Elden Ring: Be wary of fingers all the more giant

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

After all my dragon dodging I decide to check how bad the dragon at the starting lake is. The answer is pretty bad because he flies A LOT. I instead continue past him through a narrow ravine that leads to a deep mine and a stone mining troll which I defeat! Yay for the poise breaking damage of this large club!

This turns out to be good practice as when I return to the watery bog when trying to follow a treasure map I also defeat a troll knight, and Edgar who is now on revenge mode so I have to kill him. Unlocking one teleporter spire I am also brought back to the very start of the game and defeat the spider person that serves as the first battle. It's quite the sense of accomplishment! Continuing on I meet a friendly troll, Iji, who tells me to stay away from a cursed manor up ahead. Naturally this means I go right for it, evading the magical rain defending it.

Easy to dodge via serpentine pathing.

It's much worse inside though, as giant, spider-like hands lie in ambush everywhere so I just scoot past to the higher floors which are more manageable as they are only guarded by spirits. Their boss, a spirit lady on a spirit horse has me at a disadvantage since I cannot mount up to fight her but between my club and my spectral viking buddy we take her down just the same. As for why I'm doing this? I'm really trying to get to the top and top right sector of the map since it seems everything is blocking my way in that direction.

Elden Ring: Why is it always undead? Therefore try undead

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

Returning to the Roundtable Hold from that venture at Castle Morne, I discover it's not such a safe place after all having to defeat invaders Ensha and Alberich. Lucky there are helpful people too, like lady Fia who gives free hugs, Corhyn the priest, Roderika the rookie spirit-hewer (whom I recruited to come here actually), Hewg the enslaved blacksmith, and vampire hunter D undead hunter D, who tells me that to slay undead, you have to slay them. While they're dead. Translation: those respawning skels don't respawn if you smash their "corpses" before respawning.

I also buy a spirit calling bell which is amazing as I can now summon my own ghostly viking sniper who is super effective in helping me smash some undead including a cemetery shade and a boatman which D is particularly pleased with. He suggests I visit a beast cleric in a spot I hadn't reached yet, so off I go and find I need to double jump with my mount to get from plagueville into dragon land!? I obviously just run from the winged reptiles until I reach some trapped goblin ruins (the teleporting boulders are particularly funny) and meet with this cleric - but he just wants me to keep bringing him pieces of the dead to eat.

Ghost versus spirit!

Reverse scouting through the dragon territory lets me find a ruined fortress (beyond a GIANT dragon) that is now home to big bats and ghosts, neither of whom are very good defenders which lets me loot the place easily. I then warp back to the first fort I skipped and wipe it out too, as having a spirit helper really makes things go much smoother.

Elden Ring: No joy ahead

[Part of my Elden Ring journal]

Feeling more courageous now after adventuring with Blaidd, I return to the well fortified stone bridge in the South and decide to rush it on horseback! Some how this works, and I come across the blind Irina who pleads with me to help her father at Castle Morne where their servants have rioted. I happily comply and ride right into a giant golem shooting missile sized arrows right outside the castle... WTF!?

Shooting right past that and into the castle itself I find the servants to be ugly harpy like things that are mostly too busy to see my crouch walking past them and up to the ramparts where Irina's dad Edgar is. He refuses to go however, because he's too worried the beast servants have made off with the castle's sword? Fine, so I traverse the rest of the castle and kill the boss-servant who wields said sword (aggression is better here) to convince him to finally go to Irina. We both travel to her and find her cleavered remains.

Home run!

While Edgar weeps I try hunt down the murderer by exploring the nearby surrounds but only find a tunnel filled with more servant things that I'm not keen on exploring just yet and a tower guarded by three spirit turtles who I slay to break the magic barrier, but am just rewarded with more treasure I'm not going to use. My bag is actually filling up with gear I can't use now as I'm only putting points into HP or Strength.