Dark Souls 2 PC - April 25, 2014

for my 2nd playthrough I'm surprised at all the things I missed...normally I'm very thorough...

right when entering Majula there's a cliff you can drop down to and pick up some items...in the Dragon Aerie, the reason the dragon lands on the bridge for some players and not others is determined by the number of dragon eggs you break in that level
 
polonyc2 said:
for my 2nd playthrough I'm surprised at all the things I missed...normally I'm very thorough...

right when entering Majula there's a cliff you can drop down to and pick up some items...in the Dragon Aerie, the reason the dragon lands on the bridge for some players and not others is determined by the number of dragon eggs you break in that level
Click to expand...

I thought it was based on if you killed the three dragons or not
 
I beat it last night took, me about 55 hours total with one character I remade. Dual cetus bro all the way. Overall I really enjoyed the game. I loved the coop and invasions. The only thing that really let me down was the ending and how easy the ending bosses were.

Still I give it a 8.5/10 experience! Now I feel like I want to go back to dark souls and beat that as I never finished the game.
 
I've been tossing around going with a cestus, too. I boosted one a little just for the hell of it, and it was doing as well as my other weapons.
 
Power stanced cestus is pretty cheap. Can stun lock pretty much anyone with the L1 combo. Also wear the ring that reduices poise. Even some of the bigger npcs I could stunlock to death.

I think my second playthrough I'm going to go pure pyromancy like I did in DS1.
 
Blubikins said:
Power stanced cestus is pretty cheap. Can stun lock pretty much anyone with the L1 combo. Also wear the ring that reduices poise. Even some of the bigger npcs I could stunlock to death.
Click to expand...

In all the invading that I had done, I only found one guy that used hand to hand combat. He pretty much stunlocked me for half of my life each time. It was one of the few times where I really felt like I had no chance of surviving with my current setup. I'm pretty sure he was using the Vanquisher's Seal as well.

I didn't realize this was a viable build for pve as well, might be worth giving it a whirl.
 
polonyc2 said:
won't weapons with a long reach somewhat negate the cestus in pvp?
Click to expand...

Maybe. But I played through NG4+ as a pure caster, so never really had a weapon as a backup.

Made a second character and at SL130 now so hoping to play with this after my respec.
 
DPI said:
Nope.
Click to expand...

Yeah I didn't think so. I just went into offline mode to farm the bell tower guys. I don't mind 1 invader but 2 at the same time? Ugh...

Blubikins said:
Also wear the ring that reduices poise. Even some of the bigger npcs I could stunlock to death.
Click to expand...

I just got that ring this morning and I was wondering about it. I don't use the cestus but I'll have to try it out for my Knight.

I've been putting points into ADP and that makes a difference, I've noticed I can roll through attacks that usually would've hit me before not to mention it speeds up the estus flask drinking. Good stuff.
 
how many points need to be put into Agility to get decent invulnerability frames?...30?...40?
 
polonyc2 said:
won't weapons with a long reach somewhat negate the cestus in pvp?
Click to expand...

It all depends on how you use it. If you are pretty good at whiffing and exploiting openings---any weapon is viable. Just keep your environment in mind.

The Cestus is pretty strong per hit (strike damage is king) when upgraded and gets in multiple hits, quickly. I was almost killed by a Cestus user.
 
chameleoneel said:
The Cestus is pretty strong per hit (strike damage is king) when upgraded and gets in multiple hits, quickly. I was almost killed by a Cestus user.
Click to expand...

yeah I just experienced a dual Ceastus invader for the first time...I underestimated him...his stamina never seemed to get drained as he kept connecting with shot after shot like a boxer
 
So what all determines being summoned?

Tonight I was trying to get some souls on my sorcerer so I popped over to ornstein and dropped my sign. After about 10 minutes, I got bored and switched to my younger dex toon and found a number of signs at ornstein. Switching back and forth I couldn't get summoned on my sorcerer but could quickly on my dex. The primary difference being one having 800k SM and the other at around 50k. I have no sins on either and both are in the blue cov. If SM is really the issue here then I'm jumping on board with the SM detractors, this is crazy.
 
I want to like the Greatsword (found in a chest in the same room as Gavlan) but I can't get used to that moveset where it swings in the direction you are moving...it's a great STR weapon for PvE but I can't get used to that directional swing
 
rsbennett00 said:
So what all determines being summoned?

Tonight I was trying to get some souls on my sorcerer so I popped over to ornstein and dropped my sign. After about 10 minutes, I got bored and switched to my younger dex toon and found a number of signs at ornstein. Switching back and forth I couldn't get summoned on my sorcerer but could quickly on my dex. The primary difference being one having 800k SM and the other at around 50k. I have no sins on either and both are in the blue cov. If SM is really the issue here then I'm jumping on board with the SM detractors, this is crazy.
Click to expand...

http://jpdesign.pcriot.com/darksouls2/

Neat little calculator.
 
rsbennett00 said:
So what all determines being summoned?

Tonight I was trying to get some souls on my sorcerer so I popped over to ornstein and dropped my sign. After about 10 minutes, I got bored and switched to my younger dex toon and found a number of signs at ornstein. Switching back and forth I couldn't get summoned on my sorcerer but could quickly on my dex. The primary difference being one having 800k SM and the other at around 50k. I have no sins on either and both are in the blue cov. If SM is really the issue here then I'm jumping on board with the SM detractors, this is crazy.
Click to expand...

Ornstein is a relatively low level boss, as pointed out by your other character being there with 50k SM. No one with 800k SM is going to be doing that boss. You'd need to go to bosses in the later half of the game for your summon sign to be visible.

By default summoning is +- 25% of your SM. I believe being a sunbro increases the range, as well as the Name-engraved ring. Cracked orbs also follow a different formula.

http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Summon+Range+Calculator
has a much more detailed explanation. Basically it caps out at 15mil SM and is based on tiers before then.
 
polonyc2 said:
yeah I just experienced a dual Ceastus invader for the first time...I underestimated him...his stamina never seemed to get drained as he kept connecting with shot after shot like a boxer
Click to expand...

Yeah I just beat the game using dual ceastus weapons. As far as pvp went, well I did pretty well against many types of people but of course had some difficulty fighting people with tower shields and long weapons.
 
Ok here are my updated settings and screenshot comparisons for visual mods. I made a post similar to this earlier in the thread. I went back and edited it and now I am double posting it as a new post:

Here are screenshot examples of my personal visual mod settings for Dark Souls 2.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2zh6fptb13ce7de/AADPOu5xcHbplQOnpr4LTfBUa

*click pics to make larger and also enter a slideshow mode. Even still, they do not display full size. download each picture, to view full size (1080p).

You will see several sets of comparisons, each made of three shots. The first shot has all effects active. The second shot is minus the new shiny HDR/Bloom effect from GeDoSaTo. The third shot has all visual mods turned off.

I play the game at 1080p, so these shots were not shrunk down. They were compressed using a very good method, but it only VERY slightly affected the image quality. These shots closely represent my in-game quality, although everything of course looks even better in motion. The "bloom/HDR" effect which really makes shiny stuff shine, is actually much better in motion than in screenshots. It's not meant to be something you sit and stare at. It is meant to glint in your eye. Looks great when spell effects are being thrown around or when two shiny armored people are fighting in a patch of sun, etc.

Overall, my settings are meant to preserve the look of Dark Souls 2 and just enrich or slightly change certain aspects, for what I think is a pleasing improvement. Most of it affects light and brighter parts of the screen. Darker areas see much less effect, as I certainly did not want to brighten dark areas. Most dark areas are actually very slightly darker and/or tightened up, if they were washed out by default.

After the main sets of comparisons, you will see several images of the loading screen. I am using a mod which makes the loading screen bonfire flash in different colors. These images show that. After those images are two sets of older images I took, before Durante added the new shiny HDR/bloom effect to GeDoSaTo. I tacked them onto the end because I like them and think they are still good comparisons.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

List of visual effects mods used:

I am using Durante's "GeDoSaTo" (what I refer to as "Ds2fix) to inject better Ambient occlusion (see the very end of this post, for something about that) and the new shiny HDR/Bloom effect, tweaked so it only effects fire, bright spells, or truly bright/shiny objects. Those are the only things I am using from that mod. I am not using the downsampling capabilities or anything else. I have skipped down-sampling because the effects I am using, all combined, are fairly taxing. With the added weight of donsampling, my 7870 struggles to maintain conistant framerate, especially while capping video. Down-sampling in DS2 really only improves the grass, tree limbs, and very distant objects. So it's really not a big deal. Especially since Ds2 doesn't have huge issues with showing aliasing, to begin with. SMAA or FXAA are quite good enough.

Here is my settings file for the shiny HDR/bloom effect: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jqvbabbzcy48m7k/shinybloomsettings.zip
unzip that into the "assets" folder for GeDoSaTo. *note, these settings are based on GeDoSaTo alpha 5. If you upgrade to a newer version, you should manually compare this file to the newer version's file, and manually make the changes. Just in case there are newer settings in the newer version.

One thing to note about the injected Ambient Occlusion is that it makes stuff visible in "The Gutter" which probably shouldn't be. Thankfully, the AO effect can be turned on/off with the press of a button.


Along with the aforementioned effects from GeDoSaTo: I am using the work in progress version of 64 bit SweetFX (also supports 32 bit). I'm using it because A. it has some effects in it that regular SweetFX does not and B. it claims to perform better in DirectX 9 Vs. normal SweetFx. Ds2 is a DX9 game.

here is the WIP sweetfx: This particular variant is no longer being developed. But, it is stable and has some very good effects not found in standard SweetFX. You need this, to make your game look like mine. You still need GeDoSaTo for the better ambient occlusion and the shiny HDR/Bloom effect, if you want exact parity with my screenshots.

here is my settings file, for the WIP SweetFX. copy and paste it into your Dark Souls.exe directory, after you have pasted the WIP SweetFX files into there.

From SweetFX I am using the following effects:

SMAA with default settings. Ds2 doesn't have huge problems with showing aliasing anyway. But SMAA and FXAA are almost free in performance, so if you aren't walking the line of performance/framerate, it should be easy to use. SMAA is more demanding than FXAA. If you have older hardware or are walking a performance line, try FXAA and set it for zero "subpixel aliasing removal". This will effectively make FXAA work as "edge detect" only and will dramatically lessen the negative effects on sharpness. Compared to SMAA, it will still be very slightly softer, but you won't notice unless you are looking hard and you will get very similar aliasing removal, for less performance cost.

Also, if you are running the game at a resolution lower than 1080p, you may want to try FXAA anyway. In my experience, FXAA does a better overall job than SMAA, at resolutions under 1080p, seemingly as a rule. although it may still depend upon the game. So test it out!

Gaussian: This is a little more than that title lets on. In addition to straight blurring; if tweaked correctly, this is effectively a true "bloom" shader for what we are used to associating bloom for videogame graphics. It has two main settings for two different types of blurring/blooming. There's a heavier setting, which pretty much affects the entire screen/all colors, is pretty much a straight up bloom effect. The other setting seems to bias more to highlights and lighter colors and creates a bit of a hazey/smokey effect around such areas. This is the one which I use.

To be redundant, you'll notice in my screenshots that it adds a hazey effect to flames, bright light from the sun, brighter areas reflecting light from the sun, etc. It reminds me of the UV haze you get from sunlight or just some general light bleed. It's a bit more of a "custom" feeling effect from a more typical full screen bloom option. and it doesn't wash out dark areas, like some heavier/full screen blooming can do.

Both bloom types have a setting to tell it where the 'cutoff' is for the bloom effect to apply interms of bright areas/light sources.

This shader is fairly taxing. Older and/or less powerful GPUs may have trouble if they are already walking the acceptable framerate line.

Curves: This is a general section for easily changing contrast. The idea is that it works on a 'curve' so that you don't get a really harsh result. Instead, a more natural result, which doesn't crush blacks really hard and depending on the setting, won't blow out highlights really badly. (note: this is not what you use to generally fix black level issues. Fix that first, before messing with this. If you use this to fix your black level, you will end up with a very heavy contrast effect akin to a TV on display at Best Buy). There are like 10 different algorithms to try. All of them of course look a bit different. I'm using #9 'parabola' which is especially natural, perserving blacks and only very slightly blowing up highlights. I'm only using it to affect "luma". For this particular algorithm, that looked best for me. Even though they made some improvements in recent patches, Dark Souls 2 is still a little washed out. If your gamma is setup properly, this will fix the remainder of the issue, without drastically affecting the integrity of the overall image.

Most of the algorithms are pretty lightweight, so you may be able to use it, even on less powerful GPUs. There's one algorithm in particular, which has the least performance cost, but still gives a nice effect. #3 "smoothstep". Try that if you need to preserve every ounce of performance or if you want a little bit more dramatic of a contrast effect.

DPX Cineon: This is a shader meant to color grade as if the game was made with DPX/Cineon values. It is highly configurable and can range from very subtle, to very similar to actual DPX, to something incredibly drastic which takes the DPX qualities and cranks them up to extremes. By default, it seems to emphasize brighter red/pink and lighter blue/turquoise. I know that sounds like teal and orange, but it is very far from that. It also adds "light" to the image in usually a natural way. It's a pretty interesting shader. I use it for a subtle effect, to give a little more "light" to brightly lit parts of the screen. Not so much for the color emphasizing. Coupled with the bloom effect I use, it nets a really nice result.

It's a pretty expensive shader. Weak GPUs may have trouble.

Lumsharpen: this also can be set to affect Chroma, if you want. Anyway, it's a sharpness booster. I have it modestly set, to offset the softness added by the other effects.

a low cost shader. Weak GPUs may be able to use it.

Dithering: Adds dithering to the screen color, to simulate more colors and help get rid of visible gradients/color banding. VERY subtle. I only use it because I can and because the souls games often have some visible color banding. You can easily ignore this effect for your own use and save some performance, if needed.


*The ambient occlusion effect in GeDoSaTo is made by Asmodean of PCSX2_fx fame. He is constantly tweaking it. It is different in every version released of GeDoSaTo. I personally prefer the look of the first version, so I paste the original file for that effect into the latest version of GeDoSaTo. If you want that file you can get it from GeDoSaTo Alpha 0.1 or send me a PM. *this may no longer be necessary, as of GeDoSaTo alpha 5. Durante made his own tweaks to Asmodean's VSSAO. Basically it seems like a setting Asmodean may have accidentally changed at some point, without noticing. Anyway, the VSSAO in alpha 5 should look better than the past few versions. Although I have not yet done super close comparison between the alpha 1 (what I have typically preferred) and alpha 5 settings.
 
Last edited:
Tzzird said:
In all the invading that I had done, I only found one guy that used hand to hand combat. He pretty much stunlocked me for half of my life each time. It was one of the few times where I really felt like I had no chance of surviving with my current setup. I'm pretty sure he was using the Vanquisher's Seal as well.

I didn't realize this was a viable build for pve as well, might be worth giving it a whirl.
Click to expand...

The Vanquisher's Seal is awesome. It's like dual Cestus+10s. If you manage to get it in NG, prepare to stun a lot of pvp'ers in your greatness:p
 
Nytegard said:
The Vanquisher's Seal is awesome. It's like dual Cestus+10s. If you manage to get it in NG, prepare to stun a lot of pvp'ers in your greatness:p
Click to expand...

ooo.... great idea. Has anyone actually broken down the stats for Vanquisher's versus dual +10 Cestus? If equal, I'd probably like to get the Cestus +10 to have an extra ring slot.
 
Tzzird said:
ooo.... great idea. Has anyone actually broken down the stats for Vanquisher's versus dual +10 Cestus? If equal, I'd probably like to get the Cestus +10 to have an extra ring slot.
Click to expand...

Vanquishers seal wins unless you get both strength and dex up to insane amounts (with the ring of blades) then the Cestus might slightly outperform it but you will need both like 60 strength and dex before you see that happen. At lower levels the seal is definitely a much more powerful weapon.
 
chameleoneel said:
Here are screenshot examples of my personal visual mod settings for Dark Souls 2. (the last couple of pics show a couple of shots from FineFX ENB preset which is the most 'natural' looking ENB preset I have seen. I've also tried Kalicola's preset. But, I am not currently actually using any ENB)
Click to expand...

the only 'mod' or tweak I'm currently using is the Nvidia Inspector tweaks outlined in the PCGamer DS2 article...I want to try GeDoSaTo after a few more stable versions are released...SweetFX seems to have some drawbacks with DS2 so I passed...now that I finished the game once I'm more willing to experiment with the graphics mods
 
polonyc2 said:
the only 'mod' or tweak I'm currently using is the Nvidia Inspector tweaks outlined in the PCGamer DS2 article...I want to try GeDoSaTo after a few more stable versions are released...SweetFX seems to have some drawbacks with DS2 so I passed...now that I finished the game once I'm more willing to experiment with the graphics mods
Click to expand...

The only issue with GeDoSaTo and Dark Souls 2 is that you cannot alt-tab when downsamplling, if you are using standard full screen mode. That may never be fixable. But, you can enable a border-less windowed mode, which looks exactly like you are playing fullscreen and should allow alt-tabbing.

I don't downsample, because in Dark Souls 2, the visual benefit is VERY small, for the amount of performance it demands. I can run the game at 4K/60fps, but I can't use any other effects at the same time, like SweetFX, better AO, etc, without dipping the framerate. All for grass and trees which don't show a little aliasing........

So I skip the downsampling and instead, use a bunch of shader effects to give some natural looking improvements, with much less performance cost.

What "drawbacks" for SweetFX are you referring to? it's as subtle or extreme as you tweak it to be. Performs quite well, and is stable. excluding the improved AO (which is injected through GeDoSaTo), all of the visual difference in my screenshots is from SweetFX. I have an AMD 7870, so I can't inject AO through my graphics driver, like Nvidia users area able to with 'Inspector'.


BTW, ENB developer Boris announced that ENB development for Dark Souls 2 is cancelled. He's not a fan of the DSouls games and considers developing for it too much of a chore. Bummer!
 
Last edited:
chameleoneel said:
What "drawbacks" for SweetFX are you referring to? it's as subtle or extreme as you tweak it to be. Performs quite well, and is stable. excluding the improved AO (which is injected through GeDoSaTo), all of the visual difference in my screenshots is from SweetFX.
Click to expand...

just what I read in the PCGamer article...

"One significant drawback of SweetFX injection is that it also affects all the UI elements. SweetFX is a generic tool which simply works on the final image produced by the game, and as such this unintended side-effect is unavoidable. Another slight problem is that the same processing is applied regardless of the area of the game you are currently in"

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/21/dark-souls-2-pc-tweaking-guide/2/

I'll probably give SweetFX and 'DSFix 2' a try soon
 
polonyc2 said:
just what I read in the PCGamer article...

"One significant drawback of SweetFX injection is that it also affects all the UI elements. SweetFX is a generic tool which simply works on the final image produced by the game, and as such this unintended side-effect is unavoidable.
Click to expand...

But in actual use, with several games, I've never encountered notable issues/conflicts with HUD elements. The usual fear is that things like AA injection could glitch HUD elements or make them unreadable. I have never had that problem and haven't ever heard of it being an actual problem, with SweetFX. and I prefer that changes I make to color and contrast also affect HUD elements, becuase it makes the image cohesive. GeDoSaTo includes some of the shaders from SweetFX. But curiously, Durante has not integrated the entire suite.


"Another slight problem is that the same processing is applied regardless of the area of the game you are currently in"

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/21/dark-souls-2-pc-tweaking-guide/2/
Click to expand...

Well to be fair, no mod has yet figured out how to apply area specific tweaks that transparently load in Dark Souls 2. GeDoSaTo I think could support this, in theory. But such a thing has not yet been implemented. As I mentioned, you can plainly see this, if you are injecting Ambient Occlusion through GeDoSaTo. The algorithm does not change for each area. So if you go into a place like "The Gutter" where distant objects are meant to be obscured by heavy fogging---The AO is still applied and makes stuff visible, which should not be. But you can't toggle AO injection with the press of a button!


and further on the points of affecting HUD elements and not having area specific tweaks: that's the price paid for general use mods. To get such features, you have to have game specific versions of Mods. Which need to be made at all and usually take extra time. In the mean time, we can use things with good track records, such as SweetFX or general purpose GeDoSaTo, and enjoy many benefits, right now!
 
Last edited:
For the people who have either won the game or made it extremely far - is there any one piece of advice or recommendation you'd make for someone who is at roughly the halfway point? I'm not looking for spoilers - just more generalized advice to make sure I don't waste time/resources.

I'm essentially a strength/dex hybrid with my other points being more or less evenly distributed to vigor, endurance, vitality & agility.

I'm still loving the broadsword (in spite of a shitty R2 attack), so I think I'm just going to max it out.
 
Domingo said:
For the people who have either won the game or made it extremely far - is there any one piece of advice or recommendation you'd make for someone who is at roughly the halfway point? I'm not looking for spoilers - just more generalized advice to make sure I don't waste time/resources.

I'm essentially a strength/dex hybrid with my other points being more or less evenly distributed to vigor, endurance, vitality & agility.

I'm still loving the broadsword (in spite of a shitty R2 attack), so I think I'm just going to max it out.
Click to expand...

If you've made it halfway then you'll have no problems with the rest of the game. Only real advice is to keep some Poison Moss from Gavlan on you at all times. I'd also save your twinkling titanite and dragon bones till you really find a weapon/armor set you like as they are somewhat rare. Anything that uses regular titanite go ahead and upgrade to your heart's content as you can purchase unlimited in the end.

I beat the entire game with a longsword and no ranged/magic/summoning and playing blind my first time and I'm still using the longsword in ng+.
 
chineseman said:
If you've made it halfway then you'll have no problems with the rest of the game. Only real advice is to keep some Poison Moss from Gavlan on you at all times. I'd also save your twinkling titanite and dragon bones till you really find a weapon/armor set you like as they are somewhat rare. Anything that uses regular titanite go ahead and upgrade to your heart's content as you can purchase unlimited in the end.

I beat the entire game with a longsword and no ranged/magic/summoning and playing blind my first time and I'm still using the longsword in ng+.
Click to expand...

Twinkling titanite is certainly an annoyance to amass in DS2; you can't just go to a vendor to purchase it. If you are planning to max out some of the top end heavy armors, you will need 40 of these, not including an extra 20 for a weapon and shield and that will take some time to farm.

Titanite slabs, on the other hand, are very easy to farm towards the end of the game. You'll probably need more chunks towards the end than you do slabs. You'll also be able to purchase an infinite number of shards and large titanite at some point.

Spend your souls when you can level up 2 or three times. There's really no one abiding by some meta level cap of 150 in ds2. You can respec in this game whenever you want (as long as you didn't kill the npc that allows you to do so).
 
Domingo said:
For the people who have either won the game or made it extremely far - is there any one piece of advice or recommendation you'd make for someone who is at roughly the halfway point? I'm not looking for spoilers - just more generalized advice to make sure I don't waste time/resources.

I'm essentially a strength/dex hybrid with my other points being more or less evenly distributed to vigor, endurance, vitality & agility.

I'm still loving the broadsword (in spite of a shitty R2 attack), so I think I'm just going to max it out.
Click to expand...

the first half is the hard part when haven't built up your weapons/gear...The Sentinels boss, the Chariot boss etc...once you reach Drangleic Castle you should be fine...I beat the game with a STR character using mainly the Bastard Sword (upgraded to +10) throughout

my advice...keep a lot of poison arrows in your inventory for those times you may want to take a long range approach (Giants!)
 
Domingo said:
For the people who have either won the game or made it extremely far - is there any one piece of advice or recommendation you'd make for someone who is at roughly the halfway point? I'm not looking for spoilers - just more generalized advice to make sure I don't waste time/resources.

I'm essentially a strength/dex hybrid with my other points being more or less evenly distributed to vigor, endurance, vitality & agility.

I'm still loving the broadsword (in spite of a shitty R2 attack), so I think I'm just going to max it out.
Click to expand...

My best advice is to have your first character be your achievement character (if you're going for any of them). Especially with spell casters, you're better off not purchasing most spells available, as you'll easily waste quite a few levels if you're under SL 200. You'll need roughly 250k souls for all the spells (give or take a few thousand depending on covenant rankings). This puts you at a major disadvantage pvp wise. With your first run through of the game, you're bound to lose tons of souls anyway due to just ignorance of the game, so why not just further burden the character even more, even if you're not a caster now. If you want to play a caster later on, this allows you to skip all the worthless spells. (Even going caster specific complete spell routes puts you a few levels below optimized casters).
 
Domingo said:
For the people who have either won the game or made it extremely far - is there any one piece of advice or recommendation you'd make for someone who is at roughly the halfway point? I'm not looking for spoilers - just more generalized advice to make sure I don't waste time/resources.

I'm essentially a strength/dex hybrid with my other points being more or less evenly distributed to vigor, endurance, vitality & agility.

I'm still loving the broadsword (in spite of a shitty R2 attack), so I think I'm just going to max it out.
Click to expand...

If you favor STR, you should be buffing the Greatsword and a Zwei or equivalent(BKGS), to switch between each other if one is close to breaking. Buff a mace for times you need faster attacking.

4 quick shots in succession from the poison arrows will instantly poison most targets.

Don't fight the ogres alone(at least, not the one in shrine of amana...).
 
Blubikins said:
Anyone beat the game with just a whip build? wondering if thats even viable for my next playthrough.
Click to expand...

It would be pointless, you can't main a whip because it breaks in no time. Its really meant as a surprise secondary.
 
Well this sucks, I rolled a new character with the intentions of getting some low level PVP experience in the bell tower. So I'm walking around the Sinner's Rise and next thing I know I'm invaded by a phantom (never happened before, ever). I never see the guy and about 30 seconds later the game says he's been defeated (suicide I guess). 'Great' I think - guy must have been terrible. Then I check my souls and I'm now carrying half a million. So much for that low level PVP practice :(

Real question is, how was I invaded at 120k SM by someone CARRYING 500K souls (meaning he probably had much more).
 
Drakenfeng said:
Well this sucks, I rolled a new character with the intentions of getting some low level PVP experience in the bell tower. So I'm walking around the Sinner's Rise and next thing I know I'm invaded by a phantom (never happened before, ever). I never see the guy and about 30 seconds later the game says he's been defeated (suicide I guess). 'Great' I think - guy must have been terrible. Then I check my souls and I'm now carrying half a million. So much for that low level PVP practice :(

Real question is, how was I invaded at 120k SM by someone CARRYING 500K souls (meaning he probably had much more).
Click to expand...

Hacker :( This happened to me when I was around 1.5 million SM so it didn't hurt things too much. Apparently you can hack your character to have 99 in every stat without increasing your soul memory. Their soul memory is what is used to match them with you, not their soul level. The amount of souls you get for vanquishing an invader is based on how many souls they need for their next level (not how many they're carrying). If they're maxed out, this number is something like 450k-500k
 
whrswoldo said:
Hacker :( This happened to me when I was around 1.5 million SM so it didn't hurt things too much. Apparently you can hack your character to have 99 in every stat without increasing your soul memory. Their soul memory is what is used to match them with you, not their soul level. The amount of souls you get for vanquishing an invader is based on how many souls they need for their next level (not how many they're carrying). If they're maxed out, this number is something like 450k-500k
Click to expand...

Yep. Some asshat with +99 everything used a trainer offline to reduce his soul memory, then went online.

This is why I keep rolling backups of my saves. There's a utility to do this automatically at Reddit and the DS2 section of NexusMods, but I just do it manually. In the %appdata%\DarkSoulsII\<GUID>\ folder I copy-paste the DARKSII0000.sl2 file to a new file with a -001 appended. -001, -002, -003, etc similar to how Skyrim's save file naming scheme. I do this every hour or two (quit->save out of the game first), or when I've hit some milestone like leveling up a bunch.

I haven't experienced any jumping-off-bridge suicide cheaters trying to screw up my SM, have only experienced a handful of idiots with infinite health and have figured out ways to make them ragequit, so I dont even think about cheaters while I'm playing, they're extremely rare and not worth expending worry on.

I do hope FROM's server team gets more aggressive about matching cheaters with one another. There's already been some speculation on Reddit's DS2 sub about people with blatant cheat stats being matched with others with same, a cheater pool in other words. A rep for the game (can't remember if it was Namco or an actual FROM rep) did make the statement that FROM's server team does look at stats that don't correlate - like having impossibly low SM relative to very high stats, or having weapons with hacked stats, etc.
 
Last edited:
h8AC0A3EC
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top