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Dark Souls |OT2| Praise the Sun!

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DigitalDevil said:
I'm a thief, but have been hearing a lot about this winged spear fairly early in the game. I just rang the first bell and have +5 bandit knife, +5 hollow shield, +5 short bow. Where do I get this spear?
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It's somewhere in the graveyard, next to firelink. You should be powerful enough to deal with the skeletons and find it.
 
Black Knight Great Axe is an amazing weapon. Got it up to +3, need more twinkling titanite!

The swing speed is so fast for a heavy weapon, can't wait to try this PvP.

I'm starting to think about abandoning my 2nd character playthrough and just playing a NG+ with this one once I beat the game. I'm really liking the way he's turning out at Lvl 70, a Faith/Strength Knight with Pyromancy for support. It's too much fun.

It's all down to whether or not FROM releases a patch for the online this week...
 
Man, I was so scared going into the Tomb of Giants after reading all the comments here, but it wasn't really that bad if you had Cast Light miracle and the ring that masks the sounds you make.
krakov said:
Almost considering buying a PS3 solely for Demons Souls.
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You should! DS is amazing and doesn't feel cheap at all, like the later levels of Dark Souls. Plus, I like the weapon upgrades on DS much better. Don't like that its region locked, but it makes it easier to co-op with friends if you get the same version as them.
 
Clear said:
Damn. That's a bad bug.

I would assume it should only be a factor at high-ish SL?

I've deliberately been holding myself at a reasonable level (45 now, was 42-ish when I was farming) though so I suspect odds a fairly low that I'd get paired with a NG+ player.

That said dupers/glitchers/save-hackers could conceivably be on that at a low level so... Has this bug been reported on both platforms (PS3 here) ?

I've got the ring now, so I guess I could just whack Shiva as I've got the weapons I'm interested in (Shotel and Demon Spear) for his ring and simply abandon the covenant.
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yes, and i can barely play with this bug. =|
i would like to report for PS3 (i don't know for 360), how can i do this?
 
How do I use the boss souls to make weapons? I want to make a Crystal Ring Shield. Can't find it in the guide. It just says the materials, but doesn't tell me the blacksmith.
 
gdt5016 said:
How do I use the boss souls to make weapons? I want to make a Crystal Ring Shield. Can't find it in the guide. It just says the materials, but doesn't tell me the blacksmith.
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You want the blacksmith in Anor Londo.
 
Wow.. Struggled for 10+ hours with a level 19 warrior. Everything so slow and awful. So then in frustration I decided to start over with a Wanderer. ...And it's like a different game now. I didn't die once with a level 1 Wanderer up until the area where I struggled with hundreds of deaths before with a level 19 Warrior. The restart has revitalized my interest..
 
faulty_fork said:
It's somewhere in the graveyard, next to firelink. You should be powerful enough to deal with the skeletons and find it.
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Huh. I guess I missed it. I did a suicide run to get the zweihander, is it beyond that?
 
So, preparing to wrap up my first run through the game so I have killed most of the NPC's at Firelink (and some other ones like Quelana). Figured I'd post my short review of the game:

Pros:

+ Still as utterly addictive as Demon's Souls. The satisfaction that you feel when you overcome an obstacle is still second to none.
+ Enemy variation and environmental variation is fantastic. You'll see a lot of stuff, and tear through tons of varying enemies.
+ Boss fights are generally great.
+ The open-world structure is great, and encourages you to push on in different directions without knowing where you'll end up. And as always, the level design is fantastic and the way various areas interconnect is mindboggingly cool.
+ Several of the main annoyances from Demon's Souls have been corrected; enchanting/upgrading weapons is easier and more rewarding, the armor sets are more diverse, you can't screw yourself up with NPC's as easy and best of alls: CRYSTAL MOTHERFUCKING LIZARDS respawn gihgouighoiughouighogh WOOO!
+ Generally fantastic graphics and art direction.
+ The amount of secrets and completely optional areas that you don't even have to visit encourages exploration.
+ Absolutely enormous game; you'll get tons of mileage out of your purchase. Easily one of the best games this generation, value-wise.

Cons:

- I feel the game is generally a bit more unfair/unbalanced than Demon's Souls. For example,
forcing you to get killed by a boss without having a change to prepare?
Poor form. Also, the game's difficulty feels a bit uneven; some regular enemies are harder than some of the bosses!
- (minor spoilers)
Not enough bonfires to warp between, which makes it a bit tedious to jump around the game world.
- The PvP system is so-so; the lag is terrible and will end up with you getting backstabbed completely arbitrarily. Also, it's hard to get in "touch" with other gamers, and the reason to stay human this time around is barely worth it (costs too much). Therefore, you aren't directly encouraged to interact with other players as in Demon's Souls, so I'd consider the online system here to be worse.
- A pet-peeve of mine is I don't like the fact that some bosses end up as regular enemies later on. (spoilers)
Take the bell gargoyles as an example; ringing the bell is a major event in the game world, yet those two end up as repeated enemies later on. Same with the Taurus demon and the Capra demon.
The satisfaction for overcoming them is defeated when you are pitted against several clones of them.
- The game fizzles out in a worse way than Demon's Souls;
The build-up towards the end in Demon's Souls was cool, and stuff changed around you in a cool way despite the lackluster final boss. Here, you simply open up an anonymous but beautiful area to the last boss and that's it.
- Some game areas are extremely shittily designed and just plain ugly; Demon Ruins is terrible-looking and boring, Crystal Cave is the most boring area in the game and that part in Lost Izalith is uuuuuggghhhhh. The game is overall a bit more uneven polish-wise than Demon's Souls.
- The soul distribution in the game is too uneven; some truly hard enemies grant few souls while piss-easy enemies shower you with souls. You're pretty much forced to grind boring areas just to advance.

Anyway, utterly fantastic game despite several flaws. I love this game.
 
"Demon Ruins is terrible-looking and boring"

BeeDog, when I first saw that area, all I could do is look around in awe and wonder. Just because many games already used the fire-element so heavily, I cant help but feel that this is the best this gen has to offer when I want to see an environment like that :)
 
V_Arnold said:
"Demon Ruins is terrible-looking and boring"

BeeDog, when I first saw that area, all I could do is look around in awe and wonder. Just because many games already used the fire-element so heavily, I cant help but feel that this is the best this gen has to offer when I want to see an environment like that :)
Click to expand...

Sorry to say I don't share that opinion. It's a huge area, lacking geometry complexity, with repeating ugly red textures and not much to look at. Other areas in the game nail the scale in a much more convincing way.
 
finalozzo said:
i didn't explore the valley of drakes yet, is there something useful? I only took the sword of astora.
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There is a dragon crest shield and one or two soul items. The sword is the most useful item I think. Although the dragon shield does have high fire resistance.
 
My main issue with the game, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that scaling weapons suck and it is better to just use lightning or fire. This also means there is no progression to the damage you can do in later playthroughs.
 
Finally found
the bird nest that lets you return to the Asylum
and bumped into
Stray Demon, which I also killed

Holy shit this game is awesome.
 
blackflag said:
My main issue with the game, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that scaling weapons suck and it is better to just use lightning or fire. This also means there is no progression to the damage you can do in later playthroughs.
Click to expand...

This is also a major problem with the game; you're not rewarded nearly enough for pumping points into STR/DEX. My Lightning Spear +5 is still rocking everything (except during PvP fights where I get owned almost all the time).
 
I'm in blighttown at the first bonfire and its impossible to tell where I'm meant to go next. :'(

gaping dragon was a cakewalk once you figured out how to fight him. Didn't even hurt me 1 time once you worked out just how to do it.
 
BeeDog said:
This is also a major problem with the game; you're not rewarded nearly enough for pumping points into STR/DEX. My Lightning Spear +5 is still rocking everything (except during PvP fights where I get owned almost all the time).
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Indeed. My STR/DEX build Warrior is rocking a Lightning Iaito +4, much to my dismay. :(
 
You know, I was thinking, and this game really has some old-school level designs, in quite a fresh new way.

Spoilers for how some places are:
The first easier level; Undead Burg.
The cave-level (think Mario); the Catacombs.
The ice-level where you can slide a bit; Crystal Caves.
The laval-level with Lost Izalith.

Only thing missing is an underwater level really.
 
KAOz said:
You know, I was thinking, and this game really has some old-school level designs, in quite a fresh new way.

Spoilers for how some places are:
The first easier level; Undead Burg.
The cave-level (think Mario); the Catacombs.
The ice-level where you can slide a bit; Crystal Caves.
The laval-level with Lost Izalith.

Only thing missing is an underwater level really.
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That's what Blight Town is when the frames drop to 5. Feels like you are underwater.

:)
 
zlatko said:
That's what Blight Town is when the frames drop to 5. Feels like you are underwater.

:)
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Touché! And oh so very true.

Everyone hates underwater levels. Everyone hates Blight Town. Yeah, I can see it.
 
The_Darkest_Red said:
Indeed. My STR/DEX build Warrior is rocking a Lightning Iaito +4, much to my dismay. :(
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Yeah I have 40 Dex and my lightning Iaito +5 does way more than when it was a maxed regular Iaito. I've heard this is true even with Dex maxed
 
Oh, I have a quite big question. Does Vitality scale differently when your character is female or something? I saw one dude with 14 Vit having 790 HP, or something close to that. My character wouldn't reach even 700 with 14 Vit.

Maybe he was wearing HP-increasing armor or rings, but I didn't see any icon.
 
So I'm doing Anor Londo just fine. I see this nice looking painting in the church. I examine it. Damn my curiosity. How do I get out? I tried walking back, but it just gets me killed.
Risk Breaker said:
Oh, I have a quite big question. Does Vitality scale differently when your character is female or something? I saw one dude with 14 Vit having 790 HP, or something close to that. My character wouldn't reach even 700 with 14 Vit.

Maybe he was wearing HP-increasing armor or rings, but I didn't see any icon.
Click to expand...
Maybe the ring of divine favor and protection? Adds 20% stamina, equipment load and hp. My character is a female and at 14 vit, it should 658 hp.
 
blackflag said:
My main issue with the game, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that scaling weapons suck and it is better to just use lightning or fire. This also means there is no progression to the damage you can do in later playthroughs.
Click to expand...

This is what has me a bit worried about NG+ and beyond, a little bit for long-term PVP too.

In Demon's Souls, weapon scaling was what made NG+ even possible, as even the static weapons that were insanely powerful would be outclassed on second or third playthroughs.
 
I think I am stuck in offline mode, I see no summon signs or messages anywhere! I accidentally joined a XBL Party and of course it booted me to the menu but when I restarted the system I cannot seem to see anything anymore!
 
Okay, who here has a Pyro/Sorc/Miracles build and how fun is it? NG+ would be interesting but DEX builds don't really have a lot to work with. And I had more fun as a mage on Demon's than I did as a melee character.
 
zerokoolpsx said:
Maybe the ring of divine favor and protection? Adds 20% stamina, equipment load and hp. My character is a female and at 14 vit, it should 658 hp.
Click to expand...

That must be it :P Quite a nice boost!

I'm about to leave the
Asylum
but there is this one door, between two normal undeads with shields, at the top floor, inside the only tower left standing that is locked and I can't find its key around here. I guess it's found somewhere else?


OK nevermind, I returned to Firelink and found the frigging key right after... haha, you so silly From :)
 
After hitting somewhat of a wall with the boss of Blighttown I decided to leave that area and do some exploring in Darkroot Garden. My goal was to defeat the Butterfly boss so I could get to the item that would allow me to create a Divine weapon. I knew I was going to have to get past that Demon that resides just below the blacksmith in the Undead Parish but that didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought it would.

My first attempt with the Demon I did fairly well and learned how to avoid his attacks so that I was able to take him out on the second attempt. Amazingly enough, he dropped his weapon for me and that item has turned out to be a fantastic piece of equipment. It's classified as a Polearm and has stats that are a little above a Divine Halberd but with a far more useful weak attack (its a slash that has good range as opposed to the halberd's spear like poke).

This new weapon has allowed me to do very well in the Garden, taking out those tree creatures in 1 to 2 hits and the Stone warriors in 7 or 8. The Butterfly went down on my second attempt and I was able to grab the ember and ascend my Iaito to divine +3!

So with more powerful weapons in hand (and I think I am also going to buy Flash sweat) I am going to soon head back into Blighttown and hopefully return victorious.
 
MechaX said:
Okay, who here has a Pyro/Sorc/Miracles build and how fun is it? NG+ would be interesting but DEX builds don't really have a lot to work with. And I had more fun as a mage on Demon's than I did as a melee character.
Click to expand...

Considering that user created, unscaled weapons are best, it's easy to solely focus on magic. Starting pyro and upping intelligence makes for a class that becomes nearly everything very early on.
 
BeeDog said:
This is also a major problem with the game; you're not rewarded nearly enough for pumping points into STR/DEX. My Lightning Spear +5 is still rocking everything (except during PvP fights where I get owned almost all the time).
Click to expand...

What is the power of the Lightning Spear +5? I have the base version from Sens, but I was so underwhelmed with it's power compared to my Battle Axe +10, even though a +10 spear is "inferior" to the lightning version, that I never upgraded it.

I like the spear for it's range, but my Axe hits much harder despite the fact the stat sheet says the lightning spear is about 30-40 more power. I also get about the same number of attacks per stamina bar between the two, so for me the Axe was the obvious choice.
 
BeeDog said:
This is also a major problem with the game; you're not rewarded nearly enough for pumping points into STR/DEX. My Lightning Spear +5 is still rocking everything (except during PvP fights where I get owned almost all the time).
Click to expand...

I wish they would fix with an update but I don't see it happening.

Oracle Dragon said:
What is the power of the Lightning Spear +5? I have the base version from Sens, but I was so underwhelmed with it's power compared to my Battle Axe +10, even though a +10 spear is "inferior" to the lightning version, that I never upgraded it.

I like the spear for it's range, but my Axe hits much harder despite the fact the stat sheet says the lightning spear is about 30-40 more power. I also get about the same number of attacks per stamina bar between the two, so for me the Axe was the obvious choice.
Click to expand...

If you were to turn your axe into a magic/elemental weapon it would completely eclipse your +10. In both raw damage and utility (since it would deal heavy damage through shields on most foes).
 
had a really good time in the depths, and beat the gaping dragon first time with just my spear+5. Now, I have that pyromancy guy in the fire link shrine and want advice on which spell to go with. Fireball is the standard pyromancer spell right? But as I'm melee and usually have a few arrows for pulling enemies out to fight, I think it might be better to go with something more heavy hitting for mini bosses etc?

So - combustion, fireball or fire orb as a first fire spell for a lv25 wanderer? If I put one point into intelligence I can have 2 attunement slots.

oh, and how do those spells compare to the damage done by a firebomb for instance?
 
It feels like the effort you put into killing hardcore enemies does not pay off nearly enough. 300 for the guardians at Anor Londo, really?
 
BeeDog said:
This is also a major problem with the game; you're not rewarded nearly enough for pumping points into STR/DEX. My Lightning Spear +5 is still rocking everything (except during PvP fights where I get owned almost all the time).
Click to expand...

For low levels yes, but higher levels (140) then STR/DEX is the way to go.
 
cj_iwakura said:
It feels like the effort you put into killing hardcore enemies does not pay off nearly enough. 300 for the guardians at Anor Londo, really?
Click to expand...



I kinda feel like the forest farming spot is the major thing that throws everything else off, even if you don't glitch it the guys die in 30 seconds or so depending on how much they evade and give you 2000. It's awesome... but it ruins the rest of the game. I don't mind dying in Anor Londo because those guys are harder and don't give you crap, and I can just go make it up in the forest in a matter of minutes :/


I also feel like the Dragon Sword you can get early on throws off itemization pretty badly until mid game.



Two small tweaks there and I think the game would feel a bit more balanced, atleast in the early to mid game.
 
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