Dark Souls is on Steam

chockomonkey said:
So do all characters play pretty much the same for the beginning part of the game?

I haven't seen any magic scaling weapons, even on my level 47 or whatever he is.
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A sorcerer is going to rely on soul arrow and weapons at the start, later on you'll have enough attunement slots and spells to only need weapons as a backup, if you want. Although with something like Velka's Rapier or Moonlight Greatsword, you could just melee. Those are a bit harder to get/ not early game weapons, though.

Most magic scaling weapons are crafted.
 
chockomonkey said:
You think i should not reroll?

I spent some points in resistance and killed the Sunlight co-op dude.
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I was half kidding...play whatever way you feel is best...I never really liked playing a magic character...Pyromancy was fun but I always preferred weapons (separate characters for DEX and STR)
 
polonyc2 said:
I was half kidding...play whatever way you feel is best...I never really liked playing a magic character...Pyromancy was fun but I always preferred weapons (separate characters for DEX and STR)
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Yea I'm still torn myself, which is why I asked.

You're right though--i shouldn't have taken a break because now i'm torn between re-rolling and continuing.
 
if you are looking to recover some points from resistance then you don't need to bother unless you are going to PvP. for people you want to stay from say level 99 to 120 and no more. Then the wasted points in RES would make a difference. for your caster, if you want to melee, just get a weapon you like and make it lightning or fire, or take str or dex to 40 and make it +15 (which will be the best outcome)
 
chockomonkey said:
So can we talk about some various specs?

I loaded up Dark Souls for the first time in awhile last night and decided to roll a new characters since I had wasted a few points in resistance on my last one. Problem was, i couldn't really imagine any crazy specs. Does each spec use either str or dex? Or are there specs that use neither? What about full caster specs and the like?

I wanted to get creative but ended up making a claric and planned to go str/faith, but at the end of the night it all felt so similar to my last character i figure i'll just pick him up again.
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as others have said you don't need to worry about 'wasting' points unless you plan on playing PvP...each base character uses STR or DEX but just in different amounts...the starting class has zero impact on the game because you can mold your character any way you like...only thing the beginning class is good for is for example if you want to wield the Zweihander earlier in the game...you would then choose the class with the highest STR so that you could level up quicker...the neutral starting class is 'Wanderer'

the faith builds are tricky because you really need to know exactly what you're planning on doing to maximize the class correctly
 
chockomonkey said:
So do all characters play pretty much the same for the beginning part of the game?

I haven't seen any magic scaling weapons, even on my level 47 or whatever he is.
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Dark Souls has a major change from Demon's Souls in that there isn't such a thing as a pure caster. Instead of rechargeable mana with unlimited spell usage, you just have a limited number of spell uses, with no mana. Pure casting is therefore, not very viable, because the best spells are so limited that you can't really rely on them in every situation, because you aren't going to "hit" your opponent with every cast. You will waste many, with misses. It is possible of course, to mix spell types. but you have to be pretty resourceful and know exactly what you are doing, to switch between them mid battle. It will also take some planning, to end up with enough attunement and the right spread of stats, to make it all work.

So yes, even casters have to fall back on melee, at least for the first time or two through the game and for many levels of PVP.

But Magic/Faith also has a huge benefit to melee, with weapon buff spells. I think the highest melee damage in the game is a high strength character with a large weapon upgraded specifically for physical damage scaling, then add 30+ faith to that, with the higher level damage buff miracle. Anything left over would go into dexterity, as that boosts physical attack, as well.

The thing about Dark Souls is that the first time through the game, a lot of the novelty or highly specific builds are not super viable. As the game is designed for those builds to come together, over a longer period of time, with repeated playthroughs.

Also notable is that min-maxing like that, will probably leave you open for some vulnerability. Which is part of the process of decided how you want to build!


the faith builds are tricky because you really need to know exactly what you're planning on doing to maximize the class correctly
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the problem with Faith is that that it isn't particularly useful, for a lot of the game. Many of the more useful spells are held off from you, for a long time. Due to A. their placement beign mid to late game, but also B. due to requiring pretty high stats to even use. Which is a bummer, becuase Faith can end up with a lot of useful utilities. But you have to stick it out as a straight up melee character for a long time. Hopefully in Dark Souls 2, they fix this a bit.
 
Finally finished the game! Game log says 57 hours but I think I had at least 3-5 hours of afk time. It was a bit anti-climatic and after starting NG+ I realized that I probably should have taken the time to utilize the blacksmiths to upgrade all the items I needed. I didn't realize that I wouldn't have access to the warps and the blacksmiths in NG+ right away, but I guess that makes sense.

Gwyn was a bit of a bitch to beat and on my fourth try and decided to just humanities to heal myself. I used up about 8 of them (after using all 20 of my estus flasks) before he fell.

I've been using Havel's armor for the last 20 hours or so of game time. How far through NG+ can I continue to use this before it gets outclassed by other upgraded armor?
 
Havels is fine. Giants armor is a bit better, but NG++ and beyond is a dodging game more than a mitigation game.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Havels is fine. Giants armor is a bit better, but NG++ and beyond is a dodging game more than a mitigation game.
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Hmmm... never really thought to use Giant's armor because of the weight so never looked at stats. I spent most of NG with Havel's ring and keeping my weight right below 50%. for NG++ and beyond you keep your weight constantly at less than 25%?
 
I do, personally. I'll swap in better poise gear and defense if needed, but my regular pve gear for NG+++ is fairly light. A mix of medium, light and heavy, really. Just as long as resists are good.
 
Can sins carry over to NG+? I ask because I was invaded by a spirit of vengeance last night, but I have not committed any sins this game... yet
 
In my adventures with multiple passes through the game I alternated between maxed out giant's armor and the gold-hemmed outfit with the eagle shield and wood ring.
As you progress further in the game just about everything kills you in 1-2 shots anyway. At that point it's better to be able to move. That shield still allows you to defend well, too.
It's counter-intuitive, but the further I got the more I found it helpful to simply lock-on, charge, and strafe most enemies.
 
CreganTur said:
Can sins carry over to NG+? I ask because I was invaded by a spirit of vengeance last night, but I have not committed any sins this game... yet
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I think pvp sin carries over. Each death you receive by a spirit of vengeance should knock your pvp sin down a point.
 
So last night i played for a few hours.

I rolled three new characters lol

Got them all up to the first knight guy, died on all of them, ended up stopping there on all of them lol

I'm so torn on what I should make.

Does pyromancy scale with anything?
 
Pyromancy doesn't scale, but you can upgrade it via certain NPCs. It's still extremely useful early on, and even later on as well. It takes no extra weight for the second weapons slot and doesn't require anything more than soul-bought upgrades.
 
Yea, pyromancy is upgraded in a very similar way to upgrading weapons. It becomes a bit underpowered in NG++, but some of the DLC spells help make up for that.
 
chockomonkey said:
So last night i played for a few hours.

I rolled three new characters lol

Got them all up to the first knight guy, died on all of them, ended up stopping there on all of them lol

I'm so torn on what I should make.

Does pyromancy scale with anything?
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forget about pyromancy, magic and faith...build a high STR or DEX character...get a nice weapon that scales with your character and go from there...it's the best way to do it on your 1st run...DEX with the Great Scythe is really good...or any number of STR weapons with your STR build (Zweihander is good because you can get it right from the very beginning of the game)

scale your stats up to a max of 40 or 50 (depending on the stat)...+15 your chosen weapon and you're good to go all the way to the end of the game with no problem...also get a fast weapon as a backup (Quelaag's Furysword would be my choice)...that weapon is good against Ornstein and Four Kings
 
dexterity has the potential to increase casting speed, for all disciplines. I can't remember exactly, but I think it's from 40 - 45 dex, that the benefits kick in. In other words, there are no benefits until suddenly there are, then they scale for a few points, then there are no more benefits.
 
chockomonkey said:
So can we talk about some various specs?

I loaded up Dark Souls for the first time in awhile last night and decided to roll a new characters since I had wasted a few points in resistance on my last one. Problem was, i couldn't really imagine any crazy specs. Does each spec use either str or dex? Or are there specs that use neither? What about full caster specs and the like?

I wanted to get creative but ended up making a claric and planned to go str/faith, but at the end of the night it all felt so similar to my last character i figure i'll just pick him up again.
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I finally got around to trying to play this on the PC last night but I can't. It just keeps telling me I'm in offline mode any thoughts?
 
Climber said:
I thought GFWL went by by. When I tried it, it just says connection error there may be a problem with Live, so I thought it was because GFWL was gone.
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Yea not sure wtf. When I launch my game it automatically signs me into GFWL (as of last night).

Little side story I just remembered and researched:

Someone put a message "illusory wall" next to a wall that looked like it could go somewhere in undead burg. I probably wasted 15 minutes trying different ways to get through it until finally giving up. Just looked on the internets... apparently there are no illusory walls in the undead burg... that fucker.

The concept of these messages is cool, but the fact that you can put whatever you want in them kinda defeats the purpose and ruins immersion.

It also can feel like cheating when someone straight up tells you a monster's weakness. I guess i could just stop looking at them.
 
Haha, I do that sometimes. Rate them down when you see them unless you want to keep the troll going.
 
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chockomonkey said:
The concept of these messages is cool, but the fact that you can put whatever you want in them kinda defeats the purpose and ruins immersion.

It also can feel like cheating when someone straight up tells you a monster's weakness. I guess i could just stop looking at them.
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Yeah, so that's the deal with the messages. you can actually help people, or you can use it as another tool to make it a bad day for someone. Dark Souls.


Demon's Souls was the same way. Demon's Souls even had a message you could put down, essentially begging for help. If someone read it and "approved" it, your health would be restored.

All total between the two games, I basically ignored the messages. As I don't want help. People do also occasionally use them to make jokes. I'll usually read messages that seem weirdly placed.
 
I never really paid much attention to those messages...during subsequent playthroughs I did read them a bit more and found some very useful ones...sometimes they mark the spot where you need to make a jump to get to something useful...you can only jump from that 1 particular spot otherwise you risk death...the messages have 1 word- 'Here'
 
I'm in my first NG+. Went into Sen's Fortress for the first time. I managed to make it all the way to the top in a single try on a single life. Got really close to dying a couple of times, but managed to keep it all together.

I was running into the side tower just before the boss area when the camera skipped against the doorframe, completely disorienting me. In my haste to take my hands off the controls I accidentally caused myself to jump backwards off the edge of that narrow walkway. *facepalm*
 
So is there a list of all the damage and armor types and all their strengths and weaknesses?

also--do archers ever drop arrows?
 
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all the damage types are right in the in-game menus. Just look at any piece of armor and it will list all damage types (and subsequently, the resistance to those damage types, for that particular piece of armor).


As far as I am familiar with, there aren't any strengths or weakness of any damage type, VS. another.

If you hit someone unarmored, with 50 straight physical damage and then again with 50 straight fire damage, they will be hurt equally. (providing that their base resistances are equal).

The trick is predicting what type of armor your enemies are likely to wear.

there are certain truths that make sense, such as metal armor is generally weak to lightning and fabric/leather/otherwise non-metal armor is generally an insulator and so has better lightning resistance. things like that.

and some enemies/bosses are straight up weak to certain things.
 
This is probably the best site for looking up weapons, or anything dark souls
http://darksouls.wikidot.com

This is a character planner, you can experiment with stats & weapons, also it has armor/weight optimizers
http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/

nothing drops arrows, but cheap ones are 3 souls, unless you killed the undead merchant, regular are 10. although that may seem like a lot, it really is not, especially once you can farm souls
 
CreganTur said:
I'm in my first NG+. Went into Sen's Fortress for the first time. I managed to make it all the way to the top in a single try on a single life. Got really close to dying a couple of times, but managed to keep it all together.

I was running into the side tower just before the boss area when the camera skipped against the doorframe, completely disorienting me. In my haste to take my hands off the controls I accidentally caused myself to jump backwards off the edge of that narrow walkway. *facepalm*
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There is a camera control setting that will prevent the camera from "bouncing" off the environment. Can't recall what its name is.
 
I beat Duke's Archive over the weekend. I can fight Gwyn at any time now but I think I'll clear out the DLC stuff first and also explore ash lake. I'm taking this play through nice and slow so I can experience everything before i get to NG+.
 
I'm stuck at the 2 dragon bow archers in Anor Londo in my NG+. I don't have any problem getting up to the guy on the right, but I keep dying either because I can't kill him before he kills me, or he pushes me back enough for his buddy to kill me from behind.
 
Roll into the corner before the rounded part of the tower, put up your shield and kick him off when he's not hacking at you.
 
Or summon help, or use the ring of fog and snipe him with a greatbow from below, or double-hand a greatshield and bash him off, poison him with poison arrows and hide until he's dead, etc...
 
Majinhoju said:
I beat Duke's Archive over the weekend. I can fight Gwyn at any time now but I think I'll clear out the DLC stuff first and also explore ash lake. I'm taking this play through nice and slow so I can experience everything before i get to NG+.
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Does Prepare to Die edition have all the DLC?
 
Yes, and there is only 1 DLC. You'll need to consult a guide on how to get to it, unless you're really clever with your lorecrafting.
 
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