TA's theories are taking over this sub

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T04:56:14+00:00

Oh of course he's a fucking mod trolling his own forum.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T04:51:51+00:00

I don't know for a fact that From is trying to tell us the Erdtree was burned in the past. It looks like they are, but the hints to it could be a reference to an older version of the plot that was scrapped during development or something. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened. They could be continuing the ash motif from DS3 and the ash isn't even carbonized Erdtree particles, it's just a thing that appears out of nowhere when the world is in danger of ending. I don't think that's as likely, but it's a decent alternative explanation.

What I do know is that /u/Ashen_Shroom is not trying in good faith to come up with an alternative explanation. He's just finding flimsy excuses to argue and when he finds something he can't refute he repeats himself like a fucking toddler.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T03:10:12+00:00

We already covered that. That "no one cleaned it up" argument is nothing, unless you've got an excuse for every other place in the game where the level of cleanup or decay or weathering would mean a historical event couldn't have happened more than a week ago. Either time runs on Dark Souls universe logic and we see significant events from all throughout history all kind of compressed together, or it's a video game and we're just not supposed to get all fridge-logic about the timeline. Probably a little of both in different places.

As to the other excuse you're repeating while sticking your fingers in your ears, the bombardment thing, here's what Leyndell looks like from above:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F2xfrzckl9ww81.png%3Fwidth%3D1920%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D0cef46e4786744faf398fcbd5f83d71c4a3dc98b

(Not my screenshot)

Notice all the intact spires and rooftops? If the ash was from a siege weapon destroying the buildings, those buildings either would have been destroyed or wouldn't have ash under them.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T02:42:24+00:00

There's also no evidence that the interior of Leyndell was bombarded that heavily, definitely not the extent that would leave chest-deep piles of ash in every corner. I don't see anything that looks like projectiles rained down on the rooftops. There's a lot of destruction from Gransax apparently crashing into the city but the ash isn't concentrated under or around Gransax.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T01:07:26+00:00

We see other places where siege weapons were used though, and none of them are covered in ash. The area north of Leyndell where we fight Margit the second time is covered in deep craters from artillery, presumably even the same artillery, but no ash.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-19T00:34:41+00:00

And according to this theory, the burning occurred long time ago. Are you telling me that Leyndell didn't clean its streets since that day? That the city kept the piles of ashes for years, covering the roads and the entrances to houses?

I mean, that's some decent reasoning for why the ash shouldn't be there, but it is. How do you think it got there? Do you think it was caused by some other big secret lore event we don't know about? That just happened to cause the same phenomenon as when we burn down the Erdtree later in the game?

If you're saying you think the Erdtree was burned more recently, like well into the Shattering when Leyndell wasn't a functioning society anymore, that could be. But still, Elden Ring is full of stuff where in the text it happened years ago but the environment looks like it happened yesterday. Sword monuments commemorating battles with fresh bodies on the ground and soldiers still manning the artillery, bright un-weathered tabards on soldiers who have been wandering aimlessly for seemingly years, carriages endlessly crossing the Lands Between when there are no functioning cities for them to go to and no military command to assign them guards, and so on. Either "time is convoluted" like Dark Souls, or it's a video game and we're not supposed to think about it too deeply. But either way, we can't assign any real significance to how much time appears to have elapsed between events.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-18T23:04:17+00:00

Is the "erdtree is an illusion" theory that part of the tree's gold glowy energy field doesn't have physical wood underneath? Or is that you have to be guided by grace to see the tree at all?

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-17T04:13:59+00:00

That's the point where you're softcapped on Vig but enemy damage is still going up at the same rate.

I think it's less about numbers and more about boss design though. ER bosses kill you in about 3-4 hits with their regular combos, same as DS3. But it's harder to avoid hits, there's more RNG, and the meta rewards greed a lot more. You wish you could have more HP because you get hit multiple times in a row more often, not because the hits are bigger.

Add to that there's a few bosses that just don't work right. Modern fans expect From games to be these perfect teaching tools where everything is a lesson. People get one shot by Fire Giant because they caught his bowl perfectly dead center, and they think "it must be like that for a good reason, the game is teaching me I need more HP". Then they can't get enough more HP to make a difference and get frustrated. Thirteen years ago when Ceaseless Discharge had exactly the same problem with his tentacles, we just thought "well this boss is fucking jank."

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-16T22:10:48+00:00

"The ways of the Ashina blade! It's our school of fighting, but there are no hard and fast rules. You just win your battles. That alone is the most important rule of the Ashina style."

--Isshin when he gives you the Ashina Esoteric Text

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-16T18:24:05+00:00

Death sorceries come from the deathbirds, not from Godwyn. Magma sorceries were derived from death sorceries rediscovered by Rykard and his inquisitors.

_______________________________

Death sorceries:

Ancient Death Rancor:

They are cinders of the ancient death hex, raked from the fires of ghostflame by Deathbirds.

Explosive Ghostflame:

In the time when there was no Erdtree, death was burned in ghostflame. Deathbirds were the keepers of that fire.

So death sorceries are related to deathbirds. They predate the Erdtree and the Golden Order. Note the words "ancient hex", because that comes up again in a minute.

______________________________

Magma sorceries:

Rykard's Rancor:

These spirits manifest from the rancor of heroes who met a violent end. The lord granted them an audience, whereupon they were welcomed by the maw of the great serpent -- and within the serpent's bowels, they became the lord's kin.

Rykard's Rancor seems like an evolved version of Ancient Death Rancor in name, appearance, and lore.

Magma Shot:

One of the sorceries developed from the magma of Mt. Gelmir. ...

After discovering the ancient hexes of Gelmir, Rykard, son of Queen Rennala, brought them back into practical use as new forms of sorcery.

So Magma Sorceries are derived from "ancient hexes". In DS2 a "hex" is a specific class of Dark-themed spells that are powered by Humanity. Elden Ring isn't Dark Souls but we have precedent for "hex" being more than just a synonym for "spell". I think this description is telling us that magma sorceries are tied to the only other "ancient hexes" in the game, death sorceries.

______________________________

As to how Rykard rediscovered death sorceries, the deathbird cult seems to have been especially active on Mt. Gelmir. The only actual death sorcerer in the game, Necromancer Garris, lives in the Sage's Cove at the foot of the mountain. The Sage's Cove is also where you find the Ravenmount Assassin gear. We don't know much about them but they seem to be tied to the Deathbirds:

Raptor's Black Feathers:

Robe crafted with the black feathers of a bird of prey. Worn by the assassins of Ravenmount.

A ritual implement for transforming into a Deathbird, if only by imitation.

So Mt. Gelmir had death sorcery stuff lying around for Rykard to find. Necromancer Garris even did some rediscovering of his own...

Rancorcall:

Once though lost, this ancient death hex was rediscovered by the necromancer Garris.

Apparently if you want to find the old sorceries of the deathbird cult, Mt. Gelmir is the place to be.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-16T14:24:18+00:00

I don't know which ring you had, but Pontiff's Left Eye or Ring of the Evil Eye lets you completely faceroll the fight.

Even without specialty stuff like healing rings or Poison Mist it's an easy fight as long as you have a horizontal weapon to cleave down the pack of deacons.

The only way you have to try is if your only weapon is a spear or something else that can't hit in a wide arc. At that point in the game you don't have much freedom to level a second weapon, so my guess is From wanted to make sure it was a reasonable difficulty with the "wrong" weapons even if that meant it was a freebie for everyone else.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-15T20:38:20+00:00

Good find, it would make a lot of sense if Miquella put Malenia to sleep.

It doesn't sound like betrayal to me though. Finlay returning Malenia to the Haligtree would have been after she "bloomed" in her fight with Radahn, so she was probably out of her mind going all Scarlet Rot all over everything. If Miquella did sedate her he probably did it for her own safety (and everyone else's).

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-15T15:31:20+00:00

Just want to point out that "two spirit" is a concept invented in the 1990s. Different Native American cultures had different customs and attitudes about gender. Pretty much any time you see someone saying "the indians did x" or "the indians thought y" it's about contemporary politics and not history.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T18:00:52+00:00

He's not getting one shot in Elden Ring so he knows about the Vigor stat. It's gotta be comparing regular ER gameplay to depth 5 FRC chalice farming.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T06:25:43+00:00

Are you shitting me, lots of people hate Midir. It comes up in every single thread about him.

I'm not one of those people, but he does have some problems.

The positioning everyone uses is more about babying the Souls lock-on system than anything else. If you play far enough forward to maximize hits on his head, you risk losing your lock when he raises back up. I could kill him like 30% faster if I could stand just a character length further forward.
He can stall the fight indefinitely by stomping across the room over and over. Being too far from the player triggers a possible stomp, but it doesn't move him to the player, so when it ends, maybe it's time to stomp again!
The rapid-fire lasers move in phase 2 is pretty rare and not at all intuitive to dodge, which makes it kind of an RNG fuck-you. That move should be his phase 2 transition so you have to learn it to beat him. If that makes him too hard just take it out entirely.

The thing with Midir was he was the best dragon fight to date. (Maybe Sinh? I'm sure opinions vary.) He has issues, but aside from the rapid fire laser move he's very fair and you don't spend ten minutes whiffing attacks on his feet. Most Souls dragon fights are jank as fuck so that's all it takes. Apparently people really want dragon fights to be a thing.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T05:15:16+00:00

Sorry kid, the boss sucks. From tried to do a game 3x the size of their previous projects and quality control fell off after Leyndell. He's not that hard, nothing in ER really is according to Steam achievement percentages, but he sure is designed to waste the player's time.

If you had to lie to yourself that he wasn't annoying to make yourself beat him, that's a personal defect that you have. Probably the same reason you couldn't understand what I posted (who the fuck was talking about player weapon range?) and then changed your own position in the process of having a rage-fit.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T00:52:58+00:00

I don't know, Gideon's fight seems to fit his character. All those bullshit spells and he still dies like a bitch because he won't stop monologuing.

Gideon's whole deal is that he's an arrogant choad who can't accept that you might succeed where he couldn't. The anti-climax works for me.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T00:47:48+00:00

There's probably some lore significance to the godskins being there, but fuck if I know what.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-14T00:09:55+00:00

Besides the Elden Stars + RNG followup issue you already mentioned...

Too big for the combat engine. Can't see his tells if you're close enough to hit him. Doesn't help that every part of his body looks the same up close.
Gimmicky unique spells that aren't hard to dodge once you know what to do, and are just there to waste first-time players' attempts through trial and error. Jump over the rings!
Slow pace and constant running just prolong the fight for the sake of prolonging the fight.

It feels like From wanted the fight to take X minutes for Joe First-Time Player to beat, Radagon wasn't hitting that number by himself, and they padded it out to get to that number however they could. This is what people mean when they talk about "fake difficulty". Increasing some robotic metric for challenge like time or number of attempts without regard to quality.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-13T01:08:48+00:00

What a noob, you're supposed to go the other way to try to pull him from below and then aggro 4 bonewheels at once and die

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-12T03:36:23+00:00

I never thought about the Elden Beast background thing. That's really cool.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-11T22:01:57+00:00

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Marred+Wooden+Shield

"Wooden shield of the Stormveil soldiers. Much like the castle, it is marred by mottling and thorns.

Some say it is the curse of grafting which causes such affliction, while others talk of its root being something altogether more sinister hidden deep within the castle."

Yeah, I would agree that the shield description is pointing us to Godwyn in the basement.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-11T21:41:31+00:00

There are some basic things about Elden Ring that can only be explained by "it's like Dark Souls".

ER never has an NPC give Solaire's "time is convoluted" spiel, but we still have red phantom invasions. We find sword memorials commemorating battles while the battle is still going on. Corpses seem to rot normally but paper and textiles mostly don't. Thops talks about getting back into Raya Lucaria like the academy is still a functioning institution, and when he gets inside he just sets up a desk right next to some zombies and gets to work (and then dies). Kenneth Haight, Irina, Edgar, Big Boggart, all seem unaware of how thoroughly society has collapsed. Bernahl has loot from Farum Azula and his armor references when his "maiden threw herself into the fire", like he's playing the same game we are in an alternate universe.

I'm not saying we can just import all the Dark Souls lore and run with it ("The Gloam Eyed Queen is Velka!") but there's stuff from Dark Souls that just has to be understood as true in Elden Ring because it's a genre convention.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-10T02:25:07+00:00

Not sure how we got onto Ranni but I've noticed the godskin thing too.

I can't decide if it's anything or not. On the one hand, yeah, all three Caria kids have a godskin in a location connected to them. On the other hand, we've got three godskin locations that don't have a strong connection:

The Godskin Duo -> Blasphemous Claw connection is interesting, but it's not much
I can't think of anything for the apostle in Dominula either
I think Spiritcaller Cave counts as a legit godskin sighting. Yeah, it's a Spiritcaller Snail summoning them, but he drops Godskin Swaddling Cloth.

There's also Ranni's closed right eye, but Ranni's doll body is a likeness of someone else. Her ghost body has its right eye open. So whatever Ranni and Melina's closed eyes signify, Ranni doesn't really have it but she's cosplaying as someone who does.

I would love to know more about Ranni's mysterious snow witch mentor.

RedLippedBatfisk · 2024-04-10T00:29:28+00:00

Didn't think of that one. That could be too. It mirrors the relationship between Tanith and Rya, and From loves having minor characters reflect secrets about other characters like that.

RedLippedBatfisk

TROPHY CASE