From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

Black knight weapons and jagged ghost blade aren't that rare. The jagged ghost blade is kinda rare but there's like 50 ghosts so in practice it isn't, and the black knight weapons have like a 10-15% drop rate even with 0 humanity, it's not at all rare to find one before the kiln. Certainly more likely than finding a manserpent sword.

Now, shit like the catch pole, trident, side sword, etc. those are rare as fuck and the enemies that drop them are rare too so it's a miracle to find one.

 

Or you can just buy a longsword.

 

That would require not killing everyone I see in a blind rage.

 

Getting cursed in the depths nowadays since the patch isnt too bad considering that the undead hag merchant is pretty close..

Now, getting cursed in the Great Hollow with a low vitality Character on NG and forgetting to stock up on purging stones (before getting the lordvessel). That trek through Blighttown and all the way back to the surface ..is quite the adrenaline rush

 

I've ended up collecting all the stuff in the area and killing the Gaping Dragon while being Cursed. The boss battle was very tedious, running around waiting for him to show his butt to kick it.

 

You're a trooper StaticSpine

 

Just a beefy knight with high Vitality

 

that's why DaS1 will always be better than DaS2, despite the rather substantial mechanical improvements in the latter, 'cause in DaS2 you would just warp away and carry on

 

I did the exact same thing. I got cursed in the depths for the first time. I pumped only a few points in vitality, like 3-4 and I still managed to clear the area. That depths boss is easy as fuck, killed him while cursed, on first try, without getting hit. Just follow the simple tactict of avoiding him while he charges. Done.

 

I dont know about that.

 

Nowadays the clams at the bottom drop Purging Stones, so you can just continue down to Ash Lake and farm them for a bit.

 

Yeah this got me pretty hooked. I'm getting that RPG thing where I'm at the endgame and a little overpowered and I don't even want to finish but instead start over with a different build

So much of the content of this is plain bad (bad bosses like the Capra Demon in a camerafuck closet, 1st try breakable bosses like Ceaseless Discharge/the Depths dragon, Blighttown and all the stuff on that leg of the map like Hollows) but it's saved by the system and holistics. And there's a pretty hefty amount of legit good content like Quelaag, Ornstein and Smough, all the low level areas, etc that would be good even if it were just another linear save/load game and without the Metroidvania angle.

My mostly-unspoiled 1st playthrough progression path was:

Warrior start
Longsword to +5 at the first blacksmith, used on gargoyles.
Got the Halberd to +5 a little later and used that most of the time, all the way through Blightown and Quelaag
Got a Balder Side Sword I'd gotten much earlier in the game before I understood how stats and stat scaling worked to +10 by Sen's fortress, which I used on O&S. +14 now after doing everything I could figure out in New Londo.

Standout things: Eagle Shield from Blighttown made me realize that you can safely block 95% of shit in the game with a high stability shield. Before that I thought the basic design was that you weren't supposed to block anything besides human-sized peon attacks, but by the end you are letting some 15 foot tall 8000 pound statue man do a big windup overhead chop on your shield and it's like whatever.

 

If you have decent hp, everything will be a cakewalk as you can simply swing your hammer with high poise and spamheal through everything because 20 flasks.

Rite of Kindling was a huge mistake. DragoFireheart, can you also have more than 20 flasks in DS2?

 

Estus attrition concerns never really came into play for me. Maybe around Blighttown? Five wasn't enough there with all the poison. I kindled more bonfires but it never mattered much. It's usually just not how the game works; you generally die from a stunlock or falling off something rather than anything attrition-based.

Edit - Also on the shield thing, I think it's a sound design decision at normal difficulty level because all the stuff you do to nullify enemies without blocking is about knowing all their attacks and animations. Shield turtling lets you watch a new enemy for a while and trigger how its AI reacts at different ranges without having to loading screen deathram it over and over.

 

20 flasks in Dark Souls 1 made the game a huge joke.

So far in Dark Souls 2, I have gotten 7 flasks. Not sure how many total without spoiling too much for myself.

 

let's not forget that in DaS2 you have much more types of healing items (lifegems, rouget water, divine blessings are way more common, pyro has a healing spel etc etc) and you don't need to "waste" humanity to get your max estus

 

But healing is slower and not instantaneous.

 

Not sure about this myself, but doesn't getting hit also interrupt the heal?

 

Depends on how far into the animation you are. If you got far enough for the healing to start it doesn't interrupt it but if not then it won't do anything.

 

How much worse are elemental weapons in practice than the top tierish stuff used by 40 point strength or dex builds (e.g. a balder side sword)? A lot of the Dark Souls balance design is about putting in stuff that's totally stat-independent (elemental weapons, pyromancy) so you can only fuck up a build so much, but it seems like they would open up the opportunity to do something like make an all-out tank build that gets by on minimal stat offense.

Also why is the reinforced club so good, it's like they thought giving it half durability mattered enough to make it amazing otherwise. SL1 Excalibur.

 

wut r u, casul?

 

So... what's the answer to my question, how much less useful is that in practice than like a dex 40 +15 A scaler? Is there a lot of shit with hidden resists that makes elemental weapons shit in most cases, etc

Also is there much stuff that cares about whether you are doing slash/impact/thrust damage? I basically ignored it until I my level 1 char with a +0 reinforced club did like 2x more damage to the statue men in darkroot woods than my first character.

 

Off the top of my head? No idea.

As far as stats show, the Elemental weapon has higher listed damage, but the actual damage is typically lower due to split-defenses.

 

DaS2 has 12 max in NG at least.

I found it harder to watch my health in DaS1 during longer areas. In DaS2 I pretty much don't care since I have a bajillion whatever charms/gems to heal between encounters if the flasks run out.

 

Magic works wonders on those slimy bastards.