The Dark Souls Thread

[Spooky Apparition]

when you get the dark wood grain ring, the feel of dark souls changes fucking dramatically. it's not sluggish at all... sometimes it actually seems too easy. that ring combined with a double-upgraded +5 pyromancy flame (which doesn't use your stamina at all) eliminates about 90% of potential frustration. i beat ornstein/smough in ng+ in about 3 minutes.

also, 'cubes/bill, you can summon other players into your game at basically any time, and a lot of NPCs can be summoned before boss fights. you'll have some frustration no matter what, but if you just want to keep progressing through the game, it's not difficult to do it if you use the online features.

[spacehamster]

To be fair, it's the sluggish game mechanics (or deliberate pacing) that make this game tough.

I don't understand this at all. The pacing of the combat is what makes it work for me. You generally always have time to think about what to do. If the game moved faster, it'd be unplayable.

[riley-o]

outside of the first one, the 8bit megaman games are all easy and can be beaten in a couple hours.

yeah you haven't even played this game so.

[Blair]

when you get the dark wood grain ring, the feel of dark souls changes fucking dramatically

Just looked up this ring.

GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!

When they release the additional content version, you better believe I will leaving a roadrunner-esque trail of flames leading to that invisible ninja.

FUCK.

[Friendly Goatus]

when I first found him, I killed the FUCK out of that ninja. I thought he would drop something that made me invisible but the ring was pretty cool too.

[Blair]

I didn't even know the ninja was there. I had read something about joining the forest covenant to get that ring, but I couldn't find any concrete specifics. I killed that invisible souls-farming thief a hundred times instead of kicking him off the ledge trying to get that fucking ring.

[Ghost Dad]

To be fair, it's the sluggish game mechanics (or deliberate pacing) that make this game tough.

I don't understand this at all. The pacing of the combat is what makes it work for me. You generally always have time to think about what to do. If the game moved faster, it'd be unplayable.

Trying to pull off back stabs and having your character freeze like a dope is what mainly pissed me off. Happens constantly on the silver and black knights.

[spacehamster]

Trying to pull off back stabs and having your character freeze like a dope is what mainly pissed me off. Happens constantly on the silver and black knights.

Okay. I almost never do backstabs, so I guess it comes down to play styles. Whenever I know I'm going up against black and silver knights, I just bring a big shield and slicerdice 'em when their swords are bouncing off of it.

[riley-o]

just put a solid ENTIRE WEEKEND into this again

accomplished lots in NG+ including getting smough's soul and finally getting seath's tail fuck yeah

[Spooky Apparition]

started my third playthrough this weekend. i'm finally starting to level up intelligence so i can use some higher-level sorceries... fuck, i wish i did this earlier. tin crystallization catalyst + crystal homing soulmass + rushing fools as the soulmass hits them never ceases to be fun. i'm aiming to be able to use the crystal soul spear at 44 intelligence, then i'm going to stop leveling up at about SL120 for maximum PVP hijinks. still haven't messed around with miracles much (although i do have all of them )

[Spooky Apparition]

accomplished lots in NG+ including getting smough's soul and finally getting seath's tail fuck yeah

did you think O&S were far easier in NG+ than the first time through? it only took me about 4 tries, compared to 10+ the first. four kings took an embarrassing amount of time in NG+ though i can never predict which bosses will be easier or harder in NG+. i think i died more at the hands of the goddamn centipede demon than i did gwyn.

[The Schwartz]

started my third playthrough this weekend. i'm finally starting to level up intelligence so i can use some higher-level sorceries... fuck, i wish i did this earlier. tin crystallization catalyst + crystal homing soulmass + rushing fools as the soulmass hits them never ceases to be fun. i'm aiming to be able to use the crystal soul spear at 44 intelligence, then i'm going to stop leveling up at about SL120 for maximum PVP hijinks. still haven't messed around with miracles much (although i do have all of them )

crystal homing soulmass is definitely the most deadly thing in the game if you put enough time into it, you can walk through without doing any combat

[The Schwartz]

accomplished lots in NG+ including getting smough's soul and finally getting seath's tail fuck yeah

did you think O&S were far easier in NG+ than the first time through? it only took me about 4 tries, compared to 10+ the first. four kings took an embarrassing amount of time in NG+ though i can never predict which bosses will be easier or harder in NG+. i think i died more at the hands of the goddamn centipede demon than i did gwyn.

yea I beat gwyn in about 30 seconds of my first try on NG+

the guide tells you that magic is worst option for fighting him but I figured out that is one big fucking lie

[spacehamster]

getting seath's tail fuck yeah

Got any pointers? I've tried the strategy from the Wikidot page (stand in front of the crystal, let him destroy it, run around him when that stuns him, attack tail) about elevent bajillion times, and it won't work.

[The Schwartz]

thats pretty much it, and yea it does take a bajillion hits I've had better success but attacking further towards the base instead of just the tip

[Spooky Apparition]

yea I beat gwyn in about 30 seconds of my first try on NG+

the guide tells you that magic is worst option for fighting him but I figured out that is one big fucking lie

beat him on my second try in NG+ using almost only magic... guide is definitely wrong about that. playing as human in the kiln is awesome though, nonstop invasions. i kinda wish i didn't beat him so quickly.

spacehamster: the second bonfire in dukes archives is good for summoning people, which makes getting the tail so easy you don't really need to try. no shame in doing that, especially with the long trek from the archives bonfire to his lair.

i've been using his sword now that i have the intelligence to wield it properly... upgrading it to +1 gives it an S intelligence scale, so it does pretty good damage and you can knock fools down or send them flying with the projectile heavy attacks. pretty good weapon

[riley-o]

sorry i meant ornstein's soul, not smough's. my brain was a little frazzled last night. and no, O&S was by far the hardest boss fight of my NG+ playthrough. it actually sounds like i had the exact opposite experience to you; four kings this time was pff whatever (i went and did this early on to get into the covenant) but after finally beating O&S yesterday morning after getting brutalized by them a bunch of times saturday night i went into full-on hands in the air HERE WE ARE, BORN TO BE KINGS mode

i've only just now gotten all the awesome crystal spells for the first time but i have considerable intelligence ( ) so i'm pretty pumped about trying them things out

[spacehamster]

I'm a bit worried about doing that with some random asshole who may fuck it up for the entire playthrough, though. Hrmph.

I don't think I'll be able to get back into this game until the summer anyway, my baming time's been seriously reduced, and TW2's just shipped from Amazon, so... yeah. But I am gonna get that freaking platinum if it kills me.

[The Schwartz]

yea if online play wasn't such a failure I would help you out because it's really easy that way. I spent quite a bit of time helping people since Sheath was one of my favs. The sword is fucking awesome if you are a magic character but its one of those that has like 10 durability so it breaks after like 50 < hits so I usually just wear the ham ring and wield it as my secondary until I need to use it

with that and crystal homing, niggas be running scared

[Spooky Apparition]

yeah, i'd help out too if it was possible to find the person you're looking for without trying to hop servers for a goddamn hour. i'm at about SL115 if anyone ever wants to try. but if you're with randoms, just use a homeward bone if seath is almost dead and no one has cut the tail off yet.

using some homeward bones in dukes archives is also a really good way to get covenant-related items if you need them. you can warp to the sunlight altar for the medals or the darkmoon altar for souvenir of reprisals, then bone yourself back to the archives and get to killing/helping. anor london is a good spot for that also (fuck the forest, it's full of cheap players).

[Spooky Apparition]

But I am gonna get that freaking platinum if it kills me.

i've been there

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

[riley-o]

holy shit

[spacehamster]

Winnah.

[riley-o]

what did your final play time clock in at ? i'm at about 140 hours right now but i'd ballpark my idle time at about 40 hours including leaving the system on overnight a couple times and not realizing until after work the next day. i got the all spells trophy last night and i only need two pyromancies. i still need like a billion miracles though and even thinking about all the shit with the sunlight covenant is making me so bad..

[Spooky Apparition]

i was at almost exactly 150, but probably closer to 135 not including idle time. i also spent a lot of time PVPing through my 2.5 playthroughs, so it's definitely doable in less time than that.

for sunlight miracles, just make sure you get the 3 medals in anor londo and the one from the dude in the church you set free before the gargoyle fight (after he's migrated back to firelink). since you need to get to anor londo on a third playthrough to use sif's soul anyway, that should be getting you close to 10. otherwise join the covenant and help some fools beat bosses.

IMO the two hardest things about the platinum, aside from the required 2.5ish playthroughs, was getting the channeler's trident (rare drop, had to kill like 80 of those guys in the archives) and the souvenirs of reprisal. supposedly you can farm those from the flying enemies in the painted world, but i just kept spamming the blue orb as i was progressing and invaded a lot of chumps who were at lower levels than me.

but nothing was close to as annoying as demon's souls trophies... i farmed for pure stones for so fucking long and just gave up thinking about trying again since the servers will soon go offline forever, but i don't know how many more hours i can waste running around 4-2