The Dark Souls Thread

[spacehamster]

hamper i think schwartzkrieg was simply saying that even adjusting for inflation you're still not done the game yet

Don't make me bring up my Demon's Souls platinum. Haw haw.

What I'm really wondering about is whether doing Blighttown backwards has made things harder than they needed to be. One big reason why I'm not much of a magic user atm is because I just haven't really unlocked any of the good spells yet.

[spacehamster]

Great Chaos Fireball acquired. What an awesome spell this is. Now I'll take out Sif, then level up my attunement so I can take Cast Light with me as well and finally go to the Depths. Yep.

[guardianoftheblind]

haven't been playing this as much lately because of Forza, but i'm having a doozy of a time at Sens Fortress

[spacehamster]

I think Sif has been my favorite bossfight so far. Finally a big one where the strategy isn't "run up close, hold up shield, circle around back, spam." And it's pretty cool how he sort of starts limping towards the end.

[fallbacktostone]

that shit made me sad when he started limping

[copstache]

Yeah me too. He's probably my favorite boss too

[spacehamster]

So, today's casualty list: Sif, Gaping Dragon, Iron Golem and... Solaire.

Apparently I missed a ton of shit in Sen's Fortress though, I guess I'll have to go back. Don't really want to, though. Ergh. This was a classic case of "die a million times until you've memorized every square inch of the fucking place." Iron Golem was pretty tough too, but somehow I eventually...

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

...got him to fall off the bridge. Apparently you can stagger him if you hit him enough times quickly standing between his feet. I'd died like ten times at this point, so imagine the look on my face when he suddenly fell off the same fucking tower I'd fallen off every time.

Also, add

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

walking down the stairs to Anor Londo for the first time

to my list of all-time favorite gaming moments.

This game is fucking amazing, seriously. I was ready to nit-pick the hell out of it because I love Demon's Souls so much, but it's just too damn good.

[riley-o]

This game is fucking amazing, seriously. I was ready to nit-pick the hell out of it but it's just too damn good.

i've put it back on the shelf for the time being so i don't overkill it, but it's been purely an act of love so i can come back to it and play it again down the road. most games i'll platinum as quick as possible (if i'm going to bother platinuming them) but this one deserves better than that

[spacehamster]

I'll probably have to platinum it just to kinda-sorta cure myself of the addiction, same as with Demon's Souls.

By the way, who was it that said you need Cast Light for the Depths? WTH? Totally not necessary. Of course I also had a bit too easy of a time because I'm totally overpowered. Well, until the Gaping Dragon chewed me up in his giant tooth-gina, that is.

[riley-o]

i didn't say you HAD to cast light, i said it was a nightmare without it

[spacehamster]

i didn't say you HAD to cast light, i said it was a nightmare without it

Seriously, your brightness setting must be off or something. I set mine according to the instructions at the beginning, and I can see fine in the Depths. And they did have areas that were intentionally too dark so that you couldn't navigate them in Demon's Souls (the swamp in Latria 2), so that's what I expected. I dunno. Weird.

[riley-o]

oh der dude you misread or misremember, we were talking about in the tombs after you kill pinwheel

[Friendly Goatus]

I upgraded my pyromancy flame to +15, forgetting that I only need it to be +10 to ascend it through Quelaags sister

Oh well, at least I have one more reason to focus on another early level character that I'm making into a pure all-around magic/pyro user, plus a few miracles using that talisman that scales using intelligence instead of faith.

[Comrade Slinky]

welp, you can't wear duplicate rings in ng+, and it seems snuggly the crow won't take any of the items it took during my first play through.

I'm not sure how From Software sleeps at night.

[spacehamster]

oh der dude you misread or misremember, we were talking about in the tombs after you kill pinwheel

Oh, okay. Yeah, I actually would've been surprised if there was no dark level. Plus, what would be the point of having the cast light spell in the game?

BTW, do any of my fellow Demon's Souls veterans get the impression that the stat scaling for spells and weapons has somehow been tweaked so that it's more important now to have a focused build? I don't really have the numbers to back this up, but it kind of seems that way to me.

EDIT in other news, those two archers in Anor Londo (I'm guessing everyone knows which ones) can go fuck themselves. I think I'm just gonna go back to that merchant in Sen's Fortress so I can snipe these fuckers. I just spent like an hour at Anor Londo with no progress. And apprently the bonfire's right behind them.

[Comrade Slinky]

NG+ Quelaag gave me a real run for my money today. Ended up killing it only as I lay dying in lava. Hardest encounter so far.

[spacehamster]

Anyhow. killed some drakes and that undead dragon ass. Guess its time to go to Blighttown? I popped in there for the Ruins key but ran right back out.

Blighttown isn't so bad. Just bring plenty of purple moss and blooming purple moss, and the thief's set if you have it. There's also an outfit fairly early at the top that you can get that has even better poison resistance.

EDIT bro-tip: if you're accessing Blighttown from the Valley of Drakes (sounds like you are), you can actually skip 70% of it and just climb down and head straight to the bossfight. There's lots of loot, though.

Me, I just beat Smough and Ornstein, and holy shit, I don't mind admitting I had help. And even with help it was actually a pretty slow and tactical affair, not like your usual co-op boss battle where you just trap him in the middle and wail away at him. Goddamn, this was hard.

EDIT: Nevermind.

[Comrade Slinky]

I dunno what the hell it is but twice in sen's my character sprouted these black crystals for a few seconds. I have no idea why or what they did but I nearly had a heart attack.

[spacehamster]

I'm there now too, haven't seen that happen yet. Weird. I think these sorts of things are mostly covenant-related?

Speaking of Sen's Archive, or more specifically the prison section, seriously, does this goddamn game ever run out of awesome locales? This shit is amazing.

[spacehamster]

oh and ham man. Thanks for the protip about Blighttown. I might just do that. I went around the other way and now i think ill try from the back.

Meanwhile, I spent probably about 40 minutes today trying to backtrack from Seath the Scaleless across these fucking invisible walkways with my 40'000 souls until I finally ran out of, uh, whatever the Augites of Guidance are called this time again and fell to my death, only to remember ten minutes later that I still have not one, but two rings of sacrifice. D'oh.

Also, while I loved the Archives prison, the whole section is a gigantic pain in the ass to get through. And then it's end-capped by what I'm pretty sure was the easiest bossfight so far. Circle strafe, shoot arrows. Whoopee.

[riley-o]

you DO know about bonfire warping, yeah ?

and that there's a bonfire in the lair after each of these bosses ?

[spacehamster]

you DO know about bonfire warping, yeah ?

and that there's a bonfire in the lair after each of these bosses ?

WHAT THE FUCK I DON'T EVEN.

I tried the bonfire in Seath's lair, but it didn't immediately respond, and I could've fucking SWORN I read something about that one not working on the Wiki, so I figured I was stuck. And then after the first time I fell off one of the invisible walkways, I spawned back at the bonfire in the Archives, obviously.

The problem being that at least with the path to Seath that I found, there's one spot where you drop down, so you can't backtrack that way but instead have to go through a little tunnel (at least that had two Crystal Lizards in it, and I got some Twinkling Titanite out of the ordeal) and then across a zig-zagging invisible walkway that's just fucking impossible to navigate even though I marked all the corners with messages.

Arrgh fuck agh.

[Spooky Apparition]

i think i did the darkroot basin/garden area later than most of you guys, which may explain why i enjoyed it... but fuck, i loved that area. so much stuff to find, lots of different types of enemies, three bosses (four if you count the demon you have to kill right after the undead parish bonfire), the NPC hidden in the golem (who i still haven't been able to summon?), avina or whoever it is that summons you to defend the forest with the cat covenant ring, the grinding spot... best area of the game so far IMO.

quick unrelated question though... how do i use the black orb to get revenge on whoever killed the firekeeper at the firelink shrine? i check it periodically and i'm never allowed to use it.

[Spooky Apparition]

cool, haven't been there yet, that explains it. i'm 45 hours in and haven't been to a half dozen places everyone's been talking about the last 15 pages. riley, schwartz, whoever else has beaten it... how many hours did you put in on your first playthrough?

[Comrade Slinky]

Roughly 110-120 hours, can't be totally accurate due to idle time. Managed to miss an optional boss too.