Elden Ring FAQ

Hello and thank you for watching me play Elden Ring!

Q: Is this your first playthrough of Elden Ring?
A: No, I played the game blind upon release, offstream to avoid spoilers.  My first playthrough of Elden Ring lasted 160 hours.  I am familiar with most of the base game world and story.

Q: Are spoilers allowed in the chatroom?
A: I am already familiar with the lore and locations of the base game, so I do not consider any detail of the base game to be "spoilers".  I will frequently discuss the background lore and worldbuilding of the game with chat, and new details and perspectives are welcome.

In the DLC area (Land of Shadow) I will be playing blind.  Please do not try to tell me what's around the next corner or where the next boss is.  For major sections of the DLC I will not look at chat in order to preserve my own experience.

Q: Are you doing any sort of Challenge Run?
A: Yes.  There are a tremendous amount of item and build options in Elden Ring, basically all of which are very fun.  To keep the combat fun and challenging for myself, I like to restrict my available tactics so that I have to master enemy movesets and that I am not tempted to over-rely on "convenient" methods for beating difficult encounters.

Leveling and armament upgrades are restricted as follows:
At start, I may only level to RL10 and upgrade armaments to +3 (+1 for Somber Stone armaments).

To increase the cap, I must acquire major story items. Each item acquired increases the rune level cap by +10 and the armament upgrade cap by +3 (+1 for Somber Stone armaments).  This rule is to prevent me from over-leveling content and trivializing it, as well as to give me an impetus to seek out the major story items of the game.  The following items or actions increase my level cap:
Godrick's Great Rune
Great Rune of the Unborn
Radahn's Great Rune
Rykard's Great Rune
Morgott's Great Rune
Mohg's Great Rune
Malenia's Great Rune
Mending Rune of Perfect Order
Mending Rune of the Fell Curse
Mending Rune of Death-Prince
Dark Moon Greatsword
Seeking audience with the Three Fingers

DLC items: None.
The following tactics and equipment are disallowed:

Shields of any kind (blocks and guard counters with non-shield weapons are allowed)
Parrying with any armament
ALL sorceries and incantations
Sprit Ashes / Summoning (except if required for a questline)
Crouching / pressing L3

Q: Are you following a particular build for this playthrough?
A: I'm focusing on a "quality" (equal Str + Dex) physical damage build.  The build will be able to use a wide variety of weaponry with these stats, but I will primarily use the Zweihander.  The build will make good use of consumables (grease, firebombs, knives, etc) that scale off the str/dex stats as well.  My level will be determined by the overall game state (see rules below).

Starting class: Vagabond
Stats:
VIG: 45
MND: 10
END: 20
STR: 44
DEX: 44
INT: 9
FTH: 9
ARC: 7

Q: Why not use the GREATSWORD???
A: It's all about that POKE.  Also, the greatsword is substantially heavier, though it does have better reach and deal more damage per swing.

Q: Have you played FromSoftware games before?

A: My first FromSoft RPG was Demon's Souls on the PS3.  Since then, I have played every major release by FromSoftware.  The first FromSoft game I ever played was Armored Core 2 in the year of our lord 2000.

Q: How would you personally rank FromSoft's RPGs?
1: Elden Ring
2: Dark Souls
3: Dark Souls 3
4: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
5: Dark Souls 2
6: Bloodborne

I didn't particularly like Bloodborne.  I still think all of the above are great games, especially Dark Souls 2.  It's the only Dark Souls game with fully-implemented weapon dual-wielding!