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Psychotron

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,683
Just beat Dark Souls 2! So NOW I can truthfully say I've beaten all Dark Souls games. Last boss was insulting with that curse shit. I actually liked the game though.
 
Oct 28, 2017
2,216
Brazil
On the second half of the game: I'm on the team that believes it doesn't live up to the first half, but I'd like to explain why as well.

It's not because the first areas connect to each other and make a cohesive, "believable" world, but because their level design is much more refined overall. Undead Burg, Blighttown, Sen's Fortress, The Catacombs, The Depths, and even Darkroot Forest/Basin and Northern Undead Asylum all loop into themselves in a way that makes players feel some sort of relief and familiarity when they are walking through an unexplored corridor only to find a room they already cleared. It's like going down the stairs on the bridge with the red drake and discovering a ladder you can kick down to the Undead Burg bonfire, or activating the elevator in the Undead Parish and finding yourself back in Firelink Shrine. This sort of design is pretty much lost in the second half, except for New Londo Ruins, Tomb of the Giants (which are areas that you can explore before even sounding the bells) and Painted World of Ariamis (which is optional). Hell, I'd even go as far as saying that The Great Hollow, another optional area that most player might not even know of when they finish the game, has a better design than most of the second half. But hey, I think it's time to focus on the areas I think are not as good.

Anor Londo: A bunch of straight corridors with almost no alternative paths or interconnectedness. Sure, there's a shortcut and some genuinely good sections such as crossing the beams in the painting room and running past the archers, but you can feel that the quality of the level design has decreased from previously explored areas.
The Duke's Archives: It's essentially two bigger rooms with multiple levels and staircases you can turn, a linear prison tower, a handful little rooms and a courtyard. No shortcuts, barely anything to encourage exploration.
Crystal Cave: A few narrow walkways. Some visible, some not. Moonlight Butterfly gets reused three times here. A wider area near the end with the crab enemies we will also see in Ash Lake, and the boss arena.
Demon Ruins: A joke of a boss followed by a wide but barren area that features environmental hazards and recycles the shit out of Taurus Demon and Capra Demon, features two new enemies but then recycles the Asylum Demon for the second time. There are some items hidden here and there, and you can find an elevator that takes you back to Quelaag's Domain, which is nice, or go down the stairs and find the actual boss of the area. If you ranked up enough with Chaos Servant covenant, you can unlock a shortcut to the next area, which is also nice. Oh, and here you can notice textures repeating so much that walls look like a pattern.
Lost Izalith: Oh, man. I don't think there's anything capable of redeeming this area, not even the barely hidden items. More enemies get recycled, more rushed texture work, and this area's boss is something that has to be experienced since no words can really make justice to how bad it is.

None of these areas have the intricacy of the game's first half, they're all very linear and feature little to no alternate paths or optional rooms. I won't comment on Ash Lake because it would be unfair to judge a linear optional area on the same terms as mandatory ones. I also don't think that it's bad that Tomb, the Abyss, Lost Izalith and Crystal Cave are dead ends because that adds a sense of finality to them.
I prefer it. I grow tired of bosses getting a second phase.
I don't mind it when second and third phases feel fair, just adding another layer of complexity and some new moves or mechanics. What annoys me to no end is when they enter bullshit mode, spamming attacks that hit like a truck and barely have any recovery time, bosses healing or summoning adds/clones that hit as hard as they do.
 

AbbaZabba

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
628
Good god... I must have had favorable circumstances when I played originally, because I do not recall this level of pain with the Anor Londo archers. It doesn't help that I'm not optimized for the run up to them so it's not an easy slog back and forth. On my last humanity trying to get summoned for practice. If I dot get it soon I'm either gonna a) go to Painted World (wanted to save it though), or b) hopefully find some humanity and summon a full squad lol.

Edit: welp, invader helped relieve me of that humanity lol.
 
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Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,401
Re: the Bloodborne/Dark Souls DLC connection; didn't development for Bloodborne start at the same time they were working on the Artorias DLC? I could have sworn I read something about that a while ago.

Man, Power Within is so broken. I love it.

It's like the Beast Blood Pellet but without its drawbacks
Eh, the HP drain is a decent drawback I think.

Yes, chester is from Carim
Source?

Man some players are ungodly strong somehow. I was like lvl 29 fighting Quelaag, summoned some help for fun, and homie one-shotted her. I didn't even have time to run up and take a swing.
One-shot Quelaag? The hell? At this level, only thing I could think of is maybe dark magic... but even so, one-shotting her entire HP bar seems unlikely. If you're on PC I'd suspect a hacker.
 

SilentMike03

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,091
Yeah, I understand if the boss has been giving you trouble and you just want to move on with the game, but on your first try?

Specially people who clearly have top of the line gear that you can only really get if you use guides and wikis. Like, you took the time to make a Giantdad but can't be bothered to try Artorias or Four Kings solo even once?

But on the other hand it provides a fresh supply of summoning for Sunbros like me who want to engage in jolly cooperation. Nothing like 500k souls to splurge on miracles, sorceries and twinkling titanite.
This is me. The thing is, I did all this stuff when the game first came out. I've got really good gear and I could solo these bosses easily, but if people want to put their signs down, I'll call'em in. I've got nothing to prove.

I did have a really good time helping people with Kalameet. There was one run I was particularly proud of: I killed the crystal lizard for the host that spawns in the boss arena, cut off Kalameet's tail, and we wrecked Kalameet pretty handily. I felt really good about it.
 

Dylan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,260
What's a good build for me, if I want to use daggars but also I want to use the lightning spear sunbro magic thing? Should I just build faith and agility and keep all light gear?
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,931
So I'm destroying these 4 goons in the forest with my great scythe...7000 souls in less than 2 minutes. Is there anywhere better to farm than this or should I keep going until I am extremely high leveled? Currently level 53
 

tastybread

Member
Oct 27, 2017
320
So I'm destroying these 4 goons in the forest with my great scythe...7000 souls in less than 2 minutes. Is there anywhere better to farm than this or should I keep going until I am extremely high leveled? Currently level 53
Have you been struggling with something to feel the need to over level? If you're struggling you could just coop some things. If you're doing this for something else then ignore me :p

I'm around lvl 80 without much to do before i go to NG+ and even then I feel things are a bit too easy now.
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,931
No I'm not struggling but ive read you can lose this farming spot by joining a covenant? I'd rather massively overlevel to make the game a breeze before moving on versus lose the farming spot
 
Oct 27, 2017
2,073
So I'm destroying these 4 goons in the forest with my great scythe...7000 souls in less than 2 minutes. Is there anywhere better to farm than this or should I keep going until I am extremely high leveled? Currently level 53
Depends on how far through the game you are. There's a spot in the Painted World of Ariamis that can net you 20k every 30 seconds with Firestorm/Fire Tempest.
 

Van Bur3n

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
26,089
It's a maxed out Smough's Hammer.

Should definitely be finding me. I don't know. The struggle for me comes with attempting to coop. Sometimes it just takes forever. PVP for me is instantaneous.

No I'm not struggling but ive read you can lose this farming spot by joining a covenant? I'd rather massively overlevel to make the game a breeze before moving on versus lose the farming spot

You can always farm it any time. But doing so while in the covenant will get you booted out of the covenant.
 

tastybread

Member
Oct 27, 2017
320
No I'm not struggling but ive read you can lose this farming spot by joining a covenant? I'd rather massively overlevel to make the game a breeze before moving on versus lose the farming spot
As far as i'm aware you can only betray the forest hunters if you kill Alvina (the cat in the window) - But as long as Oswald is alive to absolve your sins, you're fine. Same with attacking any other covenant leader by accident or otherwise.
 

AbbaZabba

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
628
Here's a good one - got frustrated in Anor Londo, decided to leave and level up a bit. Slog it back to Sens (no enemies, just a long walk). Take the shortcut and for some reason have a devil of a time with the lizard on the bridge. Finish him, okay it's smooth sailing, dash past the two lizards at the entrance, sprint to the bonfire - 3 arrows in the back as I leap out the front door. All the way back to the bottom of the stairs bonfire in Anor Londo lol.
 

jotun?

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,509
After beating the game can I go back and do other stuff, or is NG+ the only option? Is there any point of no return prior to the actual end?
 
Oct 27, 2017
7,409
One-shot Quelaag? The hell? At this level, only thing I could think of is maybe dark magic... but even so, one-shotting her entire HP bar seems unlikely. If you're on PC I'd suspect a hacker.

I'm on PS4! Hence my shock. Legit the only moment I've had with the remaster where I had to step back and be like "how the fuck...".

Most of my summons have been useless kooks or around my level damage output-wise. This was a huge and bizarre surprise. Glad that player didn't invade.

edit: unrelated but I thought you'd appreciate, just found out At the Gates has a new album out! Pleasant surprise.
 

Bakercat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,154
'merica
As far as i'm aware you can only betray the forest hunters if you kill Alvina (the cat in the window) - But as long as Oswald is alive to absolve your sins, you're fine. Same with attacking any other covenant leader by accident or otherwise.

This is correct, I left the forest covanent and got my sins absolved. Had to go back to the covenant to get the ninja flip ring and the cat let me back in. However, I'm not sure about killing Shiva and his ninja guard.

I really wanted that ninja flip while using the zweihander...
 

ClearMetal

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,328
the Netherlands
Rusted Iron Ring and both types of Purple Mosses and Blightown is not bad at all. Spider Shield helps too.
Yeah once you have those the swamp part is very doable. I mean, you still have to deal with those boulderbarians. But the constant danger of poison seems intimidating at first, but if you make sure to have decent resistance, it shouldn't do much damage.

I think the biggest danger in Blighttown (and perhaps Dark Souls in general) is panicking. The constant hissing of poison damage sounds intimidating, but if you keep a clear head you'll see it's really not that bad. You could even get yoursel get poisoned with no enemies around just to see the damage it does and work out for yourself how and when you should deal with it. Instead of stuffing antidotes in your mouth the moment you get poisoned. Do that and you'll quickly run out of purple moss.

Another tip, Firewithin: make sure you have three humanity, either in your inventory or as 'soft', meaning on the counter in the top left corner. One to reverse hollowing and the other two to kindle both bonfires in Blighttown. Having five extra Estus flasks should make the level a bit less imposing. And since the swamp area is great area to farm titanite shards, those five extra flasks mean you don't have to worry about the poison so much when you go about and kill monsters.
 
Oct 27, 2017
2,073
I'm on PS4! Hence my shock. Legit the only moment I've had with the remaster where I had to step back and be like "how the fuck...".

Most of my summons have been useless kooks or around my level damage output-wise. This was a huge and bizarre surprise. Glad that player didn't invade.

edit: unrelated but I thought you'd appreciate, just found out At the Gates has a new album out! Pleasant surprise.
Could have been a twink. You can output some pretty ridiculous damage at low levels with non-stat dependent weapons such as the Dragon King Greataxe coupled with Power Within.
 

Deleted member 16908

Oct 27, 2017
9,377
ymfah has tons of great YouTube guides like that. He even did one for Giantdad:

 

AbbaZabba

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
628
Damn! Farming at the top of Sens (not getting many summons...), got summoned by a normal dude who I can actually help, took him over to kill Ricard, continue on, and blow it by dying to a stupid Knight. Sorry bro.
 

Morrigan

Spear of the Metal Church
Member
Oct 24, 2017
34,401
I found this really well edited SL1 guide on YT. Pretty funny. Spoilers of course.


Had a few good laughs. Choice of music was good too. Good video!

Laughed my ass off when he kept dying to Manus and then did the crossbow cheese LOL. Glad he ended up beating him legit. I never got enough casts to make the pyro strat work (I think I screwed myself by keeping RoFaP, since I couldn't have the attunement AND bellowing dragoncrest rings at once and never had the heart to break it... really should have since you get a potential extra one from Painted World anyway), and meleeing him with lightning reinforced club was too hard, so I ended up kiting him with a Light Crossbow +15... after dying 50 times. lol.

Still, what a monster, murdering the giant blacksmith like that! Plus he did the extra legwork for that twinkling titanite since he killed his main source. He could have used a lightning reinforced club as melee backup instead, but I guess he didn't want to try and get all those chunks? IDK. I didn't "speed run" my SL1 run back in the day, I took my time and did the whole game, no skips or anything, so I played it fairly differently and I didn't use any OP/cheese method. But it's nice to see how broken the game can be. Nearly OHKOing Artorias, dear Satan... xD
 

TinTuba47

Member
Nov 14, 2017
3,813
Do crossbows have any advantage over standard bow and arrow?

I know you can't free aim with crossbows, what other differences are there? Anybody use crossbows?
 

Arozay

Member
Oct 29, 2017
326
I haven't touched any sort of magic during my play-through so far. The system wasn't explained early on and now I feel it's too late.
 
Oct 27, 2017
2,073
I haven't touched any sort of magic during my play-through so far. The system wasn't explained early on and now I feel it's too late.
Never too late to delve into pyromancies. They require no stat investment whatsoever.

Their power is determined by the magical adjustment of your Pyromancy Flame which you can upgrade with souls.