Dark Souls: Prepare to cry

That happened to me too with Pinwheel, I don't think AL is going to be as hard as people make out. I went in weird directions for quite a while. I think I have 80hrs on the game (maybe even 100) and stopped playing at AL. Must remember to get back into it..

PostDark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Parksey** » Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:44 am

I must admit, this second half of the game isn't as good as the first (I think that's the general opinion as well).

The first half is in this open, interconnected world, where you loop back on yourself many times over and generally don't really know which is the "right" way to go.

The second half, whilst you're giving four places to do in an order, the level progression is generally just a linear path from a center point outwards, generally to a big boss and dead end.

I did New Londo and got to the Abyss, which is a boss and a dead end.

Then the doing the Catacombs and Tomb of the Giants which I know is probably going to be a boss (Nito) and a dead end.

Same with Lost Izalith as I've done quite a lot of that too and presume there's that Witch boss at the end

It's still good, but it's now a lot more like other games in structure and a fairly straightforward "collect X amounts of this" to open the final boss. Like in Zelda where you always need to get parts of a pendant/mirror or from five or six dungeon bosses to open the final encounter.

Probably doesn't help that I am about 60 hours in and, having thoroughly explored the early game, now a little overlevelled. So the sense of danger and peril has diminished a bit.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Parksey** » Wed Feb 22, 2017 12:07 pm

I've got the DLC as it's the Prepare to Die edition. Haven't yet discovered how to reach it, or even know at what point it's reachable. When I was doing a mental check about what I have left to do, I forgot I even had the DLC.

It's currently like Bloodborne though, in that I died more on early bosses, and have generally beaten the more recent ones first or second time (beat O&S second or third, and would have done Four Kings first time had I not taken that bloody ring off).

It should mean that hopefully I'm at least ready for the DLC. I was overlevelled for Bloodborne and Maria and OoK were still difficult but never felt impossible.

Kalameet and Manus, strawberry floating hell they were bastards.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Mafro** » Wed Feb 22, 2017 1:09 pm

The way you access the DLC is really dumb and awkward:

Kill the hydra in Darkroot Basin then go past it to the far left of the area and there should be a crystal golem there (I think you have you exit the game to the main menu then load in again to get it appear for some daft reason) and you need to kill it to rescue Dusk and then answer yes to her question. Then later on at the start of the Duke's Archives there's a crystal golem that drops a pendant when you kill it. Once you have that you need to go back to the same area in Darkroot Basin where you killed the other golem and there's a portal thing there that transports you to the DLC area.

If you answered no to Dusks question then you're locked out of the DLC for that playthrough.

Brerlappin wrote:prepare to gooseberry fool yourself.

Thread title update request.

Ad7 wrote:Kalameet and Manus, strawberry floating hell they were bastards.

Kalameet is okay if you have the giant shoot him but Manus is tough. I love that fight though, going down into those dark underground caves and then summoning Sif. :wub:

YouTube · PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Jazzem** » Wed Feb 22, 2017 5:18 pm

Mafro wrote:The way you access the DLC is really dumb and awkward:

Kill the hydra in Darkroot Basin then go past it to the far left of the area and there should be a crystal golem there (I think you have you exit the game to the main menu then load in again to get it appear for some daft reason) and you need to kill it to rescue Dusk and then answer yes to her question. Then later on at the start of the Duke's Archives there's a crystal golem that drops a pendant when you kill it. Once you have that you need to go back to the same area in Darkroot Basin where you killed the other golem and there's a portal thing there that transports you to the DLC area.

If you answered no to Dusks question then you're locked out of the DLC for that playthrough.

So glad I knew about this in advance...as much as I love the lack of transparency in these games, that's one case where it was needlessly opaque.

Leads to a weird difficulty curve near the end as well, with the final boss being nowhere near as hard as the DLC ones. Thankfully not the case in 2 onwards, I've got the DLC to go back to in Sotfs sometime having finished the main game.

7256930752 · PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **7256930752** » Sun Mar 19, 2017 1:27 pm

I'm working my way through Blightown and have been reading some hints and tips online; people are suggesting that the Drake Sword is awful and that you should use a different weapon. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Drake Sword is good bordering on cheating if you get it very early as it's base stats are very good but because it doesn't scale with any stats meaning no matter how strong you get it will never do any more damage it quickly becomes obsolete.

I will always recommend the Black Knight's Sword if you can get it to drop, failing that the Claymore is decent and a lot of people round here swear by the Zweihander.

7256930752 · PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **7256930752** » Sun Mar 19, 2017 5:51 pm

Is it important to have a weapon that scales?

Hime wrote:Is it important to have a weapon that scales?

Generally speaking yes. The higher a stat associated with a weapon is the more damage you will do so in effect your weapons grow with you.

With a non scaling weapon like the Drake Sword no matter how high you raise your stats it will never do any more damage so as you progress and enemies get stronger you don't and quickly become ill equipped to take them on.

Zweihander.

That is all.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Parksey** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 3:22 am

I used the Black Knight Sword for about 80% of the game. I had to run a strength build, which sort of ran counter to how I played in Bloodborne, with plenty of fast hits and rapid getaways but it worked. I got through a helluva lot of boss fights purely by doing a fuckton of damage. If you only need to hit them six or seven times then you stand a good chance.

I actually beat Manus second time like this. I got so strawberry floating lucky three or four times, having only a sliver of health left and having just upgraded my vitality immediately before. But because of the BKS and high strength (not to mention vitality and endurance), I was always confident in boss fights that I would survive long enough to deal the damage needed to kill it. When you deal high damage and have good vitality, you generally only need to survive a couple of minutes.

Also with the hyper-aggressive bosses later in the game, I think Bloodborne does a good job of preparing you for that, so it wasn't as big a shock to the system.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Met** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 4:21 am

The thing with scaling is that at low levels it's nothing to write home about, you might only get +20 or something dependant on the weapon. But the more you pump into your stats and the better you make the weapon that number goes up. In some cases it's possible to get your bonus scaling damage higher than the weapon's base damage.

As for weapon suggestions, have you settled into a playstyle yet? If you're looking for slow strength weapons, the Zweihander you get in the graveyard by Firelink is a fantastic choice. If you want a faster dex weapon there's an Iato katana you can get at the start of Blighttown and an Uchigatana you can get from killing an NPC that quickly becomes useless, so is the one NPC I'd say is completely safe to kill. If you want to play extremely defensively with a spear/shield combo you could hit up the Winged Spear, also in the graveyard, or the Partizan in Darkroot.

7256930752 · PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **7256930752** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 6:41 am

I would have to do a fair bit of grinding to use the BNS unless there is a way I can reset. I've spread myself a bit with trying to upgrade 4 or 5 stats.

Met wrote:As for weapon suggestions, have you settled into a playstyle yet?

Get myself over leveled so that I can kill things in 2-4 hits with added pyromancy for good measure :shifty:

The danger of trying to be a jack-of-all-trades in Dark Souls is that you can end up spreading your stats a bit thin and having to grind a lot of souls just to keep up. For beginners I'd always recommend throwing the vast majority into Strength and just tanking the bosses as much as possible.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Met** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 2:25 pm

I agree with just focusing on one style. It's much better to pump 3 stats than 5 or 6. As for playstyles, I'd recommend a strength build with heavy armour and no shield, or a dex build with a fast roll and no shield, but if you'd rather ease into that then focusing on Dex with a medium shield is probably a good call. It's less punishing than a str build with the slow, open attacks and you can often keep your mid-roll. The only issue is that you could get into a habit of turtling too much and Dark Souls shines when you play more aggressively.

Either way I'd try and settle down. It's still possible to do a quality build which runs off both strength and dex, but they're far from the kings they were in Demon's Souls.

Also since we've neglected to talk about it, if you're looking for spells, Dex is a good side stat to level with Int and if you're rocking miracles then level Faith and Str since a lot of holy boss weapons have Str scaling too. But with those it's mainly just level it to the minimum required to use your weapons effectively.

Pyromancy doesn't really scale, so it's a great filler to a typical non-magic class.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **That** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 2:54 pm

I tend to make tanks in Dark Souls because rolly-polly builds are 2hard4me. You tend to get more leeway for mistakes with holding up a big shield, compared to rolling around. It sometimes feels like it's not as exciting, admittedly.

PostRe: Dark Souls: Prepare to cry by **Hexx** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 3:02 pm

Quick, Nimble, Sorc.

Shield on OffHand if needed. Otherwise evade and Staff/Sword combo

:wub:

Dark Souls: Prepare to cry

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