Elden Ring (George RR Martin and From Software)

Are you definitely using the right Shackle? There's Margits Shackle and Mohgs Shackle.

It can also only be used in the first phase of the fight, and I think you have to be reasonably close to him. It has a smaller AOE than Margits Shackle.

Pretty sure it won't work from outside. Inside, yeah it doesn't hold him down for long. It's something you can use twice in the first phase to get a few quick hits (or one big hit) before he pops back up again.

You're in the late game. Fewer and less effective cheap tactics to use on bosses. Use the shackle to give yourself time to wind up for a big attack or hit a big combo, but other than that it's not something I'd be relying on too much for the fight.

Ah right, sorry, wasn't aware of that cheese. I thought you meant the shackle wasn't working as it was actually intended to. In that case, while not specifically noted in the recent patch notes, one of the bug fixes is "Fixed a bug that allowed enemies to be attacked from outside the fog in certain areas." So perhaps stopping the shackle from working on Mohg outside the fog gate is one of those fixes.

Just cleared Radahn. Took a few goes but nothing too bad. I believe he was nerfed in an earlier patch?

Really enjoying everything, but I haven't found it as challenging and other Souls games yet.

So I decided to give a second playthrough a go because I wanted the Ranni ending, first playthrough was with what would be considered a quality build, pretty much all mele, this one I went with a mage build and I have to say the mage playthrough was a lot smoother, you just have so many options for dealing with all the different scenarios the game presents, having powerful ranged options makes clearing out castles, dungeons and caves so much easier, you can also avoid most of the bullshit traps they set for you, which litter the latter half of the game.

I also had little trouble with any of the major bosses, I didn't have to cheese anything, beat fire giant, draconic tree sentinel (the one outside the capital)Niall, and Malekith all on the first go, beat godfrey in only a couple of try's and beat radagon and elden beast in half the time it took me the first time around.

I suppose the downside of playing as a mage is it gets kind of boring, once you beat rennalla, which is fairly early on, you get her staff which is the best staff in the game, that took me through the whole game, and for when it did get up close and personal moonveil was my go to, the special on that weapon was ridiculous and very very fast, they were the only two weapons I used so It does lack variety, I also only used a couple of sorceries, glinstone pebble and rock sling took care of 99% of situations.

Got it done in around 40 hours, first playthrough was well over a 100 hours but I did more exploring.

I'd recommend mage if someone is struggling and wants a smoother, easier experience, you have options for everything and magic is very powerful in Elden Ring, you can pretty much trivialize most of the game as a mage I found.

Once you make a bit of progress and get some decent upgrades, spell cast will be fairly overpowered. Especially if you combine it with some of the more powerful spirt summons. I am playing through as melee as i prefer that, but I might respec for my NG+ playthrough.

If you don't like grindyness then you would do well to refrain from collecting plants. Biggest mistake I could have made was thinking that they would become useful at some point...

Yeah there can be a slight delay between pressing the button and starting to run, but as per your edit, keep your equip load in Medium Load which will help. Levelling endurance will increase the load you can carry, and also extend your stamina bar to run longer or dodge/attack more.

Any pointers on the best bosses/areas for getting summoned?

Have not been able to get summoned at all yet, and I prefer not to invade.

Any tips for Godfrey in Leyndell lads? Finally gonna go back and try beat him as I want to progress that part of the story.

I fought him a few times before but his weapon attacks where **** me up.

Cheers only seeing this now but beat himself and Morgott last night anyway. Onto the mountains!

Have you played any of the other Soulsborne games? I am a fan in general and enjoying Elden Ring a lot but wouldn't say it will be my favourite.

It's hard to see GRRM's influence on the story tbh. The story feels pretty on par with FromSoftware's other games. It is probably the best lore and world-building of all their games, but it's still presented in the FS way, where most of the history and links are in item descriptions, environmental storytelling etc, to the point where you only fully understand the story and implications of everything in the second playthrough.

It's very much a FS story with GRRM's touches, rather than a GRRM story in a FS game.

I still think the best description of FS's stories is how you defeat a random boss and with their dying breath they say "Forgive me, Zanzibart..." and you have no idea who they or Zanzibart are.

Maybe I'm just bad but I lose runes all the time when I play because there's so much BS in this game. Like you walk through a random doorway and surprise! it's a boss fight that you had no way of knowing was there and you're under levelled for it for so now you have 2 options. Spend hours trying to win the fight or say goodbye to the runes. Plus no matter your level most enemies, even big chunky ones that are like mini bosses give you at most 2k runes or a lot less. When I need 80k or 90k runes to level up once there's no way I'm managing to collect that many without specifically farming.