The Dark Souls Thread

[spacehamster]

That was dumb, but at least you didn't have to re-do the chaos orbs on the side each time.

Sure, but that just felt like they were apologizing for the shit boss fight. The general randomness to what respawns and what doesn't in this game is my biggest (although still somewhat minor) gripe with this game so far anyway. There's just no logic attached to it, other than the fact that it usually feels like a last-minute difficulty tweak. First mob of Taurus Demons in Demon Ruins? Don't respawn, so you only have to kill them off once to get to the ember, and you can just ignore them anyway if you want. Next three Taurus Demons? Do respawn, because they're in terrain where they're easy to fight, and we want you to have to fight the one guarding the boss fog everytime you die. Black Knights? Don't respawn. Except the one in Sen's Fortress. Because... I dunno, so you can farm him for item drops? It's just silly. One of the things I loved about Demon's Souls was the incredible internal logic and cohesiveness of the game, and it really does seem like Dark Souls has lost some of that due to how expansive it is.

Like I said, it's a nitpick, and I know I'm holding this game to a ridiculously high standard, but, well, this is the Demon's Souls sequel here.

[spacehamster]

Painted World looks awesome. I was a bit disappointed with the more dungeon-y levels (Catacombs, Tomb of the Giants), so this is especially nice to walk into now. Priscilla just totally wiped the floor with me, though.

[ungodlywarlock]

Painted World looks awesome. I was a bit disappointed with the more dungeon-y levels (Catacombs, Tomb of the Giants), so this is especially nice to walk into now. Priscilla just totally wiped the floor with me, though.

I haven't fought her yet, but I explored the hell out of that place. Awesome zone!
I spent my time last night getting into the Dragon covenant so I can have the dragon-head which looks supremely badass with Havel's armor.

[spacehamster]

Oh yeah, covenants... honestly, so much of that stuff sounds really awesome and fun, I really want to do all of them eventually, but I do need to do something other than play Dark Souls in the next five years...

[spacehamster]

So where the fuck is the entrance to the Abyss? Strolling around at the bottom of New Londo "just looking" is kinda, um, deadly.

[ungodlywarlock]

Oh yeah, covenants... honestly, so much of that stuff sounds really awesome and fun, I really want to do all of them eventually, but I do need to do something other than play Dark Souls in the next five years...

Well most of them give you a pretty sweet ability just for joining that you don't have to build up.
Join the Dragon covenant get the dragon head, join the chaos covenant, get the great chaos fireball, etc...

It's when you leave one covenant for another, it doesn't make them hate you. You have to kill a member of it for them to do that.

[spacehamster]

Well most of them give you a pretty sweet ability just for joining that you don't have to build up.
Join the Dragon covenant get the dragon head, join the chaos covenant, get the great chaos fireball, etc...

Yeah, but from what I've seen at least some of them also have fairly long and involved sorta-quests attached to them that are all kinds of awesome if you're into the Souls games' style of cryptic half storytelling. Those seem fairly time consuming to do, and I probably won't be able to resist doing them because I can't put this game away until I feel like I've done absolutely everything.

[spacehamster]

Just finally did the Great Hollow and Ash Lake.

I'm now convinced that some form of severe mental illness is a hiring requirement at From Software.

[spacehamster]

So here's another question nobody's going to answer: when I unlock the Kiln of the First Flame, does that lock anything else out or can I still go everywhere? I think I'm pretty much done with all the trophies I'm going to do this playthrough (got about half the upgrade trophies, doing the boss weapons in NG+ when buying Titanite will require less grinding), but just in case.

Four Kings was hilariously easy at lvl 80 with a +10 Magic Bastard Sword. Cast Iron Flesh, circle, spam R1. Got 'em on the first attempt. Fighting all those Darkwraith on the way there was clearly harder.

[Comrade Slinky]

I unlocked it and was able to run back in and out. Only by beating Gwyn do you get locked into ng+ I believe.

[spacehamster]

Alright. I think I'm still gonna get the Sunlight Maggot and kill Gwynevere and Gwyndolin first, though.

I kinda don't really want to finish, too, because I know from Demon's Souls how awkward everything always is at the beginning of a playthrough when you can't go anywhere. Just the thought of not being able to warp again... ugh.

[ungodlywarlock]

Well Lost Izalith is fucked.

[spacehamster]

Well Lost Izalith is fucked.

Protips:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

The jolly jumpin' t-rex butts don't respawn. Dragonslayer Greatbow helps, but a regular longbow is enough if it's properly upgraded. Also, you can get them to kill each other. Get to the top of the second tower, aggro a bunch of them with arrows, watch them stomp each other to death.

Also, in typical 'Souls fashion, Lost Izalith has some really good loot to make up for what a pain in the ass it is.

Dark Sun Gwyndolin was seriously mopping the floor with me earlier, but I think it may just have been one of those things where I needed to take a break from the fight and come back a bit more patient. In the end, the trick was not to hold down the sprint button as I ran towards him so that I had enough stamina to block whatever attacks I couldn't dodge.

Tried Gwyn too, got my ass handed to me. Prolly farm the Black Knights in the Kiln for chunks and the two NPCs in Anor Londo for souls for a bit before I go back there.

I also have to kill Quelaag's sister for her Firekeeper Soul, but I no wanna. She and the friendly little infested dude are some of my favorite NPCs.

[riley-o]

just kill them directly before going to kill gwyn. they'll be back and all will be forgiven in NG+

[spacehamster]

just kill them directly before going to kill gwyn. they'll be back and all will be forgiven in NG+

Yeah, I know. That's the plan.

What kind of bugs me is that you'd basically be stupid not to kill both firekeepers at the end of every playthrough. It makes perfect logical sense, but you end up with a game mechanic that basically forces you to go around murdering people unless you want to lose out on an important upgrade.

Or maybe I'm just cranky because Gwyn kicked my ass yesterday.

[ungodlywarlock]

Yeah, fuck Lost Izalith. I decided to spend my time grinding those little dead skeleton babies for humanities and got my Chaos Covenant to rank 2 so I could just use the shortcut.
Killed Bed of Chaos and Nito. I was sort of disappointed with how much of a pushover Nito was. He was easily my favorite character in the cinematic.

[spacehamster]

Yeah, fuck Lost Izalith. I decided to spend my time grinding those little dead skeleton babies for humanities

Does that work for you without the Gold Serpent Ring? I've tried, and I've literally never had one of them drop a single Humanity. I kind of want to try again before NG+, and I have the ring now, but getting down there is such a pain in the ass.

Killed Bed of Chaos and Nito. I was sort of disappointed with how much of a pushover Nito was.

Man, I seem to be the only person on the planet who had trouble with Nito. Granted, once I figured out what range to be at so he doesn't do his unblockable toxic assrape move anymore, it wasn't that difficult, but still.

Gonna farm the black knights in the Kiln for some more titanite chunks of various colors and level up to 90, and I think then I'm ready to take another crack at Gwyn.

It'll be interesting to see how platinuming this thing goes. It kind of seems like it's a lot easier this time around because once you unlock the Kiln, you basically get free titanite chunks, the shards can be bought and all the slabs can be found somewhere. And I think the number of slabs you need pretty neatly coincides with the number of playthroughs needed to get all the boss soul weapons, so no problem there. It'll just be a pain in the ass grinding for eleventy bajillion souls just to buy all of the spells/pyromancies/miracles, and fuck, there's a ton of them this time. We'll see. Definitely doing it, though.

[ungodlywarlock]

Does that work for you without the Gold Serpent Ring? I've tried, and I've literally never had one of them drop a single Humanity. I kind of want to try again before NG+, and I have the ring now, but getting down there is such a pain in the ass.

I used the covetous gold serpent ring, yes.
But the trick is to also use some humanity as well (it works conveniently as a heal when the little shits start to get you down in health) as every bit of humanity you use increases your drop rate. At the end there, I had about 20 humanities used and I was getting 2 per group every couple of minutes. Took me about 45 mins to get all I wanted there (30 for rank 2 and then a surplus for bonfires). After that I just home-boned by ass back to a bonfire, warped to the daughter of chaos and turned them all in.
Plus now I still have a ton left to kindle important bonfires up to 20 flasks.

Worked out quite nicely!

Nito was just so slow that every time he did anything I went behind him and fireballed his ass off. Took him forever to turn around.

[doomeddisciple]

My Nito fight was a welcome glitch fest.

He cornered me up in between some staligmites at the back of the cave which didn't allow his skelly buddies in and for some reason his sword swipes were kinda blocked by the staligmites even though the animation showed the sword cleaving me in two.

4 Chaos fireballs and a few Great Fireballs and it was all over.

[spacehamster]

After all that bullshit in that level. Fucking pinwheel is easier than fucking taurus demon. Literally just ran up to him and hacked for 10 seconds. OVER.

So did you make it to the next bonfire? That was the real kick in the teeth for me, having to go through the Catacombs like a bajillion more times just to get to the Tomb of the Giants. Course the upside is that I can now do the Catacombs with my eyes closed. If you have to do it again, Hidden Body or the Ring of Fog gets you past the wheel skellies pretty safely.

Dusty - thanks, I'll try that.

[riley-o]

did you get the ring of fog by doing the cat's covenant ? i couldn't kill anybody i invaded. fucking nobody.

[spacehamster]

No, I got it from the crow. I didn't do that covenant because my understanding was if you join, you're not allowed to kill those NPCs in the forest anymore.

But so far I've been invaded once and got slaughtered. So yeah. Also, there's a lot of grumbling on the Wikidot forum about people boosting weapon upgrades, so maybe that's why you kept getting killed. I guess theoretically it's possible to max out your Pyromancy Flame with the dragon head glitch and never level up, so you're going against n00b characters with pyromancies that can OHK them five times over. I dunno, I never got into PvP in Demon's Souls because there was so much lag there that it seemed pointless, and now it's just a habit I don't have. I always play hollow anyway.

[doomeddisciple]

To resume killing forest fuckwits just go make another covenant after you get the ring. Eg : go back to firelink shrine and make nice with the cleric and then you can go back to your regularly scheduled farming.

[spacehamster]

I made it. I had been there a bunch ut not opened that secret door. The cheat vid shows a way to get through that level in literaly 15 seconds. you only have to kill like 5 skeletons. I just ran my ass all the way back out because Im intimidated by tomb of the giants. Kind of unsure where to go next TBQH.

If you're still running back from bonfires, I assume that means you don't have the Lordvessel yet? Didn't you say you killed Quelaag a while ago? That means you can get to Sen's Fortess, so do that and then go to Anor Londo to get the Lordvessel. You can't even get to the bossfight in the Tomb of the Giants without it, and getting out without warping is supposed to be possible, but personally, I don't see how.

[spacehamster]

This is why I have two controllers.

Playing Dark Souls really made me appreciate that.

*cough*