Dark Souls

Hmm, I might do that in NG+ just so I can fight Sif with the Greatsword and Greatshield of Artorias, plus his armour. Just for fun.

edited 1st May '14 5:02:07 AM by Talby

Ooo, Artorias build. I like.

But the real Artorias doesn't use a shield!

Yes he does

But his arm fuggin broke saving the widdle puppy.

There was supposed to be a "[:P]" after that sentence...

The smiley buttons don't work, the edit button doesn't work... Should probably just use my computer for this.

Well, I got tired of slogging through the DLC (apart from the Artorias fight it's pretty meh, and considering what you need to do to unlock it I doubt I will bother playing it again) and other optional areas like Lost Izalith and decided to just squish Gwyn and get it over with. It's a shame the third act is such a letdown after the awesomeness of the first two. The Gwyn fight in particular was really disappointing. I was expecting something better than just a huge guy with a sword, I've been fighting huge guys with swords the entire game.

Also, just realized I got the "link the fire" atrophy exactly one year and one month after I got the "enkindle" achievement. Kinda cool.

Edit: I'll add that I think the final boss was very effective from a lore perspective, though. By that point, I felt sorry for Gwyn. It wasn't even him I was fighting, just a dried out husk of a dead God animated by his will to protect the first flame who had to be put down.

edited 5th May '14 6:11:59 AM by Talby

Yeah, the fight with Gwyn wasn't really so much as a final exam as "this dog is sick and should be put down." It was a surprising and appreciated end to the game, much different from the balls-out final boss I was expecting, and the music was a nice touch.

It's worth it to slog through the boring sections of the DLC. Manus and Kalameet are very fun fights, on par with Artorias and Ornstein and Smough.

Makes me wish they'd added a time attack mode so you could fight the bosses as much as you'd like without having to slog through everything in between :P

Cutting off Kalameet's tail is a huge pain though. The fucker keeps it's tail up so high 90% of the time.

No kidding. The Dark Soul achievement would be a lot more frustrating if it required Kalameet's tail.

I don't think I'd considered that angle on Gwyn before, or at least not from the point of view of lore. I'd heard it said that he's a shadow of his former self, which would explain his rather mindless aggression.

I think this was done better in Demon's Souls though, with Allant. He was clearly supposed to be weak and corrupted (there's nothing about Gwyn's appearance to suggest a similar weakening), there was that feeling of putting him out of his misery, for his own good and the world's, and he actually spoke to you. That was one problem with Gwyn's battle, he had no personality (but again, hollow). I'm not even sure where I heard that he is diminished now. I think the idea was that much of his power had been burned away in the flame.

Well, any NPC talking about Gwyn tells you how he was consumed, or how he withered down, or that he's now nothing compared to what he used to be. He also uses the power of fire after being consumed by the First Flame, instead of the powers of lightning he found within the Lord Soul. His face is pretty much like any other Hollow's face and he doesn't even have a introductory cutscene. His soundtrack is (arguably) tied with Sif's for the saddest melody...

I don't know, I think From made every possible effort to drive the point home.

So... playing through Dark Souls. New Game. I've heard this is supposed to be Video Game Hell, where you are made to pay for your sins.

I'm not feeling it. It's not "hard" so much as "unforgiving." Hell, I die once or twice against a boss, then I come and kill it easily. I would have killed the Golem the first time but it glitched when it did its fist pound attack and sent me flying to my death (yes, it was a glitch. The attack didn't hit me- I was just in the space where the Golem's legs needed to be when it completed, so I was sent flying, while still in standing position, farther than any attack launches you). Seath's first fight, I was fortunate enough to have two rare rings of sacrifice in my inventory for.

Is there a difficulty spike I don't know about? Am I being shown mercy by Velka? Does NG+ step up the difficulty immensely? Or am I just in my element being a sneaky opportunist willing to exploit any advantage I can get?

Note: This all excludes the Hellkite. Fuck that thing! Stun-lock with fire, or just one-shot... But my Dragonslayer Greatbow and my Dragonslayer Spear gave it a nice dose of Karma.

(I'm running around as an Ornstein cosplay, by the way- except I use a Silver Knight Shield and a few miracles. Also, Darkmoons are awesome.)

edited 6th May '14 9:58:24 PM by Dragon573

In regards to Gwyn: it's either said or at least heavily implied that he went Hollow at some point after linking the fire. You're basically fighting a Hollow, which is why he's so mindless and doesn't even seem to be sentient (Artorias is the same way, though I don't think he's actually Hollow.)

In regards to difficulty: People greatly exaggerate the difficulty of Dark Souls, and I'd disagree that it's unforgiving. As long as you can grab your corpse before dying again, you lose absolutely nothing from dying. If anything, Dark Souls is very forgiving, and it's one thing I liked about Dark Souls 2, that there's a (small) penalty for dying, even if you recover your corpse.

I'd say the primary difficulty spikes in the game are Undead Parish/Belfry Gargoyles and Anor Londo/Ornstein and Smough. Those two areas and bosses tend to represent the biggest leap in enemy damage output and health, and those bosses are also known to be noob killers, though I think both of them are quite simple once you have a firm grasp of gameplay mechanics (gargoyles are a JOKE if you just use a lightning resin, and O&S is easily handled once you know how mechanics like shields and stamina work.) Parish, for example, is probably the first time in the game that monsters take more than a couple of swings to kill, and it doesn't return to the level of Undead Burg until after you've upgraded your weapon to +3 or so. Anor Londo tends to be another difficulty spike since Silver Knights are standard enemies (they're a bit weaker than Black Knights, but not by much), the Giant Sentinels can't be hurt at all if you hit their shield, and the Bat Demons are very mobile and have a lot of reach.

Either way, people like to circlejerk over how supposedly hard Dark Souls is, and I don't buy it. I've played much more difficult, much less forgiving games. Dark Souls is very fun, and maybe a bit harder than the average game, but not by much.

When I said unforgiving, I meant "Make one mistake, you can die." I ran into a mob of a few basic hollows (the type with no armor and a broken sword), made a bad roll, and the hits they got on me in the space of a second came close to killing me.

Luckily, I had my Estus Flask and my shield handy.

Even then, the game is pretty forgiving unless you're running around with 0 Poise. About the only monster or boss in the game that I can think of that can basically one-shot you are those goddamned skeleton dogs in Tomb of Giants, because they're fast, incredibly random, and hit extremely hard.

And once you "git gud", running with 0 Poise can actually be easier then with Poise

Or if you slap on Havel and the Fap Ring aboost your End up a bit, you can slap on the Elite Armor (upgraded of course) and be able to fast-roll AND take hits.

I hate the way they implemented Poise because it makes trading hits with enemies irrelevant. Get Elite Armor + Wolf Ring. Get huge weapon. Press R1. Congratulations, you just won Dark Souls PVE.

Also, it does nasty things to PVP.

I don't Wolf Ring. It's pointless to me, barring early game.

Go Dark Grain or go nothing

unless you are a tank.

Fap Ring will be perfect for you then

Rolling is for wussies. No need to evade when you can hit through every enemy attack this side of Anor Londo's walls.

Seriously now. Poise is a broken mechanic that makes combat pitifully trivial.

edited 9th May '14 12:55:45 PM by 2Zak

no rolling

Yeah and they did the opposite in Dark Souls 2 and made it seemingly useless. Seems like it'd be easier to just make it based off an HP threshold, with poise increasing that threshold, rather than some kind of arbitrary value.

So... I'm going to hop back into Dark Souls this weekend, and I have one question in mind — What to do about that Hellkite Wyvern?

I beat the Taurus. Now what?

You are not able to beat it right now. In fact, most of the time, I stll can't beat it at end-game.

Just run past and pray that it's moveset doesn't burn you twice.

I didn't mean killing it... though I would like That blade it's tail...

I just want to RUUUUUN. How does get maximum the speed?