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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition |OT| Durante Does In 23 Minutes What From Can't

P1mldF


  • Developer - FROM Software
  • Publisher(s) - FROM Software / NAMCO Bandai Games
  • Director - Hidetaka Miyazaki
  • Platform(s) - Windows PC / Games for Windows – LIVE®
  • Rating(s) CERO: D / ESRB: M / PEGI: 16

  • Worldwide: August 24th, 2012
  • Availability: Digital [NA/PAL] / Retail [PAL]
  • Price: $ 39.99 /£ 29.99 /€ 39.99

PC Manual

New Content For PC
  • New Bosses – Including Black Dragon, Sanctuary Guardian, Artorias of the Abyss.
  • PVP Arena & Online Matchmaking System – Quick matching for players to play 1vs1, 2vs2, and 4 player battle royal.
  • New Areas – Including Oolacile Township, Oolacile Sanctuary, Royal Wood, Battle of Stoicism which is the training ground for online PVP battles.
  • New Enemies – Including Wooden scarecrows, Chained Prisoner, Stone Knight.
  • New NPCs – Including Hawkeye Gough, Elizabeth (keeper of the sanctuary).
  • New Weapons and Armor – Equip some from the new bosses, enemies, and NPCs.

Dark Souls is the new action role-playing game from the developers who brought you Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware. Dark Souls will have many familiar features: A dark fantasy universe, tense dungeon crawling, fearsome enemy encounters and unique online interactions. Dark Souls is a spiritual successor to Demon’s, not a sequel. Prepare for a new, despair-inducing world, with a vast, fully-explorable horizon and vertically-oriented landforms. Prepare for a new, mysterious story, centered around the world of Lodran, but most of all, prepare to die. You will face countless murderous traps, countless darkly grotesque mobs and several gargantuan, supremely powerful demons and dragons bosses. You must learn from death to persist through this unforgiving world. And you aren’t alone. Dark Souls allows the spirits of other players to show up in your world, so you can learn from their deaths and they can learn from yours. You can also summon players into your world to co-op adventure, or invade other's worlds to PVP battle. New to Dark Souls are Bonfires, which serve as check points as you fight your way through this epic adventure. While rested at Bonfires, your health and magic replenish but at a cost, all mobs respawn. Beware: There is no place in Dark Souls that is truly safe. With days of game play and an even more punishing difficulty level, Dark Souls will be the most deeply challenging game you play this year. Can you live through a million deaths and earn your legacy?
  • Extremely Deep, Dark & Difficult - Unforgiving in its punishment, yet rewarding for the determined – learn to strategize freely and conquer seemingly impossible challenges.
  • Fully Seamless World - Explore a completely integrated world of dark fantasy where dungeons and areas are seamlessly intertwined, with great height.
  • Mastery Earns Progression - Contains 60 hours of gameplay, with nearly 100 uniquely despair-inducing monsters & an incredibly nuanced RPG systems including: weaponry, armor, miracles, faith, and more. Player success depends on their eventual mastery of how and when to use the magic spells, choice of armor, the number of weapons, the types of weapons, and the moves attached to the weapons.
  • Network Play - Players may cross paths with one another, invading each other for PVP battles, or to play co-op and take on giant boss encounters as a team.
  • Flexible Character Development & Role Play - As the player progresses, they must carefully choose which of their character’s abilities to enhance as this will determine their progression style.
  • Community - See other real players and empathize with their journey, learn from seeing how others died, find and leave messages for your fellow players; helping them or leading them into death.
  • Symbolic of Life & Hope - The Bonfire is an important feature in Dark Souls for many reasons. Though in gameplay it serves as a health and magic recovery and a progression check point, it also happens to be the one place in the dark world where players can find a fleeting moment of warmth and calm.

System Requirements
  • OS: Windows XP , Windows Vista, Windows 7, or newer
  • Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 GHz+ or AMD Phenom II X2 545 3.0 GHz+
  • Memory: 2 GB
  • Hard Disk Space: 8GB
  • Video Card: GeForce 9800 GTX+ or ATI Radeon HD 4870+
  • DirectX®: 9.0c
  • Sound: Direct Sound Compatible
  • Additional: Online play requires software installation of and log-in to Games For Windows - LIVE



Screenshots(New Content)

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This program is strongly recommended when using Games for Windows – LIVE®

Digital [NA/PAL] / Retail Shops [PAL]:
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Boxed Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition heads to consoles October 26 in Europe, Australasia / Joystiq
DARK SOULS™: PREPARE TO DIE™ EDITION ON PC NOW AVAILABLE ACROSS EUROPE AND AUSTRALASIA

- The Critically Acclaimed Action-RPG Coming to PC gamers today -

CERGY PONTOISE, FRANCE – 24 August 2012 - NAMCO BANDAI Games Europe today announced that Dark Souls TM : Prepare to Die™ Edition on PCis now available at retailers and through Steam and Games For Windows Marketplace across Europe and Australasia. This special, content-enhanced edition of the critically acclaimed Action-RPG developed by FromSoftware will be finely-tuned to cater to the PC gaming audience while retaining all of the deep challenge, rich atmosphere, and compelling gameplay that made the game a worldwide phenomenon. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on the PC platform will also include an enhanced PVP mode allowing players to more closely assemble battles against one another online in an all-out fight to the death that fans have demanded . The day one edition willinclude a stunning art book featuring art from the new Artorias of the Abyss game content, the original soundtrack CD, a DVD containing the complete behind the scenes video series, poster and postcards.

Dark Souls TM : Prepare to Die™ Edition will include sprawling new maps and environments; new boss characters, enemies and non-playable characters; an arsenal of new weapons and armour; and additional challenging content for stalwart heroes to face as they return to the deadly world of Lordran. Players will also experience an as yet untold chapter in Dark Souls lore set in the dying kingdom of magic known as Oolacile. Unwillingly taken by the abyss and sent back in time, the player becomes the only one who can save Oolacile from the spreading darkness that threatens to engulf the kingdom and all of its people.Aseparate retail edition of the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition including Dark Souls™ original game and the new in game content will be coming to Xbox 360® and PlayStation®3 on October 26th.

With tense dungeon crawling and fearsome enemy encounters, the seamlessly intertwined world of Dark SoulsTM is full of extreme battles, rewarding challenges, nuanced weaponry and magic, and the flexibility to customize each character to suit any desired play style. The innovative online component allows gamers to draw from the collective experience of the Dark Souls community as they either help or sabotage each other on the journey through the world of Lordran to save the land from darkness. With a massive, seamless open world design, Dark souls encourages deep exploration and an adaptable gameplay experience.

Dark Souls TM : Prepare to Die™ Edition on PC is available throughout Europe and Australasia today. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition will be available for Xbox 360® and PlayStation®3 in Europe and Australasia on October 26th. For more information on the game please visit www.facebook.com/DarkSouls, www.PrepareToDie.com.

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on PC is the first game published by Namco Bandai Games Europe that will include game registration. This brand new feature will enable users to collect loyalty points when they register their game on www.namcobandaigames.eu/register, these collected points will be redeemable against downloadable contents or rare and exclusive items in the VIP Corner (www.uk.namcobandaigames.eu/vipcorner) for free .​

^-¬Thank you, TheExodu5 for this banner.
 
Some Miscellaneous Info:

Green Man Gaming 20% Off
DERHE-RRDER-RINGE

Windows 8 Fix

Windows 8 Users (as of 8/23/12)

Check here for steps to fixing GFWL issues

Durante's Internal Resolution Fix Thread

Dumping this here as well.

Here's 3 shots in 2560x1600, with 5120x3200 used in the DSfix.ini

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Just downsample the hell out of the game with the DSfix, most GPUs are barely doing any work at the locked 30FPS.

Thanks to both V_Arnold for original format/information and Sullichin for re-edit.

Beginner's Guide

Character Creation

Class: Your class only determines your starting stats and equipment. You are not locked to anything! You can alter your stats later on, you can equip any weapon that your stats allow to do comfortably so, and you can cast spells as long as you have the required item and enough attunement slots.

Starting item: Master key is a useful accessory that lets you open some locked doors, allowing you to tackle certain areas in a different order or skip them entirely, so it is considered to be the best starting item. All of the starting items can be obtained in-game, but by the time you can get the master key otherwise, it's not nearly as useful.

Gameplay Basics
The combat is very simple and straightforward once you familiarize yourself with how it works. Your vitality (red meter) is of course your health, and if it reaches 0 guess what happens. The green bar underneath is stamina, which depletes if you perform action such as blocking an attack, rolling, jumping, attacking (heavy attacks are more exhausting than simple attacks). If you decide to block an attack with a weapon, the amount of damage that will get through is the attack's damage minus the reduced amount of your weapon's "physical block". The shields are way more effective if you plan on blocking a lot, quickly reaching the 90-100% block damage reduce area where you take minimal or no damage if you block, but you will lose stamina. When walking with your shield up, your stamina regenerates at a much slower rate, so it is important to sometimes lower your shield to allow your stamina to recover. The two main melee/ranged combat stats are strength and dexterity. Heavy weapons like Clubs and Great Axes require a strength investment, while quicker weapons and bows benefit from dexterity. Others require a healthy, balanced towards one or other mix of the two. It is wise to base your strength and dexterity stats around your weapon choices.

Weapons have minimum requirements to wield, and some weapons have damage scaling bonuses with certain stats. There is a "Param Bonus" section of the item detail screen that will tell you which stats if any affect the damage of the weapon. They will be indicated with a letter, with S and A being the best, E being the lowest. For example, something with A scaling in strength will add more damage to the weapon with your strength stat than a weapon that only has D scaling in strength. It should be noted that elemental weapons (Fire, Chaos, Lightning) lose ALL param bonuses -- the weapon will do elemental damage at the expense of no longer adding additional physical damage based on any of your stats. As an example, a Lightning Claymore +5 with 16 strength (the minimum requirement for the weapon) will do the same damage as a Lightning Claymore +5 with 50 strength.

There are several kinds of upgrade paths that require different materials and the skill of a blacksmith. The various paths and materials required are outlined nicely here. Upgrading your weapon will usually yield a higher return of damage increase than increasing a stat like strength or dexterity. Upgrading weapons is very important, and ANY weapon in the game is viable when upgraded. Use what you like! You're also going to want to upgrade your shields (increased stability) and armor (increased resistances).

Sorceries scale with your Intelligence, and Miracles scale with your Faith. Miracles and Spells will scale damage depending on the MagAdjust stat of your equipped talisman or catalyst, respectively. Pyromancy damage is not governed by any stat, but increasing attunement lets you equip more spells of any type. The damage done by pyromancy is affected by upgrading the pyromancy glove. You can find NPCs in your journey that will allow you to do this.

TL;DR: VIT for health, END for stamina and equip load, STR/DEX for weapons, FAI/INT/ATT for magic. Don't bother upgrading Resistance.

Combat Tips
  • Parrying and finding openings: The combat revolves around striking at the right moment -- dodging or blocking attacks and then attacking yourself when the opponent is recovering. You can parry also, which can be achieved by hitting L2 /LT/Tab just as your opponent's weapon is about to hit you. After this, a sound effect confirms your parry, and you will perform a special attack with increased damage. While you are engaged in a parry attack animation, you are immune to damage. Parrying is risky because the window to do so is very narrow and mistiming will result in you eating a counter attack from your foe. Typically, only humanoid enemies can be parried.
  • Don't get hit-stunned: If you engage 4-5 opponents by going into a room where they are, chances are that you will have to block the first, then the second, then the third, and by the time you blocked all (and ran out of endurance to act), the first mob will already start his second attack. Do not do this. Plan ahead by having always a path open for a small retreat - you will be comfortable with faking a retreat than hitting back, if the mob's weapon and behavior is compatible with this play-style - but do not engage more than 2 mobs together unless you are really, really good, or simply are over-geared and confident. See: death section ;) You can raise the threshold that an enemy attack will interrupt your own by equipping armor with higher poise.
  • Watch your step. Everyone can be tossed down from a cliff/building. If you have no wall behind your back, you will be pushed down even if you block, however slightly. Blocked and connected attacks push everything, you can kill and you can be killed by being pushed down on such places. If any mob dies while you are nearby, you will gain the soul from its death, but any potential loot gained will be lost if he falls to the abyss.
  • Rolling/dodging is often better than blocking. Especially with bosses, their hits are HUGE. They can deplete your stamina by 50% with one hit if you decide to block - and if that attack has a followup, you will be toppled sooner or later, with no option to counterattack. Find the pattern, roll if you can, as this costs less endurance than blocking the hits. This is not always the case in tight spaces and non-boss fights, but you will know it in time. Again, always keep an eye on your stamina.

About Bonfires, Death and Humanity:
Bonfires: Bonfires are like checkpoints. While you can save anywhere if you quit the game, you will re-spawn at the last bonfire you rested at once you die.
Resting at a bonfire replenishes all of your spells and Estus flasks (healing potions), and offers several options. You can attune new spells and level up. The "reverse hollowing" option allows you to return to human form provided you have at least one active humanity (see humanity section below). Once in human form you can kindle the bonfire. This uses up another humanity, but it permanently increases the number of Estus Flasks you will receive when you rest at that particular bonfire.

Humanity: Humanity is a semi-complex gameplay mechanic that affects various aspects of the game. Your character's "active humanity" is represented by a number in the left upper corner of the screen. This number can go all the way up to 99, and higher numbers will provide a few passive bonuses: it increases item discovery (loot drops) up to 10 humanity, the damage of chaos weapons up to 10 humanity, curse resistance up to 30 humanity, and certain defenses all the way up to 99.
Having active humanity is required to kindle and reverse hollowing at bonfires. Having a number greater than 0 in your counter does not mean you are in human form, necessarily. You must reverse hollowing to become human, changing your appearance and lighting up the humanity counter. While in human form, you may summon help and get invaded (see Co-Op section below).

Humanity is available as a semi-rare consumable item. Certain enemies like rats can drop them. Consuming the item will add one to your humanity counter (two if it's a twin humanities), and restore your health fully. You can otherwise increase the number in your humanity counter by successfully beating a boss in someone else's world, winning an invasion, or randomly after killing a certain number of enemies in an area with an undefeated boss.

Death: If you die, you lose all collected souls and active humanity. If you were human upon death, you will lose your human form.
If you can successfully run back to your bloodstain, you can regain your lost humanity points and souls, but you will NOT revert back to human form. If you die again, the souls and the humanity points will be lost permanently and a new bloodstain will appear in the place you last died. If you fall off from somewhere, your stain will appear in the last valid and reachable position in the map, nearby to the place you died.

Pro-tip: You can equip a ring of sacrifice after dying, and if you die again on the way back to your bloodstain, you will lose nothing as a new bloodstain will not replace the one with all of your souls, allowing you another chance to retrieve it.​

Co-Op and Invasions
You can get help from other people on your journey to tackle tough areas and bosses, and you can go into someone's world to help them. To summon a co-op partner, you must be in human form (see humanity section above), and the area boss must be alive. Look on the ground for white and orange signs, typically near bonfires and before boss entrances. These are other players in your level range that you can summon. Some areas have NPCs that can be summoned as well. The conditions for them appearing are the same - must be human, boss must be alive.

To help someone else, you need the white soapstone, which is acquired very early in the game. You can be in hollow or human form and the area boss can be alive or dead. Use the item to place your summon sign on the ground, and wait to get summoned into someone else's world. Defeating the area boss will net you 1 humanity in your counter.

Being in human form allows you to summon help, but it's a 'double-edged sword.' You can now be invaded by other players. Eventually you can obtain items that will allow you to invade another player's game world.

If you hit a Stone Wall and aren't making progress:
  • Wander around somewhere else. Maybe you should clear another area first. Dark Souls's world is vast, after all. Many new players head to New Londo Ruins or the graveyard/catacombs from the starting area, Firelink Shrine. This is not recommended.
  • Change up your fighting style. Every weapon (at least every weapon type, but there are further differences even within the same weapon types) has a different attack animation, hit-box, attack speed, and recovery length. Find what you're comfortable with and master the move sets. The last thing you want to do is an accidental horizontal attack in a tight corridor, unless you like having your sword clank against the wall while a snake-man bites your head off. This is very important on boss fights too - you need to know the spacing of your weapons and attacks to properly counterattack after you roll out of danger.
  • Switch your ring/armor setup too, to best fit the situation.
  • Upgrade your weapons. Upgrading only costs souls and (mostly) easily obtainable materials. See upgrade & stats/combat sections above.
  • Grind a few levels, but realize that it is possible to tackle any section of the game at any level -- a strong weapon is more important than a high level. Make sure to address your problems in this grind process: if you need more endurance to equip heavier armor, get an extra swing out of your sword or roll faster, increase that. If you need more health, increase the Vitality. If you have a fancy new potential weapon, but need more strength, increase that. But if you're just grinding levels hoping that it will make a tough section suddenly easier, it won't.
  • Practice. You're going to die a lot. It doesn't matter, you'll gain more from continued experience with the game than you will from leveling up.
  • Ask for help in this thread.
 

Alex

Member
Nice thread, looks good, proper info and not all the pointless marketing like bloat of a lot of OTs.
 

scitek

Member
I know I've shat on it since the announcement, but I really hope those of you buying this port enjoy the hell out of it.
 

Tain

Member
Nice OT.

Day One people: dig into those config files, write D3D wrappers, and report back ASAP, please!
 

Raide

Member
Really interested to see how PC gamers respond to this, outside of the technical issues.

I also hope the PvP additions lead to some awesome stuff in Dark Souls 2.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Yay (?). I'm going to wait on a price drop or sale for obvious reasons, but unless there are crippling bugs I'd like to own this on PC. All things considered, it can still be the closest thing to a definitive version of Dark Souls. Plus, I sold my PS3 version when this was made official, so there's no turning back now.
 
Man, I just picked up the PS3 version again because I said I wasn't going to touch the PC version due to it being gimped. But, I'm second guessing myself now. Frak!
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Sigh... What could have been. I'm going to be following this very closely because I really hope that some bright minds out there manage to remove these asinine restrictions.
 
I'll definitely jump in if the resolution gets modded. And maybe even if it doesn't, on a sale, since I've heard so many good things, both on GAF and from other people I know.
 
I need to see how it launches before I pick it up. I want it, but have to be sure it'll be okay on my machine before I do.

If not, I'll get the PS3 or 360 version.
 
Subscribed. I finally resumed (started really) playing the Xbox version 2 weeks ago and am currently on vacation. I stopped after getting the Lord Vessel. I guess I'll finish the game when I get back home and start the PC version afterwards.

Despite all my bitching in the other thread, my GMG order stands because I got it for cheap. I hope my PC brethren will enjoy the game. I also hope it's modded to hell, to get some ultimate version of this truly special game.
 

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
Even though it's a shitty port, the underlying game is fantastic. I'll get it when it's on sale.
 
Anyone willing to capture gameplay video with framerate displayed, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm planning on trying to stream from the beginning up until going through the back door into Blighttown, but I only have like 1mbps upload and my stream quality sucks. I'm trying to figure out what the best solution is for streaming but everything i've tried is pretty terrible. I might just stream at a really low resolution. I just hope the game is optimized enough that it doesn't impact performance, in which case the whole thing is meaningless anyway
 

Sullichin

Member
I plan on taking some FRAPs videos as well.

Steam says this unlocks in 1 day, 3 hours.

Can't wait!

Thanks for the OT Indigo
 
Got it preordered on Steam.

I'll be casting this at release (although not sure of the exact hour EST) on my Twitch channel (/jerpdoesgames). Expect me to spend too much time in the character editor before jumping in.
 

Ledsen

Member
You really need to put the 30 fps+locked rez info along with a big warning sign in the OP. People should know before buying, and many people only read the |OT|.
 
Im checking in as this will be my house for the next months.

Sad u didnt use : sent to die edition as title but its ok hehe

Cant wait to read the beginners guide
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
I hope modders are at least able to fix the resolution thing. If that happens, I'll bite. I'm not too hopeful though.

Any other recent cases where a game had been locked, be it framerate or resolution, and the community fixed it? I recall LA Noire but I never played that and From Dust I believe.
 
You really need to put the 30 fps+locked rez info along with a big warning sign in the OP. People should know before buying, and many people only read the |OT|.

I will do that , for sure. Thanks.

I meant to use a suggested title ,but it took me a few hours and initially I had input the current title in the submit form just in case I hit post rather than preview. By the end of three hours I forgot to change.

And thank you for praise everyone! Hoping this thread ends up just as great as the other Souls OTs. This will be a more cozy, unique OT as the demographic may be smaller. And who knows. Maybe it will house a mods section.
 

Sethos

Banned
If modders can fix the framerate at least, then I might get on the wagon. No way am I playing a 30FPS game again, ever.
 

PewPewK

Member
I want to hear GAF impressions once this launches before I bite the bullet. And I want to see if modders can salvage this port.
 

Taruranto

Member
My body is read.
Hopefully mod to change the resolution and the bullshit From implemented in this remake are ready too.


I'm curious to see how really "hard" is this.
 

Darknight

Member
Took a quick look at OP and didnt find my answer....so is the PtDE gonna be a disk release for consoles or only coming out as DLC?(for consoles and disk for PC) I ask because if its coming via a disk release, ill sell my vanilla copy. Else Ill keep it and one day buy the DLC.
 
Took a quick look at OP and didnt find my answer....so is the PtDE gonna be a disk release for consoles or only coming out as DLC?(for consoles and disk for PC) I ask because if its coming via a disk release, ill sell my vanilla copy. Else Ill keep it and one day buy the DLC.

I honestly don't know. I'm not sure if it has been announced yet. If I had to guess I would say a disc release may be in the cards. Best I can do right now.

If anyone knows please let me know and I'll update.
 
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