We all love Elden Ring. It has a sort of magical charm where it took all the stuff we like from Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne (with a dash of Sekiro), and they dialed down the sadistic stuff (like the chest traps, unavoidable death, lethal lava, etc.).
As you play, you may scream questions like, “Why, Why, for the love of…Why?” Followed by angry comments about hitboxes, enemy counterattacks, and bosses not allowing you to heal. However, as you are throwing your controller at the screen for your Twitch followers to laugh at, have you considered some of the questions below?
Why is Mohgwyn Palace So Full of Rune Farming Areas?
If you really do your research, you are going to find a lot of Rune Exploitable areas in the Mohgwyn area, especially if you look over the ones that have been patched. And the question you forgot to ask is, “Why is this area so full of exploitable rune-farming areas?”
The answer, the very delightful answer, is that this area is no better or worse for rune farming than any other. The only difference between this area and many of the other higher-level areas is that this area has been scoured repeatedly by rune farming players.
When most players get to that Albinauric area on the Palace Approach Ledge-Road and see all those jerks sitting around waiting to be harvested for between 2000 and 3000K runes, they are delighted and start grinding up a treat. While players have been hanging around this area, they have started finding new ways to farm runes.
Shooting an arrow from the cliff down to that rot bird so that it jumps off the cliff has always been fun, but since then, people have also been finding ways to jump through the map and slash in order to get around 160K runes. As one is patched, another is found.
Even at the time of writing, there are at least two map-falling areas, and that doesn’t count the one up the blood wall that was patched with patch 1.04. The area has so many rune farming areas simply because people are scouring the area for them.
Why Are AFK Farmers So Successful?
An AFK farmer is somebody who finds a position on the map using Torrent (the horse/goat/cow) and hides. He or she then uses the taunter’s tongue to encourage invaders. The invaders arrive and can’t get to the AFK farmer, so they either quit out, and the host is rewarded, or they die trying to get to the AFK farmer, and the host is rewarded.
It is called AFK Farming (Away From Keyboard) because you simply hide your character and then leave your computer running on its own while it gathers resources for you.
AFK farmers are so successful because they prey on people who just want to have a good time. The way to defeat AFK farmers is to spend a long time finding them and killing them or to stay in the game so that the host doesn’t get rewarded for people leaving. People who are playing for fun don’t have time to punish AFK gamers, so they finger sever their way out, and the AFK farmer wins.
Are From Software going to patch this sort of thing out of the game? Sadly not. The only time From Software has acted when people are being game-breathtakingly unfair, such as glitching out your character, so you are invulnerable and then going AFK.
How Are People Getting Two of the Same Weapon?
Have you seen those ghostly images of people playing, or even the death animations of people dying, and wondered how they managed to get two of the same weapons? How did they get two of the Wolverine claws? Here are the many ways it is done.
Firstly, some items do drop more than once, especially the ones you pick from regular enemies. If you picked your weapon up from a chest, then there may only be one for your current run-through.
Secondly, there are boss remembrances where you take them to the old finger lady to get a weapon, and you can sometimes use those walking temple things (some have a big bell on them) to duplicate these remembrances so you can have the same weapon twice.
Thirdly, you can use a service like MMOGAH for things like Elden Ring items, and they will drop off a weapon or item for you in your game.
Fourthly, on a similar note, you can have your friend start up a new profile, get the weapon you want, and then pull you into their world as a multiplayer. They drop the weapon you want, and then you go back to your game, and you have the weapon. They then abandon that profile and carry on with their regular profile.
Fifthly, you complete the game once, and then you play in a new game plus. You then go through the game and get whichever weapon you want again so that you have two.
What Will Future Elden Ring DLC Feature?
If you are lucky enough to take a sneaky peak at the programming for the game, then not only will you learn things like the jump mechanic giving you I-frames on your bottom half, but you will also see the infrastructure that has been left behind.
It looks as if the blood/bleed weapons and spells were supposed to be far more expansive and varied than they are, so they may turn up in the DLC. Also, on that point, it is possible they left a lot of bleed stuff out of the game because they hadn’t balanced it correctly yet (considering the fact that bleed was nerfed in recent patches).
There is also an infrastructure set up for Frenzy, where it too seems like it should have had more weapons and spells. More Frenzy stuff is likely to appear in the next DLC, but this also brings up several balancing problems, especially with PVP. If they are going to add Frenzy and Bleed spells, skills, and weapons, it is likely they need to do a lot of testing prior to release because balancing them for PVP and for PVE seems very difficult.
If you were hoping that death blight would be more fully explored, then think again. It is very unlikely that From Software will make death blight something you can use against enemies and bosses, even in a DLC situation.
Why is the Game So Unbalanced?
If you disagree and figure it is pretty well balanced, then you are mostly correct. The way the game pens you into corners of the map without you knowing is brilliant. That is why when you teleport into a stronger area without realizing it; you feel outclassed and pretty vulnerable.
However, the unbalanced gaming question is one that is raised by successful rune farmers. The people who are falling through the map and slashing their way to 160K each time are wondering why the game is still difficult. Even some of the classic overpowered features, like Bleed and Comet of Azur, only seem to cheese certain bosses and not others.
The reason for this is that the game offers a massive range of boss and enemy varieties, and each has strengths and weaknesses based on different stats. You may be the most overpowered mage in the game, but if you come across a boss who moves very quickly, a boss who has high magic resist, or a boss arena where the boss is always close, then you are going to struggle no matter what level you are at.
Which Are The Fastest Weapons?
By far, the fastest weapons are daggers. They are the fastest to strike, the fastest to inflict ailments (in most cases), and are the fastest to recover. However, moving on from the balanced-unbalanced argument from above, daggers are too weak to offer a lasting benefit to players.
Unless there are builds out there that can seriously improve the usability of daggers, they are simply not worth investing your time and effort into using (unless you want a more difficult/challenging game).
Even if you have two Reduvia daggers, maxed out, and you have all the suitable talismans and stats, you are not going to have an easy time playing Elden Ring, especially since they nerfed bleed damage and bleed’s stagger in patch 1.04.
Even if you use daggers for their enhanced criticals, you are rarely in a situation where you can stealth all the enemies on the map before they go aggro. In most cases, the enemies see you before you see them.
The daggers ask that you stay close to the enemy, but most enemies and bosses are thrashing around too much. They have nerfed the amount of stagger that bleed offers, so you can’t really stun-lock enemies anymore, even if you are duel-wielding the daggers. Fighting with them feels a little ratty. As if you have to jump in there, chomp chomps your damage really quickly, and then jump away before the enemy thrashes again.
Daggers have the quickest attack times, they inflict affinities like bleeding very quickly, and they have the fastest recovery times. Sadly, the damage they do is just not enough to justify their use over the long term, especially when you pair this with the fact that you have to be very close to do damage, and it is too difficult to do damage on your horse/cow/goat, it is not just worth using daggers.
