The Dark Souls Thread

[Spooky Apparition]

took about a week off to play uncharted 3 and arkham city, jumped back in and played like 7 hours yesterday. anor londo: CONQUERED. lordvessel: OBTAINED. high dex character with furysword+5: AMAZING

not sure where to go next. i haven't done the painted world yet... are there any specific items i should buy before going in to make it easier? i read you can't leave once you go in and that worries me a little bit....

[spacehamster]

not sure where to go next. i haven't done the painted world yet... are there any specific items i should buy before going in to make it easier? i read you can't leave once you go in and that worries me a little bit....

You can bypass the bossfight and get out if you make it to the end, but yeah, the one bonfire doesn't let you warp out. You'll mostly be fighting juiced-up dreglings, so I wouldn't worry too much, though. Bring plenty of blooming purple moss because there's an enemy type that can turn you toxic, but otherwise, it's not that much of a problem.

Just finished myself, just over 99 hours.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

The non-ending confused me a bit. You... link the fire and the end credits roll? That's it?

I feel an enormous rant coming up that I'll probably post here or somewhere else eventually, but right now, um, I just want to go back to my NG+, really.

[The Schwartz]

there is a slightly different ending if you go back outside instead

[spacehamster]

there is a slightly different ending if you go back outside instead

Yeah, I know. It was just a bit odd, even Demon's Souls had more of an ending with the narration. Oh well.

Anyway, I immediately sat down and played for another two hours.

[spacehamster]

It'll be interesting to see how platinuming this thing goes. It kind of seems like it's a lot easier this time around

Haha.

I just found out what I have to do to get all the miracles.

Fuck. I knew it. Fuck fuck fuck.

[riley-o]

haha yeah.

[Comrade Slinky]

Spill the beans fellas.

[spacehamster]

Level up to +1 in the Gravelord Servant and join the Warrior of Sunlight covenant. Plus I'll have to get to +1 in Blade of the Darkmoon, Warrior of Sunlight and Darkwraith AND +2 in Chaos Servant for certain weapons and spells. Most of this involves sacrificing items that I'll either have to collect over the course of several playthroughs to have enough or do tons of PvP. Also, to level up in Darkmoon, you practically have to kill tons of invaders in the Forest Covenant first to get Pendants and then trade them with the crow. Otherwise you need 10 playthroughs or you have to wait until you're invaded.

Basically I'm now going to have to plow through the Wiki and put together a plan of how I'm going to do this so that I can limit it to the number of playthroughs I'll need to get the duplicates of the boss souls for all those weapons. Granted, I had to do the same thing with the boss souls and weapon upgrades in DS, but this is actually even more complicated. Did I mention everyone at From is insane? I think I've mentioned that.

[spacehamster]

Even now in NG+, I absolutely always instinctively hit every chest before I try to open it. Even in the early levels where I know there aren't any Mimics. Not doing that makes me queasy.

[riley-o]

i hit a treasure chest and it came to life and ate me anyway

it was a sad day for this wonder boy in monster land

[riley-o]

hoooo buddy. and how.

[spacehamster]

There's lots of them. Plenty of people are nice enough to leave warning messages, so if you see a message right in front of a chest, that's usually not a good sign. And like Riley, I've been killed even though I was ready. Mimics look silly, but they're fucking tough. Which is kind of a running theme in this game, come to think of it. Fucking mushroom parents.

[Spooky Apparition]

what weapon are you using, doad? if you want something new, make sure to kill that first mimic next to the ramp the rock rolls down. you can get a lightning spear which can be upgraded to +5 pretty easily later on in sen's fortress. i used that for a while and it does solid damage against most enemies.

[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