Dark Souls Thread

I really need to get around to finishing this. I made it to Blighttown and put the game down so I could play the other newer releases.
 
kind of surprised... finally got around to fighting ornstein and smough... probably took my 5th or 6th try solo, but not too difficult. some had me crazy worried.
 
wadec22 said:
kind of surprised... finally got around to fighting ornstein and smough... probably took my 5th or 6th try solo, but not too difficult. some had me crazy worried.
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Depends on who you decide to kill first as well. Killing ornstein first makes the whole process a lot easier in my opinion, because super smough doesn't even change up his moves.
 
ultimatequix said:
Depends on who you decide to kill first as well. Killing ornstein first makes the whole process a lot easier in my opinion, because super smough doesn't even change up his moves.
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Yeah but if you mess up once on the dodge, chances are you die instantly. I think it's easier to kill Smough first then just shoot arrows at Ornstein while dodging his lightnings, he won't even move when you get far enough.
 
wadec22 said:
kind of surprised... finally got around to fighting ornstein and smough... probably took my 5th or 6th try solo, but not too difficult. some had me crazy worried.
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I was expecting S&O to be much more difficult as well. The first time I tried, I got destroyed while over thinking the whole thing. Then I just focused on Ornstein and whacked away with a Demon Great Machete and tried to keep myself topped off. After that, Super Smough was easy for me. I was using a STR build, no attunement slots, nothing fancy.

Four Kings was fairly easy as well, I used a Demon Greataxe for that one though and I had learned Magic Weapon. I just pounded away on each one and killed them before the next King appeared :eek:
 
i was and am still using end build. couple that with woodgrain ring and havel's ring... good stuff. :)
 
Gwyn was probably the easiest boss for me in this game. I just parried him, then rispote, ran around his back and used Greater Combustion. Rinse and repeat, and he was dead after four times.
 
I just beat Gwyn, too. But I am no good at parry/riposte and had to slap on Havel's armor and just beat him to death with 2H attacks while trying to time Estus swigs with Gwyn being staggered.

NG+ hasn't been too bad, so far. The Capra demon got me a few times, and I'm at a bit of a road block with the Gaping Dragon. The enemies hit way harder, but so do I, and most of the bosses get chewed up very fast by a +5 Fury Sword of Dark Knight Sword. The Gaping Dragon is weird. He's not really that hard, he just has tons of HP and a bunch of attacks that kill me in one hit. Every time I get him down to below 1/4 of his life, but then I screw up and stand too close when he goes trampling and oops, dead.
 
I'm just about toward the end of the game. I've got the Catacombs/Tomb of Giants as well as Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith. It's pretty amazing how, when going through these areas I dread them, but as soon as I beat the boss, I'm filled with exhilaration. I just finished the Duke's Archives and Crystal Caves yesterday, and Seath whooped me quite a few times, because I kept standing to close to him and getting smacked by his tail, or stabbed by his crystals. But, I wised up and stopped trying to be greedy and just hit him 2-3 times and then ran away to see his next attack. I love how this game makes you re-think your approaches.
 
RIPATI said:
I just beat Gwyn, too. But I am no good at parry/riposte and had to slap on Havel's armor and just beat him to death with 2H attacks while trying to time Estus swigs with Gwyn being staggered.
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I ended up beating Gwyn wear Havel's armor as well, along with a Stone Shield and the Demon Greataxe. I played almost the whole game with a greatshield, and couldn't get the parry timing down. After a couple of attempts, I discovered that with the Poise on Havel's set, you can chug Estus while getting beat on. Then I pretty much just tanked Gwyn and pounded on him when my stamina was full. Once I ran out of stamina, I chugged Estus or dodged back.
 
best way to beat seeth? get him down to like 1/3hp and i die everytime. tried reversing hollow twice in a row to recruit help but got invaded and killed both times before i could even get back to him.... so pissed right now lol
 
wadec22 said:
best way to beat seeth? get him down to like 1/3hp and i die everytime. tried reversing hollow twice in a row to recruit help but got invaded and killed both times before i could even get back to him.... so pissed right now lol
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Stay close to his right tentacle (his left when you are facing him). Just start hacking away and try to stay close to it. He will rarely hit you if you hang out there.

Another strat you can try is to to run in and whack on his stomach. He will o an attack that goes over your head. The next attack after that will hit you at point blank range, so run away before that happens. Rinse and repeat.
 
wadec22 said:
best way to beat seeth? get him down to like 1/3hp and i die everytime. tried reversing hollow twice in a row to recruit help but got invaded and killed both times before i could even get back to him.... so pissed right now lol
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What I did was to just not be "greedy." I didn't lock on, and got 2-3 hits on him 2 handed and then ran away and waited for his attack. Then, I ran back in and repeated. Ornstein's armor helps if you have it, due to its curse resistance.
 
Yeah whack on his tentacles and keep circling to the left or right but get back when he's about to do the crystal thing that surrounds him. I wouldn't go anywhere near his belly.
 
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I thought Seath was one of the easiest bosses. Hug his butt on either the right or left side, and just keep close to him while he turns. The crystal breath thing never hit me, and neither did any of his tail swipes or whatever he does for melee.
 
How hard is this game, does it live up to all of the notoriety? I keep hearing conflicting reports, some say it's hard because of the controls, then I hear it's only hard if your reckless. I'm going to either buy this or mass effect 2 for xbox after work, but I can't decide.
 
Ticker305 said:
How hard is this game, does it live up to all of the notoriety? I keep hearing conflicting reports, some say it's hard because of the controls, then I hear it's only hard if your reckless. I'm going to either buy this or mass effect 2 for xbox after work, but I can't decide.
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It's about 800 million times harder than Mass Effect 2.

Here's how Dark Souls is hard: there are encounters that will almost certainly kill the ignorant player. If the player learns from that experience and adjusts their strategy, the encounter becomes defeatable. If the player doesn't learn, they will never beat the encounter and the game will end.

Modern AAA games don't do that. They may have hard sequences, but every bit of the game is designed to be completeable by everyone. Mass Effect will never put it's foot down and demand a terrific, practiced performance in order to advance. It will let the player by eventually. It's sort of the gaming version of pity.

Dark Souls has no pity. The player gets better, or the player gets stuck. This is really compelling for some people, and incredibly frustrating for others.

I'm in the latter camp. There's not many games like Dark Souls, anymore. If there were, I probably wouldn't be interested in most of them. I don't have the time to master many games, and getting shepherded through a story with little bits of gameplay to break up the narrative has some appeal. But every year or two, it's nice to hunker down with a game that eschews the power trip hand holding of modern design.

Dark Souls will hold your hand, but only because that makes it easier to hit your knuckles with a ruler.
 
Ticker305 said:
How hard is this game, does it live up to all of the notoriety? I keep hearing conflicting reports, some say it's hard because of the controls, then I hear it's only hard if your reckless. I'm going to either buy this or mass effect 2 for xbox after work, but I can't decide.
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It's more the latter case. If you run around with your shield down and are not cautious, you'll get destroyed pretty quickly. Take your time, read up on upgrading weapons and armor and you'll be fine, and most importantly, get the Drake sword asap.
 
Ticker305 said:
How hard is this game, does it live up to all of the notoriety? I keep hearing conflicting reports, some say it's hard because of the controls, then I hear it's only hard if your reckless. I'm going to either buy this or mass effect 2 for xbox after work, but I can't decide.
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The game is not hard, though it is time consuming and requires some focus. Once you learn how to do something, it will seem easy and you feel like an idiot for dinking it up previously.

The game could be more helpful about some things, and the difficultly goes up as a result of that. For instance if you just toss skill points in random places as you level up, you can end up as a jack of all trade, master of nothing. And being a master of nothing sucks since when it comes down to harder areas, you need to be able to effectively dish out damage.

There is an easy place to farm souls pretty early in the game. Once you get there, you can almost AFK through it and spend a couple hours watching TV/listening to music while leveling up rapidly. It makes the game much easier. This is the "forest farming" area a lot of people talk about.

I spent around 45 hours on my first play through, didn't really like how it was going with a hybrid STR/DEX/FAITH character so I started over. In about 6 hours on a new character (using a STR build), I was right back to where I was after 45 hours on the first. Plus that 2nd character was dealing much more damage and able to wear better armor so the whole thing was like EZ mode. I stuck with the STR build and by the time I finished the game, I was almost face rolling a lot of bosses with the damage I was doing.
 
I finally finished this amazing game. I got a little impatient towards the end and just wanted to finish, but even now that I'm done, I really want to go back and play more, even though I have a huge backlog. Something about this game is really alluring, the atmosphere is awesome, the way all of the areas are linked together seamlessly, the "hidden" lore/story, etc.
 
I'd love to see the next Souls game use a different setting. There's a Japanese comic book called Gantz that's basically a post modern video game. People are snatched away and copied just as they die, then given high tech equipment and organized into teams that fight alien monsters. Most of the players are killed in gruesome ways, but the survivors continue on with new teammates to fight more monsters. The setting is modern day Japan.

I feel like that would be an awesome way to evolve the Souls formula. Replace magic with sci-fi technology, build a combat system around shooting rather than melee, but keep the brutal difficulty and encounters designed around fighting a small number of elite opponents rather than huge swarms of cannon fodder.
 
RIPATI said:
The setting is modern day Japan.

I feel like that would be an awesome way to evolve the Souls formula. Replace magic with sci-fi technology, build a combat system around shooting rather than melee, but keep the brutal difficulty and encounters designed around fighting a small number of elite opponents rather than huge swarms of cannon fodder.
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This fulfills many of your requests.

http://www.amazon.com/Armored-Core-...U8U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324413839&sr=8-1/
 
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Ticker305 said:
How hard is this game, does it live up to all of the notoriety? I keep hearing conflicting reports, some say it's hard because of the controls, then I hear it's only hard if your reckless. I'm going to either buy this or mass effect 2 for xbox after work, but I can't decide.
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Dying is a huge part of this game. In the beginning, you will die a lot. Once you get a hang of the combat system, you will die much less. And then they will throw new, surprising things at you, which will kill you again for a while. Plus, you've got to deal with the environment trying to kill you in parts of the game as well.

But the game is built around the fact that you die. It expects you to die horribly many, many times. And some people can't deal with that, but as long as you persist and are patient, you will eventually triumph. And you will feel like a badass.

ocellaris said:
This fulfills many of your requests.

http://www.amazon.com/Armored-Core-...U8U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324413839&sr=8-1/
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Which is also developed by From Software. How surprising!
 
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Awesome news. I heard From maybe releasing a DLC pack for Dark Souls this year called "Dark Forest".
 
I heard there is an item that sells for the same price as the cost? Does anyone know what it is?
 
tuaarita said:
I heard there is an item that sells for the same price as the cost? Does anyone know what it is?
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It's the Dung Pie. Only cost 200, then sells to Frampt for 200. Since you can only carry 99, it lets you bank ~20K souls which is pretty trivial since <5 minutes in forest farming will also get you 20K souls. Heck at higher levels, you can just go to the forest and kill all the mobs for 18K souls and that takes about 2 minutes.
 
Our strategy was equally cheap. We rolled under his arrow and got him to fall off the ledge. It can be comical watching enemies leap to their doom. Did you design those behaviours to be exploited?
Yes, that was definitely something that was intentional. There&#8217;s one approach to combat that involves a head-to-head collision, but luring enemies and using cheap strategies is one of the joys of this game as well.
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glad to see that people bitching about cheesing the AI are wrong, and that situations like mentioned were actually intentional
 
Reality said:
glad to see that people bitching about cheesing the AI are wrong, and that situations like mentioned were actually intentional
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Hah. I mean think about it. If you have a knife and a bow, are you going to shoot the lion or stab it? Sure, stabbing might feel more satisfying or have more inherent challenge. But the bow is a tool to use!
 
Am I the only one who probably won't finish this because of the shitty way they set up the servers? As in the servers for Demon's Souls were/are amazing.
 
SolidSnakeUS said:
Am I the only one who probably won't finish this because of the shitty way they set up the servers? As in the servers for Demon's Souls were/are amazing.
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Why would the servers prevent you from finishing the game?
 
SolidSnakeUS said:
Am I the only one who probably won't finish this because of the shitty way they set up the servers? As in the servers for Demon's Souls were/are amazing.
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A little more info on your plight would be nice.

Demon's Souls was regional. Dark Souls is not regional. You potentially have access to the whole world. It does tend to prioritize connecting with people that are geographically closer to you, but not nearly as much priority as you might think. I regularly hear of people playing with Japanese players, for example.
 
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