Collecting (Somber) Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones is THE ONLY practical reason for completionists to keep progressing past NG+7

[Raisian]

Being a completionist, I enjoy every game mainly by consuming all of the content to its utmost exhastion - by achieving all achievements, by obtaining and upgrading all obtainable and upgradable items and by maximalizing my character’s level - just to consider it done and move on. All the more, gaining of skill, efficiency and experience is just a side effect of this my routine completionist gameplay.

As for efficiency, I naturally consider the most viable (non-cheat) strategies and routines to do so, however it’s always tied with completing the game as such and fulfilling my completionist purpose, in the following sense.

In Dark Souls 3, I speedran 70+ New Game Plus cycles, not just to get free five levels every cycle (Yoel strategy) in order to reach maximum level soon, but to realize my completition at all - just as Elden Ring, DS3 is the game which can’t be completed solely by farming.

Which brings me to this post. I’m practical, highly consumptive completionist player, whose purpose and source of his enjoyment is to mark off the games as done. From this perspective I can consider the quality of how developers motivate me (or players like me) to play the game further and further.

(Somber) Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones are such limiting condition, because they literally make completition possible and they can’t be farmed - you can collect max. 21 ADSS and 14 SADSS in one cycle and there’s 240 items requiring ADSS and 138 items requiring SADSS, but because powerstance is a thing, roughly two thirds of the items are desired to be duplicated (and upgraded) by a completionist, making it 400 items requiring ADSS and 230 items requiring SADSS = requiring at least 19 completed cycles, in which all ADSS and SADSS were collected.

In order to upgrade all upgradable items, collecting all final Smithing Stones is the only practical reason to keep progressing to NG+ cycles past NG+7 - everything else (achievements, the very equipment, magic, spirit ashes, cookbooks) can be all obtained in first three cycles and the sheer efficiency of Rune farming at Palace Mohgwyn’s Palace suprasses runefarming by speedrunning main bosses (no need for starting NG+8+), NG+7 serves only as the limit of acquired amount of runes from enemies. Nevertheless, the requirement for completionist to complete numerous NG+ cycles is desirable as far as it’s based properly.

Admittedly, the way of completionist satisfaction in Elden Ring isn’t done perfectly, but well and in accordance with developers satisfaction. Completing the Elden Ring as such isn’t immediate, trivial and overall cheap, but it’s still unproblematically feasible. It takes a long while, but it doesn’t take a lifetime. Completionists aren’t primitivized by profitting from doing one action at one place and are obliged to develop some mastery while repeatedly covering the most of the scale of content-world of the game, which is rewarding beyond completionist’s claims. It’s a higher kind of satisfaction, because it develops the original satisfaction.

However, the undeniable borderliness of this quality is given solely by collecting final Smithing Stones, nothing more - no free levels, simply no more rewards.

tl;dr = it’s good that completionists like me are forced to progress past first cycles and to actually git gud, but it definitely shouldn’t be based on sole amassing of one particular material item

[qwerrie]

Why do you need to have all that 400 guns maxed to +10 / +25? Do you actually use them? Sounds like a wrong math to me, maybe a very dull experience to circle all those rounds..

[UrbanNoodles]

Stop it, get some help.