Also, while going through the Mountaintops of the Giants, I also ended up unlocking the side-area, the Consecrated Snowfield. It's just a different elevation from the Mountaintops of the Giants, but it is a bit of a hub-overworld for two of the game's optional endgame locations. I haven't done a lot of exploration of the Consecrated Snowfield yet, but the few enemies I do I think need to be saved for the next part.
Another fun area I did was the Sauron-reference Frenzied Flame Village in Liurnia, which I completely missed since it was out of the way. Again, reading up a bit on these new enemies made me realize that I missed a bunch of foreshadowings and whatnot in older locations, which I do need to fix.
(No new remembrances that I've gotten yet, but I'll let you guys see a little sneak peek of a boss I'll fight far, far in the future since it's likely I'm going to review her alongside other remembrance bosses due to them being in the endgame... this is Malenia, one of the game's mascots and resident super-boss)
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Winged Ant
Remember the giant ants in the previous underground area, Nokron? We get even more variations of them, making nests atop mountains of corpse parts. And some of them have wings! In real life, ants with wings are the reproductive types called 'alates', which would fly out in mating seasons, breed and either die off or create a new colony. In video game terms, they're just airborne enemies, with the same biting and acid spray attacks that the regular ants have. Pretty neat!
Shield Ant
The random coolest variation of the giant ant is the 'Shield Ant', whose heads have turned into a hardened, shield-like structure. These act as actual shields, and you need to either get around the shield-head to strike at the belly, or wait until it lifts its head up to do its acid sting-spray attack to get a shot in. Like a typical shielded knight, where you need to wait for the timing as they move their shield to show off their weapons... except this is an ant's giant, flattened head. It almost looks fantastical, doesn't it?
Except like most of the 'regular' wildlife in this game, the shield ant is actually a real creature that exists, ants of the Cephalotes genus, sometimes called the Turtle-Head or Shield-Head Ants. Some members of the ants of this genus are adapted for phragmosis, which is an adaptation to allow them to use their hardened, flattened heads to block off tunnels to their burrows. In fact, I would say that the real animal looks a bit weirder compared to the scabby, thick growth of Elden Ring's shield ant.
I haven't gotten it yet, but you can even loot one of these ant-heads as an effective shield you can carry around in your arm to block off attacks from demigods. It's honestly a very cool real-world animal that I am quite pleasantly surprised to see make an appearance in this game!
Nox Night Maiden
The ancient civilization called the Nox are reduced to a handful of priestesses and monks. This is technically a new enemy, with a new armour set and a new spell, while we've met the Monk and Swordstress variants as bosses in Caelid, and in Nokron. There's not much to say about them on their own beyond the mystery surrounding Nokron... but:
Hell yeah. Some of the Nox people ride ants as mounts. They didn't do that in Nokron! Clearly, Nokstella is the far superior culture. I love this. I love how cool and fun this looks.
The Nox apparently aren't the best at animal husbandry, however, because if you can manage to knock the rider off the ant without killing either of them, the ant will actually turn on the rider. Notably their eyes glow while being ridden, implying some kind of coercive mind-control might be in use here.
Electric Silver Tear / Shielded Silver Tear
Two more variations of the Silver Tear enemy show up in Nokstella. Silver Tears, if you forget, are silvery blobs that act as the 'slimes' of the game, but are only found in the underground cities. They morph their bodies into cannons or spikes, sometimes they attach to ceilings to drop on you, and there are a couple stronger ones that are the size of boulders or can morph into humanoid shape.
Two more variations of the Silver Tear enemy show up in Nokstella. Silver Tears, if you forget, are silvery blobs that act as the 'slimes' of the game, but are only found in the underground cities. They morph their bodies into cannons or spikes, sometimes they attach to ceilings to drop on you, and there are a couple stronger ones that are the size of boulders or can morph into humanoid shape.
Two variations show up in Nokstella. The electric one is, well, charged with electricity and explode when they die, something that does not bother me as all since I mow them down before they even get close. Another variant, like the shielded and, has grown a hardened shield on its front which really reduces damage, forcing me to go into melee and zip around them to kill them.
Normally I wouldn't really talk about them, but after going through the game a bit more, it is really interesting just what these Silver Tears imply. They aren't found anywhere else other than the subterranean Eternal Cities, which are for the most part abandoned other than frenzied Fallen-Hawks (who fell from the 'upper' world) and the Nox Priestesses. There are also a lot of statues or petrified people who are in various states of screaming and pleading. And a lot of the lore note that the Eternal Cities were punished by the Greater Will for high treason. The implication is that either these people have somehow been transformed into Silver Tears, which is creepy enough.
Another potential implication? They might be punished because they created the Silver Tears, an artificial lifeform. The other artificial lifeforms we have seen a lot of are the Albinaurics. Whether it's the crippled and more humanoid 'First-Generation' ones or the frog-like 'Second-Generation' ones, all Albinaurics bleed silver, and unless I'm missing something, they're the only other things in the game that do. Albinaurics are the source of persecution throughout the game, with the village in Liurnia being annihilated by Omenkillers and Volcano Manor's insane array of torture devices being used against Albinaurics so much that they are driven crazy. So clearly the 'conservative' worshippers of the Greater Will hate these guys... and while most of the Silver Tears are blobs, occasionally you'd find little 'Larval Tears' that imply that they might be far more alive than their shape imply. Food for thought!
Baleful Shadow
Well, okay, that screenshot is actually of our buddy Blaidd the Half-Wolf, bodyguard to Ranni. As with all 'invaders', the Baleful Shadow enemy is put through a filter that makes it hard to see any features of. We don't actually fight Blaidd, but as we do Ranni's quest, she tasks us to fight a member of the organization called the Baleful Shadows, who are out to get her. Ranni betrayed the Two Fingers that worship the Golden Order/Greater Will, who had initially wanted to prop her up as one of the potential new gods, because fuck destiny and all. The Two Fingers were the ones that assigned Blaidd as Ranni's bodyguard, and apparently they have a supply of giant wolf-men wielding gigantic greatswords, since the Baleful Shadows are apparently wolf-men. While it's also a cheeky way to reuse a model, it also kind of makes sense in a way.
Well, okay, that screenshot is actually of our buddy Blaidd the Half-Wolf, bodyguard to Ranni. As with all 'invaders', the Baleful Shadow enemy is put through a filter that makes it hard to see any features of. We don't actually fight Blaidd, but as we do Ranni's quest, she tasks us to fight a member of the organization called the Baleful Shadows, who are out to get her. Ranni betrayed the Two Fingers that worship the Golden Order/Greater Will, who had initially wanted to prop her up as one of the potential new gods, because fuck destiny and all. The Two Fingers were the ones that assigned Blaidd as Ranni's bodyguard, and apparently they have a supply of giant wolf-men wielding gigantic greatswords, since the Baleful Shadows are apparently wolf-men. While it's also a cheeky way to reuse a model, it also kind of makes sense in a way.
Crucible Knight Ordovis
In one of the catacombs in Altus Plateau with a lot of nonsensical chariot puzzles (no, seriously, fuck those puzzles) the boss chamber is guarded not by one, but by two Crucible Knights. Which, again... I normally don't talk much about the human enemies in the game, but the Crucible Knights are just pretty damn cool by virtue of being able to sprout giant golden wings or tails made up of light. We get to see the two armour set variants, too, the 'axe' set and the 'tree' set. Ordovis, one of the two greatest knights, is the guy with the shield. It's a dual boss fight, which does make the boss a bit harder... but I really do wish that if they're going to give one of the guys a name, give the other one a name too, yeah? Elden Ring has been otherwise so good at giving random nobodies like Alberich or whoever a little blurb hidden here and there in item descriptions, at least if you're going to repeat enemies, give them a little story for me to read!
Fell Twins
We've fought many Omens before, and indeed there are a lot of Omen in the frankly insane three-part subterranean ruins underneath Leyndell. The Fell Twins appear to ambush you as you go and try and access Leyndell's Divine Tower. Two of the same boss isn't really anything particularly special (and indeed, at this point in the game a lot of the bosses tend to repeat in the minor dungeons) but I must respect these two's presentation. The Fell Twins actually cast a spell or something that covers the entire long bridge in darkness, forcing you to fight the two hulking, glowing-red brutes in darkness. It's ultimately just two familiar enemies, but the sudden change in background actually does a lot at making them feel a bit more special.
Decaying Ekzykes
This is another one of the named dragons, not from the Lake of Rot. But I was also going around beating some older bosses I missed. We haven't really seen a lot of dragons! Ekzykes here has been so overgrown with the fungal rot of Caelid that when you pass him for the first time, it's easy to mistake his curled-up body as just one of the many blossoming rot land formations in Caelid. He is a half-decaying dragon and he spews out clouds of Scarlet Rot, and that status effect is far more likely to kill you than the same attack patterns as the other basic lesser dragons you've killed. I mean, I play a sorcerer so it was laughably mean for me to just snipe him with Loretta's Bow and Comet Azur out of reach of his decay breath, but the concept is still cool.
I don't think I've spoken about Dragon Communion before, but there are a couple of ruined temples all over the Lands Between where you can consume dragon hearts of the dragons you've slain to obtain specific powers. And if you killed a named dragon, you get a special spell tied to them -- Ekzykes, for example, lets you learn the incantation Ekzykes's Decay, channeling the spirit of this dead rot dragon to unleash a gout of scarlet rot.
The description of said incantation does bring a fair bit more of a story to poor Ekzykes here, though. Ekzykes is described as a Dragon Communion Revenger, and it's no coincidence he's placed very near to one of these temples. He's literally camping next to where he knows people who practice Dragon Communion -- the act of eating the hearts of his kin to steal their powers -- and punish them. I wonder if he got infected because he was camping in Caelid and doesn't care, or did he come to unleash vengeance when he realized he was infected and was going to die soon?
Commander Niall
One of the major points of interests in the otherwise snow-covered, fire-cultist-infested Mountaintops of the Giants is a location called Castle Sol, on our way to obtain one of the medallion halves that allows access to the Consecrated Snowfield. The boss of the ghost-infested location is Commander Niall, who seems to be the twin of Commander O'Neill who we met so long ago in Caelid. Niall could very easily be brushed as another human enemy, but he gets my respect for actually being a fun boss fight. He summons two ghostly knights to fight, before jumping around and unleashing explosions of lightning or blizzard. And after beating him, we learn that Niall actually has been fighting with a peg leg (which the game lets us use... as a 'fist' weapon. Huh?) all along. Mind you, the fight is so frenetic that there would be no way I would ever notice it if it wasn't pointed out to me. But I did kind of enjoy this fight.
Death Rite Bird
A big 'what the fuck is this thing' happens as I was going through the Mountaintops of the Giants, where boss music starts playing out of nowhere and this creepy thing materializes out of the air. The Death Rite Bird is... disturbing. It is a bird in the sense that it has wings, a beak and a talon, but the anatomy is all wrong. The design reminds me of the Gargoyles in that it looks like a sickly, gnarled man, but where the Gargoyles look like they were constructed or created with some purpose, the Death Rite Bird is just... really weird. It's got the body that's more or less a skeleton with skin stretched on it, and its head is a skull. But not just any skull. It's got a beak, but the cranium head of a human. And it's cracked. The result looks almost baby-like, which adds to how disturbing this thing is. The Death Rite Bird's wings are made out of black, shadowy flames ('Ghostflame', a type of spell in the game) which is pretty simple... until you realize that the row of white feathers aren't actually just feathers, but ghostly skeletons impaled on the Death Rite Bird's wings.
And it's also a pain in the ass to fight, shooting out waves of ghostflame and doing some over-the-top anime attacks of shooting and blanketing the battlefield with falling fiery missiles.
But the thing is that the Death Rite Birds are... really weird, even for the standards of the game. Elden Ring as a game in general is very particular about the types of damage and monster classifications, and one thing it's very particular about are undead bosses. The state of undeath and 'Those Who Live In Death' is something very particular that various NPCs track. The Death Rite Bird does take extra damage from holy magic and is classified as an undead for the game's spells, but it does not drop Deathroot, nor does it really look like an undead version of something else in the game.
Rather, their association with ghostflame in particular and item descriptions imply that the Death Rite Birds are the setting's equivalent to valkyries or grim reapers, being described as 'graveyard fire keepers' that look for the remains of the dead from their kilns, and being ancient beings that took care of the 'death that was burned in ghost-flame' before the time of the Erdtree. A particularly strange item notes that the Deathbirds are children of an entity called the 'Twinbird', itself being an Outer God, marking these guys as being associated with death, yes, but seemingly a completely different brand of death and undeath that we're more 'used to' in the setting. It's a bit weird, honestly, and it doesn't really matter since the Death Birds are just a couple of one-off enemies, but it wouldn't be Elden Ring without some unexplained mysteries.
I love how they actually do have a shield ant blocking up one of the tunnels. Ants are so cool
ReplyDeleteIt’s kinda odd to me that Ordovis a)is in a kinda random dungeon and b)doesn’t get particularly more fancy moves than other ordovis style knights. Like this is one of THE top dogs of the crucible knights, who the other variations are modeled after, and like Tanith’s Knight has more moves. Like as you point out they’re awfully stingy about named crucible knights, so why is one of the very few named crucible knights not a beast.
There is a lil bit more to what the fell twins represent lorewise but it might be spoilers so I’ll just say to keep them in mind. Anyways their intro is really striking despite how mundane they are as enemies.
I really wish they had let Niall give us feet weapons, alas.
On my first playthrough I ran into death rite birds before deathbirds(didn’t happen to be night when I went through any of the deathbird spawn locations) and man they are a striking figure. Their relation to this older kind of death is weird indeed. I was hoping we’d get more about the twinbird and the helphen in the dlc but we didn’t(well nothing explicit, there are connections to be drawn as per usual) so ye another curious type of death. They fall into the group of pre-Golden Order rituals of the Lands Between that are very hard to piece together.
The fact that they had the shield ant do what their real-life counterparts evolved to do is indeed very much appreciated. So are the 'honeypot' repletes containing a lot more runes.
DeleteOrdovis is really weird. I felt like they could've named all of the Crucible Knights and that'd be fine (they've got enough prehistoric period names to go with the Ordovian and Silurian period). But to have Ordovis be paired with a nameless one is just... really, really weird.
Oh, more Fell Twins lore? Interesting...
Oh yeah, as these reviews show, I ran onto the Death Rite Bird on the Mountaintops way before I ran into any Deathbirds. And indeed, I only realized Deathbirds existed at all while doing research for this article. But it really is interesting that we've got so many pre-Golden-Order stuff beyond just the Crucible! How does the Deathbirds' weird flame relate to Destined Death, Those Who Live In Death, or to the strange ghostflame that cursed the Fallen Hawks Soldiers? Who knows?