Elden Ring's Underdark and Up to the Mountains

 It's amazing to me how sometimes in Souls games I'll find some very difficult route to the next "bonfire" only to realize there was a fantastic shortcut all along.

Following the defeat of the two bosses in Leyndell (which is not the final area of the game, though you might assume that when you start off) I took another tour around the city, eventually discovering the way forward (it was in a direction I expected, though I'm glad I hung back and beat the area's bosses, as I needed an item off them to continue).

Following the defeat of Starscourge Radahn, I followed up with Ranni's quests at Ranni's Rise. I have to say, as the prerequisites for the secret ending, these are more involved than the Lord of Hollows ending for Dark Souls III (which I haven't actually ever gotten, because I still haven't taken down Midir or Gael, and thus haven't gone on to the Soul of Cinder).

One thing I'm really appreciating about Elden Ring is that it is genuinely easier (so far) than Dark Souls III. With the exception of the Draconic Tree Sentinel (whom you need to beat to get into Leyndell, unless there's some alternate route) I haven't ever really felt "stuck" on a boss. Rennala took me a few attempts (and ultimately I co-op'd it) but I've been able to take down most bosses in just 2-5 attempts, which I think is a pretty good sweet spot for challenging but not infuriating. I am playing a ranged character, of course, so I might be skewing things a little.

Anyway, Ranni's quests take you on a fairly extensive quest chain through Elden Ring's Underdark-equivalent, where you travel through ancient, ruined cities where, weirdly, the most dangerous foes are giant spheres (that you can usually wedge into a doorway so you can take potshots).

I do think that I'd recommend every character get some ranged capability. I think I might make a Samurai as my next character and see if I can make archery a viable primary combat option.

Anyway, Ranni's quest chain eventually has you fight a very eldrtich-looking alien monster, which wasn't terribly difficult. Far more difficult was the Lake of Rot that you need to cross before you can face it. This is basically a test to see how fast you can run across a horrific, pink-and-red lake of awfulness filled with basilisks (which, traumatizingly, have the same model more or less as they did in the Dark Souls games).

Something like 30 hours in and I have to say this is a remarkable achievement on the part of FromSoft. I'm skeptical as always about open-world games, and I don't think the game escapes all of that genre's pitfalls (the biggest being the overwhelming sense that there's an infinite number of things to do) but I also think that the open-world aspect of the game softens the hard edges of the Souls-like genre - there is so much to do that you can usually find something that is fairly manageable.

Rumble in the Capital: An Erdtree Rematch

 There's a trope that FromSoft has developed within a number of their titles. You've opened up some mysterious location, exploring down each corner, and suddenly, you find yourself somewhere familiar. It's not the same - the version of this location is a safe space filled with NPCs, or at least some degree of safety and comfort. But here, you find it weirdly abandoned, filled with lore-filled items that have bizarre implications.

Spoilers:

Radahn Down, and Into Leyndell, and the James Joyce of Video Games

 Well, I've defeated Starscourge Radahn, the massive warrior on a tragically normal-sized horse. While he's one of the great demigod bosses, Radahn's "legacy dungeon" is not really a dungeon - or at least not in such a way that requires you to gradually navigate it until you come to some epic boss battle. Instead, you just portal in and find a group of champions waiting for the Radahn Festival - a grand melee in which everyone comes together to fight the ancient champion.

The fight's arena is massive - the enormous desert that makes up the eastern third or so of Caelid is basically just one large boss room. Once you talk to the festival barker dude in the castle, the way opens to an elevator down to a portal that takes you into the boss arena.

There, Radahn will shoot these massive gravity arrows at you that basically one-shot you and are tough to dodge. While I'm just a shrimpy sorcerer, having a shield that at least blocks a decent amount of magic damage allowed me to tank the hits with only a sixth or so of my health, giving me time for what is the key to this fight:

There are tons of little summoning signs here that you can use to summon NPCs. While you need to put the hurt on the boss to beat him, that's going to be one of two jobs. The other is to summon these guys to fight for you. These include Blaidd, the werewolf-like knight, and Iron Alexander, the friendly pot-person. The NPCs basically replace any spirit summons you'd use for other fights, but they play the role of tanking Radahn while you go in for hits.

I'm playing a Sorcerer, so I would typically run up toward Radahn, summoning the first few NPCs while blocking the arrows, and then once he started with other (still ranged) attacks, I'd hop on Torrent so I could dodge them and then get in close enough that he switches to melee attacks. Then, it's a pattern of dodging attacks, summoning more NPCs (even if one dies, you can find other signs to summon them again) and then chipping away at his health with Rock Sling or other spells. He has nasty attacks, so I can only imagine what this will be like on a melee character. As a ranged one, you basically just need to worry about some of his big cone-attacks and one where he slams down and launches some gravity-beams at you (a good Torrent-sprint perpendicular to his attack should let you dodge them).

Radahn's defeat causes a massive shooting star to fall in Limgrave - I have yet to investigate, but I did finally get Ranni the Witch to show up at her tower and was able to start her quests (she tells you to investigate the crash site).

I also beat the Draconic Tree Sentinel, which is one of those fights I felt like I had come close to beating about three million times before I finally took him down. This opened up the Eastern Rampart of Leyndell, and I've been able to get into the capital city.

Here, I get a very Ringed City vibe, mainly in that it feels like there's an utterly massive stretch between sites of lost grace. The first enemies you encounter are some top-tier From Soft design - these odd trumpeters with spherical bodies and spherical headdresses that use their horns/trumpets as bludgeons or cast weird bubble-spells with them. These guys aren't actually terribly hard to kill, and while I still haven't been able to find the next site of grace, just going back and forth and killing enemies here has been a pretty hefty source of Runes - I think I leveled up like ten levels today.

Also, it was here that Melina took her leave of me - I still don't know what her deal is at all.

The open-world nature of Elden Ring means I'm almost surely not doing everything in the order that the designers expected. For instance, I killed a tree avatar in northern Caelid and got 90k runes at a level where I needed like 23k to level up - it was one of those fights where as long as I didn't get greedy, I just had to constantly circle the boss (also, hilariously, the fight starts in an area that is dense with large pots and trees, but by the end, the boss had cleared a wide-open field).

I might finally be graduating from the Meteorite Staff, as I have Lusat's and Azur's Glintstone Staves - while I don't have them upgraded enough to have a higher Spell Buff than the Meteorite Staff (I think I need Somber Smithing Stone 5 or 6 for each) I believe the broader bonus on Lusat's that makes spells cost more FP to do more damage might make up for it. That being said, I still use Rock Sling as my favorite boss-killing spell, and so Meteorite makes sense for that.

Also, a note on Ranni: she seems to have kind of a sinister vibe going on, but this is From Soft, so I can never really know for sure if the "darker" ending is every the "evil" ending. I think Demon's Souls might be the only one with a really clear good or evil option. I'm given to understand Elden Ring has something like 7 or 8 endings, so who knows.

I certainly don't think I've got a strong handle on the lore yet - I think I might just have to wait for VaatiVidya and the like to compile everything. There's so very much to this world, and I think for now I'm really just focused on getting my character strong enough to make it through all the challenges.

My experience has been that the game has fewer points of real frustration than earlier Souls-like games. My roommate, who has always bounced off of Dark Souls or Bloodborne after a single play session, has actually seemed to get into this one. I know there's been some discourse on whether Elden Ring is too hard to draw in new players to this type of game, but I think there has been a marked lowering of the difficulty - it's not that they made it easy, they just made it less crushingly difficult. And that might actually be the result of the open world. You really can just move past things and go elsewhere. Between that and the Spirit Ashes, I think there are a lot of pressure valves here.

Again, though, I don't really get worked up when other people don't like the things I do. I'm glad that From Soft gets to make these games - the video game equivalent of... I don't know, abstract art? Surrealism? I think that the topic of difficulty often gets bogged down in a sort of toxically-masculine dick-measuring contest, but whatever you think of the game's combat, I feel like these games engage with difficulty also in terms of narrative and even game systems. Is that insane? Or will Hidetaka Miyazaki be looked back upon as the James Joyce of video games?

Heroes of Krynn Nitty Gritty; Kenders and Lunar Magic

 Unlike Travelers of the Multiverse, which was basically just races, Heroes of Krynn gives us a race, a subclass, two backgrounds, and associated feats. While I did a broad review in my last post, here I want to get into the depths. You can read the UA here, though I'll be reproducing a fair amount of it to comment on specific elements.

We'll start with Kender. Kender are small humanoids who are said to look like humans with pointed ears. It seems very likely that the Kender are basically Krynn's version of Halflings, but their racial features differ. As with all of the post-Tasha's races, you'll be able to pick your ability score bonuses, and as established with Monsters of the Multiverse, despite being small, you still have 30 feet of movement. Kender are small and have the humanoid creature type.

Like Halflings, they have the Brave feature - this gives you advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the frightened condition.

Next, they have Kender Ace. When you hit 3rd level, you can reach into a container you're carrying or wearing as a bonus action and produce a randomized item. You can do this bonus action a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. When you do, you roll a d6, and this determines what you get.

1: 5d6 gold pieces

2: 1 simple weapon of your choice with the light property

3: 1 item of your choice off the adventuring gear table in the PHB that weighs no more than 1 lb and is worth no more than 1 gold.

4: One random trinket from the table in the PHB

5: Your choice of a crowbar or grappling hook

6: 1 item of your choice from the tools table in the PHB worth no more than 10 g.

    So, the weirdest thing about this is I could see this as a way to get a lot of extra money by producing random objects. It won't net you a ton of stuff, but in the early levels, this could really save/earn you a fair amount. This is not a terribly reliable trait, but I could definitely see some instances in which you pull out a random item that could be clutch.

Next, you have Taunt. This lets you, as a bonus action, unleash a barrage of insults at a creature within 60 feet that can hear and understand you. The creature makes a wisdom saving throw with a DC based on your Charisma, and if it fails it has disadvantage on attack rolls until the start of your next turn. You can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

    This is actually pretty good, though obviously best if you're a Charisma-based class. A bonus-action disadvantage can be a very useful thing to help your party survive, and if you're on a boss fight with a lot of charges left, you can use this for several rounds.

So, we have a class with two major features (plus Brave,) one of which I think is more flavorful than powerful (though again, it could be clutch) while the other has a very strong combat application.

    Lunar Magic:

Now, we come to the new subclass.

Lunar Sorcery I think fits pretty well as a source of magical power, and on Krynn, the gods of magic are associated with the world's three moons. There are some fun flavor concepts for how lunar sorcery looks and affects you when you cast it, like your pupils taking on the different phases of the moon or your body glowing with faint moonlight.

At 1st level, you get Moon Fire. You learn the Sacred Flame cantrip, which counts as a sorcerer cantrip for you but doesn't count against your cantrips known. In addition, you effectively get the acid splash effect with it, being able to hit two targets within 5 feet of one another with each cast. Sacred Flame is a solid cantrip - between the radiant damage and the fact that creatures don't benefit from half- or three-quarters- cover from it. Can't complain.

You also, at 1, get Lunar Embodiment. You gain new spells as you level up that don't count against your sorcerer spells known (there seems to be an error here where they say you get Death Ward, which I believe is a 4th level spell, at 5th level, but hey, it's UA). You only get one of these spells per spell level (1-5, in theory,) depending on your lunar phase. When you finish a long rest, you can choose whether you're in Full Moon, New Moon, or Crescent Moon phase, and this tells you which spells you get.

Full Moon: Faerie Fire, Moonbeam, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, and Mass Cure Wounds.

New Moon: Dissonant Whispers, Darkness, Bestow Curse, Evard's Black Tentacles, and Mislead

Crescent Moon: Sanctuary, Blindness/Deafness, Phantom Steed, Hallucinatory Terrain, Dream

You also get to cast each spell you get from this once for free per long rest, though you can also cast them again with spell slots.

    So, we sort of have a class version of the Eladrin's season-changing feature. Clearly this spell list isn't final, but I think the new model of extra spells for sorcerers is a very smart one, continuing the pattern from the Tasha's subclasses.

At level 6, you get Lunar Boons. Each lunar phase is now associated with two schools of magic. Full Moon is Abjuration and Conjuration, New Moon is Evocation and Necromancy, and Crescent Moon is Divination and Transmutation. When you use a Metamagic option on a spell that is either of a school associated with your current phase, or if you use it on one of the spells from the lunar phase spell list, you can reduce the sorcery points required to pay for that metamagic by 1 (minimum of 0). You can use this reduction a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

    So, Sorcerers love to conserve sorcery points when possible, and this effectively gives you your Proficiency bonus' worth of extra Sorcery Points - though it does push you toward those particular spells. Still, with two schools of magic per phase, your options are somewhat open.

Also at 6 you get Waxing and Waning. As a bonus action, you can spend one sorcery point to change your lunar phase to a different one. This is quite nice - relatively cheap to realign yourself if you find yourself needing to use other spells.

At 14, you get Lunar Empowerment. Whenever you choose a lunar phase, you get the following benefit associated with that phase:

Full Moon: You shed bright light for 10 feet and dim light for another 10. Any creature in the bright light of your choice gets advantage on saving throws.

New Moon: You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks and if you are in dim light or darkness, attack rolls have disadvantage against you.

Crescent Moon: You have resistance to Necrotic and Radiant damage.

    So, these are all potentially very useful. There are basically two ways for monsters to harm you, and that is by attacking you or forcing you to make saving throws, and you can swap between defenses against those with a sorcery point and a bonus action. The Crescent Moon bonus is, of course, worthless if you're an aasimar, but not many people are. The Full Moon one benefitting your allies is also quite nice (stack up with the party's paladin to make your saving throws very strong).

Finally, at level 18, you get Lunar Phenomenon. As a bonus action, or as part of the bonus action to swap phases with Waxing and Waning, you can use the power of your lunar phase.

Full Moon: Each creature within 30 feet of you of your choice must make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC or be blinded until the end of its next turn, and one creature of your choice in the area regains 3d8 hit points.

New Moon: Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw against your spells ave DC or take 3d10 necrotic damage and have its speed reduced to 0 until the end of your next turn, and you become invisible until the end of your next turn or until you make an attack or cast a spell.

Crescent Moon: You teleport to an unoccupied space within 60 feet that you can see, and you gain resistance to all damage until the start of your next turn.

You can a phase's bonus action once for free per long rest, and can spend 5 sorcery points to use it again.

    All of these feel pretty good emergency buttons - indeed, all make it easier to escape foes, and you can potentially lock down a lot of enemies - a 30 foot radius is pretty huge. As a note: you get a free use of "a phase's bonus action," which to me implies you get one use of each of these for free per long rest - which makes it much better.

Lunar Magic is not simple. There's a lot to go over here, and I think it'll require some careful strategic choices as to which phase to default to, and when you'll want to change it. I think the multi-phase idea fits very well with a lunar theme, and I also kind of like that there's a reason to track which school your spells are. This is a complex and versatile subclass, though I expect we'll see some tinkering and revision given how complex it is.

Unearthed Arcana: Heroes of Krynn

 Well, they aren't playing coy. Also, I called it!

The latest Unearthed Arcana brings a race, a Sorcerer subclass, and a few backgrounds and feats, all based in the world of Krynn, also known as Dragonlance.

Dragonlance is a world I'm not super familiar with, though I believe it was the most popular D&D setting in the 1980s, before the Forgotten Realms was adopted as the sort of default setting. Fizban is a character from that setting, and Wizards of the Coast recently reached a legal settlement with the Hickmans, who created it (they also originally created Ravenloft, but I think the rights there were more firmly in WotC's hands,) so I was pretty confident we'd see this brought in.

The Unearthed Arcana gives us the Kender, a diminutive race that seems to be Krynn's equivalent of Halflings, though perhaps with some Gnomish or Fey flavor.

Kender have the Halfling's Brave feature, but they also have a really fascinating one called Kender's Ace, which allows them, a few times per day, to pull random, supernaturally generated objects out of their pockets, which might be small light weapons, gold coins, tools, trinkets, and simple adventuring gear. They also have the ability to taunt foes and make them less effective fighters - granting them disadvantage on attack rolls for a round.

The UA also gives us Lunar Sorcery.

Lunar Sorcery is built around three phases of the moon. Like the Clockwork Soul and the Aberrant Mind, Lunar Sorcerers have additional spells, but it's three sets of them that change depending on the Sorcerer's lunar phase - which they choose like an Eladrin chooses its seasons once per long rest (at later levels you can use sorcery points to change it). Transitioning between Full Moon, Crescent Moon, and New Moon, the phases have various benefits that are themed around light, darkness, and balance.

Next, we come to backgrounds.

Mages of High Sorcery (renamed from Wizards of High Sorcery given that there didn't used to be so many spellcasters) is a world-spanning organization of spellcasters that includes basically anyone who had to learn their magic - Wizards, Bards, and Warlocks, though also including Lunar Sorcerers. One would assume this could include Artificers and Eldritch Knights and such. The Mages come in three varieties, with different colored robes based on Krynn's three moons - White Robes are good-aligned, Red are neutral, and Black are evil.

Knights of Solamnia, then, include Fighters, Paladins, and other martial classes (as well as Valor/Swords Bards). The knights are dedicated to pretty strong lawful good ideals. The knights have three orders - the Order of the Crown, the Sword, and the Rose, which emphasize different ideals.

Like we've seen in the Magic the Gathering settings, these backgrounds come with some extra, power-increasing features, which are feats. Each background gives you a feat at level 1 - the Initiate of High Sorcery gives you a cantrip and 1st level spell based on your affiliated moon (you get several choices for each). The Squire of Solamnia gives you martial weapons and medium armor, and a couple other benefits to mounted combat and a reaction to help friends on saving throws.

Each of these then lets you pick up a second feat at level 4 or higher that is based more around you specific order within the organization.

There's also another feat-path connecting you to a divine source, which starts with Divinely Favored, which grants you Thaumaturgy and a 1st level spell based on your alignment, and then at level 4 you can pick up Divine Communications, which gives you several languages (including Celestial as a mandatory choice) and the ability to cast Augury and Commune.

    One of the most striking things about this UA is how often alignment comes up as a concept. In previous editions of D&D, alignment had a more significant role in mechanics - paladins, for example, all had to be lawful good, and if they weren't, their powers wouldn't work. 5th Edition has tended to look at alignment as more of a general descriptor of the character's overall "vibe" with next to no real impact on the game itself.

Here, though, we see that certain feats and options will only work if you have a particular alignment. If you want to get Adept of the Black Robes, you cannot have a good alignment (at least you don't have to be evil).

This, to me, suggests that Dragonlance might be developing an identity as the "alignment matters" setting.

Anyway, I think this is tantamount to announcing a Dragonlance campaign setting book. They did say that this year would see two classic settings released, and judging from Travelers of the Multiverse, I think there's a very, very strong chance that we're looking at Spelljammer and Dragonlance for 2022.

New World of Warcraft Expansion Announcement April 19th

 We've been speculating for a while about when we'd actually hear about the next WoW expansion, and now we have a date: April 19th.

Given that 9.2 is already out, this is a bit farther down the line than I think some of us had expected, but I believe this will be the date that the last LFR wing for the Sepulcher of the First Ones comes out, so that might be judged as the moment Shadowlands, as an expansion, is truly "done."

Shadowlands is an expansion that I have profoundly mixed feelings about. It started off very strong - I think 9.0 was among, if not the best expansion-launching patch we've ever had. But the expansion suffered from a slow rollout of content, not to mention the meta-narrative problems involving the scandals at Blizzard. I don't know how much that affected the average gamer's experience of the expansion, but it definitely did for me.

I don't know exactly to what degree the expansion's shortened patch list was the result of the pandemic and how much was planned this way, but I did truly think that after the disastrous Warlords of Draenor that Blizzard would never again make an expansion with only three raids (to be fair, Castle Nathria felt more like a full raid than an "intro raid" like Highmaul, and that distinction has been somewhat fuzzier in recent years - but the number of raids in Shadowlands does remain the same as that of Warlords).

But, setting aside critiques and disappointments (see, I was never really on board for Warlords of Draenor, but I really wanted Shadowlands to be as amazing as the premise promised) let's talk about what comes next.

Unlike Legion and BFA, I don't think there's been a really strong hint moving forward about what's coming next. Legion was awash in various implications that the Old Gods, and N'zoth in particular, might be up to something, and BFA was filled with a theme of death and death magic. Shadowlands has mostly, it seems, been focused on its own themes and objectives, and expanding out the cosmic story of World of Warcraft.

But I doubt that they'd follow this up with another Planescape-like journey into metaphysical planes. It seems like we need to have a return to the grounded reality of Azeroth.

So, practically everyone has unanimously concluded that we'll be getting the long-speculated Dragon Isles expansion. It's been twelve years since Cataclysm launched, which was the last time that dragons were really front-and-center (and, frankly, I think Cataclysm's "elementals in chaos" theme was actually the bigger vibe of that expansion - Deathwing was the first of the failures to repeat the success of Arthas as a villain) so I think the game could re-visit that. There's no clear big bad for such an expansion (unless Galakrond were somehow brought back) but, then, there wasn't for Shadowlands (though I hope that if it's a new character they avoid the beefy dude-bro feel that undermined how cool the Jailer could have been).

I also know that WoW has a lot of classes to balance, but we haven't had a really great incentive to create a new character since Legion - apologies to those who love the allied races. I do think a new class is more practical than new specs for each class - the latter would seem to mean less work until you consider that that'd mean four times as many new specs.

We'll know come April 19th!

The Scope of Elden Ring's World

 One thing that has been kind of fun about playing Elden Ring has been a sense feeling around in the dark. Normally, I play Soulsborne games long after they were first released, and my impulse is to try to do everything "right" the first time.

Here, though, I'm bowling through the content with little sense of how it will conclude. I don't know that I have all the best spells or equipment (though grabbing the Meteorite Staff early on and then going back for Rock Sling was probably a good call).

I have done a bit more exploration, though, and at this point I've gotten a couple map fragments that first opened up the whole Liurnia region (I had been missing the western region above the lake) and then I've entered the Altus Plateau and, I think, the capital city of Leyndell (and have very quickly come to realize that I should level up a lot more before I try to do much there).

I think at this point that I've got a pretty solid chunk of the map exposed, though one thing I've noticed is that my route - kind of a clockwise progression from Limgrave to Liurnia and now Altus and Leyndell (man, lot of L names) - but I haven't felt much of a "questline" to go east from Limgrave to Caelid.

Leyndell has a very final-region feel to it, being the capital of the Lands Between and seeing how it's awash in golden light from the nearby Erdtree - I've found that a lot of games make the final area more heavenly in appearance than hellish. But there is more to the map for us to come across.

In terms of bosses, I found a sort of outdoor dungeon (similar to the one at the bottom of the Weeping Peninsula south of Limgrave) north of Raya Lucaria, which I believe is the Carian Manor, and beat a boss there. Shortly thereafter, when I returned to Roundtable Hold, the silent bodyguard for Gideon Ofnir, named Ensha, attacked me. I killed him and then Roundtable Hold reset to its normal state, except that I got Ensha's creepy armor.

Just based on the notion that you need 70 intelligence to cast Rennala's Full Moon sorcery suggests that the eventual level you're expected to hit by the end of the game is probably higher than Dark Souls III, but I still don't really know how far into the game I am. I've got two Great Runes, of which I think there are five to collect, but I don't know how far things go after that.

So far I haven't done much alt-playing. I have my Confessor who has basically just met Melina and actually beat one of the first mini-dungeons before even talking to her (realizing I was sitting on a few thousand Runes before I could level up was a little scary, to be honest, especially when they were all stuck in the boss room where you fight the werewolf miniboss, but I managed to collect them again on each attempt and eventually win).

Even though my Astrologer character doesn't have a 100% block shield, I've found that with 85% you still reduce the incoming damage to so little that it's worth it to block and get a block counter attack - this, honestly, is one of the most satisfying new gameplay features for them to introduce, and makes me excited to play a more melee-focused character.

I am curious to see if they make Elden Ring a series rather than a one-off like Bloodborne or Sekiro (still crossing fingers that we do get a Bloodborne II, but the fact that it's Sony-exclusive could potentially make that less likely).

Anyway, I thin that at least so far the strength of the Souls-like combat system has made me more tolerant of the open-world elements that I sometimes find a little overwhelming. I haven't really gotten into the crafting system, which is something I have gotten less and less enthusiastic about in games over the years, but I also don't think I'm crippled by not always crafting things.