u/HungryColquhoun

Just got Children of Blood yesterday, playing on Standard two-player it seems like one of the most difficult opening scenarios FFG have ever made. I thought I'd make a thread for general discussion, and to pose the question of whether the scenario is easier on Hard mode.

Your goal is to kill Julia Stern, who on two-player Standard is a 4 fight 10 health enemy who can only be damaged when she's snared (i.e. spend two clues on two-player to put a snare on her) - with one hit removing the snare and allowing damage to be placed. She's also Elusive, so even if you get two snares on her in a turn she moves to a different location. There are two locations which allow for free movement (so long as there's not an enemy at these locations) which can ease things. She has Retaliate, so the high fight score is quite punishing for level 0 decks. She also heals at the end of the night (there's two day and two night agendas), retaining only half health, rounded down (it goes on the scenario card, and then goes back onto her when she's revealed again). Putting snares on her will provoke an attack of opportunity as well. In terms of Easy difficulty, Julia loses two health and Retaliate, making her rather more manageable!

It seems like the best way to deal with her is to draw her during the day, destroy her Lair (if you don't and she's still there at the end of the day, she full heals and you repeat the process of getting her out of her Lair - you can destroy lairs if they have no clues on them). She does start with a snare if you're lucky enough to find her during the day. With the need for snares to deal damage, traps also don't work too well (but can at least trigger her Elusive if you're not ready to deal with her and don't want her eating someone - more on that below).

The encounter deck is rather punishing, with a lot of enemies to distract you from your task. The are 8 other enemies in the encounter deck, 5 of which have 2 or more health (and two are Bat Horrors, again Elusive and big action sinks). There's Burning Daylight, which is either an Ancient Evils (in Agenda 1 or 3), or it draws a set aside 3 Fight 4 Health Elusive Hunter who heals when they attack. Grasping Hands also makes a return - for low Agility Guardians this is a recipe for taking 3 health damage in a single failed test. To cap it all there's blood tokens, which function a lot like Frost tokens from EotE (-1, reveal another token) and seemingly get added to the bag quite easily. A new Predator keyword means Julia will often kill Doomed civilian enemies in the enemy phase (Waterfront Civilians) to further ratchet up the Doom track (and you put down 4 civilians in the final day, typically). Raising Suspicions from the Chapter 2 core box often adds doom to Waterfront Civilians if you haven't dealt with them. These enemies need a two Willpower test to parley away - which a lot of investigators aren't necessarily well equipped to do.

I guess in terms of the math, to kill Julia on Standard you need usually 5 fight actions that deal two damage, and unless you're attacking at a 6 or higher then Retaliate on Julia is quite perilous - and then there's a lot more actions running to get to her and putting snares on her. Dexter or Daniela are probably the only investigators who manage this okay (Dexter with a Cosmic Flame and Bloodstone/Jim, Daniela with any weapon). The usual method of playing a slightly lower combat action investigator (Tommy, Marie, Joe) and hoping to build up cards to commit doesn't work too well, as ideally you want to get Julia out very early to have a good shot at killing her - and so you simply haven't had the time to build up cards to commit (especially on Tommy, who lacks a lot of card draw).

In terms of changes for Hard difficulty, Julia gets an extra two health and deals an extra damage (on Standard it's one damage/one horror). While the bag gets worse, it's not much worse. Most locations get an extra shroud and other nastier effects. 3 Health dogs replace the 1 Health rats, and there's a nastier enemy which comes out if you draw Burning Daylight during the night.

But, you start with 5 XP (it says you "may" start with 5 XP, but it seems like this is encouraged). This means one Cosmic Flame [5] for your Mystics (with both Marie or Dexter good at finding a single copy), one Sledgehammer/Winchester Model 12/Thompson Submachine Gun for your Guardians, events like two Caustic Reaction [2] or A Sudden Fall [2] for your Seekers/Rogues, Longbow on Miguel or Izzie (or Retribution on Izzie). Guardians and Mystics also tend to be very good at finding their damage dealing assets in Chapter 2. All of these tools allow you to deal 3 damage, allowing you to 12 health Julia in 4 actions (rather than the 5 actions needed on Standard difficulty for 10 health Julia). It also makes it much easier to test at a 7 with just the asset or an 8 with a little support (putting you at 3 over the test difficulty at 7, which with the worse bag is usually a pass - i.e. 13 out of 17 pulls are a pass at 76% [ignoring the one blood token added] vs. 9 out of 16 pulls as a pass on a 5 test on standard difficulty with level 0 weapons at 56%). These odds are a bit of a simplification, and I've ignored blood tokens as mentioned (and justified that Skull tokens are within pass range if trying to kill Julia early for either difficulty) - but you get the gist.

In terms of XP you get out of this, it's 8 under most circumstances (3 two VP locations, two VP on Julia, two bonus XP for surviving the night if you don't kill Julia) or a little more on Hard if Burning Daylight draws a Spawn of Zburamoarte for you (the nastier 5 health enemy Hard throws into the mix).

TL:DR River of Blood is hard yo (likely harder on Standard for your average player). It's a fun scenario for sure, but settle in for a long ride - especially if you don't kill Julia on the first night. I guess just surviving the scenario leads to a resolution, so maybe not killing her is a 'win' - but I always want to do the assigned task haha! I suspect it's perhaps easiest on standard difficulty on higher player counts as well as - while the clues per snare scale - Julia's health doesn't scale at the same rate. For True Solo, it goes in the opposite direction - the high health is problematic, but it's only one clue per snare so there's economies of scale on that side. What's everyone else's thoughts? I still need to play scenario 2, not sure if I'll post more of these deep dives or not - I'll see how the mood takes me!

The current opinion of this sub is that we are heavily underpriced vs. the rest of the market given our strong balance sheet. I wanted to explore that assumption by comparing to two other speciality retailers. EDIT: In terms of what you'd call this, it's a 'Comparables Approach to Equity Valuation', looking specifically at price-to-earnings. It's another valuation method - similar to book value (which is used more commonly in distressed companies) or Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), which is a forward-looking valuation method which looks at average expected cashflows with time. DCF is finance degree level modelling (which I don't have), so the Comparables Approach is a reasonable middle-ground.

I’ll be using bolding throughout, but I can assure you I’ve written this out with my fair hands with no AI used. Realistically all I’m doing in copy and pasting from Q1 of three companies, and drawing some conclusions – it’s not something you need AI for.

My background: I’m STEM PhD educated, and professionally I’m involved in business development, which includes being a board observer on startup companies (representing the interests of a larger parent organisation). Essentially, I’m no stranger to board packs and finances, and I’m aware what startup investors want to see (especially in pre-seed and seed rounds). I’ve also been a board observer for a company which went bankrupt.

What is a speciality retailer? It’s a store that sells specific goods, unlike superstores like Walmart which sell a bit of everything. Some are more generalist than others, but they all lean into a particular market.

Company selection: A lot of direct comparator companies in the US are private (Barnes & Noble, Hallmark, etc.). Two that are publicly traded are Lowe’s (selling tools, building materials, garden and home suppliers, etc.) and Best Buy (selling consumer electronics and appliances). Lowe’s is big, Best Buy is a lot smaller. As what they sell doesn’t overlap with GameStop (video games, collectables) my assumption is the balance sheet is the main determinant of price for specialist retailers, and the market they operate in is of less importance. Tech companies are not appropriate comparators, as their price is often stupid haha!

Q1 2026:

Publicly available links (all info copy and pasted, except market cap which was taken from individual tickers – market cap taken as of today to factor in price stabilization after earnings) as follows:

GameStop Q1 2026

Best Buy Q1 2026

Lowe’s Q1 2026

Store	Revenue ($mn)	Operating income ($mn)	Net income ($mn)
GameStop	835.3	143.3	389.6
Best Buy	8,936	370	276
Lowe’s	23,078	2,554	1,628

Store	Diluted EPS ($/share)	Non-GAAP adjusted diluted EPS ($/share)	Market Cap 18^(th) August 2026 ($bn)
GameStop	0.66	0.30	8.26
Best Buy	1.31	1.28	18.01
Lowe’s	2.90	3.03	121.01

Store	Dividends	Long-Term Debt ($mn)	Cash equiv.s ($mn)
GameStop	Warrants	4,166.1	7,411.8
Best Buy	$0.96 per share	1,158	1,749
Lowe’s	$1.20 per share	36,751	786

GameStop Comparison:

Store	Revenue	Operating income	Net income	Market Cap
Best Buy	x10.7	x2.6	x0.7	x2.2
Lowe’s	x27.6	x17.8	x4.2	x14.7

My interpretation what the market thinks to the data:

• Market cap is correlated most strongly to operating income (in a mostly linear fashion). This makes sense, it’s the money you’re making from your core business.
• Revenue is mildly correlative with market cap (generally lots of sales = healthy business that can absorb market shocks)
• No one gives a shit about debt so long as the company can service it.
• No one really gives a shit about cash and how it’s invested – this would explain why our net income isn’t seen as that impressive (even though it’s necessary per GAAP reporting) as it’s an unrealised gain, i.e. just more cash in a lot of ways. They want to see cash change the business.
• Dividends may have a factor in pricing, with cash dividends per share per quarter being favored.
• I’ve not covered cashflow, for Lowe’s it was negative, for GameStop and BestBuy positive. Again unless it's big negative I don't think the market gives a shit.

The extra GameStop spice: The big disclaimer is cash gives a lot of optionality, and the short thesis may well still be alive (or at least, GameStop continues to attract new shorts). Both of these indicate deeper value than you see in Q1, and are good reasons to invest or hold IMHO.

TL:DR My conclusions are, if we’re taking market cap as most strongly correlative with operating income, then (until our operating income goes up to look impressive vs. other retail companies) we’re probably priced where we should be within a margin of error. To get a feel for if we’re priced unfairly, we’d need to see operating income and revenue go up and reassess the picture from there.

If you think the assessment is unfair, then explain your position – what price would you put on the optionality given by our cash pile, for example. Do you think that added value should put us closer to Best Buy (and if so, how much closer)? The other thing to think about is whether the market agrees with you – the answer is probably no.

This should at least give a sense that companies which make more money operationally tend to have a positive linear relationship with market cap (and so share price). The pricing of where we’re at, if viewed under that lens, makes sense. Thanks for reading.

I've been playing a Black Flame/Frenzy Flame build (if you're killing the gods, you may as well melt away the world) and I'm at a point where I'm trying to kill Rykard.

I like to forgo the spear to kill Rykard and so still kill him with my build.

Black Flame spells deal 2.5% as we all know, so technically if you hit Rykard 80 times (40 per phase) you win. However the math isn't really mathing here, my FP bar only has enough for 5 Black Flame spells - so even if I took just blue flasks I still wouldn't have enough (you'd need 15 flasks).

I suppose in reality you need fewer than 80 hits as you deal residual fire damage on top, but even so it would need to be a hitless run which I don't have any appetite for - especially vs. Rykard.

Black Flame Tornado stacks multiple instances of the DoT effect (so in the same FP I can cast 5 Black Flames, dealing around 12.5%, I would cast 3 tornados dealing closer to 30%).

I think it's got to be the Tornado right? I can use Swift Spear on this build (I took Dex to 40 for effective 70 casting) so I'll probably put Tornado on that and try Rykard again later, as it's lightweight I can minimally respec to get enough End to use it while retaining medium rolling.

EDIT: I might respec into 28 Mind. Drops my damage on other spells by ~4% as I would take the points out of FTH. Allows for 9 casts off a full FP bar (or 7 with Black Flame's Protection). 80/9 = 8.88 full FP bars. As you start with a full bar then that is 8 flasks, if I want to cast a couple of Black Flame's Protection that takes it up to 9 blue flasks 5 red which feels about right to me. I guess it is pivoting my build for just one fight, but I did want a fire incants build that could handle any boss, so I think this is the only way...

EDIT2: Killed him with just the Black Flame fire ball spell, 28 Mind was the trick (was 40 Vig, 40 Dex as well) for 9 casts per flask. It took ~7 minutes. Talismans were Dragoncrest Greatshield, Flamedrake +3, Blessed Dew and Flock's Canvas (I've not progressed the DLC enough for Crimson Seed Talisman +1 - but that would be best in the final slot for sure). Physick was Opaline Hardtear and Crimsonburst. Split of 5 Crimson vs. 9 Cerulean - had a little FP left over after casting Black Flame's Protection twice so you could miss a few times and still be fine (not that he's really a missable target though lol). I'm only using build appropriate buffs so no Golden Vow or health regen spells in this case (probably Golden vow isn't too worth it vs. the FP cost given it's not going to make a difference to damage and the difference is only small for resistances, a regen spell would be very worth it).

For some reason the God-Devouring Serpent seems to get weird AI vs. the Black Flame spell specifically (not sure if it's the DoT, or me standing in the lava, or what). In any case he either does attacks that miss you entirely or will do that annoying spinny one from time to time. You can probably miss the dodge on one of those (they're awkward if you're very close to them) and still be in good shape for Rykard - not that he won't throw random bullshit at you as well. If anyone else wants to kill Rykard with just fire incants, hopefully this serves as a guide. Aiming to post a build video of it at some point (probably vs. Midra, as I'm going the Frenzy ending...).

I thought I'd plan some builds for the remaster. I want to do a Legion build, but also want the Armor of the 87th Tribe.

I know you can remove bad rep if you do Lonesome Road before the strip, has anyone thought of a good way to headcanon why the Legion would welcome you back into the fold if you nuke them? (I guess I'd be interested in your thoughts for the NCR as well if you nuke them). I'm thinking of going the Lanius ending in this case, if that changes things.

And before you say "no shit", I have some clear reasoning on this...

I like to compare GME to BBY. Both are speciality retailers (in stock market maps they're both in the same segment), and BBY tends to perform better than we do (~x10 revenue, around x2+ operational profit - but we get a much greater proportion of non-operational profit, more debt for BBY but nothing alarming vs. their cashflows). While they sell different stuff, there's not really anyone like us out there so very exact comparators are tricky. All in all it's a good yardstick to measure against when people say we're being treated unfairly (i.e. how is other brick and mortar retail doing...).

Anyway, prior to the Q1 2026 earnings, BBY was around x1.5 our market cap - which I would say is fair enough because they perform a little better.

Both stocks beat on Q1, and ours was a record beat. Shall we take a look at the charts? GME:

Turdy GME chart, down ~19%

BBY:

~56% gain BBY chart

I appreciate the leverage of the eBay deal is being priced into GME right now, and also BBY paid a dividend in July as well - but I still think this is not enough to explain the difference. We're now 19% down vs. the slight earnings bump and BBY are 56% up. It makes no sense to me that on similarly positive earnings we shouldn't both be riding the same wave (at the very least we should be upper $20s I would say, if not knocking on $30 - as more of a "fair value", if such a thing exists). This would still put us at a lower market cap than BBY, but it would be closer to BBY being x1.5 our value (which was the norm for many months before these earnings).

TL:DR We're somewhat objectively undervalued vs. near competition and in a dip. Whether you choose to buy the dip is up to you. NFA.

I'm trying to post a gaming video (6m40s long, .mp4, 280 MB) and I get the 'Media Processing failed' message - despite the video being in Reddit's specified parameters. I've tried uploading slightly longer videos and had the same issue (but still within parameters). Previously I've uploaded things fine with no problem (though longest vid is probably 4m or so). My internet speed is poor but that hasn't been an issue before.

Any ideas?

So I'm trying to kill the Elden Beast with pure Holy damage (I've learnt Radagon well enough to manage him with Discus of Light, only took about 10 hours to learn him well lol).

Is there anyway way to avoid the crescent attack (the 4 horizontal holy attacks from his sword) *when combined* with his spear attack (e.g. the stream of holy damage spears from overhead)? Separately either is fine, but usually I'll be on Torrent avoiding the spears and then the crescents will start and kill me - can Torrent jump over them if your timing is right (and any tips for this)?

I've had 3 separate deaths like this, and it's tricky enough to get through Radagon with just holy damage, so I don't want to waste more opportunities. I've never had to work at Elden Beast so much TBH, as with non-holy damage he's fine. I've got him under 30% a few times so sooner or later I will crack it, but I don't want to be taken out by this random cheap combo any more haha! Thanks in advance...

I'm trying to post a video to r/EldenRingBuilds, and it keeps saying "there's an error processing this media".

It states that the video must:

• Be less than 1GB in size (it's 406.5MB)
• Not be greater than 15 minutes in length (it's about 9 minutes 30 seconds)
• Not be less than 2 seconds in length (see above)
• Be an mpeg4 file (.mp4 or .mov) [it's an .mp4]

I've posted videos before without issue, and seemingly the video here ticks all the right boxes but has got taken down twice now. Any suggestions?

I'm currently fighting Radagon and struggling. I can get him to ~25% in 10 minutes or so but it's a major endurance test. I think I'm okay with attack windows generally (I find that there's enough time after his charge I can hit him and get out of the way, and he does that a lot) so no advice needed on that front.

Attacks I'm struggling with:

• "Holy Spear Fan" as part of a melee combo. While the Holy Spear Fan is normally super easy to dodge, when he gets on low health he'll do a melee swing, then two fans, then usually his charge or thrust IIRC. Are there any tips for predicting this? I find I usually dodge the melee swing and then get caught off-guard by the unexpected fans (and sometimes these with break my poise leaving me vulnerable to the final melee hit).
• Airborne "Imbued Hammer Wave". His single straight up-in-the-air and down hammer slam is easy, but with the more side-swipe airborne hammer slam if I can get underneath him I can usually roll behind or if I'm far away he usually can't get to me. The intermediate distance is where I'm struggling more. Is there any best strategy for this (possibly jumping?)?
• Triple slam. I think likely I'll do the two roll towards him and then strafe (I tried the roll towards his back technique but this doesn't seem to work well). I've also heard if you're far enough away you can roll the last wave as well. What do you prefer (I've seen some people just jump the hammer swings but this seems more finickity)?

Lastly, as a general point do you save your Physick for him or the Elden Beast (I'm using mine to buff)? I'm doing an incants run so he is parrying - I'm using Blessed Blue Dew Talisman for infinite FP. Parrying isn't a problem as there's still plenty of windows to attack him him, but I suspect there's more attack windows on the Beast given it lacks a parry so it may be 'better' to use it there and I just git gud on Radagon. That said I suspect Radagon is the harder of the two bosses (now that there's Torrent for Elden Beast) so maybe any additional damage is a good idea even if it's a little short lived. Thoughts?

I think I'm getting there but I thought asking for tips would help expedite the process, and I suspect these are common problem attacks for a lot of RL1 players. If there's a great video guide you can point me to feel free, I've watched a few but there's a few things that aren't clicking so maybe I'm not watching the right ones... Thanks in advance!

Make no mistake, this is probably the most significant earnings GameStop has ever had. The narrative has always been GameStop is a "dying" brick and mortar store. With revenue (topline - i.e. the top line of the balance sheet) now growing - i.e. we are doing more sales - there's no argument that we are dying anymore. By anyone's definition, we are growing. There is now no short thesis any more, it's completely dead - not only are we now growing but we're eyeing a massive acquisition, with any justice we should trade at $30 again (but who knows).

About a month ago (and several times last year when we were trading flat) I said this:

>I'd say our topline per store is growing as well, so once closures are finished (which is a net negative on topline, as you'd expect) we will grow revenue again.

I think it's remarkable we're seeing that topline growth so soon after the store cutbacks. RC is basically a business wizard, how on earth do you grow sales by over $100mn for a retail business like this? It makes no sense, it's genuinely astonishing. RC is reminding people he's the genius that led dog stock to become the largest e-commerce acquisition in the world at that point. Now, just imagine what he could do if he gets his hands on eBay, were revenue is already respectable...

Strap in. Buckle up. LFG. History is being made right now...

EDIT: Lol, there was an instant downvote... methinks some people aren't happy with the latest earnings!

Last week I finished my series looking at 10 new decks using just the Chapter 2 core and the new Chapter 2 starters. These decks are designed to be highly compatible: for two players, any one deck can be played with at least 7 others from the series with no overlap. Each investigator can also be played with the other investigator from the same class (Joe with Carolyn, Izzie with Miguel, etc.).

The goal here was to get people playing as quickly as possible. Some people don’t enjoy deckbuilding, and others want a foundation to build their own decks from – this series is ideal for both of these. Most decks have descriptions around build choices I made and alternate selections of cards (either in the guide itself, or in the comments) - so any of the guides serve as a primer for building your own new deck.

Below I’ve listed the decks, their roles in a team, and what type of card type IMO predominates the deck (Asset/Event/Skill). Links as follows:

• Marie Lambeau: Blood Money. Focus: Assets & Events. Roles: Cluever, Evader, Damage Cleric
• Dexter Drake: A Faustian Bargain. Focus: Assets. Roles: Fighter, Flex
• André Patel: Money Buys Happiness. Focus: Assets & Skills. Roles: Flex, Evader
• Trish Scarborough: Pocket Sand! Focus: Events. Roles: Cluever, Evader
• Tommy Muldoon: Got Yourself a Gun. Focus: Equal Mix. Roles: Fighter, Flex
• Daniela Reyes: Hurting for Clues. Focus: Assets & Events. Roles: Fighter, Tank
• Miguel de la Cruz: Rancher Rambo. Focus: Assets & Events. Roles: Evader, Fighter, Trapper
• Izzie Barnes: Jenny’s Retribution. Focus: Assets & Skills. Roles: Flex, Auto-Damage
• Carolyn Fern: Who Looks Inside, Awakes. Focus: Assets. Roles: Cluever, Horror Cleric
• Joe Diamond: Shoot First, Questions Later. Focus: Events. Roles: Fighter, Flex

For compatibility, here is a matrix of what can be played with what at two player using one set of cards (crosses mean they’re not compatible, empty boxes mean they are):

The Matrix - Woah... (Keanu Reeves as Ted there rather than Neo...)

For higher player counts, there is some overlap between basic skills (Perception, Guts, etc.). I thought I’d use this thread to suggest some combinations at higher player counts (and necessary changes needed. I’ll drop a comment below for four player combos (Reddit gets upset with too many hyperlinks!), and I'll close out the series in the comment too...