From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

I only had help for O&S and Nito because his pre-area was tedious as fuck. The game was terribly easy with help, agreed.

 

On my first playthrough I summoned Solaire for Gargoyles, just to see what would happen, and immediately identified NPC summoning as an in-game cheat. Although I do feel like this is what you're expected to do for that particular bossfight, since without a summon they're harder than any boss up to O&S.

 

^ solo'd gargoyles second try *flex*

Stuff that is annoying me:

Stats are way too obfuscated. Why does a longsword with higher base damage than a scimitar have a lower attack rating on a given character (answer: obfuscated stat scaling)

How do covenants work? They give you so much information to go on. BLINDLY COMMIT FAGIT

The item upgrade and build system makes grokking the game by experimentation a big pain because I can either try the new thing I just found or I can use my starting weapon +X

Meh. Whatever, it's still pretty cool but I think you should probably just play it while using internet FAQs and shit freely. Even the orange slash messages in the game are basically From saying hey this is a community experience game, don't be a Mr. Solitude nerd that won't read a faq

 

Dark Souls seems intentionally designed to promote a "learn by trying" approach to mechanics. Leaving a covenant to join a new one, in general, does not inflict any penalties, so you are free to join everything and see how it works for yourself. For weapons, just try each one out and upgrade the one that "feels" best. I would agree that the upgrade system is rather obtuse in that it doesn't neatly lay out every option for you, but if you actually try to upgrade a weapon to say, Fire, it'll show you exactly what that upgrade does in terms of stats.

You do know that a weapon's info screen shows the scaling levels for different stats, right? It's not hard numbers, but it usually serves as a decent answer to "Why is my attack value higher with X than with Y?".

 

BROS JUST GETTING BACK INTO THIS GONNA TRY AFAITH BUILF THIS TIME

 

I don't know. I havn't upraged a weapon at all. Is that normal for first playthrough? All the base weapons I found were enough, for example black knight halberd, dragon tooth and crystal halberd. Oh, I upgraded the halber, to fix it.

 

It's not super weird. Back on launch the black knight weapons were much rarer, but then again the lightning spear was badass, so it was a good substitute. Assuming you're exploring around you've got good odds of finding some kind of powerful weapon early on that doesn't need upgrades.

Though upgrades do still help a ton, especially on special weapons (ones that upgrade with twinkling titanite, demon titanite, or dragon scales.) Upgrading a basic weapon from +10 to +11 (like the crystal halberd) isn't that big a deal.

 

It depends. If you just want to do enough damage and don't care about the moveset, you can get away with not upgrading weapons before endgame. One exception is Blighttown, where a weapon with decent damage really helps (in particular it helps with making Quelaag not take 20 minutes to kill), but there aren't any guaranteed drops of good weapons up to that point, if I remember correctly. Afterwards you get the Lightning Spear in Sen's, and Anor Londo and endgame basically shower you with weapons.

Keep in mind, you were lucky enough to hit the jackpot of weapon drops by getting the Black Knight Halberd, which is overpowered as fuck relative to where you get it and the stats it requires. You can easily finish the game with that upgraded to +5.

 

I think I got real lucky with the gargoyles. Took me only three tries and I had them beat in under a minute. Must've been the pine resin.

 

My yesterday evening: hey, why won't I play Dark Souls for an hour before getting to bed?
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->

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went to bed

 

Hmm, I didn't know it was that rare. Throughout the whole playthrough I used only a couple of weapons. It was my first playthrough and it was a blind one as the deprived, maximum combo. My first main weapon was the jagged ghost blade. I got it from one of the ghosts. I didn't know where to go at the beginning, and I was getting killed equally easy everywhere so going to new londo ruins was a good choice like any other at the time. I pretty much cleared it as one of the first locations until I realized I cannot move further and was puzzled. After that, most locations seemed easy in comparison. Not to mention the jagged ghost blade was pretty strong with extra bleed effect and fast moveset. I used it for about half of the game. I think I used it up until Anor Londo, where I already had dragons tooth, black knight halberd (I think I couldnt use it earlier because of stats) and crystal halberd. From this point I used those 3 weapons interchangeably, with crystal halberd + great magic weapon combo saved for bosses.

 

Jagged Ghost Blade is pretty rare as well, I have over 100 hours clocked in DkS and have yet to see it drop. So yeah, your experience with weapon upgrades and their necessity doesn't reflect that of an average player.

 

There are better choices anyways.

Blind playthrough: Longsword
Internet using: Drake Sword --> Longsword
1337 skills: Gravelord Sword.

Movesets tend to trump raw power most of the time.

 

I still haven't finished the game but I found two Jagged Ghostblades after a short trek in the New Londo ruins. I was at 0 humanity too.

I killed a dark knight with fireballs early on and got a Black Knight Greatsword and that's pretty much what I've been using after pumping Str.

I just killed Ceaseless Discharge. Died about 10 times before I got the dodging down. Apparently there is an exploit to kill him more easily?

 

Yep. I always found his attacks nearly impossible to dodge. The exploit makes him a joke.

 

That's intentional. (...maybe. Who can tell with this game?)

 

Well I don't know if From intended for you to run away at some point. From enjoys trolling.

For example, there's a Bonfire in Dark Souls 2 that has 3 archer enemies right next to it. The re-spawns are limited to you can kill them off to make the bonfire peaceful, but really From? You're going to put enemies RIGHT next to the bonfire no more than 5-10 feet away within plain view of it?

Troll Souls.

 

Btw, you playing DS2 too, Jasede ?

 

It's pretty obvious the game was specifically designed to frequently troll the player. Like when that NPC in the Tomb of Giants tells you to look down a cliff for treasure, and then pushes you into it. Or how often treasure is placed near some monster, and looting it causes it to aggro. My favorite one is probably when you have to free that NPC caught in a barrel.

 

iirc, it was confirmed to be intentional in that interview a year or two ago (it even has a special animation if you kill him that way... if that's not intentional, i don't know what is)

 

But how would you know to do that without Internet?

First time I saw him I beat him the hard way.

 

and how did the first dudes figure it out before the wikis? and how is that relevant to the intention of the developers to include that method of killing him? there's shitloads of stuff in the game that is really really hard to know without internet...

 

So troll souls?

 

I wish. I don't have a PS4!

 

Eh, it's out for PS3, not for PS4