Elden Ring's Nonlinear Difficulty

 Weirdly enough, my level 130 sorcerer is having an easier time farming runes than my level 83 paladin. (To be clear, these are not actual class names - just how I'm describing the characters). In large part, that's due to the fact that my sorcerer has access to nearly every area of the game (maybe all of them, actually). He's also powerful enough that he can take down tough enemies with a burst of powerful magic.

I've been working on Ephael, Brace of the Haligtree, which is a sort of doubly secret area - you first need to get the Haligtree Medallion to access the Consecrated Snowfield, which then has portals that take you to Moghwyn Palace and the Haligtree (Ephael is the city built around the base of the tree - you need to make your way down from the branches, which have their own gateway boss).

There are some very tough enemies here - Cleanrot Knights who have either powerful spells or aggressive attacks, some of which can inflict Scarlet Rot - but most are sort of rank-and-file soldiers, and each drops 2-4k runes. As such, even when you need over 100k runes to level up, it doesn't take that many passes to get enough for a level.

My paladin character, though, is not quite there. He's reached the Mountaintop of the Giants and made it to Castle Sol, but that's an area with very tough enemies that don't actually drop many runes.

Essentially, there are places in any Souls games where enemies are not that difficult to defeat but also give a lot of Souls/Runes/Blood Echoes. I remember in Bloodborne, the path from Hemwick Charnel Lane's lantern to the Witch of Hemwick one (once you unlock the shortcut) is a great early/mid game farming location. Likewise, the stretch from where you defeat Micolash to Mergo's Wet Nurse's boss area.

But sometimes you hit points in the game where you'd need to truly do a mindless, long grind if you wanted to farm the... let's call them "experience points" to level up. These games also have a slow, incremental leveling system, so each level doesn't necessarily feel that significant.

With Ephael, given the fact that I'd tend to die at the same place, and often stepping toward a group of enemies with very powerful ballistae, it was pretty easy to go grab my runes, realize I had enough to level up, and then warp back to the Prayer Room site of grace, level, and start the process again (in fact, the very tough enemies that barred the way past that point can actually be run past, and you'll find yourself at a new site of grace shortly thereafter).

On the paladin character, I finally took down Astel, Naturalborn of the Void, which gave me a lot more trouble on a melee class than it had on my sorcerer. That netted me two levels, and I've started to boost his Dexterity as I think both the Winged Scythe and Treespear, which are the weapons I've focused on, scale best with Dex.

On the Sorcerer, I'm high enough level that I'm kind of searching for things to actually level up. I don't think I'll have that issue with the Paladin, who ideally wants high Vigor, Endurance, Faith, Dexterity, and Strength (and maybe a little Mind as well). I'm eager to hit a point where I can pour levels into him like I've been doing with the Sorcerer - I'd like to see how powerful he gets when he's got high numbers in all of those stats.