Dark Souls III

Eh, they aren't that bad. Their eye gaze doesn't kill you, the get staggered very easily, they don't have that much health and their attacks are super telegraphed. It's a challenging room, to be sure, but as long as you're prudent with your cockiness, the room is yours.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

I resorted to sniping them with arrows to lure them out.

And if you can beat Gundyr, you should be able to handle Nameless King easy peasy. Especially if you have the Dragonslayer Armour's Greatshield.

Edited by M84 on Aug 25th 2019 at 9:22:25 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Can't lift it for shit. Put all my points into strength rather than vigor.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Then you'll have to make do with the Lothric Knight Shield.

When I first used the greatshield, I had to use the Prisoner's Chain, the Ring of Favor, and Havel's Ring. I also wielded nothing but the Longsword and wore the Mirran Armor set.

Edited by M84 on Aug 25th 2019 at 9:31:46 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Hot take: Gundyr DA CHAMP is the hardest boss in DK 3 vanilla. Nameless King is only hard because you have to suffer through the jankfest that is king of storms everytime you fight him. Sulyvahn might be 2nd place, and then the final one.

TBH I wish DKS 3 didn't use boss stacking so much. It makes fights I'd otherwise enjoy frustrating to play particularly solo. One of the DLC ones really should've been two separate battles.

Edited by Vertigo_High on Aug 26th 2019 at 1:10:45 AM

Friede was such bullshit.

Disgusted, but not surprised

I remember so little of the Friede fight. Just a lot of running and screaming, mostly on my part.

It's been fun.

The Friede fight becomes more manageable once you realize that Friede is actually a Hollow (she's originally from the Kingdom of Hollows Londor) and thus takes more damage from the Hollowslayer Greatsword.

Edited by M84 on Aug 26th 2019 at 4:31:10 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Friede has no poise, so I always beat her third phase by just tanking a hit with the Zweihander's weapon art, then healing while she gets back up.

Friede is the only boss I NPC summoned for. It was mainly because of the third phase.

Gotta love that "Ah, fights over, got the Titanite Slab... OH SHIT SHIT SHE'S GETTING BACK UP AGAIN" twist!

The fact a soul doesn't drop is the first hint that the fight isn't over.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Lol, wifey been playing the game recently, beat Iudex first try and even got past Vordt on the first sitting. Even managed to stumble into the road of sacrifices bonfire without finding the two bonfires in undead settlement.

And I’ve also been trying to beat Cursed Greatwood with my 2nd char, a sorcery build. Currently have soul arrow, farron dart, greater soul arrow and magic weapon and I think all ranged sorceries are basically useless against him because you can’t lock on to the weak spots.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Aug 27th 2019 at 11:07:18 AM

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

I never really bothered with magic builds myself, save for pyromancer in the first game and second game.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Well, I just wanted to try it out for once. Man, fighting Vordt as a sorcerer was a really different experience, I had to learn his moves exactly in order to not avoid damage and learn the timings for when it was safe to cast.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

I enjoyed magic the most in the 2nd game, though you'll need to be careful win the dlc areas since some of the enemies there are highly resistant to magic.

I never properly tried out magic in DS 3. Given hows 3's enemies act in general(i.e they're far more aggressive with harder to read tells compared to the previous 2 games), it feels like it'd be a hassle TBH.

Magic in Dark Souls always seemed to kind of be an afterthought. All of the enemies and bosses are designed around players fighting them melee first. Meaning fighting a boss with magic is either a hilariously easy curbstomp or incredibly difficult since it's resistant to magic or too aggressive or has too much health or dodges too quickly or whatever.

I dunno, I guess I just never found relying on magic actually fun in this series.

If I was going to make an INT based character it'd only be to make a build centered around wielding FROM's signature Moonlight Sword.

Edited by M84 on Aug 28th 2019 at 5:33:57 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Agreed. I went pyromancer in the first game (which made it much easier), but the late availability of pyro in DSII meant I went for a classic sword-and-board instead. When I hit the soft cap on the relevant stats, I expanded into sorcery, but only for magic-knight purposes and having a bit of a surprise up my sleeve in PVP, which is the formula I carried through III.

It's been fun.

Now, magic was downright broken in Demon's Souls. Want an easy time? Choose noble, enjoy your regen mana ring as starter equipment and just spam spells at enemies. Many DeS speedruns rely on spell builds and almost instashotting bosses with OP spells.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

All of the games are built around melee characters. No area, no enemy, no boss is too difficult or too easy if you're going melee and no magic.

If you are going magic, a lot of areas are either so easy they are almost not fun, or so hard they are not fun. And may the game gods help you if you have to face enemies and bosses who are resistant to the magic you use most.

It's not so bad in the first game since Pyromancy doesn't rely on stats — only the level of the pyromancer flame. So you can still build your stats for a melee build as a backup when you meet a fire-resistant foe. Seriously, Pyromancy was friggin' broken in the first game. Which is probably why the scaling for Pyromancy spells was altered in later games.

I remember burninating Seath in seconds with Pyromancy easy peasy. Granted, Seath is one of the easiest bosses in general — the challenge lies in going through the annoying Crystal Caverns and cutting off his tail for the Moonlight Greatsword. It's kind of funny that his successors in later games — the Duke's Dear Freja in DS II and Oceiros the Consumed King in DS III — are more challenging foes.

Edited by M84 on Aug 28th 2019 at 5:59:52 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

I mean, my DS runs tends to be Pyromancer starting class eventually turning into melee with a pyro spells as backup. Pyro is actually a decent way of killing the first black knight too, if you can bait him into somewhere you can rain fireballs on him without him blocking them with his shield. My first (still unfinished) playthrough of DS is basically Pyro then deliberately into Giantdad.

Dark Souls III is my first magic character where I've gone any decent way into it though. I think Max's DS3 video (below) inspired me to give it a go, because it looked AWESOME, and just being able to buff your weapon with magic etc seems cool.

---

Funnily, I found Oceiros far easier than Seath.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Aug 28th 2019 at 11:05:09 AM

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Oceiros wasn't difficult for me, but I did consider him harder than Seath. If only because he's faster and more aggressive. Seath is ridiculously easy if you don't care about cutting off his tail for the Moonlight Greatsword. Especially if you're a Pyromancer.

Edited by M84 on Aug 28th 2019 at 6:07:39 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Looking at INT builds, and I've just come across the only time I've seen Raw gems be recommended. It's a magic swordsman build, so the idea is that you keep the sword raw so you can still buff it with magic weapon, great magic weapon, crystal weapon / carthus flame arc as needed, but the raw weapon keeps the physical as high as possible considering you're going to basically never put points into STR or DEX. Having a buffable raw weapon as backup seems like a good idea for any sorcerer build tbh.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

I like playing magic builds in these games, and I can safely say that Demon's > Dark Souls > Dark Souls II > Dark Souls III in terms of how powerful pure magic builds are in these games. Still can make the game look easy, but so can a dedicated melee player.

Hold on. ... do you have to manually trigger the NG cycle in Dark Souls 3? Rather than it automatically triggering once you've beaten the final boss? I can go beat the Soul of Cinder and then return to the DLC afterwards without worrying about going into NG+?

If so, that's AWESOME.

"...in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."