Elden Ring: Elden Lord

About three weeks ago, I finished the required fights up to the final fight. I then spent the time between then and now leveling and exploring all the parts I’d missed to that point, always trying to tune my build enough to push it over the edge. That plan was doomed to fail.

I was about to quit this game. I told my partner today that I would finish Elden Ring this weekend, or put it away. I have other games I want to play. And then against all odds, I finished.

All I had to do was play the game 100% entirely differently.

I played through most of the game with a Dragon Incantation build, with a variety of bleed weapons for trash mobs. High arcane, high faith, enough vigor and endurance and mind to get by, dex and int enough only to wield the weapons. And that really worked. Once I went dragon and got faith high enough, almost every boss died to rot, bleed, or magic, and it wasn’t even really that hard. Once I realized I would never be able to dodge as easily as the pros on YouTube do, I really leaned into the dragon mode and most every boss fight was easy. The few that were strong to status effects, I figured out other ways to kill. The Crystallian Trio, for instance, I blew bubbles at.

Faith/Arcane builds are among the rarest, and although I typically had a lot of fun with it, there’s not a lot of variety. End game builds revolve around the Dragon Communion Seal and Rivers of Blood. Rivers is more often found in dexterity builds, but it’s decent in arcane.

Although I eventually got good enough to kill the first half of the final fight — Radagon of the Golden Order — this build seemed worthless against the second half, the Elden Beast. I worked with a particular weapon, the Godskin Peeler, that had the Black Flame Tornado ability which would take massive chunks off the Elden Beast’s health bar. And actually, I almost finished the game last weekend with this — I came within ten percent. But that was a fluke and I couldn’t get anywhere close to that again. I decided I wanted to try another spec.

I became a Sorceress, with Comet Azur. This would delete Radagon, those few times he’d stay still enough. But I usually didn’t have many flasks left for the Elden Beast, and the beast was far less interested in letting me stand still long enough to cast it. I think I could have made it work, but I was finding myself going through the entire game again, doing quests and dungeons for caster gear, and I still had huge gaps. Plus, the Millicent quest, the one that during the course of gives a lot of vital talismans and spells for the endgame, was bugged for me. I have no idea what happened to her, but I can’t find her to continue her quest so two vitally important melee talismans — Millicent’s Prosthesis and Rotted Winged Talisman — aren’t available to me. Plus, the spell Pest Threads wasn’t being sold by her mentor that is supposed to.

I made a spreadsheet this morning that listed all my dragon incantations, all the weapons I’d leveled up, the minimum stats required and their special abilities. I went to work crafting the perfect build.

I had four candidates for the final weapon — Mohgwyn’s Sacred Spear, Marais Executioners Sword, Blasphemous Blade and Fallingstar Beast Jaw.

Mohgwyn’s is a powerful AE bleed weapon. With the correct great rune, it could really power up my mimic tear. Even though the final boss is immune to bleed, with attack high enough, it might work. My tests showed it was too slow for the speed of the bosses — though it was very nice for clearing out groups of mobs.

The Executioner’s Sword has a spinning attack move which does a LOT of small, quick attacks. Talismans can multiply that damage to insane amounts. I’d actually tried this weapon against Radagon before I respecced, but he tended to punish me for using channeled attacks like that. After the respec it was very powerful and would just tear through the troll in Stormveil Castle.

The Blasphemous Blade was going to be my choice. Every hit heals. It uses flame, which can be buffed way up, and it’s the element Radagon is weak to. Tests went well, and this was the weapon I expected to finish the game with. But then I thought I would try…

The Fallingstar Beast Jaw. You target something, you pump it, it breaks the poise of your target, you punish the target, target dies. Testing on the Stormveil Troll showed the damage not being the greatest, but the stagger power was unmatched.

I happened to have it equipped when I was prepping the Blasphemous Blade, so without even tuning my spells or talismans, I two-handed it and entered the final fight. Summoned the mimic tear and we both started pumping. Radagon fell and fell and fell and died. I’d gotten good at dodging his attacks but I hardly needed to. I had cast Lord’s Divine Fortification that erased most of his damage, and I kept casting it now and then.

The Elden Beast rose up from his shattered body, I cast Lord’s again, ran up and started pumping. It knocked him down. He still was able to attack a few times every time he swam away, but I’d just recast Lord’s and run back and start pumping again. And then it was dead.

Now it’s time to decide what game to play next 🙂 Elden Ring is going to be a hard game to follow, though. I’d have liked it better if it hadn’t invalidated my build right at the end, making me think I should have focused on strength all along, but, it is what it is.