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Dark Souls |OT5| Definitely better than the sequel
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
I have to admit I've not used the white soapstone once yet, nor have I been invaded by a human character. I've written and rated lots of signs with the orange stone. I really just want to experience the whole game solo for the first time, explore and learn it on my own without any help making it fast, easy, or spoiling it for me. With how awesome the monster and level design is, part of the fun (for me) is getting lost, finding new paths, and yes losing horribly to monsters I've not figured out yet. It's been challenging, and grueling. And I like that.
I'll do co-op and pvp and such on my second run through.
I admit though, it's cool as hell seeing messages from other players and seeing their shades running around while I play. Everytime I find a bloodstain I get giddy and can't wait to see how someone else died. It's a great way to incorporate multiplayer in a new way.
Wow that sounds awesome. Hope it works great. Fucking hate being invaded. Every single time I am completely overpowered, I have no idea how these people invade me and not someone else that can give them a fair fight. I just bend over and get it over with.
Pizza con salsiccia
Banned
Sheeeeeeeeeeit, Sen's fortress. I keep dying at almost every corner. Finally made it to the bonfire. Now I'm taking some time off before I turn crazay.
I still haven't found a bonfire in there. I even went back in after the next area to peek around. Also, is the shortcut someone mentioned the elevator with the spikes on the very top?
Yeah, the Bonfire in Sen's is in a real dickish location.
Deified Data
Banned
Cuz you're not hardcore if you need to summon help, in addition to an ever-growing list of things that make you not hardcore which include but are not limited to: using a shield, using magic, using poison arrows, using anything but your bare fists to solo the game. Do you want to be hardcore?
SeventhSon
Member
Yeah, what are you? Casul?
ihearthawthats
Banned
Darkmoon is much slower but can be much easier. Level range is way bigger so you somwtimes fight low level players. I just do Anor Londo. Totg wouldn't be so bad either, as I think people love killing Patches.
The worst is Dragon covenant. My 2nd main is full on dragon suit, I think I only had like 2 or 3 matches. Ended up having to farm drakes for scales.
Prolly a better idea to just do coop through white summons and 3v1 invaders.
Pizza con salsiccia
Banned
There's a shortcut to ??? in the fortress ?
Can someone enlighten me please ?
Can someone enlighten me please ?
that is not the short cut. the short cut in sens takes you almost right to the end
i have the lord vessel and finished the archives. When should i think about the dlc? i heard it was really easy to miss
Now's a fine time to do it.
DaciaJC
Gold Member
There's an enemy near the beginning of the Archives that drops an item that you need for the DLC. You might've already gotten it.
You go downstairs from the merchant up on the tower, and get the key. After that, you use the key on the cage hanging before the boss. That cage will bring you down to the first floor of the fortress, and then you can use it to go up and down.
I know many people here will berate me for this, but while I do like a challenge, I don't particularly have time to die over and over and over again when I could just level up a lot and blow through areas easier. I'm wondering if there is a detriment to power leveling other than just being overpowered a bit? I'm about level 50 right now and I haven't beaten the butterfly yet, but I'll go there soon. Doing STR/DEX/END/VIT with a Claymore +5.
HalfBakedProphet
Member
I'm trying to learn to play upside down with my feet, I'm hoping to get some internet cred
Deified Data
Banned
A lot of people are going to say that power leveling will ultimately hurt you more than it helps, as it's going to increase the amount of invasions you get while decreasing the number of co-op partners. That said, if you're not giving any thought to online there aren't really any downsides. It doesn't make the game all that much easier, so level away. On the plus side you should be able to use just about any weapon you choose to if you're not worried about keeping your SL low.
Arjen
Member
You'll miss out on co op because you'll be out of the level range. So it might even make things harder if you want to summon people for o and s if you're like SL 70
Pizza con salsiccia
Banned
Shit, I'm currently SL51... I should stop leveling then ?
Deified Data
Banned
Depends on what part of the game you're in. SL51 is perfectly fine for any point post-Lord Vessel.
but there would probably be at least a few people doing the same thing, you'd think. Plus if you're higher stats then maybe you wouldn't need to summon help? Seems like it's all relative.
Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
To the guys who are currently playing through Dark Souls for the first time (like me), are you planning to get Dark Souls 2 upon launch? Or are you going to wait for a few months while you complete Dark Souls and do some NG+ runs first?
I'm trying to decide if I should pre-order DS2 because on the one hand I feel like it will be fun to go through the game at the same time that everyone else is, but on the other hand I feel like once I start playing DS2 I won't really go back to DS1.
I'm trying to decide if I should pre-order DS2 because on the one hand I feel like it will be fun to go through the game at the same time that everyone else is, but on the other hand I feel like once I start playing DS2 I won't really go back to DS1.
I doubt I'll do NG+ - too many other games, and also a newborn in my house. But I will finish DS1 before buying DS2.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
So I was home yesterday due to weather and ended up playing Dark Souls a lot of the day. Worked my way through the Depths and got to the Gaping Dragon's room. Man this game can be beautiful at times. The dragon kicked my butt about a half dozen times until I worked out a strategy and finally took him down.
That of course opened up Blighttown, and wow did I have a hard time working my way down that area. Died a few dozen times to those club wielding big guys at the start, then once I got used to them I died a lot to those head chomping smaller guys. Eventually I figured out their patterns and began to make decent headway, but talk about a dangerous place to navigate. Fell to my death more than once, sometimes while trying to figure out how to get to some out of the way loot. Got to the bottom and finally found a use for all of those herbs I'd gotten from the Darkroot Garden. Had fun trudging around the bottom of Blighttown, but those damn flies sure are annoying. Went through so many arrows just keeping them off me...
Eventually I found my way to the molten spider queen's area. I totally gave up trying to kill the boulder throwing guys, gave it a lot of attempts but in the end I just ran around them. (I may go back later on and try to find a way to kill them consistently) Surprisingly I only died twice figuring out Quaelog, on the third attempt I beat her down handily.
That of course opened up Sen's Fortress. I don't know if I'm supposed to go there next or not but I decided to go check it out. Curiosity made me do it. And then I proceeded to die over and over again to the two Egyptian looking giants right at the start. They are brutal, and they gave me a lot of grief. I could get them both down but only after using up a few swigs of estus. And that didn't leave me a lot left to deal with the rest of the place. I could not get past the third guy standing on the narrow bridge with the swinging blades and fourth guy shooting magic at me. It was just too much.
So I went back to the drawing board with my character. Up until now I was wearing Stone Armor and weilding a Claymore +5 with a Black Knigh Shield. I was basically a slow hulking tank. So I spent an hour or so messing around with different armor and weapon combinations and testing them out on various bad guys in Undead Parish and Darkroot. In the end I discovered that I VERY much prefer mobility to armor. I'm now wearing a mix of Crimson Armor, Black Leather, rings are Havel's plus the stone ring, and wielding the Black Knight Shield plus a Divine Longsword +5. I look like a melee combat warlock from World of Warcraft, LOL. But I'm a fast, mobile, dodging maniac.
And suddenly Sen's Fortress doesn't seem so hard anymore.
I run in to close melee, circle around, take a few quick swipes and backwards roll out. My endurance regens so fast that the fights have become more about energy management and avoiding hits rather than surviving hits. I spent hours working my way through, learning where all of the monsters and traps are, how to safely navigate the fortress, and now I think it's my favorite area so far. I can beat the monsters pretty consistently now, all the way to the top, where I stopped last night ready to confront that damned boulder throwing giant. Haven't found a bonfire in the fortress yet but I'm sure there is one somewhere.
This game, this fucking game.... I now see why people complain about Skyrim's combat. After playing Dark Souls I'm not sure I can like it anymore either...
That of course opened up Blighttown, and wow did I have a hard time working my way down that area. Died a few dozen times to those club wielding big guys at the start, then once I got used to them I died a lot to those head chomping smaller guys. Eventually I figured out their patterns and began to make decent headway, but talk about a dangerous place to navigate. Fell to my death more than once, sometimes while trying to figure out how to get to some out of the way loot. Got to the bottom and finally found a use for all of those herbs I'd gotten from the Darkroot Garden. Had fun trudging around the bottom of Blighttown, but those damn flies sure are annoying. Went through so many arrows just keeping them off me...
Eventually I found my way to the molten spider queen's area. I totally gave up trying to kill the boulder throwing guys, gave it a lot of attempts but in the end I just ran around them. (I may go back later on and try to find a way to kill them consistently) Surprisingly I only died twice figuring out Quaelog, on the third attempt I beat her down handily.
That of course opened up Sen's Fortress. I don't know if I'm supposed to go there next or not but I decided to go check it out. Curiosity made me do it. And then I proceeded to die over and over again to the two Egyptian looking giants right at the start. They are brutal, and they gave me a lot of grief. I could get them both down but only after using up a few swigs of estus. And that didn't leave me a lot left to deal with the rest of the place. I could not get past the third guy standing on the narrow bridge with the swinging blades and fourth guy shooting magic at me. It was just too much.
So I went back to the drawing board with my character. Up until now I was wearing Stone Armor and weilding a Claymore +5 with a Black Knigh Shield. I was basically a slow hulking tank. So I spent an hour or so messing around with different armor and weapon combinations and testing them out on various bad guys in Undead Parish and Darkroot. In the end I discovered that I VERY much prefer mobility to armor. I'm now wearing a mix of Crimson Armor, Black Leather, rings are Havel's plus the stone ring, and wielding the Black Knight Shield plus a Divine Longsword +5. I look like a melee combat warlock from World of Warcraft, LOL. But I'm a fast, mobile, dodging maniac.
And suddenly Sen's Fortress doesn't seem so hard anymore.
I run in to close melee, circle around, take a few quick swipes and backwards roll out. My endurance regens so fast that the fights have become more about energy management and avoiding hits rather than surviving hits. I spent hours working my way through, learning where all of the monsters and traps are, how to safely navigate the fortress, and now I think it's my favorite area so far. I can beat the monsters pretty consistently now, all the way to the top, where I stopped last night ready to confront that damned boulder throwing giant. Haven't found a bonfire in the fortress yet but I'm sure there is one somewhere.
This game, this fucking game.... I now see why people complain about Skyrim's combat. After playing Dark Souls I'm not sure I can like it anymore either...
ihearthawthats
Banned
50 is good for Anor Londo. My current chara is lvl70 and I get summoned frequently in the post-Anor Londo areas.
50 is a good stopping point so you can still participate in pretty much any area, but 70/80 is fine if you're fine with mostly post-Anor Londo content. If you take it to 100, Anor Londo and some other low level areas can open up again for ng+ summons.
HalfBakedProphet
Member
I've been thinking about the same thing. I should be finished with DS by then, I think I'm jumping into DS2 at launch. I was several years late on DS and had some stuff spoiled before touching the game, so I want that experience of having everything be new with DS2
As a break from the anti-"hardcore" parade, it's clear that the encounters are designed to be done by a single player. For the most part summoning will simply make the fights easier (obviously especially true if the summoned phantom is an experienced player), and in some fights (O&S in particular) summoning fundamentally alters the experience. Don't know why people on this last page or so have been so oddly defensive about recommending that new players not summon so that they can experience a fight solo and figure it out for themselves their first time.
symphonask
Member
This has probably been asked a dozen times in this thread but,
when you save Rhea of Thorolund, she mentions that Patches trapped her and her companions in the tomb of giants. My question is it possible to kill Patches early on in the game and thus save her and her companions?
HalfBakedProphet
Member
I can see the argument for figuring out the boss for yourself the first time.
Summoning in should make things easier though, thats part of its purpose. Some of my most memorable moments have occured during co-op so far, so I guess I just don't see cooperation is a bad thing overall when it is so satisfing. The game is brutal and challenging and its not like co-op is easy mode (in relation to most other games, I mean). just getting to the boss is the biggest challenge.
Edit: I can see why people make fun of the uber-hardcore portion of the DS fan base. The pissing contest aspect some fans turn the game discussion into is straight ridiculous
I would like there to be a bonfire outside of each boss. That way you can actually focus on the fight instead of just being pissed your trek to the boss was all for nothing and you have to do it all over again. If that was the case, I wouldn't mind dying in boss fights much. It's just annoying to get all the way back to them each time you want to try again.
Red Liquorice
Member
You'd see MUCH more results from upgrading your weapon. SL50 with a +5 weapon? Invaders will have you for lunch. You've been power levelling the wrong thing.
Nothing wrong with levelling up - go for it, but upgrade your weapon as you go.
Most areas have shortcuts or quick routes to the boss and if not - when you know the enemy layout of an area, they can all be run through without engaging a single enemy.
I've tried to upgrade, but apparently I can't upgrade it anymore without items that I don't have. I also haven't been shown how to add any magic to my weapons either.
I know that a lot of times this running through can be done, but it's still tedious for no good reason.
Whether you want to dismiss it as "easy mode" or not, it's necessarily easier as you said. I've tried to get friends into this game because obviously I think it's a great game and I think they'll like it a lot if they give it a chance. However, one of the roadblocks is the game's undeserved reputation for having masochistic difficulty. People just get a mental block and want to give up, or they'll bang their heads against the wall (aka go to Catacombs first) because rather than realize that they probably shouldn't be in that area, they're figuring that the game's just THAT hard. I try to help out as much as possible without spoiling things.
Now, obviously, if they really wanted help they could just summon me. Co-op is great, it's a lot of fun. Problem here is if they summon me and we co-op, I'm going to be robbing them of that same great experience of figuring out the game and overcoming challenges that I had. Dark Souls won me over in the tutorial, with the way that you feel so defenseless and weak at first but manage to overcome what looked like an unbeatable enemy in the Asylum Demon. This cycle of helplessness and accomplishment basically continues through the whole game, but if I co-op with a friend the whole time I'm taking that away from them. If they're struggling on a boss that I know they can beat, letting myself be summoned and doing the boss for them allows them to progress in the game but it's a hollow victory. That's why I would recommend that new players go without summons their first time, and it's pretty much the same reason I would heavily advise against using a walkthrough. It's got nothing to do with bragging rights or anything like that.
Well, upgrading your weapon is going to help you far more than grinding up levels. Gear > stats in this game.
Just look up the upgrading process on wiki.
Uh, are you missing Large Titanite Shards or the Large Ember? Pretty sure you should have some large shards by now. If you missed the Large Ember it's in the Depths in a chest near the first butcher lady.
hmmm. i killed that butcher, and I would've checked a chest. Maybe I have that ember. I know I have the "Sack"
Full disclosure: Even though I like being summoned I don't like summoning. The double edged thing in play. If I play more most of it would be PvP anyway. Last time I did I had rolling backstabs down and was working on toggle escapes. Rolling backstabs reminded me of how much I hate modern controller design. A small change like two more bumper buttons and I don't have to crab the controller.
It all comes down to fun. If you are having fun then that's your playstyle.
If you really want to know the outcome: (check the wiki) spoiler removed.
A frequent theme when most people play the first time. Then players facing certain bosses try another armor found later in the game and that becomes popular as well. Let's see how it goes.
It all comes down to fun. If you are having fun then that's your playstyle.
I don't want to give it away completely. I'll just say, No. Don't do that.
If you really want to know the outcome: (check the wiki) spoiler removed.
Red Liquorice
Member
Chitown B - start reading the descriptions of the items you pick up, they actually tell you what to do with them. NPCs at Firelink etc also give you important information under the 'talk' option, and their dialogue changes as you play on. It's all in the game, it's just not in your face like 99% of other games out there 
It's not that people don't rate comments, the online system is fucked up.
It's sad because even now when I go back to Demon's Souls, I still see messages with over 500 ratings. I don't think I ever saw that much in Dark Souls.
Chitown B - start reading the descriptions of the items you pick up, they actually tell you what to do with them. NPCs at Firelink etc also give you important information under the 'talk' option, and their dialogue changes as you play on. It's all in the game, it's just not in your face like 99% of other games out there
thanks, good call
I have spoken a lot with the NPC's around the firelink - just recently realized that's where I can buy fireball magic.It's ok, no need to shelter him. It's a hard knock life and you (the player) are an asshole.
I saw a "need humanity" around the Berg fire, to 40+. I put one down and never got one rating.
side note: I haven't been down to New Londo Ruins almost at all because I'm scared of the immune ghosts. I don't want to have to curse myself :\
edit: I guess transient ones are no big deal.
symphonask
Member
Hmm, I checked the wiki on Rhea of Thorolund and it doesn't mention anything about
I've got a NG+ character that I might try that route with now.
what would become of her and her companions if you kill Patches early on in the game before they set out on their mission.
I've got a NG+ character that I might try that route with now.
Oh, ok.
Which wiki?
http://darksouls.wikidot.com/rhea-of-thorolund
If you kill Patches prior to rescuing Rhea in the Tomb of the Giants, the next place you will encounter her is in the Duke's Archives, as a hollow.
RabidTanooki
Member
symphonask
Member
Interesting, thanks.