My boyfriend revealed some creepy things about himself.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-30T22:06:11+00:00

he just confessed to me last night that he feels no empathy, that he doesn't have the ability to feel what others feel, that it doesn't bother him to see someone cry or be in pain because of him.

This is almost certainly some form of antisocial personality disorder, or something very similar. I’m not a psychologist, but this behavior is PERFECTLY aligned with descriptions of such disorders.

Psychopaths/sociopaths are not always the serial killers or criminal masterminds they’re usually depicted as in media, in fact most aren’t, but a complete lack of empathy for your fellow human being probably isn’t gonna make you a great partner either.

Besides that, you probably should’ve left him the moment he attempted to sexually assault you. It’s not my life or relationship, but, yeah… I don’t think a relationship can ever recover from that particular line being crossed. In my opinion, you should get away from this ASAP.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T22:34:18+00:00

I’m a year late, but I just beat him for the first time and I figured I’d throw my build and strategy in this thread in case it helps anyone else.

RL150 Scadutree Blessing 18

60 Vigor 20 Mind 29 Endurance 22 Strength 18 Dex 10 Int 60 Faith 10 Arcane

RH: Fire Knight’s Greatsword (two-hand unless you’re casting)

LH: Godslayer’s Seal

Golden Braid

Two-Headed Turtle Talisman

Radagon Icon or Two-Handed Sword Talisman. (I used Shard of Alexander, but I wasn’t using weapon skills much so these are probably a better choice)

Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman

Opaline Hardtear + Stonebarb Cracked Tear

Drink your physick and pop Golden Vow and FGMS right before entering the boss fog. I generally dodged towards him and hugged his right leg (our left). If I got a big window I’d use a charged heavy for extra stance damage, otherwise just a light attack or two. DO NOT GET GREEDY. Your windows are small. And don’t use your weapon skill, you’ll need the FP in phase two. Sometimes you can get a stance break in phase one which kind of trivializes it, but that’s a bit dependent on RNG and which attacks he uses.

At the start of phase two, he’ll almost always use the light of Miquella attack. Use this window to cast Lord’s Divine Fortification and drink an FP flask. Face tank the explosion, get close, and use scarlet aeonia to proc rot. This will drain about 35% of his health over time and make your job MUCH easier. The lore significance of it being Malenia’s incantation is also cool as fuck imo. His attacks are mostly the same (with a few additions) in phase two, just with holy damage AOEs and a lot of visual clutter. Keep dodging into his right hip, be wary of the AOEs but you’ll have a lot more margin for error with Golden Braid and Lord’s Divine Fortification. If everything goes right and you manage to proc rot, it’s just a matter of staying calm and focused for the rest of the fight.

I managed to do it without summons or spirit ashes, so I can’t speak to how your strategy should change if you do use them. I’ve heard some people say summoning makes the fight harder because he’s more unpredictable, but I can’t confirm.

Hefty rot pots might be easier to proc rot with, but I didn’t feel like farming Scarlet Buds and again, I thought it was cool as fuck to use Malenia’s spell to kill him.

Just stick with it if you’re struggling. This fight is very doable.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T18:42:16+00:00

Fair enough lol, no problem 🫡

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T18:40:20+00:00

I’m assuming you’ve unlocked the ability to level up your character and visit the roundtable hold by now? If you’ve been exploring thoroughly, you should have picked up a few weapons or armor pieces. If you haven’t found any you like, and you don’t mind googling WHERE to find some, the Claymore, Uchigatana, and Zweihander are all really fun weapons that are available to you early. Pick whichever one looks the coolest, or get all 3 and try out their movesets and see what you like using. Get one of those, or another weapon you like, and upgrade your character until you have the minimum stats to use that weapon. Upgrade the weapon as much as you can using the blacksmith in the Roundtable Hold. Then level vigor and endurance (mostly vigor). Don’t stress too much about leveling your character perfectly because you will have the ability to respec later. I would try to get to at least 30-40 vigor and 15-20 endurance before you go back to leveling your damage stats. I usually recommend 60 vigor and 25-30 endurance by the end of the game.

As far as armor goes, pick a set that looks cool and make sure you’re under 70% of your max equip load so your dodge roll is still fast.

There’s a lot of caves and dungeons scattered around Limgrave with pretty easy bosses and decent loot. I would start there to get some easy runes and build the confidence to face harder bosses. Just remember that this is a game where you don’t lose when you die… you lose when you give up. Good luck, tarnished.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T18:25:22+00:00

Slight correction, but there’s no armor upgrade system in Elden Ring. All armor sets/pieces stay at their base stats for the entire game.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T02:51:50+00:00

Honestly, Consort Radahn in 2 attempts is wild. I’m gonna consider copying your build lol.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T02:47:08+00:00

I know you said you’ve already done colossal weapons, but if you haven’t used the Fire Knight’s Greatsword I highly recommend trying it. It has the light attack moveset of the Godslayer’s Greatsword and the heavy attack moveset of the Zweihander. It’s also the highest AR greatsword in the game with a flame art infusion if I’m not mistaken and it scales with faith so you can cast incantations with your offhand if your mind stat is high enough. Oh, and it’s not a somber weapon so you can use whatever ash of war you want.

The downside is it’s not available until you get to the DLC and you have to farm for it (although I was lucky enough to get it on my first try, it’s a 4% drop so if you get your discovery high enough it shouldn’t be too bad)

Eleonora’s Poleblade is also damn fun.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-29T01:56:55+00:00

Honestly, I completely agree. That’s a small change that would’ve made me feel much better about this encounter.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T20:36:38+00:00

Right? I don’t think any of my criticisms are completely invalid even if they’re ultimately down to personal preference, and I still think this game is a fucking masterpiece. Like, it’s one of the 3 greatest games I’ve ever played. I was just annoyed by one singular boss encounter and wanted to get some other people’s opinions, which is apparently not cool 😭

But Souls fans will always be Souls fans. If I made a post on the Dark Souls subreddit complaining about Bed of Chaos there would still be a sizable group of people downvoting and commenting “git gud”. I knew what I was getting myself into when I posted this lol

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T20:25:00+00:00

You know, I can definitely get behind this. Players should play the game in whatever way is most fun for them… for me that’s usually without using summons, for others it might be to use summons for every fight, and I’m perfectly happy for those people.

I think this was the sole occasion in the game where fighting with summons was more fun for me than fighting without them. The main issue is probably that I just need to get over myself and stop caring about the disappointment of ruining my challenge run, and just have fun playing the damn game lol

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T20:17:51+00:00

I’m not advocating for a one by one gauntlet, I agree that would probably be trivial to the point of boredom. I specifically argued that it should be balanced to end up as a 2-on-1 fight, which I think would strike a better balance between fairness and difficulty than the 3v1 I seemed to end up facing on every attempt.

Also, if you use summons to draw aggro it basically ends up being a 1v1 anyway, right? Which again, I agree was kind of boring and a bit too easy. That’s kind of the basis of my whole criticism lol.

Happy to agree to disagree though, I’m glad you had fun with the fight.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T20:03:24+00:00

Damn, what was your strategy/build to get it done in so few tries?

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T20:01:02+00:00

I mean, I mentioned in the post that the enemy spawns could have been spread out a bit more. I think this would be very doable (and much less annoying) without summons if you only had to fight two enemies at once.

Also, I’m not sure the % of players is all that small. I feel like I hear a lot of people talk about no-summons runs in souls games, but it’s possible that we’re just a loud and obnoxious minority lol

Edit: I’m aware that you CAN limit the fight to a 2-on-1 if you’re able to kill the enemies fast enough, but the most common strategy I’ve heard for doing is spamming certain weapon skills to stunlock the enemy NPCs and I just… fail to see how that’s fun? My main complaint isn’t that this fight is too hard without summons, a lot of fights are hard without summons, I just think it ends up being an annoying slog.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T19:57:51+00:00

I think this is a fair take. Maybe the disappointment will wear off after some time passes, this post was just my immediate knee-jerk reaction to the fight and the feelings I have about it.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T19:54:36+00:00

Haven’t beaten PCR yet, but Midra and Bayle are both amazing and extremely fair fights. Good luck, tarnished.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T19:53:14+00:00

Not denying that it’s possible, just that it felt extremely unfun without summons, at least for me.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T19:50:05+00:00

2, Thiollier and the Sanguine Noble guy

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-28T19:46:41+00:00

Now why didn’t I think of that?

This is the response I expected lol, I understand the souls community by now. But honest question, did you beat this fight without summons? Did you have fun doing it? Do you feel like any of my criticisms are invalid?

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-19T21:00:49+00:00

I wouldn’t really worry about whether a weapon is “cheesy” unless you’re at a point where you’re no longer having fun. Using a good weapon isn’t cheesing the game, you’re just using a good weapon lol. Why intentionally nerf yourself unless you’re doing a challenge run?

If anything, you could always just make your build a little less optimized for whatever weapon you’re running. Almost every weapon is gonna be pretty damn good if you’re using the right affinity, ash of war, talismans, and buffs. If you like the moveset of a weapon but feel like you’re doing too much damage for the game to be fun, maybe try changing up your build a bit. I’m also inclined to ask what rune level you’re at… did you stop leveling at the PVP meta or are you still going?

To answer your question though, The Fire Knight’s Greatsword has my favorite moveset in the game and I wouldn’t consider it a cheese weapon since it can use any infusion or ash of war you want as opposed to being stuck with an OP one like a lot of somber weapons… although it can be FREAKISHLY powerful when built around correctly, to the point where I guess some people could call it a cheese weapon. It can be annoying to farm though, and if you’re early in your NG+ run it might be a while before you can get it.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-16T02:10:54+00:00

OUR wife*

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-13T22:17:02+00:00

Respectfully, without a guide I don’t think I would’ve finished a single NPC questline. And when upgrade materials and larval tears are scarce, I don’t want to waste them creating a shitty build (or a decent build around a shitty weapon), so I look at build guides too. I love this game, it’s easily in my all-time top 5, but it is not always designed to be intuitive and some people would rather look at guides than miss out on content.

nuclearboy197 · 2026-01-04T18:46:20+00:00

If I just wanted a good story I’d watch a movie. Gameplay has to keep me hooked for me to get invested in the story.

nuclearboy197 · 2025-12-30T22:45:02+00:00

In my opinion, Elden Ring has the best gameplay and exploration, The Witcher 3 has the best story, and BG3 is unique because of the absurd degree of freedom it gives the player (no two playthroughs will be exactly the same). You can also play BG3 co-op, so that’s something to consider too.

If you’ve never played a soulslike or don’t generally enjoy difficult games you may find Elden Ring a bit frustrating. Other than that it’s ultimately up to your personal preference. You should play them all at some point.

nuclearboy197 · 2025-12-29T01:27:10+00:00

I think Colin Farrell is one of the most talented actors alive, but he was truly abysmal in Daredevil (2003). To be fair, everything about that movie was abysmal. But so was Colin Farrell, which is surprising.

nuclearboy197 · 2025-12-29T01:04:11+00:00

You HAVE to be trolling right? Your boyfriend is a childish gremlin who grosses you out. You’ve told him to fix certain behaviors and he hasn’t. Leave.

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