Making a new character right before the release of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and then immediately beating the DLC in New Game+ and now New Game++ with my main, level 250 character made me feel like a peasant promoted to king. The reason couldn't be simpler: my main has all the smithing stone bell bearings unlocked, meaning I can snap my fingers and acquire mountains of upgrade materials for any weapon, normal or unique. This made it easy to test out dozens of weapons in the DLC, to the point that I started rotating between multiple spears, katanas, and swords just for fun. Now this is living.
Usually, every time I start a run in Elden Ring I struggle to upgrade even one weapon, and it always ends up being a unique one that uses somber stones since regular smithing stones have a worse economy than the 1930s. You only need 10 somber stones to max a unique weapon, but for standard weapons you need an eye-watering 97 smithing stones total – 12 each for all eight tiers, and then one dragonstone to cap it off. I repeat: 97! Nine seven! What the hell, FromSoftware? Most of the loot in Elden Ring can barely manage to cough up one, maybe two smithing stones at a time. There ya go, kid, buy yourself something nice, says director Hidetaka Miyazaki, flicking a lone pebble my way as I stare down the mortgage-sized stone debt of my new giant sword. What am I gonna do with one stone, Miyazaki? See how many times I can skip it across the surface of the Lake of Rot?
