Elden Ring (DLC Announced!)

[Dankster Morgan]

Im one of the very few people who didnt dislike the Astel rematch. I mean, we are fighting lots of Fallingstar Beasts and full-grown Fallingstar Beasts while also encountering the "malformed stars" (which look exactly like the Astels, just desaturated) hanging from ceilings underground well before we reach the second Astel. Everything points out to those being stages in a creature's lifecycle, so it is pretty obvious that there is more than a single "Astel" and those are just a species or something. I also read somewhere that the correct translation for "Astel" would be "Aster" instead, because Japanese has that thing with switching Ls for Rs and such. "Aster" is the Greek word for "Star" - its where the "Asteroid" word comes from.

So yeah, the lore implication is that the stars in Elden Ring universe are actually Astels - or at least some of them are. So maybe there are billions of them lol. Radahn is said to have kept the stars at bay with gravity magic - this has a completely different meaning when you factor in that those "stars" might be actual living eldritch abominations from the cosmos. There is some cut animation where supposedly Astel would fall from the sky as a meteorite - I'm pretty sure that was initially planned to be Radahn's phase two.

I like your explanation!

I enjoyed the Astel fight but it did make it feel less special for me, but it was a good fight I didn’t mind running back.

 

[Marinjuana]

So I tried going at Melania, my build seemed to gel well and almost killed her in a few attempts but now that I don't "not know what I don't know" I can't get her down. The charge attack strategy will work! Just not yet

So I moved on to stuff I missed, Volcano manor boss, Morg Blood Lord, realized I can't finish dung eater quest and finishing up random quests including Ranni. I believe I'm at the final bosses door but I want to finish most of the other stuff first.

It can be frustrating, sometimes I turn this game off literally like "fuck this game" but I remember all the cool shit I did and it evens out lol

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

So I tried going at Melania, my build seemed to gel well and almost killed her in a few attempts but now that I don't "not know what I don't know" I can't get her down. The charge attack strategy will work! Just not yet

So I moved on to stuff I missed, Volcano manor boss, Morg Blood Lord, realized I can't finish dung eater quest and finishing up random quests including Ranni. I believe I'm at the final bosses door but I want to finish most of the other stuff first.

It can be frustrating, sometimes I turn this game off literally like "fuck this game" but I remember all the cool shit I did and it evens out lol

I think what helped me with Malenia was actually NOT summoning spirit ashes (in my case, the Mimic Tear). They will more often than not just be a way for her to heal when dealing damage. Bleed weapons also work well against her, if that can be slotted on your build.

 

[Dankster Morgan]

So I tried going at Melania, my build seemed to gel well and almost killed her in a few attempts but now that I don't "not know what I don't know" I can't get her down. The charge attack strategy will work! Just not yet

So I moved on to stuff I missed, Volcano manor boss, Morg Blood Lord, realized I can't finish dung eater quest and finishing up random quests including Ranni. I believe I'm at the final bosses door but I want to finish most of the other stuff first.

It can be frustrating, sometimes I turn this game off literally like "fuck this game" but I remember all the cool shit I did and it evens out lol

Don't let any from soft dorks gaslight you into thinking Malenia isn't bullshit, she's awful, come back when you feel like it. I'd use a bleed weapon or something like blasphemous blade that can get you health back too.

Ranni quest was a blast, I loved volcano manor and Mohg.

 

[Juggs]

Don't let any from soft dorks gaslight you into thinking Malenia isn't bullshit, she's awful, come back when you feel like it. I'd use a bleed weapon or something like blasphemous blade that can get you health back too.

Ranni quest was a blast, I loved volcano manor and Mohg.

I didn’t find her awful at all. I think I mentioned it in here, but I beat her on my 3rd ever attempt. This was at lvl 137-138 (can’t remember if I got to my lvl 138 cap yet), and it was 100% solo. Which, every fight at least on my first playthrough is completely solo unless it for some reason HAS to be with someone else, which pretty much never happens. Anyway, this WAS way back before BHS got nerfed. And pre-patch BHS was insanely broken. I mean, it’s still fairly powerful even after the nerfs, but nowhere near as god tier as it used to be. To put it into perspective, the first 2 tries against her I didn’t use BHS. I wanted to try and beat here without it. But considering I had a bet going with some people on me being able to beat her in a certain amount of tries without summoning, overleveling, cheesing, etc, I had to try out BHS and to my surprise I beat her 1st try after equipping that AoW. Even uploaded the fight on YouTube which again, it feels like I’ve mentioned and posted that ITT.

Anyway, that’s not to say she isn’t a difficult boss. She definitely is. I just have been playing FromSoft “Souls” games for well over a decade at this point, and I’m somehow just naturally good at video games. So I’m absolutely an outlier, or an exception to the rule. I actually haven’t faced her since then, and I’m still lvl 138 on my main character and want to try and beat her in NG+ without BHS. Gonna use something else broken… light rolling. Light rolling got super buffed, then got slightly nerfed, but it’s still insanely broken in PvP, and fairly OP in PvE. Not gonna use any other cheese strat like doing insane amounts of damage or anything. Just gonna use light armor and my trusty Greatsword.

Malenia reminds me a lot of the Alecto boss fight, and also similar to the Tree Sentinel. Both of these bosses seem impossible to beat at first. Which is why most players skip Tree Sentinel and come back to him later once they have better gear and are at a higher level. But I’ve beaten The Tree Sentinel now at least 3 times as a Wretch at level 1. Just like with all these bosses, the main thing you have to have is patience. That and the ability to learn movesets, learn when to dodge, when there’s openings, ya know, the standard Souls formula for “getting good” and learning to beat a boss. It was actually the infamous player “Let Me Solo Her” aka “LMSH” that inspired me to start doing this more. I always would try to learn and adapt to the bosses, but I was always way more lazy about it which actually hurt me far more than anything else. Instead of immediately rushing back to the boss and not at all reflecting on what just happened and how I died, I took a minute to treat it like I was learning a fighting game. So, I’d go in fully expecting to die, but I was testing to see how the bosses would react to certain moves, really looking for the patterns, sometimes I wouldn’t even attack I would just see how long I could survive by dodging, and all of these things helped me TREMENDOUSLY. Not just for that boss fight, but for every boss fight. And it’s something I wish everyone could experience but I understand that most won’t. It’s far faaar easier to just overlevel, summon players/NPC’s/Spirit Ashes, and use OP weapons than it is to actually learn the boss and, as I said, “get good”. (I know ppl say “git gud” but that spelling always annoyed the hell out of me for some reason).

Anyway, I feel like I’m drunk and cracked out in this post (I’m not… to clarify), so I’m gonna leave it at that, lol