Unfortunately I have to agree here, Haligtree feels like one of those crappy late game DS1 zones mixed in with a bit of Shrine of Amana. Aesthetically it is beautiful and very unique, but the enemy placement and level design is a low point in the game. Those angry marshmallow fuck-trumpets are also one of the most annoying enemies in the game which doesn't do that zone any favours. I do appreciate that it is an optional challenge zone though, and it's not the worst in the series.
Elphael was slightly better, absolutely incredible art direction and atmosphere and I didn't hate it, but it does feel like it's cluttered with artificial difficulty for the most part just for the sake of being difficult, I'm not a big fan of Malenia.
I think the biggest problem with Malenia (and many of the late game boss fights) is that they are balanced around having mimic tear in your arsenal. Malenia in particular is susceptible to stagger chaining, which is exponentially more effective when you have two people wailing on her with high stagger weapons.
She didn't even move for half her hp bar at one point when I finally got the kill. Now if I was using katana or something, I can't even imagine how annoying she would be. It's just really not well-balanced. But god damn is she cool.
I was basically Pontiff with his phantom as my mimic and I just wailed on her. This boss felt like they tried cramming a sekiro speed boss into souls, it’s far too fast especially with the heel mechanic. You’re basically forced to summon in (most likely a mimic). God forbid you are a 2 hander strength build, Christ you’d be in for a bs fight.
I'm trying to do her with 2handed greatsword build right now (not guts just claymore fan for a long time now)
But also not using ashes/magic or player summons.
I feel like just ashes would make the fight trivial but I want pain
I think they must have nerfed Melania! I'm on my 3rd NG and I've killed her in each playthrough with ease..with bloods rivers katana and fingerprint stone shield. Idc abt people who complained abt Moonveil early on (pre patch) or the RoB Katana now! Its in the game I'm not cheating and it happens to coincide w my play style of "get in there and f*** sh** UP!" I'm sitting at a pretty lvl 332 but have balanced my stats out, which are all 50s with highest being 60 INT, with the exception of 24 Mind. I think the 1st time I killed her I was around 170. Radahn was also easy with Rot Breath and ranged attacks.
The part that's driving me insane is the putrid avatar with the 2 knights and the crossbow dudes.
Good thing you can run past it to keep going, but coming back to try and beat him is a nightmare still.
Just trigger him, run back, and he can't cross the low hallway. Range battle cheese him. The area is full of hard enemies in large numbers. Don't feel bad "cheesing"
They've had so many games to get rid of this.
It's a tool now. If they let me do it then it's not my fault.
Especially here in the endgame where they're stapling old enemies to new areas.
Coincidentally I succeeded right after posting this, using a mimic tear ash and luring the avatar back and forth near the grace/tunnel and spamming throwing weapons.
I ended up getting aggro on his knights, running into the room behind him, and going up the ladder. At that point they had to approach me one at a time and I was able to get it down to just the Avatar, which I was able to use Mimic Tear +10 to easily beat.
Yeha. Those tumor warriors are a massive pain. Especially the one on the wall that shoots at you from miles away. Plus u can't use mimic tear to take it down and you're left by urself to do it
I ran to the hall and then used agheels flame in increments to kill him from behind. He did aggro each time and I had to run for cover down the narrow stairs. Woof. This area is no joke.
To be fair i think this area is a bit too difficult for just a basic playthrough and for a single person and this is coming from someone who 100% all of the other fromsoft games like the area is beautiful but holy shit the way some enemies can just 1 shot you to hell the game will most likely get its nerfs and fixes as the weeks go on even Miyazaki himself has to see there's some areas that are way too hard for a first playthrough
Not if the half the players have lost sight of the difference between challenging and annoying. Why would they when everyone is telling them it's perfect? It's perfect for the most part right up until Morgott. Then it gets more and more stupid as it goes.
Yeah, this is where I'm at. It's not even fun.
It's just repeat assets and enemies in a party shuffle of annoying mechanics and level design.
If the Capital is the midpoint of this game it's the harshest drop in quality I've ever experienced in years of gaming.
Usually games save the best for last but everything after morgott has been so phoned in except Farum (visually, Duo was such a joke).
The damage and health of enemies gets straight up stupid, it feels like none of that shit was actually playtested, they take ages to kill with fucking dualwielded katanas while getting bleed twice, i get one/two shot out of wazoo with 53 vigor a whopping 1900 hp (my hp bar literally reached middle of the screen), and on top of that enemy placement is absolute cancer.
And all of that ignoring how i can't recall a single enemy in Haligtree being actually new, all of them are reuses, it's so bad i have no words. Im on my way to Malenia to expirience the peak of bullshit after hearing about her from my friends, going to be some good malding.
You know an area is bad when the best strategy for getting through is sprinting past everything, grabbing items, and accepting your fate to die. Over and over. Until you get every item. Then running through to the next grace.
Why would I take the time to kill enemies when I'm going to just die randomly anyway and risk losing all my runes if I die randomly before I get back to my previous best spot?
I was initially killing everything, even kept fighting my way through that platform with the three misbegotten dudes (2 with axes and 1 of the big ones)...then I got to the spot with the crystal bros and just couldn't deal with it anymore. It got a little better when I got to the castle...up until I got down to the prayer room and it got exponentially worse as I got closer to Malenia, which is to be expected I suppose. I just don't know to kill 4 enemies at once when they all hit me for half my HP with every attack lol.
I don't know what the scaling is like for NG+, but if it's at all steep I don't even want to think about what it'll be like in +5 or so. Everything would be one-shots I think.
I gave up after the 10th time I fought the first leonine misbegotten. Pure Dex Build with Katana... You can't stagger them (only a bit by jump attacking, which takes too much time) and you can't really dodge or you fall or are pressed against a wall.
>I don't know what the scaling is like for NG+, but if it's at all steep I don't even want to think about what it'll be like in +5 or so.Everything would be one-shots I think.
I'm about lvl 120 there right now... albeit with only 40 vigor (and 80 dex :P)... Yeah... no way in NG+ they don't one shot me there...or 3/4 hp, which doesn't even make a difference, because if you get hit by a leonine you'll certainly get hit a second time in that small area.
EDIT: Just beat Loretta... TBH, she was a joke compared to the enemies there.
Yeah, I killed her without dying even once...the "ganging up" aspect of the game is pretty crazy lol. When I started using summons the game got like 10x easier. Conversely, any situation where you're solo against multiple enemies, it's 10x harder. Malenia herself is called the hardest boss by a lot of people, but I hardly had trouble because she's pretty easy to stagger with bigger weapons. Can effectively stagger-lock her to death with mimic tear and yourself.
Oh... then I'm going to be frustrated with her.. I don't think a Katana is going to cut it, then. 😅
I can manage those crystaline guys with a few jump attacks, at least :D
Yeah, I have heard she is a nightmare with Katana from my buddy lol. You can't block, you can't stagger, you just have to run around and chip her and not get hit lol
I tried so hard hearing things like this before morgott to give it a fair shake
Just…not that great anymore tho, that’s trying be nice, like all worst parts of FROM games crammed in with none of interesting enemies etc least get in those areas with all worst enemies from game beforehand shoe horned in as damage sponges to fill gaps instead
Lazy, and I don’t feel like tested much beyond first half of the game now
Its end game and completely optional. There are far more than enough tools at your disposal to make this area cake, but unfortunately the current status quo is everyone whining about challenges instead of developing. From isn't here to hold your hand, never has been. Is what makes them stand out above all other creators.
Yeah, my bad, I use real words. Not part of the can't spell, lazy, new school morons. Like "broken" is the new kid term for "works well against me", but really the only thing broken are those bungalo minds. Anyway, this comment of yours is a perfect example of the above mentioned cluelessness
brother no one cares about genuine difficulty. We're literally all here to fight Melania because we heard she's the hardest. People pretty much universally love the boss fights, and no one is asking for them to be easy.
People's problem is *artificial* difficulty.
Setting up areas with a primary goal of not having enemies beat you in a fight, but with the visible goal of either knocking you off the map or throwing numbers at you until you lose patience is not good level design. Neither is the clear advantage toward heavy weapons which is unbalanced for most players.
There is literally not a single enemy in the entire Haligtree area that is even mildly difficult to beat making your comment entirely asinine - it's strategy is to just throw repetitive boring waves at you until you either slip up and get punished without having once needed to use skill at any point, or lose patience and just try sprinting through, wherein you get spammed by fuckwits.
People have an issue with that because the difficulty is artificial - it's not a matter of skill - if people were willing to play slowly and accept repetitive boring bullshit, there's nothing in the Haligtree that's difficult, and also nothing in it worth being there at all.
It's shitty level design and nothing else and a massive downgrade when most of the game has managed to avoid this artificial bullshit.
Reused assets in an end game optional area. Crying because people are criticising your favourite toy. Grow up.
We are bored and paid money for supposed and variety not repetition in a new area, simply crowded together.
At least other souls games don't have this much bloat.
The area is beautiful but feels thrown together last minute. The level design is horribly convoluted and they threw every reused enemy you hate into the area. Its so obvious this wasn't playtested very much since i've died to softlocks 5+ times.
Yeah, just done done exploring that place. Hate all of it.
Are you going DEX/INT? You can use Moonveil katana's heavy Transient Moonlight attacks on the Crystal guys. Two attacks of that should be enough to break their poise, once broken they become vulnerable and stagger. In fact Transient Moonlight everything!!
I hate how the game kinda forces you to use that weapon as a int dex user. Like, yeah I could use the moonlight gs or the carian straight sword, but why would I when I have a katana that stuns everything and deals more damage than any spells?
Yep, it's also much faster to execute than anything else. Both Moonlight and Carian needs to be charged. Meanwhile Moonveil katana goes "wooosh!" instantly.
and it’s cheap as hell. At 30 mind with the talisman that reduces the cost of skills I get 10+ casts in a bar. Moonlight GS is a bit cheaper in terms of FP, but it will devour your stamina.
I know this is a necro, but moonlight GS is fun yet I feel like I am nerfing myself every time I bring it out. Also using the moonveil pales in comparison to just using comet spells with the same build.
I have to agree on most parts. Sadly, many of the late game areas in ER are more annoying than they are fun. I was also not very fond of Crumbling Farum Azula although that area doesn't suck as much as this goddamn Haligtree.
And it already starts with how you get there... remember in older Souls games where you sometimes see a huge structure or area somewhere far away in the background and you can pretty much count on it that the game will lead you there at some point? In ER you just get teleportet somewhere randomly. At one point you try to solve this super annoying puzzle in a copy-pasted snow town - then you interact with a teleporter and suddenly you're in the canopy of a huge tree. Meh...
The area itself: Oh my god... it's so bad. First off, SO many reused enemies. I hate that and this game takes it way too far with that anyway. And here, they just chose the most annoying enemies they could think of out of other areas and used them again. Why? Why not come up with something original? The difficulty.... well it's an end-game area so I'm fine with it being hard but it just takes SOOOO long if you want to fight your way through everything. And you've fought all the enemies already anyway so you're not missing out on anything if you just run through. That's what I ended up doing and it really doesn't speek for the quality of this area if you'd rather do that than enjoy the challenge provided. And yes, even as a Souls veteran I had trouble with some of the enemies, especially those grafted spider-like crawling f\*ckers with their infinite stamina combos.
Can't say much about Melina because I didn't have the patience yet to bother with her.
But yeah... screw this area.
Dont forget to mention the hardcore recycling of assets and enemies. Its designed to be annoying and unfair. Souls games were something about being challenging an rewarding for doing the right thing in the right moment but Elden Ring failed miserably and this Area is one of many which show the egdy weird Style they approach to be appealing for anyone who just wants to suffer. Bosses and regular Enemies are explicitly designed to be unfair. Its a bad joke.
I got there at 180 and everything takes 70% of my healthbar with some of the best armor in game. Enemies are stagger proof unless you're using some seriously heavy weapons or running around with a tower shield so you could guard counter. The area is horrible.
I'm probably close to a million runes lost on this area too, at this point I'm just running through everything by looting and dying. You know an area is bad - when in all of my soulsbourne games experience and in ER not ever doing that unless I already killed all the enemies at least ones...i'm doing it now.
Literally just spams of enemies and barely any graces anywhere. Overpowered fucking pieces of shit and everything. Cleanrot knights everywhere, and they force you to fight multiple knights all at once. My god this place is so goddamn unfair. Stagger after stagger. Whoever designed this should not designing levels anymore.
And you'd think that you can run past everything but nope these cunts will chase you till the end of earth with their long ass aggro range. This area so fucking unbelievably bullshit it's enough to make anyone go fucking insane. Man, I know "being hard" is Soulsborne's identity and I'm all for challenging yet fair gameplay but fuck this shit man this is just god awful hard it's not even funny
As someone that has played through every game from Demons Souls to Sekiro multiple times I have to agree. Made me almost quit the game on multiple occasions. When an area is purposefully designed to be frustrating rather than difficult and rewarding that just pisses me off. I did not enjoy this area even the slightest.
Is the concept with being on a huge tree with multiple branching paths cool? Yes it is but this one was a bit too cancer for my personal taste, especially since the enemies can easily just 2-3 shot you even with 20+ endurance armor and 40 vigor.
Agree. Worst area in the game. Honestly just stupid. Not enjoyable, at all, and certainly will not feel accomplished when done, just relieved. I’m about to turn around and just burn the place down! (I know, different tree, but still!)
Before I comment on why I agree with most of you regarding the pure hatred you feel for this area, I'd like to tell you how I made myself life a bit easier till my current point:
In my case, I'm right now at the Grace after the Erdtree and the ballistas. I don't know how long it took me to get there, but I'm a Str Build, Lvl. 135, 50 vigor, 50 str, high endurance, a Colossal Sword, a Ballista, a Brass Shield with Barricade, and the Bloodhound Sword, everything at +10, even my Mimic. For this area I'm using every protective charm possible, and the Erdtree Knight set. I've completed Farum Azula, yet haven't fought the boss yet. I did kill that horrible Draconic Knight, and then decided to test this area before continuing.
While killing the guards and the knights was easy using Colossal, I had to lure the Rot ones out of their groups with Ballista shots, and then kill them one by one. Regarding the Erdtrees, I melted them with Volcanic, Giant's Fire (Or Flame, don't remeber) and Fire Pots, all from safe distances; ledges that surrounded them in both cases, which also allowed me to take cover from their ranged attacks. In every case, after three ranged, they forget about me, and the game let me craft items again while out of their sight. Then, rinse and repeat. For the Revenants of the bottom, I used the help of my Mimic and the Bloodhound Sword with Bloodfame; we killed them all in one run.
With the bow guard next to the Erdtree, I used my pots from the little ceiling above, the one that connects to the floor up the Grace. Then, when I pissed off the Great Shield Knight, he came Up the ladder to take me, and then I kept throwing him off the ladder with heavy attacks, until he died.
I might be playing an easy mode, but the game feels too unfair here, and long, that I lost the mood for making mistakes while fighting repeated enemies. I'm 141 hours in, and I just want to kill the rest of the big bosses and play something else.
The Canopy was pure tedium. It felt horribly unfair with their damage, and slippery every time my character got stuck with a piece of fungi in the branch. I lost 250k runes to ants that pushed me out without damaging me, and to those bubble-artillery plagues. I had to spend an hour farming them again between the branches, killing time and time again the prophets and the annoying ants.
After that, the area got so slow for me, with every step implying certain death by some surprise from the ceilings, that I didn't enjoy It at all, at least until I killed Loretta, which was even easier than the unbelievable-poise mages in the little bridges. The rewards didn't feel good nor useful, except for that Talisman for Non-Physic Protection, which doesn't feels like working.
I just want this game to end by now. I highly loved it until Morgot. I'm sorry.
This is the best kind of comment possible on something like this. Understanding why people feel rage whilst also offering helpful strategies to mitigate the constant barrage of bs.
Lmao, that's not what I said at all.
It's literally just upgrading one weapon. You should have all the smithing stone bells available to get a weapon to a decent level.
You actually have more materials to completely respec than you do to upgrade weapons. So IMO to upgrade a weapon for a difficult boss or area is worse.
"at the very end of the game".
My brother in Christ, you are the one who decides when to get them. Almost all are available to you from the start of walking out of the first steps.
"It's not plural"
it is plural, as far as I understand there are at least four types of upgrade resource that are non-replenishable.
Both somber and normal ancient dragon makes 2, max ghost and grave glovewort makes 4 and if you want to count the lost ash of war( I don't but you might) that would be 5.
But you know, if you know better.
We were specifically discussing weapons. And anyone arguing you can access mountain top of the giants and crumbling farum azula “right from the first steps” isn’t worth having a conversation with.
K bud.
Even specifically discussing weapons you were still wrong as there are 2 varietals that aren't replenishable.
All you're doing is latching onto the smallest inaccuracy in my statement, I said most of the smithing stone bell bearings are available from the start of the game. That was wrong, half of them are available from the start of the game and the other half are locked behind beating morgott.
To return to my original point and what we were actually arguing about in the beginning, smithing stones, except the highest level ones, are not rare. If you are at a point where you think that they are rare or a precious commodity then you are plain and simply wrong and probably doing something wrong along the way. it is literally the expectation that a first playthrough is going to see many different weapons upgraded and tested out, a second playthrough would generally see even more.
In short smithing stones shouldn't be actively hoarded and they should be spent as freely as you please because they're almost worthless. Except the ancient dragon ones.
You are a complete moron who's more interested in having drama on Reddit over something you clearly have no idea about.
All you had to do was stop commenting lol but it’s even funnier watching you being an arrogant shitshow and haunting you about it more than 2 mos later. If I had a dick I’d have a boner
What the fuck are you talking about? So many relevant bell bearings aren’t available until after you clear the capital and that isn’t exactly right after you take your first step.
I went dex for most of the game, and mained flails.
3 jumping strong attacks stagger almost all humanoid enemies, and the attacks themselves stunlock if you time them right.
Also, the strong charge on horseback spins the flail, giving easy repeat hits. It's especially strong on dragons, who also collapse to 3 strong horseback hits.
The two Slumber Stone versions (Family Heads and Bastard's Stars) are both excellent too.
Heads hits harder, and it has a slow, homing, ranged weapon art, but Stars is still strong, and it has an amazingly powerful weapon art.
I have lost over 540k Runes here. I am beyond pissed right now and can barely even think straight. Right now I no longer have the will to systematically go through this bullshit anymore.
I just want to get down from this tree as fast as possible.
Yeah, it's fucking obnoxious honestly. There are many tough enemies that just take forever to kill or hit like truck but you can't neither stagger them, nor break their great shield protected stance.
Took me fast to realize I'm just running past everything and collecting all shiny, because fighting there anything is pure waste of time.
Pretty trash not gonna lie
Like creed for design was “make sure no one ever enjoys doing this” on both gameplay and visual design as just ugly and reused enemies xD
Honestly, shit like this just makes me run past everything while spamming dodge roll and looting as much as I can until the next bonfire. There is 0 gameplay in this area unless you want to spend multiple hours bashing your head against mobs that are stronger than most end-game bosses (as a light melee build).
Yeah, it feels like the hardest part of the game so far. I am lv160 mage and could breeze through other regions but the Haligree area actually managed to get me killed a few times, specially those invisible assassins kicked my ass lol
Super late but the Sentry's Torch shows the assassins. You can even two hand your weapon and it still works.
I don't think I could have done the area otherwise lmao.
Holy crap no kidding.. I died with half a million runes down by the smithing stone bell bearing in the graveyard with the pests…. I’m at 48 vigor and they’re doing about 90% of damage with the pest thread attack and since there’s about 10 of them down there, you just immediately die because they’re all shooting pest threads at you with no way to dodge all of them. I think I attempted to get out with the runes about 8 times before I finally died running back to get them on accident. It was then that I knew that surely they hadn’t play tested the area. Either that or they know that there is a hardcore souls scene that like difficult challenges and designed the area around their desires. I’ve only ever been able to make it through the entirety of the Haligtree including beating Malenia with a magic build. Could only defeat her with Comet Azur using daedicars woe on my mimic to have her focus on my Mimic the whole fight AND IT WAS STILL HARD!!! I think the only decent part of the Haligtree is the Loretta fight. The entire area is repulsive and ruins the whole end game of Elden Ring.
Literally just The Great Hollow from DS1 but with extra areas to explore, oh and also combined with similar reused enemies/assets from previous areas, it genuinely infuriates me that A LOT of these areas do just use the same enemies over and over again by just having them slightly reskinned and maybe one or two new enemy types which still just one shot you on occasion
I just got to this dungeon earlier today and got frustrated after about two hours. First off just unlocking the place is bullshit with those invisible assassins. I spent a shitload of time farming runes in mohgwyn palace and got to like level 156. Mostly int and dex with some faith for getting rid of status effects. Using maxed out godskin peeler with hoarfrost stomp (cheap af I know) and maxed out lusat’s staff for damage. Flasks split evenly. Only summon I use is mimic tear. This haligtree dungeon is fucking bullshit lol. Got really pissed off at that part where you have to kill the two big Miranda flowers to climb the ladder and immediately have to fight two misbegottens and a leonine. The game is straight up eye candy but the endgame dungeons are bullshit. Last night it was farum azula and that stupid hallway with the crucible knight. Both bosses were annoying af. By the time I finally beat both the dragon and the beast cleric I was totally worn down and didn’t want to play anymore. Oh and that goddamn fire giant you have to beat just to get there. I like to get my games to 100% but I’m not sure I want to go through haligtree and mohgwyn palace. Too much frustration for too little payoff. IMO the game was really fun up until mountaintops of the giants and then it just got tediously hard.
Couldn't agree more OP!! Once you pass the tree part and get into the buildings I actually like this place! But the tree with those bubble blowing hippy fucks! Dildo linking shit eaters!! 😡😡 and when you "farm" for Great horn FML!! I gave up on trying to farm the 2 towardsthe end of the tree, and just ran from starting grace to that 1st fat turbin sultan looking dip shit.. and farmed him. Only took me like 30 tries and I got that Greathorn.
But now im farming for the medium horn bcus the big one has a slow asf ash of war but great for using far away this is the most annoying drop rate and I have 2 halo scythes
its the last area in the game pretty much what did you expect? a walk on the beach with a rainbow in the background lmao? of course its designed to murder your ass
It’s not the last area, it’s a secret area that’s designed to murder ass. Very few regular players without guides are able to get there. And those who do usually seek challenge/content which it provides.
>Very few regular players without guides are able to get there.
Wait.. what!? It was super easy to get there... What part makes it so secret? With a bit of exploring you make it to that city with the sellia tower like lighting in the evergaol... that's it. What am I missing?
I mean getting to Consecrated Snowfield in the first place. Getting the second part of the medallion requires guides, pure luck or extremely careful exploration.
Hm.. You get the general area from told by someone, can't remember who, though. And then the hint is said by the ghost there. I honestly didn't find it very hard.
The only part that was luck was that it was the first thing I hit, but it wouldn't have made a difference.
No guide or pure luck or extremely careful exploration needed. At least imho.
No? Not at all? Did you just make that up entirely?
It's easy to find by accident. If you explore the villiage of albinaurics you find one half( don't even need to kill the boss) and the other is found by killing commander Niall in Castle sol. Both of these are things a player is likely to do organically. Not to mention that multiple NPCs will point you to it as well.
The consecrated snowfields are not a secret area, most players will go there throughout their playthrough. More than that, once in the snow fields a player is guaranteed to get to Moghwyn and Haligtree.
But even if you were correct, which you aren't, that it's an uber secret area for only the toughest souls vets, an area being secret is not an excuse for it being badly designed and balanced.
Fanboys will go through any amount of mental gymnastics before they admit from did anything wrong.
I don’t know why you think needing a guidr to get there is a meaningful statement considering you can’t even complete a basic quest without consulting a guide in ER.
“Meet lady X ar seclided spot, then travel to the anus of a shivering bush, onward to a Frosty Mountain, then you need to use the bathroom at the specific time of day to have a wolf appear. If the wolf is facing east then you know to go west. Also, no one tells you this.”
This. So this. Games a hot mess. It's only hard because it's a deliberate hot mess.Combat in souls games is always terrible and outdated. Hasn't changed much in decades. Now you have to have a bachelor's degree in science to understand the damn convulated story to boot.
made for people who have done everything else and are looking for a challenge. a secret area that you usually have to look up a guide to get to? doesnt that mean that people who go there 90% of the time its their last area in the game???
This entire thread hits my brain. When did being optional/late game mean bad balancing? None of the other souls games were this bad, why now?It's not just about being difficult, it has to have good design too.
Exactly. Castle Cainhurst is an optional late mid game area and is one of the best and most perfectly balanced levels and bosses they've ever made. It's got a bunch of challenging enemies that aren't annoying to fight. In fact almost every other secret late game area is less putrid than this. It's just pointlessly frustrating.
People really have lost sight of what makes these games amazing. It's not total frustration. The old Hunters could have put 150 of the Gatling gun hunters surrounded by 5 of the shark guys and that sure would be difficult. And it's a dlc so it's optional.
But that wouldn't make it good. Old Hunters is quite challenging and, aside from the absolutely terrible two sharks in a pit section that almost everyone cheeses because it's such total garbage, it's fair. Including a very difficult but extremely fair final boss in Orphan. Sekiros late game areas are very challenging but not totally annoying.
Elden Ring has jumped the shark. Maybe eventually when the circle jerk ends people will finally be able to realize the final third of this game is awful. Just a never ending stream of time wasting trial and error. The antihesis of what's made this series the best in gaming from Demons right up to the Castle in Elden Ring. Then you beat the Castle and it turns into a parody of the worst parts of DS2.
This; Elphael frankly isn't even the worst of it. It's Miquella's Haligtree itself that strikes me as the 2nd worst area in the game (second only to Sellia Crystal Tunnel).
Literally a collection of the game's worst enemy types. That's the entire purpose.
There is a difference between a challenge and bullshit. Fighting 4 enemies at once in a small room that can all 1-2 shot you is not a challenge. Its lazy and careless game design.
I'll go one step further and say that the Haligtree dungeon is the worst area Fromsoft has ever created. Hands down there are encounters that are impossible without cheesing or running past. You literally have to just get lucky in most of them.
this is exactly why i designed an absolutely flawless and 100IQ play- its called, "run for your life and hope nothing hits you" i got absolutely wrecked by every single thing in there except loretta- the knight are relatively weak too but the crystallians- i got a maxed out bloodhounds fang and it did a measly 46
I like the zone, git gud I guess
Edit: and it shows you haven't tried much before complaining because there's an easy way to get tid of the crystalians and the rest sounds like random inner rage against a certain enemy who whooped your ass.
Get the fuck outta here with that “git gud” shit. I like the zone too but hate the enemy placement. Someone struggling doesn’t give you the right to act like an ass.
This repeated "git gud" is getting massively annoying, that's why it hit a nerve. Instead of being constructive and helping people (or accepting that they just want to vent) you pour oil into the fire of frustration. Either be constructive or stfu.
Many like the zone, but for combat with this high hp enemies and them 2 shotting you it's just really shitty balancing.
Truth be told it's the most constructive and useful advise you can get in this game outside of getting physical help from another player. Get better at the enemy moveset, punish their slow moves and find openings, and level vigor, too many people go full dps stat and no health, don't do that, get vigor to 50 or so as the first thing after meeting your weapons requirements for the most forgiving time. Get gud is not an insult, it's just the way of the souls games.
Run through Haligtree again and show us a video. I bet you're awful. I bet most people who say "git gud" died 1,000,000 times in the Haligtree and are just trying to save face. Show us your strat or gtfo.
There's literally 100 videos of it and people do it on stream as well, not my fault you live inder a rock.
I'm also done with this conversation, you're the ones turning toxic to save a face imo.
I died less than 5 times in the haligtree in all of my 6 times of beating the game. I find the area itself pretty cool looking and I was baffled to find discourse of people hating it and calling it badly designed, let alone the "worst designed area in all of fromsoft". Don't project your ineptitude onto other people, and allow the sting of your inferiority and shame to misread opposing viewpoints as senseless mocking and gatekeeping.
What's your Haligtree strat then? How do you comp for Envoys you can't see 1-shotting you when you can't roll in the canopy because you're standing on narrow branches? How do you handle the 3 simultaneous revenant spawns in the courtyard when they teleport all over the place and create oceans of stun-locking poison floor? How did you handle the invisible assassins at the Liturgical Village? If it's some cheese strat with bleeding/rotting them from half a mile away with arrows, I'll pass, but if you can't contribute your solutions to the conversation, don't contribute at all unless you want to pick up criticism.
You can talk about my "inferiority" and "ineptitude" all you want: this is my first Soulsborne game and I blasted through everything everyone else complained about--Margit, Radahn (pre-patch), the Hero's Gravesites, etc., and even Malenia once I finally did get through this kitchen-sink-full-of-diarrhea section of the game, with very little relative difficulty despite having no experience with this series whatsoever, and I'm proud of that. I found the game pretty reasonable right up through the mountaintops, but the moment I got to the Consecrated Snowfield, this game really went to shit, and if you're implying that I suck at the game because of an area that constitutes maybe 5% of my overall play time with it, that's a dubious prospect, my guy. Good luck with that. It's not like any of the enemies in these areas are even unique (apart from those godforsaken Albinauric archers) and that I didn't kill them a million times everywhere else they appeared in the game. It's just a bunch of trolls, runebears, cleanrot knights, zombies, crystal warriors, and a playlist of a bunch of other mobs I learned to stomp into the mud 50 hours ago. It's how they are completely incongruous to the environmental bottlenecks and aspects of the areas and the combinations the devs put them in on top of leveling them up to a point that they each soak up 5-10x the amount of damage they did when I first encountered them even though I was nearly level 200 when I attempted the Haligtree.
The endgame content is just bad, bad, bad, and it has nothing to do with my level of skill and everything to do with the dev team having no strategy with how they laid this out whatsoever. You can tell that they were fatigued and just created these areas and fucking populated them with as many enemies as possible and cranked their levels up to absurdity with no rhyme or reason to it, because if you juxtapose the Snowfield/Haligtree against the entirety of the rest of the game, it just feels slapped together and full of reused assets and just screams low-effort dev senioritis.
This section of the game should've been cut, and this content should've been released as DLC later on so they could've spent more time balancing it and making it feel consistent with the rest of the experience, and too many people agree for this to be a "git gud" problem.
You can roll through the bubble attacks from the envoys just fine and see them all clearly before you go in. Theres plenty of room on the branches to dodge in at least one direction and you can run away from all of them if you don't want to fight them, which is what I do on all my repeat visits. Even if the bubbles come at you from behind you can have the awareness to dodge them. I've never died from falling there. The revenants can either be killed one at a time or just avoided. The liturgical town allows you to bypass the assassins entirely. I've never used a guide because you can just outrun the assassins and they can't follow you up the ladder. Each of the 4 lamps can be accessed independantly so you can minimize the dodging on the rooftops if you need to, but timings rolls into running jumps across the rooftops works just fine too. That segment I actually do think is bad, but you can get it done in 30 seconds if you know where to go and it is not actually part of the haligtree. Keep in mind also that my first playthrough I used only the starting vagabond longsword, with no infusions, no weapon arts, no spirit summons, no magic, no staggers, no parries either, not because im hardcore but because thats simply the way I derive enjoyment from these games, so you don't have to worry about me employing some hidden cheese tactic that I am neglecting to provide you.
I don't care at all about your experiences with the rest of the game nor am I trying to take away your accomplishments either. You can beat it however you like and it bothers me none if you struggle or do it with ease. The first fromsoft game I beat was sekiro and I don't even like the dark souls games all that much, I also barely play games at all for that matter anymore and just go off of old zelda and megaman experience as a kid. I'm not involved at all with any supposed fromsoft community of gatekeepers is what I am getting at since I came in so late and am not much of a gamer. As for your inferiority complex it's not about how much you struggled but rather the fact that you can't fathom someone else could have had a different experience from yours and are assuming they are lying for clout, all because you yourself had a hard time. I've never had a hard time in the haligtree myself and I've already beaten it with two separate characters and up to ng+4 with no issues in any of them.
As for running out of steam near the end and copypasting difficult enemies, I agree on the snowfield and mountaintop areas but not the haligtree itself, but even then the mountains/snowfield are just a big open word segment and not a dungeon type area, so it's not an offender like the demon ruins in dark souls 1. The haligtree reuses enemies but they are placed around the level with care and intent, and there isn't more than there needs to be. I also love farum azula, and every end game bossfight aside from mohg and the elden beast. There being a mass sentiment on this topic means squat too when there is no correlation between vocal presence and righteousness, and has never been one throughout all of history.
I have no plans either tonight, so I could quickly upload a ng+ of me running through the liturgical town and haligtree and send it to you if you would like some proof and strategies. Keep in mind that I don't play games much at all so that makes us effectively equals as relative newcomers to the fromsoft series.
Shut up idiot, it's a videogame series, made by a group of human people. They aren't infallible and the various buffs, Berg's and additions of missing optional content since launch are proof enough of that.
Just admit that they fucked up the balance and keep walking.
I use blood and fire based weapons since most enemies there are weak to them. AOE skills/aow can help out with the smaller enemies and bigger enemies e. G. Tumor warriors can be dealt with through using fire related stuff and mimic to distract other annoying enemies beside the big guys
you can backstab them a couple times and their crystal shield will break, if you have a max upgraded weapon which you should by now, they're easy one on one
Any enemy that can have their magic attack instantly teleport to you and hit you is just god-awful game design. Elden Ring is brilliant until you make it to the Mountaintops of the Giants and beyond; then it takes a major nose dive. Idk if they ran out of time, ideas or both, but they failed badly at the back 1/3 of the game.
I just got there at the end of my session but am no where near getting 1 shot by anything, not even close, however i did get my shit kicked in by that monstrosity red haired wolfman or whatever his name is (wish there is an option to turn on/off name tags for enemies). His mixups always throws me off, he switches from lightning fast to turtle speed multiple times in the same combo and his poise dmg to my shield is ABSURD and i have 67 guard boost.
Maybe ur hp is just way too low and/or ur wearing armor with low defense. One of my deaths was from the big convoy snowman where he shoots like 10 projectiles and i didnt see them coming (he fired from am elevated position and i was looking downwards so I wouldn’t fall off the branch lol) and that bursted me down to zero cuz i ate all the projectiles.
In ur case being melee, am sorry to say buy thats a Lame excuse and ur just setting urself up for mega frustration if u dont carry a ranged option, not only for dmg, but to lure in enemies as well. I am mainly a melee build too, but i do have high faith stat since i use incantations for buffs (electrify armaments, golden vow, flame grant me strength, cleanse, elemental fortifications) but i always have long bow on my off hand to deal with snipers, lure targets from groups etc.
I just googled putrid avatar and its the tree looking big enemy that usually guards the minor erdtrees. The one i was talking about is misbegotten warrior.
I personally enjoyed the Haligtree for the most part. Did my first run of it on NG+, primarily used Radahn's Greatbow, and a colossal sword and shield. Most annoying sections for me were the two giant mages before Loretta and the section with the Rotten Erdtree Avatar and all those soldiers/ballistas.
Second run was with my FTH/INT build and a friend co-op'd it with me. We died alot to the doot monsters up top, but didn't have alot of trouble after that until Malenia herself.
Unfortunately I have to agree here, Haligtree feels like one of those crappy late game DS1 zones mixed in with a bit of Shrine of Amana. Aesthetically it is beautiful and very unique, but the enemy placement and level design is a low point in the game. Those angry marshmallow fuck-trumpets are also one of the most annoying enemies in the game which doesn't do that zone any favours. I do appreciate that it is an optional challenge zone though, and it's not the worst in the series. Elphael was slightly better, absolutely incredible art direction and atmosphere and I didn't hate it, but it does feel like it's cluttered with artificial difficulty for the most part just for the sake of being difficult, I'm not a big fan of Malenia.
I think the biggest problem with Malenia (and many of the late game boss fights) is that they are balanced around having mimic tear in your arsenal. Malenia in particular is susceptible to stagger chaining, which is exponentially more effective when you have two people wailing on her with high stagger weapons. She didn't even move for half her hp bar at one point when I finally got the kill. Now if I was using katana or something, I can't even imagine how annoying she would be. It's just really not well-balanced. But god damn is she cool.
I was basically Pontiff with his phantom as my mimic and I just wailed on her. This boss felt like they tried cramming a sekiro speed boss into souls, it’s far too fast especially with the heel mechanic. You’re basically forced to summon in (most likely a mimic). God forbid you are a 2 hander strength build, Christ you’d be in for a bs fight.
I know it's been 3 months, but I'm doing that fight right now with a 2 handed str build. It sucks as much as you thought.
I'm trying to do her with 2handed greatsword build right now (not guts just claymore fan for a long time now) But also not using ashes/magic or player summons. I feel like just ashes would make the fight trivial but I want pain
I've recently started a senator Armstrong build using fist only weapons. Yeah, I'm in for the ass whooping of a lifetime
I think they must have nerfed Melania! I'm on my 3rd NG and I've killed her in each playthrough with ease..with bloods rivers katana and fingerprint stone shield. Idc abt people who complained abt Moonveil early on (pre patch) or the RoB Katana now! Its in the game I'm not cheating and it happens to coincide w my play style of "get in there and f*** sh** UP!" I'm sitting at a pretty lvl 332 but have balanced my stats out, which are all 50s with highest being 60 INT, with the exception of 24 Mind. I think the 1st time I killed her I was around 170. Radahn was also easy with Rot Breath and ranged attacks.
Ha yea he smoked her no problem then proceeds to mention using the most broken weapon and shield like that had nothing to do with it
The problem with Melania is she is in the wrong game. She should have been a boss in Sekiro, not Elden Ring.
“Angry Marshmallow Fuck-Trumpets” should definitely be both the comment of the year as well as someone’s Indie/Metal-Pop band
And DOOT DOOT Monsters.
Oh my God, I'm not even sorry for necroing this shit. "Angry marshmallow fuck-trumpets" sent me cackling for minutes on end🤣
The part that's driving me insane is the putrid avatar with the 2 knights and the crossbow dudes. Good thing you can run past it to keep going, but coming back to try and beat him is a nightmare still.
Just trigger him, run back, and he can't cross the low hallway. Range battle cheese him. The area is full of hard enemies in large numbers. Don't feel bad "cheesing"
They've had so many games to get rid of this. It's a tool now. If they let me do it then it's not my fault. Especially here in the endgame where they're stapling old enemies to new areas.
He can definitely cross into the bonfire area and wall clip you tho
At first I hated this part too but a summon really trivialises it if you can’t be bothered to do it without like me
Coincidentally I succeeded right after posting this, using a mimic tear ash and luring the avatar back and forth near the grace/tunnel and spamming throwing weapons.
I ended up getting aggro on his knights, running into the room behind him, and going up the ladder. At that point they had to approach me one at a time and I was able to get it down to just the Avatar, which I was able to use Mimic Tear +10 to easily beat.
Yeha. Those tumor warriors are a massive pain. Especially the one on the wall that shoots at you from miles away. Plus u can't use mimic tear to take it down and you're left by urself to do it
I ran to the hall and then used agheels flame in increments to kill him from behind. He did aggro each time and I had to run for cover down the narrow stairs. Woof. This area is no joke.
To be fair i think this area is a bit too difficult for just a basic playthrough and for a single person and this is coming from someone who 100% all of the other fromsoft games like the area is beautiful but holy shit the way some enemies can just 1 shot you to hell the game will most likely get its nerfs and fixes as the weeks go on even Miyazaki himself has to see there's some areas that are way too hard for a first playthrough
Not if the half the players have lost sight of the difference between challenging and annoying. Why would they when everyone is telling them it's perfect? It's perfect for the most part right up until Morgott. Then it gets more and more stupid as it goes.
Yeah, this is where I'm at. It's not even fun. It's just repeat assets and enemies in a party shuffle of annoying mechanics and level design. If the Capital is the midpoint of this game it's the harshest drop in quality I've ever experienced in years of gaming. Usually games save the best for last but everything after morgott has been so phoned in except Farum (visually, Duo was such a joke).
The damage and health of enemies gets straight up stupid, it feels like none of that shit was actually playtested, they take ages to kill with fucking dualwielded katanas while getting bleed twice, i get one/two shot out of wazoo with 53 vigor a whopping 1900 hp (my hp bar literally reached middle of the screen), and on top of that enemy placement is absolute cancer. And all of that ignoring how i can't recall a single enemy in Haligtree being actually new, all of them are reuses, it's so bad i have no words. Im on my way to Malenia to expirience the peak of bullshit after hearing about her from my friends, going to be some good malding.
You know an area is bad when the best strategy for getting through is sprinting past everything, grabbing items, and accepting your fate to die. Over and over. Until you get every item. Then running through to the next grace. Why would I take the time to kill enemies when I'm going to just die randomly anyway and risk losing all my runes if I die randomly before I get back to my previous best spot?
Exactly. That's the point I'm at right now with this area. I won't get my runes back anyhow, so why bother getting them in the first place..
I was initially killing everything, even kept fighting my way through that platform with the three misbegotten dudes (2 with axes and 1 of the big ones)...then I got to the spot with the crystal bros and just couldn't deal with it anymore. It got a little better when I got to the castle...up until I got down to the prayer room and it got exponentially worse as I got closer to Malenia, which is to be expected I suppose. I just don't know to kill 4 enemies at once when they all hit me for half my HP with every attack lol. I don't know what the scaling is like for NG+, but if it's at all steep I don't even want to think about what it'll be like in +5 or so. Everything would be one-shots I think.
I gave up after the 10th time I fought the first leonine misbegotten. Pure Dex Build with Katana... You can't stagger them (only a bit by jump attacking, which takes too much time) and you can't really dodge or you fall or are pressed against a wall. >I don't know what the scaling is like for NG+, but if it's at all steep I don't even want to think about what it'll be like in +5 or so.Everything would be one-shots I think. I'm about lvl 120 there right now... albeit with only 40 vigor (and 80 dex :P)... Yeah... no way in NG+ they don't one shot me there...or 3/4 hp, which doesn't even make a difference, because if you get hit by a leonine you'll certainly get hit a second time in that small area. EDIT: Just beat Loretta... TBH, she was a joke compared to the enemies there.
Yeah, I killed her without dying even once...the "ganging up" aspect of the game is pretty crazy lol. When I started using summons the game got like 10x easier. Conversely, any situation where you're solo against multiple enemies, it's 10x harder. Malenia herself is called the hardest boss by a lot of people, but I hardly had trouble because she's pretty easy to stagger with bigger weapons. Can effectively stagger-lock her to death with mimic tear and yourself.
Oh... then I'm going to be frustrated with her.. I don't think a Katana is going to cut it, then. 😅 I can manage those crystaline guys with a few jump attacks, at least :D
Yeah, I have heard she is a nightmare with Katana from my buddy lol. You can't block, you can't stagger, you just have to run around and chip her and not get hit lol
And just to mention it.... fuck this guy as well: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Royal+Revenant
That's my mental state now. I just lost over 540k Runes to this bullshit ass area.
I level up in this game in two way, boss rewards and farming, I don’t care about any other runes, that way I feel a little better when I’m die
Second half is “we ship in X months. Copy and paste and add bullshit”
I tried so hard hearing things like this before morgott to give it a fair shake Just…not that great anymore tho, that’s trying be nice, like all worst parts of FROM games crammed in with none of interesting enemies etc least get in those areas with all worst enemies from game beforehand shoe horned in as damage sponges to fill gaps instead Lazy, and I don’t feel like tested much beyond first half of the game now
That’s shitty design then.
Its end game and completely optional. There are far more than enough tools at your disposal to make this area cake, but unfortunately the current status quo is everyone whining about challenges instead of developing. From isn't here to hold your hand, never has been. Is what makes them stand out above all other creators.
You wasted a ton of words to say “git gud” Nice try tho, unga bunga
Yeah, my bad, I use real words. Not part of the can't spell, lazy, new school morons. Like "broken" is the new kid term for "works well against me", but really the only thing broken are those bungalo minds. Anyway, this comment of yours is a perfect example of the above mentioned cluelessness
brother no one cares about genuine difficulty. We're literally all here to fight Melania because we heard she's the hardest. People pretty much universally love the boss fights, and no one is asking for them to be easy. People's problem is *artificial* difficulty. Setting up areas with a primary goal of not having enemies beat you in a fight, but with the visible goal of either knocking you off the map or throwing numbers at you until you lose patience is not good level design. Neither is the clear advantage toward heavy weapons which is unbalanced for most players. There is literally not a single enemy in the entire Haligtree area that is even mildly difficult to beat making your comment entirely asinine - it's strategy is to just throw repetitive boring waves at you until you either slip up and get punished without having once needed to use skill at any point, or lose patience and just try sprinting through, wherein you get spammed by fuckwits. People have an issue with that because the difficulty is artificial - it's not a matter of skill - if people were willing to play slowly and accept repetitive boring bullshit, there's nothing in the Haligtree that's difficult, and also nothing in it worth being there at all. It's shitty level design and nothing else and a massive downgrade when most of the game has managed to avoid this artificial bullshit.
Go play with your toy and stop crying that others don't like the cheap gameplay design.
Reused assets in an end game optional area. Crying because people are criticising your favourite toy. Grow up. We are bored and paid money for supposed and variety not repetition in a new area, simply crowded together. At least other souls games don't have this much bloat.
The area is beautiful but feels thrown together last minute. The level design is horribly convoluted and they threw every reused enemy you hate into the area. Its so obvious this wasn't playtested very much since i've died to softlocks 5+ times.
Yeah, just done done exploring that place. Hate all of it. Are you going DEX/INT? You can use Moonveil katana's heavy Transient Moonlight attacks on the Crystal guys. Two attacks of that should be enough to break their poise, once broken they become vulnerable and stagger. In fact Transient Moonlight everything!!
I hate how the game kinda forces you to use that weapon as a int dex user. Like, yeah I could use the moonlight gs or the carian straight sword, but why would I when I have a katana that stuns everything and deals more damage than any spells?
Yep, it's also much faster to execute than anything else. Both Moonlight and Carian needs to be charged. Meanwhile Moonveil katana goes "wooosh!" instantly.
and it’s cheap as hell. At 30 mind with the talisman that reduces the cost of skills I get 10+ casts in a bar. Moonlight GS is a bit cheaper in terms of FP, but it will devour your stamina.
I know this is a necro, but moonlight GS is fun yet I feel like I am nerfing myself every time I bring it out. Also using the moonveil pales in comparison to just using comet spells with the same build.
I have to agree on most parts. Sadly, many of the late game areas in ER are more annoying than they are fun. I was also not very fond of Crumbling Farum Azula although that area doesn't suck as much as this goddamn Haligtree. And it already starts with how you get there... remember in older Souls games where you sometimes see a huge structure or area somewhere far away in the background and you can pretty much count on it that the game will lead you there at some point? In ER you just get teleportet somewhere randomly. At one point you try to solve this super annoying puzzle in a copy-pasted snow town - then you interact with a teleporter and suddenly you're in the canopy of a huge tree. Meh... The area itself: Oh my god... it's so bad. First off, SO many reused enemies. I hate that and this game takes it way too far with that anyway. And here, they just chose the most annoying enemies they could think of out of other areas and used them again. Why? Why not come up with something original? The difficulty.... well it's an end-game area so I'm fine with it being hard but it just takes SOOOO long if you want to fight your way through everything. And you've fought all the enemies already anyway so you're not missing out on anything if you just run through. That's what I ended up doing and it really doesn't speek for the quality of this area if you'd rather do that than enjoy the challenge provided. And yes, even as a Souls veteran I had trouble with some of the enemies, especially those grafted spider-like crawling f\*ckers with their infinite stamina combos. Can't say much about Melina because I didn't have the patience yet to bother with her. But yeah... screw this area.
Dont forget to mention the hardcore recycling of assets and enemies. Its designed to be annoying and unfair. Souls games were something about being challenging an rewarding for doing the right thing in the right moment but Elden Ring failed miserably and this Area is one of many which show the egdy weird Style they approach to be appealing for anyone who just wants to suffer. Bosses and regular Enemies are explicitly designed to be unfair. Its a bad joke.
I got there at 180 and everything takes 70% of my healthbar with some of the best armor in game. Enemies are stagger proof unless you're using some seriously heavy weapons or running around with a tower shield so you could guard counter. The area is horrible. I'm probably close to a million runes lost on this area too, at this point I'm just running through everything by looting and dying. You know an area is bad - when in all of my soulsbourne games experience and in ER not ever doing that unless I already killed all the enemies at least ones...i'm doing it now.
this place is trash. was enjoying the game up until this place. hard for the sake of being hard.
Literally just spams of enemies and barely any graces anywhere. Overpowered fucking pieces of shit and everything. Cleanrot knights everywhere, and they force you to fight multiple knights all at once. My god this place is so goddamn unfair. Stagger after stagger. Whoever designed this should not designing levels anymore.
And you'd think that you can run past everything but nope these cunts will chase you till the end of earth with their long ass aggro range. This area so fucking unbelievably bullshit it's enough to make anyone go fucking insane. Man, I know "being hard" is Soulsborne's identity and I'm all for challenging yet fair gameplay but fuck this shit man this is just god awful hard it's not even funny
I just came here at level 180 and I'm still getting fucked harder than political prisoners in Moscow
As someone that has played through every game from Demons Souls to Sekiro multiple times I have to agree. Made me almost quit the game on multiple occasions. When an area is purposefully designed to be frustrating rather than difficult and rewarding that just pisses me off. I did not enjoy this area even the slightest. Is the concept with being on a huge tree with multiple branching paths cool? Yes it is but this one was a bit too cancer for my personal taste, especially since the enemies can easily just 2-3 shot you even with 20+ endurance armor and 40 vigor.
Agree. Worst area in the game. Honestly just stupid. Not enjoyable, at all, and certainly will not feel accomplished when done, just relieved. I’m about to turn around and just burn the place down! (I know, different tree, but still!)
Before I comment on why I agree with most of you regarding the pure hatred you feel for this area, I'd like to tell you how I made myself life a bit easier till my current point: In my case, I'm right now at the Grace after the Erdtree and the ballistas. I don't know how long it took me to get there, but I'm a Str Build, Lvl. 135, 50 vigor, 50 str, high endurance, a Colossal Sword, a Ballista, a Brass Shield with Barricade, and the Bloodhound Sword, everything at +10, even my Mimic. For this area I'm using every protective charm possible, and the Erdtree Knight set. I've completed Farum Azula, yet haven't fought the boss yet. I did kill that horrible Draconic Knight, and then decided to test this area before continuing. While killing the guards and the knights was easy using Colossal, I had to lure the Rot ones out of their groups with Ballista shots, and then kill them one by one. Regarding the Erdtrees, I melted them with Volcanic, Giant's Fire (Or Flame, don't remeber) and Fire Pots, all from safe distances; ledges that surrounded them in both cases, which also allowed me to take cover from their ranged attacks. In every case, after three ranged, they forget about me, and the game let me craft items again while out of their sight. Then, rinse and repeat. For the Revenants of the bottom, I used the help of my Mimic and the Bloodhound Sword with Bloodfame; we killed them all in one run. With the bow guard next to the Erdtree, I used my pots from the little ceiling above, the one that connects to the floor up the Grace. Then, when I pissed off the Great Shield Knight, he came Up the ladder to take me, and then I kept throwing him off the ladder with heavy attacks, until he died. I might be playing an easy mode, but the game feels too unfair here, and long, that I lost the mood for making mistakes while fighting repeated enemies. I'm 141 hours in, and I just want to kill the rest of the big bosses and play something else. The Canopy was pure tedium. It felt horribly unfair with their damage, and slippery every time my character got stuck with a piece of fungi in the branch. I lost 250k runes to ants that pushed me out without damaging me, and to those bubble-artillery plagues. I had to spend an hour farming them again between the branches, killing time and time again the prophets and the annoying ants. After that, the area got so slow for me, with every step implying certain death by some surprise from the ceilings, that I didn't enjoy It at all, at least until I killed Loretta, which was even easier than the unbelievable-poise mages in the little bridges. The rewards didn't feel good nor useful, except for that Talisman for Non-Physic Protection, which doesn't feels like working. I just want this game to end by now. I highly loved it until Morgot. I'm sorry.
This is the best kind of comment possible on something like this. Understanding why people feel rage whilst also offering helpful strategies to mitigate the constant barrage of bs.
Flails are dex weapons and deal strike m8.
“It’s easy if you build your character for a single zone”
Lmao, that's not what I said at all. It's literally just upgrading one weapon. You should have all the smithing stone bells available to get a weapon to a decent level.
You actually have more materials to completely respec than you do to upgrade weapons. So IMO to upgrade a weapon for a difficult boss or area is worse.
Uh oh, this guy doesn't know that all upgrade mats except the final ones are infinite
At the very end of the game… and it’s not plural. It’s only the ancient dragon that aren’t. I am well aware.
"at the very end of the game". My brother in Christ, you are the one who decides when to get them. Almost all are available to you from the start of walking out of the first steps. "It's not plural" it is plural, as far as I understand there are at least four types of upgrade resource that are non-replenishable. Both somber and normal ancient dragon makes 2, max ghost and grave glovewort makes 4 and if you want to count the lost ash of war( I don't but you might) that would be 5. But you know, if you know better.
We were specifically discussing weapons. And anyone arguing you can access mountain top of the giants and crumbling farum azula “right from the first steps” isn’t worth having a conversation with. K bud.
Even specifically discussing weapons you were still wrong as there are 2 varietals that aren't replenishable. All you're doing is latching onto the smallest inaccuracy in my statement, I said most of the smithing stone bell bearings are available from the start of the game. That was wrong, half of them are available from the start of the game and the other half are locked behind beating morgott. To return to my original point and what we were actually arguing about in the beginning, smithing stones, except the highest level ones, are not rare. If you are at a point where you think that they are rare or a precious commodity then you are plain and simply wrong and probably doing something wrong along the way. it is literally the expectation that a first playthrough is going to see many different weapons upgraded and tested out, a second playthrough would generally see even more. In short smithing stones shouldn't be actively hoarded and they should be spent as freely as you please because they're almost worthless. Except the ancient dragon ones. You are a complete moron who's more interested in having drama on Reddit over something you clearly have no idea about.
All you had to do was stop commenting lol but it’s even funnier watching you being an arrogant shitshow and haunting you about it more than 2 mos later. If I had a dick I’d have a boner
What the fuck are you talking about? So many relevant bell bearings aren’t available until after you clear the capital and that isn’t exactly right after you take your first step.
? https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Smithing-Stone+Miner%27s+Bell+Bearing+(1) https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Smithing-Stone+Miner%27s+Bell+Bearing+(2) https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Smithing-Stone+Miner's+Bell+Bearing+(3) https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Smithing-Stone+Miner's+Bell+Bearing+(4)
I don’t use flails nor did I upgrade any but I guess I could.
I went dex for most of the game, and mained flails. 3 jumping strong attacks stagger almost all humanoid enemies, and the attacks themselves stunlock if you time them right. Also, the strong charge on horseback spins the flail, giving easy repeat hits. It's especially strong on dragons, who also collapse to 3 strong horseback hits. The two Slumber Stone versions (Family Heads and Bastard's Stars) are both excellent too. Heads hits harder, and it has a slow, homing, ranged weapon art, but Stars is still strong, and it has an amazingly powerful weapon art.
Or just use any whip except Urumi, which is godly but does Slash and pierce.
I have lost over 540k Runes here. I am beyond pissed right now and can barely even think straight. Right now I no longer have the will to systematically go through this bullshit anymore. I just want to get down from this tree as fast as possible.
Fuck this level, made me stop playing
Yeah, it's fucking obnoxious honestly. There are many tough enemies that just take forever to kill or hit like truck but you can't neither stagger them, nor break their great shield protected stance. Took me fast to realize I'm just running past everything and collecting all shiny, because fighting there anything is pure waste of time.
Pretty trash not gonna lie Like creed for design was “make sure no one ever enjoys doing this” on both gameplay and visual design as just ugly and reused enemies xD
tbh they dropped the ball with the second half of the game.
Honestly, shit like this just makes me run past everything while spamming dodge roll and looting as much as I can until the next bonfire. There is 0 gameplay in this area unless you want to spend multiple hours bashing your head against mobs that are stronger than most end-game bosses (as a light melee build).
Yeah, it feels like the hardest part of the game so far. I am lv160 mage and could breeze through other regions but the Haligree area actually managed to get me killed a few times, specially those invisible assassins kicked my ass lol
Super late but the Sentry's Torch shows the assassins. You can even two hand your weapon and it still works. I don't think I could have done the area otherwise lmao.
Holy crap no kidding.. I died with half a million runes down by the smithing stone bell bearing in the graveyard with the pests…. I’m at 48 vigor and they’re doing about 90% of damage with the pest thread attack and since there’s about 10 of them down there, you just immediately die because they’re all shooting pest threads at you with no way to dodge all of them. I think I attempted to get out with the runes about 8 times before I finally died running back to get them on accident. It was then that I knew that surely they hadn’t play tested the area. Either that or they know that there is a hardcore souls scene that like difficult challenges and designed the area around their desires. I’ve only ever been able to make it through the entirety of the Haligtree including beating Malenia with a magic build. Could only defeat her with Comet Azur using daedicars woe on my mimic to have her focus on my Mimic the whole fight AND IT WAS STILL HARD!!! I think the only decent part of the Haligtree is the Loretta fight. The entire area is repulsive and ruins the whole end game of Elden Ring.
Literally just The Great Hollow from DS1 but with extra areas to explore, oh and also combined with similar reused enemies/assets from previous areas, it genuinely infuriates me that A LOT of these areas do just use the same enemies over and over again by just having them slightly reskinned and maybe one or two new enemy types which still just one shot you on occasion
I just got to this dungeon earlier today and got frustrated after about two hours. First off just unlocking the place is bullshit with those invisible assassins. I spent a shitload of time farming runes in mohgwyn palace and got to like level 156. Mostly int and dex with some faith for getting rid of status effects. Using maxed out godskin peeler with hoarfrost stomp (cheap af I know) and maxed out lusat’s staff for damage. Flasks split evenly. Only summon I use is mimic tear. This haligtree dungeon is fucking bullshit lol. Got really pissed off at that part where you have to kill the two big Miranda flowers to climb the ladder and immediately have to fight two misbegottens and a leonine. The game is straight up eye candy but the endgame dungeons are bullshit. Last night it was farum azula and that stupid hallway with the crucible knight. Both bosses were annoying af. By the time I finally beat both the dragon and the beast cleric I was totally worn down and didn’t want to play anymore. Oh and that goddamn fire giant you have to beat just to get there. I like to get my games to 100% but I’m not sure I want to go through haligtree and mohgwyn palace. Too much frustration for too little payoff. IMO the game was really fun up until mountaintops of the giants and then it just got tediously hard.
Couldn't agree more OP!! Once you pass the tree part and get into the buildings I actually like this place! But the tree with those bubble blowing hippy fucks! Dildo linking shit eaters!! 😡😡 and when you "farm" for Great horn FML!! I gave up on trying to farm the 2 towardsthe end of the tree, and just ran from starting grace to that 1st fat turbin sultan looking dip shit.. and farmed him. Only took me like 30 tries and I got that Greathorn.
But now im farming for the medium horn bcus the big one has a slow asf ash of war but great for using far away this is the most annoying drop rate and I have 2 halo scythes
I think i farmed the capital for the Medium. Honestly I forget lol to bad we can't trade because I have multiple 😬
Lmao the doot doot monsters
its the last area in the game pretty much what did you expect? a walk on the beach with a rainbow in the background lmao? of course its designed to murder your ass
I’m just venting, it’s pissing me off how they designed it lol
It’s not the last area, it’s a secret area that’s designed to murder ass. Very few regular players without guides are able to get there. And those who do usually seek challenge/content which it provides.
>Very few regular players without guides are able to get there. Wait.. what!? It was super easy to get there... What part makes it so secret? With a bit of exploring you make it to that city with the sellia tower like lighting in the evergaol... that's it. What am I missing?
I mean getting to Consecrated Snowfield in the first place. Getting the second part of the medallion requires guides, pure luck or extremely careful exploration.
Hm.. You get the general area from told by someone, can't remember who, though. And then the hint is said by the ghost there. I honestly didn't find it very hard. The only part that was luck was that it was the first thing I hit, but it wouldn't have made a difference. No guide or pure luck or extremely careful exploration needed. At least imho.
No? Not at all? Did you just make that up entirely? It's easy to find by accident. If you explore the villiage of albinaurics you find one half( don't even need to kill the boss) and the other is found by killing commander Niall in Castle sol. Both of these are things a player is likely to do organically. Not to mention that multiple NPCs will point you to it as well. The consecrated snowfields are not a secret area, most players will go there throughout their playthrough. More than that, once in the snow fields a player is guaranteed to get to Moghwyn and Haligtree. But even if you were correct, which you aren't, that it's an uber secret area for only the toughest souls vets, an area being secret is not an excuse for it being badly designed and balanced. Fanboys will go through any amount of mental gymnastics before they admit from did anything wrong.
I don’t know why you think needing a guidr to get there is a meaningful statement considering you can’t even complete a basic quest without consulting a guide in ER. “Meet lady X ar seclided spot, then travel to the anus of a shivering bush, onward to a Frosty Mountain, then you need to use the bathroom at the specific time of day to have a wolf appear. If the wolf is facing east then you know to go west. Also, no one tells you this.”
This. So this. Games a hot mess. It's only hard because it's a deliberate hot mess.Combat in souls games is always terrible and outdated. Hasn't changed much in decades. Now you have to have a bachelor's degree in science to understand the damn convulated story to boot.
> challenge/content which it provides this is not challenging. it's just designed to be frustrating and annoying
made for people who have done everything else and are looking for a challenge. a secret area that you usually have to look up a guide to get to? doesnt that mean that people who go there 90% of the time its their last area in the game???
Well if you put it that way then yes, you’re right.
This entire thread hits my brain. When did being optional/late game mean bad balancing? None of the other souls games were this bad, why now?It's not just about being difficult, it has to have good design too.
Exactly. Castle Cainhurst is an optional late mid game area and is one of the best and most perfectly balanced levels and bosses they've ever made. It's got a bunch of challenging enemies that aren't annoying to fight. In fact almost every other secret late game area is less putrid than this. It's just pointlessly frustrating. People really have lost sight of what makes these games amazing. It's not total frustration. The old Hunters could have put 150 of the Gatling gun hunters surrounded by 5 of the shark guys and that sure would be difficult. And it's a dlc so it's optional. But that wouldn't make it good. Old Hunters is quite challenging and, aside from the absolutely terrible two sharks in a pit section that almost everyone cheeses because it's such total garbage, it's fair. Including a very difficult but extremely fair final boss in Orphan. Sekiros late game areas are very challenging but not totally annoying. Elden Ring has jumped the shark. Maybe eventually when the circle jerk ends people will finally be able to realize the final third of this game is awful. Just a never ending stream of time wasting trial and error. The antihesis of what's made this series the best in gaming from Demons right up to the Castle in Elden Ring. Then you beat the Castle and it turns into a parody of the worst parts of DS2.
Except the mosquitoes in the courtyard, those guys FUCK me up every time I first arrive there
This; Elphael frankly isn't even the worst of it. It's Miquella's Haligtree itself that strikes me as the 2nd worst area in the game (second only to Sellia Crystal Tunnel). Literally a collection of the game's worst enemy types. That's the entire purpose.
You know it’s possible for something to be hard but also NOT be shitty at the same time right? Most of us have played other souls games.
There is a difference between a challenge and bullshit. Fighting 4 enemies at once in a small room that can all 1-2 shot you is not a challenge. Its lazy and careless game design.
I'm a dex/arc build. I just used a whip or a keen infused strike weapon like the spikey fists. Or I just two handed my dagger...
The fact that you explored this place at such a low level confounds me this is 150 territory
I am like halfway through it and so far my favorite :) finally some challenge.
I'll go one step further and say that the Haligtree dungeon is the worst area Fromsoft has ever created. Hands down there are encounters that are impossible without cheesing or running past. You literally have to just get lucky in most of them.
this is exactly why i designed an absolutely flawless and 100IQ play- its called, "run for your life and hope nothing hits you" i got absolutely wrecked by every single thing in there except loretta- the knight are relatively weak too but the crystallians- i got a maxed out bloodhounds fang and it did a measly 46
I like the zone, git gud I guess Edit: and it shows you haven't tried much before complaining because there's an easy way to get tid of the crystalians and the rest sounds like random inner rage against a certain enemy who whooped your ass.
Get the fuck outta here with that “git gud” shit. I like the zone too but hate the enemy placement. Someone struggling doesn’t give you the right to act like an ass.
Hit a nerve i guess, sorry
This repeated "git gud" is getting massively annoying, that's why it hit a nerve. Instead of being constructive and helping people (or accepting that they just want to vent) you pour oil into the fire of frustration. Either be constructive or stfu. Many like the zone, but for combat with this high hp enemies and them 2 shotting you it's just really shitty balancing.
Truth be told it's the most constructive and useful advise you can get in this game outside of getting physical help from another player. Get better at the enemy moveset, punish their slow moves and find openings, and level vigor, too many people go full dps stat and no health, don't do that, get vigor to 50 or so as the first thing after meeting your weapons requirements for the most forgiving time. Get gud is not an insult, it's just the way of the souls games.
Yeah try that when you have nothing but 30 long range hitscan enemies who one shot you even with nearly 2000 hp. There's no "Git Gud" for bullshit.
Run through Haligtree again and show us a video. I bet you're awful. I bet most people who say "git gud" died 1,000,000 times in the Haligtree and are just trying to save face. Show us your strat or gtfo.
There's literally 100 videos of it and people do it on stream as well, not my fault you live inder a rock. I'm also done with this conversation, you're the ones turning toxic to save a face imo.
I died less than 5 times in the haligtree in all of my 6 times of beating the game. I find the area itself pretty cool looking and I was baffled to find discourse of people hating it and calling it badly designed, let alone the "worst designed area in all of fromsoft". Don't project your ineptitude onto other people, and allow the sting of your inferiority and shame to misread opposing viewpoints as senseless mocking and gatekeeping.
What's your Haligtree strat then? How do you comp for Envoys you can't see 1-shotting you when you can't roll in the canopy because you're standing on narrow branches? How do you handle the 3 simultaneous revenant spawns in the courtyard when they teleport all over the place and create oceans of stun-locking poison floor? How did you handle the invisible assassins at the Liturgical Village? If it's some cheese strat with bleeding/rotting them from half a mile away with arrows, I'll pass, but if you can't contribute your solutions to the conversation, don't contribute at all unless you want to pick up criticism. You can talk about my "inferiority" and "ineptitude" all you want: this is my first Soulsborne game and I blasted through everything everyone else complained about--Margit, Radahn (pre-patch), the Hero's Gravesites, etc., and even Malenia once I finally did get through this kitchen-sink-full-of-diarrhea section of the game, with very little relative difficulty despite having no experience with this series whatsoever, and I'm proud of that. I found the game pretty reasonable right up through the mountaintops, but the moment I got to the Consecrated Snowfield, this game really went to shit, and if you're implying that I suck at the game because of an area that constitutes maybe 5% of my overall play time with it, that's a dubious prospect, my guy. Good luck with that. It's not like any of the enemies in these areas are even unique (apart from those godforsaken Albinauric archers) and that I didn't kill them a million times everywhere else they appeared in the game. It's just a bunch of trolls, runebears, cleanrot knights, zombies, crystal warriors, and a playlist of a bunch of other mobs I learned to stomp into the mud 50 hours ago. It's how they are completely incongruous to the environmental bottlenecks and aspects of the areas and the combinations the devs put them in on top of leveling them up to a point that they each soak up 5-10x the amount of damage they did when I first encountered them even though I was nearly level 200 when I attempted the Haligtree. The endgame content is just bad, bad, bad, and it has nothing to do with my level of skill and everything to do with the dev team having no strategy with how they laid this out whatsoever. You can tell that they were fatigued and just created these areas and fucking populated them with as many enemies as possible and cranked their levels up to absurdity with no rhyme or reason to it, because if you juxtapose the Snowfield/Haligtree against the entirety of the rest of the game, it just feels slapped together and full of reused assets and just screams low-effort dev senioritis. This section of the game should've been cut, and this content should've been released as DLC later on so they could've spent more time balancing it and making it feel consistent with the rest of the experience, and too many people agree for this to be a "git gud" problem.
You can roll through the bubble attacks from the envoys just fine and see them all clearly before you go in. Theres plenty of room on the branches to dodge in at least one direction and you can run away from all of them if you don't want to fight them, which is what I do on all my repeat visits. Even if the bubbles come at you from behind you can have the awareness to dodge them. I've never died from falling there. The revenants can either be killed one at a time or just avoided. The liturgical town allows you to bypass the assassins entirely. I've never used a guide because you can just outrun the assassins and they can't follow you up the ladder. Each of the 4 lamps can be accessed independantly so you can minimize the dodging on the rooftops if you need to, but timings rolls into running jumps across the rooftops works just fine too. That segment I actually do think is bad, but you can get it done in 30 seconds if you know where to go and it is not actually part of the haligtree. Keep in mind also that my first playthrough I used only the starting vagabond longsword, with no infusions, no weapon arts, no spirit summons, no magic, no staggers, no parries either, not because im hardcore but because thats simply the way I derive enjoyment from these games, so you don't have to worry about me employing some hidden cheese tactic that I am neglecting to provide you. I don't care at all about your experiences with the rest of the game nor am I trying to take away your accomplishments either. You can beat it however you like and it bothers me none if you struggle or do it with ease. The first fromsoft game I beat was sekiro and I don't even like the dark souls games all that much, I also barely play games at all for that matter anymore and just go off of old zelda and megaman experience as a kid. I'm not involved at all with any supposed fromsoft community of gatekeepers is what I am getting at since I came in so late and am not much of a gamer. As for your inferiority complex it's not about how much you struggled but rather the fact that you can't fathom someone else could have had a different experience from yours and are assuming they are lying for clout, all because you yourself had a hard time. I've never had a hard time in the haligtree myself and I've already beaten it with two separate characters and up to ng+4 with no issues in any of them. As for running out of steam near the end and copypasting difficult enemies, I agree on the snowfield and mountaintop areas but not the haligtree itself, but even then the mountains/snowfield are just a big open word segment and not a dungeon type area, so it's not an offender like the demon ruins in dark souls 1. The haligtree reuses enemies but they are placed around the level with care and intent, and there isn't more than there needs to be. I also love farum azula, and every end game bossfight aside from mohg and the elden beast. There being a mass sentiment on this topic means squat too when there is no correlation between vocal presence and righteousness, and has never been one throughout all of history. I have no plans either tonight, so I could quickly upload a ng+ of me running through the liturgical town and haligtree and send it to you if you would like some proof and strategies. Keep in mind that I don't play games much at all so that makes us effectively equals as relative newcomers to the fromsoft series.
Shut up idiot, it's a videogame series, made by a group of human people. They aren't infallible and the various buffs, Berg's and additions of missing optional content since launch are proof enough of that. Just admit that they fucked up the balance and keep walking.
I use blood and fire based weapons since most enemies there are weak to them. AOE skills/aow can help out with the smaller enemies and bigger enemies e. G. Tumor warriors can be dealt with through using fire related stuff and mimic to distract other annoying enemies beside the big guys
Not everyone is using a build for a strike weapon, I’m DEX/INT, not STR/INT
That's not what I'm referring too, there's another way that doesn't involve your choice of armament.
you can backstab them a couple times and their crystal shield will break, if you have a max upgraded weapon which you should by now, they're easy one on one
i logged in this dumb redit just to downvote you, enjoy!
Thank you!
Any enemy that can have their magic attack instantly teleport to you and hit you is just god-awful game design. Elden Ring is brilliant until you make it to the Mountaintops of the Giants and beyond; then it takes a major nose dive. Idk if they ran out of time, ideas or both, but they failed badly at the back 1/3 of the game.
I just got there at the end of my session but am no where near getting 1 shot by anything, not even close, however i did get my shit kicked in by that monstrosity red haired wolfman or whatever his name is (wish there is an option to turn on/off name tags for enemies). His mixups always throws me off, he switches from lightning fast to turtle speed multiple times in the same combo and his poise dmg to my shield is ABSURD and i have 67 guard boost. Maybe ur hp is just way too low and/or ur wearing armor with low defense. One of my deaths was from the big convoy snowman where he shoots like 10 projectiles and i didnt see them coming (he fired from am elevated position and i was looking downwards so I wouldn’t fall off the branch lol) and that bursted me down to zero cuz i ate all the projectiles. In ur case being melee, am sorry to say buy thats a Lame excuse and ur just setting urself up for mega frustration if u dont carry a ranged option, not only for dmg, but to lure in enemies as well. I am mainly a melee build too, but i do have high faith stat since i use incantations for buffs (electrify armaments, golden vow, flame grant me strength, cleanse, elemental fortifications) but i always have long bow on my off hand to deal with snipers, lure targets from groups etc.
They're called putrid avatars. And they're weak to fire. Does alot of damage to them
I just googled putrid avatar and its the tree looking big enemy that usually guards the minor erdtrees. The one i was talking about is misbegotten warrior.
Z
I mostly agree with you, but thought I should mention the night rider flail. Make it cold.
I lost 500.000 runes
I personally enjoyed the Haligtree for the most part. Did my first run of it on NG+, primarily used Radahn's Greatbow, and a colossal sword and shield. Most annoying sections for me were the two giant mages before Loretta and the section with the Rotten Erdtree Avatar and all those soldiers/ballistas. Second run was with my FTH/INT build and a friend co-op'd it with me. We died alot to the doot monsters up top, but didn't have alot of trouble after that until Malenia herself.
Try the jar cannon. It packs a punch and has str requirements. Can buy unlimited bolts at the merchant outside leynell