It was a matter of time I guess 
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The Tree Sentinel, first Dragon, and first main boss all hold valuable lessons that are integral to learn in Elden Ring. Between Horse Combat, Running Away, and simply exploring.
So with that being said you can always take a step back get more powerful and come back later.
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Summary after 15 Hours:
- Okay never played a Souls game before. This is going to be challenging, better prepare to die a lot.
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Ah the unwinnable boss fight. A classic. Not angry because I immediately realized that I was “supposed” to lose. That said, I’m sure it’s entirely possible to beat the boss.
- Tutorial area. That’s nice. There are even some weak enemies to practice what the game teaches you. But oh boy, there’s a lot of stuff to teach. Hope I can remember all of it and don’t have to check the tutorial section constantly. (Spoiler: That’s what I’m ending up doing.
) - Lost a few times to the tutorial boss. But that’s what I expected from a Soul game.
- Finally, outside. And look at that, there’s a giant knight patrolling on the street ahead. Yeah, I bet this is a trap and he’s going to whoop my ass. Not going to fight him.
- Great, there’s a merchant. Let’s buy some armor and… Wait, why can’t you compare items? Is there a key for it? checks internet Nope you just can’t. Come on game it’s 2022, this is a standard comfort feature. The game doesn’t get more difficulty just because you have memorize/ write down the stats of an item to compared it your current on.
- Second boss. Beat him after a few tries. So far having fun.
- dies multiple times to a giant cat stone statue boss Now I’m not having fun.
- Finally beat that thing. Let’s move onward.
- Invisible enemies but you can see the torches they are carrying. That’s good enemey desing.
- Wait why is my mount suddenly invisible? Why do I get attacked by invisible wolves? Guess it’s a bug afterall.
- Big camp of undead soldiers. Time to practices my stealth skills and kill them one by one.
- How the hell do I defeat the big guy with the huge-ass shield? Nothing seems to break his cover.
- checks tutorial Why did the put the tutorial into the inventor and turned them into “items” you have to check to read. That’s one of the worst tutorials designs I’ve ever seen.
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eventually beats the guy with the huge-ass shield with the brilliant tactic of brute force Maybe I just didn’t use the right weapon or maybe I need a different combat strategy. I’m sure I’ll get better eventually. (Spoiler: I was wrong. )
- Wait? There’s a sprint button? How did I miss that?
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Alright, time to move through that small pass and to the castle. Only a few undead archers and soldiers I can deal with… THEY DID SUMMON A FRIKKING GIANT. #$@!%
- Nope, not fighting you. simply uses newly discovered sprint function to run past him
- Let’s head into the castle and fight the first story boss. Since the game told me to get there, it should be doable.
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Aaaand I’m death, but that was to be expected. Still Ghost Lady showing up, praising me and telling me that I can now teleport to the Round Table makes me feel like the character from the “Are you winning son?” meme. Lady, I just got crumb stomped but the first boss. I’m not sure I’m up to this legendary hero stuff.
- Well time for another round. Second time’s the charm.
- Third time?
- Fourth time?
- Twenty-fifth time?
- checks Internet Oh you’re not supposed to beat the first story boss right at the start. You need to explore and level-up. Exploring I can do.
- explores the world Wonder what’s inside this swamp…. #$@!% DRAGON! RUUUUNNNNNNNN!
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Why is there fog coming out of that chest? gets teleported into a dungeon full of enemies way over my own level Oh…
- Wow, can’t believe I made it out there and only dying twice.
- exploring some big dungeon that goes deeper and depper underground and being afraid of dying or falling down a cliff, while having a blast
- Okay dungeon boss… This is going to be… He’s death? In the first try? That was unexpected.
- Looks like I finally got the items to open the force field in the starting area. Let’s see what behind this.
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sees the giant stone chariot on the rails that instant kills you This is going to take a while.
- Hah, finally made it to the boss area. Was pretty funny and I felt like I made some real progress. Let’s see what the boss can do.
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gets brutally murder by lave-stone dragonworm thingy Okay this game is about recognizing boss patterns but I’ve absolutely no clue what I’m supposed to do her. Ah well, I’ll come back later. Better write off these runes as lost. Again…
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Cool there’s an item that reduces fall damage that allowed me jump down to a beach area with a cave that leads back to a previously unreachable cliff in the tutorial dungeon where I can you pick up an item. I love this kind of level design.
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Another cave, this time with a second exit leading to a previously unreachable island with a dragon shrine where you can get buffs if you have the right items. Exploring in this game feels really rewarding.
- Let’s try to kill this larger undead on the beach. It’s not a boss so this should be doable. dies a lot
- Let’s try to kill this red ghost near the big arena-like building. dies a lot
- Let’s try to kill this red ghost that pops-up up at the river. dies a lot
- dies a lot
- doesn’t feel like I’m making progress
- still hasn’t figured out how most mechanic in the game work because the game has a sink or swim mentality
- Alright, time to uninstall. Really shame, game looks great and I love the open world. But I guess Soul games aren’t just my cup of tea. Could’ve saved some bucks but the money is not hurting me and it was worth a try.
So that was my experience with Elden Ring. I died a lot and had fun until I didn’t. 
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But did you die?
20 tarnished rising
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are you aware of invincibility frames?
do you know about fatrolling/equipment load?
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that’s a great write up. tragic ending tho.
to be fair on this point, i think obfuscating mechanics and the like is specifically to get the community working together to ‘solve’ them. souls whole deal isn’t just hardship but shared hardship. miyazaki has said as much in interviews. it’s kind of part of the game.
there’s no ‘shame’ in asking about stuff or looking for help, if that’s what’s stopping you. in fact, it’s encouraged (message system, summoning, etc.). outside of self important pricks, the community has been, generally speaking, eager to help whenever i’ve asked.
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Invincibility frames? Not sure, to be honest. Is it something like if you’re doing a certain move or attack you don’t take damage during the animation? Sounds like cheesing but if it works…
I’m aware of fatrolling aka being slower if you’re carrying to much weight. Always have medium weight. Considered reducing weight to low but I saw a few topics on the internet stating that the benefit is minimal and you’re probably losing a lot armor due to not being able to wear heavier stuff.
I dunno. There’s a difference between making a game challenging and a lack of a proper tutorial/ learning curve. Especially if it’s a game with many complex mechanics. The Arkham Series is a great example of slowing introducing the player to new mechanics. Elden Ring just throws everything at you at once in a tutorial than you can even miss if you don’t jump into that pit at the start. So it’s a good thing players can place notes to tell unsuspecting new players that they should jump down there.
And sure I could summon a high level player to beat the bosses for me or just grind till I’m strong enough to just can take the damage but that feels like it’s goes against the idea of game which is about learning the boss patterns via trial and error. You can beat the game that way, it just feels wrong to me. Like a certain Electrocution Phone in another video game series.
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I like to compare Elden Ring to Breath of the Wild. All things considered they are the same with the only difference being Breath of the Wild has tutorial shrines to show how the tablet and it’s abilities work. (Of course there are more differences but structurally they are the same)
I’m gonna say this from experience. I use to have no interest in these type of games. My first game was DS3 and I played it with friends. During the first year of the pandemic I beat DS1-2-3 all with my friends. Playing these games alone for new players is very daunting since I didn’t understand how anything worked.
Souls games also have hidden mechanics like Soul levels to balance out PVP and COOP too so you aren’t dealing with outrageously OP people (since that’s not fun).
Part of what makes these games fun is the learning aspect of it. if you play overly aggressive you will die, if you panic roll and drain your stamina you will die. In Elden Ring this is no different, but the “secret sauce” for this game specifically is that you can explore and comeback. This allows the player to come back absurdly OP in sections of the game with sorceries, ashes, and weapons arts.
My recommendation for you is play with friends or people on the forum with the same platform as you. If that doesn’t work I recommend using fextralife since that’s where a large portion of the community resides. These games are great and are a little less daunting when with people cause atleast for me I haven’t played a souls game alone.
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I’m happy to announce I have now beaten the game! I’ll take a bit of a break from it for an MGS3 playthrough (every gamer should make a pilgrimage to Tselinoyarsk!) but I will be coming back for more open world completion as well as probably an NG+ cycle or two.
I’ll give a spoiler-free retrospective on what I consider to be the game’s largest flaws:
- IMO, Spirit Summons were probably Elden Ring’s biggest mistake, or rather the implications they had on gameplay. I’ve went through some pretty tough Fromsoft bosses in my time, but some of the endgame fights are simply unfair. I believe the reason for this is that they’re tuned around co-op/Spirit Summons, unlike the earlier bosses which have HP tuned around normal play, and for whom Spirit Summons just serve as short term aggro drawing. This ruins a lot of the endgame fights because it becomes reliant on what the AI randomly decides to do- Your summon gets a lot of staggers, fantastic, your summon doesn’t, well, screw you. Most of these bosses (with one notable exception who just has a blatantly unfair moveset) WOULD be fantastic if it wasn’t for this stat tuning. This sadly deprives Elden Ring IMO of having a fantastic endgame secret boss to cap off the game, they just become annoying instead. (some bosses also have an issue with this by doing the BS Dark Souls 2 did, throwing multiple bosses at you without their movesets being designed around a multi-fight) I really hope that some of the DLC bosses will outlaw Spirit Summons to avoid this, or that we get a Summon option that allows us to forgo an AI partner for stat increases.
- The open world works fantastically, with the sole exception of NPC questlines, as their designs have seemingly not accounted for the change at all. In previous Soulsborne games, while NPC questlines are often missed or screwed up, you can do most of them blind. In Elden Ring, due to its nonlinear exploration combined with the massive world size, you will very frequently drop NPC quests without wiki abuse, even when you’re trying to follow them. IMO it’s astonishing the Roundtable Hold wasn’t used more to continue NPC quests, instead of them appearing at random Site of Grace #230
- Ashes of War are a great concept but with bad item distribution. I do not, for the life of me, understand why Ashes of War are all individually unique drops with no other sources in the open world. (and almost always tied to the scarabs?) For example, there’s one merchant who stocks like 10 different Ashes of War, many of them being basic but extremely useful ones like No Skill or the basic swordplay techniques. He’s in a random shack that’s really easy to miss, though! I don’t get why there aren’t duplicate Ashes of War in the world, because there is a use to obtaining multiple copies of them- Duplicate Ash of War pickups could even just convert themselves into Lost Ashes of War.
- The Mausoleum feature is a great concept, but I don’t understand why they did it in Elden Ring of all games, which never has a single boss soul which converts into more than 2 choices and doesn’t let you dupe conversions in the same playthrough. It’s an idea that would’ve justified the boss soul madness that was Dark Souls 3, but From reined it in instead, for some reason
The game is overall fantastic and the actual journey through the world is unparalleled. I think as far as the Soulsborne rankings go, it’s still on the higher end. The DLC, as always, can change an awful lot, though, and From usually do their best bosses in them anyway, so here’s hoping. >:)
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it has a proper tutorial, plus pop-ups when new things are introduced. i think the fact that the messages of other players led you to the tutorial kinda makes my point about the community ring truer. it is integral to the game.
it also has some pretty clever (and utterly brutal) diegetic lessons. i’ll give you an example:
the tree sentinel. most people try to fight him straight away and he mauls them. there’s two ways you can look at that:
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from are fucking trolls for putting a mini-boss as the first enemy you see outside the tutorial cave. this isn’t entirely inaccurate, but not the full story.
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from are teaching you not to immediately attack everything you see. it is a brutal lesson in caution and observation.
i think that is, if anything, confident design work.
respectfully, i think you’re imposing arbitrary restrictions on yourself that are stopping you from playing the game.
the idea of the game is to overcome hardship, and nothing within the context of the game is off limits. anything else you might imagine about it is probably part of the weird elitism a very loud and snobby minority of the community spout. christ, there are idiots who think using magic is cheating. they are not worth listening to. it’s your game; play it how you want.
you don’t need to grind specifically. just exploring the accessible areas prior to margit (including the peninsula), i ended up around level 35 which was more than enough to deal with him solo. no grinding required. it is worth noting that in the early game, weapon upgrades are the main way to increase damage.
summoning is perfectly valid too; the game wouldn’t support it otherwise. they can’t be excessively higher than your level and, with summons present, boss health is increased to compensate. if you’re not fighting with them, you’re severely handicapping damage output. most of the time you can’t really just sit back and let them do it.
if it helps, there is a common misconception about this game that i’d like to dispel: unless you play offline, you’re actually never alone in a souls(-esque) game. the community is there in blood stains, messages, summon signs, white shades, etc.
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Laser sword is fun and nice to look at.
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they’re schmuks.
i havent used any in er yet, but it looks incredible. already planning my next playthrough around the magic weapons
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I find it funny that people complain over the lack of easy modes so I redirect them to the eBay listings that give you an absurd amount of ruins for a price.
Here is the easy mode.
Now me I just grind the birds for two hours.
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A lot of nerfs so as of today a lot of peoples builds (including mine are no longer as effective) I think it’s time for me to respec my character…
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from what i’ve seen most of the nerfs aren’t that bad. mimic is still the best summon, bloody slash still does good damage (though the timing needs to be accounted for), and sword of whatever it’s called is still outputting great damage, etc. they’re just really good instead of overwhelmingly good. only things that took a real hit were barricade and hoarfrost but at least the latter was being abused in pvp and the former could be used to block 100% dmg without losing stamina, which is insane.
on another note, i’m up to the gates of the capital now. my build is coming together nicely. gone dex with a little bleed. dual uchi’s with bleed/bloody slash on the offhand and keen/bloodhound step on my main. coupled with the raven cloak, it turns out i’ve basically made a bloodborne character 
once i get the nagakiba up to snuff (again with bloodhound step), i think i’ll be in a position to try some invasions.
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My only issue with the nerf is the reach. I was okay with the 30% damage reduction, but the reach getting nerfed too it was a bit much in my opinion since you now have to get close to enemies for it to be effective atleast that’s how it was when I tested it.
I just went ahead and am gonna focus on Bleed since you can’t go wrong with a build that does bleed.
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The one comment I needed to see to actually consider buying this game.
Having recently played Yakuza 0, I have to step in and say that such a quest can be entertaining and memorable.
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i suspect they may nerf it (they kinda did that in ds3 too), which is a shame because it’s a good reward for aggressive play. everyone is going nuts for the rivers of blood katana, which is also a shame because i like collecting katanas and they’re cramping my style.
what’s a weeb…?
i’ve ditched quickstep… for an improved version that goes further and turns you temporarily invisible.
oh, and i’m working on carrying a third katana to switch my right hand to (anyone know if that is quicker than two handing the left hand weapon?) so i can activate the raptor of the mist. it’s basically the mist raven counter from sekiro where, if you’re hit, you instant transmission above your opponent for a jumping counter attack!
praise the mobility!
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Oh, absolutely. Yakuza substories are the gold standard for side quests in open world games. (with the only real competition being The Witcher 3. FO: NV also has really good questing but it’s too curated to really call “side” quests IMO)
Hell, I’m one of those guys who played Death Stranding’s postgame content and is hyped for Director’s Cut PC, I definitely don’t have an inherent problem with pizza delivery xP
I have no idea, but I believe the frame data for both is identical and it’s just a matter of which one you can personally do faster.
However, wielding three katanas is about as anime as it gets so I highly approve of that plan for style points alone. I’m still looking for an efficient way to maximise those myself but as I mop up some more armorpieces I think I’ll be able to put together a great fashion set.
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