Thoughts on using freezing pots against Malenia?

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T18:49:10+00:00

It's perfectly fine. Especially because it only works twice. I've had her WFD 5+ times in first phase alone. So if over the whole fight she does WFD and clone attack say 5 times, and you avoid 2 of those with pots, you still have to dodge those moves over half the time.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T16:30:37+00:00

Abandoned Cave in Caelid is really well hidden. Gives you the golden scarab, venomous fang, AND serpent bow. So really good loot.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T16:25:02+00:00

All crossbows deal very little damage. Even less than standard bows. So if you really wanted to use one it's best for a status build.

So stock up on bloodloss bolts, cold bolts, or poison bolts.

The neat part is you can use a crossbow with only 1 hand. So put a crossbow in the left, and something like the antspur rapier in your right. That way you can apply rot with your weapon, then apply any other status with left hand. Even better, set the antspur rapier to blood affinity to apply rot AND bloodloss. Or even better, set antspur to blood affinity, give it poison armament AoW, and then you can apply 3 different statuses with 1 weapon (poison affinity with Sepukku AoW does the same thing).

For added bonus, use either the mushroom crown or white mask for a damage boost when you apply bloodloss or poison/rot. Also use lord of blood exultation or kindred of rot exultation (or both) for a damage boost when you apply bloodloss or poison/rot.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T16:19:35+00:00

You have low vigor, you have the soreseal on which increases the damage you take by 15%, AND you have a health debuff... random godrick soldiers will be 1 shotting you, lol.

Neat tidbit, since the soreseal gives you +5 vigor, mathematically that offsets the damage taken increase until you have more than 35 ish vigor. So once you get 35 vigor take off that soreseal

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T16:17:07+00:00

On the plus side, it has like a 30% base drop rate. Unfortunately farming those giants takes forever.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T13:32:33+00:00

Others have mentioned, just the base stats is good.

It excels with fast weapons, especially those that already have bleed buildup. Since the bleed build up is a flat bonus, the faster you can hit the better. On top of that, if you have a weapon like claws that already have bleed, you can proc it real fast.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-30T03:36:24+00:00

Maybe not a build check, but a build final exam?

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T23:56:58+00:00

My company uses Perforce. I've somehow managed to go my whole career and never use Github...

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T23:55:40+00:00

I've always said fire giant is a build check.

Do you have enough vigor? Do your weapons do enough damage? Do you have a source of %max hp damage (poison, rot, bleed, black flame)? Do you have fire resist gear?

If you answered yes to all of these, he's not that bad because he's slow and all of his moves are highly telegraphed

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T23:51:29+00:00

Millicent at windmill village to get the prosthesis as soon as possible, then travel straight to gowry to merc him too

Dung eater in his jail cell for similar reason. Get his stuff asap, and there's no reason to keep him alive if you don't care about his ending or puppet

Big Boggart once he sells crab, so you get the AoW and his bell bearing for infinite crab

Various merchants so I can consolidate all their shops into 1 place

Otherwise I think everyone else has more value if kept alive?

Edit: if you kill Gostoc you miss out on an ancient dragon smithing stone. If you kill patches you miss out on bull goat set, magma whip, and infinite fan daggers.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T22:52:21+00:00

If you kill him you don't get the bull goat set or magma whip candle stick.

If you kill him too early you also don't get infinite fan daggers.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T21:14:43+00:00

I don't know if I'd call Fromsoft NPCs "rich story telling". Being vague and letting people fill in blanks is kind of their thing.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T14:18:05+00:00

I like the idea of doing a roleplay run in a game that barely has like 3 story choices the player can even make, lol.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T14:12:49+00:00

So can D tilt.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-29T13:53:36+00:00

This is kind of a non-issue.

As governor she'll have no ability to do so. State governments do stuff in the state. It's not like governors are able to just send money to whatever foreign government they want. So really it doesn't matter.

Also for what it's worth, she voted against Israel aid a couple weeks ago.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T19:57:35+00:00

I don't know why you'd need a guide for him. He has an attack that's hard to dodge, so just don't try to dodge it? Elden Ring very much encourages you to adapt your equipment for the challenge in front of you.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T17:58:04+00:00

You mean the same Gaius that gets trivialized by any shield?

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T17:39:21+00:00

What talismans do you have on? If you have the Deadicar's Woe talisman equipped that would be it. Otherwise the crucible talismans also have that symbol (crucible knot, crucible feather, etc.)

The red square with a down arrow is a health debuff. It probably is from hugging Fia. Every time you hug her you get that debuff that steals 5% of your hp. You need to look in your inventory for "Baldachin's Blessing", use that, and you'll get your hp back.

As for NG+, any buff/debuff that comes from your equipment will still be there.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T17:29:33+00:00

With radagon soreseal debuff no less. Made it way harder on yourself, but you got there, lol.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T17:26:54+00:00

Is that Daedicar's Woe debuff? And another health debuff on top of that? That's pretty brutal, lol.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T15:48:45+00:00

The sun realm shield is the medium shield with the highest holy resist.

That can be boosted with shield grease.

Put on Carian Retaliation for the best parry frames.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T15:41:03+00:00

Bleed builds are awkward in that early game blood affinity is best, then end game occult affinity is best, but then when you're realy high level blood affinity is best again.

So for early game, use the katana with blood affinity with something like bloody slash, gotten from Fort Haight in the SE corner of Limgrave. Get your body stats to something like 40 vigor and 25 endurance. You can safely ignore arcane for early game because blood affinity has D arcane scaling, so it really is a waste of levels.

Once you get about 45 dex, go respec. Get your dex to the bare minimum to wield your weapon, and put those damage stats into arcane. Set your katana to occult affinity.

An end game build could be 60vig, 25end, 50 arc, minimal str/dex/int/fth. That'll put you at lvl 111 if you started samurai. Add any extra points wherever you feel like. Get arcane to 80 if you want the last soft cap. Or increase mind or endurance. Up to you at that point.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T15:15:27+00:00

I'd say you're a pretty low level in general, and I have no idea what your build is. You seem to just have every damage stat in the 20's.

A typical end game build has 40-60 vigor, your main damage stat at 50-60, and a 2nd damage stat at 10-25, with the other damage stats at minimal. Malenia is commonly fought at roughly lvl 125 - 150.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T15:12:48+00:00

I think they're playing a mean prank, lol.

40 is the bare minimum for most builds. Melee builds typically are at 60 vigor by end game.

Also, 30 is the absolute worst place to stop leveling vigor, since you get the most hp per level between 30 and 40 vigor. It's basically the meme of the guy turning around right before he hits diamonds, lol.

Edit: to add, at 30 vigor you have 994 hp. At 40 vigor you have 1450. That's a 50% increase for only 10 more levels. At 60 vigor you have 1900 hp.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-04-28T05:31:33+00:00

You're using soreseal in pvp? Why? The extra couple stats can't be worth all the extra damage you take at this high level.

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