I have been an avid gamer for as long as I can remember, with my first strong memories from playing Doom2s “The Chasm” on LAN with a couple of friends during the early 90s. Gaming gives opportunity for friendship, growth, exploration, and fun! After the era of World of Warcraft, I always stuck to multiplayer games. Recently I tried FromSofts Elden Ring for the first time.
Elden Ring is an action role-playing game released in 2022, written in collaboration with George R.R. Martin. The Author of the renowned Game of Thrones series. The game is set in a vast open world called the Lands Between, where players take on the role of a Tarnished - an exile called back to this mysterious realm. FromSoftwares games is known for challenging combat, deep lore, and intricate designs. Unlike traditional open-world games, Elden Ring doesn’t hold the player’s hand - there’s no quest log, minimal guidance, and every victory must be earned through persistence and skill. It really has a unique approach to storytelling and progression, and it encourages the player to explore, and rewards curiosity. In essence, it is everything I dreamed of in a game as a child. The power is in the players hands, and it is so difficult that you need to pay close attention to the story, and stop and learn for every new encounter.
Never give up, every loss is a chance for growth
Like in life in general, Elden ring shows no mercy. Everything is difficult and you experience many setbacks in the form of a black screen portraying “You are dead”. When you encounter a new boss, you need to structure your approach to learn its behavior and tendencies.
This means sticking to it and perfecting your skill. Every time you fail, you have the opportunity to learn something. Perseverance is often the way to go, and sometimes it means dying to the same boss for hours on end. As frustrating as this is, the reward when you succeed is sweet. It is probably a strange scene seeing a grown man screaming “YES! DIE!” in the middle of the night after defeating a particularly challenging boss encounter.
This is true in life as well. Every hard problem and setbacks is a chance for growth. Not letting it get to you, but motivate you to try even harder.
Take the time to study your opponent
The bosses and encounters in Elden Ring have large diversity of patterns and attacks. Your strategy for one encounter does not help you beat another. So instead being dumb about it and keep applying the same strategy and skill (which we all do), you need to change it up. Give yourself the time to test and learn. In Elden Ring that can be beefing your character as much as possible and by doing so removing alot of damage. You will probably not win that attempt, but your extended “beefyness” gives you the time and opportunity to observe and learn. You can then use that time to learn the patterns and strategize how you want to win.
This is a separate kind of persistence. Admitting that you do not possess the skill needed and then invest the time and effort in increasing your abilities. So often you want to throw yourself at a problem, blindly trying to fix something with only the tools and skills you already possess instead of taking the time to study.
For cyber security work, this is particularly true. The threat landscape is constantly changing, new threats rising every day. The technologies ar
Learn to give up, and go back to the drawing board
Sometimes you tangle yourself into an area where it becomes too difficult. The monsters you encounter does not seem to take damage, and they kill you too quick. You get so annoyed and apply your persistence and perseverance.
Elden Ring does not limit much where you can go or in what order the game should be completed. Therefore this can happen often. It is also hard to distinguish when you have stumbled into an encounter that is just too hard for you current level.
The best course of actions is then to admit defeat and move elsewhere. Gain experience and skill elsewhere. By leveling up and slowly adding to your skillset, the encounter can often be beaten more easily that you imagined.
Admitting defeat is never easy, especially for those of us in security.