From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

What's the best level for that area?

 

I think between 60-90, max up to 100. Higher than that and you might start seeing a lot less action. Just be smart with your stats, don't raise both STR and DEX to 40, that's just dumb. Choose one of those paths, or even go elemental and raise str/dex only as much as weapons require.

 

One thing. I'm currently running the game with supersampling at 1.5 since AA doesn't seem to be doing anything in this game, even by forcing it through the NVidia panel. But since i have a 16:10 monitor, the game forces itself to some kind of 16:9 resolution, i think 1680x945. I've tried a program called Widescreen Fixer which fixes the resolution (but only in the game. The GUI becomes deformed), but which however removes the supersampling (and i'm too much of a graphic fag to play without it at this point).

Google comes up with nothing, wonder if any of you guys knows how to get around this problem. I can play it with the black bars, but if i can do without them all the better.

 

How are you supersampling it? Pretty sure you can just set whatever rendering and display resolutions in DSFix and it will work. Also, enabling SMAA in DSFix should work, assuming you turn off the in-game AA.

 

Fuck supersampling. Set your display and rendering resolutions in DSFix to be the same and force multisampling via Nvidia Inspector with this flag - 0x004000C0. It has to be forced on Data.exe, not Dark Souls.exe. SMAA in DSFix is better than nothing but MSAA looks way better. If your card is good enough you might try hybrid AA modes like 4xS or 8xS too, myself I only got GTX460 so I use 4xMSAA. But it works good enough already. If you never used Nvidia Inspector (a mistake) and have no idea how to do this, I might be able to help you further. Or you can just google. Can't help you with the black bars though, I never minded them myself.

 

Damn, this thread made me want to play Dark Souls for the 7th time. DaS 2 is such an unmemorable game I don't even know when I stopped playing it.

I need to borrow a PS3 for Demon's Souls.

 

Right now those are the values i'm using:

# internal rendering resolution of the game
# higher values will decrease performance
renderWidth 2520
renderHeight 1575

# The display width/height
# 0 means use the same resolution as renderWidth/Height
# (use for downscaling - if in doubt, leave at 0)
presentWidth 1680
presentHeight 1050

I had to set borderlessFullscreen to 1 as well as turn on the supposedly experimental forced full screen setting to make it work. Game looks very good, not sure why Multidirectional thinks its shit. Unless he is talking about the performance?

To be frank i'm sick trying to tune this game. I'll keep it the way it is. Fuck it.

 

Like I said, forcing MSAA will get you a lot better result. But FINE, DON'T LISTEN! I use 4xMSAA at 1680x1050 and all aliasing is pretty much gone plus it runs better than downsampled. You can also choose real supersampling in Nvidia Inspector, or hybrids between SS and MSAA such like 4xS or 8xS, which are even more effective but my card isn't up to the task.

And I'm not sure why you think I think that. It would look fine to me if I had no other choice, I just like to share shit like this among Nvidia fellows.

 

Maybe i'll look into it.

Just found out i can't use miracle weapon buffs with my divine weapon. Teaches me for thinking logic matters in those type of games. To be frank so far i haven't found many useful miracles, at least for PvE, but i guess i have no choice now but keep pumping Faith and hope for the best. I have limited STR and DEX which i may have to raise if i'm going for the weapon buffs since they only work on normal weapons. It also seems i can only get some key miracles from joining different covenants. Now i have to figure out which to join first in order to dump it to go to the other one. I'll probably settle for Darkmoon anyway since i like the idea of going after sinners.

 

Logic does matter. Magical upgrades count as buffs.

 

Yes but divine power is not magic.

The logic was that if you are going faith you are going for a weapon with faith scaling but you can't use the faith buff with the faith weapon. Doesn't really rhyme but whatever. I'm looking at the buff now and it seems its made only for PvP though. Only one use, and last only a minute. So basically i need a normal weapon for when i use this buff and a divine weapon for when i'm just doing PvE. I'm now pondering if to take faith to 40 or 50. Which ever way, i guess i'll start putting some points into either STR or DEX depending on which type of weapon i decide to use. Currently looking at the Dragonslayer only because it looks great with the paladin armor set.

 

don't. leave Fth at 30. little point in going over that. you have WoG, GMB, both buffs, emit force, gravelord sword dances (farm the curse frogs in the depths, won't take long to get rank 2), great heal, 2 lightning spears (sunlight spear requires 2 slots and 50Fth and NG+, though... not really worth it imo), and replenishment at near-enough full power. if you really want to take it beyond 30, then go all the way to 50, since 40 is kind of a shitty breakpoint neither here nor there. Fth is more about versatility than pure offence like pyros and Int magic.

and "infusing" a weapon with any kind of "element" (divine, lightning, fire etc) prevents buffing. actually, iirc, any weapon with split damage can't be buffed? (like f.e. the dragonslayer spear). the "logic" there was probably "you can't apply magic on something that is already magical" (case in point, the vast majority of twinkling/dragon/demon weapons can't be buffed)

they did it better in DaS2 where lightning is associated with Fth, rather than "another flavour of magic", which was always weird in DaS1 since lightning was a heavy "theme" of Fth and there's a lightning upgrade path and a lightning buff miracle.. but whatever

 

IIRC almost nothing but plain weapons enchanted normally or raw (or crystal I think?) can have a buff spell/buff item like a pine resin put on it. Like even silver/black knight weapons or the tracers that only do normal damage can't be buffed.

You'll never use the buffs in PvE; they take incredibly long and are boring. In PvP you either use them when invading when you have some decent control of the moment you will attack (if you're on defense they'll just run behind a monster and wait for it to wear off) and for honarabu dueling where both people put up their weapon buffs and then bow and jesus

 

But faith scales better with divine weapons. Plus you get more powerful miracles. With only one use i can't imagine getting much out of Darkmoon or Sunlight Blade outside of PvP. In PvE, it seems pumping faith and using a divine weapon is a better option. Unless i'm missing something.

 

OMG - I bought this on Steam only because Codex put it on the top 50 list and then someone said it was like Ultima Underworld so I installed it and came across Windows Live thing - I thought that was dead or disentangled from Steam.

Once in game proper the console controls appeared and I just thought OMG - Codex has deceived me.

Then I tried to exit the game after 1 minute and could not figure out how.

Now, going to print off the manual and learn the keyboard shortcuts and will try again over the weekend, I have faith in the Codex!

But know this - anything that requires a joystick or game pad to play can't be RPG - that's just my view. Only decent game I played with one of those things was FF 7.

Not saying it can't be a good game.

Any tips on how to get it running on Steam - any mods or patches to install or Steam version decent to use?

Thanks

 

yes, you're missing something. "split damage weapons" (i.e. weapons doing 2 damage types) generally aren't worth it (divine is ok for the catacombs and the Nito fight... that's about it) and end up doing less damage than single-type weapons. there are a few exceptions, and it's always cool to have a chaos/lightning backup weapon with a big number on it (like f.e. the garg halberd or a greataxe or whatever), but you're better off buffing a pure physical or even using a pure physical weapon unbuffed in about 90% of the cases since going through 2 defence types more often than not will reduce the damage significantly.

plus, the scaling you get from Fth going from 30 to 40 is negligible, and going all the way to 50 is barely worth it for the increase in damage of WoG and getting sunlight spear (but for PvE you're better off using those 2 slots it takes up by getting both lightning spears). and buffs will make quick work of most bosses so they're not recommended in PvE

 

It's nothing like Ultima Underworld and whoever called it a "dungeon crawler" on the stupid list was being deceptive on purpose. As an unapologetic fanboy of this game I consider that kind of a dick move, by the way. When I read dungeon crawler I expect something like Arx Fatalis or Dungeon Master. They should have called it an exploration-oriented, combat-focused action RPG thriving on atmosphere - and not a dungeon crawler.

 

I call it an action game with stats.

I went through entire game using lightning weapons and it was fine. In some cases I did noticeably lower damage, but most of the time it's about the same level, certainly didn't make the game significantly harder. Plus removing the reason to pump stats for damage allowed me to pump END and VIT up to 40 and still stay low enough level for PVP. Don't see any reason for using divine, I even go through catacombs the normal way usually, without help of divine weapons.

 

Dark Souls has way too much out door areas to ever be considered anything like Ultima Underworld or an ARPG dungeon crawler. Besides Arx Fatalis and UUW focus on the dungeon crawling aspect and athmosphere a lot more while the real time combat is very simplistic and not very satisfying, where as Dark Souls has great combat and it's the sole focus of the game.

FF7 is a better console RPG than SMT Nocturne, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, FF tactics, Tactics Ogre, SMT Devil Survivor, Persona, Shining Force, Fire Emblem etc (or even early FF games, Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star 1&4, generic wizardry clones...)?
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Also that would technically mean that the joystick version of Ultima 4 isn't a RPG. Any console port of any old CRPG really. Though I agree that the distinction between CRPGs and console RPGs is necessary, as well as to JRPGs and WRPGs to distinguish Japanese console RPGs from Western multiplatform RPGs

 

"I don't like it, therefore it's not the thing that it is."-type arguments really annoy me.

 

I liked DS1, but keyboard/mouse support is fucking terrible even with ds(m)fix... and I can understand if someone refuses to play a game because of bad controls/UI.

 

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0/10. Git gud at trolling, FFS.

 

Though you can find a PC compatible USB controller for cheap. I can understand not wanting to buy a controller for just one (or two) games, but it's retarded to complain about the controls if you're playing a console game with a mouse and keyboard.
Then again, if this is possible, getting through with mouse and keyboard should be doable

 

Heh, I don't think he's trolling. Lord Azlan is a bro in a quest of good RPGs who got a bit misled about DS1.

- First of all Dark Souls is a fantastic action-RPG focused on exploration, combat and atmosphere. In the parts of combat and atmosphere it really excels. It's also pretty hard so prepare to die a lot (as the subtitles says) but this is expected and it's actually kind of a feature in the game. In my book it's one of the best games ever made, and unlike any other. (except, you know, the other games From Software has been making... Demon Souls, Shadow Tower, King's Field etc. These dudes have been refining their recipe since mid 90s)

- Secondly, the PC port of Dark Souls is a piece of shit. You definitely need a gamepad to play the game and you definitely need DSFix. DSfix will give you the option to use higher resolutions, Anti-Aliasing, 60fps, and will fix many performance and stability problems. I also advise using its savegame backup option, because the PC version will crash sometimes and there is always a chance of savegame corruption. In DS you only have ONE save per character, so this is handy. If your gamepad isn't an xbox gamepad, you'll probably also need the x360ce tool or something similar. If you set these mods up correctly the game will run almost flawlessly.

- Thirdly, YES, you need to do some work to get this shit done and yes you need some patience in the beginning to get used to the gameplay. I almost rage-quit two times, once while I tried to get the crappy port running decently and then when I couldn't beat the goddamned tutorial boss, but I pressed on and got rewarded with one of the best experiences in my gaming life. Stick with it and you'll be rewarded.