From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[CthuluIsSpy]

What's a good boss to farm sun medals for the Sunlight covenant? I want that miracle cheevo, because my OCD forbids me from letting a game I spent 30+ hours on go uncompleted.

 

[Jigawatt]

I got my sunbro medals primarily from Smelter Demon, people really seem to need help with that. Warning: after 30 summons you will come to despair the average skill level of the random spaztards playing

Edit: You probably need to do Orma's suggestions though if you're SM > 1.1mil though

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I got my sunbro medals primarily from Smelter Demon, people really seem to need help with that. Warning: after 30 summons you will come to despair the average skill level of the random spaztards playing

Edit: You probably need to do Orma's suggestions though if you're SM > 1.1mil though

Oddly enough, I get no activity around my soul level range in Iron Keep.
However, that might be due to 3 factors -
1) I'm still in NG
2) I'm playing original DS2, not scholar
3) I have nearly 2mil soul memory. Being a completionist when it comes to souls games is a bitch.

 

[Crimson_Striker]

Do you wear heavy armor? Armor doesn't feel as effective to me as in DS1.

Yeah. Heavy Armor doesn't feel as effective because poise works differently. I think it's the best handled out of all three. Poise doesn't feel kind-of-sort-of overpowered liked in 1 and it actually exists and works, as it should, unlike 3's poise that is "working as intended".

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Idk, to me it feels backwards to have poise only work when you are in an attack animation, where if you get hit you'll probably die anyway at higher levels of play.
It made more sense in DS1, where you always have poise, so you can't get stun locked before starting an action.
I might be missing something though.

Apparently DS3 poise is super fucked up, as it only applies to certain weapons. Which is pretty dumb.

 

[Arnust]

it feels backwards to have poise only work when you are in an attack animation

Except when it doesn't. And I say that as that being the ONLY way I could play 3 without feeling physically ill. DS1's would be alright if you didn't get free Equip Weight for leveling a neccessary stat, which made everyone become absolute tanks regardless of build. (different roll speeds were alright but c'mon).

 

[Crimson_Striker]

Idk, to me it feels backwards to have poise only work when you are in an attack animation, where if you get hit you'll probably die anyway at higher levels of play.
It made more sense in DS1, where you always have poise, so you can't get stun locked before starting an action.
I might be missing something though.

Apparently DS3 poise is super fucked up, as it only applies to certain weapons. Which is pretty dumb.

In DS2, Poise also affects you when you get hit while just idling or moving. If you take a hit but have enough poise to withstand the attack, you just get slowed down a bit but are still fully functional. If you don't then you get staggered.
The Hyper Armor in 2 applies to most great weapons and greatly increases your poise.

In DS3, there is no poise, just Hyper Armor on only a few heavy weapons. Meaning that if you are wearing a full set of havel's but you are using something like a Straight Sword, you will be staggered by absolutely anything; rats, doggos, skinny hollows with butter knives, etc. You may as well not be wearing armor because even the damage reduction from armor hardly matters, thus, heavy armor is effectively worthless.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Really? Because if I'm wearing armor in DS2 and I get hit by something then I always stagger unless I'm attacking.
Maybe the enemies in the DLC just deal that much poise damage, because I remember being staggered all of the time when just moving, even whilst wearing drakeblood armor.

Maybe for NG+ I should respect as an armored cleric or something.
I always liked the idea of a warrior priest. Might be the Warhammer fantasy player in me. Would fit with my attempts at farming medals for that pesky sunlight spear.

 

[Crimson_Striker]

Really? Because if I'm wearing armor in DS2 and I get hit by something then I always stagger unless I'm attacking.
Maybe the enemies in the DLC just deal that much poise damage, because I remember being staggered all of the time when just moving, even whilst wearing drakeblood armor.

Maybe for NG+ I should respect as an armored cleric.
I always liked the idea of a warrior priest. Might be the Warhammer fantasy player in me.

Go for it. In fact, there is a set of armor that's perfect for that. It's the Heide Knight Set, it's basically crusader armor
http://imgur.com/a/F2God

Lightning Infusions scale with faith and lightning element is strong against a lot of things in DS2 AND Heide weapons have innate lightning damage.

 

[Arnust]

Maybe for NG+ I should respect as an armored cleric or something.
I always liked the idea of a warrior priest. Might be the Warhammer fantasy player in me. Would fit with my attempts at farming medals for that pesky sunlight spear.

You can also combine between: Heide, Throne Defender, Insolent, Cleric, and anything you find that you like really. Few armors "suck" like that. There are some nutty sets outstanding for their weight, but no need to chase those unless you're a 1000%er.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Maybe for NG+ I should respect as an armored cleric or something.
I always liked the idea of a warrior priest. Might be the Warhammer fantasy player in me. Would fit with my attempts at farming medals for that pesky sunlight spear.

You can also combine between: Heide, Throne Defender, Insolent, Cleric, and anything you find that you like really. Few armors "suck" like that. There are some nutty sets outstanding for their weight, but no need to chase those unless you're a 1000%er.

Yeah, I know the insolent set. When I saw it I thought "That's crusader gear. I want it."
I might use lightning heide weapons and an uninfused mace / great hammer. Because what sort of warrior priest would I be without a big bloody hammer?

Really? Because if I'm wearing armor in DS2 and I get hit by something then I always stagger unless I'm attacking.
Maybe the enemies in the DLC just deal that much poise damage, because I remember being staggered all of the time when just moving, even whilst wearing drakeblood armor.

Maybe for NG+ I should respect as an armored cleric.
I always liked the idea of a warrior priest. Might be the Warhammer fantasy player in me.

Go for it. In fact, there is a set of armor that's perfect for that. It's the Heide Knight Set, it's basically crusader armor
http://imgur.com/a/F2God

Lightning Infusions scale with faith and lightning element is strong against a lot of things in DS2 AND Heide weapons have innate lightning damage.

Yeah, that set is nice. Its a rare drop in the original though, isn't it? I might wear insolent for the time being.

 

[Arnust]

Yeah, I know the insolent set. When I saw it I thought "That's crusader gear. I want it."
I might use lightning heide weapons and an uninfused mace / great hammer. Because what sort of warrior priest would I be without a big bloody hammer?

You've also got the Barbed GS, Defender GS, Dragonslayer's Axe, and the other Heide weapons; the Spear, Lance and Greatlance. Or whatever the hell you feel like and infuse it.

Yeah, that set is nice. Its a rare drop in the original though, isn't it? I might wear insolent for the time being.

Vanilla: In each NG+ they drop a different piece, therefore you need to play around them and with Ascetics, and having a good eye in the Wikia
SOTFS: Just drop rates. Better to switch to Covenant Of Champions to avoid them despawning and making the area harder after the Ascetic reset.

To literally improve the Insolent set, change helmet (Cleric's hood looks oddly well), and put on the Faraam Boots instead of the Insolent boots. Believe me, it's a straight upgrade. Also good stats.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Any pointers on getting summoned? Its taking ages to get summoned. What soul memory would I need, and where should I hang out?
I know about the orange borders in the travel menu, but even if I hang out there nothing happens. I suspect the activity shown is other people waiting to be summoned.
One problem I find with the summoning system is that the activity indicator isn't precise enough; yes it shows activity in an area, but the areas are pretty large with several bonfires and its hard to tell where people actually are.
Brume tower has 5 bonfires, each pretty far apart from each other. While I'm wasting my time waiting at fume knight the people I'm waiting for could be somewhere else.

 

[Crimson_Striker]

Yeah that's something that a patch for Dark Souls 3 around the The Ringed City DLC launch improved on.
You just gotta put a sign down and hope for the best.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I never have that much luck with the ballista myself, so I usually just fight him properly.
If you kill him on that plaza you don't have to deal with him again, at least.

 

[cvv]

Any pointers on getting summoned? Its taking ages to get summoned. What soul memory would I need, and where should I hang out?

It's an old game, few people still playing. On my last playthrough half a year ago it's been a pain to co-op. Ultimatelly my best shot was to come here and ask people. Co-op is a mountain of fun, especially in the DLCs.

 

[Orma]

Any pointers on getting summoned? Its taking ages to get summoned. What soul memory would I need, and where should I hang out?

It's an old game, few people still playing. On my last playthrough half a year ago it's been a pain to co-op. Ultimatelly my best shot was to come here and ask people. Co-op is a mountain of fun, especially in the DLCs.

Spy's problem is he isn't even playing SotFS.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, red signs should be for dark spirits. I think there's a bug though where one can get summoned as the wrong type of phantom.

 

[Stonewolf]

Meta SL used to 150 IIRC.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So I beat blue smelter demon. Solo.
Didn't take as many tries as I thought. Not that I'm saying that he needs to be harder mind you; he does deal a lot of damage with autotracking bullshit. Not to mention that the trip to him is a massive pain in the ass. I don't mesure how good a boss is by the amount of time I wasted on him.
I only managed to get to him because I was running a light build that prioritizes magic defense. No idea how a heavy build would get to him without murdering everything in the way, as you have hexes slowing you down and fuckers constantly attacking you.

 

[Multidirectional]

It's an old game, few people still playing. On my last playthrough half a year ago it's been a pain to co-op. Ultimatelly my best shot was to come here and ask people. Co-op is a mountain of fun, especially in the DLCs.

Nonsense, there's plenty of action in SOTFS, about the same as when I bought it. And it should remain that way because it has the best mp in series.

What's the meta level for this?

Why would you care about soul level in a game that bases matchmaking on Soul Memory? Just level up as much as you want.

 

[Orma]

Please ignore reddit memes such as 'Meta level'.
And don't worry too much about soul memory either, since I can still consistently invade/get invaded at 8-10 million SM range.

And do not pvp on the reddit bridge.
Just invade the maps you like or the ones that have an orange border in the bonfire warp screen.

 

[Multidirectional]

I had many fun times on Bridge. Can't complain. It's also a good area to hang around when you want more bellbros action. I suggest going for pvp options that give useful rewards.

Hunt for red summon signs on bridge in hopes for human effigy.
Bell bros for upgrade materials. You can even get rarest ones sometimes.
And blood bros for cracked red eye orbs.

Also, is it me, or is the movement more, I don't know how to put it, imprecise compared to the others? I feel like the character quite often moves slightly off and a lot more off when rolling compared to the way I'm pushing the joystick. Or is my gamepad busted?

This is probably what I use deadzone fix for.

 

[Urbanolo]

So I beat blue smelter demon. Solo.
Didn't take as many tries as I thought. Not that I'm saying that he needs to be harder mind you; he does deal a lot of damage with autotracking bullshit. Not to mention that the trip to him is a massive pain in the ass. I don't mesure how good a boss is by the amount of time I wasted on him.
I only managed to get to him because I was running a light build that prioritizes magic defense. No idea how a heavy build would get to him without murdering everything in the way, as you have hexes slowing you down and fuckers constantly attacking you.

The gauntlet is pretty easy to run through though? I don't know why people make such a big deal out of it. Even with a high % equip load, you have to only roll like 2 and 3 times, and have a time to heal when you drop down, if you fuck up. Personally, the road to Alonne was a bigger pain in the ass.

 

[Arnust]

The Iron Keep segment before Smelty is actually made way easier with two things:
- Shutting off the furnace so that you can jump back in the bridge or skip the area outright
- NOT lowering the far half of the bridge. Seriously, it locks out of the initial wave like half of the enemies, you can bait them by going through the aforementioned bridge (has nobody mentioned yet that DS2 mobs have the balls of dropping 1mt tall ledges to chase you), and then looping back to the bridge and dropping off again. Or try and leg it to the boss fog, which should be at least somewhat easier now.

Alternative:
- Farming the motherfuckers until they stop spawning, if you want all the souls that you'll ever need. Actually seriously, it's a pretty good method of doing the Shrine of Winter 1 million souls skip, and you can sell the tons of gear that they drop for a good chunk.

This is probably what I use deadzone fix for.

That, I was wondering about. Is it worth it, and maybe more importantly, does it get you banned?