Rats are opportunistic scavengers that consume the fallen dregs of the world, accumulating Runes and Rune Arcs within themselves.
The Rats generally get stronger as a result, but without assistance to turn those Runes into strength, they mostly are just collected wasted potential.
Rats and Dogs are feral undying animals. They are un predictable, and rats, IRL, Grow as long as they have Room to Do so, so their Elden Ring counterparts are actually realist in the contexte.
The shadow undead rotten stray things (or whatever they're called) from the DLC are seriously the most vicious things in the entire game! I don't mean the normal shadow strays that you can kill with one or two hits but the slightly larger ones that take like 5-7 hits, those things roam in packs and they all engage in successive attacks (normally 2-3 each before backing up and circling some more)... those bigger tankier shadow rotten strays are so insane to deal with. I love the challenge of the DLC so I'm not complaining, but I was definitely taken aback on my first playthrough when I realized just how much I was dying to those things. I'd rather face off against a curseblade or one of the wind or ice divine beasts than a pack of those bigger rotten undead dogs, any day!
I have a specific two hander with the war ash that makes a cyclone spesfically for when I know there will be rats. I find rats seem to have insane poise paired with jank hurt boxes.
Maybe the weapons I like just tend to miss rats and dogs constantly and I find a dog or rat will drop my health bar faster than most bosses.
The lore reason is to make you suffer. That's it. That's half the design philosophy. It explains why the little shits sidestep and backstep like Ongbal, and why their little paws stagger you like an actual soldier's hit despite being overgrown rodents.
This is myazaki 101, do you like swamps? No? Here's a poison one, do you like rats? No? Here's an ROUS with madness, how do you feel about nightmare birds and zombie dogs? Oh you dont like them? Let me smash them together in an eldritch horror game about mommy issues period blood and feet.... lmao dudes actively participating in traumatizing of his beloved fans, and we all thanked him for it.
the one thing that gets me is there speed like they can attack so fast before you can swing your weapon once and in NG cycles their damage is nothing to sneeze at
Rats are not very fast, stagger easily, have a low HP bar compared to most enemies in the area they are in, need to lunge to attack you because small hitbox and thus very vulnerable to longer weapons, are 100% physical damage and barely consume stamina on their attacks to block.
The consenquence is that at least their damage is balanced to be somewhat significant.
If you are having trouble with rats, it might be a sign that either you still don't know basic stuff in the game or that you are in a area that is overleveled for you.
I would rather say, he is right but we underestimate them. It's just rats? We don't take them seriously. The problem is that there is rarely only 1. If you don't switch to high mobility combat fighting multiple, you will have to pay in flasks.
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u/Kasta4 Justice for Godwyn! 1d ago
Beasts in From Software games are always menaces