't offer much protection. I suspect each second in the fight feels like a struggle, especially for those who aren't prepared for such challenges.