Got It Made

So, in an unusual development, I am writing up a review of a game I did not finish. My brother generously gifted me "Shadow of the Erdtree", the long-anticipated expansion to Elden Ring. I made it to the final boss and have died a ridiculous number of times, so rather than letting my positive feelings get overwashed with frustration I think I'll call this the end. The journey has been so fantastic that I still want to capture my thoughts and opinions!

MINI SPOILERS

I've mostly avoided information about the expansion heading into it; the one review I did read was Gene Park's typically excellent writeup in the Washington Post, and I caught a couple of drive-by comments in social media.

The consensus is correct that this is a significant amount of new content; it's shorter than the base game, but long enough to plausibly be a stand-alone came in its own right. For the most part it's more of the stuff from Elden Ring and not so much new mechanics: new lands to explore, dungeons and legacy dungeons, bosses, weapons, spells, spirit ashes, ashes of war, remembrances, NPCs, quests, and so on. The main adjustment from the base game is a parallel leveling mechanic: you can still gain XP and levels as usual, but a more important progression is collecting Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes, which respectively buff your character and your summons, but only within the new areas of the DLC. There aren't any more Golden Seeds or Sacred Tears to increase your Flask potency or uses. You might be able to do some stuff here from the late-mid or mid-late game, but I doubt you could beat it (at least at my skill level) before coming close to finishing the base game.

From my limited pre-playing information, I had gotten the impression that there's less exploration in the DLC, but that is not the case: there's still plenty of terrain to roam around in, random points of interest to discover, beautiful vistas to see. I'm really glad, since the free-roaming open world was probably my single favorite aspect of the base game.

There are fewer basic dungeons in the expansion, which is mildly disappointing - those were my second-favorite part of the base game, and I really adored the rhythm of finding, exploring, and defeating a mid-sized chunk of content in a single play-session. There are still a few here, but it feels like there are as many of the massive Legacy Dungeons as the simple basic dungeons. Legacy dungeons are cool, but can also feel overwhelming to navigate.

There have been a few patches between the time the game came out and when I played it, and I think I'm glad I waited; from what I've read, the difficulty was very overtuned on release. By the time that I played it fit the "tough but fair" mode that I've come to expect from Elden Ring. As a sorcerer, my MO is to stay at range and try to nuke down enemies before they can reach me; for boss fights, I typically use my Greatshield Soldier Ashes to try and keep the boss occupied while I take care of business. This isn't always feasible, which keeps things fun and interesting.

One aspect that was present in the base game but far more pronounced here is the creative use of vertical space. Looking at the map can be very deceiving; two areas may look close together, but be separated by thousands of vertical feet, and you may need to travel to the other side of the map to find a way to climb up or down to the right level and then retrace your steps.

I was occasionally frustrated by just how to find certain areas of the map. This was true in the base game as well; I don't think I ever would have found the Consecrated Snowfields or Mohg's Palace without looking up online guides. In Shadow of the Erdtree, I reached the final boss with roughly half the map still undiscovered. I was able to organically find a few of the routes by revisiting and re-exploring nearby places, but needed to search online for a few others.

When I did reach those unexplored places, they generally were much more barren than the rest of the game. There are quite a few huge areas that might only have a single treasure or a boss and nothing else. Still, even if there isn't a ton of gameplay they are still visually really distinct and fun to explore.

MEGA SPOILERS

The writing also maintains the high standards of the base game. The lore is very opaque and vague, which I adore. But there are a few stretches that seem significantly clearer than the base game, particularly Count Ymir and the various knights following Miquella.

Some things seem to reference and build on existing lore from the base game. You can meet the Lord of Frenzied Flame, and there's a chain of dragon encounters that refers to Placidusax. The main story, of course, revolves around Miquella, who is frequently referenced in Elden Ring but never seen. It seems that Miquella has the ability to inspire love, which sounds wholesome but unsurprisingly has an ominous overtone in the context of this game.

Giving some more detail to what I said before: I've cleared most of the game that I'm aware of, though I haven't been following any guides and I'm sure there are things I'm missing. I've reached level 18 for the Scadutree Blessing and level 9 for the Revered Spirit Blessing. There was one dungeon with a miserable Death mechanic that I nope'd out on. I haven't been able to defeat the huge Sunflower thing or Promised Consort Radahn; for Radahn, I've gotten to the second phase a couple of times but haven't gotten close to beating them.

END SPOILERS

I still haven't decided whether to head back and play the previous FromSoftware games in the Dark Souls franchise, but Elden Ring has been such a fantastic experience that I remain tempted to do so. Apparently they have a long-standing reputation for meaty and enjoyable expansions, and it's great to see them maintaining and expanding that faculty here. I think Shadow of the Erdtree is more than worth the price, and it's given me many weeks of gaming fun that I think I'll still remember fondly even without having finished it.

Ring Around the Scarlet Rot

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally finished Elden Ring! I started playing back in the spring of 2023, and had gotten decently far into the game before pausing it to switch over to Baldur's Gate 3. After the holidays I picked it back up and have been enjoying getting back into it.

 

I wasn't sure if I would be able to get back into it, after a months-long absence. In the past when I've taken prolonged absences from, say, MMORPGs, I've hit such a powerful wall when coming back that I just give up: unable to remember my character's abilities or combat moves. And even games I loved like the original Divinity: Original Sin weren't able to recover after holidays, as the plethora of quests and mechanics of the midgame feel too overwhelming to reconstruct.

 

I was worried that Elden Ring would be even worse - unlike other RPGs, this is specifically an action-RPG, and requires a fair degree of reflexes and hand-eye coordination that I'd cultivated in my months of play. So I was pleasantly surprised that it didn't take a whole lot of time at all to get back into the swing of things. Part of that may be due to this being a controller-based game, which necessarily limits the number of mechanical options available, but also may tap into muscle memory better than a mouse and keyboard would. And unlike the sprawling western CRPGs I tend to play, I wasn't coming back to 30 unfinished side quests in varied states of progress scattered across multiple map zones.

 

Diving back into it, I realized that one of the many things I love about Elden Ring is the rhythm of play. My favorite sections might be the dungeons. You'll discover one while traveling the overworld, and either start it or mark on your map for later. You'll cautiously proceed into the dungeon, discovering what kind of creatures inhabit it and how best to fight them. You'll learn its route - some are linear, some have branches, some have pretty complex networks of passageways. You may find levers that open up shortcuts and allow you to bypass middle sections on subsequent delivings. Eventually you find a boss, fight them, maybe fight a few more times until you win, and are rewarded with some unique equipment and a large number of runes, usually enough to level up. I find that doing a full clear of a dungeon from start to finish usually takes me about 30 minutes, which is a perfect amount of time between getting home from work and starting dinner, or after a dog walk and before bed. It's just nice to finish something in a single sitting: still making progress towards your overall goals (higher levels, more power), but just checking something off as "done", without having a lot of things lingering.

 

That might be the key development of Elden Ring in particular, its marriage of the open world with dungeons. The open world is great for roaming around, seeing beautiful vistas, discovering things: it's (a few specific areas notwithstanding) a peaceful and relaxing vibe. The dungeons, in contrast, are meaningful, rewarding careful planning and careful play.

 

I also need to shout out the art direction once more. Seeing screenshots of this game (and other Dark Souls games) was a huge factor attracting me to it in the first place, and it's all the more amazing to be playing inside these enormous, awesome, weird, dark, compelling, beautiful spaces, alongside monstrous and delicately unnerving creatures. The art reminds me a lot of Brom - not the exact style, but the "dark fantasy" vibe is better realized here than in any other fantasy RPG I can remember playing.

 

While I loved the game, it did start to feel a little less fun (albeit more epic) as I headed into the endgame. The end is mostly a series of Legacy Dungeons - much larger than standard Dungeons, with multiple Sites of Grace (save points), they have more freedom of movement than regular dungeons but without the ease and openness of the open world. They aren't bad by any means, but I found myself missing that rhythm of doing dungeons, exploring and advancing the plot.

MINI SPOILERS

Let's talk about some mechanical stuff. I was pretty much a pure Sorcerer through the whole game. My staff progression was Astrologer Staff -> Meteorite Staff -> Academy Glintstone Staff -> Carian Regal Scepter. I updated the scepter to +10 by the end. As a backup melee weapon, I had a Short Sword for the first part of the game, then a Misericorde for the rest, which I also upgraded to the highest level.

 

Very late in the game, I started very situationally wielding a Horn Bow. This was specifically for toggling those fire/ice pillar things in certain dungeons. You usually need to time their blasts and carefully run between safe spots before getting close enough to bonk them. But you can totally just shoot an arrow at them from a distance and turn them off (or on) with no trouble at all. It might be possible to do this with spells, but I never found a good way to reliably free-aim them, and the bow works much better. I never bothered to invest the stats to wield the bow, but I'd pop on Radagon's Soreseal when I needed to equip it.

Speaking of stats: By the end of the game, I was INT 80, VIG 60, MIND 40. I think Endurance was around 33 before heading into the endgame, and around 38 by the end. DEX was 13, STR and FAI both below 10.

 

Earlier in the game, I focused on stat-boosting Talismans, especially Radagon and Marika's Scarseals / Soreseals. Once you get close to the caps, though, further boosts don't really help you. My end-game loadout was the Green Turtle Talisman (faster stamina recharge - I found that stamina was always a more limiting factor than FP), Bull Goat Talisman (to reach 101+ Poise), and the Graven-Mass Talisman (boosting sorcery power). For the last slot, I most often rocked the Pearldrake Talisman +2, which boosts non-physical damage negation; my armor was already pretty good at physical negation, so the talisman helped fill a gap. But I would totally swap it out for boss fights, like the Dragoncrest Shield for physical negation or the Haligdrake Talisman for holy negation.

 

For helms, for the first part of the game I used the best INT-boosting helm I could find, which for a long time meant the Twinsage. After I got above 70 INT, though, I swapped it out for the Pumpkin Helmet, which has much better damage reduction and poise, and also protects against headshots.

 

For the rest of the armor, in general I tried to wear the heaviest armor I could while still keeping a Medium roll. One exception was for gauntlets, I used the Briar ones, which inflict a small amount of damage on contact with an enemy. I wore these specifically for dealing with undead enemies: I hate hate hate the respawning mechanic, especially as a sorcery user where you have a very narrow window of time in which you can target the body before it regens. With the Briar armor, though, you can just roll through the skeleton and they'll die, which is great. Even 1 point of damage does the trick, so I just wear the gauntlets for that. For the rest of the armor, I used the Carian Knight set for much of the midgame, and Tree Sentinel for the endgame. (At a couple of points in the game where I had to wade into a disgustingly large pool of Scarlet Rot, I used the Mushroom Set for the highest Immunity.)

 

As a sorcerer, I mostly focused on high-damage attacks, so for Spirit Ashes I tried to get tanky summons that could distract enemies while I focused on attacking from range. Early on I used the Lone Wolf ashes, then the Jellyfish. Around the midpoint I got Greatshield Soldiers, which are amazing: even a single one would be good, as they can block a lot of damage, but you get five, which also acts as a wall to prevent your foe from moving. I used those for most fights, but when that didn't cut it I'd use my Mimic Tear, which duplicates myself but with more HP.

 

I didn't really use any Ashes of War in this playthrough.

I had a pretty completionist playthough of the game: I'm sure I didn't 100% it, but I did pretty much everything I could find in the game. I think there were two dungeons I nope'd out on, both of which had Chariots. I was fairly engaged in the wiki for my playthrough. I didn't follow a walkthrough for the game or anything like that, but if I got stuck on a puzzle or an encounter for long enough I didn't feel bad about looking up guidance online.

 

Without the wiki, I almost certainly wouldn't have discovered multiple huge optional areas in the game, like the Consecrated Snowfield and Miquella's Haligtree. I've thought a lot about how much of game design in 2024 rests on the knowledge that gamers can and will collaborate online to share and find information. Probably something like 0.5% of players would organically find their way to these areas in a blind playthrough, but since so much of the culture of gameplaying is social, many more will be able to experience them.

 

And, similarly, even the side-quests in this game almost require a wiki to complete them. Not even because they're especially obtuse, just because it's so easy to completely miss them: there's no giant pointing arrows or quest markers on your map, and you can easily blow past an NPC without even realizing they're there. I'm not complaining, exactly: the game is doing what it's trying to do, and as a result occupying a very unique spot in the field.

MEGA SPOILERS

Speaking of side-quests: These ultimately unlock the main endings to the game. You can get the default ending by defeating the final boss, but options for alternate endings can be unlocked by completing certain side-quests.

 

I've beaten the game, and I still don't totally understand what the main plot is. I'll likely dip into a YouTube video or something now that I'm done; I've been trying to remain unspoiled while playing. In general, the story is pretty powerful due to how sparse and evocative it is. In most RPGs, you get lots of dialog and lore books that provide different perspectives on any given concept. In Elden Ring, you'll get a single brief sentence of lore, and need to extrapolate a much larger meaning from that. It's kind of deduction rather than induction, which sort of gives the feeling of a spiritual fumbling towards some greater truth, rather than an investigator chasing down the solution to a mystery.

 

But even though I'm likely wrong, here's my vague understanding of the plot:

 

This game takes place in a separate universe from ours, in a world called the Lands Between. In an earlier primordial time, life force ebbed and flowed: creatures were born, would grow and procreate and die, and the cycle would continue. The power of this cycle was incarnated in the Elden Ring. An early Elden Lord was Godfrey, who basically guided the life of the world.

 

Then there's the Erdtree. I'm not totally clear on the relationship of the Erdtree with the Elden Ring, but the Erdtree seems to be a sort of depository of life-force in the world. When people die, their souls are returned to the Erdtree, and then are reborn again. I think this is an in-game explanation for the game mechanics of respawning: when you die, and then respawn, you aren't rewinding time and doing things differently: you did die before, and then your soul was reborn in your body. Likewise, all the enemies respawn for the same reason: even if they died, death isn't eternal.

 

At some point in the past, the Shattering occurred. This caused the Elden Ring to split into multiple fragments. Each of these was fashioned into a Rune, and the owner of each Rune became a demi-god. These demigods wielded enormous power over other living creatures. However, because the Elden Ring was not intact, the cycle of life froze. The same beings would die and be reborn over and over again, instead of old things ending and new things starting.

 

Many of the major NPCs/bosses in the game seem to have storylines tied to the Shattering, which also causes strife and division among the extended family tied to the rulership of the world. Somewhere within there, General Radahn stopped the movement of stars in the sky, freezing some ancient power tied with the night sky. He led armies in rebellion against the lord. A woman, Malenia, created the Scarlet Rot in response, bringing Radahn's armies to ruin and his mind to madness. Various demigods sought to rule from the traditional capital of Leyndell, or rejected the old gods and followed the path of blasphemy, or retreated in sadness from the world and created bubbles of sanctuary sealed off from strife.

 

In theory, any person could gather all of the Great Runes and use them to reforge the Elden Ring, in the process becoming a new Elden Lord and overseeing a healthily functioning world. That's the path you're on for most of the game. As a Tarnished, you are one of the many many people seeking Great Runes.

 

Late in the game, you collect enough Runes where you could reforge the Ring. However, at this point you find that the way is blocked by the Erdtree. It seems that the Erdtree likes things the way that they are, with itself as kind of a chokepoint over the flow of life. This causes consternation and upheaval among the various great powers that are trying to mend the Ring, as they haven't contemplated what to do in the face of an intransigent Erdtree.

 

The game can go a few different ways from here. In my playthrough, my Finger Maiden, a woman named Melina, was willing to go against the letter of the law in order to uphold the spirit: the only way for life to resume is for the Erdtree, the repository of life, to die. She immolates herself as kindling to light the Erdtree on fire. After this, you fight the Beast Clergyman Guranq, later revealed to be the Black Blade Maliketh (sp), the keeper of Destined Death. Once he is defeated, Destined Death is loosed in the world, which allows the Erdtree to die, which in turn opens the way for the Elden Ring to be reforged.

 

The current ruler of the world is Queen Marika, though I'm not clear on whether she's actually an active ruling presence or not: you never fight her, and at the end she just appears as a hollow statue. You can mend the ring in a few different ways, which set the tenor for how the world will work going forward.

 

In my case, I summoned Ranni, who is an ancient being affiliated with the Dark Moon. I'm not totally clear on the chronology here, whether this predates the Erdtree or not. She accepts the power of the Elden Ring and brings the world back under the cool alignment of the moon, with you as her consort.

 

Favorite area: Liurnia of the Lakes

 

Favorite Boss (Story): Radahn

 

Favorite Boss (Mechanics): Mohg

 

Favorite NPC: Sellen. No, wait! Iron Fist Alexander!

 

Favorite Dungeon: Cave of the Forlorn

Favorite Legacy Dungeon: Stormveil

 

Favorite Merchant: War Counselor Iji. (Runner-up: Miriel Pastor of Vows)

 

Favorite Spell: I used Magic Glintblade by far the most, but Ranni's Dark Moon was the coolest

Favorite Crystal Tear: Opaline Hardtear

Favorite Consumable: I used Preserving Bolus the most, but they are not fun! Maybe Boiled Crab.

END SPOILERS

I feel like I ought to be writing a lot more about this game, given how much I've been playing it and how much I enjoy it... but I guess the downside of a fairly minimalist story is that I have a lot less than usual to say about it!

 

 

This is my first game in the Dark Souls vein, and while I've loved it, I'm not sure yet whether I'll try any other FromSoftware games. I do see the appeal after playing this: it is hard, but fair, and it feels immensely satisfying to overcome obstacles after repeated failure by examining your mistakes and then executing well. But I honestly don't know if I'd have the patience to go through something like that again, without the ease and visual distraction of the open world to break up more punishing sections. Still, I do feel a certain sense of achievement for Having Beaten A Souls-Like Game, and who knows, maybe I will go back for another in the future!

Rest In Coffin

So, I was vaguely hoping to wrap up Elden Ring prior to Baldur's Gate III officially releasing on August 3rd. That's not happening! I probably could have done it if I just focused on the main quest, but I'm congenitally incapable of turning down side quests, and I know I haven't even opened up half of the map. So I wanted to write this post to kind of capture where I am at the moment, with the vague thought that I'll likely set this aside for several months while I quest in Faerun, before hopefully returning to the Lands Between. (That said, if there do end up being game-breaking bugs in BG3 [unlikely] or I don't dig the game [even more unlikely], I may come back to Elden Ring while BG3 gets its initial patches.)

 

Before spoilers, some gameplay things:

In an earlier post, I confidently wrote about how I'm intentionally boosting INT to increase damage for my sorcerer, while paying less attention to Vigor/Health, with the thinking that the best defense is to kill enemies before they can reach me. I've since done a bit more online reading about theorycrafting, and am grokking why the current recommendation is to initially prioritize leveling Vigor, with just enough in the offensive stat to allow you to wield your weapon or catalyst (staff, seal, etc.).

The reason for this comes down to how damage is calculated in the game. A given weapon does a flat amount of damage, plus an additional amount that scales based on your stat. The amount that the stat contributes varies based on the scaling level of the weapon. So, as a made-up example, a short sword might do 20 points of flat damage, plus a "B" level of scaling based on DEX. If you have 10 points of DEX, this might add an extra 5 points of damage; if you have 20 points of DEX, it might add an extra 10 points of damage, for a total of 30. As you continue through the game, you will be able to level up your weapons. This will increase the flat damage, but also the scaling amount. After several upgrades, that same short sword might now do 35 flat damage plus S scaling. That same 10 points of DEX could now give 15 more points of damage, while that same 20 points of DEX would now give 30, for a total of 65 damage.

 

The point is, early in the game, most of the equipment you find will have a low scaling value, so you don't get much incremental benefit by leveling up your attack stats. In contrast, the extra Health you get from Vigor is consistent throughout the whole game: leveling up Vigor from 10 to 11 will always give the same number of extra HP. Because of this, there's a benefit to front-loading your Vigor points early in the game, because you're already getting the full benefit of that investment. Offensive stat points can be spent later, shortly before you start getting those higher scaling amounts.

All that said, in my very specific case of a sorcerer who was wielding the Meteorite Staff, my build was still OK: the Meteorite staff can't be upgraded, but has "S"-level scaling for sorcery, so I was getting full benefits from the moment I found that staff. Which also helps me understand why so many online guides recommended picking it up ASAP for these types of builds!

 

 

I've also been warned that thee is a big spike late in the game, when enemies can suddenly do a lot more damage in a single hit. Having a big fat hit bar will be essential for getting through that part, and you might as well have extra health before then anyways.

 

Like almost every RPG, health is ultimately the single most important resource: if it gets reduced to 0, you die. This can happen in a lot of ways (fall damage, poison effects, lots of little pinpricks over time, some big swings that connect), but for most people most death will occur during boss fights. Bosses in Elden Ring are tough, resourceful, have unique mechanics and lots of health. As I've noted before, boss fights can feel a lot like puzzles, in some ways like in The Witcher 3: learning about your opponent will allow you to prepare for them, applying the best buffs ahead of time or discovering how to counter their moves in combat. Unlike The Witcher 3, where you could do that research by Witching around the enemy in advance, in Elden Ring you usually get that damage by dying a lot. I've had a lot of moments of going "Oh, OK, that guy swings his whip twice, so I can't just dodge the first and then attack, I need to dodge both before there will be a window."

 

Partly because of this, it can be really hard to decide when to keep attempting a boss and when to give up. IF you could pull off every move with perfect timing and perfectly read everything your foe would do, you could definitely beat him/her/it/them. If you mess up too many times, you'll fail. Having more health will let you mess up a few more times, and having more offensive power will shorten the duration of the fight and give fewer opportunities for failure. I've also had the experience many times of fighting a boss, getting them down to ~5% health before dying, then trying again another dozen times without getting them below 80%. I don't really have a hard and fast rule for when to give up... for sure if I've died a lot of haven't gotten them down, but if my frustration rises too high I may call it quits even if I've gotten close multiple times. When this happens, I just open the map and add a Skull marker to the spot. I'll come back 10-20 levels later and almost invariably stomp the floor with them.

 

One of the things I really love about Elden Ring is how different types of areas have different modes of play that reward different strengths. Boss fights are mostly about skill and secondarily about stats. You'll chug your Flask of Wondrous Physick, maybe chug a consumable, and join the dance, maybe using some potions during the fight. Bosses are typically at the end of long dungeons, and dungeons are a game that in my opinion is more about resource management. Particularly as a sorcerer, I have a finite amount of FP available to cast all the spells I'm going to cast between the beginning and end of the dungeon. That FP is based on my Mind, the number of Golden Seeds I've collected and how many Flasks of Cerulean Tears I allocated at the Grace. Even if I'm outplaying all of the enemies in the dungeon, if I run out of FP along the way I'll need to bail and return to the start, respawning the enemies.

To some extent, this is a little like boss fights where the next time through you'll likely do better. I might have learned that I only need a single cast to take down a particular enemy, so I won't spam my spell and waste FP. I may have already picked up a collectible down one branch, so on my next run I can skip that branch and the enemies inside it, saving my resource for the main branch and the boss. But in some cases I just realize that I need to go explore elsewhere, level up and get more Seeds so I can have the resources I need to finish the dungeon.

 

There's also the Overworld portion. The thing that's unique about this is that defeating groups of enemies will grant you recharges of spent Flasks. This leads to a more open-ended, wandering feel to things: unlike a dungeon, which has a tight beginning with you at full health and resources, and a tight end where you're bloodied and exhausted but victorious (or just bloodied and dead), in the open world you're typically near, but not at, full Health and FP, and have several, but not necessarily all, of your Flasks. What's kind of fun is that you can just keep wandering indefinitely, without needing to visit Sites of Grace - in fact, I often prefer to avoid them, to keep the map depopulated. Overall the Overworld is much easier than the rest of the game, and I think it's nice to have a rhythm which makes the tense parts feel more tense.

 

 

Monsters in the overworld tend not to be too worrisome. There aren't any yellow-fog gates, and everything is out in the open, so if you do get into trouble you can typically just GTFO on Torrent's back; you can even escape boss fights this way. The big concerns here are fall damage and, to a lesser extent, status effects. Scarlet Rot is really nasty in the early game but can be easily avoided by staying on horseback; stay out of fights to avoid getting knocked off! Death Blight can kill you in a few seconds, so move quickly to get out of it. Actually, in general, "run away" is a good all-purpose response to bad things happening in the overworld.

Scarlet Rot is just about my least favorite thing in the game, and for quite a while I've put off doing things that involve this effect. Much like with bosses, I'd drop a marker on my map that basically means "Nope" and then move on. I recently kind of had to deal with Scarlet Rot, so I did a bit of reason on how to handle it. The main thing to do is get your Immunity as high as you can. This slows down the rate at which the Rot gauge will fill up. Once Rot does fill up, you will start taking significant DoT. For some DoT effects like Poison, you can potentially heal through it with enough Flasks of Crimson Tears; in my experience, you can't heal through Scarlet Rot, but if aren't in combat you can fast-travel to a Site of Grace to clear the effect. There's also a rare craftable and consumable item called a Preserving Bolus that helps with this, but I'm honestly not totally clear on how it works, with even online information not being very helpful: it doesn't make you immune to the effect, and may just slow down the effect and clear an instance of the effect on you; I haven't died from Scarlet Rot while using one, so I think it may keep the effect from triggering during some period of time, similar to how the Flask of Wondrous Physick buffs for a period of time.

 

 

I got to one point in the game with a ton of Scarlet Rot, and resorted to the wiki to figure out how to deal with it. My eventual strategy was:

• Go back to a previous dungeon that I had skipped because of the Scarlet Rot in it.
• In here, swap out all of my armor for the pieces I had with the highest Immunity. Some of these were lighter than I would normally use, but there aren't a ton of tough enemies in these areas; also, you can totally swap out equipment while in the field and not just at Sites of Grace, so it's tedious but possible to put one one set while navigating through Rot and swap it out on the other side.
• Equipped a Talisman with a boost to Immunity and another that boosts Immunity, Focus and Robustness. (These come with normal and +1 versions that don't stack with each other, but the different types of talismans do stack.)
• With highest possible Immunity, you usually want to run across Rot for the shortest distance to dry land. Jumping doesn't help but is OK if you need to go up. Rolling is unhelpful.
• Once on dry land, wait for the Rot gauge to tick down. This is very tedious and my least favorite moments playing the game.
• Repeat until you reach your destination.
• In this particular dungeon, I was able to pick up the Mushroom set of armor, which has extremely high Immunity. It makes navigating this dungeon a lot easier, and that other area feasible.
• In the other area, you can race forward and kill an enemy in the rot who drops a +1 version of the Immunity-boosting Talisman. It's impossible to kill him before getting Rot yourself, but you can heal through for many seconds while you grab the talisman and then fast-travel back to the Grace.
• Once again, Run to dry land and try to change the terrain to something you can walk on!

 

 

For Spirit Ashes, I think that at the time I wrote my previous post I was mostly rocking the Jellyfish Ashes, which are pretty cool and easy to get early on: it's decently tanky, which is helpful for a ranged fighter like me. Since progressing further in the game I've gotten the amazing Greatshield Soldier Ashes. I'd read about these online, but hadn't realized that it summons five of these guys: huge defensive stats and health, they're the ultimate tanks. They are a bit weak when it comes to AOE, but overall they make battles a breeze. I've since also picked up the Mimic Tear, which duplicates your PR, and leveled it up to 10. It honestly feels a little like cheating to use that Ash so I often don't, but when I do bring it out it's pretty amazing.

MINI SPOILERS

In terms of my progression: in the main story, I'm no closer than the previous post, but I've now cleared most of the major content before I can progress. In particular, I've defeated four of the Shardbearers and several Legends. Radahn was a little frustrating but also one of the coolest fights in the game. With Rykard, I somehow totally missed the Grace right outside the yellow fog and got frustrated when I died, and hated the journey to that point so long that I waited well over a week before trying again. In the meantime I'd done a ton of Nokrun Eternal City and picked up the Mimic Tear, which is insanely helpful for that fight as well as being a great Spirit Ash in many other fights.

 

 

I peeked at the Wiki several times to figure out how to progress quests, but I'm trying to play as organically and naturally as possible, without spoiling anything. I had seen a few references to the Shabiri Grape maiden quest, which I discovered I had totally missed due to not seeing her hanging out at a Site of Grace just past Stormveil Castle. I think this was a spot where Boc the Seamster was hanging out, so maybe I just didn't notice her standing there. Anyways, that's a super-dark quest with some really unsettling voice-acting! Even for a game that feels dark, I'm surprised at how much darker it can get at parts. I'm also starting to have real conversations with the Loathsome Dung-Eater, and phew boy, I can tell that will be an ordeal.

 

I'm currently going through Ranni's quest, which I've mostly been able to do without the wiki, and Sellen's, which has needed a little wiki assistance. Ranni's in particular seems really key to the game and the plot, opening up huge new areas of play, and it's really ballsy game design to have these things be so easily missible. I have been wondering if From Soft could or would have made their games this way in the pre-Internet era; trusting that they will be big hits and communities will come together to help answer questions and document solutions probably empowers developers to make more obtuse games than they otherwise would have dared.

 

END SPOILERS

This is a great game, I'm loving it, and just about the only thing that could keep me from playing it is the prospect of a return to Baldur's Gate. Until next time, Tarnished.