From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Blaine]

I'm not sure if you know that the binoculars on offhand can be used to manually aim spells but your 2H method would have been a better way of implementing it.

Yeah, I've known about binocular aiming for a long while. The ability to aim and (crappily) block might be enough of a reason to two-hand, alongside the absence of shield encumbrance, all without affecting PvP in any way (the notion of zoom-aiming in Dark Souls PvP is laughable, even using a mouse). A minor casting speed increase would probably also be appropriate.

The notion that bonuses for magic setups other than one-handing would be OP is dumb anyway. Magic is already extremely underpowered as-is. I don't care if you can deal 1,000 Great Heavy Soul Arrow damage with a +5 Faintstone-infused Staff of Wisdom and 60 INT (unless the target is resistant, that is), because those are 50+ points that could be used to wear tank armor, carry a blast door shield, have more HP and Stamina, and smash things with a bus glued to the end of a telephone pole... which ends up being much more workable and safe in most situations, unless you're using NPCs to tank bosses while spell-spamming, which is the same as admitting you have to basically press a skip button to get past the boss.

In fairness though, high INT also allows for equal use of pyromancy, which is retardedly strong against invaders and hordes of minions. It lacks staying power to actually make one's way through a level while relying on it, but it's good.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I did it. I killed the Ivory King. He's a pretty good fight. Not too much bullshit, just need some skill.
Could do without the little private army though.
Anyway, I have all 3 crowns and I talked to Vendrick's memory, and he's acting like I don't have them all. Am I missing something? There's not much information on what to do.
In fact, DS2 is really vague about what you have to do and where to go. DS1 had more guidance.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I have all 3 crowns

There's a 4th. 3 from the DLC, and one

Spoiler

"Found behind a large locked door in Shrine of Amana after defeating Vendrick. Must be human in order to open the door." IIRC it's across the bridge on the left after the first (I think) bonfire

Yeah good luck remembering that door exists and then getting it open without looking it up.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I have all 3 crowns

There's a 4th. 3 from the DLC, and one

Spoiler

"Found behind a large locked door in Shrine of Amana after defeating Vendrick. Must be human in order to open the door." IIRC it's across the bridge on the left after the first (I think) bonfire

Yeah good luck remembering that door exists and then getting it open without looking it up.

That seems awfully convoluted.
Would it have hurt them to record a line for vendrick going something like "oh you got all my shit. Now murder me in the present so you can open some big ass door in Shrine of Amana"?

 

[Blaine]

The game is huge, which is good, but remembering where arbitrarily locked thing #85 is located can be a huge pain in the ass. It's somewhat verboten, but I often just use the Wiki if I've lost track of a King's Door, Forgotten Door, etc. I know I've seen before.

Also, I feel as if Japanese developers are still putting shit into games to sell game guides. The hidden doors are fucking annoying. The ONLY way to find them (in all but a few cases) is to either simply read messages, which is the same as reading a guide that just tells you where they are, or else to scrape your face along the wall pressing A, because there sure as shit aren't any other hints. There's no satisfaction in finding them because you either find them through dumb blind labor or by being handed the location.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

There's actually a miracle and a piece of head gear that tells you where hidden doors are.
Guidance and the Hollow Skin both make developer messages appear.

 

[Blaine]

That's neat. Yet still, they're just telling you where they are.

Recently when reading something about item farming, I realized that I never got the Watchdragon Parma, which meant the loot probably fell off the platform when I killed the dragon first time through. I used my first-ever Bonfire Ascetic to try again, and the enemies are about as spiced-up as I thought they'd be. With my increased damage, armor, health, and stamina, they're no more mechanically difficult than they were my first time through, and effectively easier given my experience with the game.

Sorcery finally won the day versus dragons. They're weak to it, and with the red dragons, I can get off two Soul Spears before they even start to fight, taking off fully 40% of their health. Merely ambling out of the way of their fire breath a couple of times and shooting Soul Arrows is all it takes after that. I'm considering using Ascetics to respawn the crystal lizards at Dragon's Aerie, since the ISIS suicide bombers have virtually 0 health to begin with, and sorcery is E-Z Cheez versus dragons (although it seems you needn't even wake the dragons to get all the stuff).

Actually, sorcery is also strong versus those wights that appear when bells are rung in Undead Crypt. I can stand to the left of the stairs leading to Velstadt's arena, allow the hollow to ring the bell, and continually binocular-snipe two of the wights while they respawn infinitely for massive amounts of souls. If I upgrade my Staff of Wisdom a little more, I'll be able to one-hit them with Great Heavy Soul Arrow.

I'm not too keen on using Ascetics for Duke's Dear Freja to get the Moonlight Greatsword. As amazing as the weapon is, and although that boss isn't the most punishing boss in the game, it's a tense chore and it can also destroy equipment. I might possibly attempt it with sunbros. It doesn't help that it apparently has 2/3 damage reduction versus sorcery.

On an unrelated note, the way infusing works in this game is obnoxious. It's of little or marginal benefit on its own, providing a minor bonus versus enemies weak to that element and an often major (due to the way resistances work) malus versus enemies strong to that element. Using consumable resins on a non-infused weapon provides far greater damage potential, is much more versatile due to the lack of a fixed element type, and once you reach a certain point in the game, you can afford tons of resins when necessary and they're sold infinitely by various vendors. Also, many, many bosses (and more than a few enemies) are very strong versus dark, and hexes tend to have shit-tier usage caps, which makes me reluctant to experiment with a hexer respec, let alone infuse anything with dark. I'm also a bit butthurt that my +5 magic-infused Dragonrider Bow with magic arrows (and 50 INT on my character) does very similar damage compared to my +10 Heavy Crossbow... which has 5 more range, can be wielded in one hand, uses slightly less expensive ammo, and doesn't require Petrified Dragon Bones to upgrade.

 

[Hyperion]

Ascetic farming the Lizards isn't really necessary anymore.

Dragon Acolytes in Aldia's Keep drop Petrified Dragon Bones.
Amana Knights drop Twinkling Titanite
Stone Soldiers drop Titanite Slabs.

Everything else can be bought in infinite numbers. Not really recommended because of Soul Memory, if you care about PvP. Better off farming, and putting the Souls towards your level.

 

[Blaine]

I don't care about PvP, and Soul Memory is a big part of the reason. It's a terrible, completely retarded Band-Aid meant to stop twinking that accomplishes nothing of the sort, since experienced players can grab the Agape Ring, run to their chosen equipment, and accumulate just enough Soul Levels and Memory to min-max themselves and their equipment. I went offline after awhile since it was hard for me to find co-op anyway, whether summoning or being summoned.

Every crossbow bolt I buy essentially adds to the total. Souls I lose due to failed retrievals (rare, but it happens) add to the total. It's idiotic.

Even if the PvP didn't suffer from the above alongside understandable low population at this late date, in general I only care to play competitively in the types of games where everyone's on a more-or-less even footing without having to do a bunch of PvE: Arena shooters, team shooters, strategy games and the like.

Anyway, I know some of them can be bought, but getting the lizards seems faster than the drop rates for most of those things.

 

[sullynathan]

Using consumable resins on a non-infused weapon provides far greater damage potential

True for every souls game. I sometimes think they could've fixed this problem by giving infusions/upgrades a greater damage boost

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Or allow you to buff infused weapons so you can deal even more elemental damage. Maybe some sort of multiplier, where if you buff a weapon with the same element you get more bonus damage.

You'd think a lightning infused weapon with gold pine resin would deal a lot of lightning damage. I infused my thorn greatsword with lightning, and I think it actually deals less than keeping it normal with gold resin.

 

[Mozg]

You can buff infused weapons in DS2, and it works better than resins because the buffs are inherently stronger than the resin buff and they scale off the weapon's total base damage, which is higher for the infused versions of the weapon unless it's a poison infusion or something. Flame weapon is also dirt cheap for any build; you just need one attunement slot, no other casting stats necessary. Stuff like dark weapon or crystal magic weapon are another step up from there.

Try a minimum stats elemental infused lost sinner sword + minimum stats flame weapon to see the damage output.

 

[Blaine]

You can buff infused weapons in DS2, and it works better than resins because the buffs are inherently stronger than the resin buff and they scale off the weapon's total base damage, which is higher for the infused versions of the weapon unless it's a poison infusion or something. Flame weapon is also dirt cheap for any build; you just need one attunement slot, no other casting stats necessary. Stuff like dark weapon or crystal magic weapon are another step up from there.

Try a minimum stats elemental infused lost sinner sword + minimum stats flame weapon to see the damage output.

Yeah, you can buff them with spells, except for the Moonlight Greatsword and certain other boss weapons because muh PvP balance.

In that case though you're still limited to one element type and also require a spell slot, and it will do shittier damage unless you use the spell, making it less useful for slogs through to bosses. When you do use it you need to switch to a catalyst in the off-hand and cast it and switch back managing not to get murdered, unless you have one specific shield or are dual-wielding two of one specific sword.

It's doable of course, but fairly aggravating.

 

[Mozg]

You can cross elements with the infusion and your buff. Like fire buff on lightning; works fine. I think there's like a minute 1-2 AR advantage or something on matched buffs because of scaling interactions, but it's not material. So that's a way to get a little more coverage. Even on a sorcerer I didn't do things like have a blue-infused weapon using blue-infused buffs - fire infusion is the obvious choice, but you can even do shit like use lightning infusion with a sorcerer, the elemental scaling doesn't really amount to much.

I honestly never noticed elemental resists in the base game, despite using infused stuff most of the time after I started abstaining from rob-flynn. Fire resist is pretty bad in the ash castle DLC IIRC, other than that it was never a showstopper.

 

[Blaine]

I just ran a test on NG+ strength sword-and-board Old Knights with an Archdrake Mace +10 (20 STR/DEX and 50 INT), and here are the results:

• Plain with nothing: 178 per normal hit
• Plain with Aromatic Ooze: 211 per
• Plain with Crystal Magic Weapon: 224 per
• Magic infusion with nothing: 202 per
• Magic infusion with Crystal Magic Weapon: 270 per

Well, clearly infused is better, especially considering that Old Knights have ~50% magic resistance. I'm not sure how much of a difference having 50 INT makes for either the resin or the buff spell. I don't think the weapon buff spells scale at all, though, so I imagine the resin doesn't either. Then again, perhaps their base damage doesn't scale with INT when cast/used, but that base damage might see an increase.

Which infusion you choose will make a difference for the weapon's basic infusion scaling, of course. If you choose lightning infusion as a pure INT build, it's going to deal less damage to everything except significantly lightning-weak enemies, and vice versa with FTH and magic infusion.

 

[Mozg]

The difference between a lightning uchi and a magic uchi for a 40 int build is about 25 AR (for a weapon with ~370 total AR infused). I.e. it ain't much, elemental scaling is small potatoes in most cases. And the difference isn't percentile, so the spread between that 40 int bild for a lightning vs. magic lost sinner sword is still only about 25 points despite the total AR being near 700.

When I say "base damage" I mean the damage without any scaling. Say, a +10 longsword has (checks a wiki) base 225 AR, a +10 fire longsword has 157/157, 314 total. Weapon buffs and resins scale with the total base damage, at differing rates (crystal magic weapon/dark weapon/sunlight blade are all equally strong IIRC). The buff's damage increase is totally indifferent to your stats or anything but base damage; only duration scales with your stats+staff.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is it worth infusing if you are running a 40/40 quality build, with below 20 stats in faith and int?

 

[Mozg]

Only on stuff with near zero scaling on str/dex. A few weirdo weapons have no scaling at all, like the malformed skull.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So stuff like the Avelyn then? Because I already have a +10 Raw Avelyn, but it feels kind of weak. Did it get nerfed super hard at some point? Its hardly an efficient use of bolts, even though its a cool weapon.
Its actually the first avelyn I used in a souls game too; the one in the Archives in DS1 is a bitch to get.

I guess I'll downgrade my lighting thorned sword to normal then. I only have something like 16 faith anyway

 

[Blaine]

In my experience with crossbows, raw with strongest normal bolts is the way to go. If you use elemental bolts with a raw crossbow, it'll nearly always deal a smidge more damage to most enemies, but at the cost of a smidge more souls. Occasionally, that smidge will shave one shot off the shots needed to kill something, so it can be worth it. My Raw Heavy Crossbow +10 leaves a tiny sliver on the hollows with the dark priestesses in the Undead Crypt if I use iron bolts, for example, but if I use fire bolts it will one-shot them. It's easy to slot to iron and something else for those occasions.

I think it's only worth infusing crossbows with an element if you have a specific group of enemies with a weakness to that element in mind, and then make sure you use the matching arrows. I have little choice but to do this with the Dragonrider Bow since it's innately part magic damage (not a crossbow, but same principle). Lightning is probably a good choice for a crossbow infusion, since you get no FTH scaling regardless, very few enemies or bosses resist it at all, and many enemies and a fair few bosses are at least slightly weak to it.

 

[praetor]

On an unrelated note, the way infusing works in this game is obnoxious. It's of little or marginal benefit on its own, providing a minor bonus versus enemies weak to that element and an often major (due to the way resistances work) malus versus enemies strong to that element. Using consumable resins on a non-infused weapon provides far greater damage potential, is much more versatile due to the lack of a fixed element type, and once you reach a certain point in the game, you can afford tons of resins when necessary and they're sold infinitely by various vendors. Also, many, many bosses (and more than a few enemies) are very strong versus dark, and hexes tend to have shit-tier usage caps, which makes me reluctant to experiment with a hexer respec, let alone infuse anything with dark. I'm also a bit butthurt that my +5 magic-infused Dragonrider Bow with magic arrows (and 50 INT on my character) does very similar damage compared to my +10 Heavy Crossbow... which has 5 more range, can be wielded in one hand, uses slightly less expensive ammo, and doesn't require Petrified Dragon Bones to upgrade.

this is pretty much 100% wrong

 

[praetor]

So stuff like the Avelyn then? Because I already have a +10 Raw Avelyn, but it feels kind of weak. Did it get nerfed super hard at some point?

yes. mundane avelyn used to be insane (OHKO or near enough with all 3 bolts) so they nerfed it into near uselessness (it's what they usually do)

 

[Blaine]

this is pretty much 100% wrong

Only the part about infusions vs. resins is wrong, and I already tested that and corrected myself. Also, I have 50 INT and tested a magic infusion; for characters with very low INT and FTH (and likely ATN) who aren't using buffs, using resins will be superior to infusions in terms of versatility and very similar or superior in damage, particularly considering they'll probably have higher STR and DEX than mine and will be getting significantly more physical scaling.

More bosses are resistant to dark damage than any other element, with fewer being weak to it than any other element (keeping in mind that, in boss terms, "resistant" means "very resistant", while "weak" means "only slightly resistant"). There is exactly one Dark spell per catalyst type (Dark Orb and Resonant Soul) with a significant number of uses for slogging through levels.

Bosses resistant to magic: 5
Bosses weak to magic: 5
Bosses resistant to fire: 8 (some situational dependant on water)
Bosses weak to fire: 8 (one situational dependant on water)
Bosses resistant to lightning: 4
Bosses weak to lightning: 13
Bosses resistant to dark: 9
Bosses weak to dark: 4 (two of which are extremely easy)

My maxed-out Dragonrider Bow using magic arrows indeed does similar damage to my maxed-out raw crossbow using iron bolts, even with my high INT scaling and decent STR/DEX scaling, while using more stamina per shot, having 5 less range, having higher stat requirements, only being usable two-handed, and requiring Petrified Dragon Bones to upgrade. It also seems to fire at about the same rate. The only advantage of the Dragonrider Bow is its lower weight.

So no, you're objectively incorrect. I'm not even close to 100% wrong. Suck it down, retard.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So stuff like the Avelyn then? Because I already have a +10 Raw Avelyn, but it feels kind of weak. Did it get nerfed super hard at some point?

yes. mundane avelyn used to be insane (OHKO or near enough with all 3 bolts) so they nerfed it into near uselessness (it's what they usually do)

Well shit, I should have maxed out the heavy cross bow

 

[Blaine]

Speaking of nerfed into near-uselessness, it's finally time for a respec because I'm starting the DLC and every enemy is 70%+ resistant to all elements. Unfortunately, the things I've spent my Petrified Dragon Bones and Twinkling Titanite on are largely magic-based or elemental, so I'm somewhat limited to normal weapons and/or armor. The Bandit Axe, a nice greatshield with tons of stability, and about ten more points in Stamina should do the trick... that, or I might two-hand a giant hammer that can two-hit those armored dudes in less than half the time it takes to four-hit them with Great Heavy Soul Arrow (and typically get murdered because of the spell casting speed and poise damage nerfs).

I was warned about this and was expecting it, but it's still obnoxious. Of course, I'll still have bows for gratuitous sniping.

I'll be sure to record my no-hit victory over the Fume Knight with ShadowPlay and upload it in case of smug retards.