Hello and welcome back to my blog!
There is a crystal tunnel in the Caelid region of the map in Elden Ring. I reached it very early in the game upon opening a chest, but I decided to teleport away once I found the lost grace site. Now that I was much stronger, it was time to take the challenge.
The enemies found here are tough, especially one insect-like creature that has a powerful range attack. I had to kill them with my bow, using the caves to my advantage. Their ranged attacks can't be stopped with the shield.
It took me a lot of time to clear the entire cave, died a couple of times to that insect and reached the final room. I thought there would be a big chest or a good reward waiting for me, but instead, there was a powerful insect boss coated in strong crystal armour, which was quite resistant to my attacks.
It charges at you and stomps you. Grabs you with its two pointy ends and squishes you like a bug. Even my knight was unable to deal much damage to it.
The worst part was that it respawned me back to the grace at the beginning of the cave, and I had to come back here after spending a good 10 minutes just to be obliterated by it in less than a minute. xD
It was frustrating, and my countless failed attempts were painful to bear. At the end, I conceded my defeat and decided to move on. But I promised to come back later for this and kill this ugly creature. I was a bit sad about losing around 10K runes as well, but those can be gained back easily, just takes more grinding.
It will be safe to say that I don't use a magic or fire build, just a simple physical build with focus on raw strength, endurance and Dexterity. Which meant that the incantations are mostly useless for me. I killed a dragon earlier in the Dragonbarrow and decided to see what I could get in exchange for the Dragon Heart. It was just useless as I failed to meet the required faith and arc levels.
I remembered that there are many Evergaol bosses in the game, which proved to be quite tough in the beginning, and recently I killed one. So, I think that it may be a good idea to check other arenas like that. I went to Malefactor's Evergaol.
This one was Adan, Thief of Fire boss. He had an interesting low-range melee weapon and was slow as well, but had a fire spell incantation that he was spamming constantly. There were some very close calls. For example, look at the next screenshot. He was almost dead, his health was barely there, but he took me out. Sometimes I get excited reaching the end of the fight and lose my patience, and try to attack more than I should and get these types of frustrating failures.
But then after a few more close attempts, we both died at the same time lol. Good thing that the game registered it as a death and gave me the items it dropped.
He dropped his incantation called Flame of the Fell God, but it required 41 faith levels. WTF!? 41!! And I was on mere 10 haha. I am not gonna use this in this life. It wasn't even worth it.
I feel like this game trolls me so hard that it's funny.
Anyways, I just roamed around looking for more secrets in this world. And as I was in the Luirnia of the Lakes, I found the lady again who wanted me to get her necklace back from someone. But the only issue is that she gives me vague directions. Down the road in an abandoned house?? Lady, there is no road, the entire thing is a swamp, and every house is abandoned here lol.
I don't like looking up things on the internet, but this one feels like I have to get some help. I am afraid it is such a basic thing that I am missing.
It feels like all I did in this episode was to just redo all things I could not do in the past. One of them was the knight in the shiny armour patrolling the place. He had some deadly magic attacks, so this time I used the backstab multiple times to take him down. It was not a fair fight, but who cares, this game is hard enough, sometimes you've got to use these tricks...right?
I had to kill him because he looked important. He dropped a Dragon Cult Prayerbook, which I should give to a 'learned cleric' to get some more incantations. That's another useless item that I will never use lol.
I reached a place called Uld Palace Ruins, and the enemies were not impressed by me there. They had massive bows and arrows. Look at the size of this arrow stuck on my head.
A big statue of some random dude formed a perfect bridge to the other side. I believe this is the only way you can reach that side of the cliff, too.
It is interesting how the map of Elden Ring is soft-locked by interesting details. Some areas can be accessed only by portals, while others with secret caves or tunnels. Some through mysterious lifts what not. They know how to do a good level design and restrict access to some areas in clever ways.
Until next time...
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All the content is mine unless otherwise stated.
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Screenshots are from the game, Elden Ring.
