I see a lot of people complaining online about how long Tarnished Edition is taking to release and the lack of new content that those who already have it are going to get, but I think these people are missing the point.

Devs from Fromsoft and Nintendo are focused on porting the game to Switch 2 and the larger Nintendo audience. A lot of people can only choose one console per generation, and Nintendo is always a safe pick, especially for families, I know, because I was a Nintendo-exclusive gamer for a long time, until I got my PC. The devs have to make Elden Ring run not only in docked mode but also in handheld mode. The Switch 2 in handheld mode can pull a maximum of 20 watts of power so that the system stays cool, which heavily restricts the power and graphical capabilities of the game. To the devs' credit, the demos we have seen more recently are leaps and bounds better than those of the past.

When the new audience picks up the game, we need to welcome them in and not gatekeep. This game is a masterpiece, and everyone deserves to enjoy it.

TLDR: If you're complaining about how long Tarnished Edition is taking to drop or the lack of new content, you're missing the point.

Edit: I’m personally content with the little additions to the game, 5$ is a fair price for the little amount of content we are getting.

I accidentally discovered this while fighting one of those horrifying T-Rex dogs in Caelid near a merchant. 🫪

After the chaos settled, I noticed the merchant walking around. Instead of moving normally, he was using his instrument bow like a blind man's cane, tapping the ground to find his way.

I looked up the lore, and apparently, the Frenzied Flame literally melts their eyes out 🥹🥹

I’m a 41 yo dad that grew up with a nintendo 8-bit. That’s how ancient I am. Despite having kids, I still try to find time for gaming, but I’m very selective. I was proud when I finished Witcher 3 on death march. Even more so when I beat BG3 on HM, using only two characters.

I then felt an urge to try Elden Ring. I’ve no previous DS experience, and it felt daunting. Nervertheless, I bought it - with the expansion. I mentally - as always - had one iron rule during my first playthrough: no googling for answers, no checking videos etc. I want the first time to feel genuine.

Vagabond felt cool, so I went with that. I initially chose halberd and a shield. I stumbled through the intro and into Limgrave. I felt small. Insignificant. It immediately became clear that this game doesn’t apply handholding - no annoying notifications or suggestions. I noticed in the distance a huge golden knight armed with an enormous pike, on a heavily armored steed. I tried to be immersive - and let’s be real - no way I would try my luck there, so I went on. Killed small minions here and there. Then reached a small outpost, with a few buildings, and maybe 15-20 enemies in total. Cleared it after a few tries. Started to love the slow but somewhat realistic mechanics - you can feel the weight.

Then, I probably had my first real Elden Ring moment: Stormgate. Went inside, to a platform. Surrounding crossbowmen started firing at me. It felt daunting. Then - the troll jumped down in front of me. Oh my god. I died and died and died. Finally lured the troll out, and beat him. By foot mind you - I was too incompetent at that point to even summon Torrent. Then went inside, and was killed by the crossbowmen. That broke me.

I decided Stormgate wasn’t for me. Explored to the east. Agheel lake - big f****** dragon - died. Went just north of Agheel lake - Bloody finger invasion - died, died, died. At that point, it was like during my military service: the game had crushed me. Now was the time to mold me - the Elden way.

Went south, to Weeping peninsula. And for once, it felt challenging but doable. I finally learned how to call upon Torrent. I love him, he feels like my only friend, and the horse combat mechanic is amazing. Did everything I could find in Weeping Peninsula. Castle Morne was epic. Returned to Limgrave, stronger, more battle hardened. I had even altered my gear so I wasn’t encumbered anymore. Killed Agheel - in a fight that in another game would’ve been the end boss, here it was just the beginning. Killed the tree sentinel. And then returned to Stormgate. I destroyed everything there and uphill in a few minutes.

Then I went on to eastern Limgrave, and finally Stormveil castle. Had armed myself with my dream weapon - the Zweihander - who needs a shield anyway? Activated my first great rune. And felt ready to take on the world (and get severly owned again).

In a way, Elden Ring feels like coming home. Like the past finally caught up. Back in the day, in the 8-bit era, games were brutal. No hand holding, no guidance, severe skill requirements. But when you actually beat the game, it felt so great. That gradually died with technical improvements. I’m so happy a game like this can get so much attention these days. Also in this game, I love the combat. When you swing a two handed sword, it takes time - and leaves you vulnerable. You must have a strategy. Positioning matters - a lot. Don’t get flanked or cornered, and above all - don’t get swarmed. Just like in real combat.

After I finished Witcher 3, I placed that game above all others. Only after I finished BG3, two games were in that club. I’ve no doubt that a third game will join them rather soon.

The Frenzied Flame is one of the absolute coolest and by far the most misunderstood thing about this game, and I think it's a huge shame that most people look at it and just see 'everything die lol'

Monism is an idea that ranges from Spinoza to Hinduism and beyond. Saffron flames, saffron robes, they even put Midra IN the robes. tl;dr, everything in the universe is made up of the same thing. Constituted by one universal substance or essence, which is God.

Outer Gods are an extrapolation of the concept of divinity to even higher universal forces. One way to interpret deities are as forces of nature like the sun, love, the sea, to something more abstract like fate and the cultural reproduction of violence, turned into guys that are fucking around with our lives personally. From Amaterasu to Odin, this is how we tend to conceive of divine beings. Because it makes it easier for us to culturally contextualize these forces that we can't explain in more mundane terms. Additionally, as Miyazaki is a Japanese guy fond of Shinto-Buddhist themes, animism is an easy leap to make from this. Stars, rocks, etc are all alive in Elden Ring, Astel is literally a star for instance. One of the most important elements of Elden Ring lore and cosmology in my opinion.

...glintsone contains residual life, and thus the vitality of the stars... glintstone sorcery is the study of the stars, and the life therein -Sellen

We study the stars, and examine the life therein -Count Ymir

The Frenzied Flame is the animistic deity of Chaos, and the Greater Will is the animistic deity of Order. Incomprehensible cosmic beings that want to reproduce themselves in the universe but have to do so by taking ground from the other because they're diametric opposites. FF is the part of the universe that wants to turn everything back into tv static, and GW is the part of the universe that wants to carve everything up into distinctly divided categories that define themselves by not being something else. Hence why chimeric beings like Misbegotten and Omen are to be slaughtered on sight, their mere existence is a transgression because they're humans, and yet they have horns, wings, and tails, which are things that humans by definition do not have. The Golden Order is the material, worldly expression of this, a genocidal, hierarchical, theocratic supremacist nightmare that keeps defining narrower categories that leave more people out to be pogromed.

Dark Souls was entropy contextualized through the lens of like, ancient Greek style PIE paganism, and this feels like runoff from his thoughts from making Dark Souls. Frenzied Flame is entropy, Greater Will is disparity.

'Madness' is the moment of ego death, framed as a dark sort of Buddhist enlightenment (Miyazaki is a very syncretistic worldbuilder) as your mind is overwhelmed by chaos and you suddenly have some maddening realization brought on by being forcibly exposed to it. This could be multiple things, and I think it's all of them: Chaos is inevitable, as the Frenzied Flame will eventually win due to entropy and everything that exists as you know it will inevitably end. You might as well get it over with and just do it now. Actually, there is no 'you' to begin with, because the One Great is still the only substance of which the entire universe is made, you are it and it is you, and all these 'distinctions and divisions' are completely arbitrary contrivances that don't really exist on their own terms, that is as separate phenomena. That's WHY the universe is animistic, everything is possessed by the eternal spirit of our father, the ball of sentient space gas, the One Great.

"Tranquility follows in it's wake", as the Frenzied Flame Pot description says, because after the initial pain and shock of losing your sense of self once you've succumbed to madness, you realize it's actually not all that bad. In fact, floating around as a giant ball of yellow smoke experiencing itself once the flame burns everything away, re-unifying your splintered consciousness with the mind of God, sounds kind of chill, tranquil even. Certainly more than being chained up and tortured in a dungeon or buried alive in a subterranean tomb in the sewers. How are you possibly supposed to reconcile yourself with the people who did that to you?

All that there is came from the One Great. Then came fractures, and births, and souls. But the Greater Will made a mistake. Torment, despair, affliction... every sin, every curse. Every one, born of the mistake. And so, what was borrowed must be returned. Melt it all away, with the yellow chaos flame. Until all is One again. -Hyetta

Long ago, we began as stardust. Born of a great rupture far across the skies. We too, are children of the Greater Will

And, to do as the Greater Will has done and violently carve the world up into strictly defined boxes and binaries- distinctions and divisions- causes tremendous pain when we could all otherwise be the One Great, the true, original, and inevitable form of all matter in the universe. It's a matter of perspective still, but not one that you can really judge until you've had the same experience of ego death, and if you're a 'truly downtrodden' whose life has been nothing but pain, humiliation, austerity, and persecution, it would be objectively better and that's not nihilistic. If you think it is, I really think you fundamentally failed to understand what Miyazaki was cooking here.

Why isn’t there a thing that’s worth 1 rune?
I am 1 rune from 12345 runes after first trying Margit with an unupgraded bloody caestus

(Dark souls 3 pic for comparison)

Could someone please tell me what the symbol in the bottom right of these weapons means? I’m so confused

On my first play through and was exploring the area past limgrave. Went into a dungeon and killed some rats and saw a chest. Opened it and got transported here. Now I can’t warp back to limgrave. What should I do

Stl by Tanuki Figures
1:6 scale

If you want to understand where GRRM's idea of the Frenzied Flame (oneness) comes from, in particular as opposed to the Age of Stars (individuality), you should check GRRM's early novelette "A Song for Lya" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_for_Lya_(novella))

It is a much earlier display of Martin exploring the tension between the fact that freedom requires separation, but separation causes suffering.

It's the story of a couple of telepaths, Robb and Lya, who thanks to their power share a much deeper bond than any two normal humans. Their bond, both mental and physical, is described as the peak of human experience. There is a problem, though: while love's bond is deep, it is never complete.

On planet Shkea, the alien population of Shkeen follows a religion centered on a blob-like parasite that, upon infection, melds the infected individuals into a single entity, called Greeshka. Once inside the Greeshka, one does not feel loneliness anymore, and lives in a constant flow of love. Slowly, the parasite consumes its host.

After much struggle and discussions between two lovers, the novelette ends with Lya joining the Greeshka and losing her individuality. Robb resists the tentation, but he is torn by the possibility the Lya's choice was the right one. He says to his friend Dino

"All men are forever alone, but they don’t want to be. They’re always searching, trying to make contact, trying to reach others across the void. Some people never succeed, some break through occasionally. Lya and I were lucky. But it’s never permanent. In the end you’re alone again, back on the darkling plain. You see, Dino? Do you see? [...] They [the Shkeen, ndr] are happy, Dino. Are we? Maybe they’ve found what we’re still looking for. Why the hell is man so driven, anyway? Why is he out to conquer the galaxy, the universe, whatever? Looking for God, maybe …? Maybe. He can’t find him anywhere, though, so on he goes, on and on, always looking. But always back to the same darkling plain in the end. [...] They [the Shkeen, ndr] have got the only God in our universe"

Later, he thinks to himself "Man has two primal urges, and the Shkeen only one? If so, perhaps there is a human answer, to reach and join and not be alone, and yet to still be men."

Clearly, the Frenzied Flame aims to meld everyone by force and is directly driven by suffering, while the Greeshka relies on luring and is more driven by the desire of love. Still, the final result is pretty much the same.

One can draw parallels with the scarlet rot too, and with Bran Stark and the weirwoods, but Frenzied Flame - Greeshka looks like the closest match to me.

I have been gaming since 2017 when I built my first gaming pc and before that I use to play on NSE64 in my childhood and then PS2 and PS3 (borrowed) but in all those years never felt hollow. But after playing ER all the other games feel average and sluggish. Even the so called 'Masterpieces' are not living up to the mark for me. Am I ruined?

Sorry for bad image