Maybe It Was My Build?

 While I'm not done with Shadow of the Erdtree on my first character, I decided to take a couple others into the expansion to see if I might come across some fun armaments and playstyles that wouldn't require me to re-spec them.

I've been seeing a lot of complaints about the difficulty of the expansion, and have been wondering why there's such a response - I've killed many of the Remembrance bosses in a single attempt on the character I took in first, and have generally been pleasantly surprised that the expansion hasn't been Ringed City-level brutal.

But maybe it was my build.

Admittedly, I've only scratched the surface on these two. I took my Arcane/Faith character in and decided to try out a build involving the Beast Claw found on the random NPC in the woods south of the entrance to the Gravesite Plains (now that I have a better lay of the land, I suspect that the Church of Contrition if that's what it's called will be a first stop for most characters after getting the initial map fragment).

This character was built around Dracon Incantations, which are awesome when they can melt bosses, but they leave you profoundly exposed and drain basically all your FP in moments. So I actually wound up slapping on Radagon's Soreseal so that I could equip Rivers of Blood (which I had used on that character prior to respeccing for Elden Beast, so it was a +10) after multiple attempts trying to take that guy down.

I played around a bit on this, using the built-in skill and an Occult attunement, but I have to be honest - I feel like debuff-based builds must have been nerfed at some point.

The other character I took in was my primarily Intelligence-based character (actually my very first Elden Ring character). He uses lots of Sorceries but mainly focuses on the Darkmoon Greatsword, with its effective and efficient ranged cold blasts.

Overall I think he's decent, but perhaps not as powerful as my main guy (the self-healing from Blasphemous Blade, both its passive and Taker's Flame, cannot be overstated). Now that I know the quick and easy path up to Prospect Town and the Church of Benediction (and only just realized that the pit you drop into afterward is where you start the expansion) it will likely be an early stop on any character's visit to the land of shadows. I have found that the Blessed Blue Dew Talisman is a pretty strong choice for a spellcaster who has plenty of other combat options - I found that I basically always had the FP to activate the Darkmoon Greatsword's ability, and I could toss in a Loretta's Greatbow or a Rock Sling here and there if I didn't want to get anywhere near a foe (the bomb-lobbing Messmer Soldiers on the path to the first catacomb dungeon were no match for the range of Loretta's).

Anyway, Fog Rift Catacomb was pretty tough. While the dungeon itself felt difficult merely in your typical Soulsborne way - you needed to be quick to dodge, approach every corner with skepticism, and ration your flasks - I found the Death Knight boss at the end staggeringly difficult. I did eventually figure out it was easier to dodge his attacks by rolling into him, but unlike my jumpy melee guy who is happy to be right up next to the boss, this guy prefers a little distance - and medium distance might be where this guy is deadliest.

The worst part is that I had more than enough Runes to level up (something like 260k) and on one attempt he managed to kill me before I could grab them.

I think it only took me one or two tries the first time I went in there, but this took me, I'd guess, 6-8 tries, and the last attempt I was fully out of Crimson Tear flasks and just praying that I could get another one or two melee swings in (with an un-buffed sword - no time to buff it) before he killed me.

Now, maybe on future runs of this I'll put Fog Rift up there with Impaler's as one of those dungeons that you just hold off on until a little later. I think I only have three Scadutree blessings at this point.

One thing I am very curious about is where I can get some of the cool death magic sorceries that you see in the Land of Shadows - like the bouncing darts and the big missile that shoots several other missiles off of it.

I am planning to go see Count Ymir as soon as I can on this character so that I get plenty of Finger sorceries. One of the downsides of the way these games work is that you often can't get some of the coolest spells and weapons until late in the game. I'm wondering if there's a way to get to Ymir without beating Rellana, though at least in the most straightforward interpretation of the paths available to you, it seems she's required to get up there.