This week we speak with Jeremy Greer, of Days of Future Cast and many other shows, about his experiences with the Shadow of the Erdtree. We also read your responses to Castle Ensis and Scadu Altus!

Reposted in remembrance of our good friend Jeremy Greer.

f5axtjj6

Gary Butterfield, Kole Ross, and Jeremy Greer talk about Lothric Castle.

Reposted in remembrance of our good friend Jeremy Greer.

This week, we conclude the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC by talking about the divine tower of the Hornsent, Enir-Ilim, where the final showdowns of the game take place. First, Miquella’s followers have kind of a Civil War thing going on, and then we learn the truth about what Miquella was really after…

This week's Roundtable Roundtable has a slightly different format, because we are featuring two audio interviews with guests alongside your responses to the Caelid region of Elden Ring!

Our first guest needs almost no introduction. Iron Pineapple is a popular YouTuber who makes funny and insightful videos about From Software games. You've probably seen his videos about the glut of Soulsborne games on Steam, or his numerous and hilarious challenge runs.

Our second guest is Bryn, of the Generation Loss and Beep Beep Lettuce podcasts, and the band Stay Inside. Listen to her music and shows!

The next stretch of game we're covering is the remainder of Ranni's quest and Deeproot Depths, before we head up to the Altus Plateau.

This week we set our sights on the big guy himself, Radahn the Star Scourge, a general whose magic is so powerful that he has arrested the stars themselves. But we're not going to do it alone. Redmane Castle's festival is the first event of its kind, where a whole dungeon is changed for a specific encounter which is the crossroads for a few different quests. And the fight itself is a grand spectacle, iterating on Dark Souls II's Ivory King challenge.

Our quest to defeat Starscourge Radan is near its end as we storm his stronghold, Redmane Castle. This legacy dungeon is quite strange, and not just in the context of Elden Ring. There are two versions of it, one that is full of enemies, and another that is empty and ready for the Festival to kill the rot-blighted demigod. FromSoft have never done anything like this, and while it's not entirely successful, it's still really neat.

Because there's relatively little to talk about in Redmane itself, and because the Festival is getting its own episode next Sunday, we round out this week's episode by talking about what's changed in Elden Ring through patches and updates, and what it means to dive deep on a game that is both huge, and a moving target.

With all of the Scarlet Rot in Caelid, it's easy to overlook the other forces at play in the region. Namely, the Black Flame, Deathroot, and other forces associated with the Destined Death. In this cleanup episode, we head to the Bestial Sanctum to learn about Gurranq the Bestial Clergyman, and then we head to the Divine Tower of Caelid where we find the Godskin cult tucked away in the basement.

Next week we head to Redmane Castle to begin working to handle Starscourge Radahn himself.

Edit: There was a problem with the first version of this that is fixed now. If you hear overlapping audio at the start you can delete and re-download. I apologize for the error! - K

This week we pick up on the road above Sellia, to the cliffs above to save the poor girl Millicent at the behest of the strange sage Gowry. Then, we proceed northward beyond the giant skull to Greyoll's Dragonbarrow, a slightly less-blighted portion of Caelid, which is now a sanctuary for the remannts of Dragonkind in the Lands Between.

Sellia is a town in Caelid that holds many secrets, sealed away behind an impenetrable puzzle that involves lighting three torches. A strange sage named Gowry acts as our guide, sending us to the Aeonian Swamp to recover a cosmic artifact before directing us to the heart of Selia to learn where these people came from, and why the Golden Order had turned a vicious eye toward them in the past.

This week we continue our journey along the Caelid Highway, down further into the wilds of the rot-blighted land. Starting at the Smouldering Wall, we venture into Fort Gael and the prison complex beneath it, before reaching the swamps and dragons of the southern reaches.

Next week we will turn northward into Selia and the Aeonian Swamp, ground zero of Malenia's blossoming.

This week we go tour the many parking garages of the Ancient Ruins of Rauh, a beautiful area that we wish had more narrative and gameplay interest. It’s a pileup of a number of civilizations, all searching for the truth of the Crucible, but ultimately overwritten by the Scarlet Rot and its saint, Romina.

This episode, we head up the Jagged Peak in order to do the last of the optional content in Shadow of the Erdtree. We’ve heard tell of a tyrant atop of the volcano, Bayle the Dread, a draconic betrayer so hated by Placidusax that the practice of Dragon Communion was created to bring him down.

This week we head east of the gate to Stormhill and follow the road all the way down through Mistwood and to Fort Haight. Topics discussed include Boc's storyline, the Night's Cavalry boss fights, the beginning of Kenneth Haight's quest, Mistwood Forest, the elevator to Siofra, and Fort Haight itself.

We would also like to remind you that we are experimenting with a weekly release format, meaning shorter episodes that come out more frequently, but with the same level of detail that we had before. Next week we will talk about Limgrave South and Limgrave North, up through the Stormgate area.

We'd also like to announce that we have new show art! It was time, we figured, to commission a cover that is specific to Elden Ring. Check it out...

The artist is Ellie, aka @ells_ink, and you can find all of her info here at her Linktree. She sells buttons and will soon have other commissions open.

This week we dive into Elden Ring proper with our discussion of the intro cinematic, the tutorial, and all of the dungeons of the West Limgrave region. Limgrave is a beautiful and idyllic place from a distance, but up close you see some disturbing details that show the rot that it's suffering under the inept Lord Godrick. And things are only going to get worse from here.

On this first big episode of the Elden Ring series, we go over Elden Ring's mechanics and generalities in broad strokes. What's returning from previous From games? What's been improved? What's brand new? We talk about as many systems and aesthetics as we can, in order to establish a basic understanding before we dive into more lore-heavy parts of the game.

In two weeks, we will talk about the Limgrave West portion of Elden Ring's world.

This week’s Roundtable Roundtable features an interview with Phobia, a YouTuber who documents glitches in games in an accessible and entertaining way. We talk about his process and how looking for glitches changes the way he plays FromSoft games. Then we read your responses to the northeastern part of the map and the Abyssal Woods.

Rise, Tarnished, and attend the first episode about Elden Ring! There's no way to describe the great unclenching that happened when we realized that Elden Ring is, in fact, good. Whether that bears out over the course of the entire game remains to be seen, but we have high hopes. This episode covers our first impressions after about a week of having the game, and we also lay out our current reckon on how the season will shape up.

If this is your first time here, we're Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross, a duo of hosts who make Bonfireside Chat. Since 2013 we've talked about Souls games in high detail, in addition to talking about FromSoft's earlier games, their influences, and the whole galaxy of Soulslikes that spun off of Dark Souls' popularity.

This show comes out every other Sunday, and it's normally available only to our [Patrons](http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv). If you back at the $5 tier you gain access to [every Premium episode of Bonfireside Chat](https://www.bonfireside.chat/tags/premium), you can listen to hundreds of hours of patron-exclusive content. If you decide to back us, you can [check out how to get your content by looking at this post.](https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-redeem-63283880)

This episode and the next episode, covering the game's general mechanics and its opening, will be free for all. We really appreciate you listening.

It's pretty rare that we will dedicate a whole episode to something as slight as a demo, but Nightfall is worth it. This full conversion mod by a team led by the creator of the Daughters of Ash mod seeks to create a full sequel to the original Dark Souls. It will feature a new story, new characters, new bosses, and whole new gameplay systems. And while the demo is short, it grants you an extensive look at what will set Nightfall apart. We really recommend you check it out. 

Note: We've added an addendum about Weapon Augments at 53:58. We regret to omission.

Who's ready to get yelled at? We gave it an honest shot, but Returnal just didn't win us over. So this episode is about the first biome, the generalities, and about why we think this isn't a good roguelike (which doesn't mean we think it's a bad game!). We were super intrigued by the story and the atmosphere, if that's any consolation. This is likely disappointing for you, but I ask that if you really enjoy Returnal to hear us out.

The creators of Dark Souls deny taking any direct inspiration from the original Legend of Zelda, but we know that's impossible. So we dive into this strange, foreboding, ahead-of-its-time adventure game and look for the elements that would go on to become Souls-series hallmarks. We also talk about the whole game in a Watch Out for Fireballs!-like fashion.

We seek to answer the question of whether or not this is a good Dark Souls tabletop adaptation, but the more pertinent question is whether or not what's special about Dark Souls can captured outside of video games. Steamforged made an attempt at a Dark Souls board game, and we don't really like it. However, they distilled its best parts into a faster card game, and it works a little better! Listen for the particulars of how it works, and how it relates to Souls' unique mechanics.

This week's Bonfireside Chat is about the remaining two Bloodborne comic volumes, "A Song of Crows" and "The Veil, Torn Asunder". Given the strong showing in the second volume, we had our hopes set pretty high. Unfortunately, these overly abstract stories are big on style but short on substance.

"A Song of Crows" gives us some backstory on Eileen the Crow, and shows us what the process of going mad is like. "The Veil, Torn Asunder" is about an outsider to Yharnam who nevertheless succumbs to his own trauma and the fell influence of the town, showing us what the process of going mad is like. The two stories are very similar.

This week, we return to the world of Souls comics to see what's been happening since the last time we checked in. We cover the Dark Souls anthology series Legends of the Flame (Part 1 and Part 2), which has a smattering of not very good short stories that are, putatively, set in the world of Dark Souls.

We then turn our attention to The Healing Thirst, the second volume of the Bloodborne comic. It's a standalone arc about two men, a scientist and a priest, who are trying to discover the cause of the Ashen Blood plague, and it's really good.

For reference, here is a link to the first Dark Souls comic discussion. Additionally, the first Bloodborne comic discussion, Death of Sleep, was an episode of Adaptation Decay. We've bumped its Patreon tier down so everyone who gets this episode can also hear about the previous part.

Remember, it's only a game. More accurately, it's a movie about a game gone very wrong. This week we talk about the Green Knight, a 2021 adaptation of the classic Arthurian legend directed by David Lowery. Specifically, we look at the movie through the lens of the themes and motifs of the Souls series, looking at the importance of our changing relationships to Arthurian myths as the basis of modern fantasy.

EDIT: Little note from Gary on the ending: I just found out in the original ending, they depict the beheading, but the director decided to leave it ambiguous so Kole and I could argue about it (that's me being cheeky; he decided it was better if it was left ambiguous). But I am relieved to see that at some point, he was going that way, just so I don't feel like the only person in the world who likes the story better with Gawain biting it at the end.

EDIT 2: A little note from Kole, who is just now seeing Gary's little note a few months later. Not cool, bro, sneaking around like this. Though there was an original intent, deciding to leave it ambiguous was also a conscious decision, and ultimately the final one. Gary is alone in the world as the only one who takes his read on the ending and I WILL NOT HEAR OTHERWISE.

We really enjoyed Grime, and this appendix episode has us reading your thoughts on this indie Soulslvania. I think I'm going to stick with that spelling.

This week we conclude our discussion of Grime, the superlative Soulslike where you play as a rock man with a black hole head. We pick up after the Carven Palace and continue running errands for Shidra, before learning the truth of the Coda and our purpose in this world.

Though the Abyssal Woods and Midra’s Manse aren’t huge areas gameplay-wise, we adore their lore and story so much that we had to camp out for some extra time. So this episode concludes our discussion of Midra’s Manse, including the boss fight, and a long talk about what Midra and Nanaya’s deals were.

Our unnamed rock man with a black hole for a head continues his journey up and into the realm of the Carven, learning more about the life cycle of the rockborn of this world. This episode covers Gloomnest and the Palace of the Carven, which is a massive dungeon with a ton of stuff going on.

This week we continue playing the excellent Soulsike Metroidvania game Grime, heading through the rock nursery of Lithic before meeting the godlike Shidra and venturing into the meaty, nervy bowels where the Feasters dwell.

Grime is a brand new, very strange Soulslike that we really recommend you try out. You play as an unnamed creature with a black hole for a head, who is born into a world of stone and bodily tissue. Society is stratified based on who has, literally, the best chiseled proportions, and everything has an uncanny otherness to it.

This first episode covers the generalities of the game, and goes up to the gates of the town of Lithic.

EDIT: I called Sophie Pillbeam Sylvie! I'm an idiot! It's Sophie. -GB

This week we have a special episode where we survey some Dark Souls Youtube creators that we've enjoyed recently. Instead of lore, these creators focus on cut content, technical explanations, glitches, and different kinds of speed and challenge runs. Take the time to subscribe and check all of them out, because they're quite informative.

• Zulie the Witch - Short dissection videos.

• Ray Dhimitri - Dark Souls 2-focused close looks and dissections.

• Ymfah - Souls series challenge runs.

• BonfireVN - Fun "fight" videos (i.e. Gwyn's four knights vs. Manus).

• Phobia - Skips and glitch explanation, focusing on current versions of each game.

• Catalystz - Speed run explanations.

• Sinclair Lore with Sylvie Pillbeam - Fun, chill in-depth Souls topic discussions.

• The LoreHunter - Close reads of Elden Ring materials.

• IllusoryWall - You know what he does!

Here's the relevant Twitter information: @ZullieTheWitch, @RayDhimitri, @_ymfah, #bonfireVN, @PhobiaSoft, @catalystz_, @SinclairLore, @TheLoreHunter, @IllusoryWall

You wrote in with your thoughts about Ashen, and they helped clarify our own dim view of the game's merits. This appendix features the highest concentration of beatdowns any single dungeon has gotten on an episode of our show, so, congrats, Seat of the Matriarch!

You should be warned that we're really cranky in this one. As we head into the territory of the Shadow Worshippers, Ashen finds even more ways to turn us off to what might otherwise be its charm. We hit the Palace of Lathyrus and finish out the game, despite the game's best efforts to repel us with its dungeon design and noun soup story. If us being down on a game brings you down, you know what to do with this one.

This week we continue our discussion of Ashen, the indie Souls-like that's open world, made for co-op, built around side quests, and has terrible, terrible dungeons. Our frustration runneth over as we head toward the second major boss, Amiren, in the Seat of the Matriarch, on our guest to reassemble the Heart that will tell us where to find the bird that will restart the world.

We begin our new series on Ashen by talking about the game's generalities, and fighting through the first boss. Most Soulslikes concern themselves with the end of the world, but this one has us midwifing a world's rebirth, and we're going to do that with combat and systems that are very familiar to Souls veterans.

We need a little more time to get more Ashen under our belts, so this week we present something from the archives... The first time Gary and Kole really talked about Dark Souls. This was recorded as part of the extra content for our Fallout episode back in November of 2012. Hear our initial geeking out, and the earliest rumblings of the crazy idea of making a show that's all about Dark Souls.

We will be back next Sunday (August 8) with the beginning of our series on Ashen.

We return for a new survey and review episode, continuing our look back at all of the non-Souls games we've covered for the show. Once again, we ask ourselves two questions: Would we recommend you play these today? And what element, mechanical or aesthetic, would you like to see someone take from each game and use elsewhere?

This second part goes through all of the games we've talked about so far on the revived run of the show, so:

• Immortal: Unchained

• Dead Cells

• Death’s Gambit

• Blasphemous

• King’s Field (US)

• The Surge

• Mortal Shell

• Eternal Ring

• Ico

• Remnant: From the Ashes

• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes

Though the Abyssal Woods and Midra’s Manse aren’t huge areas gameplay-wise, we adore their lore and story so much that we had to camp out for some extra time. So this episode concludes our discussion of Midra’s Manse, and a long talk about what Midra and Nanaya’s deals were. Next episode we hit the big man himself and talk about the rules of Frenzy in The Lands Between.

This is a different kind of episode for us, because instead of talking about one game in depth, we're looking back at all of the non-Souls games we've covered for the show and asking ourselves two questions: Would we recommend you play these today? And what element, mechanical or aesthetic, would you like to see someone take from each game and use elsewhere?

This first part goes through all of the games we talked about on the original run of the show, so:

• King's Field IV: The Ancient City

• 3D Dot Game Heroes

• Shovel Knight

• Lords of the Fallen

• Shadow Tower

• Shadow Tower: Abyss

• Titan Souls

• Momodora 4: Reverie Under the Moonlight

• Hyper Light Drifter

• Salt & Sanctuary

• DarkMaus

• Let It Die

• Nioh

• Hollow Knight

This week, we continue and finish our discussion of Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, an indie soulslike that was unfortunately pretty disappointing. We pick up after defeating the first Acolyte and go through to the end, saving the world of Mornia from the evil grasp of the Gahar.

The first trailer for Elden Ring was revealed today, and we have some thoughts. This is a short reaction 'cast where we talk about what was revealed, and lay out a little bit of planning for the immediate future of the show.

Morbid: The Seven Acolytes is a top-down 2D soulslike with a really great art style, great looking bosses, and level design that's unfortunately lacking. We were really hopeful that we'd found a hidden gem, but instead we got a valuable lesson, through contrast, in what's necessary for a soulslike game to really sing.

This is the first of two episodes about Morbid: The Seven Acolytes. We cover the generalities, and the beginning of the game through the first acolyte boss fight.

This appendix has us responding to your responses about the 2020 Demon's Souls remaster. We also spend some time talking about the passing of Kentaro Miura and talking about his impact on fantasy media.

This episode concludes our discussion of the 2020 remake of Demon's Souls, which we think is a really great effort on BluePoint's part. We talk about the two most-improved areas: the Shrine of Storms and the Valley of Defilement, before hitting the endgame and sharing our final thoughts.

If you have responses for next Sunday's appendix episode, please leave them as comments on this post.

Our discussion of the Demon's Souls remaster continues with some in-depth looks at the changes made to Stonefang Tunnel and the Tower of Latria. How does the redesigned Armor Spider change that fight? How does the new music fail the Fool's Idol? All is contained inside.

At long last, it's here! Our discussion of the 2020 remake of Demon's Souls, the game that started our beloved SoulsBorne series. It's been four years since we did our revisit of Demon's Souls, so we're taking this opportunity to not only talk about the changes that BluePoint made, but also reacting to these sacred spaces with modern Souls-enthusiast eyes.

This episode is pretty freeform. It begins with us discussing the remake in general, before talking about the tutorial, the Gates of Boletaria, and the Lord's Path.

Here's a brief appendix episode where we read your responses to Remnant: From the Ashes! We'll be back next week with our coverage of the Demon's Souls remake.

This week, we finish out our conversation about Remnant: From the Ashes by talking about the worlds of Corsus and Yaesha before hitting the endgame.

Next week we will have a response episode, and then we begin our coverage of the Demon's Souls Remake!

This week we find the very hidden entrance to a very hidden path to a very hidden area. Shadow Keep hides a way to reach the Recluse’s River, which is the warpath that the hornsent inquisition took to bring great force to bear on Midra in the Abyssal Woods. Along the way we will complete our final two mini-dungeons and descend further than ought to be possible, as we approach the coolest area in the game.

We continue our discussion of Remnant: From the Ashes by talking about the first two major biomes of the game. We begin on Earth, which is ravaged by the Root even though that should be impossible. Then we reach the interdimensional Labyrinth, which takes us to the world of Rhom which has been seared by nuclear fire at the hands of the Undying King.