Call & Response: Bonfireside Chat
Added 2024-11-01 16:39:35 +0000 UTCHey folks! It's time to write in with your responses on Cerulean Coast in Elden Ring. The relevant areas are Cerelean Coast, Charo's Hidden Grave, or Stone Coffine Fissure. Submit your response as a comment on this post! As always, keep some guidelines in mind.
Keep your responses and stories specific to the Cerulean Coast
Please keep your responses brief. Think two short paragraphs, or around 200 words.
Specificity is preferred over generalities.
We tend to get a lot of responses, so please don't feel bad if we omit your response, or edit it for length.
The deadline is the end of the day, Wednesday November 6th.
Comments
This section of the DLC is a good example of the non-standard sequencing to the map. The 3 main areas featured here were explored in vastly different parts of my playthrough. Most prominent is the Cerulean Coast. Rather than approaching the way that was describe in the episode, I came down from Charro's Hidden Grave. I think this is also the area I returned to the most to find more parts I hadn't found initially. I'm pretty sure it was 3 separate times. Once, by choice, to go down the Fissure since I felt I needed to later. The second time was to find the path to the small island where the Nameless Mausoleum is located. The final time, which was during my final clean up of the DLC map, when I found the whole section of Demi-humans. I was completely gobsmacked by how much there was to find in areas I thought I had explored thoroughly. This a testament to the level design put into these areas. It's also a testament to how poor my exploration skills are.
Chris Blanchette
2024-11-09 02:18:29 +0000 UTCNo worries, I understand the impulse. I would have appreciated someone hyping me up if I hadn’t already taken the plunge. - K
Duckfeed.tv
2024-11-08 17:33:19 +0000 UTCOh my bad. Turns out I was the one who was late to the party.
Cinnamon Toast Cunt
2024-11-08 17:31:32 +0000 UTCI streamed it a few weeks ago! I adore it. - K
Duckfeed.tv
2024-11-08 13:33:14 +0000 UTCKOLE add Mouthwashing to your horror game list if you havent already
Cinnamon Toast Cunt
2024-11-08 11:30:14 +0000 UTChopefully this isn’t too late/ too long and rambling my phone deleted the draft i was working on for no reason! i love how next to the hard to reach Red area, there’s a hard to reach Blue area, and at the end of that there’s an ultra- secret PURPLE area. What a beautiful game it always blows my mind how much of these games is completely missable. The stone coffin fissure is one of the coolest areas in the whole game, and I very nearly missed it completely! I got all the way to the cape and thought wow that was cool but i guess there’s nothing else here! it wasn’t until much later when I was watching a play through on youtube that i finally realized there was something down there. you guys are always saying that From finds your weakness, and it turns out mine is my inattentiveness, or maybe just my monitor brightness. My only complaint with this area is that we never get a *cute* St. Trina talisman that I could 3d print and hang above my bed (not that St. Trina’s severed head isn’t cute, i think i’d need to level faith much more to get any benefits to my sleep) and finally i want to shout out the Tarnished Archeologist’s videos on the stone coffin ships. he really goes through all the to real world historical references and puts them together in a way that makes what would otherwise be really wild lore suppositions feel natural and obvious.
William Vernia
2024-11-07 03:45:48 +0000 UTCHey Gary and Kole, This is my first time writing in. The coast zone really struck a chord with me in regards to the more mysterious aspects of Elden Ring’s cosmology. In the base game you fight a few manifestations of the outer gods but I was surprised to see how many made an appearance in the dlc (always assumed they would remain formless/conceptual or were being saved for an Elden Ring 2). Cerulean Coast and Charo’s Grave did something pretty interesting with it, however - Maybe this is a reach but the blue and red landmass itself (from above) kind of resembles the shape and colours of The Twinbird that we see on some of the shields and gear, the outer god most associated with living death. Sure enough, this zone is the hub of all the death-coded enemies in the DLC (mariner, deathbird etc). In my head, I liked this notion that maybe some of the ‘gods’ are not literal entities (in this case an actual giant two headed bird) but cultural traditions mythologizing the land itself, like star constellations representing different characters in antiquity. Makes me wonder how many Outer Gods are less giant scorpions and more interpretations of inert things. Love the network, thanks for doing what you do.
Alec McKay
2024-11-06 03:34:11 +0000 UTCSeems like I'm firmly in the minority here, but I actually enjoy how expansive and "empty" areas in the DLC like the Cerulean Coast are. Exploring these areas is the closest the game comes to giving me that mix of melancholy and awe that hooked me on Shadow of the Colossus the first time I played it. Maybe I will feel differently on a third play through and beyond, but I like that areas have space to breath and aren't necessarily packed with incident. It does really makes me wish Torrent was a bit more fleshed out and captured that "me and my trusty steed against the world" feeling that Agro evoked.
trent allen
2024-11-05 23:16:37 +0000 UTCIf either of you had your own version of prattling pates made in your likeness, what would they look like and say?
Eric
2024-11-05 13:48:52 +0000 UTCRed
Eric
2024-11-05 13:42:35 +0000 UTCBlue
Soulful Bison
2024-11-04 22:35:42 +0000 UTCLike a good bit of the DLC, I find that this area was great on a first run, but suffers a lot in subsequent replays due to it being a dead end with mediocre rewards. The amount of empty space to actual content is worse than in the mountaintops of the giants, even if the spectacle and story is great. Dead ends in these games I feel need to have compelling rewards to justify them. In DS3, the Untended Graves dead ends but unlocks an ending and grants the unlimited use homeward bone. Each of the dead ends in the DS1 endgame to get the Lord Souls has valuable items along the way, some for more builds than others depending on the lord, leading to player choice mattering on the paths you choose. The other DLC’s steer clear of dead ends until the end of the DLC for the most part, but SOTE does it repeatedly for the sake of adding seemingly confusing routing, which becomes bland when you realize how few of these paths intersect. Don’t really like to be so negative, so I’ll say this DLC gives me a new appreciation for all the pathing and rewards in the base game.
Lucas West
2024-11-04 17:36:09 +0000 UTCThe Cerulean Coast was one of the last places I explored. I loved it visually, but it seemed unnecessarily large and empty. There’s so much rich lore in there, but you have to ride through large open spaces with no enemies or items, with many of the items you do come across not all that interesting or useful. It continuously felt less and less rewarding to do so much to get so little that the lore reveals were diminished for me.
Josh Sanko
2024-11-03 20:10:32 +0000 UTCIt’s big and it’s blue. This place is one of the most visually striking areas in all of Elden Ring and the mysteries of the stone coffins will forever be unknown to us. I get shades of Alien or Prometheus with the goo on the inside. Like maybe it was something they couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with. A plague, and the goo is liquified bodies. Or as simple and cruel as the people put inside the ships didn’t believe in whatever outer god. It’s a place that’s sparseness is compelling!
Mateus Silva
2024-11-03 19:56:29 +0000 UTCI want to speak to trans readings of Miquella/Trina and start by admitting I read a lot of gender stuff into them myself. I also buried a part of me that's a girl for a long time and with it my self compassion. But repressing that half of myself made me feel equally hollow and incomplete, trying to meet societal and familial expectations that were ultimately tainted and hollow because all I'd given up. I don't think the trans read is all there is to Trina, but I like to think there's something in it that allows being trans to be more understandable to people who aren't. You might not have buried gendered aspects of yourself. You probably haven't attempted apotheosis either. But there's almost certainly something about yourself you have repressed, even something as simple as a hobby or interest, because it's expected at work or fear friends will laugh and it made you feel shitty. And a great thing about art is people can look at something like that, see how other people relate to it and realize maybe our life experiences aren't irreconcilably different.
Kerr
2024-11-02 23:49:08 +0000 UTCI just love seeing everyone's interpretations of St. Trina— even though the gist of what happened is clear, there's still enough to the tragedy of abandoning one's love that everyone has their own view. At first, St. Trina to me represented that all-encompassing love you feel as a child discarded in miquella's efforts towards godhood— his efforts to grow up, in a way. Not necessarily my actual/current interpretation but one that's stuck with me for a long while. Re: the putrescent knight— there's strings in their music which people say sound like astraea's theme, which fits, but in terms of a connection to the lands between the lone female vocal called to mind maliketh's phase 2 music when he draws death from his hand— the lament of death is what I've been calling it. In putrescent's case it's softer like a lullaby which is fitting.
Goldie
2024-11-01 21:41:35 +0000 UTCFirst time caller, but I just can't shut up about this area. Nothing tells you about Cerulean Coast, it's just Thiollier vaguely saying he's going "south" and an empty spot on your map. The way there is not that intuitive. I think because of that there was an incredible sense of wonder and thrill when I just came across it riding around the DLC map. It was a bigger, more exciting exploration moment than anything in the base game; partly because it's stunning on its own but mostly because the game really makes you feel like you had to work for it and it rewards your curiosity. And SotE pulls this trick multiple times! The DLC map feels designed with the confidence that they can hide things away just to make them more exciting to find.
corvidnoah
2024-11-01 20:59:39 +0000 UTCI see a lot of people bemoaning the cerulean coast (and some other DLC areas) for being too empty, but I thought this area was just breathtaking and being there was a reward all on its own. Plus it has one of the most important story locations on the entire map with the stone coffin fissure. My only real complaint is that I wish you were directed to go here a bit earlier because I don’t know anyone who came here before the barrier was broken.
Ethan Hudson
2024-11-01 17:34:21 +0000 UTCMy experience discovering the Cerulean Coast and the fissure was my favorite part of the DLC. Winding through the riverbed wondering how far it goes built up the reveal of the stunning blue fields so much that I sat my character down near the grace and took in the view for a couple minutes. Now after that peaceful interlude, I rode down to the fissure after seeing it on my map and got menaced by putrescent blobs. It was great game design to ride by these things, take a few whacks at them and realize they are surprisingly tanky, then have to deal with them falling on your head while you platform down into the fissure itself! Finally, when I got to the bottom and found the sealed door, I thought this must be where I fight Miquella at the end.
Wyatt Andree
2024-11-01 17:12:18 +0000 UTCThink I mentioned this elsewhere. I don't think about Hidetaka Miyazaki's internal life a great deal when playing these games. But thinking about Miquella and everything he sacrifices of himself for the good of the Lands Between, (often against the better judgement of others) , you can start to see parallels with what it must feel like to be the creator behind a project as vastly all-consuming as Elden Ring. Abandoning one's sense of doubt is something auteurs often have to do in order to achieve their vision; but a one-track mind can make you into a taskmaster and alienate the very people who are meant to be helping you. Abandoning one's love - one's personal relationships - is also a sacrifice many artists make for their work. As for abandoning sleep, well... St Trina describes a prison of Miquella's own making, and voices genuine concern for his own happiness and welfare. While I still don't fully understand Miquella's arc just yet, Shadow Of The Erdtree feels like a pretty solid manifesto for why Miyazaki is apparently choosing to put the Elden Ring franchise to bed (much as we'd all love him to continue).
Charlie Frame
2024-11-01 17:05:22 +0000 UTCI think experience with the great rune breaking was better than most. I had noticed that it also said a powerful charm had broken as well, so I immediately ran around and talked to all the NPCs, learning that they had been freed to pursue their own goals, and walking away slowly with my hands up at Leada's immediate bloodlust. In addition, because I had found the great rune seal in the Cerulean Coast at that point, the second thing I did was dive into the Chasm, and get some of the best chilling moments of realization at just what Kindly Micquella was willing to give up in pursuit of godhood.
Collinsbro45
2024-11-01 17:03:50 +0000 UTC
