Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring, Part 13

So yeah, after Radahn last episode, I got through a bunch of the storylines for the lesser characters. I finished Latenna's story, Nepheli's story (for the good ending, of course), and explored a chunk of Nokron. I still have huge swathes of Liurnia and Caelid still unexplored, but so far I'm happy enough to move on ahead for a bit. 

And I finally have the two keys that activates the Grand Lift of Dectus, allowing me to ascend to Altus Plateau and access the Plateau, as well as two further areas -- Mt. Gelmir, where Volcano Manor is (and where I was briefly teleported thanks to an Abductor Virgin) and the actual endgame area, the Royal Capital City of Leyndell... which I will be avoiding like the plague, thank you very much. I'm not the sort of player who enjoys or really cares about the idea of bum-rushing the final boss unprepared. I'll be slowly making my way to Volcano Manor while exploring Altus Plateau, and also slowly clearing out the remnants of Liurnia and Caelid content. It's so refreshing to realize such a huge chunk of the map is actually done and dusted for me!  

And... I didn't actually explore all that much in Altus Plateau. Or rather, I didn't really find much to talk about. Lots of soldiers, a bunch of golems, some harpies, Fingercreepers... I did explore some of central Altus Plateau and started a little bit of Volcano Manor, but the bulk of what I'll talk about here actually comes from the subterranean locations. I went down the other subterranean area, Ainsel River in Liurnia, and completed all the way to the end. I also went and explored a fair bit more of Nokron, the area that opened up after Radahn died and he stopped holding the stars together, creating a way to the subterranean, sealed-underground ruins of Nokron the Eternal City where a lot of plot stuff might happen!

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Inquisitor Ghiza, Old Knight Istvan, Great Horned Tragoth, Rileigh the Idle

We'll get these out of the way. The Volcano Manor 'dungeon' acts less of a dungeon and more of an extensive quest hub, which is not particularly new in the world of role-playing fantasy games but certainly a huge anomaly in this role-playing fantasy game. Inquisitor Ghiza is just some random dude that attacks you... with a giant buzzsaw attached to a spear. OKAY! I love that for all the dour seriousness of this game, it's not afraid to have some visual fun. 

The Volcano Manor also sends you out to assassinate some other Tarnished, which... I really don't have much to say about. So far I've gone through three of them, but while I'm a fan of Elden Ring's show-not-tell storytelling, I really would've liked to learned a bit more about who these targets I'm killing beyond 'cool armoured hammer guy'. Maybe just a little. Istvan and Tragoth are a bit special because they're technically allies that I could've summoned for help in earlier boss fights... but I don't have much to really say here otherwise before we get into armour set reviewing. 

Putrid Crystalian

Acting as the boss for a dungeon called Sellia Hideaway are three Crystalians. We've talked about Crystalians before, who tend to act as bosses in glintstone-themed caverns, and some of the dungeons have a couple extra Crystalians. This trio show off the three different Crystalian moveset variants -- ring, spear and spellcaster. But the ones in Sellia has been inflicted by Scarlet Rot just as everything in Caelid. It does really highlight just how oppressive Scarlet Rot is, yeah? It's one thing for Rot to infect beasts, dragons, people and whatnot, but these supposedly alien beings made up of crystal and rocks are also infected by the Rot. Their attacks and spells deal Scarlet Rot, as expected. Visually we sadly don't get fungus (or, what would be cooler, crystal fungus) growing out of these guys, but at least they have lines of red corrupted crisscrossing through the body. 

Fallen Hawks Soldier

I've mentioned that I was doing Ranni's storyline, and one of the events triggered after defeating Starscourge Radahn was that all the stars he's holding in the sky starts to move again... which involves one of them slamming down to Limgrave and punching a hole straight to the underground 'Eternal City', Nokron. It's connected to the subterranean lands of Siofra River that we've visited before, but far creepier. Where Siofra River seems to have been taken over by nature and ghosts, Nokron clearly used to have some kind of civilization that... was left to ruin. 

The humanoids that you can find are these 'Fallen Hawks Soldiers', which are definitely a reference to the Band of the Hawks from Berserk, at least in name and backstory. Their designs, however, are far more morlock-y, with them being hideous, skin-and-bones ghouls with bloodied hands and feet, and a face that actually does look creepy since it's not just a corpse's face. The one remaining eyes on these Fallen Hawks look malevolent paired with the lipless mouths, which adds a great layer of creepiness. 

Backstory found in the items you salvage upon them explain that they were a band of soldiers and/or slaves that were ordered to explore the Eternal City before being trapped within. At some point they turned into what's implied to be cannibalism, which interacted with something in the city called the 'ghostflame', which now they use to empower their arrows and swords, but it also sealed themselves as dwellers of the underground city for a long, long time. 

 

Silver Tear

The far cooler enemies in Nokron, however, are these guys! They're big Slime-type enemy blobs made entirely out of silver, and they just blob around. After the highly-detailed horrifying beasts and humans and armour and undead, it's a nice change of pace to look at these enemies and see something that seems like they should be menacing a protagonist in a N64 game. 

But these Silver Tears don't just glomp you like slime, no. As that other picture shows, they can create appendages -- very cool ones -- that resemble lances or cannons, and shoot giant silver spears at you. That's quite cool, and makes complete sense since they're all made out of liquid metal... they can literally draw upon their own body to attack enemies with metallic weaponry!

What their backstory are is strange, however, which revolves around the history of Nokron the Eternal City, sealed underground for some reason. As item descriptions note, "The Silver Tear makes mockery of life, reborn again and again into imitation." So are they imitations of life, similar to beings like the Albinaurics, but perhaps less perfect? Creepy. Considering that Nokron's an empty city that found tiself underground and primarily filled with these Silver Tears, it does beg to wonder if the population of Nokron were killed by the Tears... or turned into them.

Mimic Tear

Going through Nokron, one of the minibosses in the pathway is a 'Mimic Tear', who appears initially as a regular Silver Tear... before transforming into... into you. Yes, this is a 'Dark Link' fight, a 'Metal Mario' fight! The fun thing is, the Mimic Tear actually mimics your exact loadout. Every piece of mismatched armour, your weapon and the ashes-of-war modifications you have done, and even your spells! 

...which, of course, means that you can utterly trivialize this fight by using Spirit Summons, and going two-on-one on the Mimic Tear. But why would you even do that? You have the perfect chance to show that your skills with your character is better than a computer controlling your character! I normally don't really care for the git-gooder-than-thou part of the Souls fandom who snobbishly look down on the players that play with summons, but in this case, the whole point of having fun with the Mimic Tear is to see how you stack up against you.

And in my case, because I play a Sorcerer, I know damn well how fragile I am, and how like, a half-dozen shots of my magic spells can take down myself. But it's still fun!

Giant Ant

I took a break from exploring Nokron to explore another underground area, which is the Ainsel River below Liurnia. I love this. I love that there are giant, biologically-quite-accurate ants, in an underground area. The implication being, of course, that the tunnels that I explore, when they don't have man-made ruins in them, are actually parts of a giant ant nest. I love it! Lots of egg-sacks and even a couple of room filled with skeletons -- real ants do instinctively dump their garbage in a certain area outside their nest, to prevent fungal infections in the colony! 

I love how furry they are, and how mean the mandibles look. But they also attack by lifting their bodies up and shooting a spray of acidic fluid from their abdomen... which is very true for many ants! They can spray formic acid at enemies! (In contrast, termites shoot what's essentially an organic glue gun) There's also a grapple attack that I died to a couple of times where they grab you with their claws, and stab you with their stinger many times. 

Again, I just find it really cool. If you can't tell from all of my Pokemon and Digimon reviews, I'm a huge bug geek and I like it when video games draw from beyond the basic spiders, wasps and scorpions and give us entire dedicated areas for a giant ant colony! Real-life ants are actually some of the scariest things if you're the size of a bug, and should really be made into monsters a bit more often. 

Bloated Ant

Mistakenly listed as 'Ant Queen' in some older Elden Ring guides, the Bloated Ant is most certainly not a queen -- only termites have that infamous engorged-abdomen. Real ant queens are just a bigger winged ant! These Bloated Ants, however, are based on repletes. In some species, most famously the Honeypot Ant, repletes are a special kind of worker ant that can engorge their abdomen to a ridiculous amount of size to store nutrition, and then acting as a food bank for other members of their colony through a mouth-to-mouth transfer of that nutrient via trophallaxis. 

And if you can see the basic soldier/worker ants above, you can see the blue 'stripes'... which are actually the flesh of the abdomen below the armoured parts. I can't find a good screenshot of them, but some of the basic soldier/worker ants do have their abdomens slightly engorged, with the blue flesh being a bit more prominent. These honeypot-style repletes, however, take it to a bigger extreme, being so full of nutrition that they really don't move and just stick in one spot, relying on her sisters to protect her. 

And, of course, they drop even more treasure for you, which is nice!

Malformed Star

What the fuck is this thing. Lying at the almost-final chambers of the Ainsel River is a large caver with a single stalagtite with what appears to be a giant... bug? Hanging upside down? It shoots rocks at you and you basically have to maneuver and find a way to climb the ruins to get into a position where you can whack this monster in the face, all the while avoiding the literal horde of Claymen in the massive cavern. 

This is a Malformed Star, which is just so strange. Its name makes it seemingly be related to the Fallingstar Beasts, and there's another spoiler-y boss that it seems to be related to. Are they just beings from the same 'star' that landed and grew? Different stages of a life cycle? Two completely different beings that the humans of the Lands Between just slap a label on because they don't understand them? They do utilize a lot of gravity magic, which tends to indicate being associated with the falling stars. 

The Malformed Star hangs upside down, and this behaviour seems to be inspired by insects that have to perch and hang while their crumpled wings harden post-molting. And yeah, the position doesn't seem to be quite the same, but you can almost see a vaguely dragonfly-like shape to the Malformed Star, right? Or rather, the Dobsonflies, which are already regular enemies in the overworld. After all, the Malformed Star has these gigantic pincers.

But they're not just creepy large dragonflies. Their bodies are formed of a string of weird, gray orbs, and their head is a gigantic human skull with the giant pincers bursting out of the sides, as well as what appear to be an eyeball growing out of the skull's forehead. And instead of bug legs, the Malformed Star is clutching on with long, giant humanoid limbs. 

It really is a fun, weird design for what's otherwise a mechanically simple boss. I really like this one. It's weird! I just haven't really looked too much into it because there's not much information on the wikis that don't spoil me on some big lore boss down the line. 

Basilisk

A very iconic enemy in the Dark Souls game, Basilisks return to this game, but with a bit of a facelift. I really like this design, actually -- most video games and fantasy tend to interpret Basilisks as either huge snakes or huge dinosaurs, but Dark Souls and by extension Elden Ring has interpreted the Basilisk as this weird frog-gecko hybrid creature!

It's got two very prominent sad eyes (the eyes are a bit different from the Souls Basilisks, which are bloodshot) that inflate and deflate. And when the Basilisk attacks, it can also swell up the frog-like pouch under its mouth. Now those massive eyes are actually decorative, with people who inspect these models when they're not moving around finding that those eyes are essentially eyespots in mimicry, with the Basilisk's real eyes being two impossible-to-see-in-normal-gameplay dots above its beak-like mouth. 

Now the basilisk is most well-known for being able to turn people into stone with its eyes, which most video games translate as some kind of an eye-beam. But despite these Basilisks' prominent eyes, they actually turn you into stone with a gaseous smoke that it expels from its throat sac. It's a fun little combination of features that feel 'plausible' on a mutant animal in this setting, while also still keeping the vibe and themes of the original myth alive. 

...And that's it for now! I think I'll take a break from Volcano Manor and Nokron, and try and explore a bit of Atlus Plateau and the overworld areas for the next episode.