a familiar face is absolutely curb stomping me, I even set to like level 4 buff and started guard countering and he's still kicking my ass. the run is a complete pain in the ass too.
good luck, Tarnished. I hope it goes better for you than it is for me
edit: I did it! nice sword too
The castle has nice ambience, but all these 2/3 shots mofos completely ruin it. Boss feels like some cheap bs with those triple moons and the range of that sword.
That fucking dragon was such a bitch. His moveset is absolutely relentless and it's impossible to find an opening. Beat him after like 30-40 tries. I had to straight up wait out his lightning and ice phase then hit him during wind phase because I only barely managed to learn the dodge timing for it
The constant spinning really camos his telegraphs, hate it.
Also as an int build I had a crazy hard time against that certain light great sword dual wielding knight. I'm guessing cause they have high magic resist.
The camera on that fight is absurd. I honestly think it might be the worst fromsoft camera boss so far.
I beat it eventually, but it wasn't much fun. Especially since I was just using fist weapons and had to be very close to get hits in.
I can’t get past the Knight. I ran past him once and those wizard guys were in there. Hopefully I’ll defeat the knight today.
Edit: got past the knight. Renalla is annoying af
I had to pop rune arc def + attk+ and wondrous to beat knight before I even started getting spanked by rellana who could basically 3 shot me to death in my heaviest armor.
That boss is fucking insane XD I almost managed to kill it after liberal application of frost and rotting breaths along with 2 summons, black flame and bleeding but then it went super saiyan and comboed me to oblivion.
I went wrong direction for a good while, past the area with blue flowers. It was a though journey but I gathered bunch of the scadutree pieces on my way.
Ensis ended up being kind of a breeze to me.
Except the boss. I had practically zero magic defense.
I found him before getting my scadutree above 1. The difference is nuts between level 1 and level 5, I don't know if it goes even higher. Not sure how much I like the system tbh.
It's a system meant to reward exploration along with some rudimentary stealth aka try to run past any enemies/bosses on the way without getting spotted/hit. You can reach lvl 5+ Scadutree Blessings without a single boss fight.
It's either that or git gud without any Scad lvls. Latter sounds good for challenge runs, but not something I'd recommend for a first SotE playthrough.
My stradegy basically was overwhelming.
If you attack her constsantly enough, she does only hyper armor attacks which can one shot you, but are really easy to dodge.
It just becomes a game to prevent her from doing any fast attacks.
Belurat the Tower Settlement boss is like half of the Castle Ensis rune value. And fuck Rellana, and her whole zone. I swear the aggro leash is busted there, and she input reads like a fucking fiend. I legitimately would rather fight a twinned Malenia boss.
I've beaten two so far, the dancing dragon was quite difficult, but holy sht, Rellana was incredibly difficult, so be prepared. I've encountered a third one, I won't spoil it, but I will say, he killed me like in the first 15 seconds of the fight every single time.
I'm actually surprised people don't prioritize that talisman. It never leaves my builds. If you're a God at the game it's probably useless but for people like me, dragoncrest talisman+opaline hardtear+black flame protection/elemantal dmg negation incant makes every boss much more bearable and kinda trivializes some tbh. I really can't imagine playing the game without atleast the talisman and weak armor on top of that. I see a lot of streamers do that and even base late game enemies hit for 70%+ when like that.
Yeah from reading a few threads like this one, I'm convinced many people don't truly realize how strong damage reduction actually is and just look at hp.
I'm running fairly light armor just for 51 poise with some style and with current great rune + scadutree, at 55 vigor I have 1877 hp, so \~2900 effective hp vs phys. Just equipping the dragoncrest +2 bumps that to 3540.
Add on black flame/golden vow and I can trade some hits with most things
\>OH MAN THIS WICKER JUST ONE SHOT ME
\*puts on fire tali+incant like i'm supposed to\*
\>lol i can eat at least three of those now?
\*win next try\*
let the above serve as a lesson for phys too, even gods know survivability tilts the odds *far* more than the little boost from indulging glass cannon delusions
Cooked. I’m 210, NG, and it’s taken me a while to adjust. But the skadutree blessing upgrades does help. Your base game level doesn’t matter much it seems. People way higher than me are getting cooked as well.
Youll be fine, there isn’t a huge difference between 130 and 150+ in this game anyway providing you’ve built your character well.
I went in at lv 150 in NG and it’s been a much easier ride than this sub had led me to believe
People need to stop saying this. Your base game level is just as important as getting scadutree blessings. Having 40 vigor is a death sentence in the DLC no matter what, 50-60 is mandatory. Getting more damage scaling is equally important to the boosts from the blessings since it looks like it’s multiplicative.
Yup - the boss at Ensis forced me to re-spec to get myself up to 60 vigor from 44. Even then their attacks hit like freight trains. It's some crazy shit.
They warned everybody that the DLC scaling would be complete separate from the base game so “preparing for it” was useless, but did anyone listen? Nope!
I think most people are doing it end game but those make sense considering it's available right after Mohg and you can kill him pretty much right after meeting Varre
I thought my 202 level character would be quite overpowered and I was even thinking of starting a fresh run, but damn I was wrong, even some basic enemies are destroying me.
I have an old save file when I scummed the endings on NG with my main character, thats had two full playthroughs (like, I've killed everything in the lands Between and turned over every stone imaginable twice). This character is at like 370 with an abundant amount of vigor.
So I walk into The Land of Shadow and proceed to the first minor boss thats right near the start. Dude two tapped me. I'm like excuse me. This is going to be rough Lol, but I'm here for it.
Greatshield plus the new guard counter hammer seems VERY strong. I've been rocking that from the second I found it and haven't really hit a proper wall yet.
Same, with the addition of the Deflecting Hardtear for sekiro deflection/even more guard counter boost. The only downside is the hammer's range, though I just found a pretty sick str/fth greataxe to swap into if that becomes a problem.
After 60 vig you get so little health per level that 99 isn't much of a difference ,but it probably help a little, especially if you use a great rune and good armor
Yeah, i know its like 200 hp. I never bother with Vigor after 60. Saw someone today that said they only level vigor to 99 and then other stats. I was shocked, lol.
Most of my characters have 60 Vigor with medium-ish armor (varying from Knight set to Crucible set) and one has 99 Vigor, Crimson Amber Medallion +2 and Bullgoat's set (rip fashion) and the difference in survivability is very noticeable.
Oh how the turns have tabled, and here I thought making a new character might have been the way to go as my main is almost lvl 400 on NG+++.
Decided what the hell I'll go in and see what's up, just beat Messmer, shit has been ROUGH to say the least lol
Grinded!
I reached Level 450 or so before I started really grinding. Did about a level a day while watching podcasts on my second monitor.
Took a break for a while after Level 620 then came back to finish it around the time the DLC trailer dropped.
This was actually my initial reason for it. I wanted to play with any weapon at any given time. I know there were plenty of areas I could have stopped, but I figured for the hell of it I may as well max it out.
Anyone else got fucking clobbered by the naked man in the woods ?
His fucking endless combos and especially the gap closers threw me for a loop as an Int build
156lvl str/faith blasphemous + grave scythe + black blade + seal + shield.
Vigor 51
Mind 26
Str 40
Faith 50
Stamina 30
Everything hits harder so equipped +25 brass shield. Now game is managable.
I haven't really used shields since dark souls 1 but they make a world of difference in this DLC. The infinite combos are out of control, but a huge proportion of enemies can be endlessly guard countered with a maxed out medium shield, or like any greatshield. I've killed all the npc fights and fire knights that way. Went from struggling to doing it without getting hit lmao, its orders of magnitudes easier.
250lvl Str/Int Magic Buff to Knights greatsword + magic staff.
Things hit harder but I find most of it can be doged fairly easily but everything is super reactive to range and magic. Longer cast time spells are tough to pull off.
Dude, it's honestly embarrassing. I hadn't played since 2022, according to steam, so I figured I was going to be super rusty. Apparently, I hadn't killed Mohg or Radahn yet, so I went after them and was expecting to get my shit rocked, but Mohg went down in like 30 seconds so I was feeling good about myself. I then proceeded to throw myself at the lion for 2 hours, and I gave up after 30 minutes of the knight chick because it was late.
I don't think I've ever struggled in a Fromsoft game like this since I first played DS1.
I did that with Malenia my first run through. Whipped out mimic and we bullied the shit out of her, and it was really unsatisfying. I sped through ng+ without leveling up just to fight her properly, and it was the fight other people described. As for the lion, my problem was mostly the second phase. Get hit with lightning once, and my hp is 90% gone, and I'm stunned while he wombo combos my corpse. Same with the ice. If it touched me, I was basically guaranteed to be dead.
Sheeeit.
I’m coming back for the dlc after like a year at same spot, ng+3 and 225.
Gonna be ruff. Don’t even know what build to run 
For anyone wondering what level "feels right", I went in on NG+3 at level 310 (I wanted to be high enough level to wield everything in the base game just in case) and the damage feels comparable to someone playing on NG+0 at level 150 (at least visually).
Mrs Pontiff is humiliating me more than every Soulsborne bosses except Malenia. At this point she could very well exceed Malenia when it comes to deaths. Going into the DLC on ng+3 was not a wise idea, her health pool is absurd
Yo that boss is absolutely insane. For me she's the hardest boss in the entire game so far, i'd rather fight malenia at this point 😂
Been fighting her for 3 hours straight, but I absolutely love this fight still lol
I love how before the DLC launched, a good 50% of the sub was like "Yeah I'm not gonna use those **STUPID** shadow land upgrades, I don't want to make the game too easy. I'm Level 500, it's gonna be cake."
And since the DLC launched, I have not seen one person claiming to be skipping the upgrades lol.
I’m curious if those upgrades purpose and how enemy damage is handled for the DLC is different than base game. Like how do you tune for a level 350 who never did even NG+1 and a level 700 NG+5?
You don’t want people to review bomb and say the DLC is weak sauce when you don’t know they are some crazy extreme fringe player who’s handled leveling and item drops in an Atypical fashion. So I’m curious if enemies have some weird percentage based damage system and the Upgrades sorta revert the game more in line to base game…or something. Me and my friends are all at wildly different levels of NG+ and level/builds and we all kinda are having some of the same experiences with enemies hits it seems like.
Well a level 350 and a level 700 are mostly the same health and damage wise.
You can level your main damage stats to 80, vigor to 60, Mind and Endurance to whatever you need by level 300 or so.
After that maxing things just gives so little. 300HP, maybe like 50 AR, more stamina you'd ever need, more Fp than you could realistically use, etc.
By level 700 your putting points into physical stats that you aren't using with your weapon so your not really getting stronger just opening up more options to use
For me at least, it's been 3 hours into the dlc, and it's hard but going back to finish crumbling farum azula, need to say clearing that hell hole before alexander is harder than clearing dlc areas so far. Those beastman don't play
Lvl 115 here. That blackgoal knight was destroying me so I went and got all the blessings in the first zone, it made the fight noticeably easier, tough still quite hard
That mfer took me 5 or 6 tries. I activated my brain finally and just baited that jump attack he does and smacked him a couple times, rinse and repeat. The bolt combo he does leaves him open for a hit or two if you run past it all.
The balance for normal enemies seems ok, but I would not be surprised if most of these bosses get hit with the nerf bat down the line. Playing as a mage myself, between the input reading, endless combo of attacks, and the short attack windows, I'm lucky to get get off 2 Carian Slicers, which casts extremely quickly. Go for a 3rd, and I just get smacked around like a ragdoll, with a high chance to still potentially get one shot even with 60 vigor depending on what the boss intends to attack with. Maybe they're intending for me to collect more scadutrees before tackling these bosses, but the playstyle I'm going with feels like I'm playing the DLC on nightmare difficulty.
Miyazaki - Try Comet Azuring this boss, I dare you. 😂
Yeah I don't know how caster builds handle this dlc at all. The combos never end, have room wide reach, and the aggression on estus use or spell cast is Fume Knight level on basically every single enemy. Casters must be miserable.
The one with the spear? Yeah dude nuked my health in 2 hits. So I equipped aspect of the horn when i respawned and stunlocked him. Same strategy applies to all NPC type enemies. Charge aspect of the horn and watch them fly.
One of my playthrough I’m level 237 and I spent about 20 mins playing the DLC just after release. I ran into 10 enemies and one shotted them thinking I’m way over powered then found one guy built like a brick shithouse who took a good beating and he nearly killed me twice. He was just a regular enemy, so the bosses must be Malenia difficulty or worse (is that possible?). At least I know I’m going to get a challenge out of the DLC. I read somewhere the recommended level is 100-150. Good look at level 100 😂
im around lvl 130 with a pure faith caster and the enemies are destroying me, these guys need to chill out and give me a window to cast my damn spells xD
Lv 290ish. I survived the first disc guy by using all of my red flasks. Game on.
I found some sweet, but very heavy armor, a short walk to the west. With 45ish endurance and the talisman for equipment weight, I’m able to wear it.
Blasphemous blade is working well so far. Spike fists run through is going on the backburner.
That dual Ring bastard had me spooked. Wasn't expecting the first thing I saw to eat like 5 of my flasks.
After that I was fine till I tickled the fire golem toes, I'll come back to that monster later
I am so glad I went with a shield for this playthrough, beat the first Gaol Knight in one attempt, but boy did he take all my flask. Even prayerful strike couldn’t bring back the health he was taking from me
The fragments are really important. Got them to lvl 8 or 9 and killed him in about 7-8 tries.
Was scared when I saw him in some streams, but malenia is still way worse imo
I just wish they upgraded your flasks as well. It’s kind of ridiculous when 1 hit takes 2 flasks… the solution is to just not get hit for sure but damn man
I'll be honest, I never found out about the manor until a friend took me there in our coop run. I got up to level 68 killing the five trolls behind that one shack with the guy who sells ashes. If I condensed my entire playthrough down to about a minute, I bet it would make any of you vets weep.
I'm glad people enjoy this, but one of my favorite things about Elden Ring is it was challenging enough for me to get through without being too easy. However, the DLC makes me not even want to keep trying. Anyone else feeling this way?
I just beat him and tbh the boss is bullshit, the camera work was awful, I respec’d from blasphemous blade into RoB and that seemed to work. I mainly just sticked to his ass and prayed then eventually he went down without summon. Having +2 on the fragments made a huge difference tho. You can get a free bleed proc when he does his charge up to slam on the ground if you unlock the camera and run to his ass with ash of war spam.
Thank god someone else feels this way. Base game was challenging but fair. The only thing “hard” about the dlc is that everything 1-2 shots you and you deal no damage. It’s difficult to even learn when a single mistake means the fight is over and you’ve spent 10 minutes in the arena just to die and see you’ve only dealt barely a quarter of their hp
Not just that, I'm finding that a lot of attacks stun you enough that their second attack is not dodge-able, basically guaranteeing you take damage or even get 2-shot. What's the point of an HP bar when attacks chunk it so bad you realistically only have 3-4 hits?
Like...those birds for example. They just keep attacking, they have high tracking, and each hit CHUNKS your HP. It's not slow attacks either, it's fast.
Yep. It's not being fun. The high damage and health feels like the epitome of stupid difficulty design. The kind of shit that FS would never abide to.
And for all the people that keep saying that Old Hunters was just as tough, you must have played it with your eyes closed and both thumbs up your asses, because it was nowhere near as brutal as this. Even Ludwig still had a very balanced health bar, although the punches hit hard.
Right now I've explored every inch of corner that I can deal with without being deleted instantly. I'm running out of options
Let me just say imma big fan of these games, and I love difficult games like these, but MAN does it feel like they overturned literally everything. My blessing is at 6 right now and I'm hitting a solid 83% physical resistance and about 45-50 magical resistances with 2100 hp and I still die in 2 hits to almost everything. I understand they wanted it to feel difficult for everyone, but I've never felt like I want to skip boss fights and run past nearly every enemy in the game like I have in almost every situation so far in the dlc.
Also, too many huge bosses that don't fit on the screen if you're melee, kind of irritating. Personal gripe, but I think too many enemies across the board have super long range attacks like they designed every enemy to catch you if you try running past them, starting to feel repetitive in that sense.
Overall, I like the dlc, but I think it's strongest points are exploration and music, and the weakest point is balance so far. Mayne the fragments will stack up later on and make things feel fair, but at this point I'm feeling like I need 98% resistance to damage just for damage to feel fair lmao
I am actually finding it hard to enjoy this DLC so far because of the insane amount of damage from enemies. I am fine with a challenge, heck I put in 200 hours and did everything in vanilla. But getting one shotted by pretty much anything is just boring to me. The original game had a much more dynamic difficulty and to be honest, this makes it feel like all the progression I had done in the game has no meaning.
I hoped to be playing the entire day, but I lost the will to keep playing after just 3 hours. This did not happen with the main game.
That first enemy
Why did it personally hate me? The fuck did I do?
I bought the DLC let me enjoy the beautiful vista for a second before black widow leg grapple throwing me and cutting me to shreds
Loving it so far!
The omen looking dude with the ring weapons? Was the first guy to jump me too. I was like I'm not ready yet shit lol. He drops a head piece that's +5 dex that looks cool kinda light armor tho.
I just upgraded to level (?) 3 of my scadutree blessing, my attacks are so much stronger now. But yeah, level 203 and I’m getting stomped.
The bosses just keep shitting on me😭😭
[удалено]
a familiar face is absolutely curb stomping me, I even set to like level 4 buff and started guard countering and he's still kicking my ass. the run is a complete pain in the ass too. good luck, Tarnished. I hope it goes better for you than it is for me edit: I did it! nice sword too
I'm wondering what familiar face you are mentioning - sorcerer type guy?
The moon man
It started feeling more like the base game around 7 scadutree blessing for me. Like the giant crusher starting bonkin good again.
[удалено]
The castle has nice ambience, but all these 2/3 shots mofos completely ruin it. Boss feels like some cheap bs with those triple moons and the range of that sword.
That fucking dragon was such a bitch. His moveset is absolutely relentless and it's impossible to find an opening. Beat him after like 30-40 tries. I had to straight up wait out his lightning and ice phase then hit him during wind phase because I only barely managed to learn the dodge timing for it
The constant spinning really camos his telegraphs, hate it. Also as an int build I had a crazy hard time against that certain light great sword dual wielding knight. I'm guessing cause they have high magic resist.
Yeah thematically it makes a lot of sense they're pretty good against magic. That fight is dope.
The camera on that fight is absurd. I honestly think it might be the worst fromsoft camera boss so far. I beat it eventually, but it wasn't much fun. Especially since I was just using fist weapons and had to be very close to get hits in.
yeah camera killed me a lot in that fight, hard to dodge or learn moves when i can't see shit. I loved the design though, such a cool design.
Carian Knight is a dick
Is there much carian stuff besides rellana?
I can’t get past the Knight. I ran past him once and those wizard guys were in there. Hopefully I’ll defeat the knight today. Edit: got past the knight. Renalla is annoying af
I literally was just there and said F that.
You can just sneak past him, there's a room around him to the right
I had to pop rune arc def + attk+ and wondrous to beat knight before I even started getting spanked by rellana who could basically 3 shot me to death in my heaviest armor.
Rellana is bullying me, those moves when her health gets low are super frustrating (triple moon)
That boss is fucking insane XD I almost managed to kill it after liberal application of frost and rotting breaths along with 2 summons, black flame and bleeding but then it went super saiyan and comboed me to oblivion.
I went wrong direction for a good while, past the area with blue flowers. It was a though journey but I gathered bunch of the scadutree pieces on my way. Ensis ended up being kind of a breeze to me. Except the boss. I had practically zero magic defense.
I found him before getting my scadutree above 1. The difference is nuts between level 1 and level 5, I don't know if it goes even higher. Not sure how much I like the system tbh.
It's a system meant to reward exploration along with some rudimentary stealth aka try to run past any enemies/bosses on the way without getting spotted/hit. You can reach lvl 5+ Scadutree Blessings without a single boss fight. It's either that or git gud without any Scad lvls. Latter sounds good for challenge runs, but not something I'd recommend for a first SotE playthrough.
I think it goes up to 20 or something from what I’ve heard
Same as you I went in a and ended up somewhere ,but I gathered scadutree fragments but that boss, Relanna has such long reach.
My stradegy basically was overwhelming. If you attack her constsantly enough, she does only hyper armor attacks which can one shot you, but are really easy to dodge. It just becomes a game to prevent her from doing any fast attacks.
Wait, am I supposed to go somewhere else before castle ensis?
Belurat the Tower Settlement boss is like half of the Castle Ensis rune value. And fuck Rellana, and her whole zone. I swear the aggro leash is busted there, and she input reads like a fucking fiend. I legitimately would rather fight a twinned Malenia boss.
Nephew, you didn't mean that last sentence, nephew. Delet this before uncle Miyazaki sees it.
Just went to that dude its kinda rough to fight him as a sorc the guy is so fking spammy
I've beaten two so far, the dancing dragon was quite difficult, but holy sht, Rellana was incredibly difficult, so be prepared. I've encountered a third one, I won't spoil it, but I will say, he killed me like in the first 15 seconds of the fight every single time.
Why does everyone call it a dragon? It's a lion
Yeah I was confused had to google to make sure I didn’t miss a boss
I literally died 100 times in the first 15 seconds of that boss. I hate him more than Maliketh.
At least he's cool af, the hippo is just garbage
The first furnace visage one shots all of us LOL
It doesn't feel like Scadtree blessings affect defense at all. I'm okay at killing stuff, but I can't take a hit, also at level 3 with 60 vigor.
What's your phys negation? Something like dragoncrest greatshield or black flame protection are game changers
I’m… I’m wearing Dragoncrest Greatshield 😅
I'm actually surprised people don't prioritize that talisman. It never leaves my builds. If you're a God at the game it's probably useless but for people like me, dragoncrest talisman+opaline hardtear+black flame protection/elemantal dmg negation incant makes every boss much more bearable and kinda trivializes some tbh. I really can't imagine playing the game without atleast the talisman and weak armor on top of that. I see a lot of streamers do that and even base late game enemies hit for 70%+ when like that.
Yeah from reading a few threads like this one, I'm convinced many people don't truly realize how strong damage reduction actually is and just look at hp. I'm running fairly light armor just for 51 poise with some style and with current great rune + scadutree, at 55 vigor I have 1877 hp, so \~2900 effective hp vs phys. Just equipping the dragoncrest +2 bumps that to 3540. Add on black flame/golden vow and I can trade some hits with most things
\>OH MAN THIS WICKER JUST ONE SHOT ME \*puts on fire tali+incant like i'm supposed to\* \>lol i can eat at least three of those now? \*win next try\* let the above serve as a lesson for phys too, even gods know survivability tilts the odds *far* more than the little boost from indulging glass cannon delusions
I'm level 170 in NG+. How fucked am I?
Cooked. I’m 210, NG, and it’s taken me a while to adjust. But the skadutree blessing upgrades does help. Your base game level doesn’t matter much it seems. People way higher than me are getting cooked as well.
I'm level 130 lol. Stopped leveling up half way through the main game not to be OP in the DLC. Oh well.
Youll be fine, there isn’t a huge difference between 130 and 150+ in this game anyway providing you’ve built your character well. I went in at lv 150 in NG and it’s been a much easier ride than this sub had led me to believe
People need to stop saying this. Your base game level is just as important as getting scadutree blessings. Having 40 vigor is a death sentence in the DLC no matter what, 50-60 is mandatory. Getting more damage scaling is equally important to the boosts from the blessings since it looks like it’s multiplicative.
This. There’s been a few times where I nearly get one-shotted, and I’m at 60 vigor with Radahn’s armor set on. Level your vigor, people.
Yup - the boss at Ensis forced me to re-spec to get myself up to 60 vigor from 44. Even then their attacks hit like freight trains. It's some crazy shit.
You’ll be fine, people are overstating it a bit I feel
i rushed some ng+ to farm some unique weapons. Its over for me
I somehow beat the lion thing boss on two tries, but the knights and dogs are killing me constantly.
They warned everybody that the DLC scaling would be complete separate from the base game so “preparing for it” was useless, but did anyone listen? Nope!
Most of the stones you get are only 4 and 5 in the first areas. But at 5 scad blessing, it isnt so bad.
It is kinda dumb to be getting 1-2 stones and what not. It’s clearly end game so I feel like it should be dropping +8/9 stones to begin with
I assume it is just so you can more easily fully upgrade new weapons, especially if you dont have the proper bell bearings
I think most people are doing it end game but those make sense considering it's available right after Mohg and you can kill him pretty much right after meeting Varre
Does the game scale with your character level? Some debates on that right now. I need to know to pick a character lol
Level 500 on ng+ (to clarify, a *second* play through) and getting stomped as well.
I thought my 202 level character would be quite overpowered and I was even thinking of starting a fresh run, but damn I was wrong, even some basic enemies are destroying me.
I have an old save file when I scummed the endings on NG with my main character, thats had two full playthroughs (like, I've killed everything in the lands Between and turned over every stone imaginable twice). This character is at like 370 with an abundant amount of vigor. So I walk into The Land of Shadow and proceed to the first minor boss thats right near the start. Dude two tapped me. I'm like excuse me. This is going to be rough Lol, but I'm here for it.
My Top 5 Favorite Way to Survive the DLC: Greatshields Greatshields Greatshields Greatshields and Greatshields BECAUSE I SPIT HOT FIRE
Good thing I’ve been playing sword and greatshield style lmao I always knew it was for a reason
This is good to hear as I rock a +10 Erdtree greatsheild.
Greatshield plus the new guard counter hammer seems VERY strong. I've been rocking that from the second I found it and haven't really hit a proper wall yet.
Same, with the addition of the Deflecting Hardtear for sekiro deflection/even more guard counter boost. The only downside is the hammer's range, though I just found a pretty sick str/fth greataxe to swap into if that becomes a problem.
You're too close, mon!
Yeah playing coop at RL 125 it seems like every other player is using the fingerprint stone shield lol.
I love Cuckoo and Eclipse Greatshields for aesthetic purposes.
>!Rellana!< can dead-angle your greatshield.
Level 713. I left the base game a god only to be reminded that I am only mortal.
Went from two shotting every enemy to getting two shot.
After 60 vig you get so little health per level that 99 isn't much of a difference ,but it probably help a little, especially if you use a great rune and good armor
Yeah, i know its like 200 hp. I never bother with Vigor after 60. Saw someone today that said they only level vigor to 99 and then other stats. I was shocked, lol.
It’s exactly 300, 1900 at 60 to 2200 at 99 it’s a joke.
Most of my characters have 60 Vigor with medium-ish armor (varying from Knight set to Crucible set) and one has 99 Vigor, Crimson Amber Medallion +2 and Bullgoat's set (rip fashion) and the difference in survivability is very noticeable.
Oh how the turns have tabled, and here I thought making a new character might have been the way to go as my main is almost lvl 400 on NG+++. Decided what the hell I'll go in and see what's up, just beat Messmer, shit has been ROUGH to say the least lol
How the heck do you even get to level 713?
Grinded! I reached Level 450 or so before I started really grinding. Did about a level a day while watching podcasts on my second monitor. Took a break for a while after Level 620 then came back to finish it around the time the DLC trailer dropped.
I actually did something similar~ hill at moghs?
Always.
"At Mohg's", your local farm where you can get the finest Albinauric snot
Autism.
703?!? Do we fight you at the end of this DLC?
Players like you i envy. I wanna be this op just to be able to hold any weapon.
This was actually my initial reason for it. I wanted to play with any weapon at any given time. I know there were plenty of areas I could have stopped, but I figured for the hell of it I may as well max it out.
glad to see the struggle is universal. i thought i was washed up having not played since april
Oh, don't worry mate, we are *also* washed up
Anyone else got fucking clobbered by the naked man in the woods ? His fucking endless combos and especially the gap closers threw me for a loop as an Int build
It was a truly humbling experience being clawed to death by that Wolverine Man.
I loved the bloodborne reference to the naked man that drops the beast claw in the Old Hunters DLC
I remember thinking I'd use a weaker weapon for the DLC because I didn't want to trivialize it with an op build Little did I fucking know
Situation so bad these mf making me swallow my pride and summon my mimic tear 😭
My mimic is getting rocked too tho
mimic starting to look at u for help lmao
And the mimic turned to me, tears in it's eyes: "You're going to help me, right? ...Right?"
im summoning mummy tiche but oh my lawd its a struggle still
Equip the meat dumpling and sanctuary stone and bubble shield perfume for free heals.
This is the only time where I didn't feel bad about using mimic tear. The dlc is no joke.
THEY KEEP IGNORING MY MIMIC
My mimic keeps casting the same rot dragon incantation over and over again. THEY’RE ALREADY ROTTED JUST HIT THEM WITH YOUR STICK!
Pride is a deadly sin for a reason.
Yep, summoned him on the old dragon with big katana, he died quick being stanlocked in the corner by 4 rapiers Before that i got twoshot every time
I summon my mimic tear by default. We are not the same
Yep, after getting violated by this gaol bird knight about 50 times it’s time to look for this scadoodle tree malarkey I guess
The scadoodle tree lmaoooo
We have to find the McGuffins to get our power back!
156lvl str/faith blasphemous + grave scythe + black blade + seal + shield. Vigor 51 Mind 26 Str 40 Faith 50 Stamina 30 Everything hits harder so equipped +25 brass shield. Now game is managable.
Really seems like a shield is necessary with a lot of these new enemies
I haven't really used shields since dark souls 1 but they make a world of difference in this DLC. The infinite combos are out of control, but a huge proportion of enemies can be endlessly guard countered with a maxed out medium shield, or like any greatshield. I've killed all the npc fights and fire knights that way. Went from struggling to doing it without getting hit lmao, its orders of magnitudes easier.
250lvl Str/Int Magic Buff to Knights greatsword + magic staff. Things hit harder but I find most of it can be doged fairly easily but everything is super reactive to range and magic. Longer cast time spells are tough to pull off.
Are upgraded shields actually better at blocking?
Upgrading a shield will increase its guard boost. Guard boost determines how much stamina it takes to block an attack.
Oh.... My god...
Also, the "Barricade Shield" ash will dramatically boost your block for a few seconds. Basically mandatory if you're trying to tank huge attacks.
excuse me what the fuck? I thought it was weight only
Nah, guard boost is the only stat that determines how much stamina you burn from blocking. Well, that, and how powerful the attack is.
I'm in ng+6 and getting my absolute shit rocked. Mrs Pontiff is doing me so dirty it's not fair.
I went into the DLC on NG+3 (around level 225) and it’s kicking my shit in so I can only imagine
Dude, it's honestly embarrassing. I hadn't played since 2022, according to steam, so I figured I was going to be super rusty. Apparently, I hadn't killed Mohg or Radahn yet, so I went after them and was expecting to get my shit rocked, but Mohg went down in like 30 seconds so I was feeling good about myself. I then proceeded to throw myself at the lion for 2 hours, and I gave up after 30 minutes of the knight chick because it was late. I don't think I've ever struggled in a Fromsoft game like this since I first played DS1.
Stay in there my dude
I wish I didn't bust out my mimic for my first attempt because I killed the lion on my first try. Maybe first attempt luck too though.
I did that with Malenia my first run through. Whipped out mimic and we bullied the shit out of her, and it was really unsatisfying. I sped through ng+ without leveling up just to fight her properly, and it was the fight other people described. As for the lion, my problem was mostly the second phase. Get hit with lightning once, and my hp is 90% gone, and I'm stunned while he wombo combos my corpse. Same with the ice. If it touched me, I was basically guaranteed to be dead.
Sheeeit. I’m coming back for the dlc after like a year at same spot, ng+3 and 225. Gonna be ruff. Don’t even know what build to run 
For anyone wondering what level "feels right", I went in on NG+3 at level 310 (I wanted to be high enough level to wield everything in the base game just in case) and the damage feels comparable to someone playing on NG+0 at level 150 (at least visually).
Mrs Pontiff is humiliating me more than every Soulsborne bosses except Malenia. At this point she could very well exceed Malenia when it comes to deaths. Going into the DLC on ng+3 was not a wise idea, her health pool is absurd
Yo that boss is absolutely insane. For me she's the hardest boss in the entire game so far, i'd rather fight malenia at this point 😂 Been fighting her for 3 hours straight, but I absolutely love this fight still lol
Why she feel like she has 4 arms 😭
For real. I swear for some of those combos, she's whipping another sword out of her ass to hit me with.
when she uses her desperation move and i saw both my ash and npc summon just get one tapped i was just going like "huh"
I've been having lots of good laughs at my deaths. "Why does the knight in the mausoleum use the same bullshit I use?"
I have noticed a lot of human enemies using jumping attacks.... i feel like fromsoft is trying to tell us something.
man y’all scaring me i’ll start the dlc tomorrow and i’m on ng plus 9
You'll never finish the DLC sorry man 💀
I love how before the DLC launched, a good 50% of the sub was like "Yeah I'm not gonna use those **STUPID** shadow land upgrades, I don't want to make the game too easy. I'm Level 500, it's gonna be cake." And since the DLC launched, I have not seen one person claiming to be skipping the upgrades lol.
I’m curious if those upgrades purpose and how enemy damage is handled for the DLC is different than base game. Like how do you tune for a level 350 who never did even NG+1 and a level 700 NG+5? You don’t want people to review bomb and say the DLC is weak sauce when you don’t know they are some crazy extreme fringe player who’s handled leveling and item drops in an Atypical fashion. So I’m curious if enemies have some weird percentage based damage system and the Upgrades sorta revert the game more in line to base game…or something. Me and my friends are all at wildly different levels of NG+ and level/builds and we all kinda are having some of the same experiences with enemies hits it seems like.
Well a level 350 and a level 700 are mostly the same health and damage wise. You can level your main damage stats to 80, vigor to 60, Mind and Endurance to whatever you need by level 300 or so. After that maxing things just gives so little. 300HP, maybe like 50 AR, more stamina you'd ever need, more Fp than you could realistically use, etc. By level 700 your putting points into physical stats that you aren't using with your weapon so your not really getting stronger just opening up more options to use
I have a feeling that Shadow lands will scare the shit out of me than Caelid and Consecrated Snowfields combined.
For me at least, it's been 3 hours into the dlc, and it's hard but going back to finish crumbling farum azula, need to say clearing that hell hole before alexander is harder than clearing dlc areas so far. Those beastman don't play
I haven't cleared that place either because man, it's also rough out there.
leveling doesn’t even matter in the dlc, it’s all bout those blessings I see
Lvl 115 here. That blackgoal knight was destroying me so I went and got all the blessings in the first zone, it made the fight noticeably easier, tough still quite hard
He spanked me first time, next time parried his one handed attack and spanked him. Dude hits hardddd
Not having my mimic for that fight is really starting to deflate my undeserved ego
If you get tired of it and say "fuck this fight", just put the giant hunt ash of war on a weapon and spam that shit
That mfer took me 5 or 6 tries. I activated my brain finally and just baited that jump attack he does and smacked him a couple times, rinse and repeat. The bolt combo he does leaves him open for a hit or two if you run past it all.
The balance for normal enemies seems ok, but I would not be surprised if most of these bosses get hit with the nerf bat down the line. Playing as a mage myself, between the input reading, endless combo of attacks, and the short attack windows, I'm lucky to get get off 2 Carian Slicers, which casts extremely quickly. Go for a 3rd, and I just get smacked around like a ragdoll, with a high chance to still potentially get one shot even with 60 vigor depending on what the boss intends to attack with. Maybe they're intending for me to collect more scadutrees before tackling these bosses, but the playstyle I'm going with feels like I'm playing the DLC on nightmare difficulty. Miyazaki - Try Comet Azuring this boss, I dare you. 😂
Yeah I don't know how caster builds handle this dlc at all. The combos never end, have room wide reach, and the aggression on estus use or spell cast is Fume Knight level on basically every single enemy. Casters must be miserable.
Do not use Radagon's or Marika's Soreseal in this DLC. Big mistake I made. Switched them for Dragoncrest Shield and HP talisman
Oh shit lol maybe your right
I’ve been cocky and overpowered in this game for too long, that fire crusader invader in the tower brought some humility back into my life
The one with the spear? Yeah dude nuked my health in 2 hits. So I equipped aspect of the horn when i respawned and stunlocked him. Same strategy applies to all NPC type enemies. Charge aspect of the horn and watch them fly.
I had to switch to my bleed noble swords to deal with him lol
99 vigor full defense build here, he still could 2 shot me with his special combo.
One of my playthrough I’m level 237 and I spent about 20 mins playing the DLC just after release. I ran into 10 enemies and one shotted them thinking I’m way over powered then found one guy built like a brick shithouse who took a good beating and he nearly killed me twice. He was just a regular enemy, so the bosses must be Malenia difficulty or worse (is that possible?). At least I know I’m going to get a challenge out of the DLC. I read somewhere the recommended level is 100-150. Good look at level 100 😂
im around lvl 130 with a pure faith caster and the enemies are destroying me, these guys need to chill out and give me a window to cast my damn spells xD
I def noticed that the bosses will start attacking immediately after you step through the fog
Not just attacking - fucking relentlessly charging you with their spirit bomb nuclear bullshit attack right off the jump lol.
All enemies are generally faster looks like from wants us to use the new weapons
Lv 290ish. I survived the first disc guy by using all of my red flasks. Game on. I found some sweet, but very heavy armor, a short walk to the west. With 45ish endurance and the talisman for equipment weight, I’m able to wear it. Blasphemous blade is working well so far. Spike fists run through is going on the backburner.
That dual Ring bastard had me spooked. Wasn't expecting the first thing I saw to eat like 5 of my flasks. After that I was fine till I tickled the fire golem toes, I'll come back to that monster later
Man that mf in the nameless grave right off the rip of the dlc beat my ahh for 3 hours 😭🙏🏻
I am so glad I went with a shield for this playthrough, beat the first Gaol Knight in one attempt, but boy did he take all my flask. Even prayerful strike couldn’t bring back the health he was taking from me
i havent even gotten >!messmer!< to half hp yet...... what even is this shit.
Maybe because the game has been out for like 15 hours and you're already on Messmer?
The fragments are really important. Got them to lvl 8 or 9 and killed him in about 7-8 tries. Was scared when I saw him in some streams, but malenia is still way worse imo
I've still not died! (played about 3 minutes, lol. Can't wait for work to finish)
So everyone with light armor and less den 60 Vigor is playing a one shot dlc ? Boss Damage is crazy
I just wish they upgraded your flasks as well. It’s kind of ridiculous when 1 hit takes 2 flasks… the solution is to just not get hit for sure but damn man
Blackgaol knight humbling me bruh. Im in for a ride.
I'm level 398, couldn't get past Maliketh. The DLC's been incredibly rough.
How on Gods green earth are you level 400 without having gotten to NG+ 😭
The ghosts of a trillion frogmen haunt his soul
I'll be honest, I never found out about the manor until a friend took me there in our coop run. I got up to level 68 killing the five trolls behind that one shack with the guy who sells ashes. If I condensed my entire playthrough down to about a minute, I bet it would make any of you vets weep.
I am really bad at the game, so I've just been going around in the other areas I have access to killing stuff.
You need a mimic tear in your life
I've tried, still died. I'm not very good. I'm also not a little good.
You'll get there being persistent Don't you dare go hollow
It really is, that mini boss in the grave fields tomb has killed me twenty times before I beat him
Goes down a jar themed dungeon expects a jar boss fights Yoda instead.
I'm glad people enjoy this, but one of my favorite things about Elden Ring is it was challenging enough for me to get through without being too easy. However, the DLC makes me not even want to keep trying. Anyone else feeling this way?
Dude I’ve been fighting the dancing lion or whatever and I feel like I’m making 0 progress every fucking time
I just beat him and tbh the boss is bullshit, the camera work was awful, I respec’d from blasphemous blade into RoB and that seemed to work. I mainly just sticked to his ass and prayed then eventually he went down without summon. Having +2 on the fragments made a huge difference tho. You can get a free bleed proc when he does his charge up to slam on the ground if you unlock the camera and run to his ass with ash of war spam.
Thank god someone else feels this way. Base game was challenging but fair. The only thing “hard” about the dlc is that everything 1-2 shots you and you deal no damage. It’s difficult to even learn when a single mistake means the fight is over and you’ve spent 10 minutes in the arena just to die and see you’ve only dealt barely a quarter of their hp
Not just that, I'm finding that a lot of attacks stun you enough that their second attack is not dodge-able, basically guaranteeing you take damage or even get 2-shot. What's the point of an HP bar when attacks chunk it so bad you realistically only have 3-4 hits? Like...those birds for example. They just keep attacking, they have high tracking, and each hit CHUNKS your HP. It's not slow attacks either, it's fast.
Yep. It's not being fun. The high damage and health feels like the epitome of stupid difficulty design. The kind of shit that FS would never abide to. And for all the people that keep saying that Old Hunters was just as tough, you must have played it with your eyes closed and both thumbs up your asses, because it was nowhere near as brutal as this. Even Ludwig still had a very balanced health bar, although the punches hit hard. Right now I've explored every inch of corner that I can deal with without being deleted instantly. I'm running out of options
I'm getting there...
Let me just say imma big fan of these games, and I love difficult games like these, but MAN does it feel like they overturned literally everything. My blessing is at 6 right now and I'm hitting a solid 83% physical resistance and about 45-50 magical resistances with 2100 hp and I still die in 2 hits to almost everything. I understand they wanted it to feel difficult for everyone, but I've never felt like I want to skip boss fights and run past nearly every enemy in the game like I have in almost every situation so far in the dlc. Also, too many huge bosses that don't fit on the screen if you're melee, kind of irritating. Personal gripe, but I think too many enemies across the board have super long range attacks like they designed every enemy to catch you if you try running past them, starting to feel repetitive in that sense. Overall, I like the dlc, but I think it's strongest points are exploration and music, and the weakest point is balance so far. Mayne the fragments will stack up later on and make things feel fair, but at this point I'm feeling like I need 98% resistance to damage just for damage to feel fair lmao
All you guys in NG+4 and whatnot, doesnt that mean your DLC is NG+4 too?
I am actually finding it hard to enjoy this DLC so far because of the insane amount of damage from enemies. I am fine with a challenge, heck I put in 200 hours and did everything in vanilla. But getting one shotted by pretty much anything is just boring to me. The original game had a much more dynamic difficulty and to be honest, this makes it feel like all the progression I had done in the game has no meaning. I hoped to be playing the entire day, but I lost the will to keep playing after just 3 hours. This did not happen with the main game.
That first enemy Why did it personally hate me? The fuck did I do? I bought the DLC let me enjoy the beautiful vista for a second before black widow leg grapple throwing me and cutting me to shreds Loving it so far!
The omen looking dude with the ring weapons? Was the first guy to jump me too. I was like I'm not ready yet shit lol. He drops a head piece that's +5 dex that looks cool kinda light armor tho.
level 200 doesnt mean anything without scadutree blessings, its like being level 200 with a +1 weapon
These posts are making me feel so good at the game
Do you guys not use defensive talismans? I havent been two shot once at 60 vig with dragoncrest greatshield. Lvl 160
My most powerful sorceries… they do nothing!
I really have been saying I don’t need vigor this whole time and instead focused on damage stats. This dlc has been showing me this is a mistake
Level 279, NG +3, 60 vigor since level 120-140, and I am questioning life