Dark Souls II

Heh, the game is already pretty generous with slabs, I think. I picked up about six on my first playthrough, without actually trying to get them. I remember picking up a slab as a drop somewhere in the castle though. I have a feeling it was from one of the regular stone statues though, rather than the horse ones.

Reminded me of a message I saw next to the Harvest Valley Mines bonfire today: "Try horse or something".

Only got the Llewellyn torso on NG+. The whole set does look pretty neat (it actually resembles the King's Set), but Twinkling Titanite being at the rarity it has...

I think I preferred when the slabs were the rare forging material, because at least you didn't need too many of them.

edited 20th Apr '14 5:37:22 PM by Zephid

Slabs being easy to get wouldn't be a problem if you could break them down into chunks like in Dark Souls 1.

Cleared Earthen Peak as my warrior in NG+ last night, and of course he got the drop that I wanted for my rogue :P

This video goes quite in-depth with criticism of Dark Souls II. I agree with a lot of the points, but some of them just seem like nitpicking.

Seven minutes into that video, and I'm wondering why the hell a knight (the same build I started with) decided to wear the Archdrake Robes as armor. (edit: he didn't use footage from when he was a knight)

I was watching amishman's twitch stream while he played Dark Souls blind all through last week, and several of the points he makes on bosses are good ones when compared to the last game. But then he makes them about bosses I had no trouble with, like the Prowling Magus and the Twin Dragonriders. Yes, if you wanted to focus on one, the controls meant you couldn't see the other begin its attack, but that's why I killed the mages first and, well, I've never had trouble with the dragonriders so...

There is also no boss in the game that compares to the Four Kings, and the Throne Watcher/Defender are poor retreads of Ornstein & Smough.

edited 21st Apr '14 6:03:28 AM by Zephid

I've found most of the bosses so far to be reasonably easy compared to the last game. I'm up to Nashandra, and she's giving me a bit of grief, but I'm sure I'll defeat it soon.

Chunks are ridiculously easy to get, actually. Just join the Bell Brothers! Gank some poor bastards.

He makes a great point with torches. I did the exact same thing he did: I just explored areas in the dark before lighting any torches (excluding the Gutter). On the other hand, he didn't seem to notice how lock-on ranges were influenced by how much light was available, since on my second playthrough I've noticed the torch makes areas much easier than otherwise.

My version of Soul Memory would've been total souls spent, not total souls earned.

Bosses are definitely easier, something I'm finding very annoying. On NG+, Guardian Dragon takes four Sunlight Spears and two Great Lightning Spears with 50 Faith. Granted, there's more of him in the Dragon Aerie, but it's a disappointing and lackluster fight.

The video complains about the Last Giant being a poor retread of the Tower Knight because of hitbox issues, and this is another area where I'm not following him. I've never died to the Last Giant (excluding phantom deaths). I've had hitbox issues, notably with the Pursuer's curse-stab, but I usually have them with basic enemies. I think it's also related to how they changed the Poise system discussed earlier in the thread.

edited 21st Apr '14 7:19:46 AM by Zephid

By the way, it turns out Nashandra is perhaps the best NPC in the game. I've made a habit of visiting her after big plot events, and she actually provides guidance! She has lines outside of when you first meet her!

When you get the Ashen Mist Heart, she tells you to go to the Forest of Fallen Giants. (and says some disparaging things about the Ancient Dragon being a false deity)

edited 21st Apr '14 7:06:36 AM by Zephid

I think the Tower Knight was actually a pretty poor boss, especially since you have to go down the entire trial-and-error dragon bridge every time you fight him. Also, Demon's Souls hardly had any shortcuts after the initial areas.

Finished that youtube review. I agree with him on some stuff, disagree or don't care about the other stuff.

Stupid deaths in the Iron Keep are becoming a tradition for me. This time I just plain walked off an edge because I wasn't paying attention. And then two more deaths happened because the phantoms I'd summoned didn't help me. First one was particularly bad. I opened the furnace thing, not knowing there were two red phantom Allone captains in there now, and ended up trapped on the narrow dead end walkway pretty much unable to do anything with both of them attacking me, while the Sunbro I'd summoned was on the ledge above and could easily have done a plunging attack or dropped behind them, but I guess he fell asleep or something because he didn't do anything.

Pretty much.

Much of what I read seems to come down to Dark Souls II being less cohesive, more lazy designing and dubious decision.

I will say however that I'm pretty OK with the healing system: Lifegems are less useful than Estus, but you don't have an endless supply, so I found myself having to argue which heal would benefit me the most. Maybe that's just me.

Really, I think it would be a good breath of fresh air to have From take a new take on the Science Fiction theme with a bit of supernatural on top. I have no idea if a Dark Souls 3 is coming, but I find myself not wanting it as bad as I wanted Dark Souls the first or the second.

edited 21st Apr '14 8:27:41 AM by QuestionMarc

I'd quite like to see them do something scifi too, or at least not fantasy. I can't imagine what it would be though, I just get stuck on imagining Dark Souls or Armored Core :P For some reason the idea reminds me of the way that new Zone of the Enders game is going though, not that there's much info about that at the moment.

Got around to watching that critique video, and yeah, I'd say he's got a point with pretty much everything he says. The only one I definitely disagree on is the multiple mobs thing. I like having more mobs at once, generally speaking. It's not so good when they're powerful enemies, such as primal knights or dragonkeepers (and I completely agree with him on those mace-wielding dragonkeepers, they are ridiculously unfair).

edited 21st Apr '14 10:20:48 AM by artfulscruff

Alright, NG++. Time for a no-death run! Let's see if those rings are real! Playing offline 'cause screw invaders, and I can solo bosses just fine.

Lost Bastille: I forget, is there a way around the Ruin Sentinels or not? I've just gone through the Pursuer's route (didn't know killing him right after that early fog gate meant you skipped the boss battle proper) and I don't know if I need to backtrack to Heide's and go through No-Man's Wharf. Edit: Nevermind, need to get to Harvest Valley. Need that Fragrant Branch to unpetrify Rosabeth. Fairly certain I can just walk through the Shrine of Winter at this point, skip half the game.

Initially I was going to try a no-death, no-bonfire run, but decided right around when I first got to Majula that this was suicidal.

edited 22nd Apr '14 10:27:17 AM by Zephid

You can skip the Ruin Sentinels by using a Pharos Lockstone somewhere.

Alright, already failed a no-death run. But! I've learned my plan wouldn't have worked anyway, and the Shrine doesn't open based strictly on Soul Memory.

Either way, based on how fast I'm going through the essential areas now without dying, I think it's still doable.

Death occurred in Huntsman's Copse. I decided to try out Soul Appease at the cliffs, at the first corner with a dude and an archer. I got two steps into the corner when I suddenly chickened out and tried to retreat, but I got disoriented, ran into a guy, chose the wrong way around him and ran off a cliff.

Turns out Soul Appease will totally work there though.

edited 22nd Apr '14 12:03:26 PM by Zephid

You can skip the Ruin Sentinels by getting the key near the Pursuer entrance to the Lost Bastille, by entering the building to the left of the path to Lucatiel I think, and then progressing from McDuff's Workshop past the gate you need to open from the Flexile Sentry End. Eventually you'll need to use a Pharos Lockstone and go through a couple of illusory walls to find an elevator that takes you near Straid I believe.

Note that by doing this you can't access the Belfry Luna and thus can't make the Lost Sinner easier.

edited 22nd Apr '14 12:16:44 PM by Badwolfwho

It turns out I don't need to skip them since I can Sunlight Spear one to death and Great Lightning Spear the other to near death before they become an issue. The same tactic works surprisingly well on the Gargoyles.

I really wanted to do this without fighting the Lost Sinner, but I don't feel like grinding 4 million souls to bypass them all at the Shrine of Winter.

I heard it was a million souls. I dunno, it doesn't seem like such a large number to me. I think my rogue was coming up on 900,000 last time I looked (she's at Brightstone Cove now, fuck Freyja), and I wasn't particularly grinding, just getting summoned for bosses and stuff. Then again, two of those bosses were the Lost Sinner and Old Iron King, so, I dunno. Try doing PVP.

Why do you want to skip the Sinner anyway?

Because in two playthroughs, the Lost Sinner is the only boss I've had consistent trouble with. I can handle the Rotten and Old Iron King easily, and Freja with a little luck. It doesn't help that NG+ and beyond, the Sinner gets two pyromancers as backup. Plus the hallway to get to her is a pain.

Also, it's a million souls on NG, two million on NG+, and so on. I've already died here in NG++, so the next playthrough would be four million. Apparently it's not based strictly on Soul Memory but how many souls you've gained in that specific playthrough.

Ah, right, that makes sense. I don't have any plans to move beyond NG+, since I don't know of any specific reason to. I don't want to end up overleveled for the purpose of co-op and PVP (I'm considering shifting to a PVP focus once I'm done with NG+).

I want to echo what the guy in that video, and I think someone else here, said, in that I don't think Soul Memory should have been total souls collected, it would have made more sense to me (and this is also what I thought it was pre-release) to have it as total souls spent. I thought the point of it was to separate players who would outclass others simply through gear, but if it's simply total souls gained, you could potentially have someone who's gained a lot of souls but died and lost them again, and someone who's spent them all on gear. Then again, as I've said before, I never felt outmatched in PVP, so I suppose it works. That has been changing a bit in NG+, where I've mainly been up against spellcasters, and since I play almost exclusively melee, if I can't close with them quick, I'm as good as dead. I tend to not be able to avoid or counter spells effectively. Regular enemies tend to be slow and predictable with them, actual players not so much. Still, I never felt that beating them was impossible, just that I didn't know how to go about it.

And yeah, the hallway to get to the Sinner is a pain :P Much easier if you have the Bastille Key though. You can go up the stairs at the sides, and you only have one prisoner to deal with, and they're sitting down so you can get them easily, rather than however many are in the cells that you can't deal with easily because of reduced mobility in water and the low visibility and so on.

edited 22nd Apr '14 4:32:38 PM by artfulscruff

If you're a spellcaster you can get a couple spells (ex. Wo G) through venders in NG++ (as opposed to acquiring them online via covenant ranks) but that's about the only reason I know of to go into NG++.

I haven't found a need to go above SL 250, and I still get summoned fairly often even at that level. I think if I was 240 I'd get summoned more, but really it's a difference between being summoned instantly and waiting twenty seconds at most.

Unfortunately, this means I'm always carrying around a million or more souls since I can't level up, and the price of goods doesn't go up with each playthrough. On the other hand, I'm never short on your basic titanites.