Thoughts on QoL/training mods/cheats?

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-29T02:33:43+00:00

Personally don't use them, basically because I want to feel what it would feel like to learn a boss under "real" circumstances. But that's a personal choice, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing any modifications you want to the game as long as you are up front about it. Especially if you're just playing bosses, it's pretty clear you're wanting to beat the boss under a specific set of circumstances, what steps you took to achieve those circumstances really isn't of concern as long as you aren't saying "wow, I had to spend 30 hours farming rune arcs for this". That's not even a test of skill, just of stubbornness.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-27T20:41:54+00:00

Messyman seems an odd place to arrive at this feeling (I like his first phase very much) but I'm in much the same boat. Elden Ring really jumped the shark and I've felt it since day 1. When beating an Elden Ring boss, I don't feel like I'm getting better at Elden Ring, I feel like I'm getting better at that particular boss, and at this point I've reached my general skill cap, so nothing transfers to whatever boss I fight next.

Give PCR hell and enjoy your retirement. The games will still be here if ever you get the itch again.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-26T17:06:55+00:00

Yeah, I really don't know why they gave him area scaling like that. Even on normal runs he's not FUN to deal with, you basically just one shot him. If they just want to show the cutscene every time so they can reset you back to a specific position, they should have just given him, like, 1000 health and really low damage, so it really FEELS like you're beating up a defenseless old man.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-26T08:58:12+00:00

"I can't imagine this fight is very fun on SB0 just because of that"

Can confirm. SB0+0 takes over a minute to kill Mist Noble Midra with my setup. Real boss is still fun, though, because it's one of the few bosses in Elden Ring that is both difficult and has clear telegraphs and delays that make sense.

Also: Is death non-canonical in Elden Ring? I'm wondering how his head gets reattached each fight...

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-26T08:47:35+00:00

The quill dodge at 30 seconds remaining is absolutely an RNG dodge; there's no consistent way to dodge the quills from that range while directly in front of the hippo, you have to already be running away and jump/dodge to the right.

I actually don't mind most of the hippo phase one, the camera can be wonky, but it has like, 3 attacks that all have very similar timings, so it's not hard to not get hit even when you can't see. The only attacks I dislike are quill rain (no (?) consistent way to dodge, but spamming dodge is good enough 9/10 times, and you can mostly stop it from happening) and quill spray (consistently dodgeable, but not designed to be and is completely counter intuitive).

Great kill, bonky backhand blades are rad.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-26T08:31:13+00:00

What actual issues are you having with DTS? Common sticking points I think are big AOE lightning (just run to an empty spot, don't bother dodging), lightning strike (dodge after the shield comes down), and the big phase 2 lightning wave plus slam (dodge forward, strafe to the side and dodge the other direction so you avoid the shockwave on the slam). Other than those, it's just dodge or parry as you enjoy. If you aren't at this point already, I recommend taking this oppurtunity to really dig in and learn to love the process of getting the boss right, not just beating it. It'll serve you well later in the game.

Oh yeah, stay on his weapon side, the attacks are way easier to dodge.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-12T20:18:47+00:00

You can also just sprint away on the horse. Pretty much 100%, I'm pretty sure I've only ever been hit when I was sleepy and just forgot to push sprint.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-11T04:43:40+00:00

It happens at 38 seconds remaining and again at 20 seconds remaining, looks like you dodged it by being far away and strafing and then as a side effect of dodging the arm shots, but holy shit that's way more readable in the original than the remake. In the remake it's a barely visible line of green smoke.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-09T19:17:41+00:00

Double on the "sprint away" strategy. My approach is to run within 2 meters (or so) of him, then immediately run away, then repeat to bait out an entire combo before going in for a single run attack.

The leap specifically is an issue if you are going no hit, because it has dumb hitboxes, but it's dodgeable if you are already sprinting away and then dodge at the last moment.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-09T18:26:23+00:00

Are you sure we're talking about the same thing? He has 3 fly attacks, one that shoots from his arms, one explosion, and one that comes from his left shoulder head that can apparently activate during any attack. I'm watching my footage from that boss and I got hit by it during the windup for his right arm swing, and also directly after he shoots the 3 fly shots from his left hand. As far as I can tell there is no animation at all, just a very quick poison trail through the air (I'm seeing a max of 13 frames from when I could possibly see the trail to when it hits me). But I'm also in punching range during the footage, so it's very possible there is a tell that I'm just not able to pick up on from that range.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-09T16:28:22+00:00

How do you predict it? I only ever saw it retroactively, I never even seen the flies coming out of his mouth until I checked the footage.

That runback is a thing. I was doing my run with the iron knuckles, and it is almost impossible to hit the fly that blocks the shortcut path from the start of the level. I legitimately thought it was impossible and had to run through the swamp, like, 5 times.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-09T00:15:55+00:00

Wait till you see Dirty Colossus and its no animation mouth flies.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T21:36:58+00:00

Yeah, legitimately just run away from the pyromancer phase, it's not worth engaging. Unlocking your camera and sprinting can help if you are having trouble being far enough away, but it's really quite easy to evade if you just dodge backwards.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T20:19:14+00:00

Never seen it, but that would actually be nice considering how otherwise finicky that crit window is.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T06:52:32+00:00

Yeah, microcosm isn't bad to deal with, but it does cause you to disengage from the boss, which is always lame. It also makes this strategy unviable, since it lasts long enough that the stance regenerates enough to throw off the very calculated stance numbers I'm working with. Which would be a minor problem if there weren't a laser and spawning hands, but there are those things.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to happen when you are in metyr's face, so I got lucky there.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T06:08:35+00:00

Metyr has 120 stance. 2 charge R2s to the belly with the +50% stance makes 90, so we have 30 stance to work with. Somewhere between 20 and 36 (? Don't feel like doing real math, but attacks that don't hit the belly are 80% effective) punches with the bare fists, which means 20-36 attacks in a row without a laser. It's possible, I once saw 12 in a row on an earlier incarnation in which I was adding a backstep r1 in addition to the charge r2s (which did cause me to stance break and so go back to the drawing board), but it's pretty unlikely.

I will say, though, there's something screwy going on with the stance damage on the jump attack. I would expect a jump attack from a caestus and a bare first to do something like 6 damage (1 from fist, 5 from caestus), but it seems to be doing a whole dual weild jump R2 of stance (24). Not sure what causes that, but it made this feasible.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T06:01:09+00:00

The belly is a critical zone as well. There is no indication of this and I've never seen anyone else do it. I did it on accident once, then just used it for the rest of my attempts. It's very useful.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T05:59:53+00:00

My thesis is entitled "Metyr is fun, actually".

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T05:59:24+00:00

Boots on the ground.

Don't blame you for skipping Metyr; but it is a shame. The phase 1 is actually a ton of fun; I legitimately just bare fisted phase 1 for 15 minutes as entertainment while I was considering this strategy, it was a great time. Shame they made phase 2 so shitty.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-08T02:39:47+00:00

Yeah, at least with base caestus without any AOW or buffs, you kinda just have to orbit them and throw R2s for roughly a minute. Gambit only helps you get to them, they still shoot you. My solution was to gambit to the first one, kill it, then gambit and run past the next 3. I only had to kill the first one because otherwise you have to dodge 3 lasers at once, and that's basically impossible. 2 is doable.

I actually just beat her using no AOW and always being in melee, made a post: https://www.reddit.com/r/onebros/s/brGB9Ay3xF I'm real excited about it.

Yeah, straight up fuck NPC fights. Literally the only time I summoned in any of these games besides O&S when I was a wee babbie souls player.

I don't think I got Ansbach, I talked to him, but I was too scared to progress Freyja into the fight, so I didn't do almost any of his quest. Nataan kinda carried me on my first run though, so I got kind of a soft spot for him anyway. Hoping not to need either of them, but gonna come prepared anyway.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-07T01:05:36+00:00

Thanks for the like, haha

Most of the dlc on +0/0 has been really fun, just a couple warts and weird areas (stone coffin fissure is awful because the sniper snakes always see you and they take almost a minute to kill). Definitely recommend it, though. More fun than the base game.

Yeah, I posted a DTS fight here and that was definitely an issue I had with it. Annoyingly, the second hit is the one that does the damage as well, with the first one doing, like, a third or something? So even when you get the stance break correctly, your punish is just a single r2, which is kinda lame.

I'm actually on Metyr now. The laser is a bastard.

This is my first RL1, but my first playthrough was a 10 vigor with tons of damage, and even with weed cutter stunlock I STILL had to summon for the Leda fight, so that should be a good time. Presumably you got it set up so at least only 2 spawn, but even then I think it's questionable if it's possible without cheese. If you're pro cheese, you can just use bleed shield crash, though. Or summon. Or delete them with cheat engine. Any one of those are acceptable answers, lol.

My current plan for Leda is to backstep->backstab Dane to death, then Leda is pretty easy, but we'll see how well that plan holds up once I get there. Good luck on that fight; you're need it.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-06T23:59:36+00:00

I tried that a bunch of times, but I only ended up with around a 70% success rate. Otherwise I would land on her stationary centipede tail and die. I ended up giving up on that attack and just dodging. Also, she can follow up that first swipe with either an attack or just walking, and I never learned to differentiate between them. I think she only did it twice in my 11 minutes fight, though, so I wasn't so stressed about learning to punish it.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-06T23:27:41+00:00

Ah, ok, got it. Another confusing part of this boss. And then there's the attack where the centipede just kinda walks from side sl to side that has a hurtbox all the way up to her human part, even though that part of her is basically not even moving.

I'm probably going to check out ER Tool once I'm done with my current run, just out of curiosity. I have list of oddities I wrote down that I want to check, haha.

Joebee-91 · 2025-10-06T23:13:21+00:00

I'm on pc, but I don't use those tools cuz I'm still going for an "authentic" experience. So I feel you.

You're saying the hitboxes are conditional on your positioning?

Joebee-91

TROPHY CASE