Somewhat predictably my hiatus from Elden Ring was much shorter than I intended. I finished the games I wanted to be done with prior to God of War Ragnarök’s release (the best being The Artful Escape which you can find my review for here) and had a few days with nothing to play ahead of the Ragnarök launch. That being the case I settled down to battle through the Mountaintops of the Giants and the Consecrated Snowfield, just for starters.
Things did not start well as the Ancient Heroes of Zamor presented a significant spike in difficulty over the enemies I’d faced until their appearance, with the slight exception of the Crucible Knights who I still hate. Luckily for me I could just ride passed these icy irritants and continue up into the Mountaintops themselves, heading immediately for Castle Sol. I was surprised after how much difficulty I had endured to get there that the enemies in the castle were relatively easy, meaning I gained the other half of the medallion required to reach the Consecrated Snowfield. I did explore more of the Mountaintops of the Giants, even managing to kill the region’s Death Rite Bird. I had attempted to kill the dragon on the frozen lake but after it took longer than I would have liked to get its health down a quarter I gave up and retreated. I’ll just kill them later.
Having seen enough of the mountainous area I reached the Snowfield and was immediately annoyed by the enemies hiding in the blizzard which greets you. Using my old friend Google I quickly established where all the Sites of Grace were and, most importantly, the teleporter to Mohgwyn Palace. I activated all Grace sites across the area, successfully raiding both caravans and being viciously mauled to death by a snowy Runebear which suddenly emerged from the blizzard and scared me to death as well as my Tarnished. I tried to kill the final Death Rite Bird but after two failed attempts decided to pack that in and add it my list of bosses to circle back to later. For now I had all I needed, access to Mohg and the famous rune farm outside of his Palace.
Seriously, the runes you can acquire here in a short space of time is incredible. First slay all the Albinaurics and their bodyguards at the top of the path, then fire an arrow at the Rot bird across the chasm to entice it to jump off the cliff to its death. This process takes barely two minutes and yields around 50k runes each time. Even though I didn’t need the levels I had a lot of fun rinse and repeating that tactic for about half an hour. Combine the runes I collected from this with the Golden Runes, Heroes Runes and Lord’s Rune picked up in the blood lakes, along with the others I had accrued on my way there and my level jumped from 198 to 205.
Upon equipping the Mixed Physick required to nullify the Blood Lord’s curse I charged straight in to fight Mohg and bested him on my first try. He put up a good fight and nearly killed me once or twice while I got greedy and prioritised attacking over conserving my health. That’s a mistake I still make regularly in Elden Ring.
With him dead I descended back into the underground beneath the Lands Between to cross the Lake of Rot and fought Astel, Naturalborn of the Void who took a couple of attempts to defeat as I was slow figuring out how to avoid his grab and gravity attacks. Upon beating Astel I hurried to complete Ranni’s questline, killing the Glintstone Dragon Adula on my first go, who also nearly killed me multiple times. It consistently annoys me that Torrent (your mount) retains such a shallow pool of health throughout the entire game, but I did enjoy discovering that if you heal yourself whilst mounted that Torrent also regains a portion of health.
Ranni’s quest completed, I returned to the Mountaintops of the Giants to fight the Fire Giant I had heard so much about and…that’s as far as I have reached for now. I expect I’ll be writing the next stage of my Elden Ring adventure very soon, so until then thanks for reading and I’ll be back with another update very soon!
Written and edited by Alexx.