Elden Ring Diary Entry #10: Into the Underdark
The General Radahn fight ended up being not very hard at my level. The hardest part of the fight was just getting to him on the battlefield without getting btfo by his arrows. Once I figured out the timing to dodge his arrow attacks, and summoned the homies to help me, he went down pretty fast. I see people saying stuff like "Oh I'm not gonna use the summons, that's cheating" but I'm not above taking whatever help the game gives me.
After defeating Radahn, I rode up north to a fort full of ghosts and vampire bats that will bite your fucking head off if you're not careful. I just ran past the bats because honestly fuck those guys, and climbed to the top of the fort to get the other half of the medallion to operate the Grand Lift of Dectus (even though I had already taken the back path to the Atlas Plateau). Poking around in the fort a little more, I found Radagon's Soreseal, which seems like a pretty freaking badass charm. It gives +5 to most of your stats, in exchange for taking increased damage. The +5 to my Vigor gave me 200 HP more, and the +5 to my Endurance let me wear some heavier armor, so I think the juice is worth the squeeze (not to mention the +5 to STR and DEX boosting my weapon damage).
On the way to use the Dectus medallion, I took a little side path up this hill and found the freaking Eye of Sauron on top of this tower. Whenever I got close to it, it hit me with madness, and then I got swarmed by rats, so I started looking for side paths. The cliff around this area was pretty sheer except for the main path, but I finally found a little rock outcropping I could jump on and get around behind it. From there I found some rocks to hide behind until I could get close to it, and then climbed up and killed all the weirdos there and shut off the eye. Once it was disabled, I went to the Flame-Frenzied Town, the Church of Inhibitions, and the Converted Fringe Tower and cleaned out all the goodies there. I got another grape while I was there, so I checked a wiki to find the locations of grape lady and gave her all the grapes. She seems nice.
After a quick elevator ride, I did a bit of exploring around the Atlas Plateau. I'd come here earlier through the Magma Wyrm cave, but I just grabbed a site of grace and bailed out without really looking around much. I rode all the way up to the capital entrance and beat two Tree Sentinels. That was a cool "Look how far you've come" moment, haha. I found
THE EVER BRILLIANT GOLDMASK! chilling out on a bridge. He seems like a homie. I told Brother Corwym where to find him and then we all chilled out for a bit and pondered the Erdtree. I also rode over to the Mount Gelnir region to see what was up over there for a minute, and then headed back to the Mistwood Forest to find the entrace to Nokron.
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Nokron was cool. I got to do some Assassin's Creed shit and parkour around on some rooftops. Had a "Don't trust anyone, not even yourself" moment, fighting Shadow Link. I found the Mimic Ashes which seems pretty badass. I like that it takes HP instead of FP to cast, I've got 11 +5 flasks at this point, so I can easily spare the HP, but I haven't invested much into FP because I just like hitting people with my sword. I found the thing that Ranni wanted from Nokron, and also fought the Regal Ancestral Spirit while I was down there. He was tough, and my Mimic Ashes were kinda crap for that fight because my mimic just kept running through the fire like an idiot. I feel like my mimic knows me too well, smdh. :'( After a few tries, I managed to hack my way through all his heals and win the fight though.
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Continuing Ranni's questline, I went to the inverted Dracula's Castle, which was a pretty sweet location. I unlocked Renna's Rise and went back into the underworld to do battle with some giant ants. Yo, we EDF now! I finally found some Somber Smithing Stones(7) for fighting some gross-ass centipede thing and upgraded my Meteoric Ore Blade to +7. Feeling badass, might delete later:
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Then I fought some Crucible Knights in Nokron and got knocked back down to Earth. Those bastards can lick my taint.
Total Time Played: ~52 hours
Current Character: Lv. 74 Samurai