August 2024 Part 1

15 August, 2024. 2,299 words.

Why do blog posts have to start with an introductory sentence anyway?

Gaming

So the Elden Ring DLC’s last boss is basically impossible. There, I said it.

But stay-tuned for shocking, late-breaking news at the end!

It’s not the first time I’ve said an Elden Ring boss is impossible. There was Melania, who cheated so, so much, but who finally succumbed to a good old fashioned damage blitz and stupid good luck. There were the final bosses, Radagon and the Elden Beast… two impossible bosses right in a row, the second of which constantly ran away from you. Earlier in this very DLC there was Rellana (or was it Rennala??) and Messmer, yet more Elden Ring bosses who are cheating cheaters who cheat unfairly.

Now there’s … this last DLC boss. I guess I won’t say who it is, in case somebody out there isn’t so disgusted with From Software’s descent into bad Souls-like mechanics that they’re still actually following the lore.

I thought that I’d try not to lean so much on the Mimic Tear in the DLC as I did in the main game, but that went out the window very quickly with this one. Mimic Tear is the only Spirit Ash that actually helps, because it basically doubles your damage output for free, which reduces most of these Elden Ring story boss fights down into the realm of a “normal” From Software difficulty, not the new-and-improved Elden Ring “super not fun” difficulty.

But not so with this last boss. It’s still impossible, because he hits so frickin’ hard. And fast. And repeatedly. He hits some eight times in a row, then pauses only long enough for you to do a single light attack, or heal, and that’s about it. Sometimes I could do two light attacks.

And, also, it should go without saying that he cheats in the standard Elden Ring ways, by dodging whenever you press your attack button. Or attacking whenever you press your heal button. Or by busting out some crazy 1-in-100 one-shot kill move just when you start to make progress. Or utilizing a hit box that clips you when you’re nowhere near him. Or ignoring your immunity frames in a wide variety of cheating ways. The list goes on and on. Not to even mention the intentional and unintentional lag on top of everything. That’s just standard operating procedure for Elden Ring now.

And I’m only talking about the first phase here. I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty reliably get past the first phase with a 1:1 duel most every time.

But in the second phase, well, it gets worse. So much worse. You can’t even see what the dude is doing most of the time, in the midst of all the screen-filling light effects. Let alone try to think of some way to dodge that stupid big AoE nonsense after every hit.

It’s really … not fun. So I have two choices. Either I can farm for levels, which isn’t fun, and probably isn’t going to help much, because at level 175 I’m already at a point of diminishing returns. (I gained 25 levels in this DLC without even trying, and I spent a vast majority of my runes on weapon upgrades or spirit ash upgrades.)

Or I can just keep repeating this fight over and over and over again until I get lucky and win. Which is … also not that fun. Especially when there’s no more content to look forward to afterward.

Has From Software always been like this? Are the scales falling from my eyes? Am I just now starting to see the real boss fight designs that have been there all along?

Surely that can’t be true. There have been frustrating bosses before (Sister Friede springs to mind, and the Fume Knight and ~~Elenora~~ Elena in Dark Souls 2, and Artorias in Dark Souls 1, all DLC bosses incidentally), but there’s always been a sense of patient progress. A sense of working through the problems methodically to arrive at a point of mastery, where it felt like, once I mastered the mechanics, I would have a decent chance of beating each boss every time I encountered them.

In my eyes, something changed for the worse in Elden Ring. Now, it’s just, “Boy I hope I get lucky one of these times. Statistically, it’s inevitable that all the random numbers will line up in my favor someday.” The thought of beating these bosses consistently is laughable.

I suppose a third choice is to go online and start summoning coop help, but I expect that will end up taking just as long. Because, in order for the coop players to help, I have to stay alive long enough for them to help, which isn’t guaranteed. Also, I think you have to use a consumable to summon help? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever summoned help in Elden Ring. Oh! I did once. For Melania, in a similar bout of desperation. And those coop players didn’t help at all.

Anyway, that’s the state of me and the Elden Ring DLC.

Late-breaking Elden Ring DLC News

But wait! Just one day before publication, I finally beat the last boss. It took slightly more than two weeks and roughly 150 attempts.

That might be the longest it’s ever taken me for a From Software boss. Longer than Artorias, longer than Elena, longer than Sister Friede, longer than Isshin, longer than Melania. (A real trip down memory lane, those links. Also a real insight into how much less fun Elden Ring boss fights are than any of the previous games. Previous games: Celebration! Elden Ring: Meh ok I guess that dumb chore is done.)

Almost nothing happened after the last fight, except a 30 second memory that didn’t make any sense. What a chore to reach such an anticlimatic ending.

Did I do something wrong? Was it bugged?

It seems not. Screenrant says the DLC “culminates in a shocking ending that recontextualizes much of the base game while still leaving many questions open-ended.” ORLY? I saw no such thing, despite seeing exactly what that post describes. But then I’ve mostly forgotten the Elden Ring story and care little and less for the machinations of its gods and demigods.

By the way, the word “recontextualizes” is a word I need to add to my list of gimmicky words that writers use way too often. I can’t seem to turn around lately without seeing it.

Overall, if you enjoyed Elden Ring, the DLC is more Elden Ring. I personally found it to be more aggravating than the base game, with little reward. I don’t think I even got a single achievement the entire time.

I feel very little desire to replay the DLC or even the base game, which is a sharp departure from the Dark Souls series, all of which, after finishing, I immediately wanted to dive back into NG+, or try a different character build, or something like that. I think I played Dark Souls 3 six times in a row. Those were the good old days.

Whenever I try to replay Elden Ring, I usually think something like, “Oh god this again?”

To be fair, I still tend to play Elden Ring like I’m playing Dark Souls, and that puts me at a pretty severe disadvantage. Most of a character’s power comes from FP-based Ash of War abilities or any of a variety of extra attack types that didn’t exist in previous games, and I tend to ignore them completely.

What’s Next?

I have no idea. There are no games whatsoever on my radar right now. Possibly Hellblade II, which I bought at launch time, installed, and then failed to run a single time. I find I’m not much in the mood for story-heavy games at the moment.

Media Production

I completed uploading Lords of the Fallen videos, and started uploading Elden Ring DLC videos.

The important thing about finishing the DLC is that I won’t have another debacle like The Ringed City DLC where I started uploading a series and then couldn’t finish it.

It’s still on my list of things to do, actually. Maybe someday. Unfortunately it’s hard to go back to Dark Souls 3 after Elden Ring, mechanically speaking. From Software games each have a fairly unique control style that doesn’t always translate well from one game to another. It takes time to get a feel for the controls in each game, and it’s not a great idea to pick it back up again 75% of the way through the hardest DLC in Dark Souls 3.

Media Consumption

Regularly consuming: The Rest is Entertainment podcast (on YouTube), The Daily Show clips (on YouTube), various Glass Cannon podcasts (on YouTube or in an actual podcast). Oh and there’s a new season of Taskmaster New Zealand finding its way onto YouTube, with more interesting Māori phrases at the beginning and the end of each episode than ever.

It’s also been a Disney+ marathon for me the past few weeks.

I watched Avengers: Endgame for the first time. It didn’t make any sense and I found it quite silly. Still, it was kind of funny sometimes. I laughed every time someone fell a thousand feet and walked away, which happens a lot.

Then I watched Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Talk about a movie that makes no sense. But it was visually interesting, I guess. My long-standing personal joke is that Marvel movies are basically elaborate screensavers.

I had some days where I had to rest my back a lot, so I ended up watching a bunch of things I might not have bothered with.

I watched the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. It wasn’t that great.

I re-watched The Empire Strikes Back. It was pretty good. I’m still not sure I agree with the general consensus that it was the best Star Wars movie, but I can certainly understand why people think that. Most every Star Wars trope began in that movie.

Audiobooks

I completed A Game of Thrones. It’s the best one of that series by far. The rest, as with so many epic fantasy series under contractual obligation, start meandering into “middle book” territory, where there’s no more finely-crafted story, just a lot of “stuff happening” with the characters from the first book, and a lot of interminable waiting for the epic conclusion that keeps getting postponed by more and more diversions. Luckily, in this case, the characters from the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire are really interesting charaters.

That’s the writing lesson to be taken from A Game of Thrones: Every character is interesting, and often has a fatal flaw, and you know they have that flaw, and you can see how it’s going to get them in trouble from a mile away, and yet they still walk right into trouble because they’re completely convinced they don’t have that fatal flaw.

Next I started into the A Clash of Kings audiobook. I’ve heard A Song of Ice and Fire described as “grimdark” quite a few times, possibly one of the first of that genre, but I never fully understood why.

Now I see why. I didn’t remember much of the second book. I had forgotton just how unrelentingly grim it is, when compared to the first. Yeesh. The new POV characters are awful people, and the previous POV characters are surrounded by awful people at all times. Otherwise, I find the second book less tightly plotted and more meandering, trying to find its way. Classic middle book syndrome.

And moving on into the third book A Storm of Swords, the fun grimdarkness just keeps on going. I tried an experiment and listened to only the Sansa chapters, instead of listening to them all in the proper order. It’s surprisingly coherent. Unfortunately it’s a pain to listen to an Audible book that way. There’s no programmable chapter order feature in the UI.

Home Development

Blaugust inspired me to try to refresh my memory on what I had done with my Next.js blog back in November and December, with some success.

I do all my “home” development on a MacBook Pro now. MacOS is a pretty good environment if you’re doing non-Microsoft development.

However, I don’t have any external monitors or keyboards or mice hooked up to it, so it’s hell on the neck and back to hunch over a laptop and tap away at code for any length of time. I need to fix that, but it’s hell on the wallet to buy Apple peripherals. It’s almost as bad as buying anything “for gamers!”

Day Job

I took a week off from work at the beginning of August, and when I returned, my team had merged with another team in India and had a new manager located in India. So now my team has about 15 people spanning the West Coast, the East Coast, and India. Interesting times.

Health and Wellness

I had a spate of bad back days, directly related to spending too much time reading and writing at my laptop in the first week of August.

World Context

Kamala Harris chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Who? I kid. But seriously, who?
There was a big tadoo over in the U.K. which didn’t filter much into U.S. news so I don’t know many details. Something about race riots and everybody leaving Twitter again.
Instead, the U.S. was fixated on covering Trump being interviewed by Elon Musk.
Ongoing Trainwrecks of the Year: 2024 Presidential Election, War in Israel (since 10/2023), Nigerian Coup (since 7/2023), Sudanese Civil War (since 4/2023), War in Ukraine (since 2/2022).

Pō mārie!