Check out the DLC continuation of this run! ► ruclips.net/video/qyTTHLpzO0A/видео.html Copyright vs Fangames (aka best video I've ever made) ► ruclips.net/video/1SMZdUBj0YQ/видео.html Shield-only All Bosses compilation ► ruclips.net/video/cFTGHxml2OY/видео.html Plateau Peak's shield-only video ► ruclips.net/video/xsC3Cx5H5JA/видео.html
You should do a challenge play with backlogs. Oh, I got it. You have to summon only him to help you with every boss! Just scheduling the boss fights will be a challenge. lol but I would definitely watch it because you remind me of him for some reason.
Just curious but would you consider stuff suiciding to be fair under the rules you were using? Like say the Balls near Lenne's Rise falling off a cliff....repeatedly for 1954 runes......
Dude... me to... I've litterally played from morning to night, only to get off, think about it as I lay down, and my wife tells me I say weird shit when I sleep. She doesn't speak good English but I know im in the lands in-between
@@Inhuman115 I wake up really early while my wife and son are asleep and stay up late to play. I have even been cutting work short so I can play hahahhah
The issue with Godskin Duo (and the double crucible knights) is that they weren't designed together. Ornstein and Smough work because one is fast and the other is slow, they cover each other's weaknesses but you can still split them apart. The fights mentioned above don't have that. They're just as fast as each other and their AI wasn't designed to work together. It's patently bullshit.
@@betoalema irrelevant to the point i was making, and it doesn't change the fact that they're both constantly doing shit, sticking together and covering each other. Also doesn't justify the double crucible knights, triple crystalians or any other "throw multiple bosses at you" fight.
They are designed together though? If they weren't both would ruch you and combo you to death. Noble is the first to get agressive while Apostle throows Fireballs unless you are right in front of him. You can even summon Bernard from Volcano Manor for that fight. Bosses like Duo Pumkin Heads aren't designed together because they both rush you without stopping in a Tiny Ass Arena
@@Nukesnipe I don't know why people have HUGE issues with multiple bosses at once. Sure it's harder than usual, but.. I can't be the only person in the world who attempts to keep every enemy in their cone of vision, and use sound cues when they're behind me/otherwise out of sight, to know when to dodge
"I don't know where she was when Mohg kidnapped Miquela" - If I understood correctly (and I might not have), she was fighting Radahn when Mohg kidnapped Miquela, and only left Miquela's side in the first place because Radahn fixing the firmament in place in some way disrupted the Haligtree's functioning.
As far as I understand, when she bloomed the scarlet rot on Radahn to end their fight she fell into a deep sleep. She was taken back to the Haligtree by one of her Cleanrot Knights and she was still asleep when the player arrived in her arena. It's likely Miquella was kidnapped while she was asleep.
@@Toasty_93 thats so cool. Definitely a Maria reference. But what exactly was radahn fixing? I just know his actions have something to do with fighting astel and the fallingstar beasts.
@@mt2r-music probably a bad translation from his own language (I’m going to go with spanish because fijar and fixing sound very similar but don’t mean quite the same). So he probably means holding them in place.
Hey I know that guy in the intro! It's me! Awesome video, it's always cool to see a different approach to a challenge run, and thanks for the shoutout!
@@Literally___Me well skumnut made this run look lame as he's using only rickety shield and no bleed or frost Edit: as his better run used rickety shield not indigenous clown
"I think her attack patterns get slightly slower in the second phase" It's because you switched to the cold-bleed shield for phase 2, cold debuffs enemies attack speed by 20% which would make a noticeable difference there
46:10 using Let Me Solo Her's footage is a bad idea, his second dodge ONLY works because he's a phantom in another host's world. This makes Malenia's tracking different because of the latency. She basically is tracking half a second behind where you actually are. A similar thing happens in that video where he often rolls backwards against triple slash but it doesn't catch him, for the same reason. The correct method is to circle around her 270+ degrees before rolling perpendicular to her, which he doesn't do.
@@ingeniousclown Conversely, your hitstun on her is also delayed, so you can't interrupt her attacks easily. Co-op Malenia feels like a very different fight to me :)
Light rolling is also really important for dodging that way due to the added distance, I tried rolling backwards against the fast triple slash with mid-rolls and always got caught, with light rolls it's a little tight but possible. Not exactly easy to do with 40 equip load in shields alone.
@@theroxenes light roll is a slight improvement at about 10% extra distance, rolling back against triple slash still isn't consistent with light roll though. Only as a phantom it is, but then it's consistent on mid roll too.
13:15 *clears throat* ~WELL ACTUALLY~ you can avoid fighting the Draconic Tree Sentinel. Fia's questline gives you access to a teleporter that takes you inside the capital (East Capital Rampart grace). Not sure if you have to beat the Lichdragon or just give her the Cursemark of Death, but you definitely need two Great Runes. Granted this requires taking out Radahn, the Valiant Gargoyles, completing the Nokron bit of Ranni's questline, the Divine Tower of Liurnia, go through Deeproot Depths, and defeat Fia's Champions just to skip one bossfight.
You don't actually have to do any of Fia's questline, the teleporter will activate after killing her champions who are there no matter what, but you do still have to fight Radahn, Mimic Tear, Valiant Gargoyles, and Fia's Champions just to skip the singular Draconic Tree Sentinel. In a minimum boss run, the choice is obvious.
while this is true the odds of a new player finding this before Draconic Sent is very low, like I almost missed fia's entire quest and a few bosses because while yes I found the gargoyles and beat them I missed the coffin in the boss room until a friend told me about it
@@SpaceElvisInc It's actually not too hard to get in that way if you follow Ranni's questline after Raya Lucaria, in fact that's how I got into the capital on my first blindish playthrough.
This was actually the only way I got into the capital lmao and I found all this out on my own. I didn't even find the Sentinel lol Even so, having found all the bosses I did, I didn't have to panic about having 2 great runes. Everything has been easy except for the dual gargoyle fight before the capital.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is also another teleporter at the top of a tower on south Limgrave, it gets you to a big lift on Leyndell that connect directly to the copy of the roundable hold.
Having done a shield-only run myself now, there's a few shields/skills/talismans he didn't use or mention I want to shout out to anyone else who wants to try: -The Jellyfish Shield has 100% physical block and it's WA gives you +20% damage. Once you get the stats to dual-wield shields it's almost always worth using if you aren't using the other shield weapon arts. I personally didn't find Shield Crash to be all that safe to use for most bosses, so I used an off-hand Jelly shield and just spammed R1's or jump attacks with my mainhand shield. Because shields have pretty poor scaling, you don't lose much damage one handing compared to the huge boost Contagious Fury gives you. -The Spiralhorn Shield is an infusable innate bleed small shield. It hits faster than a medium shield and I found it to be mostly superior for status proc fights. It also weighs nothing, so once their status resistance gets high you can just swap it out without losing much weight limit. I'm not sure if it's in my head, but small shields also seem to have more forward momentum for jump attacks and less landing lag. I used it to punish a few of the "unpunishable" attacks of Mogh's he mentioned - jump attack immediately after the explosion and if necessary roll his turnaround attack. -Speaking of small shields, this run didn't use parries. I'm not sure if he considers parrying non-Maliketh bosses cheese, but bosses like Morgott and Malenia that gave him trouble are much easier if you bring a parry shield with the Golden Parry Ash of War. Some of Morgott/Margit's attacks have such big delays that I found you can whack him and queue up a parry to get free damage and perfect parry timing. -The Shard of Alexander/Warrior Jar Shard is extremely worth getting if you are going to use damaging shield skills, particularly the One-Eyed Shield. -I didn't find Shield Crash great for bosses but it annihilates tarnished NPCs. The AI does not seem coded with a good response to it. I don't think I ever saw an NPC roll away from it correctly - usually they either attack into it, roll without getting out of the way or just stand there. They also won't roll if you do it while they're recovering from a knock-down, so it 0-to-deaths them easily.
You can use the Jellyfish Shield and still use a shield weapon art. You just need to put the jelly shield in the right hand and two-hand it to activate the buff. As for a light bleed shield, I think Shield of the Guilty beats Spiralhorn; it has better scaling.
Several attacks appear similar to shield crash in that regard, to the point where it becomes downright comical when you're stunlocking an npc using wild strikes
The whole "first phase becomes a several minute runback to get a moment to practice phase two" is like the biggest problem I have with so many bosses being designed with two totally distinct phases. Nearly every major boss has two phases, some slightly different but plenty are completely different move sets. I get that it makes a boss feel more epic, but it gets a little old at the end of the game where it's literally three two-part boss fights in a row.
Agreed. I'm not even asking for those boss fights to not be two or three part designs, it would just be wonderful with a freakin stake of marika in front of said bosses, because clearly that was why stakes of marika were thought up; to alleviate the frustration of running back to otherwise awesome boss fights.
By far the worst offender is the Radagon/Elden Beast fight. They are both not even the same type of fight, one is clearly badly designed and the other is very well designed. And yet you have to fight the good human sized boss just so you can get to the inferior big beast boss and beat the game. Not fun.
@@R3m1ly yeah, wish they'd split them up and let you rest or at least gave you a second wind between. having beaten the game many times radabeast is just a stress test and ends up not being that fun. especially since rada is weak to a damage type not many people even know exists and a damage type you've likely stopped using at this point because nearly every boss untill him resists it. then if you end up using the latter because it has better options and actual weapon arts/spells for it, eldenbeast ends up resisting 40% of your damage.
@Bored Allosaurus idk what damage type you're talking about for Radagon. He has 0 resistance to Fire which is definitely not a damage type people don't know is in the game. There are plenty of ways to access fire damage many being quite obvious like fire pots.
So fun fact about the frostbite status; part of the reason why it takes so long to proc it again after the initial burst is because there's a window where the status bar has to drain because frostbite increases damage from all sources, so it's a window to do damage. It can be pretty slow to drain but you can instantly empty and reset the bar and status effect with fire damage. If you proc it and get the burst of damage, hit the enemy with literally anything that does fire damage and they're back to square one for you to build it back up. Might've been useful here because the additional damage you get for the frostbite duration might be less than just resetting and proccing it again.
While the frostbite is draining though, the enemy takes more damage. Not sure the % but I'm sure it adds to to be somewhat similar to resetting it for a quicker re-proc, depending on aggression.
oh shit that's why big man let me solo her dual wields rob and a frosty katana, cus the frostbite builds, it procs to deal frosty damage and then the fire resets the frostbite for the build up again, procs more often and also risks bleed damage. Unless fire damage also resets the buildup ofc. I'm tired :')
@@ingeniousclown I believe that emptying the bar with a fire attack does another large burst of damage to account for the fact you essentially just killed your bonus damage window, but I could be mistaken
@@ingeniousclown its a 20% increase on damage, which is pretty good honestly. Don't know if frost proc does more damage overall though if you reset with fire dmg
My man really just decided to recreate the rising of the shield hero in elden ring. Props to you my friend for the sheer amount of dedication and will to playing with a shield only.
Honestly whenever I see a summon sign with an unusual weapon set, i get excited. I'm like, no weapon and only shields?? Ok this person must be an expert player who needs to do some weird shit to even feel a little bit of challenge
FR. Too many casuals running dual katanas or curved swords with the white mask and goat set. Stuff like that was actually super uncommon in previous installments compared to what we see in ER.
@@wingsoficarus1139 So you don't remember the Blue Blood Sword, Kick-tana, The Do EVERYTHING!!! Havel Mage or the Sellsword Winblades? Admittedly those took a bit longer for people to figure out but if you've ever tried grinding covenants on a over-leveled full completion character is DS2 you will know the absolute bullshit the Havel Mage is capable of. Melee? Check, between Roaring Halberd, Silverblack Spear and Sickle and the Holy shit that did HOW much damage? of the Crypt Blacksword they're better than you are. Ranged? EVERY SINGLE SPELL IN THE GAME and massive damage buffs. They can kill you with that one starter spell everyone replaces because of how little damage it deals. The one they can chaincast. And here's a cool tidbit - high-end pyromancies don't really vary that much in damage, but do vary wildly in how they're dodged. A lot of people went - I can dodge CSS just by the sound of the cast. How about every other Spell in the game? And those guys weren't glass cannons either. The only thing holding them back were attunement slots and...about three more weapon slots for their specialized catalysts. Elden ring just had people discover Comet Azur, Moonveil and RoB early.
@@neoneanderthal2658 Havel has only been a real issue in Ds2 though(which I don't nearly have the same amount of playtime in compared to the others keep in mind). In DS3, armor did almost nothing and in DS1 it required too many stats into endurance at a meta level to wear that armor. On top of which, most of the things you listed at least still left about 2/3 or half the bar. Funny enough, I've one shot people with extremely cheap spells in PVP(not the meta Comet Azur) in ER. Night comet with my only buff being howl of Shibriri does like 2k damage in PVP and up to 8k in PVE with all my buffs. Now you thought Dark Bead in DS1 was bad? This spell still one shots, has better tracking, and costs like 17 FP to cast. Its not just this spell either, there's so many ways to buff your character in ER it just becomes unfair. I've literally 2 shot people with something as little as a rapier. This is absolutely unheard of in any of these games. Again, only two buffs being golden vow and a lightning ash of war that actually buffs the weapon. The thing is with games like DS2 and DS1 where spells where absolutely broken is that they were extremely easy to punish. I've backstabbed so many people in those games where they spam sorceries and I'm not even that great at backstabbing people. In ER however, there's a ton more spells to combat aggressive players(like close range ones with fast casts) and its harder to punish a good player.
A trick I do for souls boss fights is to not attack at all until I can survive the boss fight indefinitely without dying. It forces your brain to only think defensively and you aren't even looking for openings to attack, you are only focused on avoiding getting hit. When you do start attacking, the fight is super easy and usually beat it on the first try. It seems to go a lot faster and stick in your brain better than trying to learn attack and defense both at the same time.
45:40 "I deserved that." Honestly I saw it coming from a mile away just screaming greed in my head. But GG on the eventual victory! I used fingerprint shield and spiked palisade for the majority of my shield only run. That cold bleed shield was a pretty smart play! 😄
Malenia still being able to heal herself when hitting a 100% blocking shield is such a stupid artifact of the fight that I'm convinced its an oversight. At no other point in the game (not even during the gimmick Rykard) does a boss just straight up punish you for your equipment choices. It completely undermines all the extra work they've done in Elden Ring to make sword and board playstyles as interesting and fun as no shield runs.
I agree! I actually am having a ton of fun with spear and greatshield for my playthrough. The more generous stamina allows the poke gimmick to be viable and guard counters just feel amazing. So to see bosses like Malenia that reinforce the same old bag of tricks is sad.
I beat Malenia on my first try using ashield and poking with a spear. Almost all her attacks are physical, except that bloom in phase 2 I think, and you gotta watch for the grab but its slow.
I full heartedly agree with your criticism regarding hitboxes and how aids certain bosses are. I love the idea of fist weapons and I've rocked quite a few bosses with them. But holy shit do some bosses have terrible barriers of no touchy. For God sakes I can't reach the front of the erdtree avatars point blank in the center of them with a JUMPING STRONG ATTACK. All fromsoft needs to do is just increase fist weapon hitboxes further by like 1 foot. And they would be functional vs everything again.
Came to share my belated grief. On my first run I used a claw jump atk build. (Jump buffs: raptor talon +10%, raptor cloak +10%, claw talisman +15%.) That being said, my jump heavies obv matter alot so when they miss despite the blades clipping into an enemy... AHH. Then I get punished on the recovery from the jump heavy. Any weapon with reach is gonna be easy mode after that.
Feeling it right now on the erdtree avatars fucking hitbox of bullshit. you don't even get close enough to poke it with a finger because its got this big invisible wall in front of it.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I've been devouring all Elden Ring content on RUclips for the last two months, so I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see an hour long video that's actually edited well with coherent post commentary rather than just a bunch of Twitch clips stitched together. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but....there's a reason I'm here and not on Twitch. I'm sure the extra days it took to put a video like this together probably stressed you out, but just know there are plenty of people out there who genuinely appreciate it. Loved the video, subbed and excited for more Elden content!
@@ingeniousclown there’s a great breakdown on RUclips that highlights how she can cancel her own stagger, then attack while you’re still mid swing. Can cancel her own attack animations into a block etc She is pure artificial difficulty. Like, it’s not a debate. No other enemy can cancel animations
Enjoyed your commentary and play style. You don’t have that loud, shouting all the time, rapid-fire speaking style that a LOT of RUclips gamers seem locked into, so it’s a refreshing change of pace. Couple that with a couple corny (but genuinely funny) jokes, and you convinced me to subscribe. Keep it up!
21:06 that belly strike was my bane during the godskin duo fight in the spirit caller caves. When using slow melee weapons it really does feel unfair - it comes out faster than some attacks recover! At the least he doesn't seem to combo the belly burst into anything too crazy.
I love how thorough you were about all the different shields, talismans, and weapon skills you used throughout the run. All the different things you tried made the video way more interesting, like the One Eyed Shield cannon and Visage shield flamethrower, the big and medium bleed shields, and then adding frost to the bleed shield. You even showed stuff that didn’t work out like the Coil shield, which is cool even though it wasn’t the best. I like the effort you put into this, shield only could have been boring, but you made it interesting with everything you used, and the way you showed all aspects of the journey from start to finish
Hi. New subscriber here. After finishing the game twice I am now in a "need to watch challenge runs on RUclips". This is one of the best I've seen this week, very well done. Thanks for it !
"Malenia need to be nerf" 'We feel Malenia is to easy so she now heals every time she swings regardless if she hits or not' -From Software (yes i know its a bug, its still funny)
One of the best challenge runs I've seen for this game! I love that you didn't falter on your values regarding cheesing the game. A challenge run should be a challenge; Otherwise it's just a meme run, not any more impressive than beating the game normally. I don't hate meme runs, but they don't hold a candle to proper challenge runs. So many challenge runners ignore their own rule set as soon as things get tough; Half of the runs I've seen use the gimmick weapon in the Rykard fight, even though it invalidates their run. I understand that Rykard isn't intended to be fought without the gimmick weapon, but challenge runs are supposed to do unintended things, that's what makes them amazing to watch. I was disappointed when I found out that you don't typically do challenge runs because you instantly became one my of favorite runners on the platform with this video. Hopefully you feel the inspiration to do a few more of these over time! But no pressure if you don't feel like it. Just wanted to let you know that I (and likely others) think this video is a perfect example of a well done challenge run. Absolutely loved it.
Really minor correction, the Draconic Tree Sentinel is NOT a required boss. (As you said he's the only required one in the open world area). You can skip him by going to Deeproot Depths and beating Fia's champions, there's a waygate there that allows you to never fight him.
You can but if you are able to beat the due boss that bocks the entrance but not the sentinel your doing something wrong. There are only two entrances and the other one you need to beat morgot who is in layndel
my strat was to rush to the jellyfish shield at the very start, get it to +4, and then use that to get the visage shield. not easy, but doable. getting that to plus 10 made the run fairly smooth overall... for the most part. malekith was rough. malenia was a nightmare
I'm glad to see you go into such detail on why Malenia is broken. I've seen so many casuals (no offense, but people who use Bloodhound Step and Mimic) say she's fine because '"t's supposed to be the super difficult optional final boss." But a boss can be difficult without relying on unreacteable 50/50se
Agreed. I ended up using Mimic, though I didn't go for the bleed cheese. Just because I beat her that way doesn't mean I think the boss fight was remotely fair (or even fun when I finally beat her). I'm all for different kinds of bosses and even the idea that Malenia should be a boss that's VERY HARD to beat. But not because she has bullshit mechanics that punish more or less every kind of playstyle besides a very few non-cheese ones -_-
I lost patience with her on my first try, and just ended up summoning some people and abusing Crucible Horns to put her through the blender. Amusing, in the end. Shame I had to do that, though. Malenia had so much potential, man
I rushed the One Eyed Shield early, it was a fun challenge, and made the rest of the game a joke! And it’s too bad the second channel is defunct, your Hollow Knight let’s play is what got me into the game.
This is one of the craziest videos I’ve ever watched. Well done. I cannot even fathom having the patience to fight Melania for six hours or that I watched a one hour video on beating the game with just sheilds! (And enjoyed it! I learned a lot. Amazing video. I don’t enjoy the bosses much. I really enjoy the open world. But I am starting to see how one could find these unique challenges a joy. (But doubt I ever will.)
54:12 i've beaten the second phase so easily aswell, with just waiting for her flower attacking and spamming ice spear weapon art. Chomped her up real nice.
“Chapter 1: What It Takes To Be A Hero” I’m not sure whether that’s a Bionicle reference or just a reference to the song itself, but either way that’s incredibly based.
The stagger kick is one of the coolest details in my opinion, she's one of the strongest demigods she's using the momentum of the attack to kick you I thinks it's great design
I think the point he’s trying to make is that the attack is inconsistent, it doesn’t feel like he would be upset if the kick attack just happened every time. The inconsistency was the “bad design” part, not the actual kick itself
Nice video! As an avid shield user I was surprised you didnt use the Fingerprint shield infused with blood, its better than the palisade shield in my opinion
I read that a lot during my research, but that strat seemed almost like it would be SO good that it would be close to cheese, so I didn't wanna risk it. Plus I didn't wanna dump any levels in arcane AND I really didn't wanna go down to the sewers, haha
@@ingeniousclown It is quite cheesy. Fingerprint shield will actually do more blood damage than the palisade shield. Which is stupid, considering all the spikes. With high arcane one shield crash can inflict bleed twice on some enemies. That said, if you poison infuse the pallisade shield (for blood and poison) you can use the blood and the poison/rot talismans to get easy 40% extra damage for 20 seconds for every shield crash that fully connects.
Ahhhh... hearing the start of Hornet's theme at 41:00 almost makes up for the PTSD that the Malenia fight gave me. Almost. I'm glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought of Hornet the first time I encountered Malenia, especially after seeing Waterfowl Dance.
I really love this video! I would like to see more of this. It's actually the second time I'm watching this now and I find it really nice how enthusiastic you sound, when talking about shield. I think you've earned a sub just for this video alone.
A few people in the comments have said that the draconic tree sentinel isn't required, and while true the alternative is probably just as painful, but I have a counyerpoint, what you describe as it's strenght is it's weakness, being in the open word, just poison it or rot it and leave, it won t Regen health till you die or reset the area, if it survives poison or rot it again, then repeat, it even spends a few seconds flexing before fighting you so I suspect it was made to be cheeseable in this way honestly.
I don't know for all the people that had an issue with malenia's waterfowl dance, but it's actually easy to counter with the ash of war "vow of the indomitable", it can be found in south west liurnia, it makes you invicible and doesn't heal her as it should, it's like your character's hitbox disappear, you just have to constantly block and use the skill, on her first move, you only block two hit if you have the timing, none on her second move and then by moving to the right you'll avoid the third move without blocking, I'm surprised he didn't use it against her
I won't use cheese strats. Proceeds to skip half the content to pick a very specific shield and talismans. The coil shield sucks.... Proceeds to use it on the next 4 bosses. Cold/bleed is too op Backtracks statement and uses it for the end game bosses. Your heart said one thing. The brain did the other.
I’m so confused on why everyone thinks the morning star is the earliest bleed weapon. You can get the Uchigatana from a catacomb relatively early in Limegeave I believe. And a lot of the starting class weapons have bleed build-up (Hell, the samurai class starts with an Uchigatana, you can dual wield them)
@@onepiece013 You an get the Flail in one of the Carts. It only requires I think 18 dex and 12 strength. Samurai, vagabond, confessor, and Bandit can all achieve that by killing a few mobs and leveling up like 4-8 times. And that’s before the gate front site of grace!
You're a legend... currently around 250 deaths on her.. using a hi vigor/end/str with arcane build and the fingerprint/bleeding shield crash for a weapon... man... i'm so happy that its not just me complaining about the the thought that her healing should be proportionate to the damage she does... not just a crazy like 4-500 flat heal every time her sword touches something BUT... i'll take the "skill issues flames" lol... i'm not a pro but god damn this is hard
my biggest gripe about Malenia is still just that she can heal if you block the attack, she should only be allowed to heal if she actually does damage.
"You not from miquilla if you aint never done this befo" *five consecutive almost undodgeable combos* breaks the game mechanics designed to help the player arbitrarily, stabs you in the chest and chucks you out like an old aple core
This made me realize I want a spell that is a Fire Glint blade like the big magic wolves use. I always wondered why Malenia being as strong as she is did nothing about Miquella being taken seems like a weird story loop hole or something that was meant to be told but never was.
Miquella was taken while Malenia was fighting Radahn. And after using all her strength to rot and stalemate him fell onto a coma. Cleanrot knight Finley carried her back to the haligtree but by then Mohg was long gone and by the time she awakens. She has no idea where her brother is or who took him.
The Malenia section was comical, you went down a dark rabbit hole, explaining why actually, it is FromSoft who are wrong for designing such a hard boss, not you who are wrong for trying to beat an undefeated warrior goddess to death with a shield. Funny shit.
I didnt understand your motives behind not using carian retalliation. In my opinion. Cheese involves exploiting errors and ai to trivialise challenges. Not using the tools that are designed well and scale with upgrades.
Seeing as how there is a spell for Carian Retaliation that is technically harder to pull off than the ash of war, but does 10x less damage absolutely makes the Carian Retaliation ash of war cheese imo. It's definitely exploiting an error. I'd never belittle the way someone wants to win a boss fight in a Souls game, you do you. But I do respect OP for not resorting to it. 😄
See this is why I used the word "arbitrarily" when describing cheese in my rules. Peoples' thresholds for what is and isn't cheese will inevitably be different, and for me this was well above the line. The damage is simply insane IMO, and by _your_ logic of "to trivialize challenges", Carian Retaliation certainly fits. Thing was nearly two-shotting each boss with zero points invested in Intelligence! My guess is that someone messed up the scaling numbers on it, and that +10 (ie the max level for a somber weapon) would be where the damage should be at +25, but I'd have to test more to be sure.
why whats he gonna do, call me out by creating a clown character and doing a whole run in ng+6 with just a rickety shield without bleed or frost in response? yeah right lul
@@ingeniousclown holy crap you replied to me. big fan dude, i have gotten so much useful information from you and have binged your challenges. love you and the nut. Ever thought to do heavyload w/ low stamina only run? only slow tic wepons and all. basically a slow tank run thought it would be cool.
Forgive me if this has already been said but I haven’t seen a comment on it yet. I’m very surprised and impressed that you took the time to develop a strategy for Waterfowl Dance instead of just using Vow of the Indomitable, a shield ash that acts like a stationary dodge with ultra long i-frames That art is how I beat Malenia on my first playthrough. As long as you have an okay amount of poise (your build definitely had more than enough), you can just spam the art when her attack starts and you’ll only get nicked once or twice. Way easier and she doesn’t get much healing. I’m sure you could learn the timing and not get hit at all, but since it was such a non-issue for me I never needed to before I finally beat her Regardless, this was great video! Very enjoyable to watch
Tried out a greatshield-only run a while back (was thinking less Shield Hero and more Mash Kyrielite from Fate/Grand Order for mine, and allowed myself to at least use spirit ashes), realized too late how much a hell the limited range on shield attacks was gonna make the end of the game. Didn't help that Shabriri's Woe doesn't work outside of co-op, so my idea of re-creating her taunt skill to tank attacks while summons did their thing didn't really work. Was still fun for a while, at least. Props for sticking it out and showing how it's done.
It's really really short sighted to complain that a boss should have had more time spent on design just because you decided to do a shield only run when the boss is designed around a specific weapon. You killed him with the shield, you won. What else do you want, an easy challenge? Also, learn the bosses. There's plenty of other runners who don't whine about the challenge runs they do. Roll INTO the fat dude when he's rolling at you. You haven't even figure out how to deal with most things but complain the whole way through. Listening to that is more frustrating than the game itself.
You can still get hit plenty often while rolling INTO noble. It's like rolling through the magic boulder in the academy. And yeah, Rykard has trash hitboxes. That's true no matter what, and a pretty lazy oversight really. Yhorm was a gimmick boss, still had very good hitboxes. Storm King was a gimmick boss, hitboxes function just fine using non-gimmick weapons. Bed of Chaos, gimmick boss, and aside from maybe some funky hurtboxes on the side targets, all the hitboxes are exactly as expected. Ancient Wyvern, gimmick boss, totally fine hitboxes, even being quite generous on the head hitbox to make it easier than normal to hit the plunge. And the point was you can typically kill those gimmick bosses with any loadout really. Even mages can fist plunge ancient wyvern, you can kill yhorm with normal weapons just fine, Storm King can be beaten with just the shitty throwing weapons, bed of chaos can be beat with janky firebomb throws. Point is, you're not hard locked into a specific playstyle for the fight. But you are with Rykard. You WILL be a melee spear user, and you WILL keep your distance. I personally only rank it slightly higher than Dragon God, and that's only because I get to actually fight, even if it is being shittily locked into a slow spear build.
I know this is late, but at 36:00 - I don't know if this happens every time, but when I used the claw on my first playthrough I managed to parry his jumping Destined Death slash which knocked him straight to the floor (similar to how the Shackles pin Morgott/Mogh etc.) which opened him up to some extreme damage. Might be worth testing on future challenge runs you try?
Jeez, your voice is just sooo so nice for voice overs. It was an awesome video to watch! Edit: FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE WHO ACKNOWLEDGES THAT WATERFOWL DANCE NEEDS A REWORK INSTEAD OF DEFENDING IT WITH ARGUMENTS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE
The aoe maliketh does before the actual aoe goes of run to one of the side of his legs which allows you to end up behind him so you can dodge the aoe and be able to punish him. I didn’t think people didn’t know how to dodge this it’s pretty easy but it’s very understandable why they don’t, it’s not that obvious
I mean this in the nicest way possible. I appreciate the fact that you're not great at the game. Seen so many challenge runs where people just crush the game, seeing someone struggle the way a normal player would is a really nice change of phase.
I beat DS2, SotFS, and DS3 with only shields. I couldn't find a shield that I really liked in Elden Ring. Then on my second new game plus that I came across the One -Eyed Shield. It's sooo badass! I'm going to do a shield run based on it.
I think the reason why nobody was really jumping on the shield thing is because it’s been done before in other souls games, so it’s a standard. But in Elden Ring, there’s a TON of new challenges to try. Spirit only, bow only (which could have been done in previous games, but here it’s extra viable), and trying to beat the game using the worst spells only too.
Props to playing literally one of the greatest songs ever. The Mario paint song. Makes me miss my snes mouse, playing that game for daaaays lmao. Cheers. Nice work on this vid
Check out the DLC continuation of this run! ► ruclips.net/video/qyTTHLpzO0A/видео.html
Copyright vs Fangames (aka best video I've ever made) ► ruclips.net/video/1SMZdUBj0YQ/видео.html
Shield-only All Bosses compilation ► ruclips.net/video/cFTGHxml2OY/видео.html
Plateau Peak's shield-only video ► ruclips.net/video/xsC3Cx5H5JA/видео.html
You should do a challenge play with backlogs. Oh, I got it. You have to summon only him to help you with every boss! Just scheduling the boss fights will be a challenge. lol but I would definitely watch it because you remind me of him for some reason.
Elden dreams
Just curious but would you consider stuff suiciding to be fair under the rules you were using? Like say the Balls near Lenne's Rise falling off a cliff....repeatedly for 1954 runes......
If the Godskin Duo had friendly fire it’d be one of my favorite bosses honestly.
@@Cpeerson2000 That has been patched apparently. I don’t get anything from them.
I feel your pain, when I'm not playing Elden ring I'm thinking about Elden ring. I've even had dreams about Elden ring.
Dude... me to... I've litterally played from morning to night, only to get off, think about it as I lay down, and my wife tells me I say weird shit when I sleep. She doesn't speak good English but I know im in the lands in-between
I feel ya. I've been having really vivid dreams about the game itself or elden-ring adjacent stuff. It's fun, but also weird.
Y’all too, huh? I’ve been here since day one. It gets no better.
@@Inhuman115 I wake up really early while my wife and son are asleep and stay up late to play. I have even been cutting work short so I can play hahahhah
I've been summoning Torrent in my dreams for a week now.
The issue with Godskin Duo (and the double crucible knights) is that they weren't designed together. Ornstein and Smough work because one is fast and the other is slow, they cover each other's weaknesses but you can still split them apart.
The fights mentioned above don't have that. They're just as fast as each other and their AI wasn't designed to work together. It's patently bullshit.
But the fighting area was design for that fight, the pillars really give you an advantage to play with. Use it
@@betoalema irrelevant to the point i was making, and it doesn't change the fact that they're both constantly doing shit, sticking together and covering each other. Also doesn't justify the double crucible knights, triple crystalians or any other "throw multiple bosses at you" fight.
They are designed together though? If they weren't both would ruch you and combo you to death. Noble is the first to get agressive while Apostle throows Fireballs unless you are right in front of him. You can even summon Bernard from Volcano Manor for that fight. Bosses like Duo Pumkin Heads aren't designed together because they both rush you without stopping in a Tiny Ass Arena
@@Nukesnipe I don't know why people have HUGE issues with multiple bosses at once. Sure it's harder than usual, but.. I can't be the only person in the world who attempts to keep every enemy in their cone of vision, and use sound cues when they're behind me/otherwise out of sight, to know when to dodge
@@AkariRosumashi ok do sl1 club
"I don't know where she was when Mohg kidnapped Miquela" - If I understood correctly (and I might not have), she was fighting Radahn when Mohg kidnapped Miquela, and only left Miquela's side in the first place because Radahn fixing the firmament in place in some way disrupted the Haligtree's functioning.
Firmament?
@@GeraltofRivia22 fancy word for the heavens
As far as I understand, when she bloomed the scarlet rot on Radahn to end their fight she fell into a deep sleep. She was taken back to the Haligtree by one of her Cleanrot Knights and she was still asleep when the player arrived in her arena. It's likely Miquella was kidnapped while she was asleep.
@@Toasty_93 thats so cool. Definitely a Maria reference. But what exactly was radahn fixing? I just know his actions have something to do with fighting astel and the fallingstar beasts.
@@mt2r-music probably a bad translation from his own language (I’m going to go with spanish because fijar and fixing sound very similar but don’t mean quite the same). So he probably means holding them in place.
Hey I know that guy in the intro! It's me!
Awesome video, it's always cool to see a different approach to a challenge run, and thanks for the shoutout!
"lame"
@@NustingButsErrday No he was the guy who did the glitchless one not Skumnut who did the glitch one
@@Literally___Me well skumnut made this run look lame as he's using only rickety shield and no bleed or frost
Edit: as his better run used rickety shield not indigenous clown
@@brandentaft5164 I wonder, if a year later, would you still whinge about bleed and frost.
@@s0LLagal nah ion play it nomore made me rage too much
"Godfrey seems like he'd be a really difficult boss to beat."
"Oh no he's super easy, barely an inconvenience."
"Oh really?!"
Can't wait for the elden ring pitch meeting
Did not expect a pitch meeting joke here
"I think her attack patterns get slightly slower in the second phase" It's because you switched to the cold-bleed shield for phase 2, cold debuffs enemies attack speed by 20% which would make a noticeable difference there
I was looking for a comment like this as soon as I heard him mention that
Every day cold does something more lol
WAIT WHAT
COLD SLOWS ENEMIES?
@@Jason-hz6cm no it doesn't 💀just Google it don't trust randos on the Internet
@@Jason-hz6cm I know crazy
46:10 using Let Me Solo Her's footage is a bad idea, his second dodge ONLY works because he's a phantom in another host's world. This makes Malenia's tracking different because of the latency. She basically is tracking half a second behind where you actually are. A similar thing happens in that video where he often rolls backwards against triple slash but it doesn't catch him, for the same reason.
The correct method is to circle around her 270+ degrees before rolling perpendicular to her, which he doesn't do.
Good call out, no wonder it looks easier on his footage, cuz it actually is lol
@@ingeniousclown Conversely, your hitstun on her is also delayed, so you can't interrupt her attacks easily. Co-op Malenia feels like a very different fight to me :)
@@BigDBrian Co-op anything is a very different fight. Co-op vs solo are like entirely different games in the most interesting ways.
Light rolling is also really important for dodging that way due to the added distance, I tried rolling backwards against the fast triple slash with mid-rolls and always got caught, with light rolls it's a little tight but possible. Not exactly easy to do with 40 equip load in shields alone.
@@theroxenes light roll is a slight improvement at about 10% extra distance, rolling back against triple slash still isn't consistent with light roll though. Only as a phantom it is, but then it's consistent on mid roll too.
13:15 *clears throat* ~WELL ACTUALLY~ you can avoid fighting the Draconic Tree Sentinel. Fia's questline gives you access to a teleporter that takes you inside the capital (East Capital Rampart grace). Not sure if you have to beat the Lichdragon or just give her the Cursemark of Death, but you definitely need two Great Runes. Granted this requires taking out Radahn, the Valiant Gargoyles, completing the Nokron bit of Ranni's questline, the Divine Tower of Liurnia, go through Deeproot Depths, and defeat Fia's Champions just to skip one bossfight.
You don't actually have to do any of Fia's questline, the teleporter will activate after killing her champions who are there no matter what, but you do still have to fight Radahn, Mimic Tear, Valiant Gargoyles, and Fia's Champions just to skip the singular Draconic Tree Sentinel. In a minimum boss run, the choice is obvious.
while this is true the odds of a new player finding this before Draconic Sent is very low, like I almost missed fia's entire quest and a few bosses because while yes I found the gargoyles and beat them I missed the coffin in the boss room until a friend told me about it
@@SpaceElvisInc It's actually not too hard to get in that way if you follow Ranni's questline after Raya Lucaria, in fact that's how I got into the capital on my first blindish playthrough.
This was actually the only way I got into the capital lmao and I found all this out on my own. I didn't even find the Sentinel lol
Even so, having found all the bosses I did, I didn't have to panic about having 2 great runes. Everything has been easy except for the dual gargoyle fight before the capital.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is also another teleporter at the top of a tower on south Limgrave, it gets you to a big lift on Leyndell that connect directly to the copy of the roundable hold.
Having done a shield-only run myself now, there's a few shields/skills/talismans he didn't use or mention I want to shout out to anyone else who wants to try:
-The Jellyfish Shield has 100% physical block and it's WA gives you +20% damage. Once you get the stats to dual-wield shields it's almost always worth using if you aren't using the other shield weapon arts. I personally didn't find Shield Crash to be all that safe to use for most bosses, so I used an off-hand Jelly shield and just spammed R1's or jump attacks with my mainhand shield. Because shields have pretty poor scaling, you don't lose much damage one handing compared to the huge boost Contagious Fury gives you.
-The Spiralhorn Shield is an infusable innate bleed small shield. It hits faster than a medium shield and I found it to be mostly superior for status proc fights. It also weighs nothing, so once their status resistance gets high you can just swap it out without losing much weight limit. I'm not sure if it's in my head, but small shields also seem to have more forward momentum for jump attacks and less landing lag. I used it to punish a few of the "unpunishable" attacks of Mogh's he mentioned - jump attack immediately after the explosion and if necessary roll his turnaround attack.
-Speaking of small shields, this run didn't use parries. I'm not sure if he considers parrying non-Maliketh bosses cheese, but bosses like Morgott and Malenia that gave him trouble are much easier if you bring a parry shield with the Golden Parry Ash of War. Some of Morgott/Margit's attacks have such big delays that I found you can whack him and queue up a parry to get free damage and perfect parry timing.
-The Shard of Alexander/Warrior Jar Shard is extremely worth getting if you are going to use damaging shield skills, particularly the One-Eyed Shield.
-I didn't find Shield Crash great for bosses but it annihilates tarnished NPCs. The AI does not seem coded with a good response to it. I don't think I ever saw an NPC roll away from it correctly - usually they either attack into it, roll without getting out of the way or just stand there. They also won't roll if you do it while they're recovering from a knock-down, so it 0-to-deaths them easily.
Would you be interested in recording a run like that and posting. Have subscribed to your channel :)
shield crash is especially powerful against tarnished npcs with the fingerprint stone shield, as it will almost guarantee a frenzy proc
You can use the Jellyfish Shield and still use a shield weapon art. You just need to put the jelly shield in the right hand and two-hand it to activate the buff.
As for a light bleed shield, I think Shield of the Guilty beats Spiralhorn; it has better scaling.
Several attacks appear similar to shield crash in that regard, to the point where it becomes downright comical when you're stunlocking an npc using wild strikes
That’s a loooooooong comment
The whole "first phase becomes a several minute runback to get a moment to practice phase two" is like the biggest problem I have with so many bosses being designed with two totally distinct phases. Nearly every major boss has two phases, some slightly different but plenty are completely different move sets. I get that it makes a boss feel more epic, but it gets a little old at the end of the game where it's literally three two-part boss fights in a row.
Agreed. I'm not even asking for those boss fights to not be two or three part designs, it would just be wonderful with a freakin stake of marika in front of said bosses, because clearly that was why stakes of marika were thought up; to alleviate the frustration of running back to otherwise awesome boss fights.
By far the worst offender is the Radagon/Elden Beast fight. They are both not even the same type of fight, one is clearly badly designed and the other is very well designed. And yet you have to fight the good human sized boss just so you can get to the inferior big beast boss and beat the game. Not fun.
@@R3m1ly yeah, wish they'd split them up and let you rest or at least gave you a second wind between. having beaten the game many times radabeast is just a stress test and ends up not being that fun. especially since rada is weak to a damage type not many people even know exists and a damage type you've likely stopped using at this point because nearly every boss untill him resists it. then if you end up using the latter because it has better options and actual weapon arts/spells for it, eldenbeast ends up resisting 40% of your damage.
@@MsMoonDragoon Both Radagon and Elden Beast resist 80% of Holy Damage it's their strongest resistance
@Bored Allosaurus idk what damage type you're talking about for Radagon. He has 0 resistance to Fire which is definitely not a damage type people don't know is in the game. There are plenty of ways to access fire damage many being quite obvious like fire pots.
So fun fact about the frostbite status; part of the reason why it takes so long to proc it again after the initial burst is because there's a window where the status bar has to drain because frostbite increases damage from all sources, so it's a window to do damage. It can be pretty slow to drain but you can instantly empty and reset the bar and status effect with fire damage. If you proc it and get the burst of damage, hit the enemy with literally anything that does fire damage and they're back to square one for you to build it back up. Might've been useful here because the additional damage you get for the frostbite duration might be less than just resetting and proccing it again.
I did not know that fire empties the meter. Thats hugely useful, thanks.
While the frostbite is draining though, the enemy takes more damage. Not sure the % but I'm sure it adds to to be somewhat similar to resetting it for a quicker re-proc, depending on aggression.
oh shit that's why big man let me solo her dual wields rob and a frosty katana, cus the frostbite builds, it procs to deal frosty damage and then the fire resets the frostbite for the build up again, procs more often and also risks bleed damage. Unless fire damage also resets the buildup ofc. I'm tired :')
@@ingeniousclown I believe that emptying the bar with a fire attack does another large burst of damage to account for the fact you essentially just killed your bonus damage window, but I could be mistaken
@@ingeniousclown its a 20% increase on damage, which is pretty good honestly. Don't know if frost proc does more damage overall though if you reset with fire dmg
My man really just decided to recreate the rising of the shield hero in elden ring. Props to you my friend for the sheer amount of dedication and will to playing with a shield only.
i dont like to say it but this isnt a recreate of the shield hero, unfortunatly for him, however, he is maidenless
He needs to beat the game with raphtalia now
Honestly whenever I see a summon sign with an unusual weapon set, i get excited. I'm like, no weapon and only shields?? Ok this person must be an expert player who needs to do some weird shit to even feel a little bit of challenge
FR. Too many casuals running dual katanas or curved swords with the white mask and goat set. Stuff like that was actually super uncommon in previous installments compared to what we see in ER.
@@wingsoficarus1139 So you don't remember the Blue Blood Sword, Kick-tana, The Do EVERYTHING!!! Havel Mage or the Sellsword Winblades? Admittedly those took a bit longer for people to figure out but if you've ever tried grinding covenants on a over-leveled full completion character is DS2 you will know the absolute bullshit the Havel Mage is capable of. Melee? Check, between Roaring Halberd, Silverblack Spear and Sickle and the Holy shit that did HOW much damage? of the Crypt Blacksword they're better than you are. Ranged? EVERY SINGLE SPELL IN THE GAME and massive damage buffs. They can kill you with that one starter spell everyone replaces because of how little damage it deals. The one they can chaincast. And here's a cool tidbit - high-end pyromancies don't really vary that much in damage, but do vary wildly in how they're dodged. A lot of people went - I can dodge CSS just by the sound of the cast. How about every other Spell in the game? And those guys weren't glass cannons either. The only thing holding them back were attunement slots and...about three more weapon slots for their specialized catalysts. Elden ring just had people discover Comet Azur, Moonveil and RoB early.
@@neoneanderthal2658 Havel has only been a real issue in Ds2 though(which I don't nearly have the same amount of playtime in compared to the others keep in mind). In DS3, armor did almost nothing and in DS1 it required too many stats into endurance at a meta level to wear that armor. On top of which, most of the things you listed at least still left about 2/3 or half the bar. Funny enough, I've one shot people with extremely cheap spells in PVP(not the meta Comet Azur) in ER. Night comet with my only buff being howl of Shibriri does like 2k damage in PVP and up to 8k in PVE with all my buffs. Now you thought Dark Bead in DS1 was bad? This spell still one shots, has better tracking, and costs like 17 FP to cast. Its not just this spell either, there's so many ways to buff your character in ER it just becomes unfair. I've literally 2 shot people with something as little as a rapier. This is absolutely unheard of in any of these games. Again, only two buffs being golden vow and a lightning ash of war that actually buffs the weapon.
The thing is with games like DS2 and DS1 where spells where absolutely broken is that they were extremely easy to punish. I've backstabbed so many people in those games where they spam sorceries and I'm not even that great at backstabbing people. In ER however, there's a ton more spells to combat aggressive players(like close range ones with fast casts) and its harder to punish a good player.
@@neoneanderthal2658 *The Bass Cannon*
A trick I do for souls boss fights is to not attack at all until I can survive the boss fight indefinitely without dying. It forces your brain to only think defensively and you aren't even looking for openings to attack, you are only focused on avoiding getting hit. When you do start attacking, the fight is super easy and usually beat it on the first try. It seems to go a lot faster and stick in your brain better than trying to learn attack and defense both at the same time.
Now beat it with the rickety shield to prove that you’re better than skumnut
45:40 "I deserved that."
Honestly I saw it coming from a mile away just screaming greed in my head. But GG on the eventual victory! I used fingerprint shield and spiked palisade for the majority of my shield only run. That cold bleed shield was a pretty smart play! 😄
Shoutouts to DPadGamer for that idea, I was talking to him while struggling with Morgott and he posed that idea.
Would you be interested in recording a run like that and posting. Have subscribed to your channel :)
Malenia still being able to heal herself when hitting a 100% blocking shield is such a stupid artifact of the fight that I'm convinced its an oversight. At no other point in the game (not even during the gimmick Rykard) does a boss just straight up punish you for your equipment choices. It completely undermines all the extra work they've done in Elden Ring to make sword and board playstyles as interesting and fun as no shield runs.
It took me 20 straight minutes of hiding behind the fingerprint shield and spear poking malenia to finish the fight, was kinda funny
I agree! I actually am having a ton of fun with spear and greatshield for my playthrough. The more generous stamina allows the poke gimmick to be viable and guard counters just feel amazing. So to see bosses like Malenia that reinforce the same old bag of tricks is sad.
Skill issue
I beat Malenia on my first try using ashield and poking with a spear.
Almost all her attacks are physical, except that bloom in phase 2 I think, and you gotta watch for the grab but its slow.
Radagon is immuned to Holy damage with 97% negation which is absurbly aids for faith builds like mine
Im so happy that lots of content creators embraced challenge runs this time around!
Cheers!
Same, can't get enough of it !
I full heartedly agree with your criticism regarding hitboxes and how aids certain bosses are. I love the idea of fist weapons and I've rocked quite a few bosses with them. But holy shit do some bosses have terrible barriers of no touchy. For God sakes I can't reach the front of the erdtree avatars point blank in the center of them with a JUMPING STRONG ATTACK. All fromsoft needs to do is just increase fist weapon hitboxes further by like 1 foot. And they would be functional vs everything again.
Came to share my belated grief. On my first run I used a claw jump atk build. (Jump buffs: raptor talon +10%, raptor cloak +10%, claw talisman +15%.) That being said, my jump heavies obv matter alot so when they miss despite the blades clipping into an enemy... AHH. Then I get punished on the recovery from the jump heavy. Any weapon with reach is gonna be easy mode after that.
Same with the hurt boxes they suck sometimes
Feeling it right now on the erdtree avatars fucking hitbox of bullshit. you don't even get close enough to poke it with a finger because its got this big invisible wall in front of it.
Skumnut is calling...
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I've been devouring all Elden Ring content on RUclips for the last two months, so I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see an hour long video that's actually edited well with coherent post commentary rather than just a bunch of Twitch clips stitched together. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but....there's a reason I'm here and not on Twitch. I'm sure the extra days it took to put a video like this together probably stressed you out, but just know there are plenty of people out there who genuinely appreciate it. Loved the video, subbed and excited for more Elden content!
This is the best analysis of the Malenia fight I have seen. I am glad you were insane enough to fight her.
I legitimately couldn't BELIEVE the kick-on-stagger mechanic.
@@ingeniousclown there’s a great breakdown on RUclips that highlights how she can cancel her own stagger, then attack while you’re still mid swing. Can cancel her own attack animations into a block etc
She is pure artificial difficulty. Like, it’s not a debate. No other enemy can cancel animations
@@lewispooper3138try not to spam long animation casts/attacks then
7:23 can we just take a moment to recognize how simple but how COOL that piece of editing was
Enjoyed your commentary and play style. You don’t have that loud, shouting all the time, rapid-fire speaking style that a LOT of RUclips gamers seem locked into, so it’s a refreshing change of pace. Couple that with a couple corny (but genuinely funny) jokes, and you convinced me to subscribe. Keep it up!
21:06 that belly strike was my bane during the godskin duo fight in the spirit caller caves. When using slow melee weapons it really does feel unfair - it comes out faster than some attacks recover! At the least he doesn't seem to combo the belly burst into anything too crazy.
I love how thorough you were about all the different shields, talismans, and weapon skills you used throughout the run. All the different things you tried made the video way more interesting, like the One Eyed Shield cannon and Visage shield flamethrower, the big and medium bleed shields, and then adding frost to the bleed shield. You even showed stuff that didn’t work out like the Coil shield, which is cool even though it wasn’t the best. I like the effort you put into this, shield only could have been boring, but you made it interesting with everything you used, and the way you showed all aspects of the journey from start to finish
I like how you critique the game in a way that's helpful for us AND the developers to understand in case they are watching 🙂
Hi. New subscriber here. After finishing the game twice I am now in a "need to watch challenge runs on RUclips". This is one of the best I've seen this week, very well done. Thanks for it !
“If it wasn’t meant to be played like this then I won’t use it” *swims in Rykard’s lava”
It's a bit of a stretch from what I said but I still laughed
Bro thought he could slander the skum
where's the slander? i only spoke cold hard truths my guy
@ingeniousclown then he beat it with a rickety shield 😂 and no frost and no bleed
@@RIPPERGUT yeah and that run's good. but that doesn't change how bad his original run is
"Malenia need to be nerf" 'We feel Malenia is to easy so she now heals every time she swings regardless if she hits or not' -From Software (yes i know its a bug, its still funny)
didn't FromSoftware buff Malenia in response to Let Me Solo Her?
No, its shit netcode.
0:40 never disrespect lord Skumnut
One of the best challenge runs I've seen for this game! I love that you didn't falter on your values regarding cheesing the game. A challenge run should be a challenge; Otherwise it's just a meme run, not any more impressive than beating the game normally. I don't hate meme runs, but they don't hold a candle to proper challenge runs.
So many challenge runners ignore their own rule set as soon as things get tough; Half of the runs I've seen use the gimmick weapon in the Rykard fight, even though it invalidates their run. I understand that Rykard isn't intended to be fought without the gimmick weapon, but challenge runs are supposed to do unintended things, that's what makes them amazing to watch.
I was disappointed when I found out that you don't typically do challenge runs because you instantly became one my of favorite runners on the platform with this video. Hopefully you feel the inspiration to do a few more of these over time! But no pressure if you don't feel like it. Just wanted to let you know that I (and likely others) think this video is a perfect example of a well done challenge run. Absolutely loved it.
Really minor correction, the Draconic Tree Sentinel is NOT a required boss. (As you said he's the only required one in the open world area). You can skip him by going to Deeproot Depths and beating Fia's champions, there's a waygate there that allows you to never fight him.
You have to get there before fia does though correct?
@@yanolife4478 Yes, I think? Though after you kill Lichdragon I think the portal comes back as well? Don't quote me on it though.
You can but if you are able to beat the due boss that bocks the entrance but not the sentinel your doing something wrong. There are only two entrances and the other one you need to beat morgot who is in layndel
5:28 "..... and Margit was felled, what an Omen!" Holy crap you're speaking BARS. Awesome video btw :)
my strat was to rush to the jellyfish shield at the very start, get it to +4, and then use that to get the visage shield. not easy, but doable. getting that to plus 10 made the run fairly smooth overall... for the most part. malekith was rough. malenia was a nightmare
to be fair the boss fight included she died 3 time already making the last part fighting you a literal goddess of rot and pure evil
I'm glad to see you go into such detail on why Malenia is broken. I've seen so many casuals (no offense, but people who use Bloodhound Step and Mimic) say she's fine because '"t's supposed to be the super difficult optional final boss."
But a boss can be difficult without relying on unreacteable 50/50se
Agreed. I ended up using Mimic, though I didn't go for the bleed cheese. Just because I beat her that way doesn't mean I think the boss fight was remotely fair (or even fun when I finally beat her).
I'm all for different kinds of bosses and even the idea that Malenia should be a boss that's VERY HARD to beat. But not because she has bullshit mechanics that punish more or less every kind of playstyle besides a very few non-cheese ones -_-
all that's needed to fix her is to make her not heal on blocks and remove her cheat where she can randomly ignore stagger.
I beat her on my third or fourth try after getting incredibly lucky with her patterns and using mimic. I still think she's bullshit.
I lost patience with her on my first try, and just ended up summoning some people and abusing Crucible Horns to put her through the blender. Amusing, in the end. Shame I had to do that, though. Malenia had so much potential, man
I rushed the One Eyed Shield early, it was a fun challenge, and made the rest of the game a joke!
And it’s too bad the second channel is defunct, your Hollow Knight let’s play is what got me into the game.
I got the visage shield early on. Did more damage than my weapons at the time 😂
I like how you made this video. Most challenges I think are fast pace and don't explain much but you explain everything about the shields or bosses.
This is one of the craziest videos I’ve ever watched. Well done. I cannot even fathom having the patience to fight Melania for six hours or that I watched a one hour video on beating the game with just sheilds! (And enjoyed it! I learned a lot. Amazing video.
I don’t enjoy the bosses much. I really enjoy the open world. But I am starting to see how one could find these unique challenges a joy. (But doubt I ever will.)
54:12 i've beaten the second phase so easily aswell, with just waiting for her flower attacking and spamming ice spear weapon art. Chomped her up real nice.
You have some pretty good boss breakdowns here, might have to come back to this when I get to Melinda, Blade of Megatron on my second character.
Good run. Just going to point out that Erdtree Greatshield and its Golden Retaliation is very useful both against Godskins, Draconic and Loretta.
“Chapter 1: What It Takes To Be A Hero”
I’m not sure whether that’s a Bionicle reference or just a reference to the song itself, but either way that’s incredibly based.
The stagger kick is one of the coolest details in my opinion, she's one of the strongest demigods she's using the momentum of the attack to kick you I thinks it's great design
I think the point he’s trying to make is that the attack is inconsistent, it doesn’t feel like he would be upset if the kick attack just happened every time. The inconsistency was the “bad design” part, not the actual kick itself
Nice video! As an avid shield user I was surprised you didnt use the Fingerprint shield infused with blood, its better than the palisade shield in my opinion
I read that a lot during my research, but that strat seemed almost like it would be SO good that it would be close to cheese, so I didn't wanna risk it. Plus I didn't wanna dump any levels in arcane AND I really didn't wanna go down to the sewers, haha
@@ingeniousclown It is quite cheesy. Fingerprint shield will actually do more blood damage than the palisade shield. Which is stupid, considering all the spikes. With high arcane one shield crash can inflict bleed twice on some enemies. That said, if you poison infuse the pallisade shield (for blood and poison) you can use the blood and the poison/rot talismans to get easy 40% extra damage for 20 seconds for every shield crash that fully connects.
What is this? Pleasant commentary, honest opinions, good editing and fun gameplay? You’ve earned a subscription, good fellow.
Watch doom wolf aswell he’s very similar
Idk how you can say that, his voice is so annoying
Pleasant commentary when he bashed on someone doing a run less than a minute into his video? This guy's an ass, I hope you unsubscribed
You could use the visage Sheild when you got it. 50% strength bonus when two handing. You have 60 effective strength while 2handing.
Ahhhh... hearing the start of Hornet's theme at 41:00 almost makes up for the PTSD that the Malenia fight gave me. Almost. I'm glad I'm not the only one who immediately thought of Hornet the first time I encountered Malenia, especially after seeing Waterfowl Dance.
I really love this video! I would like to see more of this. It's actually the second time I'm watching this now and I find it really nice how enthusiastic you sound, when talking about shield. I think you've earned a sub just for this video alone.
I don't know why this video has so few views when this video was really well done
huge missed opportunity not making your character a sundowner lookalike for this run
I went the weeb route
A few people in the comments have said that the draconic tree sentinel isn't required, and while true the alternative is probably just as painful, but I have a counyerpoint, what you describe as it's strenght is it's weakness, being in the open word, just poison it or rot it and leave, it won t Regen health till you die or reset the area, if it survives poison or rot it again, then repeat, it even spends a few seconds flexing before fighting you so I suspect it was made to be cheeseable in this way honestly.
I don't know for all the people that had an issue with malenia's waterfowl dance, but it's actually easy to counter with the ash of war "vow of the indomitable", it can be found in south west liurnia, it makes you invicible and doesn't heal her as it should, it's like your character's hitbox disappear, you just have to constantly block and use the skill, on her first move, you only block two hit if you have the timing, none on her second move and then by moving to the right you'll avoid the third move without blocking, I'm surprised he didn't use it against her
I won't use cheese strats.
Proceeds to skip half the content to pick a very specific shield and talismans.
The coil shield sucks....
Proceeds to use it on the next 4 bosses.
Cold/bleed is too op
Backtracks statement and uses it for the end game bosses.
Your heart said one thing. The brain did the other.
Banger video, King
Voosh rad
Voosh when you do torch only while debating insane people from cozy?
For the godskin noble, you can absolutely react to the belly attack. Granted, you're not in mid-attacking animation.
I’m so confused on why everyone thinks the morning star is the earliest bleed weapon. You can get the Uchigatana from a catacomb relatively early in Limegeave I believe. And a lot of the starting class weapons have bleed build-up (Hell, the samurai class starts with an Uchigatana, you can dual wield them)
the dungeon with the uchi is directly after the carriage that holds the morningstar
Theres also the flail in one of the carts at gatefront
@@R3m1ly its literally the opposite direction. From the spawn thr uchi is north the morning star south
Because the uchigatana has a Dex requirement, while the morning star can be used by any starting class if two-handed
@@onepiece013 You an get the Flail in one of the Carts. It only requires I think 18 dex and 12 strength. Samurai, vagabond, confessor, and Bandit can all achieve that by killing a few mobs and leveling up like 4-8 times. And that’s before the gate front site of grace!
You're a legend... currently around 250 deaths on her.. using a hi vigor/end/str with arcane build and the fingerprint/bleeding shield crash for a weapon... man... i'm so happy that its not just me complaining about the the thought that her healing should be proportionate to the damage she does... not just a crazy like 4-500 flat heal every time her sword touches something BUT... i'll take the "skill issues flames" lol... i'm not a pro but god damn this is hard
I'm new to Elden Ring and soul games in general. The way you explained some combos on some bosses was so well said! I really liked your video. :)♡
I used frost/bleed on a flail on my magic knight. The feeling of getting a double proc is difficult to describe.
Skumnut reedemed himself with the rickety run. You should check that out.
I saw it, even left a comment.
my biggest gripe about Malenia is still just that she can heal if you block the attack, she should only be allowed to heal if she actually does damage.
"You not from miquilla if you aint never done this befo" *five consecutive almost undodgeable combos* breaks the game mechanics designed to help the player arbitrarily, stabs you in the chest and chucks you out like an old aple core
What an awesome run. Love how much detail you went into for each hurdle
"I will arbitrarily make it harder on myself", That's not arbitrary then, its very well within reason. Give yourself more credit. This was amazing.
10:56
Actually, when 2 handing a weapon, strength requirements are reduced to 66%. So your 40 str was enough as you only needed 30.
This made me realize I want a spell that is a Fire Glint blade like the big magic wolves use.
I always wondered why Malenia being as strong as she is did nothing about Miquella being taken seems like a weird story loop hole or something that was meant to be told but never was.
Miquella was taken while Malenia was fighting Radahn. And after using all her strength to rot and stalemate him fell onto a coma. Cleanrot knight Finley carried her back to the haligtree but by then Mohg was long gone and by the time she awakens. She has no idea where her brother is or who took him.
@@thequeenofgay9022 feels like an even bigger plot hole that we cant just say "Mohg is in this spot with your brother"
@@dave7474 to be fair yes I feel like it should be an option.
@@dave7474 Not a plot hole, just Miyazaki's commitment to violence (joke)
32:45 All those frustrations is why Mohg has 2 counter items with his Shackle and his Tear.
Great run!!
The Malenia section was comical, you went down a dark rabbit hole, explaining why actually, it is FromSoft who are wrong for designing such a hard boss, not you who are wrong for trying to beat an undefeated warrior goddess to death with a shield. Funny shit.
Don’t ever disrespect skumnut dawg
just calling his run lame is not disrespectful, it's very valid criticism
@@neerkum5428 then he beat it with a fucking rickety shield you clown
@neerkum5428 i don't think you know what the word valid or criticism means
@@nikkospops I think it would be you. It's definitely vaild if it's simply the truth
They made up anyway lol
This truly is the definitive shield kiddo experience
I didnt understand your motives behind not using carian retalliation. In my opinion. Cheese involves exploiting errors and ai to trivialise challenges. Not using the tools that are designed well and scale with upgrades.
Yes but as of now carian retaliation is bugged and does damage in the thousands which it isnt supposed to do
Seeing as how there is a spell for Carian Retaliation that is technically harder to pull off than the ash of war, but does 10x less damage absolutely makes the Carian Retaliation ash of war cheese imo. It's definitely exploiting an error.
I'd never belittle the way someone wants to win a boss fight in a Souls game, you do you. But I do respect OP for not resorting to it. 😄
@@APG93 i was not aware of that spell. But i stand by my original point.
@@pandorasactor2346 i thought that was a result of the sheild being +23
See this is why I used the word "arbitrarily" when describing cheese in my rules. Peoples' thresholds for what is and isn't cheese will inevitably be different, and for me this was well above the line. The damage is simply insane IMO, and by _your_ logic of "to trivialize challenges", Carian Retaliation certainly fits. Thing was nearly two-shotting each boss with zero points invested in Intelligence!
My guess is that someone messed up the scaling numbers on it, and that +10 (ie the max level for a somber weapon) would be where the damage should be at +25, but I'd have to test more to be sure.
Him: shields are short range weapon
Me: laughs in one eyed greatshield
I had also tried this challenge just recently and wanted to thank you, because through your suffering I got a lot of NEEDED tips to make it through.
dont disrespect the nut
why whats he gonna do, call me out by creating a clown character and doing a whole run in ng+6 with just a rickety shield without bleed or frost in response? yeah right lul
@@ingeniousclown holy crap you replied to me.
big fan dude, i have gotten so much useful information from you and have binged your challenges.
love you and the nut.
Ever thought to do heavyload w/ low stamina only run? only slow tic wepons and all.
basically a slow tank run
thought it would be cool.
@@ingeniousclown yes, thats exactly what he did lol
skumnut did a harder run so this video means nothing to me now
Dont disrespect skumnut
y not tho
@@ingeniousclown I’ll say it again like a pastor
It’s kind of lame
Forgive me if this has already been said but I haven’t seen a comment on it yet. I’m very surprised and impressed that you took the time to develop a strategy for Waterfowl Dance instead of just using Vow of the Indomitable, a shield ash that acts like a stationary dodge with ultra long i-frames
That art is how I beat Malenia on my first playthrough. As long as you have an okay amount of poise (your build definitely had more than enough), you can just spam the art when her attack starts and you’ll only get nicked once or twice. Way easier and she doesn’t get much healing. I’m sure you could learn the timing and not get hit at all, but since it was such a non-issue for me I never needed to before I finally beat her
Regardless, this was great video! Very enjoyable to watch
Very nice use of the hollow music soundtrack, it fits elden ring’s atmosphere so well!
Skumnut is not boring
Sorry bros but Skumlord if the New Shield God
Something is rising, and thank god it's the Shield Hero.
Tried out a greatshield-only run a while back (was thinking less Shield Hero and more Mash Kyrielite from Fate/Grand Order for mine, and allowed myself to at least use spirit ashes), realized too late how much a hell the limited range on shield attacks was gonna make the end of the game. Didn't help that Shabriri's Woe doesn't work outside of co-op, so my idea of re-creating her taunt skill to tank attacks while summons did their thing didn't really work. Was still fun for a while, at least. Props for sticking it out and showing how it's done.
It's really really short sighted to complain that a boss should have had more time spent on design just because you decided to do a shield only run when the boss is designed around a specific weapon. You killed him with the shield, you won. What else do you want, an easy challenge?
Also, learn the bosses. There's plenty of other runners who don't whine about the challenge runs they do. Roll INTO the fat dude when he's rolling at you. You haven't even figure out how to deal with most things but complain the whole way through. Listening to that is more frustrating than the game itself.
You can still get hit plenty often while rolling INTO noble. It's like rolling through the magic boulder in the academy.
And yeah, Rykard has trash hitboxes. That's true no matter what, and a pretty lazy oversight really. Yhorm was a gimmick boss, still had very good hitboxes. Storm King was a gimmick boss, hitboxes function just fine using non-gimmick weapons. Bed of Chaos, gimmick boss, and aside from maybe some funky hurtboxes on the side targets, all the hitboxes are exactly as expected. Ancient Wyvern, gimmick boss, totally fine hitboxes, even being quite generous on the head hitbox to make it easier than normal to hit the plunge.
And the point was you can typically kill those gimmick bosses with any loadout really. Even mages can fist plunge ancient wyvern, you can kill yhorm with normal weapons just fine, Storm King can be beaten with just the shitty throwing weapons, bed of chaos can be beat with janky firebomb throws. Point is, you're not hard locked into a specific playstyle for the fight. But you are with Rykard. You WILL be a melee spear user, and you WILL keep your distance. I personally only rank it slightly higher than Dragon God, and that's only because I get to actually fight, even if it is being shittily locked into a slow spear build.
I know this is late, but at 36:00 - I don't know if this happens every time, but when I used the claw on my first playthrough I managed to parry his jumping Destined Death slash which knocked him straight to the floor (similar to how the Shackles pin Morgott/Mogh etc.) which opened him up to some extreme damage. Might be worth testing on future challenge runs you try?
BROTHER THE MUSIC IN THIS VIDEO SLAPS!! I'm only 1/3 of the way through but using Final Fantasy and Zelda music. Chefs Kiss
Was anyone else wondering for a good second how/why he "hooked" up a smithing stone bell to the Lyndell medallions or just me? 🤣@8:20
Jeez, your voice is just sooo so nice for voice overs. It was an awesome video to watch!
Edit: FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE WHO ACKNOWLEDGES THAT WATERFOWL DANCE NEEDS A REWORK INSTEAD OF DEFENDING IT WITH ARGUMENTS THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE
The aoe maliketh does before the actual aoe goes of run to one of the side of his legs which allows you to end up behind him so you can dodge the aoe and be able to punish him. I didn’t think people didn’t know how to dodge this it’s pretty easy but it’s very understandable why they don’t, it’s not that obvious
27:59 "I didn't have the patience for that."
-Man who beat Elden Ring with Briar Armor, 2022
I mean this in the nicest way possible. I appreciate the fact that you're not great at the game. Seen so many challenge runs where people just crush the game, seeing someone struggle the way a normal player would is a really nice change of phase.
Yeah I found the hit boxes on the ulcered salamander things is pretty bad too
love how you used the Bolero of fire at the start of chapter 3 made me happy to hear and it felt very fitting
"Margit is felled, what an omen" Absolute class
I am so addicted to this game. I never thought I’d enjoy a game as much as breath of the wild
I beat DS2, SotFS, and DS3 with only shields. I couldn't find a shield that I really liked in Elden Ring. Then on my second new game plus that I came across the One -Eyed Shield. It's sooo badass! I'm going to do a shield run based on it.
I think the reason why nobody was really jumping on the shield thing is because it’s been done before in other souls games, so it’s a standard. But in Elden Ring, there’s a TON of new challenges to try. Spirit only, bow only (which could have been done in previous games, but here it’s extra viable), and trying to beat the game using the worst spells only too.
Props to playing literally one of the greatest songs ever. The Mario paint song. Makes me miss my snes mouse, playing that game for daaaays lmao. Cheers. Nice work on this vid