The Dark Souls Thread

[riley-o]

have you joined the gravelord covenant and gotten the gravelord sword ? do that

[spacehamster]

It really depends on your character build because you need something that scales well with your stats. Anything that does magic damage is good because practically all enemies are weak to it, and it goes through most shields. I have a +10 Magic Bastard Sword, which scales primarily with Intelligence, so all I have to do really is to jack up Int to boost my damage output, along with Vit and End. What kind of weapon you upgrade depends on your combat preferences - some people like lighter weapons where they can get a lot of swipes in before they run out of stamina, the heavier swords work better for me, but that's just personal preference.

Also, this has been said here a zillion times, but definitely invest in Pyromancies. They're really a bit overpowered, despite the casting delay that's supposed to balance that out.

[Spooky Apparition]

wait you can upgrade fireballs? wtf? i'm like 55 hours into this game and feel like i know nothing about it

which is actually kind of cool

[The Schwartz]

I've play 2 and 3/4 playthroughs over 200 hours and didn't even know Gwendolin and Gweneviere or whatever were even things until a few pages back

[spacehamster]

Umm, Gwynevere gave you the Lordvessel three times?

But the whole Dark Sun Gwyndolin thing is crazy obscure, yeah. And there's plenty of other shit like that, like what you have to do to get to the Painted World. It seems like they took the Yuria quest from Demon's Souls, made it twice as obscure and then put like five of them in this game. It's just insane. There's always little things that tip you off that there's something going on - I kept wondering why there was a bonfire in Nito's arena that I could warp to, for example, and of course it's because of the Gravelord covenant - but some of this stuff, seriously, I have no idea how people find these things.

[ungodlywarlock]

wait you can upgrade fireballs? wtf? i'm like 55 hours into this game and feel like i know nothing about it

which is actually kind of cool

Dude, once you level up the fire, nothing will stop you except your own timing of the cast times. Go to the pyromancer that should be at Firelink Shrine and he'll level up for you a good part of the way. Then after that you'll have to 'ascend' the flame at the old chick down by the tree in Blighttown.

It's damn expensive, though. Get to grinding!

As for me, I beat Seath the Scaleless last night and am not ready to walk in the door that rests behind the Lordvessel. Very excited!

[The Schwartz]

homing soulmass 4 life

[spacehamster]

the old chick down by the tree in Blighttown

Get the ascension done before you kill the Bed of Chaos, though, because that causes her to disappear.

[Spooky Apparition]

Dude, once you level up the fire, nothing will stop you except your own timing of the cast times. Go to the pyromancer that should be at Firelink Shrine and he'll level up for you a good part of the way. Then after that you'll have to 'ascend' the flame at the old chick down by the tree in Blighttown.

It's damn expensive, though. Get to grinding!

awesome, i'm going to do this next time i play. you do mean leveling up the flame itself at the firelink shrine, right? i maxed it out there, so i should be able to head to the chaos girl and do that soon.

quick question about the grind spot and cat covenant ring. does using the grind spot after joining the covenant and killing those guys cause them to disappear forever or something, thereby eliminating the grind spot? the strategy guide mentioned something about this but it was pretty vague. basically i'm wondering if i can remain in the covenant (and try to actually KILL someone who i invade for fuck's sake) and keep the grind spot working.

[riley-o]

no it just cancels your standing in the covenant and you can't rejoin. grinding remains forever

[spacehamster]

Apparently you can't heal as an invader now because all phantoms can't heal themselves? I haven't invaded anyone yet, but I had another invasion yesterday from a "Spirit of Vengeance" at the Kiln, likely either because of all the grinding I did in the forest or because I killed the two NPCs outside the Smough/Ornstein room in Dark Anor Londo about a bajillion times, and the guy obviously couldn't heal, kept turtling and waiting for a chance to hit me with his supercharged lightning sword that took away like 70% of my HP in one hit.

I keel'd 'im.

[riley-o]

yeah i don't think invaders could heal from the start, that's why it's so hard. there were a few fights where i was obviously winning but they gulped a couple estus and i just couldn't hang with someone who had 3x my life bar

[ungodlywarlock]

awesome, i'm going to do this next time i play. you do mean leveling up the flame itself at the firelink shrine, right? i maxed it out there, so i should be able to head to the chaos girl and do that soon.

No, not the bonfire.
After you killed the Capra Demon, you must have started to make your way down into the depths. Once in the depths (and near the meat butcher, I believe), there is a room with a guy stuck in a barrel. Hopefully you saved him already and didn't accidentally kill him. If you saved him, he should be back at Firelink Shrine just chillin' cross-legged on the ground near the bonfire. When you talk to him, he'll offer to sell you spells and also upgrade your hand-flame. Spend the dough to raise it up to like +15 and then after that it's maxed (as far as he is concerned). After that, you can go the to old chick in Blighttown and pump it up to Ascended Flame +5.

Each time you upgrade that handflame, it will make your pyro spells nastier. Pyro spells don't scale off of intelligence initially, so this is how you make the fire awesome.

[Spooky Apparition]

oh shit, yeah i meant upgrading the pyromancy flame itself, not the bonfire flame. since doad said fireball+5 i didn't know if that meant you could upgrade a fireball spell or something? but i have the pyromancy flame maxed out at firelink, so i'll ascend it next time i play

also, for invading, i think i went like 0 for 15 before giving up. i invaded a ton of magic characters who were using crazy spells i didn't even know existed and it was honestly pretty embarrassing.

[Spooky Apparition]

hey, now i know i need to do that shit before that chaos girl gets killed off, so it's all good.

also, your earlier post: i thought the lightning spear+5 made it fairly easy to get through the sen's fortress boss and most of anor lando, so it might not be worth going back to get that sword at this point. just make sure you find the merchant after the bonfire in sen's fortress to buy some titanite so you can upgrade it.

and as far as i know, you have to have a +10 normal weapon (like some type of curved sword for quelaag's soul, for example) to use a boss's soul and create a new weapon. then you can upgrade THOSE weapons using demon titanite... which usually leads to something devastating as hell.

[Spooky Apparition]

sorta interesting interview with hidetaka miyazaki, director of dark souls. http://ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1211926p1.html gets into some of the design philosophy behind the game and what not.

[spacehamster]

Semi-annoying NG+ discoveries:

-Only Quelaana can further upgrade an ascended Pyromancy Flame, so now I have to go down to Blighttown everytime I want to do that, and I don't have the Lordvessel to warp to Quelaag's Domain yet. Derrderr.

-Anastacia of Astora is the designated Firekeeper for the bonfire at the Firelink Shrine, so if you let Lautrec murder her, that bonfire becomes unusable. Derrderr.

Today's glorious victories:

-Got Gaping Dragon's tail off and keel'd 'im on the first try
-Quelaag is basically a joke if you have Crystal Ring Shield

[Friendly Goatus]

-Anastacia of Astora is the designated Firekeeper for the bonfire at the Firelink Shrine, so if you let Lautrec murder her, that bonfire becomes unusable. Derrderr.

You can revive her.

[spacehamster]

You can revive her.

Oh, so she just comes back and everything goes back to normal if you go after Lautrec? Nice. I'll do that today.

I'm pretty much back exactly where I was after 1.5 playthroughs in Demon's Souls here... everything is still new enough to be challenging, but the game is somehow actually more fun if you know where to go and what to do. This shit is so addictive, I swear.

[Friendly Goatus]

You also get Lautrecs awesome armor that way too

[spacehamster]

Thanks, got it. Of course my problem is that since I have the entire Elite Knight set at +9, pretty much all other armor is useless to me. Lautrec's seems to have the highest curse resistance, though, so I'll use it for Seath this time.

[ungodlywarlock]

Well, I beat it and have started NG+. Will probably take a little break from the game to finish up some freelance and then play Skyrim.
But damn, what an awesome game. The music that played in the last fight almost made me kinda sad to fight him.

[Comrade Slinky]

The music that played in the last fight almost made me kinda sad to fight him.

It sort of helped to calm me down during the fight.

[Spooky Apparition]

yeah man, i just went back into anor lando to enter the painted world and was still seriously impressed by how amazing it looks. and aside from it containing probably the most annoying part in the game so far (the two archers), it was pretty tolerable as far as difficulty goes. probably my favorite area in the game up to this point

[spacehamster]

I think yesterday I finally hit that point where I need to put this game down for a week or so before I get back to work on the platinum. I could actually go in about five different directions at the moment, but with every one of them I just don't feel like doing it, so I joined the forest covenant and, well, what Riley said. At one point I kept getting summoned to the same guy's game about three times in a row, and he was just standing around with the same White, waiting for people to invade so they could jump them. It's just ridiculously hard if you can't heal. I'll probably try again with the Darkmoon covenant (I still need nine, fucking NINE Souvenirs of Reprisal, dammit) - I'm thinking since you can get summoned anywhere in that covenant, at least you're not constantly running into people who are just waiting to get invaded.