When I was a sophomore in college, I played Final Fantasy X. The game is very linear until you hit the end, at which point you can return to various locations via the airship and also go to a few new areas. One of these areas is the Omega Ruins.
The Omega Ruins is a difficult place - it's not necessary to go there to beat the game, and instead provides a kind of extra challenge. The monsters there are tougher than anywhere else, but if you just want to see the conclusion to the game, you don't have to go there.
I played through the Omega Ruins a lot. This being an RPG, generally the harder the enemy, the more experience points it gives, and so I was able to level up a lot by playing through the Omega Ruins. I leveled up a lot. So, Final Fantasy X's leveling system was the "sphere grid," a vast chart of different bonuses that would, say, increase your attack power by a certain amount, or your defense, your HP, or teach you new spells or abilities. It's actually just one grid, and the things that give different characters their different specialties is mostly where they start on the grid (Tidus, for example, gets a lot of speed upgrades early on).
As you gain experience, different character get more items to unlock spheres, progressing down the various spiraling tracks. At very high levels, the characters have unlocked enough of the grid to start getting to spheres the other characters have gotten, allowing a bit of an overlap and even or characters to get spells and abilities that were previously only available to a different character.
I got Yuna, the "healer" of the group, to a point where she was actually the strongest at melee hits with her staff, simply because, as the healer, she was pretty much always in the group and so was leveling up the fastest.
Point is: I think I've hit the Omega Ruins of Elden Ring.
Both actually require you to get the secret Haligtree Medallion, which, like the Dectus Medallion, comes in two halves. The first half is given to you by Albus, an Albinauric man who survived the massacre of his village. This starts a simple quest chain where you meet Latenna (and get her spirit ashes) and she tells you to find Sol Fortress, which is in the Mountaintop of the Giants. Beating the boss there lets you get the other half of the medallion, which then allows you to take the Grand Lift of Rold up to an area called the Consecrated Snowfield.
The Consecrated Snowfield begins as a sort of Gerudo Desert (from Ocarina of Time) challenge where visibility is super low. But once you get out of the blizzard area, it opens up to become visible. From here, there's a town in the north with a kind of puzzle/challenge where you need to go into an Evergaol in the town and light four candles, all while Black Knife Assassins patrol, invisible, and can basically one-shot you if they sneak up on you. The Sentry's Torch, purchaseable at the shack near the battlefield north of Leyndell (inside the outer wall, but not in the city proper) will help tremendously to spot these guys.
Lighting the four candles opens a gate to a teleporter that gets you to the branches of Miquella's Haligtree.
This one I haven't progressed far in - the branches are full of difficult jumps to descend, and you're surrounded by those rotund heralds seen in Leyndell (though there's an even bigger variant) as well as giant ants. Honestly, no individual enemy has been unfairly difficult, but there's basically no space to roll out of the way of attacks, making it far harder than it would be on flat surfaces.
Mohgwyn's Palace can be found by traveling to the west/southwest edge of the zone. There's a blood-covered transporter there that you can't enter until you beat the invader NPC - they're tough (at least on a caster) because they're insanely fast and relentless (and build up bleed with their attacks). Also, there's a runebear nearby that you really want to try not to aggro.
Mohgwyn Palace is actually the temple-like structure you can see from Siofra River in the distance. It's another area I haven't explored extensively - I kind of just went straight to the boss (and then used Comet Azur to blast him into next week - a strategy that works great on him, but is somewhat more limited on bosses that don't slowly walk toward you).
I'm pretty much at the boss of Crumbling Farum Azula, which as also been handing out Runes very generously. Ironically, despite being about 50 levels higher, I've found leveling up my Sorcerer character easier just because of the ample runes available and the relative power of his attacks. The tanky character can, genuinely, block attacks from bosses and keep fighting, but he could definitely use a bit more offensive capabilities (I'd love to get enough Endurance to wear the full Radahn set without needing the Arsenal Charm, but I think it's time to invest more in Faith and possibly Strength or Dexterity).
I exhibited some restraint, as I considered making a Prophet character with the intention of making them an Arcane dragon-priest, but for now I'm focusing on really getting my other characters where they want to be (honestly, the Sorcerer is pretty much fully effective - I'm two levels away from being able to swap out Radagon's Soreseal and still be able to use my Moonveil.)
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