Ten things I forgot to mention in my previous page on Elden Ring.
Soul, er, blood echoes, er, whatever farming. There is a great spot where, in the grand FromSoft tradition, you can do pretty fast farming on dumb enemies. You have to do the quest of Varre who you meet in the opening area of the game. It takes a bit of work, and you need to kill one great rune boss. But then you can get infinite levels for a while as long as you have a bow.
Just to be more explicit than I was in my long ramble: Leveling Dex, Faith, and Arcane, running the Uchi and some bleed stuff through the early and mid game, and then melting the late game with the mimic, Rivers of Blood, Swarm of Flies, and Rotten Breath is a pretty happy way to get through without too much fuss. Even Malenia is not too hard with this combo. Of course, get the Pulley Bow for the bow cheese!
Caelid and Volcano Manor are where all the early power items are. Of course, Caelid and Volcano Manor are both horrible places.
The single worst navigational path in the game is how you get to the other part of the Altus Plateau (where Volcano Manor is) from the part you see first. It’s like driving from Pittsburgh to Cleveland via Toronto.
I tried dual wielding the biggest swords in the game and it was kind of comical.
The jumping attack talisman is sort of over-powered. But of course you have to be good at landing jumping attacks.
One of the most interesting things about this game are all of the different stacking buff items (talismans, armor, physicks, spells) that increase your stats, or your damage, or both. The different combinations are a dizzying puzzle if you are a bit too much into min/maxing. It’s not too hard to find combos that double or triple the damage of specific attacks without necessarily needing to be in some low health “RTSR” mode like in the older games. In my magic run at Malenia the Night Comet spell I used started at about 500-600 damage in a vanilla setup. After the buffs (and a few more levels for a different staff) I got it to do 1300-1500 or more. Fun stuff.
Here is the setup: 65-ish INT, Starscourge Heirloom for +5 INT, Marika’s Soreseal for +5 INT and +5 Mind, Godfrey’s Icon for +15% damage on charged attacks, Staff of the Lost in the off hand for +30% damage on Night Sorceries (you only have to hold the staff to get the buff, handy!), Magic Shrouding Cracked Tear in the Physick potion for +20% magic damage (this lasts 3min, so at the end of the fight it was done). I also used Rennala’s Full Moon to for the 10% magic resist debuff, but this only lasts for the first minute of the fight. All the buffs multiply together to get to 2-3x of my original base damage. Super fun.
The crazy NPC quest with the talking pot is funny.
The various stat buff items, and the Serpent Hunter spear in Volcano manor are what make me think I could possibly do a low level run of this game. Need to find some friendly spirits to use too. Maybe Dung Eater.
Speaking of which, the Dung Eater quest is pretty funny/tragic too. And what weird armor.
Bonus #11: Have to try the bubble horns on a faith build. They look stupidly powerful. Yes, a giant horn that shoots magic bubbles.