bruno

"mr storylets"

writer (derogatory). lead designer on Fallen London.

http://twitter.com/notbrunoagain


THESE POSTS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE POSTS OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE POSTS.


Bluesky
brunodias.bsky.social

the other really nasty bit of bad balance in elden ring is the wall that you hit around Mountaintops if you're foolishly using a weapon that upgrades with regular smithing stones. At that point the game kind of fully expects you to have a nearly fully upgraded or actually fully upgraded weapon, and the somber stone economy is just dramatically more generous; unless you've been meticulously scouring every area of the game for smithing stones, you are unlikely to be able to get a +24 weapon before Faram Azula, but it's pretty trivial to get yourself a +9 legendary weapon. This kind of punishes the player for caring about or investing in the ashes of war system, instead of just getting a +9 Moonveil/Blasphemous Blade like the game basically tells you you're supposed to.


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @bruno's post:

I haven't quite shared all of your balance opinions on the game; I experienced none of the issues you're having as I played, so whatever the design intent was, I think I found it rather easily, or it at least matched my playstyle well enough. I will note that we also seem to have struggled in different areas as well.

I will agree that the game really does want you to use its Special Weapons, and that there are Objectively Good and Bad weapons to use. They did a round of nerfs to Blasphemous Blade, but not by enough, in that it carried me almost solely through the DLC except for the final boss (who does not give a flying fuck what your build is.)

I don't think it punishes with Ashes of War in the way you're suggesting, however. I think that Ashes of War are just another type of weapon category, just weirdly obfuscated.

Some weapons suck ass without Ashes and certain scalings. Some suck entirely. Some ashes suck entirely. But some weapons paired with some ashes may as well be their own Special Weapon, because they often scale better, earlier, than somber weapons, but also do some kind of wild combo.

Frost+Bleed Claws with Bloodhound Step were my go-to weapon before the Bloodhound Step nerf that shortened the iframe window, but they're still ludicrously powerful. They were how I beat Melania, and most of the bosses in base game are susceptible. Most of the DLC bosses are not, due to their bullshit fast attack rhythms, but that's fine.