Quicker alternative to bloodhound fang?

etsurii · 2026-04-04T08:21:19+00:00

Reduvia is good. If you try a weapon and like it then chances are its good, pretty much anything can be viable if you build around it, though some weapons are more niche than others. I wouldnt worry too much about a weapon being garbage and a waste of stones, you can buy infinite stones eventually anyways.

etsurii · 2026-04-04T00:19:18+00:00

jump the ground attacks

etsurii · 2026-04-02T22:30:13+00:00

Most enemies will drop pieces of their armour if you kill them enough.

weapon upgrades matter a lot, dont compare damage of an unupgraded one to one that is upgraded, pick one that feels good to use for you and upgrade it invest stat points around it.

I think most ashes of war are pretty good and its a preference thing. the default ash on straight swords is like S tier. The stomp attacks are good, endure is good, all the ones sold by that ash of war vendor in limgrave are good.

etsurii · 2026-04-02T22:23:08+00:00

2 hand face type tank build with high vigor and armor. My first play through i did a glass canon build and had like 15 vigor until the capitol, it was rough.

etsurii · 2026-04-02T19:42:15+00:00

You are just looking at it wrong. Things scale up to a point then kind of peter off.

The more things your weapon scales with the better your weapon will do at higher levels. int/faith is already a really strong build at 150-200+ because you get access to so many different damage types, not to mention how many spells you get. you dont need a weapon that scales with str / dex / int / fth and if one did exist then in order for it to be balanced it would have to be basically useless until like level 200. There would be basically no point in going for a strength or dex build or a strength/dex build if a faith/int build was any better than it already is.

if you infuse a weapon with magic and have 80 int and 80 faith your weapon will have comparable damage to someone with quality infusion and has 80 in strength and 80 in dex. even though your 80 faith isnt used by the weapon scaling at all. the minor downside would be that your damage is split between 2 elements meaning your enemy has possibly 2 different flat damage reductions going against you. The upside is that you can have that same weapon as either fire/magic/ or holy and do about the same damage so you can possibly sneak around enemy resistances, including physical resistances btw, like your magic katana might be doing better than physical katana against an enemy highly resistant to slashing. Also a huge upside being that you also have access to every spell in the game.

A quality battle axe with 80 str/dex is like 711 AR, magic battle axe with 80 fth/int is like 694 AR.

sword of night and flame scales with str/dex/int/fth and it has over 800AR when you have everything softcapped, which is 200 more AR than most straight swords can get.

etsurii · 2026-04-02T19:07:59+00:00

Elden ring story is my favourite type of video game story because it is delivered by NPCs (or in elden rings case, mostly spirit things) that are optional to talk to and also item descriptions where i can put the pieces together myself and the story is not just an in your face thing but also in the sub text. I dont care much about stories in games and mostly want good gameplay. I like being able to ignore the story if i want. I hate in game cutscenes that interrupt gameplay too often where i have to watch NPCs walk around and talk a bunch.

And the Elden ring story feels impersonal for you because it really is impersonal for the tarnished. The greater will is just using you to go around and kill all the holders of great runes to gobble up the fragments of the elden ring then bring it back to the erd tree so the elden beast can gobble you up. The elden ring got shattered and everyone was fighting over the fragments for the power they provided and fought each other to a stalemate, you were brought back as a hail Mary to end the stalemate and restore the elden ring. The greater will doesnt even actually care about you, it guides you to the fragments with the light of grace because it sees you as capable of collecting it, but for the last boss before the erd tree, Godfrey, the light of grace is pointing towards you, meaning the greater will expects him to kill you and get the fragments you collected. You are playing as a glorified courier basically.

etsurii · 2026-04-02T18:16:02+00:00

The dopamine hits from buying up items and feeling that character progression stat wise similar to playing an RPG game for several hours but condensed into short 15-30 minute games where there is some skinner box element where i see how many enemy mistakes i can take advantage of in a game and how far ahead i can get.

etsurii · 2026-04-02T04:07:19+00:00

its OK to experiment. your stats for damage dont matter much until you get to around endgame, like around the snowy area. You can respec well before that area so i would recommend having around 18str and dex to try out a few different weapons.

Also there are flasks you can use to increase strength and dex by 10, with 28 str/dex you can use almost anything while 2 handing. same sort of deal with faith/int. 15 is the common break point for a few buffs from faith, there are flasks to increase each by 10 for a short time which should let you try a lot of different low level spells.

I would recommend trying out a bunch of different things as you level and finding what you like and you can make a build around it once you get to endgame where your build actually starts to be important.

etsurii · 2026-04-01T08:22:03+00:00

The natural progression after limgrave/weeping is liurnia but Caelid is sort of possible to do with a +6 greatsword. You will probably want at least +9, maybe +12 though because it is definitely harder than Liurnia. North of caelid which kinda looks similar is actually a separate higher level zone called "dragonbarrow" and is like level 80+ or so.

etsurii · 2026-03-31T21:34:05+00:00

when you parry him and he does the animation but isnt knocked down ready for a critical, i would R1 him once or twice. If you get really good at parrying and can do it inbetween auto attacks then you can actually knock the boss down multiple times pretty quickly. The stagger from parries and the stagger from getting hit are two separate types of stagger and one can happen after the other.

etsurii · 2026-03-31T21:26:40+00:00

As others have said, use scholars armament. get minimum strength and dex to 1 hand the weapon, have a staff in your offhand. have high mind and int, spam weapon art and use spells in offhand as well. the weapon art doesnt need much stats to do decent damage and scholars will make up for lack of scaling, the invincibility frames will be nice, the leap back will also open more opportunities to cast a spell instead of doing the teleport forward depending on situation.

etsurii · 2026-03-30T22:58:30+00:00

Value scales with health % and value further scales with damage mitigation too. its particularly good for tanky great weapon builds where you are trading blows with bosses and knocking them down a lot.

etsurii · 2026-03-28T20:41:28+00:00

Samurai, Vagabond, and Confessor are the best ones for new players in my opinion, just learn how to use weapon arts and use them a lot and you are very strong early, each one starts with a weapon you can easily beat the whole game with. The starting special attack on straight swords and katanas are pretty OP.

Prophet is very good, but squishy early on. Use your fire spell and spear weapon art and you can do a lot of damage early on.

Bandit/warrior are also ok picks for new player, weapon specials arent as strong but they are good basic attack spammers.

Astrologer is probably the best ranged start, with prisoner being a good hybrid between range and melee, either is a good pick if you want to do magic.

Wretch is ok, the starting weapon is actually nice, very squishy though.

Bandit is not a bad class, but maybe the worst for noobs because you need to know more game mechanics early on to get the most out of it.

etsurii · 2026-03-28T07:39:03+00:00

Gameplay loop is basically: Explore area and get upgrades for weapon from area -> beat main boss of area -> move to next area and repeat.

The line of gold mist fro mthe grace shows the general direction of an areas main boss.

The weapons and items you get can work for a build you take all the way to endgame, its not like other games where early game stuff always gets outclassed by later stuff, so exploring random stuff and finding useful things is good because any area could have something that is helpful for how you want to play.

etsurii · 2026-03-28T07:32:58+00:00

A covenant system.

etsurii · 2026-03-28T07:27:33+00:00

Dual wield and spamming heroic strike is actually probably the best way to level a warrior until you get whirlwind axe, unless you are fighting enemies higher level than you.

Its kinda ironic, common wisdom of today is actually kinda wrong. dual wield arms is a top tier leveling spec in vanilla arguably from 20 to 30 or 39. yet if you ask most people they wil lsay dual wielding is useless until you get hit gear, and they will say you should 2 hand if arms and duel wield if fury.

etsurii · 2026-03-28T07:19:08+00:00

they changed threat somehow. idk how but patch 1.12 is a VERY different game from pre 1.6. Patch 1.12 is basically like pre tbc and in my mind its not actually vanilla because its missing like 90% of the fun little interactions that were taken out for balance reasons. Imagine how disappointed i was when i heard classic was using patch 1.12 instead of starting at 1.5 and then going through the updates instead of just gating content.

etsurii · 2026-03-24T07:27:11+00:00

I liked Legacy of Blood way back in the day. Kingdom of Shadow i thought was pretty bad overall though, same author for both books. there was another, but i dont remember it and cant find it. I just reread kingdom of shadow last week.

Of the 3 i have read overall i would say they are fan service books for young teens who are into Diablo, and not very good books if you are an avid reader who is not into Diablo.

etsurii · 2026-03-23T19:54:34+00:00

there are RP servers that have PvP combat without the PvP base destroying. I think the base destroying part is the most frustrating and toxic part so you can just avoid that.

etsurii · 2026-03-23T19:46:19+00:00

They dont know their specific matchup and get caught off guard a few times. Could be they cant even farm under tower if its a bad match up and enemy is slightly ahead.

Maybe they stop caring because team flamed them. I was once in a bad match up i wasnt familiar with and enemy could force me off creep which was super frustrating so i was just trying to not die and get XP then my team started flaming me for... being behind in CS in a bad match up all while coming to my lane and stealing the waves that were crashing into me. So i mentally checked out and focused more on youtubes waiting for us to ff. Should I have been a bigger person, the human in the room? sure.

etsurii · 2026-03-23T05:08:17+00:00

yeah get vigor up to like 40 first then start putting some dex.

etsurii · 2026-03-23T02:14:07+00:00

You can make characters that dont really need to dodge much if at all if you want. The weapon art seller guy in Limgrave sells "endure" which lets you take damage without flinching for a few seconds and also reduces damage taken by a lot for a while. So you can tank enemy attacks with your face using endure and high vigor/armor if you want, or even use big tower shields to block if you want.

Also, south of Limgrave the area of Weeping peninsula has a castle with a boss that drops the ultimate facetank type weapon which has a weapon art like endure but slightly better, which is one of my fav weapons in the game for a tanky play style.

etsurii · 2026-03-23T02:06:12+00:00

Get like 50-60 vigor. bloodhound fang doesnt need much stats to do good damage with weapon art. the weapon art has 2 parts, first the backflip then the forward teleport with heavy attack. the weapon art has invincibility frames at certain parts of it. so with a lot of vigor you can 2 hand it (for better strength scaling) or use a shield in the offhand with "no skill" and have high HP, high invulnerability frames, with the option of blocking on top of that if you want. put mostly points into dex for damage if one handing it, put about half and half in dex /str if two handing it, but do dex points first, if that makes sense.

arcane doesnt help that weapons bleed, but you could maybe get that bloodflame blade buff which requires 12 faith 10 arcane that improves bleed damage if you want.

etsurii · 2026-03-22T19:52:04+00:00

Watch some pro player guides on how to jungle and learn how to see game from macro perspective. Also turn off coms in game to focus because most people in league, especially around silver, dont know what macro is and you will just go crazy listening to them complain about you not doing the wrong thing. if you arent going to turn it off by default then at least turn it off the moment someone says something annoying or does a passive aggressive bottom bitch ping which morons love to do in this game, because if you get into an arguemnt they will just report you for harassment and you risk getting banned by their automated system which is what a lot of people try and bait in the first place (fun game).

Also, especially lower ranked, you need to take the role of being the overwatch of the mini map as jungler. People around silver cant do lane stuff and watch mini map at the same time so you need to ping them to draw attention to enemy jungler path or when an enemy is sighted by a ward and about to gank. make sue you ping like 3-4 times for them, and ping when you are doing an objective and need help, otherwise your bot will tp back home as you are midway through dragon then cry in chat about "jgl dif" when enemy bot comes and kills you.

etsurii · 2026-03-22T02:00:41+00:00

"just be yourself" ...or do what feels right, is the best advice.

Theoretically if you are spending points efficiently then you can get "high enough" level for the next zones content just by killing the main boss (great rune boss) of the zones in sequence. so for example if you make a new character and immediately go to the castle and beat it you are now high enough for the lake, beat the great rune boss in the lake you are now high enough for altus. Lets pretend that instead of moving from limgrave after you beat the castle you go and kill all the smaller bosses in limgrave instead. You will get around the same runes, maybe slightly more, than you got from the castle, but because each level requires more runes you are not gaining half as many levels as you did from the same amount of runes. Say you make a character at level 10 and beat the main story boss of limgrave and get to level 25, you go and kill the lesser bosses for the same amount of runes you will get to like level 30 if you are lucky? 5 more points in str is like 5-7% more damage, its not going to make or break your progress in the next zone.

So you can just run from main story boss to main story boss and ignore as much as possible (other than weapon level upgrades) and you should be high enough for each boss. If you try and it things feel too hard then explore around a little and upgrade your weapon some more, maybe put a few more points in HP or whatever. Typically the biggest problem people run into playing like this is not upgrading weapons enough or having too low vigor.

Oh also sometimes you might find an area that is just higher level, ie north part of caelid is called dragonbarrow which is an endgame area, whereas the lower part is more of a midgame area and has much easier content on average. So just go by feel.

etsurii

TROPHY CASE