A point to be made is that Scadutree Fragments at least the recent scaling means you don't have to max them out. They are soft capped to have the optimal damage and defense at blessing level 12 and anything after that is just a marginal increase as per the chart they gave us. Almost all of the benefit is now crammed into the first 12 levels of the blessing. You only get 1-2% marginal gains after 12.
I loved them working like this and I think it's good that you can't identify them all from a distance. You don't need ALL of them and they actually want you to explore. This means actually going around checking the scattered around loot and whatnot. If you knew at a glance what's going to be an Arteria Leaf and what's a good item, you'd just skip all useless items. I loved that compared to the basegame I had no idea if I'd get a valuable Ash of War, Cookbook, Fragment or similar item or some fodder items. This meant that I was more excited checking random loot and it made me look more in-depth into open world areas. If you make the world too "structured" you'd just filter everything by importance. The basegame is already like this. I prefer how the DLC did it which is more chaotic.
There's a flipside though, in terms of people that want to keep exploring to a minimum. Those people feel like they're being forced to collect a few just to have a 1:1 scaling ratio. I say that as someone who likes the concept of exploring for the fragments in general
@@michaelcarroll5801 Makes sense, but i guess this is an error since the beginning. Its like saying "in terms of people that play rpg games that want to keep random encounters at a minimum". It is an exploration game. You can ignore it, but don't curse the game from doing what it was supposed to do.
@@michaelcarroll5801 if you dont want to explore why are you playing elden ring? Not exploring is not a valid reason for a complaint in a game designed around exploring.
@@hawkeyemihawkgettingmoneylord if you read the comment I said I enjoy exploration and am playing devil's advocate for those who just want to rush bosses without being forced to explore on a character they already built. Besides you know the game isn't just about exploring, it's about a lot of things like boss fights, character building, strategy, immersive world building and narrative, or some people make the game about achieving impossible challenges like RL1 or TrueRL1, deathless or whatever challenge they want to do.
Contrasting scary tree fragments with golden seeds shows how half-baked the system was-you have more than enough to get max level, you can see the mini trees and can easily reach them, and you have enough to get up to a good level for your area but you can also run around the map to get more if you want. I don’t know what someone who didn’t have a wiki guide would do to find all the scadutree fragments, and you have to find ALL of them to get to max level, so it’ll be a grind!
The flaw i find in this analysis is the assumption that you have to get all of them. By level 10 you already have 1.65 of a potential 2.0 increase. That takes 20 out of 50 fragments meaning you can easily get most of the upgrade casually playing the game without going out of your way to grind for scadus. The completionist grind rarely makes games fun, if you get a feel for the challenges you will likely notice you are doing enough damage just going at a natural pace. In my personal experience level 5 was goid enough for Rellana and Divine beast and i got that from just exploring the area before scadu altus.
@@Pontif11 people complaining about the fragment system are just upset they cant rush bosses and beat the game in 2 hours. alot of people bought this game but dont actually enjoy playing it, but play it anyways, and then complain and blame the game when the fragments rewarded exploration, and werent even that hard to find.
@@S3nCh4n well, it's honestly your problem. You don't want to waste some 20 minutes traversing "big empty maps" to upgrade your scoobydoo blessing? Fine. It's not the game's fault that a boss will be destroying you for hours after that. Yeah, I actually enjoy traversing DLC map even if it's not for the first time and see no problem with it being a part of gameplay
@@multifleks it is absolutely the game's fault because of the scaling. The devs WANT you to go around on a collectathon. I get them wanting you to experience the story and not do boss rushes but after the first time it's very boring.
also the emptiness is very likely a sign of rushed development. Also why they increased the scaling of blessings AFTER release of the game. To create a mood of emptiness and a place that has been deserted is fine for one area, maybe even 2. But 5?? Nah they didn't finish it
Scadutree Fragments should be looked at less like gaining levels and more like upgrading weapons. It's maybe easy for people at end game and NG+ to forget, but before acquiring the miner's bellbearings, Smithing Stones at any given tier can also be in strictly limited supply tied mostly to exploration. This can actually be even more restrictive than Scadutree Fragments, since a lack of Smithing Stones in the early to mid-game can severely limit the player's ability to experiment with new weapons as they find them. Whereas conversely, Scadutree provide a universal upgrade system. A player never has to debate increasing their blessing level the way they might with upgrading a weapon for fear they might find something cooler they want to use instead. A player also doesn't really need to collect all 50 Scadutree fragments in a single run. Just half of them is more than enough to reach blessing level 11, which especially after the patch additament is now a 75% improvement to damage and defense, which really should be enough for base NG, with the remaining 35% being an upgrade to pursue in NG+
The thing about this system is that it either forces artificial difficulty on you or it makes you all over the map without committing to many bosses and complete areas. Why would i ever want to face a boss that i already know takes half damage from me and does twice damage to me? So i can die a bunch of times and spend hours on a single boss because it's supposed to be hard. Supposed to be hard? Have these people ever played other fromsoft games. which one was hard actually? They were all very manageable. This dlc was forced difficulty through sheer numbers manipulation. They do more damage and you do less damage. And every boss now has insane long combos with exactly one small window for attack. And so many fights are the same. A boss or enemy spinning and swinging and spinning, stop for a moment then jump back reset and restart.
you realize the dlc boss scalings with no scadutree levels are no different from how it was when you first fight the limgrave tree sentinel or margit the fell omen, right? even the solution to overcoming those challenges is the same. "go out into the world and look for a certain item, then come back and try again." It even makes sense from a lore standpoint. The shadow realm is sealed away in an alternate dimension, and the residents of it hate the lands between. why would power gained from the elden ring and erdtree mean anything here?
Not at all. When you met the sentinel there was still exploring to do granting armor and weapons to be tried. Plus weapon upgrade materials. We no longer need weapon upgrade since by this point most players should have all ball bearings. Yet our weapons deal a percentage of damage now. The exploration before was just leveling. In the dlc it's leveling, respec and looking in every nook and cranny for fragments. Before you could just do some portions of a zone and then be ready for the boss. Now you have to skip a lot to get fragments simply because % damage output and taken. The way they implemented it is not optimal. The debuf should also work locally so that exploring a single area and doing it feels rewarding. Right now you're always at a disadvantage. It also breaks immerisio having to go to a whole new area for some fragments and then coming back.
@@DMundus the fallacy that you have to look "every nook and cranny" is so funny to me. The vast, vast, majority of the fragments are put on the main roads, in front of big ass fucking statues and in churches, and those on the crosses. There's 2 fragments on Pot dudes that are a bit off road, one fragment in a cave in Cerulean Cave, one under a tree in Abyssal Woods, and one in front of a waterfall (that you see as you descend) that are not actually in the main paths. That's 1.5 Blessing levels that are actually "hidden." Please stop fucking lying.
I dare say this is a consequence of making the game as big as it is. Had the scale been smaller, they would not worry that much about overleveling nor caps. Even more, I would question, why do we even have to have "progression" in the DLC? In the basegame it made sense because it had some linearity, but in the DLC, save for the final boss, you can do a boss rush. Also, our character is already complete. Using damage to bring a false sense of progression is just stretching the playtime.
he said it in the video. Elden Ring have a different design philosophy than Dark Souls, Sekiro or Bloodborne. its a game ABOUT exploration. there are more exploration than combat in general. its fine if you dont like that but i (as an open world game enjoyer) prefer Elden Ring more than Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro. and NOBODY IS WRONG some people just slightly off the target audience. why do we have to have progression? to reward exploration which is the MAIN design philosophy of an open world game. and one of the reason why a game like AC Odyssey and Valhalla or even Unity and Syndicate is a bad openworld game (i played them) is because you dont feel rewarded by exploring them. IM NOT SAYING SCADUTREE SYSTEM IS THE BEST IMPLEMENTATION but im just answering why “progression” is necessary in an open world format. this divide is simply because Elden Ring is the biggest release and biggest playerbase soulsgame ever. so this divide is innevitable at the end of the day. lets just say they dont have progression and you can easily boss rush like Ringed City DLC (no need to care about level up and the main difficulty is just the boss and their unique moveset). then the open world fan of Elden Ring would hate that while the souls community from previous game would love that.
@@TheKnightCrafter123 The reward of exploration already comes with new weapons, spells, skills, summons, craftings, etc. The "progression" is the build completion and for that time, we already reached it. And now that you mention it, perhaps that design philosophy is the flaw. Exploration can only be experienced once, reducing the replayability. But the RPG component of Elden Ring makes it way more replayable which makes this akward blend. This is why, in subsequent runs, nobody "explores" but picks up items in the world as if we're doing the groceries. The scadutrees only make this grocery list larger.
For me the system could be made better by just giving the fragments to the bosses it would be more interesting at least like all rememberence bosses have the fragments
In my opinion they should've made the DLC accessible earlier in the game. This would give a better purpose for the fragments (equalizing lower and higher level characters), and more importantly allow us to get the new weapon types earlier. I'd love to play a build focused around light greatswords. but having to go through 70% of the game before being able to acquire one turns me off.
Hard agree, I wanted to make a dryleaf arts build but I had to work so hard just to get the new weapon, whereas PC players could just cheat in the weapon and get to enjoy it on a fresh save without going into ng plus
@@michaelcarroll5801 If it's harder than the base game why does need to be accessible early game? And arguably its accessible early game you can get to the dlc before reaching the capital.
@@desmond1164 As was stated in the initial comment and my own, we both wanted to play through the entire game with exclusively the new DLC weapons on a fresh save. A player is unable to do this without killing at least 4 amazing bosses (Radahn/Mohg + Margit and Godrick)that you have to now wait til NG+ to fight with the DLC weapon.
I think another solution/assist could be an npc that sells maps or paper hints that tell you where the more obscure drops are (like the pot guys). And some may even place a red marker on your map after you buy them. That way you wouldn't need to memorize around 40 different locations for all 50 fragments and more for the ashes. Although i guess this is only another bandaid to the current system, it's one they can actively implement.
I don't understand why they didn't just give you the fragments after beating a boss, maybe giving you 1 lv before dancing lion to introduce the mechanic and you "earn" the rest after beating a boss
Bosses already give you ample rewards, and filling the map with fragments/ashes was a good way to make it less empty and give you a reason to ride across the open world instead of rushing straight to the boss
What I keep thinking to myself is, “This took TWO PLUS YEARS?!” FOUR ENORMOUS areas that have only one reason to be there. Yes, there’s an argument for Bayle as there are other dragons on the way, but still enormous in comparison of space to boss/enemy/challenge is concerned. The Shaman VIllage. “VILLAGE?!” You mean the cute flowered area that was the home to THE character of the base game that ONLY has FOUR structures of which ONLY TWO have boarded up doors? How many people did they stuff into jars in this game? EIGHT if you assume 2 houses that small held 4 people. Why not just put the Scadutree fragments on bosses? Each boss get’s you 25% closer to your normal feeling fights in the base game. Why do it at all (as you asked) when we have ALWAYS been responsible for the amount of challenge we experience going into DLC. I think they chose this way because people were most likely going to steamroll the DLC when they realized how there was not enough to do if you weren’t the exploring type. So somehow, even though I AM the exploring type, I found it to be a chore suddenly because it felt like something I was being forced to do rather than have it naturally happen. Is there a difference? Not a huge one, mostly my mentality, but it didn’t change the fact that I felt like I was on community service picking up trash from the sides of the road. You arrive at a boss. You have X amount of fragments and ashes and you get your ass kicked. Your immediate assumption is you need more of them. You head out looking, but now you’re looking in areas where you’ve been before, backtracking, because you COULD HAVE missed one, or two. SO suddenly the question enters your mind. Do I have all of the ones that are accessible to me? How many are there? How many will I need for ME to beat this boss. It throws in a LOT of questions that you never had in the base game. Yes, some love this system, but I truly HATE it. I am not responsible for my increase in strength or whatever stat that made the difference in a fight, some fragment is. Ultimately I want to say that I can still say I enjoy the DLC, the sprawling vertical maps are beautiful, but I agree, FromSoft is hitting its head on this ceiling and I don’t like the direction we are heading. So much stamina and poise that they seldom get broken and enough HP to make Elden Beast jealous. I just don’t think this is the future. If we are afraid to criticize them then we will see more of it, and I want to see more and better from them. Fingers crossed we get it.
I used a lvl 114 build farmed up from the base game to see the difficulty differences&honestly the scadutree fragments do make the game a bit tedious. You can tell almost immediately that you need these items even at NG+0&you basically have to ignore the first two bosses until you’re lvl 4-5.
Something that resonated with me, "nor does it distinguish your character in any way" maybe if you could choose where your blessings strengthened you (for example, damage, special damage, defense, magic defenses) and then they could not only give you more, but also with few you could max whichever you want to, or which you believe you need. A mini-leveling system with 4 distinct decisions, that wont require of you to get a high percentage of the fragments
I think the roleplaying aspects of these games have been getting lost in the discussion of these games as of the last few years so it's worth reminding people of it yee
There's a presentation about botw's world design where they talk about how the world was built up of triangles (mountains) in order to create a loop of discovery. I think this is imperative to the system of looking for shrines (which you can see from a distance) and marking them. Just an additional thing the Skibidi system tried to steal but didn't quite understand. Very good video anyway, you talk a lot of sense and I like that we can have an honest discussion about how the game could be improved, rather than just praising it all to heaven and back. :)
I was actually just thinking about that. It was a really interesting talk they gave its a shame they took it down and tried to erase it from the internet 🤦🏼♂️.
Oh yeah I've heard about this! Didn't remember it till just now but yeah that's the kind of design philosophy and trial-and-error that Fromsoft likely didn't pursue
Yeah cause that would totally solve a lot of the complaints of difficulty being locked behind a certain item. That would make things worse since you HAVE to beat the hard bosses you're stuck on in order to win. One of the biggest draws of ER is that you can go somewhere else, explore, and come back to kill the boss. Besides, Gaius guards like five so the game already kind of does that.
Scadutree Tree Fragments are extremely easy to find. Almost every streamer was able to find them all on their own. Some of them even completely. I only missed the last 3 in the final dungeon. But level 19 was still pretty good 👍
@@thesnatcher3616 just have Revered Spirit Ash in the Open World so people that summon and dont learn bosses can still cheese thrue it. Ohh no Souls game is difficult how terrible surely thats totally not expected or something like that.
@@thesnatcher3616 Going somewhere else exploring, and coming back is exactly what I was going for. We can access nearly any area, fight nearly any boss without killing a single one.
I don't remember which in particular, but I do recall an interview with Miyazaki where he talked about how Elden Ring is the max of what Fromsoft can do in terms of scale, and I think you can definitely see that. As much as I love the exploration, there is a lot of dead space both base game and DLC. Open worlds nowadays seem to be getting pretty boring. I literally can't bring myself to play any more Assassin's Creed Valhalla because it's so bland. Miyazaki ended his speech when Elden Ring won game of the year with something like "I have made up my mind to make even more interesting games than this" but he's also said it's not really plausible for Fromsoft to make anything larger in scale than Elden Ring. Really makes me curious what they are cooking.
I haven't heard of this but it's a bit reassuring, if they simply kept pursuing open worlds from here it would just become a mess. They can still in the future if they want but they're not shy about working on 2 separate games at once at least
Literally would have rather had something like "shadow runes". You start the dlc at shadow level 1 and then like normal runes you get them from killing mobs and bosses. You level the shadow levels with the shadow runes. Having to run around and get the fragments on each new character feels awful. Shadow runes would make the progression much more straightforward, play the game and level as you go. Only problem I can see is that you are capped at your normal level once you enter, but since your normal levels do so little anyway compared to the fragment power that hardly matters. Edit: And also really it would make killing shadow mobs more rewarding, most of us probably entered at some kind of meta level anyway and had no use for the runes we did get, outside of buying more stones for weapon upgrades. For my part I felt no reward killing mobs and just skipped as much as I could as all I got was more useless runes.
Very good point. Bringing in a new currency to level the scadu system, could also have made it such that the shadow runes are like a fraction of "normal" runes so that you could also still level with them as the enemies and bosses drop a lot. But they needed something to fill the already barren world and having 50 fragments to throw around and place randomly is better than another 50 cookbooks
@@JuliusKingsleyXIII It's so obvious that spending more than 10 seconds thinking about how nonsensical it would be to actually implement it is a bad idea. Really hilarious that you think they didn't think of that.
@@ennayanne Not even gonna bother explaining OPs ignorance about "shadow lobs" not actually being that. And they're just ignoring things the game explains as per usual with souls players... But having an analogous currency based system like with Souls and Runes would 1) have to be balanced for end game and NG+ cycles. 2) would fuck up balance by removing the ability to control your growth actively. 3) Fromsoftware already knows how their numbers and balance work for their different NG+ cycles and how after a certain level, the difference matters very little. Just leveling up more is frankly pure idiocy. 4) By implementing a currency based system like base game and souls, they would still have to put a low cap on it, because they'd want the increments to be both significant and not break the game. People would do like they do typically in these games and waste time farming to reach the cap. Removing the ability/option to farm is good fyi. And not implementing this shit system proposed by OP is good because it forces players to actually pay attention and play the damn game. 5) the arguments made against skibidi fragments are made out of ignorance or assumptions. Most of them are on your way, and reaching level 12 is incredibly easy and you don't even have to go out of your way for it. Though having them drop out of mini-bosses and bosses and even story invader NPCs would've been better. 6) the skibidi system is also thought for the newly found DLC+ system. 7) if you actually explore you'd realise that gravesite plains alone gives you enough blessings to comfortably beat Rellana and not feel OP (4) and there are only 2 fragments that are "out of your way" And they're in Crystal Lizards/Beetles/Pot Dudes (clarification made to show how idiotic the criticism of Pot Dudes is) What op proposes is incredibly simplistic and flat out dumb because it's a system that would encourage farming rather than engaging with the key aspects of the game. Key one being exploration. And he himself said he already doesn't engage anyway. Like most people do with these games, I don't know why they pretend otherwise. Following the Crosses will give you enough Blessings to clear through the game without issues, and they're all in your way. Having a controlled and limited path to growth that is also contained by the regions you've explored is better than having another Souls-for-level system for end game characters. It's absolutely not perfect or the best, but it's better than "just keep levelling bro." Please, just fucking think for a second how it'd be in practice.
It is different though dawg. More than enough golden seeds were available to find. And the sacred tears were in fairly obvious locations and there wasn't a crap ton of them. 50 random azz scat doo doo frags being found the way they are in the dlc, lead players to doing a crap ton of back tracking banjo kazooie style. It was lame by comparison.
The dlc could have worked just fine while having level scaling from the base game. Just make the enemy HP pool and damage higher than the end-game enemies from the base game. This would also allow more freedom in terms of how you could tackle the dlc, like the main game. Currently the system pretty much forces you to explore every nook and cranny, which was not the case with the main game. Ironically the system goes against the design of freedom of exploration they aimed for in Elden ring. If they absolutely needed to have this Scadutree fragments system then simply make it so that all minor and major bosses drop them upon death.
I dont see the issues people have with blessings. I think they implemented them fine. Explore, you'll find them. As with every game in the series, once u know where enough are to get you to whatever level you feel you need given your experience and skill with the games, then it's not an issue at all.
I think having a tree-upgrade system (similar to the one from Salt and Sanctuary) would've been a better implementation Upgrading to buy Fragments with souls would naturally encourage exploration, or if players choose to (like on their alt characters), just farm for souls by cooping or farming to get some Fragments
Oh man it's been a min since I played S&S, but I do remember thinking that system was good, if maybe a bit too restrictive? Think I recall it being an investment going into one path
I thought it’s pretty good. The reason why they use the new level is so that people who are level 300 like myself also have a challenge and it makes it fun again because it’s hard.
I played the DLC on NG+1, I found most Shadowtree Fragments along my journey natural and reached LV. 17. I got to the final boss and couldn't take their hits. I looked up the locations of the remaining fragments, and get to LV 20, I felt a difference defense-wise at least, it was still hard but I didn't see my HP bar melt under the lights of gawd. I see no difference with reaching a hurdle, go somewhere else and farm Runes, and then come back with extra life and attack power.
Similar experience for me. Was in NG+7 for whole DLC, reached Radahn at 16 blessing I think, kicked my ass for like 9 hours, found the rest of the fragments, only took about 3 hours from there. I guess the difference in higher NG pluses is MUCH more noticeable, which maybe is fine that you'd need it more then
Honestly ...placement of fragments woouldnt be bad ...if... IF ..there were more mini bosses in open world ..I know that a lot of people had problem with base game with repetitive bosses ...but ..I dont hear a single person complaining about crucible knights ...like I dont know ...come up with like 3 mini bosses and copy paste them all like 4 times or whatever ..cause it would be like "yea Im going to collect skibidi pieces but I might as well have some fun along the road killing some fun mini bosses" now its really just running around the map doing absolutely nothing ...in base game its not that big of a problem cause you can skip like 95% of the map cause you know there is nothing you need for your build ..like for example ..you go grab charged attack talisman and tear ..turtle talisman .. cragblade ..blue dancer talisman and ...one thing ..then youll go grab balls as your weapon and you can go boss rush mode...takes like idk ..an hour or so ? And its like ...3 locations ? In DLC you have to go everywhere on the map and do nothing along the road
They used cool miniboss designs in place of half the remembrances. If this were base game quality, gaius, rellana, putrescent knight, Scadutree avatar would all be repeated as either standard minibosses or major foes(like elemer or niall). Those bosses are nowhere near remembrance quality or importance, yet they’re forced to be.
It just occurred to me that one possible substitution for scadutree fragments could have been a change in soft and hard caps for stats, which would only work in the dlc. Meaning, going back to the base game, the player would have very limited benefit from those level-ups, so it wouldn't mess the balance there. I don't know whether it would work well in higher NG+ cycles, though.
We need like 10 more of them than maximum, like the seeds, I can't find the last one even with a guide. That said you can definitely beat Radiquella at SFL 15 which is 34/50 frags or 68% for a 75% buff and if you miss 4 that's 92% of the frags for a 98% buff.
When I played dark souls 3 I was like level 250 when I reached Gael in ng+3 and I still got destroyed and he made me quit the game the scadu tree fragment’s system is useless
scibity scat doo doo spirit azz thingz. Lol what are they called again??? Also heard pc players at launch were glitched and couldn't find all of them in one playthrough. Annoying... Great point about how there are too many. 50 is a lot to keep track of. Why can't there be less of them that are easier to keep track of? OR Why couldn't they give the player slightly more than required to max out LIKE THEY DID IN THE BASE GAME WITH THE GOLDEN SEEDS?!?!?!! Because of this failure, we had to do a lot of back tracking and second guessing. Not kool from soft... What a time waster... It's not a big deal but at the same time like... Okay? lol dumb way to do it but whatever...
you don't need a maxed scadu level like with max flasks. you're disregarding the fact that scadu levels passed 12 don't make much of a difference. golden seeds are in abundance because the average player would NEED as many flasks as possible.
@@ZeroYami Found a comment on fextra about this. Person got 36 likes and only 6 dislikes for this statement... "don't listen to the propaganda Glazers are spreading. 12 is not 'all you need' From 13 to 20 you will miss out on 20% more damage and 11% damage reduction. the 11% specifically is massive when considering it is multiplicative with other defenses like armor charms and buffs. same goes for damage too. unless you are good with math and know how percentages actually work, these things look miniscule. long story short YES you do have to waste time getting them all, NO they are not "not that bad to the get" as glazers pretend. it sucks we are stuck with it, didn't encourage this kinda garbage by praising it for future games, os tuning worked pretty much the same way in ac6 their last game, its a terror to think this will be their approach to balancing in the future" And what's even funnier is I play the DLC launch version and haven't updated on this acc so it's even more relevant for players like me. 40% damage buff from scat level 12 to 20 in version 1.12... The fact that they nerfed the system in recent updates also proves that even they thought it was a bit flawed which only hurts your argument more. There isn't even a talisman in the game that grants such a buff in both versions but hey, 20% aint much according to you. Might as well play without any talismans that give you a 15 or 20% damage/defense boost with that logic... Oh and your argument gets even more destroyed by the fact that you're too scared to play on ngplus7 where this kind of thing matters even more lololol. Trust me kiddo, you're gunna want allll the help in the world for that playthrough, if you ever get the guts to attempt it that is... Long story short, learn math my guy. This system also ruins it for speed runners and coop summon level balance so that also sux lol. I'm sorry bro but you just aint that good at this game and you aint that smart about it either. You're not the worst lol, but nothing special haha that's for sure. I beat malenia ngplus 7 without summons, heavy weapons, or ranged attacks like I did, then we'll talk. Oh and here's the hard part... Don't get hit by her. I pulled it off. I bet you can too one day I believe in you. GL : ) Sorry I just get the sense that you're trying to engage in a dick measuring contest with me. I get a "only scrubs need to find them all" vibe from you. Trust me kid you don't wanna go there with me. I'd destroy you in this game as well as just talking about the mathematical facts within the stats of the game. Which I just did lolz. Lol 20% is not much of a difference... Insanity talk bro. Wonder if you would be okay with a 20% pay cut at your job in real life haha. Probably since you strike me as a cuck who just goes along with whatever the corporation thinks 100% of the time... Tell me son. What actual crit of this game do you have? I bet you think it's perfect lolz. Please prove me wrong... I would like to be the idiot for a change lol.
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 Bro is the master yapper💀 on my first playthrough I beat Radahn with lvl 18 it felt fine, though in ng+ I did find the rest since I wanted to max out the damge. It really isn't hard to find mist of them by just going through the game and if you end up struggling with radahn you can find the rest.
You don't need all 50, at least not after the rebalancing patch. 85% of the benefit is now concentrated in the first 12 levels, which only requires 26 fragments. Heck, they even made it so that that what used to be the original max bonus is now reached at only level 18, arguable turning the last 6 fragments into extra content for completionists.
@@Pelayum: there is an "overstock", at least after the patch adjustment. 26 out of 50 is all you need to get 85% out of the maximum possible bonus of 105%. Getting all 50 is not a requirement and only provides very marginal benefits. The only reason to make it a scavenger hunt every time is if you are a completionist... and I say that being one myself, but as a completionist I actually enjoy scouring every inch of the map and found 49 fragments in my first playthrough all on my own without a guide.
To be fair after my second character I didn't really have much trouble finding most fragments without a guide.... I basically got to an area and remember there were a few around... I pretty much always get to level 18 or 19 without a guide
I loved the system. It was a way to still feel genuine power increases with my already very leveled character going into the dlc and I love how they were all spread out quite well and unpredictibly. It was always a YESSSS!! moment when I found one. Loved it. My issues with the dlc were all the shitty crafting book rewards as well as way too much base game enemy reuse. No excuse with 2 years work to lazily reuse so many enemies. Great dlc overall.
also... scadutree? really? yeah yeah I know it's supposed to be ye olde time way of spelling "shadow" but that word is also in the literal title of the DLC and they didn't call it "scadu" there. almost like they knew it looked and sounded stupid
I get why they did it, I just think having an excess of fragments along with making them go further (ex. need only 1 for like the level 1-8) and then exponentially go up after would have done wonders too.
I like it.... It means I can go in with my level 100 character and with my level 250 character and not need to rune level either character to beat the dlc
I don’t understand why they don’t just make a mid game dlc that gets harder along with the main game? There will always be stuff that is easier or harder if you come at it later.
I really like the system because after beating the DLC you’re not overleveled for the main game content anymore. BUT they messed up the scaling a bit. It’s really easy to be overleved now, making these mandatory bosses somehow skippable if that makes sense. I especially dislike how weak they balanced Messmer and the Putrecent Knight when it comes to the fragment-scaling. You can find so many fragments before fighting Messmer that it’s likely to overwhelm him. Especially when using slash weapons, which I found out to be completely broken themselves when fighting him (he’s really really weak to them, pretty much ruining my first fight). The Putrecent Knight on the other hand can just be overseen easily, just like Dark Beast Paarl in Bloodborne. Some players are already too far into the DLC when stumbling across him just because he’s well hidden. Making a hidden boss with early midgame scaling isn’t good design because of that exact reason. They could’ve done something similar to Radahn opening up Nokron so the player knows that there’s actually something to fight idk. In my opinion they should buff every single boss after Rellana to be fought 2-3 scadu levels higher to fix that issue. It’s also nice so the final boss doesn’t feel hitting your head against the wall. For some reason all the other bosses are balanced around level 15-16 but then Radahn feels like he’s meant to be fought at 19-20. It’s such a high and unnecessary jump because every other boss is a joke when being at that level. They’re not ”a bit“ easier that way but complete pushovers. Scaling is my biggest problem with the DLC. Romina could be mentioned too but personally I think it’s her moveset that makes her an easy boss instead of her HP and damage so I’m not really talking about her. In the end I still love the DLC and would easily rank it a 9/10. I’m just very passionate about the things I love and I want them to be perfect.
You literally get like 5 million souls from the dlc. Just make it available a little after Morgott and keep it leveling normally and balance the bosses accordingly. The balancing in EVERY OTHER GAME was fine for the DLC but you’re telling me that now it’s just too hard to balance it? It’s just kinda dumb is all
The fragments would work so much better if they were boss/miniboss rewards. I think that's why the system works so well in Sekiro but feels so tedious in SOTE
Imagine Breath of the Wild but your reward for shrines are weapons and you get spirit orbs by picking them up randomly across the world. It would make the game terrible. (I know weapons are breakable in BotW so it's not a 1 to 1 comparison but most weapons you find in SotE are worse than the base game weapons so it's not like they're amazing rewards either). Fromsoft choosing to not make Scadutree fragments the rewards for mini dungeons and legacy dungeons might be one of the worst decisions in any of their games. Now I'm not rewarded for completing the content, instead I'm rewarded for wandering around the open world aimlessly.
Bro thought he was slick. Idk, maybe they didn't do that so meaningful progression wouldn't be locked behind ultra-hard bosses that from soft purposely made with streamer bait moves so that you can go and complain to your friends about how they should never touch the game, lest it be for a dare. Don't listen to me though, I'm just a blind git gud cultist fanatic with an inability to criticize a DLC they didn't enjoy as much as everyone else.
@@thesnatcher3616 feeble king is such a joke. Any of his pathetic attempts at criticism just sound like contrarianism at this point. What a horrible, untalented content creator When someone literally thinks the only reward is skibidi fragments and everything else is bad because it doesn’t fit their mid strength build, you can’t really take their opinion into consideration
I think it didn't need the scadu fragment system. If the dlc scaled naturally as an area after Mohgwyn Dynasty or Haligtree/Farum Azula, it would've been fine.
It's pretty obvious to me that they did it because they wanted you to explore and wanted to make you feel weak again at the beginning. Like most comments here, the issue isn't the philosophy (which I agree with), it's the implementation. That being said, a lot of people may be discarding NG+ which FromSoft seem to want more people to go into. When you take this into account, not finding all fragments in your first playthrough gives you another reason to explore more during subsequent NG+ playthroughs, just like missable NPC quest items. I do think that the way you get the fragments should have been consistent. Those pot enemies just didn't make sense IMO. Edit: also as a huge BOTW/TOTK fan, it's really apparent to me that Elden Ring took a lot of inspiration from that game, which makes sense seeing how it's such a successful (the most?) Japanese Open World RPG.
@@DrnMontemayor if I remember correctly, there were 5 pot wielding enemies that dropped them. If you search the Scadutree Fragment page on the Wiki, or look up a list on UA-cam, that should confirm this. I may be wrong, just going off memory.
I'm gonna defend the skibidi fragment: in your first playthrough, you find margit and get dunked on by him, so you realize you have to explore the map, get smithing stones, golden seeds, sacred tears and levels and in that sense you feel you are growing stronger. The same goes for the dlc, when you fight enemies or your first boss probably the lion or rellana, you realize you need to explore for the fragments and while doing that you find new areas, bosses, equipment and you'll get more runes to level up and fragments, the same level of progression you had in the base game. And about that replayablity with the fragments, you don't just go to grab them, you open up aswell parts of the map you"ll need to go to grab a item if you need it and fight a remembrance boss or a boss you want to defeat. The only thing i agree is that there should have been more like the golden seeds.
How is that a good defense? Why do i need experience of Margrit cockblock when doing dlc? Where is the fun? It didnt even work like that anyway. I dont need to relearn to play the game, people just want to fight bosses lol. Why are people describing this as if leaving and going somewhere else is something fun?
My problem with it is that it creates the same problem the base game does. It makes u too op if u get past 10 blessings before u even get to certain bosses like Messmer.
Genuine question because it is always so prevalent: Do people really stop leveling after level 125 or 150? Or is this only the rule of thumb for PvPers. I personally do not care about PvP at all so i just keep on leveling if i have the runes. I bring this up because if you really explore the base game you can reach about 150 without farming runes and if we consider the dlc we look at level 200++. Would love some input.
It is primarily a PVP thing but it's also a good roleplaying medium. If you have a stopping point for leveling, you have to pick your levels more carefully and stick to certain stats, and that allows for creative builds; instead of having one character that can do everything (which can be an interesting lore in itself) you have you "mage" character, your "cleric", you "big bonk" guy, etc. etc. For me for instance I recently made a character that's a former Fire Knight that joined the Dragon Cult, so he knows and has Messmer things but also uses the Dragon head spells. But the real world reason I made this is because I wanted to have a character that used lava and dragon spells, so it's the classic "limitations forster creativity" situation
The fragments are just padding to the experience. If the difficulty progression of the DLC started around lvl 125, people would clean the floor with the bosses, and finish the DLC in a few hours and give the DLC as done after radahn. The problem however is that in a second playthrough, its a massive pain in the ass, because you lose the fragments in new game plus, and exploration is only interesting as long you're finding new things. It also creates the problem that many people will find themselves at a loss and simply look a guide online to see where the fragments are, so they can go kill the boss locking the path ahead. This fragment system is one of the many failures of elden ring.
Nice one, its great to see some well thought criticism that doesnt come from a place of not understanding basic mechanics or assuming the devs are lazy/crazy. I mostly agree with the point about their locations. Even while I believe the system was necessary due to the length of the dlc, I dont particularly enjoy finding those few fragments in a random side cave or just laying there in the abyss. Restricting to crosses and hippos is a good idea imo (and hidden side rooms in the main legacy dungeons would be fine too). I dont mind that there's 50 tho, any arbitrary number would be fine. Cutting it in half probably wouldn't change anyone's opinion. Now regarding extra ones... Idk how I'd feel in game, but theoretically I dont want that. Since for those that DO explore thoroughly, finding the extra couple could be disappointing (talk about ACTUALLY useless rewards)
Just give me fragments after each boss, let me decide if I want to level up, scale the amount of fragments to the "lateness" of the boss, problem solved
I dont understand how ER being a RPG makes getting progress from Boss fights not a valid thing. I would have loved getting Scadutree from Remembrance bosses instead of riding my horse thrue a pointless and empty open world for 15 - 30min if not more. If u rly want to lock progress behind "exploration" have Revered Spirit Ash everywhere instead because people that cheese thrue the game without learning barely anything are way more likely to want to not fight bosses directly.
Maybe I didnt say it quite right, but its not so much the RPG part as much as the open world part that I think makes it fit this game more in theory. That said I'm not opposed to the boss style either. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached
I gave up on the game and uninstalled it. The base game was hard, but I could make it. If something was too difficult, I could go somewhere else, level up and return. Here, regular enemies were no problem but all the bosses were impenetrable walls. I could do it eventually, but I wouldn't be bothered tbh. It simply got boring and felt like a chore. The base game was better balanced so I felt the urge to git gud. Here, I spent a few hours roaming to find that secret way around Castle Ensis so I could collect them to be able to fight Rellana. But then oh wait, a narrative trigger happened and some NPC quests got cancelled. I obsessed over the map just for the fragments because the bosses hit like trains. It's not supposed to be like that. I get it that the DLC was supposed to be harder than the base game, but at the same time it was and it wasn't. It was just more exhausting.
it sounds like you're describing ng+7. My blind run was on ng+7, and it was about as hard as you just said. You should probably try it on NG, if this is the case.
@@ZeroYami Noo, do I sound like someone with the time for NG+7. I was on NG. I don't have that much free time. I'm not boasting how I am a busy person with a job. I envy people with more time. Good for them. Yes, it is a skill issue. But I could solve it with more time. Which I don't have. So it's just exhausting. The curve was more forgiving in the base game. I think the game is not well-balanced for the likes of me (casual players).
you could've just use summons to make your life easier in the dlc. I know this is considered cheesing by a good portion of the souls community but it's still better than quitting and missing the chance to experience this fantastic dlc. as for the npc quests, none of those quests actually gets cancelled by approaching the shadow keep. all of them simply proceeds to the next step of their quests. all you're losing are just a few npc dialogues and a few cookbooks which are both minor imo. the only major reward that you might miss is the chance to get a specific npc as a spirit ash, but you can still get an alternate reward instead. you can't get both rewards in the single playthrough anyway, so it's not really a major loss. the community were only freaking out about that on the first few days but things eventually calmed down when they realized that it wasn't really a big deal.
@@jonneldelosreyes4607 I used them. It's not about that. It's still frustrating. Believe me, I tried many things. Then just became tired of it all. My main gripe is that with the base game there was room to breathe and here there wasn't. Okay, FS doesn't need to cater to me, no problem with that. I just speak as a common person who has a few hours a day which is not enough to 'git gud', progress and have fun at the same time. It's okay if they say the game is made for a more narrow playerbase, but I just wouldn't like to be gaslighted that it's somehow only up to me and how I play. It is - and it isn't.
Imagine this, NG+7 maxed out DEX/STR/(whatever stat your weapon of choice also scales off of) comes in a smokes all the bosses. They wanted each player new or 400hrs plus to have equal scaling and difficulty.
@@Valyrael im sure it's not brother the dlc has differenat scal on it's on so if you are in Ng+7 and you never went to dlc the dlc will be on ng you have to beat the dlc to get to ng+
The system isnt good at all for me. I dont have any issue for some king of balancing the expansion, but i didnt like that was based on items: it makes the exploration a task instead of something more organic. I wish they made more like a second currency...shadow runes or whatever. And besides, the open world in SOTE feels so empty.
9:20 not only too many but too little as well at the same time- there should be spares. Also yeah, even tho I am challenge runner in souls I have absolutely 0 interest in replaying DLC
unlike with flasks, you don't really need a maxed scadu level at all. for that reason, there isn't really that much reason for scadutree fragments to have spares. all you need is level 12 and you can get a level that high naturally without a guide.
How are Marika statues hidden? HOW? They're ALL on your way on any given path they're located on. Yes, you're able to distinguish the Outer God statues and the Marika statues from afar. Please get your eyes checked. Have you bothered to think about the very, very few fragments that are in Pot dudes and why they have them? See, getting the fragments on repeat characters isn't an issue... because the vast majority of them are ON. YOUR. WAY. And given how they rebalanced them, if you're a 125-150 character in base NG, and are somehow still struggling with a Blessing level of 12-15, you've other problems as a player. You would know this if you actually played the game again in fresh and NG+ characters instead of pushing shallow reactions as complete analysis.
They copied the tree fragment idea from Wo Long Fallen Dynasry , where the more banners you placed throughout the level would make the boss easier. It's a lazy and unrewarding way of forcing exploration on the player.
I strongly dislike the scadutree system and while I could write up some long winded doc explaining my points; I won't other than to say imo the scadu sys made the balancing in the game much worse. I lvled up to SB9 when I was fighting Messmer (my 3rd Boss) on my Blind play thru which at the time felt fine as he was a rather challenging boss but then all the bosses after were a joke and died within just a few attemps w/ the exception of Bayle and Radahn. I enjoyed my time w/ ER & the DLC but if I want to play a Souls game I think I'll just stick w/ DS3, BB, & Sekiro. I think FS took just as many steps backwards w/ their design decisions as they did forward. I miss the struggle of the older games that is just flat out absent in ER.
Yeah I thought they were bad. Not game ruining or anything, but I still didn't like them. Makes it feel like an action game, been saying that since day 1.
If only it had been tied to just a couple specific things in the overworld, it would've been fine. Golden seeds being either a) by the small glowing trees or b) dropped from ulcerated tree spirits (with some exceptions i.e. NPC drops) was a great system, since there was a mix of exploration and combat to that balance. Tying them to the crystal lizard mechanic with the pot guys or just having them in random hidden locations (ends of waterfalls, stuff like that) made it very inconsistent and muddy. Tragic, because I think it fits into the game well, echoing the established system of flask upgrades
Dlc felt like a sequel that was forced to come out a year earlier. So massive and unfinished. It’s like they didn’t have enough time to flesh out items and item descriptions. And half the remembrances are minibosses that drop a remembrance.
Fair enough but that's just a frustrating concept. They could be like golden seeds where there's a superfluity of them and people wouldn't mind so much
@@michaelcarroll5801 During your first playthrough you'll naturally discover most of the fragments. In your second playthrough you're a better player so you'll need even fewer fragments than last time. And if you want easy mode after your first playthrough, just go into NG+
"no sense of level progression". Wtf does that mean? Why do you need level progression in the dlc? Some bosses become too easy because of scoobydoo fragments, wouldve been better without this forced "level progression". There was no worthwhile level progression anyway in the dlc
@@michaelcarroll5801 how does that apply to DLC? Why do you want to be overpowered in dlc? And why do you want to be underpowered? Both are bad experiences.
@@Valyrael I'm talking about how in RPGs there's a general curve in terms of power scaling of the player character when you start a new game. Most games have you ending at the point of being overpowered, which like you're saying it's not necessarily fun being overpowered. So most people enjoy starting a fresh save on their game of choice to experience that curve of power scaling from being level 1 through to reaching the point where it's satisfying and eventually maybe you end up becoming too powerful again. So yeah that's kind of the idea of scadutree frags imo, is capturing that sort of power scaling curve
It's simply an exhausting design. You basically have to enter the mindset that it's another game where you must spend thirty minutes just so you can get decent damage output without heavy itemization.
Skibidi Fragments
Music:
0:00 - The Final Battle (Elden Ring OST)
0:20 - Greenpath (Hollow Knight OST)
3:44 - Fungal Waste (Hollow Knight OST)
5:17 - Resting Grounds (Hollow Knight OST)
9:36 - Crystal Peak (Hollow Knight OST)
12:21 - Reflection (Hollow Knight OST)
15:22 - Maiden in Black (Demon's Souls OG OST)
I always love to hear Hollow Knight osts in souls videos
Yee wanted a more chill tone for this one and its always so good for that
Scooby doo fragments
Skibidi Fragments*
scooby doo biscuits
Scooby snacks
The Scooby gang goes to the shadow lands/concussion time/grounded
First Supernatural crossover next Elden Ring
Bottom-line the issue isnt that they tried to add a progression system its HOW it was implemented.
A point to be made is that Scadutree Fragments at least the recent scaling means you don't have to max them out. They are soft capped to have the optimal damage and defense at blessing level 12 and anything after that is just a marginal increase as per the chart they gave us. Almost all of the benefit is now crammed into the first 12 levels of the blessing. You only get 1-2% marginal gains after 12.
Yeah, and comparing it to your flasks, the sacred tears and golden seeds are more egregious since they're almost required to have a good experience
I loved them working like this and I think it's good that you can't identify them all from a distance. You don't need ALL of them and they actually want you to explore. This means actually going around checking the scattered around loot and whatnot. If you knew at a glance what's going to be an Arteria Leaf and what's a good item, you'd just skip all useless items. I loved that compared to the basegame I had no idea if I'd get a valuable Ash of War, Cookbook, Fragment or similar item or some fodder items. This meant that I was more excited checking random loot and it made me look more in-depth into open world areas. If you make the world too "structured" you'd just filter everything by importance. The basegame is already like this. I prefer how the DLC did it which is more chaotic.
There's a flipside though, in terms of people that want to keep exploring to a minimum. Those people feel like they're being forced to collect a few just to have a 1:1 scaling ratio. I say that as someone who likes the concept of exploring for the fragments in general
And there are plenty on the main path and just off the beaten path to get you to more than the level you need
@@michaelcarroll5801 Makes sense, but i guess this is an error since the beginning. Its like saying "in terms of people that play rpg games that want to keep random encounters at a minimum". It is an exploration game. You can ignore it, but don't curse the game from doing what it was supposed to do.
@@michaelcarroll5801 if you dont want to explore why are you playing elden ring? Not exploring is not a valid reason for a complaint in a game designed around exploring.
@@hawkeyemihawkgettingmoneylord if you read the comment I said I enjoy exploration and am playing devil's advocate for those who just want to rush bosses without being forced to explore on a character they already built.
Besides you know the game isn't just about exploring, it's about a lot of things like boss fights, character building, strategy, immersive world building and narrative, or some people make the game about achieving impossible challenges like RL1 or TrueRL1, deathless or whatever challenge they want to do.
Contrasting scary tree fragments with golden seeds shows how half-baked the system was-you have more than enough to get max level, you can see the mini trees and can easily reach them, and you have enough to get up to a good level for your area but you can also run around the map to get more if you want. I don’t know what someone who didn’t have a wiki guide would do to find all the scadutree fragments, and you have to find ALL of them to get to max level, so it’ll be a grind!
The flaw i find in this analysis is the assumption that you have to get all of them. By level 10 you already have 1.65 of a potential 2.0 increase. That takes 20 out of 50 fragments meaning you can easily get most of the upgrade casually playing the game without going out of your way to grind for scadus. The completionist grind rarely makes games fun, if you get a feel for the challenges you will likely notice you are doing enough damage just going at a natural pace.
In my personal experience level 5 was goid enough for Rellana and Divine beast and i got that from just exploring the area before scadu altus.
@@Pontif11 people complaining about the fragment system are just upset they cant rush bosses and beat the game in 2 hours. alot of people bought this game but dont actually enjoy playing it, but play it anyways, and then complain and blame the game when the fragments rewarded exploration, and werent even that hard to find.
Best way to fix imo is to just increase the amount you can find to a surplus like the sacred tears and golden seeds.
what, you didnt find enough already? i got 17 on my first playthrough lol. idk how you guys arent finding them, just ride around on torrent.
@@adawg3032 its not that we cant find it, its a pain to ride around the big empty maps to collect it
@@S3nCh4n well, it's honestly your problem. You don't want to waste some 20 minutes traversing "big empty maps" to upgrade your scoobydoo blessing? Fine. It's not the game's fault that a boss will be destroying you for hours after that.
Yeah, I actually enjoy traversing DLC map even if it's not for the first time and see no problem with it being a part of gameplay
@@multifleks it is absolutely the game's fault because of the scaling. The devs WANT you to go around on a collectathon. I get them wanting you to experience the story and not do boss rushes but after the first time it's very boring.
also the emptiness is very likely a sign of rushed development. Also why they increased the scaling of blessings AFTER release of the game. To create a mood of emptiness and a place that has been deserted is fine for one area, maybe even 2. But 5?? Nah they didn't finish it
Scadutree Fragments should be looked at less like gaining levels and more like upgrading weapons. It's maybe easy for people at end game and NG+ to forget, but before acquiring the miner's bellbearings, Smithing Stones at any given tier can also be in strictly limited supply tied mostly to exploration.
This can actually be even more restrictive than Scadutree Fragments, since a lack of Smithing Stones in the early to mid-game can severely limit the player's ability to experiment with new weapons as they find them. Whereas conversely, Scadutree provide a universal upgrade system. A player never has to debate increasing their blessing level the way they might with upgrading a weapon for fear they might find something cooler they want to use instead.
A player also doesn't really need to collect all 50 Scadutree fragments in a single run. Just half of them is more than enough to reach blessing level 11, which especially after the patch additament is now a 75% improvement to damage and defense, which really should be enough for base NG, with the remaining 35% being an upgrade to pursue in NG+
Very good comment/explanation. I never got to that comparison between fragments and smithing stones, but it does make sense.
The thing about this system is that it either forces artificial difficulty on you or it makes you all over the map without committing to many bosses and complete areas. Why would i ever want to face a boss that i already know takes half damage from me and does twice damage to me? So i can die a bunch of times and spend hours on a single boss because it's supposed to be hard. Supposed to be hard? Have these people ever played other fromsoft games. which one was hard actually? They were all very manageable. This dlc was forced difficulty through sheer numbers manipulation. They do more damage and you do less damage. And every boss now has insane long combos with exactly one small window for attack. And so many fights are the same. A boss or enemy spinning and swinging and spinning, stop for a moment then jump back reset and restart.
you realize the dlc boss scalings with no scadutree levels are no different from how it was when you first fight the limgrave tree sentinel or margit the fell omen, right? even the solution to overcoming those challenges is the same. "go out into the world and look for a certain item, then come back and try again." It even makes sense from a lore standpoint. The shadow realm is sealed away in an alternate dimension, and the residents of it hate the lands between. why would power gained from the elden ring and erdtree mean anything here?
Not at all. When you met the sentinel there was still exploring to do granting armor and weapons to be tried. Plus weapon upgrade materials. We no longer need weapon upgrade since by this point most players should have all ball bearings. Yet our weapons deal a percentage of damage now. The exploration before was just leveling. In the dlc it's leveling, respec and looking in every nook and cranny for fragments. Before you could just do some portions of a zone and then be ready for the boss. Now you have to skip a lot to get fragments simply because % damage output and taken. The way they implemented it is not optimal. The debuf should also work locally so that exploring a single area and doing it feels rewarding. Right now you're always at a disadvantage. It also breaks immerisio having to go to a whole new area for some fragments and then coming back.
@@DMundus the fallacy that you have to look "every nook and cranny" is so funny to me. The vast, vast, majority of the fragments are put on the main roads, in front of big ass fucking statues and in churches, and those on the crosses. There's 2 fragments on Pot dudes that are a bit off road, one fragment in a cave in Cerulean Cave, one under a tree in Abyssal Woods, and one in front of a waterfall (that you see as you descend) that are not actually in the main paths. That's 1.5 Blessing levels that are actually "hidden." Please stop fucking lying.
This feels like a stolen comment from when the game came out
I dare say this is a consequence of making the game as big as it is. Had the scale been smaller, they would not worry that much about overleveling nor caps.
Even more, I would question, why do we even have to have "progression" in the DLC? In the basegame it made sense because it had some linearity, but in the DLC, save for the final boss, you can do a boss rush. Also, our character is already complete. Using damage to bring a false sense of progression is just stretching the playtime.
he said it in the video. Elden Ring have a different design philosophy than Dark Souls, Sekiro or Bloodborne. its a game ABOUT exploration. there are more exploration than combat in general. its fine if you dont like that but i (as an open world game enjoyer) prefer Elden Ring more than Dark Souls 3 or Sekiro. and NOBODY IS WRONG some people just slightly off the target audience.
why do we have to have progression? to reward exploration which is the MAIN design philosophy of an open world game. and one of the reason why a game like AC Odyssey and Valhalla or even Unity and Syndicate is a bad openworld game (i played them) is because you dont feel rewarded by exploring them.
IM NOT SAYING SCADUTREE SYSTEM IS THE BEST IMPLEMENTATION
but im just answering why “progression” is necessary in an open world format. this divide is simply because Elden Ring is the biggest release and biggest playerbase soulsgame ever. so this divide is innevitable at the end of the day.
lets just say they dont have progression and you can easily boss rush like Ringed City DLC (no need to care about level up and the main difficulty is just the boss and their unique moveset). then the open world fan of Elden Ring would hate that while the souls community from previous game would love that.
@@TheKnightCrafter123 The reward of exploration already comes with new weapons, spells, skills, summons, craftings, etc. The "progression" is the build completion and for that time, we already reached it.
And now that you mention it, perhaps that design philosophy is the flaw. Exploration can only be experienced once, reducing the replayability. But the RPG component of Elden Ring makes it way more replayable which makes this akward blend. This is why, in subsequent runs, nobody "explores" but picks up items in the world as if we're doing the groceries. The scadutrees only make this grocery list larger.
For me the system could be made better by just giving the fragments to the bosses it would be more interesting at least like all rememberence bosses have the fragments
In my opinion they should've made the DLC accessible earlier in the game. This would give a better purpose for the fragments (equalizing lower and higher level characters), and more importantly allow us to get the new weapon types earlier. I'd love to play a build focused around light greatswords. but having to go through 70% of the game before being able to acquire one turns me off.
Hard agree, I wanted to make a dryleaf arts build but I had to work so hard just to get the new weapon, whereas PC players could just cheat in the weapon and get to enjoy it on a fresh save without going into ng plus
Hard disagree the dlc is fun because it's harder than the base game.
@@hawkeyemihawkgettingmoneylord it can be harder than the base game while still being accessible early though
@@michaelcarroll5801 If it's harder than the base game why does need to be accessible early game? And arguably its accessible early game you can get to the dlc before reaching the capital.
@@desmond1164 As was stated in the initial comment and my own, we both wanted to play through the entire game with exclusively the new DLC weapons on a fresh save. A player is unable to do this without killing at least 4 amazing bosses (Radahn/Mohg + Margit and Godrick)that you have to now wait til NG+ to fight with the DLC weapon.
GARY! YOU ARE GONNA EXPLORE THE OPEN WORLD, AND YOU ARE GONNA LIKE IT!!
I think another solution/assist could be an npc that sells maps or paper hints that tell you where the more obscure drops are (like the pot guys). And some may even place a red marker on your map after you buy them.
That way you wouldn't need to memorize around 40 different locations for all 50 fragments and more for the ashes. Although i guess this is only another bandaid to the current system, it's one they can actively implement.
I don't understand why they didn't just give you the fragments after beating a boss, maybe giving you 1 lv before dancing lion to introduce the mechanic and you "earn" the rest after beating a boss
They did this in sekiro and it worked wonderfully, it is like they forgot they had done it right in the past.
But you do get some after beating bosses.
@@thebakedchefyour comment is dumb because some bosses do drop the fragment lol.
Bosses already give you ample rewards, and filling the map with fragments/ashes was a good way to make it less empty and give you a reason to ride across the open world instead of rushing straight to the boss
What I keep thinking to myself is, “This took TWO PLUS YEARS?!”
FOUR ENORMOUS areas that have only one reason to be there. Yes, there’s an argument for Bayle as there are other dragons on the way, but still enormous in comparison of space to boss/enemy/challenge is concerned. The Shaman VIllage. “VILLAGE?!” You mean the cute flowered area that was the home to THE character of the base game that ONLY has FOUR structures of which ONLY TWO have boarded up doors? How many people did they stuff into jars in this game? EIGHT if you assume 2 houses that small held 4 people. Why not just put the Scadutree fragments on bosses? Each boss get’s you 25% closer to your normal feeling fights in the base game. Why do it at all (as you asked) when we have ALWAYS been responsible for the amount of challenge we experience going into DLC. I think they chose this way because people were most likely going to steamroll the DLC when they realized how there was not enough to do if you weren’t the exploring type. So somehow, even though I AM the exploring type, I found it to be a chore suddenly because it felt like something I was being forced to do rather than have it naturally happen. Is there a difference? Not a huge one, mostly my mentality, but it didn’t change the fact that I felt like I was on community service picking up trash from the sides of the road.
You arrive at a boss. You have X amount of fragments and ashes and you get your ass kicked. Your immediate assumption is you need more of them. You head out looking, but now you’re looking in areas where you’ve been before, backtracking, because you COULD HAVE missed one, or two. SO suddenly the question enters your mind. Do I have all of the ones that are accessible to me? How many are there? How many will I need for ME to beat this boss. It throws in a LOT of questions that you never had in the base game. Yes, some love this system, but I truly HATE it. I am not responsible for my increase in strength or whatever stat that made the difference in a fight, some fragment is.
Ultimately I want to say that I can still say I enjoy the DLC, the sprawling vertical maps are beautiful, but I agree, FromSoft is hitting its head on this ceiling and I don’t like the direction we are heading. So much stamina and poise that they seldom get broken and enough HP to make Elden Beast jealous. I just don’t think this is the future. If we are afraid to criticize them then we will see more of it, and I want to see more and better from them. Fingers crossed we get it.
I used a lvl 114 build farmed up from the base game to see the difficulty differences&honestly the scadutree fragments do make the game a bit tedious. You can tell almost immediately that you need these items even at NG+0&you basically have to ignore the first two bosses until you’re lvl 4-5.
4 to 5 isn't even hard to get but you dont need them either.
Something that resonated with me, "nor does it distinguish your character in any way" maybe if you could choose where your blessings strengthened you (for example, damage, special damage, defense, magic defenses) and then they could not only give you more, but also with few you could max whichever you want to, or which you believe you need. A mini-leveling system with 4 distinct decisions, that wont require of you to get a high percentage of the fragments
I think the roleplaying aspects of these games have been getting lost in the discussion of these games as of the last few years so it's worth reminding people of it yee
100% agree I am not against the fact they have progress only for the DLC but the amount of fragments and the locations of some are brutal.
There's a presentation about botw's world design where they talk about how the world was built up of triangles (mountains) in order to create a loop of discovery. I think this is imperative to the system of looking for shrines (which you can see from a distance) and marking them. Just an additional thing the Skibidi system tried to steal but didn't quite understand.
Very good video anyway, you talk a lot of sense and I like that we can have an honest discussion about how the game could be improved, rather than just praising it all to heaven and back. :)
I was actually just thinking about that. It was a really interesting talk they gave its a shame they took it down and tried to erase it from the internet 🤦🏼♂️.
@@austin0_bandit05 They did?! I didn't know that :o That's a shame, happy I already saw it.
Oh yeah I've heard about this! Didn't remember it till just now but yeah that's the kind of design philosophy and trial-and-error that Fromsoft likely didn't pursue
I would've preferred the system tied to to killing bosses and Minibosses like Sekiro.
Yeah cause that would totally solve a lot of the complaints of difficulty being locked behind a certain item. That would make things worse since you HAVE to beat the hard bosses you're stuck on in order to win. One of the biggest draws of ER is that you can go somewhere else, explore, and come back to kill the boss. Besides, Gaius guards like five so the game already kind of does that.
Scadutree Tree Fragments are extremely easy to find. Almost every streamer was able to find them all on their own. Some of them even completely. I only missed the last 3 in the final dungeon. But level 19 was still pretty good 👍
@@thesnatcher3616 just have Revered Spirit Ash in the Open World so people that summon and dont learn bosses can still cheese thrue it.
Ohh no Souls game is difficult how terrible surely thats totally not expected or something like that.
@@thesnatcher3616 Going somewhere else exploring, and coming back is exactly what I was going for. We can access nearly any area, fight nearly any boss without killing a single one.
I don't remember which in particular, but I do recall an interview with Miyazaki where he talked about how Elden Ring is the max of what Fromsoft can do in terms of scale, and I think you can definitely see that. As much as I love the exploration, there is a lot of dead space both base game and DLC. Open worlds nowadays seem to be getting pretty boring. I literally can't bring myself to play any more Assassin's Creed Valhalla because it's so bland. Miyazaki ended his speech when Elden Ring won game of the year with something like "I have made up my mind to make even more interesting games than this" but he's also said it's not really plausible for Fromsoft to make anything larger in scale than Elden Ring. Really makes me curious what they are cooking.
I haven't heard of this but it's a bit reassuring, if they simply kept pursuing open worlds from here it would just become a mess. They can still in the future if they want but they're not shy about working on 2 separate games at once at least
Literally would have rather had something like "shadow runes". You start the dlc at shadow level 1 and then like normal runes you get them from killing mobs and bosses. You level the shadow levels with the shadow runes.
Having to run around and get the fragments on each new character feels awful. Shadow runes would make the progression much more straightforward, play the game and level as you go.
Only problem I can see is that you are capped at your normal level once you enter, but since your normal levels do so little anyway compared to the fragment power that hardly matters.
Edit: And also really it would make killing shadow mobs more rewarding, most of us probably entered at some kind of meta level anyway and had no use for the runes we did get, outside of buying more stones for weapon upgrades. For my part I felt no reward killing mobs and just skipped as much as I could as all I got was more useless runes.
Very good point. Bringing in a new currency to level the scadu system, could also have made it such that the shadow runes are like a fraction of "normal" runes so that you could also still level with them as the enemies and bosses drop a lot. But they needed something to fill the already barren world and having 50 fragments to throw around and place randomly is better than another 50 cookbooks
Good idea. Sounds obvious now that you have suggested.
@@JuliusKingsleyXIII It's so obvious that spending more than 10 seconds thinking about how nonsensical it would be to actually implement it is a bad idea. Really hilarious that you think they didn't think of that.
@@DrnMontemayor can you explain how?
@@ennayanne Not even gonna bother explaining OPs ignorance about "shadow lobs" not actually being that. And they're just ignoring things the game explains as per usual with souls players...
But having an analogous currency based system like with Souls and Runes would 1) have to be balanced for end game and NG+ cycles. 2) would fuck up balance by removing the ability to control your growth actively. 3) Fromsoftware already knows how their numbers and balance work for their different NG+ cycles and how after a certain level, the difference matters very little. Just leveling up more is frankly pure idiocy. 4) By implementing a currency based system like base game and souls, they would still have to put a low cap on it, because they'd want the increments to be both significant and not break the game. People would do like they do typically in these games and waste time farming to reach the cap. Removing the ability/option to farm is good fyi. And not implementing this shit system proposed by OP is good because it forces players to actually pay attention and play the damn game.
5) the arguments made against skibidi fragments are made out of ignorance or assumptions. Most of them are on your way, and reaching level 12 is incredibly easy and you don't even have to go out of your way for it. Though having them drop out of mini-bosses and bosses and even story invader NPCs would've been better. 6) the skibidi system is also thought for the newly found DLC+ system. 7) if you actually explore you'd realise that gravesite plains alone gives you enough blessings to comfortably beat Rellana and not feel OP (4) and there are only 2 fragments that are "out of your way" And they're in Crystal Lizards/Beetles/Pot Dudes (clarification made to show how idiotic the criticism of Pot Dudes is)
What op proposes is incredibly simplistic and flat out dumb because it's a system that would encourage farming rather than engaging with the key aspects of the game. Key one being exploration. And he himself said he already doesn't engage anyway. Like most people do with these games, I don't know why they pretend otherwise. Following the Crosses will give you enough Blessings to clear through the game without issues, and they're all in your way. Having a controlled and limited path to growth that is also contained by the regions you've explored is better than having another Souls-for-level system for end game characters. It's absolutely not perfect or the best, but it's better than "just keep levelling bro." Please, just fucking think for a second how it'd be in practice.
i don't really see a problem with the system. to me it's no different than collecting golden seeds and sacred tears in the base game.
It’s extremely similar to sekiro as well
It is different though dawg. More than enough golden seeds were available to find. And the sacred tears were in fairly obvious locations and there wasn't a crap ton of them.
50 random azz scat doo doo frags being found the way they are in the dlc, lead players to doing a crap ton of back tracking banjo kazooie style. It was lame by comparison.
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 it's literally the same
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 i hit blessing lvl 16 just by visiting every area. We already learned the necessity of exploration in the base game.
The dlc could have worked just fine while having level scaling from the base game.
Just make the enemy HP pool and damage higher than the end-game enemies from the base game.
This would also allow more freedom in terms of how you could tackle the dlc, like the main game. Currently the system pretty much forces you to explore every nook and cranny, which was not the case with the main game.
Ironically the system goes against the design of freedom of exploration they aimed for in Elden ring.
If they absolutely needed to have this Scadutree fragments system then simply make it so that all minor and major bosses drop them upon death.
I dont see the issues people have with blessings. I think they implemented them fine. Explore, you'll find them. As with every game in the series, once u know where enough are to get you to whatever level you feel you need given your experience and skill with the games, then it's not an issue at all.
I think having a tree-upgrade system (similar to the one from Salt and Sanctuary) would've been a better implementation
Upgrading to buy Fragments with souls would naturally encourage exploration, or if players choose to (like on their alt characters), just farm for souls by cooping or farming to get some Fragments
Oh man it's been a min since I played S&S, but I do remember thinking that system was good, if maybe a bit too restrictive? Think I recall it being an investment going into one path
I thought it’s pretty good. The reason why they use the new level is so that people who are level 300 like myself also have a challenge and it makes it fun again because it’s hard.
I played the DLC on NG+1, I found most Shadowtree Fragments along my journey natural and reached LV. 17. I got to the final boss and couldn't take their hits. I looked up the locations of the remaining fragments, and get to LV 20, I felt a difference defense-wise at least, it was still hard but I didn't see my HP bar melt under the lights of gawd.
I see no difference with reaching a hurdle, go somewhere else and farm Runes, and then come back with extra life and attack power.
Similar experience for me. Was in NG+7 for whole DLC, reached Radahn at 16 blessing I think, kicked my ass for like 9 hours, found the rest of the fragments, only took about 3 hours from there. I guess the difference in higher NG pluses is MUCH more noticeable, which maybe is fine that you'd need it more then
Honestly ...placement of fragments woouldnt be bad ...if... IF ..there were more mini bosses in open world ..I know that a lot of people had problem with base game with repetitive bosses ...but ..I dont hear a single person complaining about crucible knights ...like I dont know ...come up with like 3 mini bosses and copy paste them all like 4 times or whatever ..cause it would be like "yea Im going to collect skibidi pieces but I might as well have some fun along the road killing some fun mini bosses" now its really just running around the map doing absolutely nothing ...in base game its not that big of a problem cause you can skip like 95% of the map cause you know there is nothing you need for your build ..like for example ..you go grab charged attack talisman and tear ..turtle talisman .. cragblade ..blue dancer talisman and ...one thing ..then youll go grab balls as your weapon and you can go boss rush mode...takes like idk ..an hour or so ? And its like ...3 locations ? In DLC you have to go everywhere on the map and do nothing along the road
They used cool miniboss designs in place of half the remembrances. If this were base game quality, gaius, rellana, putrescent knight, Scadutree avatar would all be repeated as either standard minibosses or major foes(like elemer or niall). Those bosses are nowhere near remembrance quality or importance, yet they’re forced to be.
It just occurred to me that one possible substitution for scadutree fragments could have been a change in soft and hard caps for stats, which would only work in the dlc. Meaning, going back to the base game, the player would have very limited benefit from those level-ups, so it wouldn't mess the balance there. I don't know whether it would work well in higher NG+ cycles, though.
We need like 10 more of them than maximum, like the seeds, I can't find the last one even with a guide. That said you can definitely beat Radiquella at SFL 15 which is 34/50 frags or 68% for a 75% buff and if you miss 4 that's 92% of the frags for a 98% buff.
When I played dark souls 3 I was like level 250 when I reached Gael in ng+3 and I still got destroyed and he made me quit the game the scadu tree fragment’s system is useless
scibity scat doo doo spirit azz thingz. Lol what are they called again???
Also heard pc players at launch were glitched and couldn't find all of them in one playthrough. Annoying...
Great point about how there are too many. 50 is a lot to keep track of. Why can't there be less of them that are easier to keep track of? OR Why couldn't they give the player slightly more than required to max out LIKE THEY DID IN THE BASE GAME WITH THE GOLDEN SEEDS?!?!?!!
Because of this failure, we had to do a lot of back tracking and second guessing. Not kool from soft... What a time waster...
It's not a big deal but at the same time like... Okay? lol dumb way to do it but whatever...
you don't need a maxed scadu level like with max flasks. you're disregarding the fact that scadu levels passed 12 don't make much of a difference. golden seeds are in abundance because the average player would NEED as many flasks as possible.
@@ZeroYami Found a comment on fextra about this. Person got 36 likes and only 6 dislikes for this statement...
"don't listen to the propaganda Glazers are spreading. 12 is not 'all you need'
From 13 to 20 you will miss out on 20% more damage and 11% damage reduction. the 11% specifically is massive when considering it is multiplicative with other defenses like armor charms and buffs. same goes for damage too.
unless you are good with math and know how percentages actually work, these things look miniscule.
long story short YES you do have to waste time getting them all, NO they are not "not that bad to the get" as glazers pretend. it sucks we are stuck with it, didn't encourage this kinda garbage by praising it for future games, os tuning worked pretty much the same way in ac6 their last game, its a terror to think this will be their approach to balancing in the future"
And what's even funnier is I play the DLC launch version and haven't updated on this acc so it's even more relevant for players like me. 40% damage buff from scat level 12 to 20 in version 1.12... The fact that they nerfed the system in recent updates also proves that even they thought it was a bit flawed which only hurts your argument more.
There isn't even a talisman in the game that grants such a buff in both versions but hey, 20% aint much according to you. Might as well play without any talismans that give you a 15 or 20% damage/defense boost with that logic...
Oh and your argument gets even more destroyed by the fact that you're too scared to play on ngplus7 where this kind of thing matters even more lololol. Trust me kiddo, you're gunna want allll the help in the world for that playthrough, if you ever get the guts to attempt it that is...
Long story short, learn math my guy. This system also ruins it for speed runners and coop summon level balance so that also sux lol. I'm sorry bro but you just aint that good at this game and you aint that smart about it either. You're not the worst lol, but nothing special haha that's for sure. I beat malenia ngplus 7 without summons, heavy weapons, or ranged attacks like I did, then we'll talk. Oh and here's the hard part... Don't get hit by her. I pulled it off. I bet you can too one day I believe in you. GL : )
Sorry I just get the sense that you're trying to engage in a dick measuring contest with me. I get a "only scrubs need to find them all" vibe from you. Trust me kid you don't wanna go there with me. I'd destroy you in this game as well as just talking about the mathematical facts within the stats of the game. Which I just did lolz.
Lol 20% is not much of a difference... Insanity talk bro. Wonder if you would be okay with a 20% pay cut at your job in real life haha. Probably since you strike me as a cuck who just goes along with whatever the corporation thinks 100% of the time...
Tell me son. What actual crit of this game do you have? I bet you think it's perfect lolz. Please prove me wrong... I would like to be the idiot for a change lol.
@@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342 Bro is the master yapper💀 on my first playthrough I beat Radahn with lvl 18 it felt fine, though in ng+ I did find the rest since I wanted to max out the damge. It really isn't hard to find mist of them by just going through the game and if you end up struggling with radahn you can find the rest.
They really should had more than 50 in order to reach max rank! That’s literally the only issue with this system.
You don't need all 50, at least not after the rebalancing patch. 85% of the benefit is now concentrated in the first 12 levels, which only requires 26 fragments. Heck, they even made it so that that what used to be the original max bonus is now reached at only level 18, arguable turning the last 6 fragments into extra content for completionists.
@@EmeralBookwiseTrue, but more should be found throughout the world. An overstock similar to Golden Seeds, so it isn't a scavenger hunt every run
@@Pelayum: there is an "overstock", at least after the patch adjustment. 26 out of 50 is all you need to get 85% out of the maximum possible bonus of 105%. Getting all 50 is not a requirement and only provides very marginal benefits.
The only reason to make it a scavenger hunt every time is if you are a completionist... and I say that being one myself, but as a completionist I actually enjoy scouring every inch of the map and found 49 fragments in my first playthrough all on my own without a guide.
@@EmeralBookwise Fair enough
To be fair after my second character I didn't really have much trouble finding most fragments without a guide.... I basically got to an area and remember there were a few around... I pretty much always get to level 18 or 19 without a guide
I loved the system. It was a way to still feel genuine power increases with my already very leveled character going into the dlc and I love how they were all spread out quite well and unpredictibly. It was always a YESSSS!! moment when I found one. Loved it. My issues with the dlc were all the shitty crafting book rewards as well as way too much base game enemy reuse. No excuse with 2 years work to lazily reuse so many enemies. Great dlc overall.
also... scadutree? really? yeah yeah I know it's supposed to be ye olde time way of spelling "shadow" but that word is also in the literal title of the DLC and they didn't call it "scadu" there. almost like they knew it looked and sounded stupid
Lmao yeah they knew it'd be a weird word for marketing didnt they
They should have just added new weapon upgrade levels that go past 25 and 10, as well as the ability to upgrade armor.
I wanted to get into dlc as early as possible and ran in there at lvl 60 😂. What a good time it was
I get why they did it, I just think having an excess of fragments along with making them go further (ex. need only 1 for like the level 1-8) and then exponentially go up after would have done wonders too.
My favorite video game is Banjo-Kazooie so I'm fully down for the fragments. IDC how you get them. I'm going to all the corners anyway.
I like it.... It means I can go in with my level 100 character and with my level 250 character and not need to rune level either character to beat the dlc
I don’t understand why they don’t just make a mid game dlc that gets harder along with the main game? There will always be stuff that is easier or harder if you come at it later.
There are more golden seeds than you need, just like how you wont need more than Level 14 blessing.
Hollow knight ost goes good with this game 😅
I really like the system because after beating the DLC you’re not overleveled for the main game content anymore.
BUT they messed up the scaling a bit. It’s really easy to be overleved now, making these mandatory bosses somehow skippable if that makes sense. I especially dislike how weak they balanced Messmer and the Putrecent Knight when it comes to the fragment-scaling. You can find so many fragments before fighting Messmer that it’s likely to overwhelm him. Especially when using slash weapons, which I found out to be completely broken themselves when fighting him (he’s really really weak to them, pretty much ruining my first fight). The Putrecent Knight on the other hand can just be overseen easily, just like Dark Beast Paarl in Bloodborne. Some players are already too far into the DLC when stumbling across him just because he’s well hidden. Making a hidden boss with early midgame scaling isn’t good design because of that exact reason. They could’ve done something similar to Radahn opening up Nokron so the player knows that there’s actually something to fight idk. In my opinion they should buff every single boss after Rellana to be fought 2-3 scadu levels higher to fix that issue. It’s also nice so the final boss doesn’t feel hitting your head against the wall. For some reason all the other bosses are balanced around level 15-16 but then Radahn feels like he’s meant to be fought at 19-20. It’s such a high and unnecessary jump because every other boss is a joke when being at that level. They’re not ”a bit“ easier that way but complete pushovers.
Scaling is my biggest problem with the DLC. Romina could be mentioned too but personally I think it’s her moveset that makes her an easy boss instead of her HP and damage so I’m not really talking about her. In the end I still love the DLC and would easily rank it a 9/10. I’m just very passionate about the things I love and I want them to be perfect.
Toilet fragmento
You literally get like 5 million souls from the dlc.
Just make it available a little after Morgott and keep it leveling normally and balance the bosses accordingly.
The balancing in EVERY OTHER GAME was fine for the DLC but you’re telling me that now it’s just too hard to balance it?
It’s just kinda dumb is all
@@thisstatementisfalsenothin5312 That's explicitly not the reason they chose to do it.
The fragments would work so much better if they were boss/miniboss rewards. I think that's why the system works so well in Sekiro but feels so tedious in SOTE
Am I the only one who likes the system??? I think it works a well and rewards exploring.
there's plenty of people who like it / don't mind it, it's just a mixed reception
Max scadu level is 20. When my level 150 character hit scadu level 6, it felt like I was steam rolling dungeons.
Imagine Breath of the Wild but your reward for shrines are weapons and you get spirit orbs by picking them up randomly across the world. It would make the game terrible. (I know weapons are breakable in BotW so it's not a 1 to 1 comparison but most weapons you find in SotE are worse than the base game weapons so it's not like they're amazing rewards either).
Fromsoft choosing to not make Scadutree fragments the rewards for mini dungeons and legacy dungeons might be one of the worst decisions in any of their games.
Now I'm not rewarded for completing the content, instead I'm rewarded for wandering around the open world aimlessly.
Bro thought he was slick. Idk, maybe they didn't do that so meaningful progression wouldn't be locked behind ultra-hard bosses that from soft purposely made with streamer bait moves so that you can go and complain to your friends about how they should never touch the game, lest it be for a dare. Don't listen to me though, I'm just a blind git gud cultist fanatic with an inability to criticize a DLC they didn't enjoy as much as everyone else.
@@thesnatcher3616 feeble king is such a joke. Any of his pathetic attempts at criticism just sound like contrarianism at this point. What a horrible, untalented content creator
When someone literally thinks the only reward is skibidi fragments and everything else is bad because it doesn’t fit their mid strength build, you can’t really take their opinion into consideration
I think it didn't need the scadu fragment system. If the dlc scaled naturally as an area after Mohgwyn Dynasty or Haligtree/Farum Azula, it would've been fine.
It's pretty obvious to me that they did it because they wanted you to explore and wanted to make you feel weak again at the beginning. Like most comments here, the issue isn't the philosophy (which I agree with), it's the implementation. That being said, a lot of people may be discarding NG+ which FromSoft seem to want more people to go into. When you take this into account, not finding all fragments in your first playthrough gives you another reason to explore more during subsequent NG+ playthroughs, just like missable NPC quest items.
I do think that the way you get the fragments should have been consistent. Those pot enemies just didn't make sense IMO.
Edit: also as a huge BOTW/TOTK fan, it's really apparent to me that Elden Ring took a lot of inspiration from that game, which makes sense seeing how it's such a successful (the most?) Japanese Open World RPG.
@@zaspyen What's the percentage of pot enemies actually dropping fragments? How many levels you get from them specifically? Please, tell me.
@@DrnMontemayor if I remember correctly, there were 5 pot wielding enemies that dropped them. If you search the Scadutree Fragment page on the Wiki, or look up a list on UA-cam, that should confirm this. I may be wrong, just going off memory.
I'm gonna defend the skibidi fragment: in your first playthrough, you find margit and get dunked on by him, so you realize you have to explore the map, get smithing stones, golden seeds, sacred tears and levels and in that sense you feel you are growing stronger. The same goes for the dlc, when you fight enemies or your first boss probably the lion or rellana, you realize you need to explore for the fragments and while doing that you find new areas, bosses, equipment and you'll get more runes to level up and fragments, the same level of progression you had in the base game. And about that replayablity with the fragments, you don't just go to grab them, you open up aswell parts of the map you"ll need to go to grab a item if you need it and fight a remembrance boss or a boss you want to defeat. The only thing i agree is that there should have been more like the golden seeds.
How is that a good defense? Why do i need experience of Margrit cockblock when doing dlc? Where is the fun? It didnt even work like that anyway. I dont need to relearn to play the game, people just want to fight bosses lol.
Why are people describing this as if leaving and going somewhere else is something fun?
babe wake up BertoPlease put my comment in his Elden Ring DLC video
My problem with it is that it creates the same problem the base game does. It makes u too op if u get past 10 blessings before u even get to certain bosses like Messmer.
Genuine question because it is always so prevalent: Do people really stop leveling after level 125 or 150? Or is this only the rule of thumb for PvPers. I personally do not care about PvP at all so i just keep on leveling if i have the runes. I bring this up because if you really explore the base game you can reach about 150 without farming runes and if we consider the dlc we look at level 200++.
Would love some input.
It is primarily a PVP thing but it's also a good roleplaying medium. If you have a stopping point for leveling, you have to pick your levels more carefully and stick to certain stats, and that allows for creative builds; instead of having one character that can do everything (which can be an interesting lore in itself) you have you "mage" character, your "cleric", you "big bonk" guy, etc. etc. For me for instance I recently made a character that's a former Fire Knight that joined the Dragon Cult, so he knows and has Messmer things but also uses the Dragon head spells. But the real world reason I made this is because I wanted to have a character that used lava and dragon spells, so it's the classic "limitations forster creativity" situation
The fragments are just padding to the experience.
If the difficulty progression of the DLC started around lvl 125, people would clean the floor with the bosses, and finish the DLC in a few hours and give the DLC as done after radahn. The problem however is that in a second playthrough, its a massive pain in the ass, because you lose the fragments in new game plus, and exploration is only interesting as long you're finding new things.
It also creates the problem that many people will find themselves at a loss and simply look a guide online to see where the fragments are, so they can go kill the boss locking the path ahead.
This fragment system is one of the many failures of elden ring.
Nice one, its great to see some well thought criticism that doesnt come from a place of not understanding basic mechanics or assuming the devs are lazy/crazy.
I mostly agree with the point about their locations. Even while I believe the system was necessary due to the length of the dlc, I dont particularly enjoy finding those few fragments in a random side cave or just laying there in the abyss. Restricting to crosses and hippos is a good idea imo (and hidden side rooms in the main legacy dungeons would be fine too).
I dont mind that there's 50 tho, any arbitrary number would be fine. Cutting it in half probably wouldn't change anyone's opinion.
Now regarding extra ones... Idk how I'd feel in game, but theoretically I dont want that. Since for those that DO explore thoroughly, finding the extra couple could be disappointing (talk about ACTUALLY useless rewards)
I just wish finding them was easier I guess
Just give me fragments after each boss, let me decide if I want to level up, scale the amount of fragments to the "lateness" of the boss, problem solved
I dont understand how ER being a RPG makes getting progress from Boss fights not a valid thing. I would have loved getting Scadutree from Remembrance bosses instead of riding my horse thrue a pointless and empty open world for 15 - 30min if not more. If u rly want to lock progress behind "exploration" have Revered Spirit Ash everywhere instead because people that cheese thrue the game without learning barely anything are way more likely to want to not fight bosses directly.
Maybe I didnt say it quite right, but its not so much the RPG part as much as the open world part that I think makes it fit this game more in theory. That said I'm not opposed to the boss style either. Perhaps a happy medium could be reached
I still haven't found all the revered spirited ash things.b
Maybe if they added a few more than you need like golden seeds
I gave up on the game and uninstalled it. The base game was hard, but I could make it. If something was too difficult, I could go somewhere else, level up and return. Here, regular enemies were no problem but all the bosses were impenetrable walls. I could do it eventually, but I wouldn't be bothered tbh. It simply got boring and felt like a chore. The base game was better balanced so I felt the urge to git gud. Here, I spent a few hours roaming to find that secret way around Castle Ensis so I could collect them to be able to fight Rellana. But then oh wait, a narrative trigger happened and some NPC quests got cancelled. I obsessed over the map just for the fragments because the bosses hit like trains. It's not supposed to be like that. I get it that the DLC was supposed to be harder than the base game, but at the same time it was and it wasn't. It was just more exhausting.
it sounds like you're describing ng+7. My blind run was on ng+7, and it was about as hard as you just said. You should probably try it on NG, if this is the case.
@@ZeroYami Noo, do I sound like someone with the time for NG+7. I was on NG. I don't have that much free time. I'm not boasting how I am a busy person with a job. I envy people with more time. Good for them. Yes, it is a skill issue. But I could solve it with more time. Which I don't have. So it's just exhausting. The curve was more forgiving in the base game. I think the game is not well-balanced for the likes of me (casual players).
@@dankokamcevski brother was running a soreseal 😭🙏🙏🙏
you could've just use summons to make your life easier in the dlc. I know this is considered cheesing by a good portion of the souls community but it's still better than quitting and missing the chance to experience this fantastic dlc. as for the npc quests, none of those quests actually gets cancelled by approaching the shadow keep. all of them simply proceeds to the next step of their quests. all you're losing are just a few npc dialogues and a few cookbooks which are both minor imo. the only major reward that you might miss is the chance to get a specific npc as a spirit ash, but you can still get an alternate reward instead. you can't get both rewards in the single playthrough anyway, so it's not really a major loss. the community were only freaking out about that on the first few days but things eventually calmed down when they realized that it wasn't really a big deal.
@@jonneldelosreyes4607 I used them. It's not about that. It's still frustrating. Believe me, I tried many things. Then just became tired of it all. My main gripe is that with the base game there was room to breathe and here there wasn't. Okay, FS doesn't need to cater to me, no problem with that. I just speak as a common person who has a few hours a day which is not enough to 'git gud', progress and have fun at the same time. It's okay if they say the game is made for a more narrow playerbase, but I just wouldn't like to be gaslighted that it's somehow only up to me and how I play. It is - and it isn't.
Imagine this, NG+7 maxed out DEX/STR/(whatever stat your weapon of choice also scales off of) comes in a smokes all the bosses. They wanted each player new or 400hrs plus to have equal scaling and difficulty.
If you are on ng+7, all the enemies will do way more damage and have way more health anyway
No dlc dose not scal with base game
@@user-uv4pv7ce3d yes it does.
@@Valyrael im sure it's not brother the dlc has differenat scal on it's on so if you are in
Ng+7 and you never went to dlc the dlc will be on ng you have to beat the dlc to get to ng+
@@user-uv4pv7ce3d Wrong. NG+ affects scaling even if you havent beaten dlc.
The system isnt good at all for me. I dont have any issue for some king of balancing the expansion, but i didnt like that was based on items: it makes the exploration a task instead of something more organic. I wish they made more like a second currency...shadow runes or whatever. And besides, the open world in SOTE feels so empty.
It just becomes a fetch quest forcing you to explore
I have a fun build back in the DLC and I just don't care lol it's so stupid
Skibidi fragments.
Bro is milking the SOTE hate train so hard 😂
Scoobydoo fragments design sucks. Fortunately we can mod it out on pc adjusting player and enemies scaling
People are still crying about having to explore more than just running along the road huh...
9:20 not only too many but too little as well at the same time- there should be spares.
Also yeah, even tho I am challenge runner in souls I have absolutely 0 interest in replaying DLC
unlike with flasks, you don't really need a maxed scadu level at all. for that reason, there isn't really that much reason for scadutree fragments to have spares. all you need is level 12 and you can get a level that high naturally without a guide.
The Scadu tree fragment design is perfect for the dlc
Didn't bother me, I could have delt with not being there or the way it is and Neither way would have bothered me.
I love dark souls 1 and 2 ... And 3 too more than elden ring though.
How are Marika statues hidden? HOW? They're ALL on your way on any given path they're located on.
Yes, you're able to distinguish the Outer God statues and the Marika statues from afar. Please get your eyes checked.
Have you bothered to think about the very, very few fragments that are in Pot dudes and why they have them?
See, getting the fragments on repeat characters isn't an issue... because the vast majority of them are ON. YOUR. WAY. And given how they rebalanced them, if you're a 125-150 character in base NG, and are somehow still struggling with a Blessing level of 12-15, you've other problems as a player.
You would know this if you actually played the game again in fresh and NG+ characters instead of pushing shallow reactions as complete analysis.
Fromsoft soyboy spotted.
@@JustKelso1993 tell your family to not be surprised that if you come to a hospital the doctors describe you as FOUR 7.
@@JustKelso1993 Elden Ring soyboy*
@@JustKelso1993 I'm simply not braindead like you wastes of space.
@@skeley6776 Same thing honestly😂
They copied the tree fragment idea from Wo Long Fallen Dynasry , where the more banners you placed throughout the level would make the boss easier.
It's a lazy and unrewarding way of forcing exploration on the player.
Get good
I strongly dislike the scadutree system and while I could write up some long winded doc explaining my points; I won't other than to say imo the scadu sys made the balancing in the game much worse.
I lvled up to SB9 when I was fighting Messmer (my 3rd Boss) on my Blind play thru which at the time felt fine as he was a rather challenging boss but then all the bosses after were a joke and died within just a few attemps w/ the exception of Bayle and Radahn.
I enjoyed my time w/ ER & the DLC but if I want to play a Souls game I think I'll just stick w/ DS3, BB, & Sekiro. I think FS took just as many steps backwards w/ their design decisions as they did forward. I miss the struggle of the older games that is just flat out absent in ER.
Spoilers*
Yeah I thought they were bad. Not game ruining or anything, but I still didn't like them. Makes it feel like an action game, been saying that since day 1.
If only it had been tied to just a couple specific things in the overworld, it would've been fine. Golden seeds being either a) by the small glowing trees or b) dropped from ulcerated tree spirits (with some exceptions i.e. NPC drops) was a great system, since there was a mix of exploration and combat to that balance. Tying them to the crystal lizard mechanic with the pot guys or just having them in random hidden locations (ends of waterfalls, stuff like that) made it very inconsistent and muddy. Tragic, because I think it fits into the game well, echoing the established system of flask upgrades
Malenia is already broken so no problems there ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Dlc felt like a sequel that was forced to come out a year earlier. So massive and unfinished. It’s like they didn’t have enough time to flesh out items and item descriptions. And half the remembrances are minibosses that drop a remembrance.
Scadus
Simple problem, simple solution: don't collect all the fragments, you only need around half of them to beat the game.
Fair enough but that's just a frustrating concept. They could be like golden seeds where there's a superfluity of them and people wouldn't mind so much
@@michaelcarroll5801 During your first playthrough you'll naturally discover most of the fragments. In your second playthrough you're a better player so you'll need even fewer fragments than last time. And if you want easy mode after your first playthrough, just go into NG+
souls games so much better without open world.
"no sense of level progression". Wtf does that mean? Why do you need level progression in the dlc? Some bosses become too easy because of scoobydoo fragments, wouldve been better without this forced "level progression". There was no worthwhile level progression anyway in the dlc
As in that sense of "freshness" that makes you start a new game over and over just to enjoy that scaling curve before you become overpowered.
@@michaelcarroll5801 how does that apply to DLC? Why do you want to be overpowered in dlc? And why do you want to be underpowered? Both are bad experiences.
@@Valyrael I'm talking about how in RPGs there's a general curve in terms of power scaling of the player character when you start a new game. Most games have you ending at the point of being overpowered, which like you're saying it's not necessarily fun being overpowered. So most people enjoy starting a fresh save on their game of choice to experience that curve of power scaling from being level 1 through to reaching the point where it's satisfying and eventually maybe you end up becoming too powerful again. So yeah that's kind of the idea of scadutree frags imo, is capturing that sort of power scaling curve
@@michaelcarroll5801 not necessary.
@@Valyrael I'm not commenting on the necessity of the mechanic I'm talking about the intention
It's pronounced shadutree..lol. I don't know why everybody insist on mispronouncing these words
It's simply an exhausting design. You basically have to enter the mindset that it's another game where you must spend thirty minutes just so you can get decent damage output without heavy itemization.