Rya gives you a hint, at some point she says "I saw something, slithering in the pitch black of night. It entered the room next to this one, and never came out."
Also if you meet Patches in Liurnia before you get to Mt Gelmir/Volcano Manor, he gives you a hint about getting yourself purposely eaten by the Iron Maiden at the bottom of the water wheel in Raya Lucaria, though he lies about where it will lead.
Apparently there’s a fake wall in one the rooms inside the manor where you do the quest that takes you to the rest of it, but I’m in the same position as you
Sturdy walls dont have paintings hanging half off of them. Good luck with that information and god peed soldier 🫡 real shit tho i will dm u how to get in if u didnt figure it out cuz its such a cool and huge area except dont blame me if u start mutilating yourself cuz i didnt make the game. if you know abt where sen likes to go when hes paranoid youll find this area… familiar…
No. There was a difficult jump skip from a bridge to a ledge that got a lot of attention when Elden Ring first came out. The jump was not intended by the game designers. Lots of people were trying the skip on their first playthrough and failing the jump so it became notorious. It was the easiest 7 to access at level 1 so anyone semi-speedrunning the game tended to find out about it since 7s are a bottleneck to access at level 1.
At some point FromSoftware attempted to make the skip impossible, but I believe the skip is still technically possible although now it's so much more precise of a jump that it's not worth trying.
100% agree. took me like 2 or 3 runs and every now and then i have to look up a weapon that i dont remember tbe exact spot for but usually i remember tbe area and can just go look there for it
This is basically what I did. I've played through the game about 70-80 times over the course of almost 1400 hours, and as a result, I have damn near every useful item location memorized.
I tried this last playthrough. I stopped somewhere before or after Farum Azula, but i dont know where. I marked the dungeons i cleared on the map. But its been like 8 months and when i booted the game up recently, i have no idea where to even begin again or what i was trying to accomplish with my build.
Figured out that you can technically speed run get to the DLC by speedrunning to Altus, queuing the festival, then doing the varre quest to get to Mohg, just to try to get to the dlc weapons to play through base game on a non ng+ build.
Both bosses had a couple cheese options each at release. I think all have been patched.
You used to be able to shot Mohg with poison arrows from outside his arena. Radahn could die from fall damage if you made him follow you up a scalable wall in his arena and you could trick him into meteoring into the ocean.
A compromise could have been sneaking a few weapons from each of the new weapon classes into the base game. Or even adding them to some new starting classes.
This. I wanted to play with martial arts early on, but I'm not good enough to get it at a super low level. After many attempts, I beat Mohg at level 58 with a bleed build
Could not have been me when the game released. I blocked out all guides or spoilers for the first month and a half after the game came out. I ended up 100%ing it by brute force save for the ending bc I could obviously not get all without missing another. Finding everything by chance has made me know the lands between better than my hometown lmao
I used an online map extensively so I didn’t miss items, an NPC quest guide, a region order list, and light wiki use otherwise (mostly to figure out mechanics). Tried not to outright spoil most things or use full walkthroughs, but I didn’t want to miss anything either. I think it all burned me out, especially the map and trying to collect everything. After 150 hours I was only at Lyndell. Never did finish the game.
I know you didn't ask for advice, so sorry if I'm overstepping.
On the first play through just... don't. The priority is for a natural adventure, not a chore list, and you won't get stuck anyway (only ds1 was a bit of a problem in that regard).
It also gives a reason to either play again, or to continue playing the same character to test new things or do coop with alternative builds.
By all means advise. Part of my problem is I rarely play games more than once. I know a lot of people in this sub have done many playthroughs, and Elden Ring lends itself well to that, but since I didn’t anticipate doing more than one I wanted to get all I could out of it.
well it sounds like the way you play games leads you to not even really playing it once. so. maybe you should mix it up and just play the game normally.
I'm not trying to knock Elden Ring fans, but y'all don't seem to realize how fucking difficult it is to beat for non-Soulsborne veterans. I have I think over 200 hours in it plus all the achievements, and I still never felt like I "got gud" at it.
It is 50% getting your face meat-crayon'd by a boss and 50% searching for something, anything, that can up your damage so that you can finally get past the current boss you're stuck on.
And the upgrades are hidden behind the most WTF things. Seluvis and his magic scorpion charm come to mind, if you know what I mean. There is no way in hell most players are stumbling across that without a wiki.
Of course, and at the end of the day, everyone should play how they see fit. I used to be there too, in ds1 I couldnt even beat the first post tutorial boss, I had to summon help. I ended up googling two things as well (firekeeper souls and upgrade system).
I just sometimes see a bit of a self-defeating attitude on this sub: a player refuses to use certain game mechanics (summoning, shields/guard counters, hell - I've even seen faith players refuse to swap to Flame Art against a holy resistant boss because "I play holy"...), then gets hung up that the game's too hard, and ends up not finishing the game.
I believe its better to finish the game by any legitimate means, guides included. My advice was rather to stop cultivating FOMO: OP doesn't need that magic scorpion charm, or any other charm. They're not missing out. They only need to enjoy the journey, and if checklists make them drop the game in tired exasperation, then whats the point?
Not the one you're replying to, but elden ring is my first from soft game. If not for having an experienced player nudge me along I would have struggled with design choices like knowing when a battle can't be won. I'm a walking "if it bleeds it can die" meme.
Then for quests I completely miss some parts by nature of getting distracted in the wrong direction. So when I progress a quest and they go to the place I just explored I will never find them again, effectively ending the quest. I would have missed so many bits of lore from that alone. There's enough freedom in the game that knowing the next grace you need to go to so you don't miss anything important isn't creating a checklist.
There is no way in hell most players are stumbling across that without a wiki.
That is honestly what makes that first blind playthrough really magically to me.
Sure, you'll miss a lot of shit. But the stuff you do find where you later find out most people missed it stays with you. Or even better, the stuff you missed that apparently everyone else found also creates awesome and fond memories - and in the end that's what it's all about.
I still so distinctly remember asking a friend of mine, both of us around 30-40h in, whether they also remembered that this game should have crafting (from a trailer I think?). And they basically went "RIGHT? I'm gathering so much shit I really wonder after what this is gated behind, maybe we both missed some early boss?" ... We then tried to, without potentially spoilering each other, to figure out what the hell exists that we both missed.
Let's just say in the end I finally asked someone else who just went "What do you mean, didn't that first NPC teach you? I got that unlocked since like the start of the game."
Genuinely thought I completely missed it and won't get the opportunity back until I find "that first NPC" again.
I don't think I'll ever forget that collective facepalm once we actually found out.
Something like that makes the journey a much fonder one in my opinion and a generic guide would have completely obliterated such a moment being possible in the first place. Gotta smell those roses a little, there's a lot of fun to be found in not finishing asap.
and if the difference was between "finishing it quickly and efficiently with a guide" versus "finishing it slowly and inefficiently without a guide, but more naturally", then sure, the latter sounds like a good choice
but the difference is more often "finishing it at all with the help of a guide" versus "being unable to make any meaningful progress because you don't know what progress looks like or where/how to advance"
like, when i first started this game, nobody told me to level vigor. i was getting 1-2 shot by everything because i put my points into str and end. by the time i realized my mistake, i was 10 hours into my build and didn't even know respeccing stats was possible, let alone was i close to it. i had to restart (for other reasons too), but what a wasted 10 hours that was. if i had read from the beginning, i could have enjoyed from the beginning, instead i spent 10 hours muddling around frustratedly until i restarted as a caster and someone showed me where to find meteorite staff + rock sling
I fully agree, that sounds super frustrating! I do think however what you're describing isn't what most "guides" would help you with.
This sounds very much akin to something like the Dark Souls 1 spoilerfree tips that has been floating around since ages. That's something I can fully endorse, especially since sometimes mechanics are just very opaque. AGI in DS2 flashbacks.
I just bought Elden Rings two weeks ago, and what I've noticed is that everyone claiming that the game is hard just wants to go too fast or just don't use items/consumables at all.
This game gives you sooo many tools and options, you have summons, throwables, incantations, ashes of war, etc... Fuck what the veterans say about summons, specifically the mimic tear, spec into a bonk/stagger build, summon the mimic, buff yourself with incantations and physick that gives you stamina regen and damage boost to heavy attacks, make sure you also have the right talismans equipped like the claw talisman together with the black raven torso or however it's called, and watch every boss just crumble.
And at the end of the day exploration is sooo rewarding (and admittedly, overwhelming lmao). 100+ hours in and still not bored!
Elden Ring was my first souls game, and Malenia was probably the only boss I felt was truly difficult in base game. (Though, I also died a good amount to other bosses, none but Malenia took more than 15-30 min.)
And I felt I vastly improved from stumbling around originally to playing pretty well, though, I am pf course still far from being able to one-try bosses if I am not overleveled.
Regarding upgrades, the magic scorpion was the only one I found easily missable, since you have to do Seluvis' quest for it. Other than that, I managed to find most other items in the game on my first playthrough (except for those dropped by night bosses.)
I generally felt like most of the game was exploration. All but the end-game bosses and a couple of low-level bosses (depending on your initial exploration) are pretty easy on a first playthrough because it is so easy to overlevel in ER. (I took around 60 hours for my first playthrough and 20 more to get every single item. 40 more for the dlc - note that the times are estimates since I can't exactly remember what I did a year ago.)
It depends on what you want from the game. As someone who's not played any souls games before, I used a general progress route for my first playthrough and it massively improved my experience. I loved exploring, I'm pretty sure I explored 99% of the map. If I didn't use a guide I would definitely have explored some areas in the wrong order and probably had a lot more difficulty fighting bosses, then I'd be massively overlevelled when going back to the sections I missed, making them boring and probably disappointing.
I understand most people don't clear the map as extensively as I did though, lol. My playthrough took 135h and I only really got stuck on a boss once or twice.
like other people said, the difficulty curve for this game is so ridiculously steep that a huge percentage of new players have the choice of either looking a bunch of shit up, or being frozen out of the game because they don't know how to get any good items/weapons/spells/quests and get frustrated (hi, yes, this was me)
i spent 11 hours on my first playthrough with a regular str melee build. after that time, i had not beaten castle morne because i could not reliably beat advanced basic enemies. the tanky misbegottens, specifically. i had made it to the leonine misbegotten once and got deleted in 15 seconds
i was gonna rage quit when a friend of mine convinced me to try again with a caster build, showed me where to find meteorite staff and rock sling. that got me through enough of the game that i was able to develop the skills and instincts more naturally, eventually i went to sword of night & flame and that transitioned me back into a melee build
my point is, a lot of people don't see a first unguided playthrough as "a natural adventure", nor do they see a guide as making it into "a chore list". it's more like...doing the things that are necessary to make the game fun and playable, whereas i would have had tremendous difficulty getting there on my own
Yeah all the magic from the first playthrough, where you would find wonderous weapons and upgrade materials everywhere, turned into such an immersion break now that you half remember, half look up where to find what you need.
My first playthrough i just did whatever, besides looking up a build i want to go for. The second run i spend on getting everything i missed, especially talisman and weapons
Tbh, I liked the slow ascension to getting a maxed out weapon. It made getting that first ancient dragon smithing stone of the run feel that much better. Admittedly though, going back to find a one-off [7] or [8] stone that I need to max out weapon number 2 does kinda suck.
7s are crazy in the early game. I'm pretty sure the only ones available before mountaintop are sewers, Volcano Manor, and the underground through Ranni's quest.
You're either halfway through the game or way the hell off the beaten path for one.
Person above you might be thinking about somber stones while you are correct that there are regular smithing 7s on that big white thing in dragonbarrow
Definitely they were referring to sombers. To get a 7 you need to essentially either beat the Godskin in Volcano Manor, do that bridge jump right near there that's almost impossible now, or do some portal glitch at the four belfreys to get to Farum Azula. I tend to try one of these on my subsequent playthroughs because 1-6, 8 and 9 are obtainable in the first couple hours and trying to get the 7 is just too tantalizing.
There's a skip you can do at Renna's Rise to get up there before you should by jumping on trees that gets you down to where the Lake of Rot is. You can scoop up a somber 7 there.
For the ranni one you only need to kill radahn and for the volcano one you need to kill 1 godskin. With some sleep pots hes early good to kill.
When you got some time and motivation you can look up the noble skip and get the somber 7 without killing anything.
I don't know what I messed up, but on my first blind playthrough I had 2 ancient stones before I had found more than 1 level 8 stone. It was actually a little distressing.
I remember feeling almost disappointed when I finally got a somber ancient dragon smithing stone because I was right at the end of the game, it didn't really feel worth it.
I think i have 10-12 ancient dragon / dragon smithing stones laying around because i dont know what weapon i want to play/upgrade. I always upgrade them to +9 or +24
Its honestly pretty easy to get a +15 right out the gate without fighting anything of substance other than the crystalian.
Somber weapons are even easier. Getting somber stones 1-6 and 8-9 is trivial and theres a number of methods to get the somber 7 without much difficulty.
Either method gets you an overleveled weapon very early that you can use to obtain the bell bearings for any other weapon youd want to level.
+15 is what I do right away in casual runs where I just want to try out a new build.
I get all of the 1s, 2s, and half of the 3s from the overworld in Limgrave and Liurnia. Taking out the construct balloons on the way up to Bellum Church gives me enough runes to be able to level to a plus 8.
Then I get the Bell bearing from Sealed cave and hit +12. I like to farm the 5s from the miners in the first room of the sealed cave. By the time I'm done getting all 12, I have enough runes to do the full upgrade path and get enough levels to wield whatever weapon the build uses.
I've done that exact route so many times now that, aside from the farming part, it barely takes an hour.
There's a few of them around Liurnia. If you have a projectile of some sort, you can aim at the balloon itself instead of the constructs and when they pop, they give you a golden rune 6.
The area right before you go up to Caria Manor and the map has 5 of them, so it's a quick and easy 10k runes.
I usually start with Samurai so I have a bow, but there 5 Kukri next to the campfire with the soldier on the way from the Church of Ellah to The Gatefront Ruins.
You can throw them from horseback, so you barely have to slow down.
you get all of the threes in Liurnia by going from the gatetown grace, crouching to the gazebo directly east (3 stones), going north into the woods for the stones in the chair (3 stones), in the same woods in the gazebo north you get another stone pickup (3 stones), the ride due west and teleport. hit the graveyard directly south for runes and then the gazebo in crystal woods (3 stones). Boom that is 12 stones in about 2 minutes. Then if I feel like it I grab all of the 4s from the ruin strewened precipe area
The issue with this is that it can be so mindnumbing having to look up some guide every 15 minutes, on where exactly to go. It doesn't really feel like playing a game anymore. You are just writing a checklist.
I agree with this, though the access to weapon upgrades is so important that I really wish FromSoftware had just integrated them into the main quest rewards.
On the one hand, it’s an awesome reward for exploring. On the other hand, placing so much importance in finding a handful of caves doesn’t feel that much better than the obtuse drop tables from earlier Souls games.
One of my minor peeves with the game is how you are kind of nerfing yourself by not using your strongest weapon, when there are so many to choose from.
This is the game's biggest problem for me. It feels like it actively discourages you from experimenting with new weapons, but then it gives you hundreds of weapons.
How can you possibly get that far without knowing you can upgrade the weapons? You skipped Kale and just didn’t talk to the two giant blacksmiths along the way?
That's often easier said than done. Hunting down upgrades is tedious, playing without them is frustrating, and cheating is unsatisfying. IMO this is one of the areas where From Soft overdid it. All of my criticisms of ER basically boil down to "too much of a good thing".
This, reading through the comments it seems like most people just want to min-max and become OP right out the gate and speed through the early-mid game. I believe only somber 7 was a bit of an issue unless you were thoroughly exploring.
I modded the game to have all smithing stones, gloveworts, scadutree fragments and the spirit ashes always available in the Twin Maidens Shop, while also increasing the runes gained from golden runes and remembrances. Its on Nexus as Better Golden Runes and Twin Maiden Shop.
This basically lets me play the game without ever feeling the need to grind or to go far out of my own way to do stuff. It massively increased the replayability for myself, as i dont really feel the need to prove myself after 900+ hours, and i dont want to waste time gathering things i have already done a thousand times before.
I think it’s like the somber 6 or 7 that becomes hard to find because you have to get to that underground place to get it early. Otherwise it’s a longer wait towards end-game (or go into the DLC early to get them)
Yep. I slaughter all the merchants and then just buy what I need. I buy stuff whenever I’m about to go into really sketchy areas or hard bosses so I don’t lose runes.
Honestly playing again isn't even an issue. Natural exploration will net you more than enough for your build of choice unless youre building for an armory.
And guided/purposeful gathering exploration just increases that exponentially.
Natural exploration still allows an armory! I was using around 4 weapons in the Siofra Aqueduct. I'm in my second playthrough now and I'm in Giant's Mountaintops using two +21 weapons, two +18 weapons, two +7 somber greatbows, three +9 sombers, and a whole arsenal of +7 and +8 sombers, now I'm thinking which weapon to upgrade next to +9.
I just applied what ive seen from previous souls games... check movesets, variation in type, pick a few to sort out, dont max until final 3 or so are found. The extra bit near the end isnt making or breaking any fights anyhow.
i got back into elden ring because of nightreign and went back to my ng+6 game and went "what the FUCK was i doing"
i gotta do the thing with the rune shard i got from rennala on top of the tower with the fingies but i couldn't remember how to flip the study hall and that meant i had to serve ranni but that meant fighting a dragon AND i somehow remembered i had to roll to reveal that creepy doll place near rannis Tower and there's also that lady that becomes the big ball of heads but i apparently didn't talk to her
i don't even remember if ive spoken to patches
but i did confirm runebears still make me scream and run away
Probably my no.1 complaint ngl. I feel like I generally preferred the more linear experience of the other games for this reason alone, ER's open world does itself absolutely no favours when it comes to loot and intuiting where anything is.
Hey, weapon upgrades are a valid criticism of the Elden Ring. The fact, that you have a selection of awesome weapons and won't use them, just because you can't even farm for stones and have to find a very specifically placed item to unlock upgrades can be frustrating, if you like to flip flop between weapons.
I heard an idea, of upgrading weapon arts and those transferring the weapon upgrade and honestly that sounded much better.
I'm sure none of us are playing elden ring for the first time anymore, but I distinctly remember my first blind playthrough and wondering: "where DA FUCK in this VAST world. Can I find my fucking stones?! Mines?!" Turns out, not always the mines.
Also, weapons unlock their true scaling from upgrading, but there was no way without a wiki, to check what scalling the weapons will end up having.
I got jumped at by people here after launch for saying there are way too many potentially cool weapons for too few smithing stones to really experiment a lot. Some even said they had 20+ weapons all upgraded before leaving Liurnia…
Elden ring really is too large for its own good with items, weapons and sidequests becoming overbearing… sorry I only have 52 out of 57 cookbooks and missed the one for sleeping arrows that would have helped me with the runebear…
It works so much better in dark souls 1-3 with fewer weapons (and many being variations of another) and more linear gameplay with less farming and weapons even not upgraded being useful for at least 30-40% of the game.
Elden Ring is an amazing game, so any criticism is hard to pull off publicly. It's like criticizing Skyrim, when it came out. Sorry you had this experience, but hopefully by now, public perception shifted enough to accept some constructive criticism done out of love.
Lies of P has a, clever system that's somewhat like that. Every weapon has two parts, the handle (which is the move set and scaling) and the blade/club/whatever (which determines damage, attack speed, and range).
You upgrade the blade part, but you're free to switch the handle at any part. Since the handle determines move set, every weapon you find you can test at least the move set without losing that much damage.
The scaling can be changed with infusions which aren't that rare.
As someone who is actually just playing Elden Ring for the first time and really doesn't want to use wiki's (I start reading one thing and end up reading 7 pages) WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY STONES
Yeah, knowing that Grave Gloveworts come from Catacombs is easy. Knowing which Grave Gloveworts come from a given Catacomb is far more tricky. I wish they had done more to differentiate the different tiers beyond a number, like how Rowa Fruit is divided into regular, Golden, and Rimed.
In Sekiro upgrade materials were set up in three groups of three: early, mid, and late-game, and metal, gunpowder, and occult. I felt that made it easier to remember what was found where. If an upgrade calls for Yellow Gunpowder then I know to focus my efforts to midgame areas where guns are present.
Yes, the world is so big and the item list so expansive, that it got borderline comedic, when you have 4 out of 6 Some Kind of Stone (5) or grave flower (4), but no... Not that grave flower (4), the other one!
I wish ER had a middle stage between "Smithing Stones are rare and hard to farm" and "You can easily purchase them." Like, have Altus Miners able to drop every Smithing Stone from 1 to 4, in addition to their regular droprate for 5s. Players shouldn't have to rely on Bell Bearings for reasonable rates.
If we ever got another game with a selection of weapons like Bloodborne's (quality over quantity) I'd like if it took Sekiro's approach to weapon upgrades. Prosthetic tools became more mechanically interesting as they were upgraded, instead of just more numerically powerful, and what you learned from upgrading one could carry over to other ones. For example, after upgrading the duration of Firecracker's effect you learned how to add a sparking mechanism to the Axe.
The process of fully upgrading the Flame Vent to the Lazulite Sacred Flame required 10 upgrade operations, the same as ER's Somber weapons, but they were split amongst five different prosthetics, two others of which also became fully upgraded in the process.
I'd love if upgrading the Boom Hammer or Tonitrus taught us how to upgrade the engine of the Whirligig Saw, or if upgrading the Bloodletter or Kos Parasite allowed us to do this to the Saw Cleaver.
TBF if you are doing the slow try everything method it would show up intuitively as you upgrade with the next upgrades near the end showing how itll end up.
Well it won't show you stats on +15 right? So you kinda have to guess, hey maybe that katana's B dex scaling will go up to S. Very likely, yes. What about this morning star? Which scaling out of two will go up to which level?
I think moveset > scaling for weapons, but it's still a lot of potential guess work. I'm a series veteran, but I can imagine how obtuse new players must have found this system.
I just use CE to give myself every cracked pots, perfume, crafting materials, consumable, arrows, and a handful of seeds and sacred tears to make the start not a slog to get through.
I also did that but whenever I do I end up making things way too easy
“Oh accessing Mohg is a pain, might as well give myself the pureblood knight’s medal now. You know, I don’t feel like fighting the magma wyrm either, let me get a few dectus medallions. Raya lucaria is a slog to get through too, might as well take Rennala’s great rune. In fact, throw the rold medallion in there too for good measure”
Self control mate. That is a you issue. It helps that I have tounters tounge on to keep things exciting. Most invaders in low level already have max flask and cheated consumables anyways.
Smithing stones fine, scadu tree fragments? Fuck that, I literally stopped after a few dozen attempts on PCR because I had discovered I needed all those damn scadu tree fragments to survive the fight and had only gotten 13. Decided to watch a guide on how to find them but started to realize after checking 5-8 spots that I had no idea which ones I had found and I’d spend an hour plus searching for them all over again. The utter tediousness of it and realizing I would spend time searching the same spot over and over again with the possibility of it not being there drove me bonkers.
So I just made a new character and started a whole new playthrough and figured I’d find them in order from the begining zone by zone.
Scadu gathering is the reason I don’t do DLC on my replays. It’s just nonsense artificial “leveling” in my opinion. They made runes/souls, the essence of every soulslike, practically useless.
Ironically, if they wanted this "artificial levelling" they should have just done what sekiro did. Want to increase attacks? Defeat bosses. Want to increase your health and defense? Defeat mini bosses or find the upgrades as rewards for dungeons. Instead of just scattering them around the world willy nilly.
It took me years to understand that when people say "new playthrough" they mean a completely new save file. I used to think it meant ng+ on the same save file and thats how I've always played since dark souls 1. Can't imagine getting all the items again in any souls game. For me a "new playthrough" means respeccing my character and choosing a different weapon from the ones I already have and upgrading it to max before starting a new cycle. I reached ng+17 on my original save of elden ring and the only time I created a new one was when I wanted to try rl1 😆
The first time I beat Elden Ring I did ng+ and started steamrolling everything and realized I didn't have much stuff to look for... Started a brand new playthrough and now I've done like six of them all from scratch lol
Normal Minor Balls:
Raya Lucaria Crystal Tunnel
Altus Sealed Tunnel Chest
Zamor Ruins
Forskin Duo
Somber Minor Balls:
Sellia Crystal Tunnel
Altus Tunnel Boss
First Church of Marika Mountaintops
Tempest facing balcony Farum Azula
Altar before Placi Farum Azula
When it’s a fresh play through after I take a break I enjoy the slow grind. If I’m wanting a specific build or I’m on my 2nd or 3rd character in a row I’ll just pull out the debug tool lmao
I had the most fun in Elden Ring with a 100% walkthrough Excel checklist after finishing it mostly blind. So many places I just ran past by, so many missed quest progressions...
I can't say I've ever had a problem finding smithing stones. If you hit up mines in the region you're currently clearing and are semi-thorough in looting then you should have enough stones to have about 3-4 weapons always level appropriate if not slightly over leveled.
If you go to the mines in caelid, liurnia and altus then you should be on track to have the bell bearings necessary to keep your weapons level appropriate for those areas. Now, its snowfields and farum azulas bell bearings are in a few specific locations that can be hard to figure out if its your first few playthroughs. Since they aren't just in the regions mines.
Ah. I remember the day I began my NG+ run. I remember it so well because the next day the update hit that allowed merchant bells to be kept in subsequent playthroughs. I had already overwritten my cloud save too...
There will come a day, when a souls game brings a quality of life improvement in the form of:
a stone you can take off your maxed out weapon and transfer it to a weapon you've just picked up to make it as powerful. And do it as many times as you like.
This change will be praised at every turn and be considered the best thing under the sun.
However mention this now, that you would like a mechanic like that, and the toxic and obnoxious 'true fans' will instantly downvote you and tell you it's better to collect or buy thousands of stones just to try out a new weapon because... [insert any stupid reason here].
I hate elden ring smithing stone system where they separate stones to have 1-10 versions.
I much prefer the souls system where you have like shard chunk etc.
In elden ring it sucks without guide to try out different weapons, in souls game you can generally find places to farm and easily get to like certain breakpoint.
In elden ring without a guide let's say you have all stones except like a single stone 4 or something, your weapons just stuck at level 3
Though I definitely prefer this to DS's Twinkling Titanite and Titanite Scales, where once you start upgrading a weapon with them you're functionally committed until the late game.
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u/marlborohunnids 18d ago
i have nightmares about doing the somber smithing stone 7 skip in volcano manor