Is Elden Ring TOO HARD? Why Fromsoftware buffed blessings & how to manage DLC difficulty

Elden Ring Patch 1.12.2 Calibration Update and How to Overcome Shadow of the Erdtree
In this Elden Ring video, we're gonna be talking a little about the game's difficulty and the Calibration update for Shadow of the Erdtree.

0:00 - Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree Difficulty
0:28 - Scadutree Fragments Buff
2:56 - Shadow of the Erdtree Balancing
4:47 - SOTE Boss Movesets
6:20 - Level Up
7:07 - Choose Better Scaling Weapons
8:23 - Stacking/Pairing Talismans
9:14 - My thoughts
11:25 - Final Thoughts

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[Fextralife]

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[sNNNNNable]

I've been helping ppl with bosses since I've beaten the game and my god the amount of times I am reverted to blessing lvl 1 or 2 because the host hasn't leveled them up is insane

[dmaxcustom]

Veteran here.
I kinda think is harder than it should?
Already done with most bosses but have to admit at some points it felt more frustrating than rewarding.
I dont know if I like that most bosses now fill the screen with effects and you dont see crap.
I still think from the base game and the DLC that our character is ill equipped for the challenge. Bosses keep getting faster but we still move and react at DS3 speed.
Sekiro is harder, but your character is the perfect tool for the job.
That's how I felt. And with that said, I do enjoy the DLC, I am happy with it, still cant get over the map verticality and the exploration is magical. I love the amount of content the DLC has, all the weapons, its a terrific game. But yea.

[devilgames]

The problem is how relentless the boss attacks are. Not everyone is running a hyper tank build.

[imaencuru]

My main complaint is that I Would Like To Attack Please. It's all well and good to have mega combos that feel really cool to perfectly dodge, but the opening most bosses leave after those combos is too short for any AoW or even most r2s and charged r2s. I'm not shy about using spirits and there have been several times where the boss will switch aggro just to knock me out of an animation, which would be a cool mechanic if they didn't do it *mid combo*.
(And for the final boss any attack you do get through does basically nothing unless it's a bleed proc.)

[scotto]

I'm halfway through, so far I haven't thought it was TOO hard. It has been challenging though. Most of the bosses in the base game seem to slowly walk at you so you can set up and think, drink a potion, whatever. Even Malenia slow walks the arena for a while. In the DLC many of the bosses sprint/charge/fly right at you and attack aggressively with little break. I hate that MF Gaius though.

[Shooom-ormk]

Rather than too hard, I think things have too much damage and not enough health. By the end of the DLC I was running the armor or solitude with the dragoncrest greatshield talismans (physical, pearldrake, and one elemental) and still getting 2 or 3-shot by some things, but once I got good at fights they would end really quickly.

High damage enemies worked incredibly well for Bloodborne because of the rally mechanic--when you got hit, your best option was to increase your aggression. It led to really cool fights.

But in a Dark Souls-type combat systems, if you get hit by a high-damage enemy, your best move is always to back off and heal so the next hit doesn't end you. This unnaturally lowers player aggression, and forces you to disengage when you're having fun.

Some of the best bosses in the Souls series were Gael, Demon Prince, and Midir, all of whom were extreme tanks that didn't do that much damage. Even Midir's laser doesn't one shot most medium builds at the hp soft cap. These types of bosses tend to drain your healing rather than destroying you outright. The low damage means that when players get hit they can choose to stay in rather than run and heal.

I suspect the focus on number of deaths is what drives this change. A boss that takes you three ten-minute fights to beat is just as hard as a boss that takes you thirty one-minute fights--it took you thirty minutes of exposure to learn both of them--but I suspect some people would complain about the first boss, saying it is too easy because it only took them three tries.

Ultimately, I think a lot of these bosses feel pretty cheap, and are over-reliant on damage to make otherwise easy fights hard.

[stephensetcoski]

Base game Elden Ring bosses were oppressive. They would have super long combos, most with weird and unnatural wind ups. The bosses up until Maliketh at least gave the player a “turn”, albeit that turn was usually after the boss had 4-5 turns. Maliketh is oppressive to the point of not being fun. He is a chore. And the rest of the base game is like that with a tiny exception for Radagon.

I loved Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne because those games are challenging but not oppressively so. I feel like I have a chance, even if it’s a small chance. Same for their DLCs.

Shadow of the Erdtree is oppressive to the point of frustration. Even some of the basic enemies have 5-6 time combos, have a massive health pool, leave little room for the player to attack safely, and hit like a truck. The bosses are no better. If this new boss/enemy design is going to continue for FromSoft’s next game I’m afraid they’ve lost me. And by the look of the user reviews, they’ve lost a lot of other people too.

[ZoDSeRSyLVaN]

also pve poise is so broken, fire knight armor gives absolutely garbo level of poise but those fire knight npc can poise through pretty much anything lower than greatsword and spam spining

[TheZak]

I think a big issue also is people that looked up powerful builds to cruise through the base game, then coming back not quite remembering how to play and the power of those builds being scaled in the DLC. It probably makes the DLC difficulty spike feel like a brick wall.

[chiakinanami]

My main and only issue is the fact that there are only 50 fragments and you need 50 to max yourself out, the first couple of blessing levels are easy to find but once you reach the end it feels more like a scavenger hunt rather than progression. I was blessing level 17 when i reached the final boss and I searched what felt like the entire map but not having those last levels really hurt. My proposed change would be what they did with golden seeds in the base game, make them plentiful and have more than what is needed to max out. Having bosses/mini-bosses drop 1-2 like the upgrades in Sekiro would also go a long way to make it feel like progression.

As for the bosses themselves, I only have issues with 2 of them. The first being Gaius with his bugged hitbox which should be an easy fix. The last being of course the final boss and his unrelenting endless combos, AoEs and light shows. That boss needs changes as of right now as you practically have no time to breath with its agression. I will refrain from talking about its insane damage as i was only blessing 17 as opposed to 20 but I feel it wouldn't have mattered.

[thebarbaryghostsf]

Don't underestimate cranking up endurance. Having a load of stamina and weight allowance can be way more beneficial to having a huge health pool. If you have low stamina, it won't matter how much health you have.

[kevinsilva]

Don't miss out on thrusting shields guys
The final boss will be a lot easier with them
Royal knight resolve helped greatly with it

[SKNGame]

what I love is how bosses cause you to mix and match your gear for the best outcome.

[Wisppp_]

This is a really well done video that a lot of people need to see. I had some initial frustration with the dlc because I ended up in front of Bayle too early and I was getting my teeth kicked in. Did some exploring, got some more fragments and the fight became much more balanced and not a one shot fest 😂

[Deefsplayn]

Don't ignore your defensive stats.

I fought Rellana yesterday and had three out of four talisman slots filled with defensive talismans (Physical, Magical, Fire) and it made my life a lot easier.

[davidwhisnant]

My biggest issue with the Scadutree Fragments is that there’s a set limit to how many you can find, and only by finding them all do you hit the cap. I really liked the golden seeds, because there were more than you needed but was ultimately a max, leaving you plenty of extra. I think leaving more fragments throughout the world and perhaps having the hardest bosses drop 2 or so would make progression seem more fair and linear. I had to go on fextra just to hunt down most of them, and I’m still missing 5 or so. Encouraging exploration is good, but making it mandatory is tedious.

[Farathriel]

Many people, including myself, are fed up with area of effect attacks galore that is so apparent in this DLC. While the overall design of the bosses is really stunning, I can't say quite the same about their movesets. Plethora of special effects that they cast oftentimes obstruct the line of sight. I can't dodge something that I don't see. Second of all, I can't stress enough just how casters are at a disatvantage in SotE. Because most of the enemies are now able to come up with long combos, there isn't much space to cast a spell. It's not just tricky as with Maliketh. It's straight-forward frustrating, especially because bosses have cranked up aggressiveness as well as animation reading. They exploit your casting, chase you, throw roll catchers at you. Sometimes it's not even hard but plainly annoying because you're unable to use your own build as you wanted. Instead, you are prompted to use a greatshield and heavy armor. I wish the game gave us some kind of way to punish the enemy for trying to fool players with delayed attacks as well as unending chain of attacks.

You guys didn't put much of the critique into Scadutree Blessing system but the reality of it is that I didn't care about the runes at all. I cared about running around the world and gathering those damned pieces of bark. I don't even want to mention smithing stones as these are a joke. Why would anybody need this many of them if we can buy them anyway and it's going to be faster.

I feel that SotE is a missed opportunity to include Shadow Rune Level and Shadow Smithing Stones mechanics. It'd definitely expand on the possibilities of improving your character and smoothened the overall experience by including more gradual growth. And because it'd promote player agency atop of exploration, the experience in SotE would've been much more consistent, solid and fresh.

Another thing is the inclusion of deflect mechanic in the form of wondrous physick. Why make it a flask instead of a talisman or a specific ash of war? Why? It'd have opened so many different possibilities. Such a thing can be nerfed, it can e.g. lower the absorbtion when blocking my 50%, it'd instantly promote aggressive playstyle that some players like. In that regard I feel that FromSoft is too conservative in their ways.

Aside from that: the DLC is great. I loved it despite its flaws here and there.

[darthelmet]

I think the argument around difficulty based on what tools you have to power up is kind of missing the point. The problem isn't just difficulty, it's just not fun anymore. If you fight the bosses "fairly" a lot of them feel borderline impossible to learn. If you go power up your character with tons of upgrades and a cheese build, then you just trivialize the boss and that's not fun either. I'm not new. I've played all their games since Dark Souls other than the PS exclusives. Cheese and over-leveling existed in those games too, but they didn't feel like the normal way to play. I played through all the Dark Souls games with just a typical ooga booga strength and avoid the bosses build. I learned the bosses, eventually beat them, and it was fun. I even did stuff like going to do Dancer early in DS3 and Madame Butterfly early in Sekiro. I knew I was putting myself through something more difficult than intended, but I was fine with that and I eventually beat them. I went to do optional hard content like Nameless King, that Dragon from Ringed City, etc. They were tough and I smashed my face into them for quite a while, but I got them. I never was enough of a masochist to do some SL1 challenge run or something, but I never felt the need or desire to reach for a cheese build.

Then Elden Ring happened. Half the bosses were aggressive spammy nonsense that I didn't feel like I could reasonably learn. So for the first time ever, I swapped builds to a sorcery cheese build. It basically annihilated everything in seconds. The game went from being too hard to not even really being a game anymore. It was super disappointing. For the DLC, I went in with a relatively fairer build again, a faith/str build and I tried a variety of weapons. The early game felt like absolute crap. I was back to getting shit on by bosses in a way I didn't feel like I could learn to deal with. Most of them I only beat after a lucky attempt where my spirit ash actually did something. Then I went on exploring, finding fragments, and eventually I got to the point where I was beating the bosses in like 1-3 attempts. Why? Did I git gud? No! I had just gotten enough raw power that the bosses died too quickly. I was still getting knocked around by all their bullshit, it just didn't matter anymore. Once again, I went from unfun difficulty to barely playing the game. Even the last 2 required bosses to get to the final area went down without much of a fight.

Then I got to the last boss and none of that mattered. With nearly maxed out blessings, armor, buffs, talismans, etc, I was just getting shit on by the usual bullshit. It's basically the same problem the base game had where they had to make the endgame critical path brutal to account for how much people might have explored and powered up. I looked up a cheese build and it just didn't even look fun.

Now, you could still turn around and blame me for this. I just didn't find the "right" build that perfectly balanced enough power to not feel terrible but not so much power that it trivializes the boss. But where's the line? Why is that on me to design my own difficulty settings? How much is too much? If I'm struggling, at what point do I stop trying to git gud and try to drop down the difficulty with more upgrades or a more broken build? I hate customizable difficulty in general, I think it's right that the game doesn't have normal difficulty settings. But I think framing the difficulty in terms of builds and leveling is kind of the worst possible way to do that. Players want to optimize when they play with these kinds of systems. It doesn't feel good to say I'm gonna hold back and be less efficient with the build. I want a challenge set by the devs and then I want to figure out how to overcome it.

I'm also not really a fan of all the bosses where some specific mechanic completely trivializes them, mostly because in a lot of cases they aren't even intuitive to figure out. How am I supposed to figure out that the Godskins can get put to sleep with a warm glass of milk? Either try literally everything on every boss to see what works, or go look it up on a wiki.

So yeah. I don't want cheese builds. I don't want more scadu fragments. I just want to go back to when the games gave you an honest challenge. That they "nerfed" things by buffing the fragments doesn't really make me any more interested in going back to try to beat the final boss again. It's still gonna be a spam fest even if the numbers end up tipping in my favor a bit more.

[gopackgo]

great video - this DLC taught me the importance of endurance- a lot of the new combos drain stamina. So I increased that and also was able to wear better gear.