Download Monster Legends now and start collecting the new The Walking Dead Monsters by downloading the game via this link: monsterlegends.onelink.me/X4Sc/sept22us or QR code, you will get a Starter Pack of: ► 20,000 Food ► 100,000 Gold ► 3 Gems ► Mothman

Shabriri's Woe also has the interesting ability of being able to cheese Millicent's sisters off a ledge, if that hasnt been patched

I like how he mentioned "you can just grab the item elsewhere" for everything but doesn't do the same for the Imps ash that you can also just go grab or idk just use the wolves instead

If u can summon before a fight. You can put Shabriris Woe on, summon ur Mimic and then take off the Woe. It will be the target and u have more free time.

CRAFTING IS EXTREMELY UNDERRATED I swear once I convinced myself to start using the crafting recipes I couldn't believe how useful and fun this stuff is, I Will NEVER be disappointed again when I pick up an arteria leaf or trina's Lily or even spot a cluster of tarnished sunflowers. Here's why: -even 1 sleep pot or like 4 ammo can trivialize most of the hard enemies you usually must run from (big bears and lobsters), taking them out of the fight to deal with other enemies or to give a opportunity to set up damage -Couple poison pots or bone darts can make a long boss fight shorter with Little to no cost. (Also big bears and lobsters) -holy pots do an UNIMMAGINABLE amount of damage to early to mid death birds and Death rites if you hit them on the head (literally 3 pots only to kill the First two ones). -For melee only builds the elemental bombs and buffs can upp the damage significantly if used to exploit the foes weaknesses without magic or infusions (miners weak to magic, Beasts to Fire etc) Please do yourselves a favour and incorporate crafting in your builds, you Will have a lot of fun. (Also Sorry for my spelling I'm from Mars)

"Stonesword keys are rare." Me with 24 in my inventory with almost all of those doors open: -_-

Being one golden seed ahead of the curve is so much better than being one swordstone key ahead

Something that bothers me is that you don’t acknowledge that the golden seed means one extra flask for most of the game (you reach a point where you have extra golden seeds but not enough to upgrade), same with the cracked pots

going by your logic for the golden seed, you can just run over to the dragonburnt ruins and the shack you find Roderika in, and that's 2 stonesword keys, plus it feels like half the merchants in the game have at least 3 of them (I know for a fact that patches sells some), an extra golden seed early game is a godsend, you said it yourself, even if you just get the one in stormhill, that's 2 flask upgrades before Margit without deviating from the main story path at all, I know it's the one that basically everyone chooses, but there's a reason for that

Cracked Pots are actually good because while the first few are really cheap, they become a lot more expensive after that. And since you can't craft mid-combat, having a higher total is useful. Pots do good damage early on (and even in the mid-game), and are especially useful against enemies that are very weak to a certain damage type (fire for Tree-type, Holy for undead/Deathrite Birds, Poison pots for proccing status effects, magic pots if you're a mage). The Golden Seed is great because it gets you a flask upgrade right at the start. While you can get more flasks fairly quickly, it's still a good boost that pays off for a long while.

Bruh young white branch is the best, obviously 🙄

Golden Seed is the best imo. Everything else you can either pick up early without too much trouble, or farm. Keys you can buy from merchants, then go unlock the grave you mentioned. I've never needed keys and not had them since leaving the early game, and being one flask ahead helps all the way into mid/late game.

>Why not just call them crayfish? Because best boy Big Boggart thinks they're prawns. And would you go against the only shellfish salesman in the entire Soulsborne franchise?

Completely disagree with the ordering. Imp Ashes you can get without fighting a boss; ride Torrent to Liurnia, steal key behind dragon, ride down entry ramp and buy from merchant outside Raya Lucaria. More steps but no less accessible early game than the Crimson Medallion and so equally a wasted gift. Stonesword keys are all over the damn place just as much if not more than Golden Seeds, and if you’re not a 1st timer exploring everything in the game you’ll have more than you actually intend to use. Bewitching Branches I’ll concede are difficult to get, but proportionally limited in application. As in, spots where it’s actually worth using it not just as a gag to make enemies fight each other that you had no reason to fight through. I honestly think the Golden Seed is the only thing worth taking. While they’re easy to get as you progress through the game, having one to start permanently places you 1 step ahead on every flask charge increase. Throughout the game, you have another charge earlier than without it, and when they start costing 4 or 5 seeds to increase you’ll already have the charge when others have to get to the next seed spawn. Only time it wouldn’t be helpful is in an insane run where you intend to never get hit AND never use FP for anything; otherwise more flasks earlier helps in a manner that scales throughout the run.

The thing that I like about the keepsakes in Elden Ring is non of them really gives you that big of an advantage. It's a small headstart but they don't feel op. If you really want any of those items, you can just as easily select no keepsake and you can get them all relatively easily (Aside from the branches.)

Cracked pot: Severely underrated. If you're doing a non-magic run then these, flame arrows, and fire grease are going to be your only source of fire damage for a good portion of the game. They do solid damage, the crafting materials are plentiful everywhere, and they're good for taking out groups of mobs huddled together. Once you get the recipe for the dragon pots then it just gets better. The fact that you can get 7 of them before moving to Liurnia though is definitely a mark against them. Prawn: First of all, how dare you kill BROggart. But yeah, the added defense is nice in PvP but not incredibly useful in PvE. If you find yourself relying on these, you've got bigger issues. Rune: Why is this even an option? Shabriri's Woe: Literally dead weight unless you're using summons, but like others have pointed out you can slap it on Mimic and bosses will straight up ignore you. Crimson Amber: Easy to get early and the base version is not especially useful. Seed: Yeah, you can get a few early on, but it's nice to have one more flask in the early game. Especially if you're running a mage and splitting between crimson and cerulean. It also means one less tree spirit you need to fight (eg. the one in Lake of Rot). Bewitching Branch: Literally only used once in all of my playthroughs and only for the tower in Snowfield. They're not bad, but the windup time is too long to use in an active fight and if you're sneaking up on a group of mobs then either you'll get spotted before you can use it or just attack for stealth bonus. Fanged imp: Good summon, but you can grab it in Liurnia. Stone Sword Key: I ended the game with more keys that I could use, but they're harder to come by early on and opening up Fringefolk is definitely solid for anyone who can manage it.

You can also use the Fanged Imp Ashes to open that one wizard tower in the Consecrated Snowfield with the Graven-Mass Talisman

All the bad stuff you said about the golden seed also goes for the stonesword key, but the seed has the advantage of affecting you in ALL situations and not just "block some areas". Therefor the seed is way better. And having one more flask one tree earlier is very good until you reach max flasks, which is late in the game. Also you forgot to mention that the ashes help with unlocking a tower.

You can buy 3 stonesword keys at the roundtable hold for 4k each and there are a ton of them through the game. On your first playthrough it's unlikely to even run out since you will be exploring, and on replays you'll probably only need a handful to access the places with stuff you want.

I disagree with this ranking. The bewitching branches are only useful if you're returning to the game and have a plan exactly where to use them, otherwise you'll probably waste them. Still in most cases where using them would be a good idea, they can be replaced by spirit summons, which is not an ultra rare finite resource. Stonesword keys are overstated, they're extremely abundant and even early game you'll have more than you need if you know what to open. I'd also say that going into the hero grave from the get go isn't too useful. That place is pain and the rewards aren't too useful or even usable until your character is a little over the base level, by which point you should already have found 2 keys in the world. Taking the golden seed on the other hand puts you at one additional flask for the whole game untill you reach the cap, which is huge. And lastly, the cracked pots are invaluable if you chose to commit the ultimate elden ring blasphemy and use a build that doesn't have any magic, more so if it's a quality build which elden ring seems to particularly hate. They give you access to damage types and status effects that are otherwise unavailable and they will never disappear, seriously try playing without magic, you'll fall in love with crafting.

Shabriri's woe does work in single player if you use it while summoning mimic tear and then after the summon you un-equip woe from yourself. The mimic will now have the woe and you wont, and enemies and bosses will agro to your mimic and not you (unless this interaction was changed and/or patched out)

I don't understand why everyone is so down on crafting when you can do loads of useful shit with it. Especially when you're early enough in the game that you don't have many ways to cause status effects. You're bored with playthroughs because you're ignoring a big mechanic, and who knows how much else.

Doing fringefolk straight out the gate is some gigachad material. I would assume by the time most of us plebs are ready to deal with the enemies in fringefolk we'd be swimming in keys. The only other early-key-access thing I could see rushing to is maybe the turtle talisman?

Switch top & bottom. Cracked Pots are wildly useful, raising the cap on how many Firebombs or Holy Water urns in a given encounter is a solid bonus that'll remain until well into the Altus Plateau. Stonesword Keys are not only unnecessary since you'll really never be in a situation where you've run out, but it encourages new players to just immediately waste the 2 they get on the Fringefolk Hero's Grave only to immediately be hit with the meat grinder behind the fogwall.

so far, everywhere i've used two stonesword keys has given me one back. seems like a great risk-reward thing if you finish the zone, it only costs you one. but you gotta stick to it or it's costly.

Only loathsome dung-eaters kill the nice, reformed prisoner crab man.

Ehhh there’s a stonesword key right next to the stormhill shack, they’re not really that rare…

Shabriri`s woe is useful when you help Milicent with her sisters at the haligtree, but by then you can just collect the item normally from the frenzied flame village

using the bewitching branch when you get invaded is so satisfying. seeing the invader panic when the cleanrot knight turns on them is so funny.

"There are better damage negation tools out there" Yeah like rolling, literally makes you invincible🤯🤯

I’m not even sure I knew the “Lands Between Rune” was an item before this video.

i remember choosing the lands between rune thinking it would act like the gold scarab, how foolish i was

If you are playing any kind of melee build I would say take the sword keys because of the erdtrees favor talisman, however if you want to make a caster I would pick the golden seed because you need that balance of hp and fps.

I usually select the seed if I'm playing a magic build. Magic, especially powerful magic eats through your FP like crazy and having one extra flask use is very, very nice in the beginning.

I capped my golden flask and had a surplus of like 15 sword keys SUPER early on. I was at the end of the game and I'm pretty sure those cracked pots were still adding to my total and still helping me kill things. Cracked pot ain't number 1 but compared to the useless crimson amber medallion and shabriri's woe which are both less valuable than a gold rune pop I think the list might as well be thrown out tbh.

I get the feeling that this video was made while he was still at the beginning of his learning curve, his other videos show more experience.

It's good to see more rankings.

You can craft bewitching branches but not till reasonably late and it uses limited non renewable resources. That or you grind on the base 3% rates for sacremental buds and miquella lily.

Nice list. Also, if you were just goofin' I'm gonna look like an idiot, but the description for the cracked pot does mention that it "somehow mends itself when broken", so it's not just a gameplay concession.

I mean… if you pick the golden seed and then go to pick up the closeby golden seed you will still have one more flask than the other guy.

I'd love to see you play some more of the Elden Randomizer but where you equip everything you pick up Edit - 5:50 I'm pretty sure shabriris woe works with the mimic, to where if you equip it on yourself, summon the mimic, and then take it off of yourself before you fight the boss it'll agro onto the mimic and not you, kinda useful

heyo quick question, could you post your character sliders? looks pretty nice

Gonna have to disagree strongly with the Cracked Pots. I tend to consider them one of the strongest options. None of the keepsakes are irreplaceable, but maximizing your pot count is DEEPLY annoying, and having double the pot count early on can be a huge boon. Even basic fire pots one-shot most weenie enemies in Limgrave, which can save you a lot of hassle and headache when one jackass is giving you guff from a weird spot or you need to thin the herd. Early on, when you don't have enough arrows or FP to do anything with either? Lean on those pots. And discussing the lategame potential of any keepsake is a mistake; lategame you have every damn one of them anyways because none of them are unique. Pick the one that makes getting to everything else easier, and for me that's either the Golden Seed or the pots.

I like taking the Golden Seed mostly because of how the available seeds before Limgrave and after Limgrave math out for trying to hit an even number of flasks for co-op purposes.

10:54 Idk why but I cackled like an idiot at that clip of him just shredding varre out of nowhere for like five solid minutes

Btw Shabriri's Woe *does* work if you have it on while throwing out a Mimic Tear spirit ash. If you drop the spirit ash with it on then swap it out really quick with a talisman for your build, the enemies will focus the Mimic.

The more free seeds you get in the early game, the more flasks you have earlier for multiplayer, the less tree spirits you need to hunt down. Seed is easily top tier.

Great job! Your name will live on in the history books. By the way you're inspire me to created video on my channel like you do.

The stonesword key is also useful for beelining a lot of items The Sealed Tunnel for Smithing Stone Bell Bearing 2 and getting the Godskin Prayer Book immediately are 2 great examples

love how he says the fanged imps attack with strategy, as they both die at the same time to Godskin XD

Shabriri's woe actually works with the mimic tear. Equip it at the beginning of a boss fight and then summon mimic tear and then unequip it and then watch as your mimic holds aggro while you do whatever the heck you want.

What? You can't just insult ma boy Blackguard like that! He's the best He's just a bit hostile at first because he's got severe PTSD from the dung eater and can't seem to trust people again, but eventually you bond over small mundane things like the love for crab and he becomes a true friend to you, not just an ally or a servant (the only other true friend that I can think of rn is Alexander, all of the other characters seem more formal and distant with us. Alexander and Blackguard vibe with us and seem genuinely happy to meet us and just hang out together). This all leads to him eventually opening up with you about his trauma in order to warn you and keep YOU safe from the dung eater. He has one of the best character arcs and he's so under appreciated, I feel like it's because he doesn't have a big quest or a big role in the story ane because most people (like you) just think he's an asshole and never bother to interact with him much

Kinda like buying that talisman in Weeping Peninsula, you can also take Torrent over to Liurnia early on to get the prawns and the fanged imp ashes. You can get all 3 of those keepsakes in the wild before touching Margit.

As far as early to mid-game goes, the pots are pretty great coverage for strength builds. Especially ones that go pure strength. Elemental damage type coverage goes a long way with them and it helps that a lot of early enemies and bosses are straight-up weak to fire which is the first recipe book most people will grab. My first character was pure strength because that's what I always roll first in Souls games and used dual giant crushers to great effect, but there were plenty of situations where hucking a pot at an enemy to pull it from a pack of take it out before an ambush came is super clutch. Even in lategame areas they were saving me a lot of headache just for agro purposes. Some spots like the blood swamp in Mohg's area or parts of Caelid also become a lot less stressful to navigate when you throw a beastlure pot and sneak past some of the more annoying enemies, mainly those godawful giant raptor birds. Status is nice too, but when you already proc strong poison, further pots are just wasted on making more of them and could be better used on a damaging type, unless you're cheesing something with the slow ass damage ticks. It's a lot more useful when you start getting ritual pots and can throw out frostbite, rot and bleed one after another on top of the poison. Plus the jar helm and companion jar talisman exist along with the jarwight puppet/mimic tear ashes. The latter of which gets an infinite amount of the pots you have in your item slots and will not hesitate to use them. I'd definitely put it above a single gold seed and the stonesword keys. Sure you can cheese a lot of shit with the dragon communion seal, the Erdtree's Favour talisman is decent and access to the first greatbow is nice for builds that want to use one. But grabbing a couple keys to get into the Fringefolk Hero's Grave doesn't take much effort when you've already played the game at least once. The seed is even less stellar since nothing in the game has ever made me use all my flasks in any of my playthroughs, effectively making it useless had I picked it over something I actually made use of. I'd honestly say that it's a crutch and nothing more, even the Crimson Amber Medallion is more appealing despite there being a multitude of better talismans you can kinda just grab after getting your horse. Just grab Torrent and go grab all the seeds, keys and Sacred Tears that litter the first 4 zones of the game, easy. You can do the same thing for a number of the pots, sure. But a lot of them are lying in secluded spots in the game's legacy dungeons which makes them a much bigger pain to beeline at the start of a run. Having more never hurts and there's a reason mushrooms grow damn near everywhere along with all the flame butterfly nodes in enemy camp fires and lava slug fields. Hell most if not all gatherable mats glow, making them absurdly easy to nab as you pass through an area. The only ones that suck to farm are non-respawning node recipes like branches and sleep pots, but by the time I hit the lategame I can usually make ~50 branches and ~100 pots which I barely ever use anyway so they just get thrown into the consumables vault for future NG+ cycles. The Imp ash is definitely above the pots though in terms of early to mid-game utility though when playing solo. Ashes get slept on so much in general and its depressing that I know people who openly and annoyingly repeatedly feel the need to tell me they've never used them outside of one time early game to see how they work, watching Margit obliterate their base level wolves and assuming that they just suck without ever using a single Glovewort on any of them like it somehow makes them better at the game than people who do use them.

The cut when the video starts using the time stamp him saying “fuck me let’s just start the video” was so perfect lmao

Shabriri's woe can be useful for a couple pretty interesting speedrun tactics as well

picking boiled prawns because you are actually hungry would be such a galaxy brain move

Because of the Sponsorship, I imagined Negan BONKING the Moon Presence with a barbed-wire bat, LOL! OH MAN, him doing that to the Elden Beast would be SO funny! 🤣

Fanged imp ashes while wielding the hooked fork hatchet thingy you get from them is also great fun.

My understanding is that Shabriers Woe can be equipped when you summon your mimic and then you swap out of it giving your mimic the tank role. In fact you should use talismans that make you as tanky as possible, summon mimic, and then swap back to your dps stuff.

8:21 This also could have an interesting implication on why Mohg seemed so romantically obsessed with Miquella. If Miquella had the power to compel adoration via mind-control, then maybe he tried doing the same to Mohg, but it ended up backfiring horrifically.

Despite your best efforts, I could hear you struggle to say that those Walking Dead designs in your sponsorship looked good.

Shabriris Woe works with the Mimic Tear, meaning you can equip it, summon mimic, then unequip the talisman, and have the boss stuck on your mimic for the rest of its life

With the golden seed you said that you can get it really fast from the start, but that’s also true for the fanged imp summons, you can just get the wolves, which are better too

About Shabriri's woe ! This tallisman works with summons BUT the summon gets summoned wearing it out so you both have it and it cancels out. If you can summon your summon THEN swap the tallisman, ONLY your summon is wearing it and IT gets all the ennemy's attention, it's very usefull !

I've done 6 play throughs since it came out focusing on int, faith and arcane. I just started the 7th as a pure strength and enjoying it again so much I'm even bothering to do the catacombs. As much as I've bitched about the single player challenge it's a fucking great game with amazing replay value.

not to mention that if you take the pot at the start, it appears as sold out at a merchant in Caelid. so the overall number you can get its the same even if you start with one.

Fun fact about Shabriri's Woe is that it works very well if you're rocking the Mimic's Tear (like many people do). When you summon your Mimic, it comes out with whatever you're equipping. This also includes talismans. So, you can have the talisman on when the fight starts, summon the Mimic's Tear, then swap off the talisman for another one. The Mimic will then be the primary source of aggro while you can attack all on your own. Or, you can swap out your entire equipment set (put the mimic in heavy armour and shield) while you swap out to lighter gear with good DPS or even healing/support to keep the Mimic up. Doesn't REALLY change the list too much, but it's still a valid tactic. Though to be fair, I'd still probably rank the seed higher just to be able to gain more flasks earlier on.

2 things. 1 - fire pots can one shot those God Awful birds in Stormveil. That alone is worth the price of admission. 2 - Shabiri's woe can be used in single player. Equip it, summon mimic, unequip it. Congrats, you just turned the mimic into your own personal perma-tank.

Lmao that sponsorship reading was so unenthusiastic I loved it

I remember launch day. i picked the stone keys, and oped the fog gate right the beginning. And i was a Wretch. fun times during the small time frame where no guide was available.

Don’t think I can disagree more with the pot placement. Doing a throwing-weapons run really did make me appreciate the cracked pot gift. For one, it’s actually pretty easy to get some really useful pot recipes early on. Hell, the starting Fire Pot recipe is really nice, especially with just a little bit of STR. Also, the cracked pot gift takes cracked pots from some mid-to-late-game areas and just stuffs them right in your inventory. 2 of them are from a Catacomb in Altus Plateau, so you’re not going to see those for a long time. Starting with 6 ammo for pots instead of 3 is a really nice head start. It’s certainly better off early on than the *boiled prawn*, which you can buy infinitely anyway, the money, or the Woe. I mean, damn. Early ammo was ranked lower than having permanent aggro Edit: Heck, the Golden seed is considerably more useless, since there are already WAY more seeds than you can actually use in the game. Whereas there are only ever 20 cracked pots in the game, so the keepsake cuts down on what you need to grab later.

I always choose a different one but out of my new characters most of them have the lands between rune or the crimson amber medallion. The summon ashes are cool because you need them to open a tower in the end game right?

Rusty Imma need a Elden Ring vs Bloodborne vid, but still noice tips to start play through, thanks man.

I chose fanged imps on my first playthrough. I used them until at least Leyndell. They carried me through the early game.

If you're starting samurai I recommend picking the imps. You'll be proccing bleed constantly. Also they're have range and melee options.

Fanged Imp ashes are actually not too shabby starting out, it definitly gave me some extra survivability i the early game, however they are easily outclassed by the demi-human ashes due to the number of summons on top of the damage they all provide with their different tool sets, however the bleed on the imps lso gives them an extra edge

Not a lot of people realize that the Lands Between Rune is actually a completely unique item. If you don't pick at the start, you're never going to be able to get it. That lone makes it the best option since you can fairly easily get everything else just by playing.

Should be another entry at the bottom, "forgetting to select a keepsake". Because that happens on way too many of my characters.

11:00 "if you hate your life" me after immediately using the key for the fringe folk cave when i first started playing, struggling for an hour exploring everything then for a few more against the boss with my starter level character. ...and now i see i didnt explore everything, sigh

The shabriris woe actually works if you make a mimic with it equipped and then switch it out and enemies will only attack the mimic until it dies

Even though I rarely go through Cringefolk hero's grave at the start of the game, I still like to pick the stonesword keys.

My cracked pots and perfume bottles are for my mimic to use, since i can't be bothered to remember that I have them equipped.

I felt like I always had more stonesword keys then necessary. Maybe I'm bad at finding the doors... lol Seems like it's pretty tough to get through fringefolk as a fresh toon though. At the very least the tree spirit sucks to fight.

yo i think i fought you in an invasion or two like some days ago, ggs!

It's probably been mentioned already but Shabriri's Woe is incredibly useful when using the Mimic Tear summon. Equip the talisman, summon the Mimic, then change your talisman back. This basically turns the Mimic into a tank, giving bow/spell users a much easier time in bosses or general PvE.

Two Swordkeys will also get you the Spiked Palisade Shield within 10 minutes of starting the game. It is amazing how much safer the game is with a Greatshield, and there’s no good way to get one in Lingrave or Weeping (very rare drop at Gatefront Ruins). Then again, there’s 4 Swordkeys in Lingrave and Weeping, not counting the merchants. So it’s not like there’s that hard to get.

The Imp Ashes can be bought fairly easily for 2k runes at the start with a brief diversion to get the academy glintstone key, so the lands betweeen rune is technically still more useful. But yeah they're great. At just level 1 the imps will almost singlehandedly win the duo rot knights fight in abandoned cave, getting you the golden scarab medallion early on and vastly improving your levelling from that point onwards. That medallion also scales with the golden fowl foot, meaning it'll improve your runes earnt if you're running to the dragon mother rune farm early.

shabri's woe definitely gets a: "not as useful as it should be" from me, as its range so so limited that certain aoe boss attacks will actually cause them to re-aggro against any ranged attack summon/co-operator, and they move so much faster than you that your buddy is bound to take at least one full attack combo, even if you horse to their location the second you finish dodging the aoe attack. sidenote: crafting items are dope, i swear those rainbow stones get the MVP from me as i not only almost ran out of em toward the end of the game despite obsessively collecting them early on, and were the primary reason that of all the souls like games ive played, elden ring was the only one which i died less times to platforming than i did combat

I actually used the crafting system alot lol. There was many kinds of items that you can craft that were of great use to me :).

I played this game way, way different from other people. The cracked pots are a main stay in my arsenal, as are most of the item and food buffs. Boss spazzing out every time you come near it? Fire pot to the face. Oh Margit is so tough? 9 fire pots to the face chunked away half his health bar before I even needed to get close to him. Panic rolling away from a group of rats? Fire pot to the face+ it's AoE kills the group. Big stupid flowers that spew poison and madness? Burn them with fire pots to the flowery face. Later you get volcano pots, which are devastating. And unlike every other ranged weapon in the game, they can be thrown straight down, so it's a decent cheese option when you're up on a ledge.

I think the boiled prawn actually being a crayfish is a purposeful jab at the merchant's honesty. He calls it a prawn, it's probably just a crayfish, but you wouldn't buy it if it was just a crayfish. Who knows, maybe the description was written by the merchant himself. Oh, and he'll sell you prawns as soon as you buy that necklace off of him and then come back. (That's not really that much time). Yes getting the crab meat is going to take longer. But as I've found it's very worth it to finish that Quest if you want to pvp. I killed that doofus first time around and was cut off from getting prawn or crabs for the whole game. I agree it's kind of worthless at the beginning of the game though, when you only get 5.

I almost always choose the golden seed, saves me from some annoying fights with the tree spirits

I agree on the keys being a top pick, but I honestly put the LBR in second or third, because with that one rune, you are 200 shy of buying both the base Crimson Amber Medallion AND the Fanged Imp Ashes from their respective merchants, neither of which is remarkably hard to get to (it'll take a bit of time to get to the one outside Raya Lucaria, but if you're setting up something with the imps, it's pretty easy already). And, being freestanding runes, they can be more flexible overall - early game items outside your class, early boosts to your weapons, or meeting the requirements for a solid weapon you can find in the overworld but can't otherwise wield.

I always choose the Stonesword Key because I can't drop that Dark Souls 2 memory of having to go off and find some branch just so I could continue the game.

2:50 Meanwhile, the dangitjm and invader crowds: 😶 (Seriously though, knives are extremely useful, and many pots actually do impressive damage if you got the right stats(yes, remember consumables have damage scaling, in fact perfumes in particular were basically broken strong in the beginning) Then there's the utility stuff that, admittedly is more useful in a first eun like the distracting arrows and the rainbow arrows, but also as he said, the various perfume buffs, greases and exaltee flesh(although that one does the same thing of flame grant me strength) Consumables may not be necessary, but use them right and they'll make life a hell of a lot easier, to the point where kukris can straight up kill a dragon, just the kukris, can you believe that? Even if you don't have a build specifically for them!

Crafting really is one of the best things you can do, and while I'm sure the Souls Vets or whatever don't bother with them, the majority of newbie players will get a lot out of them since they do such high damage output and stat effects even early on.

According to leaks the new dlc is taking place in Detroit

Couple opinions on this list and it’s placements. Stonesword key: definitely the best for a 2nd playthrough but way worse for a 1st playthrough not for the items you get but the misery of getting them a new player probably won’t grab it all right away. Cracked pots: You’re underestimating these, simple to use good damage especially if you hit something particularly weak to the element. Crimson amber medallion: very weak and by the time it would matter you’d either get it or something better probably overestimating this Shabriri’s woe: If you get this you have a plan. You’re certainly playing with someone else because mimic tear strategies only become available around the time you can grab this Imp ashes: strong ashes for a first playthrough unfortunately you probably won’t get them due to not knowing. Free runes: 2k runes can buy you quite a few items kinda like a smaller more immediate stonesword key. I would not recommend leveling with the runes though as 1-2 levels is not that great when you have basically nothing. Golden seen: very strong as an Extra flask early is always helpful and is a seed that isn’t in the lands between. Bewitching branch: strong doesn’t always work but definitely strong. Finger remedy: Very bad, big waste totally agree. Prawn: consumable is weaker then the branch but always works. Best item if you wanna kill the scion because that hinges on your ability to beat the boss. However even then you can get them from blackguard or the husks with his bell bearing. One of the weaker keepsakes

i really liked the seed in my incantation playthrough. got every upgrade one seed sooner, for the entire game? that meant that a SIGNIFICANT portion of the first 40 hours of play had one more flask than i would have otherwise had. it also often meant that there were many times when I had a flask painlessly when i would have otherwise needed to fight a difficult enemy sooner in order to get to the next threshold. early game, this matters a TON for builds using incantations or sorceries. i didn't feel like i had enough flasks for a very long time since i had to split them.