illusorywall

Apologies for the lack of updates... plus what's on the way!

Hey everyone, sorry for the lack of updates here this past month. I think I've been feeling a bit of burnout and was kinda stressed putting the poise episode together, but I'm happy with how it turned out! Good news is, now that it's out, I'm eager to move on to a bunch more stuff. There will be a shorter Q&A follow-up to the poise episode, but after that I'll be back to mixing things up and making vids about older Souls games again.

I'm most excited about returning to Dark Souls 2...

"Placidusax's Ruin" and other nightmare terms.

While working on the poise episode I realized there's a bunch of Elden Ring terms in here I have no idea how to pronounce. Normally I'd just power through them and not worry about it, which is what I'll still be doing I suppose, but I'm curious what will yield the least "corrections" in the comments.

I tried running through every variation of "Placidusax's Ruin" I could think of when recording the script, but I couldn't hold it together because of how ridiculous it starting sounding. H...

Someone misremembered something about this walkway in Dark Souls 1, but...

There's an interesting reddit thread here titled "Who remembers when the Undead Parish bridge would collapse after crossing it?".

It turns out OP was just mistaken, this walkway was never a breakable object and there was never a point where it would actually collapse, not even unpatched on consoles. It's not an object file at all; It's just made u...

How the Crystalians' Poise Works

The poise episode script is about halfway done, hoping to have the writing finished with audio recorded by this weekend.

In the meantime, just figured I'd share a bit about what's going on the Crystalians. You may have noticed that earlier in the fight they'll tank through everything, and then after the first time you break their stance, you can stagger them easily. The tankiness vs. easy flinching that occurs before-and-after that first stance break doesn't invoke the poise mechanic d...

Elden Ring Poise Research

Though I have a couple different episode ideas floating around, I've spent the last couple days doing some poise research so that'll likely be the subject of the next one!

One of the first things I did was explore PvE Poise, and I found it interesting how the amount of time before an enemy's poise starts refilling varies drastically in Elden Ring. Recover Time is the amount of time you have after each hit:

2022-06-30 03:40:15 +0000 UTC View Post

An Early Look at Elden Ring Dissected #5

It seems the 4k version hasn't rendered yet and I'll likely wait for that to finish before this gets posted publicly. Until then, here's an early look. Thank you for your support!

Progress Update, and a really cool hidden online feature of Elden Ring

So the upcoming episode is roughly halfway done in the video editing stage, I'll be aiming for a Saturday or Sunday release!

But if you haven't seen TheFifthMatt's tweet about it yet, he recently discovered a really neat aspect of an obscure online feature of Elden Ring:

https://twitter.com/the...

Progress Update, Other Game Episodes

Hello everyone! I had a pretty busy week last week so sadly I didn't make a ton of progress, but I finally finished editing the vocal audio for my next episode so I can begin video editing tomorrow. But I'm also going to have a lot going on this weekend so it might be slow going for bit. It's shaping up to be an ~20 minute episode and I can't wait to have it finished.

I also wanted to acknowledge the burst of Elden Ring videos! I haven't forgotten about the other games and I'm constantl...

Progress Update

Last night I finished recording the vocal audio for the upcoming "Resistance Correction" episode, which is all about the system for deepening enemy resistances in Elden Ring.

So, today I'll be working on editing this down!

I'm excited to be exploring this topic, because it's one of those things that a lot of players have noticed but aren't aware of what's happening behind the scenes. Any ...

The Sleepless Doggo (Elden Ring Error), and the subject of the next video.

While doing research for my next video, I found a glitch with the wolves inside Caria Manor. These creatures are fully immune to sleep, meaning any source of sleep doesn't drain their hidden defense meter whatsoever:

On the surface this is already unusual, since beasts are typically vulnerable to sleep. The sleep mechanic itself also already has two different reactions it can trigger, so if the...

Progress on the next video, and initial results of the shorts experiment.

I'm 5 minutes into what should be a ~15 minute long video. This is a return to what I was scripting before I decided to make the map changes episode its own thing, since this one is all about unlisted patch changes:

I'm hoping I can finish it and have it ready Friday evening, but if not I have plans over the weekend and it'll have to wait until sometime early next week instead.

Thanks to ...

A question about short form videos. Double post to youtube or not?

This past weekend I made a TikTok account, and I uploaded my first video there: https://www.tiktok.com/@illusorywall_ https://www.tiktok.com/@illusorywall_/video/7098385212115045678

This was also double-posted as a youtube short, where it unsurprisingly got a lot more views due to having more of a built-in a...

Elden Ring Dissected #3 - Hidden Map Changes (Full Video Early)

This video will be released later today, but here's a sneak peek while I wait on the highest-quality render to become available (and also for it to not be too early in the morning here in the US).

An exploration of Map Changes in Elden Ring

While I was finishing the script for the episode about unlisted patch changes, I found that the discussion about changes to the game map grew to be about half of the entire episode. There was more to talk about than I realized! So I've decided to turn it into its own subject, also considering that the map alterations are a topic worthy of their own discussion. I didn't want this to just be part of a bigger video, and it can help for discoverability if it's not buried inside an "unlisted patch...

Elden Ring's chilled out group fights of Patch 1.04

While working on scripting out a video about unlisted changes found in the patches so far, we just got a really interesting one from Patch 1.04. A bunch of duo/ group boss fights (but NOT all of them) were nerfed. KingBore first identified that this was going to be a thing through datamining, having combed the AI scripts for new flags.

He found that the following all had new flags for increasing Team Effectivity...

Taking a closer look at sleep in Elden Ring.

Today I began taking a closer look at the sleep mechanic, and there's a very interesting quirk of resistances that I don't think is well-known yet. Did you know that every time you trigger an effect on an enemy, that their corresponding resistance will increase? So let's say you poison an enemy once, but then it survives and you need to poison it again. The 2nd time will require more poison!

There are 6 levels of resistance (a stating, base value then 5 subsequent iterations where it c...

ETA on the Fall Damage Follow-Up, Other Testing Ideas

The script for the fall damage addendum has been recorded and edited, and as far as video editing is concerned I'm also roughly 6 minutes into what should be a 15 minute episode:

Even though it's a bit unusual to get a 2nd video about the same topic, there were a lot of questions and some misconceptions worth addressing. I find it funny that some balked at the 30 min length of the first video, ...

Elden Ring Invasion Testing

I talked about my invasion testing in the last couple posts but wanted to provide more details on what that looks like and how it's been going. The idea is simple; After figuring out how runes are rewarded in PvP, you can use that to find out the level of other players you defeat. So if you just do a lot of PvP and log the levels of players you encounter, you ...

Fall Damage Follow-Up!

I just recently surpassed 100k subscribers on youtube. This is a major milestone for the channel and I'm very thankful for everyone's support!

The reaction to the Elden Ring Fall Damage episode has been great, but there's a few loose ends and responses worth addressing so I'm going to work on a shorter follow-up episode. Here's a few things I'll be talking about:

Stamina

I kinda glossed over stamina loss, just mentioning that it has no bearing on HP loss o...

ETA on the first Elden Ring Dissected

So I've got some good news on the progress of my Elden Ring episode on Fall Damage. After working particularly hard on it the last couple days, it's rendering right now!

This rendering process will take several hours, and with my slow internet that will take a bunch as well. So it's possible it might not be up tonight, but barring any major hiccups this means it should be ready sometime tomorro...

Understanding Fall Damage in Elden Ring & How I got into Souls Mechanics Research

Unsurprisingly, Elden Ring is has caught the bulk of my attention as of late. I recently created a list that details how Runes are awarded in PvP, which can be found at the bottom of this page:
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/PvP 

There's just a couple more perspectives that need confirming, but everything I've added so far has been tested and verified. Tangentially to this, I've spent the la...

More Elden Ring Testing (+ minor boss spoilers)

Oops, sorry I'm a day late with the update here! Unsurprisingly, with Elden Ring out I'm now engaged with trying to figure some things out. Yesterday I began working on figuring out how runes (souls) are awarded in PvP. It uses the same system as previous Souls games, where it's a fixed amount based on the level of your defeated opponent (though the amount changes depending on which role you take and the type of multiplayer occurring).

Knowing how this works is often one of the first th...

Elden Ring Hype (no spoilers)

I recently received some of those Elden Ring chocolates, courtesy of Namco Bandai!

It was the first time I've ever been gifted any kind of promotional video game content, and I'm not even entirely sure how it came about. They reached out to me, so I must've gotten on their radar. But it was all still kind of mysterious. I basically just filled out an interest form for a promotional opportun...

Next video subject! And figuring out how to break it down.

With the servers still offline until some unknown time after the release of Elden Ring, I decided to switch gears. I've been wanting to do a video about how multiplayer was timed in Dark Souls 2, and how killing enemies reduced the amount of time a summoned shade can spend in the host's world. I don't think anyone has ever gone through and figured out how much negative time each enemy is worth, so it could be interesting figuring all of that out. Maybe there's some weird outliers? Who knows! ...

Tombstone Revivals Progress Update

Oops, missed the Wednesday update by a little bit here! The latest Dark Souls 2 Dissected is coming along nicely. I'm a little over 7 minutes over into what's shaping up to be a ~20 minute episode. I would love to have this ready by Sunday, but if I miss that (very rough and flexible) deadline, then it should be ready by sometime early next week at the latest.

Anyways, enjoy this clip of the r...

More tinkering in Dark Souls 2...

The script is almost finished for the upcoming episode and I should be recording all of the vocal audio tomorrow evening. The script isn't very long, but the only reason it hasn't been finished yet is because I keep getting sidetracked by other curiosities along the way.

I realized I wasn't sure of the exact moment when NPCs aggro in this game, so I spent the last couple days just punching everyone. I learned that DS2 switched over to just counting the number of hits regardless of dama...

The next Dark Souls 2 Dissected is in the works!

Over the last couple days I've been digging up some older topics that I researched in the past. With better tools and more resources available, I can now go deeper than I did when I was writing about this for the wiki.

I had a few ideas for Dark Souls 2 but decided to pick the Gravestone mechanic! For those who are unfamiliar, Dark Souls 2 introduced a feature where NPCs you've killed could be summoned later on as a ghost, for a cost, at a gravestone. This was a way to lesson the conse...

Dark Souls Video Screensaver #3

I'm in the mood to make another one of these stupid videos. Which area should I do next?

(As always, it won't actually be posted publicly until the next proper video is also completed, since I don't dare to release these when people are waiting on real content. But it will be available to patrons early!)

Dark Souls Dissected #14 Progress Update

Progress is coming along on the Object Health episode, and I'm currently a little over 17 minutes into what should be a ~26 minute video!

I originally expected this subject to only make for a 10-15 minute episode, but unexpected rabbit holes kept popping up and there wound up being a surprising amount to talk about.

Perhaps the most surprising discovery of all: The way objects break beh...

Dark Souls Dissected #14 Progress Update

I've finished scripting, recording and editing audio for my next episode! It was meant to be a shorter episode, but I found that the rabbit hole went a bit deeper than expected and it's still probably going to be a little over 25 minutes!

This is all about object health; Why you can roll through some objects but not others. It might be the most mundane-sounding topic that I've covered to date,...