Back on Elden Ring. Finally progressing Ranni's questline. I needed to get into the Lake of Rot for my next level 8 and 9 Somber Smithing Stones. I got my Moonveil up to +9 grabbing the easily-available stones in Dragonbarrow. I had such an easy time fighting off the gargoyle outside of Bestial Sanctum with this build. Got him first try. The bridge dragon where the +9 stone is was a bit tougher and took 2 tries.
After that, I still needed to get my Carian Regal Scepter up to +9, so I figured I'd take the Ranni quest right up to the Astel fight. That fight, I'll come back for. I haven't even done much of Altus Plateau! But I am over level 100 with great damage options. I figured it'd be easy enough to carve through the areas you only reach via the back half of Ranni's questline. Lots of really good stuff and rune opportunities. Hence, to Lake of Rot I go.
Lake of Rot suuuuuccckkkks though, good lord. Big old poison swamp full of ultra-poison and scant platform puzzling for reprieve. And then they put a Dragonkin Soldier down there! Yet is has a stingy handful exceedingly rare, hard-to-acquire upgrade items. It's the Miyazaki supreme pizza.
I skipped that Dragonkin. They are tanky AF and smack super-hard with you having nowhere to go without quickly catching rot. The first one is tough enough in a normal arena. You do get a very good katana from beating him... the lightning one. I'm good with the Moonveil
It's maybe one of the most unforgiving challenges I've seen in a game, just in pure conditions. No punishment to try again, it puts you back *right* there. The fight itself is just extremely punishing, being stuck in a literal lake of rot with no horse. It really is almost impossible. And it's not like the bolluses to cure the rot condition grow on trees. In fact, the sacramental buds needed to make them are fucking playthrough-limited.
This is one of those times where I really have to wonder what they were thinking. For a damned lightning sword? I guess I should be glad it's not something ANYBODY, like... anybody EVER needs to go out of their way to get. That's gotta be the most skipped boss by people going to any specific location. It's absolutely ridiculous.
I did grab the items past him though. Ran over, grabbed everything around him, triggered the plate to bring up the platforms, and was killed immediately after. Teleport to the stake of Marika and you're safely on the other side of him, with him sleeping in the rot mire again. Go further through the rot mire, grab items, go back to grace site. I think I used ~30 bolluses just grabbing everything as efficiently as I could... nearly all I could make with the sacramental buds I had saved up. I had the full mushroom armor set, +1 immunizing horn charm, mottled necklace, immunizing cured meat... it's a pain to get around there - rot still procs fast with over 600 in immunity.
Character's about to be level 110. With 65 INT, I'm opting to take vigor up to 50 and mind up to 30. I could really use the vigor. The difference between 40 and 50 vigor is ~300 HP. Means something when you're just below 1500 HP. Once I get there, I'm hoping I can squeeze by to take my INT to the 80 cap that the scepter has. It's nice to not need charms with big defense drawbacks. Though maybe when I get some vigor, I can equip Seluvis's Magic Scorpion Charm. It's a pretty great 12% flat magic damage boost... but it reduces physical negation by 10%, which makes for a pretty frail character with the Nox set equipped. Its big weakness is already low physical negation.
