If you intend to take the fight online and battle other players in Elden Ring, then these are the best weapons for you to use.
Elden Ring is full of weapons you can use, and all of them can be viable with the right build and upgrades. But the fact is, some perform better than others when you’re fighting against real players. Yes, we’d all love to run around with a dagger hit-stunning PVP foes, but when you’re juggling with latency and multiple opponents, your options should include the very best tools.
In this list we’ve put together the very best weapons you can use in PVP duels. There are of course many other weapons you can do incredibly well with, as long as they complement your playstyle, but if you’re wondering where a good place to start is, these armaments are the best place to start.
With April all wrapped up, the NPD Group is releasing its data on all things video games.
With April all wrapped up, the NPD Group is releasing its data on all things video games. For the unfamiliar, it’s a market research company that covers far more than just the games industry, but also has the data to actually make proper statements about who is selling what and where in the US. This month the headline is that Elden Ring is now the top-selling game since April 2021, despite only coming out in February.
This means it’s beaten out Call of Duty: Vanguard, which you’d normally expect to be the biggest seller of any given year, NFL 22, Pokemon, and everything else. Naturally that also makes it the biggest seller of this year so far, though LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has come in strong at number two, being the best selling game of April and the best start for any LEGO game. This is enough to give it the number 6 slot for the past 12 months.
LEGO Star Wars was the best selling game on each individual platform. The best exclusives were Kirby and the Forgotten Land on Switch, Horizon: Forbidden West on PlayStation, and Forza Horizon 6 on Xbox. Overall, spending was 8% lower than the same month last year at a pathetic $18.3 billion. Pocket change, frankly.
All this data and more is available on Twitter via Mat Piscatella, Executive Director & Video Game Industry Advisor at the group. He knows his stuff and is an exceptionally good follow, if you’re into that kind of thing.
And no, NPD doesn’t stand for anything any more. I checked on Wikipedia and everything.
As part of the forward-looking statements in Kadokawa’s financial results, it mentions “development of console games originating from books and animated titles” as a future goal.
As the financial report season continues ever-on, one delivery from an unexpected source has some interesting implications. Kadokawa Corporation is the parent company of FromSoftware, who you may remember from a little game called Elden Ring. Video games aren’t Kadokawa’s whole business, it’s a multi-media company with bits and pieces across every sector of entertainment. They own FromSoftware because FromSoftware makes money, essentially, rather than because they’re particularly invested in video games. They also own Spike Chunsoft, which is a crossover I can’t wait for.
As part of the forward-looking statements in Kadokawa’s financial results, it mentions “development of console games originating from books and animated titles” as a future goal. Beneath it are three examples of companies, Chunsoft and From both being in there. There’s no further elaboration beyond a note that only “suited” works will be used. This ResetEra thread notes some of the anime properties Kadokawa has access to.
From is getting pretty large at this point, and there’s multiple rumors of what’s next on their plate – Elden Ring DLC, a new mech game, this, no doubt every publisher is beating down their door after the ludicrous popularity of Elden Ring. Whether we’re going to see a Soulslike set in a Japanese middle-school with Persona plots remains to be seen, but it does look like Kadokawa has decided this is a direction to go in.
Kadokawa also noted the effect Elden Ring had on the bottom line, calling it a “big hit beyond expectations.” Shocker.
Last night, as part of a livestream on his YouTube channel ‘Klein Tsuboi’ (named for a Sword Art Online character, because what else), LMSH defeated his 1000th Malenia.
For some, Elden Ring is the hardest game of all time, an impossible creation which they may never conquer. Within that, Malenia is inarguably the hardest boss, a fast-moving, self-healing monster with a second phase that brings normal men to tears. For one player, however, she’s been a ticket to fame – Let Me Solo Her, or LMSH, is a mostly-naked player with a big pot on his head. He uses Elden Ring’s co-op system to be summoned to other people’s worlds and hopes that they will listen to his in-name request. Then he defeats Malenia, usually without taking damage.
Last night, as part of a livestream on his YouTube channel ‘Klein Tsuboi’ (named for a Sword Art Online character, because what else), LMSH defeated his 1000th Malenia. In a silent stream other than game sound, he slowly worked through Malenia’s in various viewers’ games, rarely taking damage. On the thousandth, which can be seen here, he muted the game music and played the Elden Ring trailer theme over the top.
It was unnaturally, and rather beautifully, wholesome. Once the kill was done – which was spicier than normal and involved him taking some significant damage that he usually avoids – he thanked his viewers, posed with Malenia’s flower-corpse, and then started his NG+ run on this character. He also shared a special message in a short post-credits type situation, where he said that Bandai Namco had contacted him for a “special gift” and he’s “very excited for what it is.” At a guess, one of the Collector’s Edition Malenia statues, but maybe it’s something even better for our true Jarnished.
As you can see on his YouTube channel, before this LMSH was an extremely good Overwatch support main. That might explain how he manages to avoid Waterfowl Dance, Malenia’s ‘super’ attack that has put many a player in their graves early. Watching him do so after reading so many complaints about it being ‘impossible’ was rather satisfying. Based on this interview with IGN, as well as all his various Reddit comments and other interactions, he seems like an uncommonly nice online individual.
He’s looking forward to some DLC, like anyone else. It doesn’t look like his watch will end any time soon either – got that NG+ to get through, after all, and get his sign back down to help out others.
This represents around 1.4 million sales in a two week period since the 12 million reported in the first two weeks.
The most hyped game of the year is also proving to be one of the most successful. Elden Ring, which we’re going to assume most of you have heard of, has had another sales update thanks to Bandai Namco’s financial reports for the end of the 2021 fiscal year. As of March 31, it had sold 13.4 million units, as reported by industry big brain newsbot Nibellion on Twitter.
This represents around 1.4 million sales in a two week period since the 12 million reported after the first two weeks. This was already a ludicrous record, as it took multiple years for previous games in the Souls/Sekiro/Bloodborne triumvirate to reach those sorts of milestones. At a rate of a million every couple of weeks, it’s very likely Elden Ring has passed the 15 million milestone in the time since.
This was part of a very successful presentation from Bandai Namco for their last year of operation. The presentation is fully in Japanese with no English version I can locate, but you can take a look at the pure numbers side of things, which paint a line-goes-up picture (the good kind). This includes significant continued investment in “game content R&D” – i.e. development – which Bamco sees continuing to grow next year.
The company doesn’t think success on this scale will continue through all of next year, but is predicting another very good year in 2023. Given Bamco’s predictions for Elden Ring were decidedly conservative, it could be another massive year for them.
Elden Ring, premium game of the year candidate, has gotten makeover from Luke Ross, a developer who has been making unofficial VR support for all sorts of games over the past few years.
I’m often thinking ‘the only thing that would improve this video game is having it strapped directly to my face’ and thus does the world of mods provide. Elden Ring, premium game of the year candidate, has gotten makeover from Luke Ross, a developer who has been making unofficial VR support for all sorts of games over the past few years. He’s worked on Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA5, and several others.
The main difference here is Elden Ring – and FromSoft’s catalog in general – really doesn’t take to being in first-person. At a nice, wide, third-person angle you can just about see what’s going on. Up-close-and-personal it’s a mess of clipping in and out of things, stuff in your way, and monstrous animations that weren’t really meant to be seen from this angle. That’s the first thing UploadVR says to accompany the gameplay footage uploaded today.
Luke, not being a fool and having done this a few times now, knows and understands that. Thus he’s introducing several camera modes with a range of zoom-in to see what works best for players. You might be thinking that third-person is about as bad as having a mess of textures in your face, but it works better than that. Depending on implementation, it can give a sense of being an observer of the world in a much more real way.
Despite the obvious jankiness of the fighting in the above video, the moment of stepping out into the first area and looking up at the Erdtree is as impressive as ever, if not more-so. It’s unlikely that a full thousand-hour run of Elden Ring is going to be fun with the ol’ sensory deprivation helmet, but as an oddity and an experiment it seems very valuable.
To this end, Ross has enabled a ‘tourist mode’ option that can be turned on to force enemies to ignore you as you wander the lands. That probably makes this the absolute best tool for taking up-close screenshots of Elden Ring, as well as getting virtual hugs from Fia. Someone will, of course, probably beat it within the week in first-person using a pair of bananas for controllers or something.
Ross and his R.E.A.L. VR mods are available through Patreon, with this one coming in before the end of the month according to PCGamer. That’ll cost you around $9.50, so consider it your coffee for the day.
If there’s one thing Elden Ring is missing, it’s college hipsters sporting flashy threads. Thankfully, one fan artist isn’t leaving this injustice to everyone’s imagination.
An artist that goes by Jiro on social media has come up with some wild illustrations that reimagine several Elden Ring characters as if they were living in the present day (Thanks, GamesRadar). Not only that, they clearly have several Björk albums on vinyl and love A24 films. Seriously, make it through Ranni’s quest and try telling me she wouldn’t love The Northman. You can’t.
Melina and Rya would have similar tastes. At least, that’s what the vibes these drawings give off.
All kidding aside, these are some brilliant mock-ups by Jiro. They’re a fan of Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls, and Bloodborne as well, taking key characters from those games and coming up with similar new-age designs.
The Emerald Herald would totally be a skater girl, as she regularly says “see ya later, boy” whenever you leave Mjula (in my head).
Elden Ring’s community is regularly creating wonderful stuff like this. Be it absurd playstyles or old-school Game Boy demakes. FromSoftware’s latest is a tough nut to crack, but once you do, there are oodles of inspiring sights in the Lands Between.
Elden Ring and Lost Ark are two massive successful games which have managed to keep their playerbases around long after they would drop of other games. How?
Not a week goes by without some news of a new, high-profile release that has lost 50-99% of its player base in just a few weeks. Some drop-off is expected, but there’s been many a big-name triple-A powerhouse in the recent past that has lost an awful lot of players awfully quickly. Here are two games where that isn’t remotely the case, as the biggest releases of the past few months – FromSoftware’s giga-RPG Elden Ring and Amazon’s MMOARPG Lost Ark – continue to go strong.
As usual for this sort of thing, SteamDB’s player charts are the best place to get numbers. For Elden Ring that means you can probably triple-or-more these figures for PlayStation and Xbox players. We’re decidedly lacking in active user and concurrent player counts for those platforms since the shutting down of gamstat but you can guarantee both platforms are stacked.
We’ll start there with Elden Ring. Lifetime peak just shy of a million, 150k in the last 24 hours, 240k easy at the weekend. Remember we’re talking about a primarily single-player game here. It has multiplayer features, including PvP, but the vast majority of players use them sparingly and it isn’t the kind of thing where you’re logging on with friends to do daily quests. It has an explorable world and a story with a start and end – and it’s still pulling in players in their hundreds of thousands on a daily basis to keep going. That’s GOAT levels.
Lost Ark, due to that MMOARPG nature, is on another level. It is currently gaining players by the day in the wake of the latest patch. 1.3 million and change were in-game simultaneously at launch a few months ago, and 560k were in-game at the same time yesterday. It bottomed out at daily peaks of around 350k a couple of weeks ago, then spiked up again recently. For the love of all that’s holy, as I write there are 24,000 people idling on the start screen while it’s down for maintenance.
Not to kick anyone when they’re down, but if you compare this to other recent major releases, it’s night and day. Ghostwire Tokyo, single-player RPG, down to three figures in just a month. On the MMO side, Amazon’s previous effort, New World, is looking at a 98% drop off and little impact from a free week earlier this month. Even something like Destiny 2, which I’d never claim to be not doing great, can’t match these numbers since the recent expansion launch. The less said about Babylon’s Fall, the better.
So, what’s the secret? It’s a mix, and marketing probably plays a greater factor than game quality, much as we’d love to believe otherwise. This is clearest with Lost Ark – it does some things very well, but we’re talking about an overlong, very complex, terribly translated, and grindy MMO. However, it’s been slowly gaining hype for nearly a decade at this point, and got positioned as the counter-culture to Diablo and Path of Exile as their popularity fluctuated for various reasons. The things it does poorly – storytelling, moment-to-moment gameplay variety, and enraging the community to the point where CMs had to ask them to calm down – are vastly outstripped by how cool it looks in motion and the ludicrous depth of content in the game as a whole. That gets people in and then keeps them playing, near-endlessly, especially in an age of Twitch. Plus, all your mates are playing it – that means you want to too, right?
For Elden Ring, its quality – which we’re definitely not going to deny – is a multiplier to the ever-growing popularity of FromSoftware since the release of Demon’s Souls way back in 2009. From, and particularly long-time publisher Bandai Namco, knows how to exploit that history of great games with specific appeal. The developer and publisher know that a cinematic teaser trailer is enough to sustain a slowly hollowing community for two years, and that when they bring whatever comes next, the entire world will pay attention. Bandai also knows that From will pull it off when it comes to to the final product, and likely had an inkling even back in 2019 that Elden Ring was huge. Nobody knew what a massive game we were getting going in, and even all the repeated content and similar dungeons isn’t a big turn off at that scale.
How do you make a successful game? Apparently, you’re best off building hype for 5-10 years, then releasing something with more content than most other entire trilogies. Simple, right?
While you were out partying, Ymfah studied the bow.
The Elden Ring community is at it again. Someone came up with perhaps the most impractical means of blitzing FromSoftware’s action RPG epic — by using nothing but a bow.
On Wednesday, YouTuber Ymfah made the bow-only challenge for themselves. No Moonveil Katana, Lusat’s Glintstone Staff, or spells of any kind — only projectile weapons. Now, you’re likely wondering how that’s even possible since bows in Elden Ring are not great for killing blows. Ymfah knows that too, picking up every trinket and as many runes as possible to create one diabolical build.
Check out the video below of Ymfah’s bow-only exploits. There’s no doubt that a lot of theorycrafting went into this.
Ymfah is the same person that beat Dark Souls 3 without walking, so they clearly know FromSoftware’s games well. I wonder if they’ll go after Elden Ring‘s most memorable bosses in time. Some are probably damn near impossible with only bows, though.
Elden Ring fans are constantly one-upping each other’s ridiculous feats. Whether playing with controllers made of bananas or finishing the game in less than seven minutes, the community is all about creating fun through non-traditional means. Or they’re all gluttons for punishment, who knows.
Elden Ring update 1.04 is live on all platforms and finally patches a few big bugs, including Malenia’s ever-increasing health bar.
Elden Ring has received yet another update across all platforms, and this time it’s here to fix a few game quirks, not overhaul the balance of any weapons. You’re safe for another day, Moonveiland Rivers of Blood users. Instead, this new patch is here to smooth over a few cracks that appeared shortly after the last large update launched with a host of sweeping balance changes.
As you might remember from our coverage of Elden Ring‘s previous patch, magic and sorceries got a huge boost to their effectiveness, as did the heaviest weapons in the game. No more game balance changes are coming as of now, but there are a few bugs that have reared up, and they certainly need put back down, which is whatElden Ring patch 1.04 is here to do. To see all of the minor changes in this update, just read our breakdown below.
This patch is going out to all platforms, so that includes all Xbox and PlayStation versions of the game, and those playing on PC via Steam too.
Here are the full patch notes:
Fixed a bug in which the effect duration of the Cerulean Hidden Tear was revised downward.
Fixed a bug with Malenia, Blade of Miquella in which her HP was not healed correctly in the online multiplayer environment.
Fixed a bug that caused some bosses to die at unintended times.
Fixed a bug that prevented the boss “Elden Beast” from working properly under certain circumstances.
Fixed some texts.
Malenia, Blade of Miquella and later Goddess of Rot is a tough boss, and her HP regen ability is intimidating, but when playing multiplayer players recently noted that it was bugged, seemingly giving Malenia a near-infinite pool of health. Luckily that is now fixed, along with bosses dying during animation transitions, and the final boss has had its AI seemingly fixed.
Everything else is what you would expect from a minor patch like this – just some essential bug fixes that the community has been highlighting since the last patch went live. PVP players will be happy that their build hasn’t been changed, while PVE players will find things working as intended from now on. Well, hopefully, at least. Patch notes taken from Bandai Namco’s official post.
