Like Dark Souls and Bloodborne before it
Astel On paper, it is a much more formidable challenge. It's a boss, for one, located at the tail-end of one of Elden Ring's most frustrating environments, and second its bizarre design makes it much harder to understand.Like Dark Souls and Bloodborne before it, the success of Elden Ring Runes often comes down to recognizing attack patterns; one might think that common animals like wolves, bears and birds would be more readable because of their analogies to the real world, however that's not always the case.
I'm not sure I've ever defeated one of Elden Ring's huge bears during the 90-hours (and counting) with the game. Red-furred wolves with red fur scattered throughout the Lands Between continue to be my main source of stress. I break out in sweating each time I hear the ominous sounds of an unidentified attack bird preening itself in a tree or ramparts of castles. But when I was faced with a second boss like Astel at a later point in my quest, I walked into battle with confidence and took it down on one shot.
It's true that what's difficult for me might not be difficult for others. I'm pretty certain I've got some sort of mental block which immediately sets me on tilt while fighting the more real animals of Elden Ring, which was triggered by earlier encounters with frustration.
Whatever the reason the truth is that I'm not able to get my mind around them. They could at the very least be stopped by the roaring of their attacks and I'll be able to take down the magic wolves repeatedly if I get lucky, but every time I come across the gold poop, which suggests one of the larger bears are in the vicinity then I speed-tail it away as quickly as I can. Don't think about becoming an Elden Lord or defeating super-bosses like Malenia with no support the final battle against a bear is probably going to be my biggest Elden Ring challenge. Pray for buy Elden Ring Runes me.
