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Small Mailman · Dec 9, 2011

malfcn said:
Bottomless box worth it? And is there a reason to keep 50 trash dupes?

Feed(sell) them to Frampt(You'll meet him after the 2nd bell is rung). Also I bought the Bottomless Box but never used it. Your inventory is already bottomless why make it confusing?

Can someone explain who or what

Maneater Mildred

is?

BackdoorBeauty · Dec 9, 2011

InfiniDragon said:
Didn't know anyone else was repping the Chaos Blade. I use it on my newest DEX build and it's an absolute beast, HP loss and all.

Instant best friends?? It is a beast. It is the best looking katana and does 30 points more damage than a +5 occult Uchi at 10 humanity. 43 dex, 50 faith. It seems to bleed better as well. The strong 2 handed attack will also break shields/knockdown.

ixix · Dec 9, 2011

AlphaDragoon said:
Honestly, I feel the opposite. I hate being pushed to HAVE to use a shield (I don't use one anyway, disadvantage be damned) and wish weapon blocks were more effective. After all, in real fights weapons can actually deflect other weapons without the user being hurt, except for smaller weapons against larger ones and things such as arrows.

From has a hard-on for the "tradtional knight", carrying shields (specifically greatshields), heavy armor and heavy weapons in this game and gives them ridiculous advantage over light armor and weapons in most cases. Like the fifty billion rare and powerful greatswords (large swords in Demon's), giving them a moveset with a stunlock and arguably the best damage/speed ratio making everyone use them. Havel's being stupidly strong, along with Giant's. Greatshield of Artorias blocking pretty much anything in the game. That kinda stuff.

Meanwhile, light armor gets no poise whatsoever even though Poise is implemented as a key game feature and they designed around you having it, gimped defense to the point of unusability in a lot of cases (Moonlight Robe), and no advantage other than light roll, which sucks compared to heavy armor + Dark Wood Grain Ring. You should like be able to swing weapons faster with light armor or something, to balance it out.

Weapon blocking is almost useless even though again, a lot of fights in real life involved weapons clashing against each other without the people on the other end magically getting hurt. They should have increased the damage reduction from weapon blocks IMO, and just made them low stability. Or even better, made it based on what you were being hit by. Say, a Katana class weapon blocks a Straight Sword/Curved Sword/Dagger/Katana, no damage is taken and stability is high. But you try to block a Ultra Greatsword class weapon with a Katana and it totally crushes your guard.

But regardless of what From may think of shields, are they very advantageous in PvP? I've done a no-shield build wielding Ricard's Rapier and the Parrying Dagger and while my PvE effectiveness dropped in the absence of a shield my PvP effectiveness was barely diminished at all.

I readily confess that I view PvP as more of a side dish than the main course, so to speak, and don't actively participate in it at high levels of play with any regularity, but my constant co-op activity has seen fit to give me quite a bit of PvP experience anyhow and I partake of Kiln duels from time to time, so I do think I've got a fairly decent amount of experience with it. From my experience the most popular shield by far is the Grass Crest Shield, and on good PvP players it spends the majority if not the entirety of the fight on their back. Occasionally there's a Sanctus or a Bonewheel Shield user, but the former again spends the fight on the player's back and the latter is used as a supplementary weapon, usually for attacks during recovery animations. Most players that use other shields don't fare nearly as well or are running a theme build like the guy who hangs out in the Depths pretending to be Kirk. And that's to say nothing of the perennial popularity of naked characters with nothing but a maxed-out Bandit's Knife who don't use shields at all. Or armor. Or clothes, for that matter.

Is there some level of PvP at which, say, the Greatshield of Artorias or Havel's Greatshield are regular features of builds? Because the number of people running PvP builds that I've encountered using either -- or any variety of greatshield other than the Eagle Shield for that matter -- could be counted on one hand. With three fingers left over.

Basically what I'm saying is that in my experience it seems like the best PvP shields are the ones you don't use as shields at all, and I'm not really fond of that.

Small Mailman said:
Feed(sell) them to Frampt. Also I bought the Bottomless Box but never used it. Your inventory is already bottomless why make it confusing?

The main use of the Bottomless Box is keeping your inventory stripped down to the bare essentials for PvP. At high levels of PvP swapping weapon load-outs entirely in the middle of a fight isn't unheard-of. I usually use it to clear out my inventory and keep only a PvE and PvP set of equipment for when I do co-op, and just switch to the PvP set really quick whenever an invasion message pops up.

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

Fell and died in the Depths. Trying to find where I fell is a pain. I will keep the 1k for now.

*dance* I found it!

AlphaDragoon · Dec 9, 2011

ixix said:
But regardless of what From may think of shields, are they very advantageous in PvP? I've done a no-shield build wielding Ricard's Rapier and the Parrying Dagger and while my PvE effectiveness dropped in the absence of a shield my PvP effectiveness was barely diminished at all.

I readily confess that I view PvP as more of a side dish than the main course, so to speak, and don't actively participate in it at high levels of play with any regularity, but my constant co-op activity has seen fit to give me quite a bit of PvP experience anyhow and I partake of Kiln duels from time to time, so I do think I've got a fairly decent amount of experience with it. From my experience the most popular shield by far is the Grass Crest Shield, and on good PvP players it spends the majority if not the entirety of the fight on their back. Occasionally there's a Sanctus or a Bonewheel Shield user, but the former again spends the fight on the player's back and the latter is used as a supplementary weapon, usually for attacks during recovery animations. Most players that use other shields don't fare nearly as well or are running a theme build like the guy who hangs out in the Depths pretending to be Kirk. And that's to say nothing of the perennial popularity of naked characters with nothing but a maxed-out Bandit's Knife who don't use shields at all. Or armor. Or clothes, for that matter.

Is there some level of PvP at which, say, the Greatshield of Artorias or Havel's Greatshield are regular features of builds? Because the number of people running PvP builds that I've encountered using either -- or any variety of greatshield other than the Eagle Shield for that matter -- could be counted on one hand. With three fingers left over.

Basically what I'm saying is that in my experience it seems like the best PvP shields are the ones you don't use as shields at all, and I'm not really fond of that.

Oh, I was referring specifically to PvE, not PvP. In PvP light armor/no shield characters fare much better as they can hit and run and actually avoid attacks which is much more difficult to do against the game's enemies than it is another player.

BackdoorBeauty said:
Instant best friends?? It is a beast. It is the best looking katana and does 30 points more damage than a +5 occult Uchi at 10 humanity. 43 dex, 50 faith. It seems to bleed better as well. The strong 2 handed attack will also break shields/knockdown.

Chaos Blade is pretty baller actually, I just wish it didn't have that gimp HP loss thing. It does indeed build up bleed much faster than the normal katanas, it's stronger (it should be way stronger because it should have A/S DEX scaling being a boss weapon, but...), it has a slightly longer reach as well. The only downside is the lame ass HP loss and the crappy R2 attacks.

And yes, it looks fucking awesome.

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

Fuck. Is cursed instant death? I was striking the frog but the hit box must have been off by a hair. Died while fighting the Gaping boss, and lost my shit. Time to farm for a cure. The game definitely has picked up for me.

InfiniDragon · Dec 9, 2011

Yeah, unfortunately it's an insta-kill. You can trade a Cracked Red Eye Orb to Snuggly if you need a Purging Stone to cure it.

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

InfiniDragon said:
Yeah, unfortunately it's an insta-kill. You can trade a Cracked Red Eye Orb to Snuggly if you need a Purging Stone to cure it.

Where do I do that?
I thought it halved each time. That was not the case just now.

ixix · Dec 9, 2011

AlphaDragoon said:
Oh, I was referring specifically to PvE, not PvP. In PvP light armor/no shield characters fare much better as they can hit and run and actually avoid attacks which is much more difficult to do against the game's enemies than it is another player.

Yeah, I was talking about PvP utility of shields, sort of springboarding off the discussion of Wrath of the Gods and how it's one of the few things encountered in PvP where a shield is actually one of the better options for defending against it. I don't think there are many people who would dispute the usefulness of a shield for PvE.

I'm not really sure how From would be able to make weapons better at blocking to make no-shield builds more viable in PvE without making shields even more useless in PvP than they already are.

Small Mailman said:
Can someone explain who or what

Maneater Mildred

is?

A total mystery. Seriously, I have read every single item description and dialogue string in the game (or at least all the ones that we know about at present) and she is never mentioned.

InfiniDragon · Dec 9, 2011

malfcn said:
Where do I do that?
I thought it halved each time. That was not the case just now.

You do that by going back to the Undead Asylum. To get there, go up the elevator shortcut to Undead Parish and it will pass a floor with a large hole in it. Drop off the elevator onto said floor, run right to the grass area and roll across the gap between the grass and the stone pillar. Run up the pillar and follow the stairs to get to the large nest, then press Cross/A to "Curl up like a ball". Sit there for a little bit and the big crow will take you back to the Asylum.

Once there, go down the steps from the nest about halfway and go left where the graves are. on the ledge will be a tiny nest where Snuggly the Crow will ask you to "give her soft, give her warm". Drop the Cracked Red Eye Orb in the nest, quit game. When you reload, the Purging Stone will be in it's place and she'll ask for more "soft and warm". There are a few items you can trade there.

ixix said:
I'm not really sure how From would be able to make weapons better at blocking to make no-shield builds more viable in PvE without making shields even more useless in PvP than they already are.

Same way Alpha just mentioned; make weapons have stability based on what's hitting them, while Shield stability is as it is now where it blocks whatever. For example, you can block a katana with a straight sword with little stamina loss and no HP loss, but try it with a Ultra Greatsword and you've had it. Similarly, Ultra GS would be able to block almost anything, except arrows and magic, and shields can block everything as they do now.

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

InfiniDragon said:
You do that by going back to the Undead Asylum. To get there, go up the elevator shortcut to Undead Parish and it will pass a floor with a large hole in it. Drop off the elevator onto said floor, run right to the grass area and roll across the gap between the grass and the stone pillar. Run up the pillar and follow the stairs to get to the large nest, then press Cross/A to "Curl up like a ball". Sit there for a little bit and the big crow will take you back to the Asylum.

Once there, go down the steps from the nest about halfway and go left where the graves are. on the ledge will be a tiny nest where Snuggly the Crow will ask you to "give her soft, give her warm". Drop the Cracked Red Eye Orb in the nest, quit game. When you reload, the Purging Stone will be in it's place and she'll ask for more "soft and warm". There are a few items you can trade there.

I always have a hard time in remember places in games. I knew there was something around there with the bird. I should couldn't find that spot. Will check in a bit. Y'all have photographic memory.
Getting tired of hitting the frogs and it not registering. It's like a death sentence!

ixix · Dec 9, 2011

InfiniDragon said:
Same way Alpha just mentioned; make weapons have stability based on what's hitting them, while Shield stability is as it is now where it blocks whatever. For example, you can block a katana with a straight sword with little stamina loss and no HP loss, but try it with a Ultra Greatsword and you've had it. Similarly, Ultra GS would be able to block almost anything, except arrows and magic, and shields can block everything as they do now.

Is this really all that different from the system we have now? Big weapons mostly have high enough Stability to block the light stuff and reduce damage by a decent amount, small weapons usually don't. The main improvement I can think of is allowing weapons wielded two-handed to parry. Getting more elaborate in terms of having specific types of weapons being capable of blocking other specific types of weapons quickly starts eroding some of the understandability of the system, by my estimation.

Saya · Dec 9, 2011

I hope they will implement a stack system for weapons and armor in the next game (if there is one).

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

Wow. Gaping Dragon would be easy if the clunky controls would function. I have one hit left to kill him: first my swift goes through him..then he kits me, then I hit the heal button..and I my character literally shakes his head (plenty of stamina), and then he kills me.

2AdEPT · Dec 9, 2011

Thagomizer said:
Taurus demon is absolutely the intended path. You have to go very far out of your way to skip it, and there's no way someone would find that method accidentally. I can buy going through Havel's door and not realizing you could go up, maybe, but not the whole drake/darkroot method- any reasonable player would turn around after getting their ass handed to them by the Drakes and Ents and Forest Covenant, and don't even start on going to Blighttown first. The other routes, and the Master Key in general, is more for people who have already play the game once and want to skip the Burg, which is pretty much a training wheels level.

Just because it's not technically exploiting any glitches or stuff like that doesn't mean it's not obvious sequence breaking.

We'll have to agree to disagree on certain points, I believe I understand what the developers were thinking when they put the burg and Taurus where they did, I just don't agree with the terminology, "recommended", "intended path", etc. the same way you appear to......the game is way more fun based on what items you wish to carry around with you to boss fights...and what type of character you conjure up plays a roll in that, as does the covenant you wish to join......not which order you do boss fights in. If FROM had an intended route in mind, and they probably did, it was the route I posted, not the "obvious" one the wikis promote. How could I possibly have a novel experience if I went through the game in some linear fashion, got all the EQUIPMENT out of order for the character I rolled, plus missed the point of what equipment I got from what covenant, to be used on said boss or PVP hotspot? Anyone that goes through this game in the "intended order" is missing FROM's real intent, which was to provide a facade intended order in order to obfuscate the true order (which is based on getting the useful items for whatever character/covenant/boss fight someone wishes to do.)

As obvious to you that you think the burg was intended as a "training level" (which I agree with) this will not appeal to everyone, and I believe FROM knew this also. Far less people than you think, who are cult followers of this series, enjoy going through the most popular order based on geographical logic. A very large cult following of demon's/dark players, including myself, enjoy the "road less traveled" approach that these developers tend to espouse...they couldn't even tell the truth to the distributors about what they intended to do for Demon's, this is a rebellious crew, and this beyond all other intentions, was what they set for their faithful fans in Dark. This rebelliousness was congratulated by their fans, and the master key and londo ruins door was placed there just as intentionally as was the burg. Each to their own, but to say that my wish to experience different areas of the map differently than others, find special equipment and items like the moss in darkroot, in order to go to blighttown, which in turn gets the gold hemmed set, etc etc. is reserved for second run through is ridiculous....that's the whole fun of the first play-through of the game for me, and many others like oracrest, who did their first playthrough without spoilers...its the feeling of being alone in a dangerous and unforgiving place.....the "let's play things safe" easy route exists for the masses, and sells more copies to people not liking the punishment of death etc. but the burg being easy was not for the true appreciators of FROM's REAL intent. IN Dark it was MANDATORY for me to experience the wide open freedom given to us BEFORE following some suggested order that the people making wikis (poor ones early on) thought were best, based solely on geography, perceived difficulty and soul counts etc.. This series is ALL bout the equipment, and the spice in 3.1 being useful for 2.2 in demon's and vice versa the dragon sword in 2.2 is best acquired prior to 4.1 made a pretty obvious path form.....which was out of numerical order, but was difficult to stray from without bending logic, but Dark was designed to try to fix that. Dark was intended to be different that way, and it was...more like oblivion, there were problems with PVP as a result, but that was why there were problems...the true intent of the design of dark was PURPOSELY to set a up a way for adventurous types to be rewarded by being able to get cool equipment faster than the "safe mode" people doing the easy areas first. So much so that it wrecked PVP a bit.

So although I agree the burg was intended to be an easy training level, it was intended to be that way necessarily to serve the purpose of gratifying the adventurer that prefers to have the freedom to explore as many areas as possible before going through the first boss door stumbled upon.

This is why I took the time to share the path at all, because I know there are lots of similar minded people that would like to do FROM's REAL intended route FIRST before they know where everything is. This route is FROM's recommended route, not just my own, and that is why I took the time to post it.

J-Roderton · Dec 9, 2011

What is the point of making a certain build? Would it matter if I'm not doing much PVP? I was going to make a dex build, but I'm not exactly sure if that's worth it.

mxgt · Dec 9, 2011

Just found the Stone Armor and can use the entire set without the slow as fuck roll

Good god the defence upgrade is crazy

Ill Saint · Dec 9, 2011

malfcn said:
Wow. Gaping Dragon would be easy if the clunky controls would function. I have one hit left to kill him: first my swift goes through him..then he kits me, then I hit the heal button..and I my character literally shakes his head (plenty of stamina), and then he kills me.

You must have run out of Estus if he shook his head.

malfcn · Dec 9, 2011

Ill Saint said:
You must have run out of Estus if he shook his head.

Or somehow swapped for something else. Feels dumb

Beat him though. For as cool as he looked, was a bit disappointing.

Him puking was cool though.

Game: Stop telling me everytime that you wish to autosave when I turn on and off the game.

2AdEPT · Dec 9, 2011

Booshka said:
I just did an impromptu NG++++ Speed Run and skipped a ton of the game, Undead Burg, most of Parish, all of the Depths, most of Blighttown, and most of Demon Ruins. I found out that the

Chaos Covenant shortcut

stays active through NG+'s so you can get through the game much quicker. I was able to beat it in like 100 mins, it would have been quicker if I didn't die to

Bed of Chaos

three times, fuck that boss.

It's awesome how you can skip and shortcut a bunch of the game with the master key and some knowledge of the game world.

The only thing I would add here is that you don't have to have "knowledge" of the game world to engage in the master key intent, the fun actually is on the exploration...by running by monsters you don't want to fight without the right equipment, you gain knowledge of your world and can then make the game meet the goals you intend, not the other way around....yes it is awesome, and it was an intention of the developers......, the master key being the only real choice for gift, (you could tell everything else was easy to find later, or useless) and new londo gate being close to firelink was no accident........the guy in firelink even says the goal is to ring both bells...this all points to saying ring both bells "as soons as possible" in order to open up the game for yourself and your specialized desires for it.

AlphaDragoon · Dec 9, 2011

ixix said:
Is this really all that different from the system we have now? Big weapons mostly have high enough Stability to block the light stuff and reduce damage by a decent amount, small weapons usually don't. The main improvement I can think of is allowing weapons wielded two-handed to parry. Getting more elaborate in terms of having specific types of weapons being capable of blocking other specific types of weapons quickly starts eroding some of the understandability of the system, by my estimation.

It's vastly different from what we have now, because as it stands you still magically get hurt from blocking a dagger with a large sword, or even a straight sword/katana. In a real fight just because you block with something that isn't a shield doesn't mean you suddenly still get cut.

MMaRsu · Dec 9, 2011

lol @ people suggesting to get the purging stone from Snuggly.. why would you do that when you can buy a purging stone at the lady in the sewer?

Grinchy · Dec 9, 2011

MMaRsu said:
lol @ people suggesting to get the purging stone from Snuggly.. why would you do that when you can buy a purging stone at the lady in the sewer?

I got a couple from Snuggly when I was early enough into the game that I didn't have the souls to buy them from the lady. Free stones are better than paid ones. But yeah, once you get further in the game, it would be pretty pointless.

roxya · Dec 9, 2011

MMaRsu said:
lol @ people suggesting to get the purging stone from Snuggly.. why would you do that when you can buy a purging stone at the lady in the sewer?

Hmm I dunno, maybe right after getting cursed most people have 0 souls and not 6000?

MMaRsu · Dec 9, 2011

roxya said:
Hmm I dunno, maybe right after getting cursed most people have 0 souls and not 6000?

Ehh yeah true but 6000 isn't that hard to come by is it? Also if you want to trade with snuggly arent you stuck in the tutorial section until you defeat the boss?

Tomat · Dec 9, 2011

I still have no idea how summoning works in this game. My friend and I were in the Duke's Archives last night, neither of us had killed the boss there. He's SL58 and I'm SL63, neither of us could see each others summon sign.

Trying to figure it out because I have some equipment from a character of his.

shiroryu · Dec 9, 2011

MMaRsu said:
Ehh yeah true but 6000 isn't that hard to come by is it? Also if you want to trade with snuggly arent you stuck in the tutorial section until you defeat the boss?

6000 is hard early on, unless you farm the undead on the bridge with the help of the Dragon at 555 souls a round.

And people are talking about returning to the Asylum later on to trade with Snuggly, once the elevator to the Parish in the Firelink Shrine is activated.

Deleted member 30609 · Dec 9, 2011

Jroderton said:
What is the point of making a certain build? Would it matter if I'm not doing much PVP? I was going to make a dex build, but I'm not exactly sure if that's worth it.

Just pump some points into Vitality, Endurance and either Strength or Dex and you're set. Don't worry too much about character optimization. I mean, of you want to follow a build-guide, you can, but it really isn't necessary if you just want to play through the game for fun the first time.

mxgt · Dec 9, 2011

Area after Pinwheel is scary :<

good thing I got a lantern while in here

systemfehler · Dec 9, 2011

I was a bit disappointed by the ending and story in general. The game is really great and feels very pure like old-school RPGs but I wished for more background information, talking and stuff.

There is so much you can miss or destroy by accident in that game I don't know if I should count that as a positive or negative point. In general I think there is too much left unexplained when it comes to game mechanics, spells, items, etc. and resorting to a guide might spoil the game sometimes for you but also add another layer of depth because you may find out more than you would by playing by yourself.

lunlunqq · Dec 9, 2011

sorry if this has been asked before but did they raised the humanity requirement to level up in chaos servant covenant? I just offered the fair lady 40 humanities and still didn't reach the level to open the short cut. is it the patch? or NG+? WTF???

ashk · Dec 9, 2011

lunlunqq said:
sorry if this has been asked before but did they raised the humanity requirement to level up in chaos servant covenant? I just offered the fair lady 40 humanities and still didn't reach the level to open the short cut. is it the patch? or NG+? WTF???

They didn't raise it, it's still 30 humanity to get to +2. Maybe you were checking the wrong door, the shortcut is to the right before the Firesage, not the one in the room with the covenant leader.

sixteen-bit · Dec 9, 2011

mxgt said:
Area after Pinwheel is scary :<

good thing I got a lantern while in here

Tomb of Giants is crazy. The Giants are assholes and continually try to kick you off the stage.

catashtrophe · Dec 9, 2011

lunlunqq said:
sorry if this has been asked before but did they raised the humanity requirement to level up in chaos servant covenant? I just offered the fair lady 40 humanities and still didn't reach the level to open the short cut. is it the patch? or NG+? WTF???

I did the same thing during my 1st play through, the shortcut is not in the same room as Chaos spider lady, go in the Demon Ruins and take a right before the Firesage door and a door opens up and thats the shortcut.

I do wonder though what was the purpose of that door type wall at the other end of the room where the Chaos Covenant spider lady is?

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