Elden Ring DLC And Invasions With Saint Riot | Yggdrasil Podcast 45

[@zeropat0000]

"Lets get back to talking about the DLC." "Okay, so in Bloodborne..."

[@EXEveryNote]

Saint Riot is a top-tier podcast choice. Please invite him back again.

[@alejohp8725]

You think? I think he’s a bit of a normie when it comes to analyzing the game with a greater degree of depth.

[@radagonsoreseal3457]

⁠@@alejohp8725Then go watch Steel or G9 if you want greater depth of analysis. Saint approaches the game in a much different way regarding the souls games I wouldn’t call him a normie at all though lol

[@alejohp8725]

@@radagonsoreseal3457 I mean. When Rat asks him for criticism, all he can come up with is the Abyssal Woods being empty. Sure! But how things like Malenia not even recognizing Miquella’s Great Rune? Gideon not getting a single bit of new dialog? Melina not showing up at all even when we kill her brother? Midra having no connection to the nomadic merchants? I could go on and on. The DLC was great, but come on now.

[@jjohnson01]

@@alejohp8725just a matter for priorities. Saint cares less about the story connecting and more about fun gameplay and how it interacts with other gameplay.

[@alejohp8725]

@@jjohnson01 I would hope that guys that criticize the gameplay aspect would focus on things like getting a few of the new weapons into the base game. And how, when looking into the new weapons, we really only have a few of each kind. I understand that the DLC was fun, but I don’t think he’s thought about how to actually make it even better. FromSoft needs to hear these things. I had to go through a number of hoops to get the dry leaf arts into the base game for a fresh run. Why not sell a basic form of them at the twin maidens, or add them as a new loot in the base game?

[@Anch0rd]

Something about Midra's Manse that I really loved and Ive not seen anyone else talk about is the effect in the air. The particles sitting still in the air just gave it such an ancient dechevaled feeling.

[@ryankeith2712]

Dang it, I want the SaintRiot lore podcast now, bring him back soon please Rata

[@LokiHades]

A modern Sen's Fortress is definitely on a list of what I wanna see.

[@liquidreality472]

Plz no.

[@younesbarakat1395]

Fuck no

[@exodus9001]

Yeah some little game revolving around that one dude's kobolds with their insane traps.

[@alial-kateeb5267]

bro said no bloodborne so saintroit went a half hour on darksouls

[@noamias4897]

I just love listening to these two gush about future Fromsoft games, it's a great outlet for all my dumbass thoughts lol

[@darkknight57691]

Its totally not my bias as a long time Saint fan, but man he's been the best guest on this podcast.

[@rainbowkrampus]

No no, as another saint fan, you are totally unbiased and correct.

[@darkknight57691]

@@rainbowkrampus I am glad we, saint riot fans, can be total unbiased and fair about our opinion of Saint riot

[@Sleeper_6875]

as someone who’s never seen his videos, he is a great guest. Him, smoughtown, and quelaag are great

[@KaedNinescarred]

As a Saint Riot fan, he's an incredible guest and we're all 🤙🏻😎🤙🏻 pretty cool for thinking it

[@pgh3316]

Rellana's swords should've been 2 separate weapons that have a special synergy when powerstanced. THAT would've been the best way to do it imo. Appease the int/fth ppl, and provide fun tools for other builds as well

[@badalrana10]

saint riot is such a easy dude to talk to

[@alansquared]

He’s the best!

[@stavrosmayakofsky1915]

he's a great dude. baffles me how he is not bigger on the streaming thing. dude is amazing. skilled, funny as fuck and talented.

[@jodyestevens9911]

i see glimpses of a future game, with the mechanics of the deflect tear and guard counters, and where enemies can deflect you, like the fire knights or demi human swordsman are refined even further, where a really beautiful combat dance can be present. i truly hope they go down this path somehow

[@neurosis51]

That would be the ideal path in my opinion, instead of this 20 second roll fest before you get a single r1 punish before having to watch the boss do his 1 sided theatrics again. I played the whole Dlc with the deflect tear and it made the game fun as hell. Just 25 attempts to kill Miq solo for the first time. After that I used cheat engine to revive bosses and have killed him consistently with a bunch of different builds, it's just fun being able to parry for real. From really needs to keep boss rematches as a core feature going forward too. I'm not playing this whole giant open world over and over just to fight the highlights of the game again.

[@neurosis51]

Also milenia gets so trivialized by deflect tear as well

[@Marc_bryan]

So..... Sekiro? Lol. You pretty much described it save for the guard counters. It's pure hopium but I can't help but wonder if the introduction of these mechanics is preparing people for a Sekiro sequel. It's my personal favorite FromSoftware game and an refinement and expansion on an already incredible movement and combat system would be incredible.

[@Marc_bryan]

Now that I'm thinking about....the umbrella prosthetic tools have a "guard counter" like mechanic. You should definitely play Sekiro if you haven't!

[@neurosis51]

@@Marc_bryan yeah, but I want it better than sekiro where there is still menaingful build variety and customization. I actually enjoy Lies of P more than sekiro and the from soft series when it come to tightness of mechanics and game feel. No bull input que and delays, no crap camera, etc.

[@RosuVT]

I went ro the DLC on RL139 NG+7 KNOWING it was gonna be brutal. It boggles my mind people thought ng+ wouldnt affect it

[@lilbuddy324]

R u crazy bruh

[@RosuVT]

@@lilbuddy324 kinda, but Ive been doing this ever since the original release of the DS2 releases, playing them on high NG cycles on meta level pvp. I like the game being as brutal as possible as it forces me to truly learn the boss movesets

[@Pe37777]

I mean usually people on ng + 7 are way over that level so that logic doesn’t really make sense since the majority of players even on ng+ are easily over 200 or even 250+ depending how much they farm.

[@hayabusa09]

@@Pe37777 Its almost like you didn't read his reply.

[@RosuVT]

​@@Pe37777 It's just an old habit of mine, I don't really make new characters as often as I go to NG+ cycles, and as someone who invades a lot I also just don't change my level that often. I even streamed me going through the dlc on NG+7 if you are curious

[@DoctorMalpractice]

saint riot's icon looks like ansbach with twin pigtails

[@ErikWithBrain]

How dare you deny Lord Cthulhu?!!

[@MalcolmRidley-sf8uc]

I would say saint riot is an A tier yapper

[@bbyponk]

no banter fun bad me no understand speech

[@fastenedcarrot9570]

I was expecting Midra's Manse to go down quite a bit, especially with the FF connection. I think Abyssal Wood would be improved by removing all the extra graces and the stakes of Marika, also making it permantly dark. It's too bright during the day. Also making the areas with the Aging Untouchables narrower so you have to stealth properly rather than being able to just run around sometimes.

[@acedias12]

"Sekiro but STR build"? That's pretty much being Guts in Berserk.

[@MO-zk8qs]

I liked berserk but have gotten a little sick of guts after ds3 and elden ring since he’s become such a parody in those game

[@youtubeenjoyer1743]

@@MO-zk8qs I blame reddit normies

[@bobsinclair8990]

michael zaki tiring out igon for the good stuff is now my head canon

[@xioussquid]

Based on what the guy said in an interview, it's super likely IRL canon too.

[@JoyTuub]

Me: *enjoying podcast* Saint: "Lady Maria is trash" Me: *grabs pitch fork*

[@porkwhisperer3050]

As somebody who’s done loads of challenge runs in bloodborn I honestly don’t get why he dislikes the fire. You’re just forced to out position the fire what ultimately is very similar to the pillars of light in the Radahn fight. It even has the same effect of it showing you how to deal with the previous phase in a more effective way. What he rightfully praised about Radahns second phase. Even if I don’t particularly like consort Radahn myself. I don’t hate him though as he definitely has his good aspects.

[@HeyTarnished]

@@porkwhisperer3050It has trash lingering hitboxes that go on for more than the effects appearing on screen, it’s just a janky fight overall. Doesn’t come close to Malenia or Rellana mechanically.

[@porkwhisperer3050]

@@HeyTarnished I really don’t think there’s anything janky about Maria and the hitbox lingers at most literal frames after the fire effect goes. I don’t like her as much as Melania or Rellana but those are both at worst in my top 10 favourite fromsoft bosses so that doesn’t mean Maria is a bad boss by any means. I think Maria is still one of the better bosses fromsoft has ever designed.

[@geordiejones5618]

​@@porkwhisperer3050The bloodfire fucked me up so bad but I enjoyed every minute even when I was stonewalled on that third phase on my first playthrough. I had to go to arcane to get past her but ever since then, I've committed to fighting her with the beast hunter saif and it's SO satisfying to dance with her like that.

[@HeyTarnished]

@@porkwhisperer3050 Ofc I love Lady Maria’s fight regardless, even if the fight did not age well compared to what we have with Elden Ring bosses, the music & aesthetics/lore (and even the fight) still slap, it’s one of those fights you’ll never forget, however I do prefer Ludwig & Orpahn so much more than her. 🎉❤️ Btw I recommend you try fighting Rellana with a Backhand Blade with the Blind Spot Ash of War while using the Sekiro Deflection tear, it literally transforms the game’s combat to new heights, it’s peak FromSoft combat I swear!

[@nuclearscarab]

Lies of P could kind of be played as strength Sekiro. Most of the weapons with the best guard values were big, slow, and heavy. Having the highest guard values was very advantageous for parry play style, because it made missing a parry and getting a normal guard much more forgiving.

[@valentinvas6454]

That's what I thought too. Saint mentioned a cannon and P even has that as one of the puppet arms. And don't forget that a Lies of P DLC is also coming so who knows what else will be in it.

[@Jbswe]

Lies of p combat was amazing but the levels are extremely unmemorable

[@fastenedcarrot9570]

​@@Jbswe Big disagree.

[@Jbswe]

@@fastenedcarrot9570 they all had the same similar shortcut electric doors there was very minimal exploration, they were cool linear levels but nothing stands out besides combat encounters which is fine because that’s what it focus’s on but there isn’t a level that cool besides the starting areas the opera house and the second last level everything else blends together

[@noamias4897]

Yeah but aesthetically it is not brutish in that way

[@americanphonics7023]

01:17:57 I hate how the Hosts side is almost always misrepresented in these discussions. ☝️🧐 The problem with invaders in the older games goes beyond just "feeling bad" because you lost to a human Player, it's some of that, but also a laundry list of other obscure things. 1.) Lag/ latency issues. 2.) Twinking & gimmicks 3.) Using the Enemies as a shield 4.) Taunts/ showboating (Dung Pies) 5.) Trolling/ griefing 6.) Hackers/ cheating 7.) Skill/ knowledge gap Still waiting on the day for one of these discussions to be 'honest'.

[@porkwhisperer3050]

Yeah it’s this. I enjoy co-op as an alternate way to play but I fundamentally don’t enjoy the vastly different combat of PvP. This would be bearable if there wasn’t a not insignificant chance that the person I’m fighting isn’t functionally unbeatable without being extremely good at PvP. I haven’t played any Elden ring co-op outside of seamless co-op so I don’t know how bad twinking/cheating/latency is but if it was anything like any of the older games I would still hate being invaded.

[@UnknownJudgment]

In all my time being aware and somewhat involved in this discourse I have never seen any good faith engagement with these points (1 and 2 are the strongest as far as I'm concerned). "It's just ego" has become thought-terminating cliche levels of trite at this point. My core issue has always been the lack of any real incentive to engage with the system as a host. Why deal with the issues you mentioned when I don't even get anything out of it outside of experience with a mode of fighting that I already don't enjoy? I think Rata and Saint "get it" more than a lot of others especially since they seem to understand why From would effectively remove solo invasions beyond some craven attempt to cater to casuals or PvP haters.

[@petercottantail7850]

couldn't agree more. deep down they rationalize in any way they can to justify it.

[@La0bouchere]

@@UnknownJudgment They had a good system in DeS where body form actually gave a strong incentive to engage with PVP and Co-op. In the rest of the games they've just made the incentives weaker so pvp feels like a tacked on gimmick instead of a core piece of the world.

[@UnknownJudgment]

@@La0bouchere Demon's Souls' system sort of magnifies the issue I have with the other games: the reward doesn't really outweigh the risk. Yes, you have more health in body form, but dying in body form sends your world tendency toward black which both makes that world harder and potentially precludes access to specific events, items, or areas. And it is, paradoxically, easier to die due to the invasion risk. I'd rather just take the health/ring slot loss. Body form is a liability in my estimation.

[@Jcoaerlrsiocno]

FYI wild strikes is a direct counter to blind spot

[@spookysioux1224]

That makes so much sense.

[@Mattin_Satteo]

So i have to carry a weapon with wild strikes just because pvp broken? Good old Fromsoft

[@migraine9402]

​@@Mattin_Satteo no, just because you can doesn't mean you have to. There's a million tools to deal with swift slash if you're in a 3v1

[@Jcoaerlrsiocno]

@@Mattin_Satteo I mean if you pvp I don’t think that’s too big of an ask.

[@Mattin_Satteo]

@@Jcoaerlrsiocno but if you just want to play with a friend and keep getting invaded it kinda sucks... Also, not everyone summons an ally to make the game easier, somebody just has friends and likes to play with them... I did my first rune level 1 in coop, and it was so funny to be both underleveled for endgame areas, but the worst part were still invasions, because somehow even at level 1 you get invaded, and it's not avoidable. I hope from gives the option to play without PVP in the next games, even because if i want to make some PVP i just use the tongue or the arena, and when I invade someone who does not want to fight me, I'm the first one not having fun.

[@imfamouswarrior2976]

My problem with Abyssal Woods is the lack of enemies. I was expecting Forbidden Woods vibes where youre slowly sludging through a bunch of balled snakes, giant balled snakes, snakemen, etc. and fighting them off to attempt to clear and loot the area. Instead is just a giant area with a few annoying wintern lanterns and a few pushover enemies. I thought there was finally going to be a vast open “dungeon” that you can just run through on horseback but instead it’s just not really satisfying until you get to the manor.

[@valentinvas6454]

Yeah that area has very little in it for its size. And the fact that the most common enemy type are the rats is even worse. Can't wait to see how the Convergence modders will liven it up.

[@imfamouswarrior2976]

@@valentinvas6454 i literally already had the beast repellant torch equipped so the rats didnt even bother me… was legit just a boring ass stroll through an empty forest.

[@iammax1393]

I loved the atmosphere, but this was probably the biggest example of an area having a disproportionate ratio of space to content. I also came out it feeling like Midra’s Manse was smaller than expected, because the giant patch of space behind it on the map turned out to be completely empty. I remember seeing the manor, looking at the map, and thinking it was about to be a proper sized legacy dungeon.

[@rosameltrozo5889]

Yeah, plus i really wanted a Frenzied Flame enemy that was a real fight, the laterns are a gimmick and the rest are rats and recycled enemies, i wanted some Bloodborne esque frenzied flame series of enemies

[@iammax1393]

@@rosameltrozo5889 that’s the thing. A gimmick enemy is fine when it serves to supplement the other main field enemies in an area. When it _is_ the main field enemy, and in this case the only non-recycled field enemy, it just doesn’t work

[@nicoblasss]

YEESSS BRING SAINT BACK FOR A LORE PODCAST

[@AlexanderForsman]

As a lover of DS2: Yes, we want out dark infusion. The sad thing is that we don't even like the split magic / fire weapons where the scale separately. So the closest we got was the Madness weapons, but then madess itself scales with arcane, so we are still fucked over.

[@Maffo__]

Lovely conversation, you guys have such nice chemistry!

[@redx3009]

Hey I also love Rellana, she is hard but with fatal exploitable flaws that makes her fight a fun spectacle. Anyways found today her match with Halo Scythe in my challenge run and everything was perfect.

[@Tigerbro6]

deflecting hard tear is how i wanted elden ring to be from day one. I always felt sekiro's combat has so much potential and this tear shows it

[@MeneltirFalmaro]

PSA: there are infinitely farmable craftable "starlight shards" in the DLC (Lulling Branch). The downside is sleep buildup which is a non-issue.

[@anitaremenarova6662]

Good thing most people don't know about this since nobody looks at crafting otherwise every invasions would literally be infinite magic spamming with everyone popping these + blessed blue dew.

[@CsStrez]

@@anitaremenarova6662 they already have duped starlight shards it doesn't matter

[@anitaremenarova6662]

@@CsStrez PvErs don't. I'm just glad I now have this option against tryhards without having to dupe.

[@BLK_MN]

Oh my god, THAT'S where you farm the Nectarblood for the lulling branches? We're fucked.

[@zimmy4868]

The milady light Greatsword is so fun to play with, my fav weapon by a mile

[@zombiehampster1397]

I love cooping and helping hosts for PvEvP, ever since DS III's undead village, and it's really fun to go up against an invader in ER. It's nothing personal, its just a game, and both sides are playing it, so none of it bothers me. I even enjoy the challenge of fighting another person.

[@pgh3316]

Longest one handed light gs combo I've found is running heavy, light, light, heavy, heavy(?), light, light. Its so good, I love actually having animations that flow into eachother like that. And by so good I mean borderline useless, but I can do it!!

[@LayneLovesThings]

I'm not big on PvP, mostly cause I'm just not very good, but one of my most memorable Souls experiences is besting an invader on top of Sen's Fortress. The dopamine I got from that proved that From should just be allowed to cook, even if it's not a feature I interact with much, it can still be amazing.

[@JBall7]

It turned out the exploit was serious. There was a client-side function that pushed a message to invaders but had no bounds checking, leading to ROP chaining. All you needed was the player ID and a hacked client. To quote the GH repo, "In Dark Souls III, A malicious attacker abusing this would have been able to reliably execute a payload of up to 1.3MiB of shellcode on every online player's machine within seconds." A person just needed to be connected to the online servers, and they would be susceptible.

[@Ben10Blader]

Bring this man back for a lore episode ASAP

[@cridus_]

that was very interesting and fun, thanks you both!

[@zeropat0000]

I like how Saint hears a rumor and spends the next 7 years telling butchered versions of this rumor. Very helpful, thank you.

[@reverb2516]

this was amazing, i need this podcast to go another 3 hours

[@uncannykirkhammer]

Love these podcasts with Saint. Please do more in the future!

[@VoltaDoMar]

Saint is the best guest. Also I love Unicorn Overlord- I am older than you guys, I grew up playing Ogre Battle on the SNES. Unicorn Overlord is a love letter to that game 100%, it's built on it and references it in many ways (even the name is a reference- There are no ogres in Ogre Battle, just like I think there are no Unicorns in Unicorn Overlord) - But Unicorn Overlord added a lot more flexibility and control for you to play with compared to Ogre Battle. I started playing it and got sucked in by the gameplay, I put down Elden Ring DLC for a weekend and just played UO

[@nickperri6571]

I am so happy Ratatoskr is getting strength-pilled

[@justkallmekai]

I love invasions. I was one of those people who did a coop run, taunters tongue, and earnestly went through the level. It's very fun. Maybe the only way a solo player can make it worth an invader's time is to turn on the blue sentienel function

[@Hooptymann]

Sniper Elite 5 has coop Invasions and honestly, its pretty good imo. 1944 German occupied france 2 allied special force snipers infiltrating a french Chateau then suddendly a third player joins the lobby a german sniper is hunting those 2 coop players then its an ultimte cat & mouse game. As invader who knows the game you look if they have completed any objektives yet, you find corpses of german soldiers you follow the trail and hear a shot, they are clearing another encampment. You take position waiting for the right moment and take your chance BOOOM first down, injured now you look for the other one. Its honestly a blast but I havent played in a while so I dont know how active it is

[@Killing_Edge]

My favorite podcast to date. I like the dynamic you and Saint have.

[@merrja]

2:10:24 From what I remember, the full Liurnia skip is to beat Godrick and Radahan, then go down until you get to the Deeproot Depths, then use the teleporter by Fia to skip directly to Leyndell ramparts grace. You miss out on the bloody finger, but can still get the recusant finger from volcano manor. I may have missed something, it's been a while since I did that run.

[@glinteastwood]

This interview is my reward for doing today.

[@nulls5408]

That last bit of lore detoxing is so accurate. I’ve been having fun making all these big webs of lore connections based off what we got from the dlc. And every time someone in the discussion thread will be in complete denial since their headcannon isn’t up to date anymore. It’s fine to be wrong guys, (believe me I know how it feels) we just gotta fit the puzzle pieces together in a different way. That’s the fun of it, especially before the lore connections are set in stone by a lore master. Every bit of brainstorming helps.

[@elididde3377]

You guys talking about strength Sekiro is exactly what I've always wanted for a berserk game

[@fastenedcarrot9570]

This guy is great and some of his lore insights at the end were great AND something I'd never heard before.

[@mistakai4226]

What I'm hearing from Saint is that the player is canonically a tarnished spirit in Godwyn's body.

[@balmain2496]

The chemistry between you guys is incredible. You should do these more often.

[@Haden475]

i love lore saint. all his lorethroughs are top tier and so fresh

[@AkosKovacs.Author.Musician]

People rag on invasions because they don't like losing to another person, it is that simple. It's just like in every other game that has multiplayer, It hurts the ego in a way losing to PvE doesn't. The level of rage that Artosis used to channel when losing a game to a Protoss is legendary; and that's - as the kids say - consentual pvp. That's just how human nature is. People love pvp, people love invasion, but people hate losing, and so they go out of their way to try to make elaborate allegories or hyperboles to cope.

[@petercottantail7850]

hosts aren't queing up to play pvp, they are being forced to. invaders could que up in arena and lose cause they aren't good at the game (their ego is hurt) so they invade other people, because of how damage formula in pvp works, minmaxing a character (stats and buffs) results in them dealing x3 the damage the casual stat spread host does. usually running with a oneshot l2 at the ready, then they complain about ganks being unfair(seriously why can you turn off taunters tongue AND summon blues c'mon fromsoft??) like they themselves aren't at an advantage 99% of the invasions when they could go to arena for a fair fight. but they hate losing so they go out of their way to try to make elaborate allegories or hyperboles to cope why its ok to invade people who have less experience in pvp and worse stats most of the time who never wanted to fight in the first place or even know how.

[@justin8865]

Lmao you guys have great chemistry, your the strait man playing off his unhinged rants. It's great!

[@AngryAge]

That was awesome guys. That lore part was awesome. I want to hear more

[@realcuondaotherside]

I thought Radahn was ridiculously hard but that's because I was unaware I was on NG+. It felt awfully hard for a NG boss. I fought him on NG while helping a friend and found that it was wayyyy easier than I thought it was.

[@realcuondaotherside]

For all of the other souls games, I go solo first. Then I do co-op. I did the DLC and much of my first playthrough of Elden Ring co-op so I could have those random invasions back.

[@noahduncan5998]

I certainly understood that NG+6 would be difficult, and my complaints really don't begin until the final boss's second phase. When you speak about how the shadow clones and such are "psychological warfare" because they don't really do damage, I can assure you that they most certainly do on higher cycles. As far as I'm concerned, being able to effectively avoid all attacks and thus all damage from them is an essential element of the Fromsoft combat formula. This is not to say that it should be easy, but that it must be feasible. Several of the final boss's attacks can't be reliably dodge rolled or even BHS'd, which is where I draw the line for "too much." There are a couple more examples, like Bayle's fire laser being one of the most inconsistent attacks to dodge that they've ever made, but the final boss is where the bulk of these attacks exist. I am merely concerned that such attacks may continue worming their way into the design of Fromsoft's games, which would not be to their betterment.

[@gorcshurut4934]

This wouldn't have been a Saint Riot appearence without a Suzy moment. Perfect

[@Rampy283]

This was great! You guys have fantastic chemistry! More please

[@CPAgamer313]

Saint riot got me into souls games with his learn to invade series back in ds3 you are the 🐐

[@jethrolarson]

I'd love to hear the lore follow up to this. You got great chemistry!

[@simonappel2599]

I've been loving 2v2s and 3v3s in the arena because you get your physick and respawn when you die so it's perfect for the deflecting tear and testing other new tears

[@TheJML1975]

Great discussion… and you’ve gotta do another one with Saint… that last part, where saint said he likes the lore side.. and you kept going, but was running g out of time, man that was such a great listen in itself 😁

[@TheJML1975]

Also can I ask, why you don’t upload podcast anymore? Always enjoyed those immensely!

[@4dragons632]

Igon's voice absolutely is the highlight of the DLC, but I also want to give a shoutout to Ainsbach saying "Can _I_ ask a favour of _you?_ " It just works so well you can really hear the emphasis and how its the reversal of what he just said, about how he could not serve a lord to whom he can offer no favours. Also shoutout to Needle Knight Leda with "I am sorry... for speaking to you as if you were a compatriot."

[@noamias4897]

Hate to be that guy but strength Sekiro would just be Guts and I'm down I hope that the deflect tear symbolizes FS recognizing the wishes for alternative methods of avoiding damage than shields and rolls. I love how LOTF has both dodging and rolling, but want that taken further with rolling being limited to a double tap if you're light weight, and if you're medium weight you do a smaller leap when tapping and double tapping does a lunge and if you're heavy tapping does a small side step and double tapping does a shoulder bash

[@xicor_v123]

all of the guests so far have been lovely

[@jamesneeson5751]

Man this was awesome, I'd love to see a followup in the future.

[@iota-09]

regarding rellana: the problem isn't that hse inputs read(not at all, quite the opposite, that's her saving grace) nor that the combos are too long. THE PROBLEM is that unlike margit who can reliably punished withing his own combos as long as you know where and when to roll, rellana's mid-combo punishes require most of the time time either ai manipulation to just X attacks or pretty good unlocked strafing, with iirc only one or two attacks being the exception. which for a boss like radahn or midra who are one a secret boss and the other the final boss, i could get... but rellana is an early dlc optional boss without even a cutscene, she's no malenia or placidusax, she's no alonne, she's no NK. the other saving grace you get is her immense weakness to lightning but that doesn't help the fact that you have only 3 ways of making rellana a truly fun fight: 1: parrying 2: deflect hardtear 3: unlocked strafing to manipulate the ai in doing mostly the safer attacks or attacks in ways where you can punish mid combo where normally you wouldn't be able to, or in the best case, dodging some of her attacks to give you the window of time to do fast charged R2s like the rapier. and while i do believe the third is a fundamental part of being a *good* (like, good good, very good) player in these games, the former two are... one almost unnecessary and shoehorned in(what if you have a 2-handed weapon?) and the second something you gotta try just cause the game gave it to you IF you killed the respect furnace golem. imho rellana had the POTENTIAL of being a great boss, either by making some of the hitboxes of the attacks skinnier so you could more easlly strafe them/rolle early or by giving her just an extra frame or two of recovery between attacks. (see the phase switch moon slashes which can be dodge by just sticking to her) that's literally all that she needed to be good, instead it's like fighting 2h shamshir user with sword dance or rot star fist while you barely have poise, it's oppressive in the not-so-fun way where you only have to play in certain ways to make it fun, despite being able to defeat her in other ways, ways that are however either wildly inefficient or, imho, not fun.

[@junjunlupisan8569]

Sad that they did not extensively touch on the DLC final boss here. I'm just hoping that there will one day be a rational discussion on his difficulty, because frankly it's not badly designed or a shit boss. Very difficult to the point of stretching combat limits, yes; impossible unless you do certain specific builds, no. The final boss is very learnable, just takes a lot of time because the puzzle pieces are revealed every time you die to his moves. He just has so many moves and tricks. As Rurikhan said in his podcast with Rata, he is, most likely, the FINAL ER BOSS EVER. So it makes sense that he is WTF hard. I just hope their next game's bosses are NOT all like this (if with same character movement and capabilities) 😅 EDIT: Wrong statement

[@shade0636]

I'd be surprised if we get another game that resembles souls combat as much as Elden Ring anytime soon. I hope we don't, at least.

[@bubbachord0167]

You are fighting a god, the soul of the most powerful demigod in his prime in the body of another demigod, it would be disappointing if it was normal difficulty

[@noamias4897]

@@shade0636I think Elden ring is about as good as the souls combat can be

[@KingJobber]

I just wanna add to Saint' bodiless theory. Melina is also bodiless and the GEQ was an empyrean

[@thebird5032]

I feel it in my bones were gonna get a 3rd saint riot episode

[@emerikichannel5607]

Didnt expect my 2 of my favorite youtuber to do a collab I am blessed !

[@rainbowkrampus]

They did one a couple weeks ago! Check it out, it's good. Though it was pre-dlc release.

[@emerikichannel5607]

Yeah i will check it out

[@briannakata]

Great podcast! Saint is the best! I hope you two do that second episode :D

[@mattpeavler5180]

Loved both your episodes with Saint!

[@thunderstrucktb4758]

You guys are forgetting that blues turn solo host invasions into big group invasions, which can turn out super fun.

[@IronMind92]

Bro thats a sick background wallpaper

[@ChewyTheGimp]

Behold the frenzied goat! Fear his bleats of despair!!!

[@NoYoutubeHndlPlz]

Saint excels at providing rationalizations for FromSoft design choices that totally dispel whatever flavor of the week Reddit vitriol.

[@simonappel2599]

Rellana's swords are exactly what Saint was talking about last time on the podcast. It's just a quality weapon, that requires a little int and fai. Like, that had never occurred to me until Saint talked about that and I've been loving those things on my quality build! But y'all don't like them? My only real complaint is that you can put Rellana's in your offhand and and you get the straight sword moveset but can't power stance it with other straight swords. I just think it would be so cool to easily swap between the two ps movesets with just "two" weapons equipped.

[@simonappel2599]

Also her swords look badass on your back while two handing the carian dueling shield which is better than the other one and also looks great

[@helnkellrfresh2deaf]

FINALLY someone talking about the left hand of (final boss)

[@KingSlothPHD]

I’d love to see the crossbow parry idea be implemented in the future, hard to balance for sure but would be an amazing addition

[@wavydavy6255]

Maybe marika shedded her snake self in that trailer for her new golden order and explains the snake connections of melina(gloam eyed queen) and messmer

[@florin-alexandrustanciu5643]

The chop chop scizor cut is the easyest way to deflect counter radhan, also gets you the max deflect tear bonus, you just have to be very close to him when he scizzors, that way he does not throw you back

[@ernestogonzalez2841]

Not related but I love when people reference MonHun when trying to improve some game's combat. Got to learn from the goats.

[@ryanhorton9594]

30:36 demon souls RE is perfection. 10/10. Ill never understand the hate

[@Mozgodrobil]

Huh, I didn't know Saint was doing podcasts, very interested to hear the man outside of streaming as well

[@bunklypeppz]

With regard to the deflecting hardtear, I really think all soulslike games going forward should have a Sekiro-like perfect guard mechanic. Lies of P is a good indicator of that imo, I think it is a really good mechanic because it allows the player to accomplish something while playing defensively, making the combat more engaging. With the basic playstyle of "dodge until you get an opening to attack" bosses with long combos wind up feeling kind of unsatisfying to fight in many cases, because they are literally stalling your progress in the fight by constantly attacking, whereas perfect guarding gives you incentive to focus on the boss's attacks instead of just anticipating your own chance to attack. It's one of the reasons why parrying is satisfying, but the issue with parrying is that if you do it well, you don't wind up even seeing the full combo because it always interrupts their attack and either staggers them or sets them back to neutral. On a related note, I also think it would be great if soulslike games had a mechanic that rewards the player for successful dodges. It would be equally cool to a perfect guard mechanic if every time you d through an enemy attack, it gave a stacking buff to the dmg of your next attack that resets if you get hit or something of that nature, so that if you successfully dodged a 5-attack combo, you could chunk the boss's hp with a counter attack, so that you could deal more dmg by fully engaging with the boss mechanics than you would if you just traded hits and were greedy.

[@ByOdinsBeard15]

That scissor slice from Radahn was never an issue for me for whatever reason, I had so much more of an issue with the other combo in phase 1 lol

[@steeltarkus58]

About From and Bandai Namco actually listening to player feedback, both the second dragonslayer armor fight/dragonslayer armor set as well as ornstein's helm finally having the red plume were the result of a couple of requests given to a namco rep in the ds3 subreddit two months or so before the dlc's release.

[@marcalfarres]

They saying there is no fight that lasts more than a minut and a half, me crying in my 40minutes invasions….

[@spacesloth9529]

I think what I'm gonna do with the lore is start with all the dlc lore and try to understand it. Then I'm going to go through a lore playthrough of the base game and try to connect the dots now that I have the origins of everything. Kind of like how old hunters had the origin of a lot of things, I think that the shadow lands do as well. We have the origin of the crucible, rot, Marika, fingers and the list goes on. From usually works backwards with their stories like your solving a mystery and you end up at the beginning.

[@darkknight57691]

And I would love to see Rata tackle a Lore Run of Dark Souls 1 exactly like Saint described his someday. Would be so cool

[@xuanathan]

SAINT RIOT BELIEVES MY MARIKA GLOAM EYED QUEEN THEORY I AM WINNING SO HARD RN

[@chinup3253]

Ratatoskr has such a good invader mentality. I wish we all had the same approach 1:20:30

[@RicAdbur]

I was disappointed that there wasn't more/better new madness gear/spells.

@ratatoskr6324 Great podcast, too bad it had to stop when you guys started discussing lore. While I listening to it, I had a quick thought on why Ranni had to burn her body and why it was specifically Godwin who had to die. I think some other lore channels had mentioned where Godwin probably was going to be the lord consort of Ranni, but with more dlc revelations its possible Ranni figured out that following the path the fingers laid out for her, Godwin and Ranni would basically conjoin like Radagon and Marika. Seeing as how Rennala was abandoned by Radagon who was basically Marika's other half, she probably felt disgusted at the thought of having to become the very thing that brought sorrow to her mother. This also answers more to the reason why in the DLC its not Godwin but Radahn, since Godwin was never destined to be Miquella's consort. This also establishes a small connection between Ranni and Miquella, probably Ranni also wanted Godwin to die a true death since his half death was more due to her selfishness to only die in body alone. But for both of them Radhan was pretty much the reason they couldn't move forward in many ways. I'm still thinking if this in some ways is connected to the vow between Radahn and Miquella but haven't thought far enough for that connection yet. Edit: Another thing, is that either Messmer or Melina was also probably involved here, since Ranni's body is burnt and I doubt Destined death alone could be the reason, though I'm not even 50% sure of this, since we also see Iji dying covered in black flames and also a Godskin noble on the way to Ranni's corpse. But if it isn't Messmer/Melina, the godskins were more involved in the night of the black knives than initially thought, probably they were the reason Ranni got her hands on the rune of death (i.e if marika is no longer involved in godwin's assassination), since we also see them in Farum Azula. Since most other demigods were afraid of mailketh, only the godskins who want the gloam eyed queen back, would've fought Maliketh to steal the rune. Its very circumstantial, but one thing that always bugged me was the godskin duo's health bar, why is it only 1 bar? if its a duo, they both could've had two separate health bars like the gargoyles. It probably ties into how they could've stolen the rune of death.

[@HeadChaos0.63]

As a faith build i quicly realized the furnace golems were completely trivialized by ancient dragon lightning strike which

[@kcojco]

Please do another podcast, this was great!

[@pepticheese3265]

I power stanced curved greatswords for radahn and learning the dodge timing for his phase 2 was the most fun ive had on these games goated boss idc what pll think radahn the goat.

[@Vordb666]

lol I use the Tree Sentinel Set a lot solely because of Rusty’s video ranking the armor sets

[@DashSwordSlash]

So I was absolutely that guy who decided to start the DLC with my 100% completion character in new game +2. And yeah it slapped my ass, walking into new game +2 with zero of the blessings is an absolute fucking nightmare and I loved every minute of it I’m currently on new +3 for my second Playthrough of the DLC and slowly getting 100% completion on it as well It makes me wanna go back and start a new character and get to experience them in their base came to difficulty and just wipe the fucking floor with them 😅

[@RicAdbur]

I thought they patched out the thing where you use an invader to get down the divine bridge elevator