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.