Do you use consumables?

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

There are a great deal of consumables in Elden Ring. We can make throwable items, perfumes, food, and projectile ammunition. Of that, I tend to not use all that is available. Making arrows is definitely fun, but I never seem to use the perfumes, food items and throwables.

I am considering taking more time to play with these options, and wondered what some of the opinions on these items were, or are the just as neglected by you?

[Ad Hominem]

Origineel geplaatst door Old Man Gamer (OMG):

Origineel geplaatst door Ad Hominem:

The ones I use way more than any others are animal bone throwing darts. I'll use them to pull 1 or 2 mobs at a time in a big group so I can take them in smaller chunks.

Otherwise I tend to just hoard them and not end up using any of the other powerful consumables, even though I'm completely flush with them by now. It's a "me" problem, I do this in every game. No matter how hard a boss or area is, I'll always say, "oh I better not use this power up, I only have 2000 more of them and I might need it later."

I do this same exact thing. I intend on breaking that habit with Elden Ring. I want to use all of the mechanics and enjoy everything that they put in the game. Of course, it will come down to if it is worth it.

Yea I need to do better about it, it's not like I couldn't use the boost. When I think about it I only end up really using items I can craft easily. So like the poison cure bolus, bone darts, finger remedy, volcano pots. But that means I have an entire inventory of stuff just begging to be used.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Origineel geplaatst door Ad Hominem:

Origineel geplaatst door Old Man Gamer (OMG):

I do this same exact thing. I intend on breaking that habit with Elden Ring. I want to use all of the mechanics and enjoy everything that they put in the game. Of course, it will come down to if it is worth it.

Yea I need to do better about it, it's not like I couldn't use the boost. When I think about it I only end up really using items I can craft easily. So like the poison cure bolus, bone darts, finger remedy, volcano pots. But that means I have an entire inventory of stuff just begging to be used.

Indeed. I have a bunch of incantations that do the same as the boluses, so I tend to forget I have them in my inventory. It takes about as long to do either or, so I usually stick with the incantations due to simplicity.

[Kain]

I have I think, 3 perfume bottles and Still not sure what to do with them, they seem to be like cracked pots in which you make something out of them, but so far I found no recipe.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Origineel geplaatst door Armameteus:

I'm constantly using everything at my disposal wherever I can.

On more than one occasion, I've completely destroyed bosses with a flurry of knives/darts of various elements (they stack status effects incredibly fast) or a few jar bomb tosses with the right affinities. Lots of these sorts of items let you fill gaps in your builds as well by giving you alternate methods to deal specific kinds of damage (like using crystal darts or glintstone scraps to "cast" magic on a non-mage build). And the Ritual Pots have ancillary combat effects that allow you to distract, beguile or manipulate enemies, which can be great to help you thin-out large groups, give you breathing room or, in the case of the Cursed Blood pot, put a target on a specific enemy to make your summons single-out a troublesome foe to deal with it quickly or keep it off your back for a while.

Of course, arrows for all occasions and a bow make quick work of enemies from safe distances, allow you to lure out specific enemies to thin the herd and allow you to build up status effects on enemies without needing to equip specific melee weapons to do so (if you even have/can wield said weapons; arrows don't care what your attributes are, so long as you can hold the bow). Bought or crafted arrows have little noticeable statistical difference between them, so you can craft or buy depending on availability, making bows very flexible.

As for utility items, Warming Stones provide constant passive healing, which can be a life-saver in longer encounters and save on Tears. Glow Stones provide light without needing to use a torch and are better light sources than lanterns, as well as allowing you to light areas remotely. Shiny Stones keep you safe from potentially deadly drops and allow you to mark your paths in complicated areas. The picked fowl feet both provide a not-insignificant buff to your drop rates, especially since they stack with group password bonuses whenever someone beats a boss (so a very active group means you get stacked drop buffs almost constantly). The status bonuses for food items also stack with any spell, armour and/or talisman buffs as well, meaning intelligent usage of specialised builds can completely trivialise certain areas/enemies (near-total immunity to specific statuses or noticeable buffs to attack, poise, attributes, etc.).

Also, the thing a lot of people don't seem to realise is that consumable items scale with your attributes. People often dismiss them as just being generally worthless because they use items that don't scale with their attributes and think they're all just generally weak or ineffectual; this couldn't be further from the case. The thing is, it's not about using all of them (or even most of them), but about looking at how they scale with your chosen builds and using the ones best-suited to you. Doing so, you realise just how powerful some of them can actually be in certain scenarios when you take into account your attributes and, in regards to attacking items, the weaknesses of your enemies.

Certain consumables, used correctly, can be devastatingly powerful and incredibly utilitarian, adding a huge degree of flexibility to almost any build and giving you way more options for dealing with problems than just smashing your face against a brick wall until it crumbles.

Work smarter, not harder.

You are basically where I am working at being, in utilizing every benefit. I did spend a long time working on the potions and oils in The Witcher, only be to frustrated at their lack of necessity. This keeps nagging in the back of my mind, when I start focusing on these crafted consumables. Well, most games actually, not just The Witcher. Elden Ring is a whole new box of toys though. I really like the sound of how they play out for you.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Started using some of the consumables, and they are very helpful. If anyone is struggling on something in the game, take the time to invest effort into these, and you might find the extra push that you need. I am just starting to experiment with them, so this is my first impression, but definitely impressed with their usefulness.

[D. Flame]

Origineel geplaatst door Old Man Gamer (OMG):

Started using some of the consumables, and they are very helpful. If anyone is struggling on something in the game, take the time to invest effort into these, and you might find the extra push that you need. I am just starting to experiment with them, so this is my first impression, but definitely impressed with their usefulness.

Hard disagree. They are mostly useless. Most of the time, you won't need them. Then when you could benefit from them, they run out too quickly, and they are a tedious chore to farm.

Like why spend 30 minutes farming to get maybe 5 items, only to have them be used up in less that 5 minutes when a boss one shots you anyway?

All they did was give us the same boring grinding for items that we had in Demon's Souls, only they just made it more tedious and gave it extra steps.

[Mattee]

I use them, I even use the bird feet things to boost item discovery and rune increase lol. I love the turtle meat for stamina recovering, though I dunno if it stacks with the physik flask, I love the other food for increased damage. I tried using some of the fetid pots but they always seemed to poison me as well.

I love all the consumables and throwables man. But I do play the game fairly casually, I don't look for meta builds or try to speed run. Hell I'm 88 hours into my first playthrough still, and I've only explored Limgrave, Liurnia and Caelid. If you're good enough you can beat the games central bosses at level one and naked lol. LobosJR proves that :p

Oh and I love using rune arcs, those things helped me a lot on certain fights, especially against one boss that was three of those crystaliean guys.

[mldb88]

Depends on the consumable. I'll mostly stick to the throwing knives for certain enemies my close range melee build just.... cant hit properly (the big hanging void spider monstrosity above the thin log because I'm not risking falling to my death swinging at it dangling 10ft away), aside from that its mostly the immunity/resistance items and the curing items (Lake of Rot says hi).

[Miles (Tails) Prower]

I've actually using them as long as I know their usage will come in jandy. No need to stockpile crafting materials and consumables. Some of them are really good.

And better yet, if you equip and summon mimic tear, he can use them as well. Like if you give him raw meat dumpling, that's his half health and no poison.

[Enderspoons]

I found the most crafting I was doing was making more Bone Greatbolts for my Jar Cannon and more Damage Negation perfumes.

Those perfumes aren't cheap, dang. Is there a farmable source of Arteria Leaf anywhere?