Dark Souls

After you ring both Bells of Awakening. The very next are you need to go to will have enemies that drop a good replacement for the Drake Sword if you're willing to farm them out.

you might want to explore the area and find a certain ring which will make it more likely for it drop.

So I'm farming the silver knights before Ornstein and Smough right now (I want that goddamn great bow. Got two arrows for it) and this time I actually got a message on screen that someone invaded. So naturally I signed out of Live and then the message "dark spirit so-and-so returned home". I bet that griefer sumbitch is pissed, lol.

If I remember correctly, the Greatbow isn't a random drop. Look carefully on the upper floor of the cathedral's entrance hall.

Also totally killed the guy who killed the firekeeper lady with poison arrows. Hit him and his two flunkies with poison arrows, then put on "Empire of the Clouds" by Iron Maiden. Waited their death out.

Next up... Ornstein and Smough.

I coulda sweared the giant blacksmith dude sells the Greatbow, or somebody does, but I'm not 1337, so I'm probably wrong. Check the wiki. You need stupid high stats for it I think, anyway, and it takes a year to fire. I think. Tried it once when I didn't have the stats for it.

Also, they prolly shoulda made it so Lautrec spawns somewhere you can't just cheese him to death.

edited 16th Oct '15 6:42:06 PM by Knowlessman

The greatbows main purpose is to knock hapless victims off their ass, possibly into death drops.

And yeah, motherfucker needs 20 STR to use even though you hold it with both hands.

If you have Artorias DLC / Prepare to Die edition you can get a slightly stronger and farther shooting greatbow later. That thing needs 27 STR though.

The Dragonslayer Greatbow can be found on a ledge outside the window above the big door in the Anor Londo cathedral. No farming necessary.

so my brother is actually trying his hand at this game. he tried demon's souls, didn't much care for it but seems a lot more invested in playing this game.

i've given him some advice (mostly explaining how humanity and bonfires work), but i decided to not really tell him much else since i feel it diminishes the fun sense of exploration the game offers.

he's stuck at taurus demon presently. i don't know how much more of the game he'll end up playing but i hope he makes it past him.

edited 17th Oct '15 3:43:20 AM by wehrmacht

Seems like Taurus Demon is a stumbling block for a lot of new players. This is going to make me sound like a total wanker, but I don't really see why ¬_¬ I guess if you're new to a Souls game and you're trying to play it like any other game, you're gonna have a bad time.

it's probably because he looks scary and the path to the bonfire in the burg to him is longer than say the bonfire in the asylum which is right outside the gate, so they have a lot of psychological pressure as a new player.

he managed to beat him and was pretty ecstatic.

Can confirm, having to wade through half a level of enemies to get to him each time is disheartening. It makes trial and error more of a chore.

Side note, since I don't care about spoilers, I've been reading up on the game's lore. Looks pretty interesting, especially Manus. Kinda bleak, though.

bleak is a bit of an understatement.

everyone is sad and dies

Good thing I'm not really playing it for the story. Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy sucks.

i very rarely if ever get Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. if i do it's usualy more of a problem with the storytelling than the story content (i.e the fact that everyone in god of war is an asshole doesn't bother me THAT much, it's the fact that they're all really boring assholes that does). I actually tend to prefer things to be on the darker side.

the game actually ends up being a pretty cool subversion of the whole "Hero's Journey" thing by virtue of the fact that you are not really chosen and the amount of influence you have is limited.

also there's a surprising amount of goofy stuff/humor in the game. just look up the xanthous set, the item description for the reinforced club, the mushroom people, etc. some of the npc's you meet are actually pretty funny people, it's just a shame most of them die. ): i can't decide which story is more sad

demon's souls is even more depressing, depending on how you look at things.

edited 17th Oct '15 4:06:32 PM by wehrmacht

FYI Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is available for five dollars on Steam for the next 30 minutes. I know it's not much time, but I just saw it and decided to buy it, so I thought I'd announce it here.

Dark Souls the official comic.

Sounds cool although the artstyle looks iffy? Like the dragon cover looks flat out bad and the Alva one's sword is placed awkwardly.

Still, something that actually puts Souls' Lore to good use is welcome.

i wouldn't really expect the art in this to be on the level of fromsoft's artists in the first place.

Covers and interiors have different artists. The one doing the interior has done some Godzilla books before IIRC.

I kind of want something involving the Gutter and/or black gulch. They were really cool areas.

So I've been replaying Dark Souls 1 on PC, trying to use DS Fix, I've got the frame rate unlocked but I set the FP Slimit to 30 anyway because I'm given to understand a lot of the game's logic is based on frames.

And when I start the game up, I get frame rates of like. 400 or so. The frame rate goes up and down, and it's too fast and the camera and movement are unplayable.

So. I dunno what's up there.

Oh yeah, forgot I was gonna post that I escaped the Archives. Maybe grind a bit before looking Seath up and trying to figure out how to go about him.

I remember he curses you; what, in moron's terms, does that do again?

halves your hp. At this point though that shouldn't be much of a problem, put whatever gear has the most curse resistance if you're overly concerned about it, even if you do get cursed you have ample sources of purging stones.

he only curses you if he kills you through status rather than the actual curse

which is why i always run in naked and apply Power Within to kill myself quicker

unless you're talking about Proper Bossfight Seath

in which case if you're a magic build or completionist cut dat fuckin' tail

you need to deal about 15% of seath's health on the tip of his center tail to get the sord

he's resistant to magic but weak to thunder since he's a dragon and that's what killed the dragons

other than that he only has one hard move which is Final Explosion and you just need to run from him

cutting his tail is a bitch though so find the method that works best for you and go full ham

the Havel set has great magic and curse resistance but is a little bit insane to use, so if you have the Firekeeper set that works too

edited 13th Feb '16 12:34:38 PM by Trip