The Dark Souls Thread

[spacehamster]

So I finally found that spell to light up the Tomb of the Giants.

It's been a pain in the ass getting back there each time I die, but I shall conquer it tonight.

Stupid new job getting in the way of Dark Souls...

I was wondering why you hadn't been posting here... you still planning on platinuming every version of this game?

Incidentially, I'm in the Tomb of the Giants too, and Riley was right - it would be a nightmare without Cast Light. The Skull Lantern is as good as useless - I need a shield to fight these giant skeletons, and I need to see what they're doing.

I actually made it to Gravelord Nito just now, but I got assraped. The good news is, Pinwheel was a total pushover. But that'll have to do for tonight.

[spacehamster]

So where in the Firelink Shrine is Laurentius of the Great Swamp supposed to be after I freed him? I can't find the guy.

Also, fuck Gravelord Nito. Fucking fuck the big fucker. Argh.

[spacehamster]

No, I found him. Five minutes after I posted this. Facepalm.

[ungodlywarlock]

Still very pissed off that I have this new character on this reject secondary profile, but I've shaken off the hate a bit.
I'm now seeing why everyone plays pyromancer to start. At first, I was having some troubles (for example, I one-shot the Capra demon on my first character, but even knowing the strat I still got my ass beat repeatedly on this one with the lack of armor and spells).

But after getting past that point and upgrading my pyro to like +12 or so it's like a cakewalk. Regular enemies that I kinda sorta struggled with are like 1-2 blasts of Combustion takes most things down.

Awesome.

[The Schwartz]

Also, fuck Gravelord Nito. Fucking fuck the big fucker. Argh.

oh hell naw

[spacehamster]

Also, fuck Gravelord Nito. Fucking fuck the big fucker. Argh.

oh hell naw

Are you saying you enjoyed that one? It's driving me insane. I actually went back to make myself a holy weapon because apparently that stops the fucking skeletons from respawning, but I'm still getting slaughtered. One thing I've noticed with this game is that I don't do very well if I have to keep track of too many moving parts in combat. Fighting those skeletons (my initial approach was to get rid of all of them, then attack Nito) that are coming from all sides would be hard enough in itself, but I also have to pay attention to where Nito is, ideally keeping him out of range and listen for the sound that comes before the spikes out of the ground AND then time my dodge roll exactly right so I don't get one of those shoved up my ass. It's just everything I suck at rolled into one nice neat package. I've actually gone back to the Demon Ruins now, and I'm doing a lot better there. Magic Bastard Sword +8 makes short work of those fucking Capra Demons, and it feels good.

[riley-o]

did you upgrade your powerglove to cheat levels ?

here's tips i will spoiler in case you want to beat him yourself:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

tactics:
-as soon as you land in the fight area chug an estus before any skeletors get to you
-stay at the entrance and kill the skeletons with a divine weapon if you want, or what i did was just kill them with a strong weapon because it was fast
-if you get hit by the spike, estus but try to just roll around as much as possible and it should miss you
-if you stay at the entrance neato should only launch one or maybe two spikes before he shows up, and if you keep him on the screen and in reasonable distance i don't think he launches any more spikes ? not confirmed but he didn't with me anyway
-try to keep your fight with neato to the one corridor to the right of where you dropped in so you don't trigger more and bigger skeletons

the actual fight with neato:
-if you didn't kill the skeletons with a divine weapon and they rebirthed, neato will one-hit kill them when he attacks. they don't stay dead now either but they don't get much of an opportunity to attack you with neato attacking
-try to stay just inside the reach of his sword and when he swings it, roll. this sounds like something you're not great at and i apologize but it's pretty easy once you get the timing of it
-after he misses you, chuck your most powerful fire magic at him

repeat a couple of times and then try to run/roll behind him, because he will try to back you up until you trigger the other bigger skeletons. don't be shy about using estuses, his attacks are slow and if you dodge one and need a swig, do it right after you dodge and you should have time to dodge again for his next attack.

[The Schwartz]

or just keep running in circles as the skeletons chase you and stab Nito each time you run by

[riley-o]

haha really ? man they made some of the boss fights a little too in this

[The Schwartz]

yea its pretty awesome, you can't get through it without yakety sax playing

[spacehamster]

did you upgrade your powerglove to cheat levels ?

+8, I think, and it's obviously not high enough yet, Chaos Fireball does maybe 5% damage.

Ah whatever. I went back to the Demon Ruins and keeled the Firesage instead, so now I've got that shortcut taken care of. Also killed all the Taurus Demons (no lame Poison arrow pussy strategy either) and got the Chaos Flame ember. Now I'm at the Centipede Demon. I'll probably do him and then upgrade the Pyromancy Flame some more before I go back down to Nito.

BTW, lots of bossfights in Demon's Souls had lamebot strategies if you knew how too, mostly "stand in corner, shoot arrows."

[The Schwartz]

just muffed up my L1 trigger from shielding for 200 hours

[doomeddisciple]

I have had to go away and do a fair bit of work this week so I have only incrementally made it up to the Dragon Slayer/Executioner fight.

My Chaos fireball takes Dragon dude down in about 3 hits and executioner then kicks my butt with the electric hammer. I've only had 4 cracks at them, I'm sure I will get through.

I intend to go down to the great hollow and do the second hyrdra next so I can get the light spell.

[Spooky Apparition]

Killed Quelaag and the Iron Golem last night. Quelaag was an easy one-shot, but I was sort of shocked how much trouble I was having with that fucking golem. He was easy, but I was having a really hard ass time paying attention to my walking space and I kept getting knocked off the edge or (full disclosure) kept falling off myself.

ARGH!

But all worth it, because Anor Londo is amazing looking.

tonight the iron golem killed me 11 times in a row the last time i had him down to about 1/20th of his health and i rolled off the edge. then i caved and summoned someone to help me and beat him in about 20 seconds. i'm not proud of myself, but goddamn anor londo is cool. that helped me forget my shame.

also, i don't get how anor londo has such a smooth frame rate compared to something like blighttown. it seems waaay more complex and the game's performance is almost perfect. weird.

[spacehamster]

And how do i get more than 12 shots per Bonfire and or refil that shit on the fly?

More than 12? You should be able to go to 10 at a kindled bonfire at the beginning. If you have 12, you got two bonus ones from standing close to a bonfire when another player lit it in their game. To get more than 10:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

You have to kill Pinwheel in the Catacombs (easy boss, but tough level with no unlockable shortcuts that I'm aware of) to acquire the rite of kindling. This lets you kindle the bonfires more than once, adding 5 Estus each time.

Have to agree with everybody about Anor Londo, it's fucking amazing looking, although I've had some framerate issues there as well. Nowhere near as bad as Blighttown, though.

So anyway, yesterday I decided Gravelord Nito can go fuck himself for the time being and went back to hell, I mean the Demon Ruins. For some reason I managed to kill the Centipede Demon on my own after about five tries, but needed help for the Demon Firesage. Looking back, it seems like Centipede Demon was the much harder boss, but, well, yeah. Summoned some guy whose Int was jacked up so high that he literally killed him with two or three casts of whatever type of Soul Arrow he was using. I'm about level 70, I think that means he couldn't have been higher than 80 - dude must've just poured everything into Int.

Then I decided to go and get me one of them Crystal Ring Shields. Word to the wise: the first modification option with the word "Crystal" in it that you see in the menu at the Giant Blacksmith is NOT what you're looking for... and you can't revert a Crystal shield to +10, meaning if you fuck this up because it's 1 am and you're half asleep, you have to grind about another 40,000 souls to pay for the Titanite to upgrade another shield to +10. Derp derp derp. I can see why the Wiki recommends it for just about every bossfight, though. It's ranged and apparently the damage is double whatever the damage output of your right-hand weapon is, which means it's currently displaying just something over 1000 if I use it against the Undead Soldiers in the Firelink Shrine. Too slow to really be viable against enemies that move around a lot, but for the big, slow and fat variety it should work extremely well.

[spacehamster]

Oh, also, Iron Golem melee strategy:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Lure him to the walkway where you come in to the arena. Stand between his feet and attack his legs. Don't target him, it just makes the camera whip around, disorienting you and causing you to fall off. If you do enough damage in quick succession, you can stagger him and he'll actually fall off and die. I'm not 100% sure what caused him to fall off, but that's what I did.

[riley-o]

pretty sure doad was talking about how to get more spells at the bonfire or how to refill spells away from the bonfire

which afaik is not possible

[spacehamster]

pretty sure doad was talking about how to get more spells at the bonfire or how to refill spells away from the bonfire

which afaik is not possible

Oh. Hence the 12. Derrderr.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the number of casts stacks if you have multiple copies of the same spell.

[spacehamster]

endless fucking mosquitoes

I don't know if I've said this yet, but if I have one nitpick that really pisses me off, it's this. Infitely respawning enemies? Really?

There's a few other things to do with enemy types and behavior, but I'll finish the game first. Three bosses to go until endgame. I'm thinking powerbaming this weekend. Although I'm not sure if I shouldn't try to get at least some of the upgrade trophies before I start NG+ where it's probably going to be harder to get around and farm.

[spacehamster]

So the big thing with Gravelord Nito for me was realizing that he stops doing his unblockable assrape spike move if you get close to him. Ultimately I just needed to clear out a few of he skeletons, then circle around him at mid-range and hit him with the Crystal Ring Shield.

I also finally drained New Londo today. Literally on my last Transient Curse, and when that ran out, of course it turned out that there was one last ghost I hadn't killed yet, so that one chased me all over the map while I was looking for that fucking lever. But I made it.

Oh, also, I was attacked by an NPC just before the first of the narrow bridges in New Londo. Looked like one of those things where something you do causes an NPC to turn hollow and hostile, but I didn't recognize him and so far I don't notice anyone missing. Nothing on the Wiki about this either.

[ungodlywarlock]

endless fucking mosquitoes

I don't know if I've said this yet, but if I have one nitpick that really pisses me off, it's this. Infitely respawning enemies? Really?

There's a few other things to do with enemy types and behavior, but I'll finish the game first. Three bosses to go until endgame. I'm thinking powerbaming this weekend. Although I'm not sure if I shouldn't try to get at least some of the upgrade trophies before I start NG+ where it's probably going to be harder to get around and farm.

It's especially frustrating because people like to drop their little dragon remains on the ground down near that bonfire. So if you want some pvp, it's pretty much the worst place to do it, because they always train the damn mosquitoes to you. Of course, they have also usually slogged through swamp and are poisoned as well, so they are at a disadvantage, but still.

[doomeddisciple]

I think after being blessed by dumb luck in the Nito fight - I found myself cornered by him with some staligmites stopping his swings from damaging me in a glitch and his big ass blocking the skeletons from gangbanging me - 4 chaos and 4 great fireballs = no nito.

Then the giant lava centipede thing I hammered with Soul Spearsreally easily.

Then I forgot I hadn't done the 4 kings yet.

Holy kickin' my ass they suck.

[doomeddisciple]

I have ascended to dark souls manhood and just linked the flame. I think my balls just dropped.

[The Schwartz]

I'M A SHOOTING STAR LEAPING THROUGH THE SKY LIKE A TIGER DEFYING THE LAWS OF GRAVITY

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

DON'T

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

STOP

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

ME

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

NOW

just beat this again with Queen


Sir Schwartz and Lady Schwartzevere rule this kingdom


Uncharted 3 tomorrow and more not playing Batman

[doomeddisciple]

Did you beat it again with a different character or on a NG+?