Dark Souls II

There's a 100% fire resist shield you can get in the area past the shaded woods - look for the Dorfs. Makes you literally invulnerable to Smelty and the real boss of the Keep.

But turtling behind a greatshield is kinda a bad habit to get into. Makes for really easy invasions, though.

edited 28th Sep '15 11:59:29 AM by Hydrall

Gyrm Greatshield? Huh.

I suppose it's worth a shot, if only I don't need a hideously large amount of Strength to wield it. Dorfs are like beardy pinatas already anyway, so farming them is not too difficult.

Gyrm Greatshield is amazing and one of the few shields in the game I can greatly recommend for a number of uses.

It is, however, ridiculously heavy so watch your stamina.

Also if you want to tank things, and have a massive amount of endurance to bear, Gyrm Warrior Armor is one of the best armor sets in the game

Well, Ol' Iron is no more. All in all an easy fight once you got the timing of dodges. Iron Keep can still go screw itself. I'll get back to you, Smelter.

Past the Ol' Iron was some sort of altar. This, I assume, is DLC. Probably not ready to go there yet.

With all options exhausted I went to The Gutter. The place was fairly annoying, but otherwise almost insultingly easy compared to Iron Keep or even Tseldora. Managed to not die on one of the many faulty walkways, though I will have to come back one day to see if I can get all stuff out.

Black Gulch... eugh. Why would these statues respawn? Who was so cruel? ;^; Got nommed on by the Eldritch Worm, didn't make that mistake a second time. Dropped down some ledge and OH MY GOD GIANTS CAN'T BLOCK THEIR ATTACKS ended up sniping them from a safe place. The Ancient Key thing is likely for that weird stone door from earlier? Also, Giant Soul... hmmmm...

The Rotten was piss-easy. Only got hit by a surprise wave attack, but otherwise Tower Shield made it possible to tank him reasonably well.

Hey, another altar thing. Not gonna bother with it. Just gonna light this bon-THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT

...alright then. Back to Majula and... gotta go to the Shrine of Winter...

EDIT: Reached Castle Drangleic. What are you doing here, Miss Herald? .-.

Dudes by the gate keep swarming me. Killed three fancy knights out of six petrified. Do I have to kill them all? It doesn't seem like the other three are legit knights rather than statues.

edited 29th Sep '15 9:48:11 AM by FergardStratoavis

so i bought this game again because my pc is dying on me and doesn't run it properly anymore, since i never even finished the first DLC. What is a good time to go do them anyways? I just beat Smelter (who isn't that hard frankly but kind of annoying) and was planning to finish iron keep first to get chloanne to sell titanite shards so i can experiment with weapons and stuff.

Generally the DLC is balanced to be done after you've beaten the Undead Crypt - at least, that's how it felt to me. It's definitely late-game content.

Post game is the best time to do it.

After getting Ashen Mist Heart would be ideal for the DLC.

If you collect all four crowns and bring them to Vendric in the past, all four crowns will get two new effects when worn:

• You will stay human after death, but you still leave a bloodstain with souls.
• You become immune to Curse.

Note that this effect gets removed when starting a new game cycle.

Oh, and Brume Tower has an area that pretty much requires the Ashen Mist Heart to enter.

eehhhh...

looks like my dark souls 2 save file died alongside my HDD.

i thought steam had cloud servers to transfer save files between devices?? i know it worked for binding of isaac...why is it so inconsistant?

Maybe you need to do it manually? My PC is crap, so I don't use it for gaming much, so I wouldn't know as I haven't bothered checking.

so i met aldia for the first time.

he makes quite an impression. i have a suspicion he'll end up being a MUCH better final boss than nashandra who was honestly kind of terrible.

update:got through shulva, currently at fume knight.

these areas do seem like they have a lot more effort put into them than the main games, and in terms of aesthetics shulva and brume tower have both been great, but they still have a couple of the problems i had with the main game, aka a lot of enemies have a shitton of HP and they just stack a bunch of them near each other making it kind of tedious to fight them.

also the co-op areas are just kind of horrible. i imagine that with someone to co-op with they are more fun, but holy fuck is their layout super annoying.

shulva's wasn't that bad, the moving petrify statues were a bit annoying but you could get to the gank squad fairly easily. the gank squad itself was kind of a dumb fight honestly, but at least the AI is easy enough to exploit which makes it more tolerable, if long-winded.

iron passage though is complete and utter garbage. part of that is my fault for not realizing these were actually supposed to be co-op areas, but holy fuck is it obnoxious. and all of that for a smelter reskin? are you kidding me?

he also reminds me of another problem i had with the game, that the agility stat makes rolling super clunky and inconsistent unless you put a bunch of points into it. i don't know who decided this was a good idea but i honestly don't like it.

thankfully now that i know that it's meant to be a co-op area and i can fight alonne and fume knight without ever having to touch it i'll just be skipping it.

overall i prefer brume tower in terms of aesthetics and shulva in terms of level design. elana was a huge cunt but sinh was alright, he has a cool design and the story behind him's not bad.

i'm looking forward to eleum loyce but honestly, instead of redeeming my opinion on the game it's kind of reminding me of all the things that annoyed me about it about to begin with. they are certainly more memorable than the main game, but have their own issues.

though admittedly i've been playing this on ps3. i most likely won't be getting the scholar of the first sin version since i honestly can't justify buying this game three times, especially considering how i find it to be the weakest game in the series overall.

edited 25th Nov '15 11:43:06 AM by wehrmacht

I think buying the same game 3 times is a little much, regardless of quality.

yes, there's that too. the only reason i bought it a second time is because my pc doesn't run so well anymore and i wanted to experience the dlc's. it wasn't very expensive as a buy so i don't feel too bad about it.

Three times...? There are only two versions?

He bought the vanilla version of the game on PC first, then bought a PS 3 version of the game. The scholar of the first sin edition wasn't out yet.

Well, I figured he didn't have it, but now I wonder what circumstances lead to buying the "old" version twice.

i bought the ps3 version of the game after scholar of the first sin came out because i don't have a ps4/xbone. it was going fairly cheap and i mostly just wanted to experience the dlc, so i was like 'why not'.

Wait, but the PS 360 version doesn't have the DLC packaged with the game, so why not just buy the DLC on PC?

my pc doesn't run very well anymore. any game is like 10 fps aka unplayable.

the version of the game that i bought came with the dlc packaged :p

They do those now?

Then again, the vanilla game is down to like 20 bucks, but with DLC it's priced at the usual 50 bucks or so, I bet.

I'm not sure if I should feel cheated or not. Yes, I payed full price for the game and bought the DLC soon after they came out, but did I really expect them not to drop the game price after a year?

Did I really expect them to sell a brand new game cheap? Especially with the collectors statue?

No, I probably didn't.

edited 26th Nov '15 4:47:34 PM by Geist-Fox

i got it for about 10USD so it wasn't a bad deal.

Just started playing the game.

I'm at the Wharf right now.

The Pursuer was the hardest boss so far. I tried to use the Ballistas but he's too fast so I had to give him an old school beat down after 15 deaths.

Reason that it took me so long is because I started out as Deprived so I was probably under-leveled. I compensated by grabbing that white knight's lightning sword.

The Dragonrider took me only one fight to defeat. The Old Dragonslayer/Orstein was a bit tougher. Almost as hard as the Pursuer. He was a fun boss though.

In our last fight he got me down to very little health and I had no Estus Flasks or health recovery items left. I was so mad because this was my tenth time dying to him and he was at half health so I went Leeroy Jenkins on him and switched from a one handed grip with a shield to a two handed grip. I kept slashing at him, dodging and slashing at him again. I realized we were both one hits now somehow. He tried to stab and sweep me so I dodged, dipped, ducked, dived and dodged and then sliced him from the side for the win. So relieving.

edited 10th Dec '15 12:27:07 PM by MadSkillz

you can even cheese him off the area with little effort, but there's not much point to that given how trivial he is as a boss anyway.

also i forgot to post saying i beat this game and got the new ending.

I would have to basically reiterate what I said above: fun popcorn game, would be a lot better with some of the numbers/enemy placement/level design tweaked a bit, but as it stands it's often a lot more irritating than it should be.

edited 7th Dec '15 7:58:46 PM by wehrmacht

@ Noob Pyro video:

That's some dedicated role play.

Also, why does In The Hall Of The Mountain King make everything funnier?!

edited 8th Dec '15 8:47:59 AM by Geist-Fox