Last weekend, I played a little Elden Ring seamless co-op which was a lot fun! This week, I’ve been playing around with the PS5 I borrowed from a friend of mine. After jailbreaking it, I installed a couple games among which was Mortal Shell 2 and Wuchang. I’ve played both of them for a little while and enjoyed MS2 and didn’t find Wuchang enjoyable at all thus far, sadly. Might play both of them for a little longer this weekend.
All soulslikes have specific distances you need to travel from one bonfire to the next. In Demon’s Souls, you’d only get a single one throughout an entire level. In Dark Souls, there are a couple more distributed in an area and most are in walking distance. Sometimes there can be quite long stretches between them which can hinder the flow you get into when attempting to beat a boss. Elden Ring solved that issue through Stakes of Marika in addition to having a lot more graces in an area and shorter distances between the individual graces.
What’s your preferred bonfire distribution in soulslikes? Do you like the Stake system from ER? Would you prefer them to be a little more rare?
I always like when I kill a boss, light their bonfire, then two steps out the back door is another bonfire. Perfect placement. Now I don’t have to walk 10 more feet.
xd
I had forgotten the controls in khazan and my muscle memory for the game, so I went and played control and after rolling credits I’m back to DS3 to finish the cursed playthrough and ease into the souls like flow again.
Even if it’s one of the FS games I’ve played the least it feels like coming home.
I’ll adapt to any bonfire situation just give me some good level design. I prefer them sparsely placed, tho, so I need to lock in, and make every decision count. Ahh the dopamine rush of reaching the bonfire and sigh in relief…
I can tolerate a small runback, for effect. but considering the ever increasing boss difficulty in modern games I share the opinion that the stake of Marika system is a must.
I’ve been too distracted by other things (especially getting more regular Baldur’s Gate 3 and Civilisation 7 sessions going with friends) to properly lock in and learn Sekiro. I did recently pick up Death’s Door, though, so that might make for an easier-going one for now - plus, of course, some fabulous Seamless Co-opping on Elden Ring
I’m personally a fan of reducing runbacks for the most part. I get the idea of the challenge, but in most cases you can optimise a long runback far faster than you can optimise the bossfight behind it, and after that it just becomes a chore. I think it leads to un-needed and un-fun frustration with difficult boss fights if you find yourself dying in the bossfight in less time than it takes you to actually return to the boss fight
I’ve been helping along with the ‘community quests’ in elden ring, and just beat the base game again with a strategy/build I’d never tried before. Using tower shields and guard countering everything was pretty fun, but not in a great way. Give me that parry life, yo.
I think I want to replay it now with another new ‘build’ and am thinking big naked bonker. Hmm, anyone want to help me out by muling a few big bonking items from one of my end game characters to a fresh starting one? I avoid using the cheat engine or character file editors, and none of my friends have it installed right now to mule for me.
As for bonfires, I think I remember liking dark souls 2 the best. The boss runbacks were part of the fun, and they had a number of neat little tricks to make it feel like you were progressing even with the limited number of bonfires. When I first figured out the blowing up the wall in that first castle, for instance, I was definitely wowed. I can also see the whole stake of marika thing, but it certainly made the game feel more casual.
I like a bit more distance between bonfires. So that it feels like an important occasion when you reach one. None of this seeing the next bonfire immediately nonsense – looking at you, Dragonslayer Armour bonfire.
BUT I really like Stakes of Marika. One of the best things From has ever introduced. I hate run backs and love experimentation. Thinking about it more, I also like a Bonfire directly before a mayor Boss. Malenia and Consorts Graces are probably the Graces where I changed my build the most out of all places in Elden Ring.
I am finally going to play some DS3 again this weekend. It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve played any video games at all, but now I’ve got the time. Well, where did I have my SL1 character parked… Oh, right before Friede – this should be easy, right?
DS3 was laughable with some, but Elden Ring was downright farcical. Almost every boss that wasn’t a cul-de-sac had two sites of grace right on top of each other.
Margit->front gate; godfrey->antechamber thing (and the site of grace immediately before that after the courtyard… ludicrous) etc., etc.
Then there were the incredibly strange placements with the divine towers. Why did some have one at the top, others at the bottom, others in the top AND bottom, and others midway? It felt like they were going to do something with them, and just cancelled it at some point. Looking at caelid’s as an example of what they might have done with others.
Most of the time I forget that Margit even has a Grace; I’m immediately off to speak to Gostoc while he has his exit speech. Same with Fire Giant; I’ve got stuff to do!
The Graces at the Divine Towers are really strange. You can only open the door when you have the Rune to activate, and then there is really no reason to return to it. Even the Divine Tower of Liurnia has a Grace, and what’s that for to stare at Ranni’s corpse some more? Okay, the Grace at the Divine Tower of East Altus makes a minuscule amount of sense, since if you haven’t defeated Mogh when you get there, you might want to come back and don’t take the elevator again.
But what offends my sensibilities the most is the Divine Tower of Caelid; it’s for some reason the only one who doesn’t have a Grace after the elevator (at least make it consistent!).
Maybe you are right, and all the Towers were supposed to be some kind of mini-dungeons? And these Graces are the last vestiges of that plan?The more I think about it, Bloodborne + Stake of Marika would probably be my favorite theoretical “bonfire” placement.
After a long mid-game hiatus to waste a few weeks on Football Manager and then do a NextFest deepdive I am finally back to Withering Realms, which I will finish this weekend. I guess with an asterisk that there is a post-game/NG+ mechanic that I am unlikely to engage with at this point in time, and will probably save for next year and the full release. It’s actually a Soulslike so for once I am following the tenets of this community instead of talking about other types of games here like an irreverent filthy casual.
I think a combination of sparse bonfire placements with a “Stake of Marika” type system is perfect for me. For exploration I love the tension of getting through an area with few bonfires, I love the relief of finally finding the next bonfire and I love when clever level design and shortcuts let you reuse previous bonfires. Cathedral of the Deep in DS3 is a great example.
But boss runbacks? Pass.
Withering Realms
Would you say that Withering Realms can be played without playing Withering Rooms beforehand? I’ll probably play Withering Rooms eventually (partly because of your praise for it), but I’m currently not in the mood for a 2D game.
for once I am following the tenets of this community
I really enjoy your post in these discussion threads, and many of the games you talked about have landed in my bookmarks, like, for example, The Drifter.
Would you say that Withering Realms can be played without playing Withering Rooms beforehand?
I personally don’t think it makes any sense to play them in reverse order. Realms is a full sequel and built directly on top of what Rooms establishes, and I think it would lessen the experience of both games to do so. And Rooms is such a lovely game with such cool world building and lore that it deserves its spotlight as your first game in the setting. And trust me, you’ll get used to the 2.5D in no time.
I really enjoy your post in these discussion threads, and many of the games you talked about have landed in my bookmarks, like, for example, The Drifter.
I’m glad. Sometimes I don’t know if my tendency to take the community rules as guidelines is taken well or not, hah. I do the same smudging of the line in the Patient Gaming community at times. And I hope you do get to The Drifter at some point. What a great game that was.
I absolutely do not mind at all, personally. These weekend discussion posts are here to serve as a little forum inside a forum for folks to share their experiences with all kinds of games with each other. If you’re playing some new soulslike you want to talk about - great! But I do not wish to be so dogmatic about the original “intention” of the community within these casual conversations. If it’s its own post about something off-topic, that’s a different story. But in these weekend posts I really do not mind and enjoy seeing/hearing about all kinds of games. So go off bruvva :) ✨
Not exactly a soulslike, but I recently played the demo for Queen’s Domain and it definitely brings up some of those Dark Souls feelings. Definitely looking forward to playing that one!
Don’t really play souls like, but I saw the bonfires being mentioned and I thought I’d add the opinion that the player should start their own bonfires wherever, for better or worse.
So you’d have some kinda consumable that’s permanent or an actual consumable and then you get say in where you’d like to place it, right? Sounds interesting although I could potentially see this being abused in some weird ways. Might need some kinda restrictions on where you can place them. Outside, I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t have the option to
Death’s Door kind of does this. The game uses plant pots for bonfires. You collect seeds and choose which pots to plant a seed in and activate as a respawn point. Not quite the same as placing it anywhere, but it does add an extra layer of strategy.
Huh. I must have completely forgotten about that.
Ah, right. Might not have played the game enough to see that :)
Sorry if my comment sounded like an “un actually” I just love these games.
Not in the slightest, dw. I literally did not know that was a thing :)
Bleak Faith: Forsaken apparently has a portable bonfire as part of its system, and you gotta kind of gauge where best to plop it down for a given area.
Unfortunately the game seems a bit too janky and boring for me to purchase, but maybe one day it’s on sale for a few dollars and I’ll risk it.
🤞🏻
![[Discussion] Which Soulslike will you be playing this weekend, and what is your ideal/preferred bonfire placement in Souls games?](https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/8c054a7d-4ee7-4955-acc4-78f696abf42e.avif){kind=link}