From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

That one area was especially disappointing to me given that the premise for it could have made for some excellent one-time-adventuring. It's the kind of thing that would lose its charm the second time around, but if done even remotely well, could have been a very enjoyable romp unlike any other souls game area. It's huge, it's intimidating, it's confusing, and has a nice gimmick.

Then, the rape.

Had they simply created some means of control/avoidance of the issue, or instead made the enemies vaguely more normal/fair, I'd be okay with it... instead we have strange attack timing, bat shit attack animation, and outright ridiculous damage output. It's very much a sucker punch and one that leaves no real room to enjoy as you get 'better' at it. Hell, just removing the offending monster type altogether would have made that section twice as good (albeit a bit dull). Replacing them with decent enemies would have easily made it an enjoyable but somewhat time consuming task.

The boss at the end tho is oddly fair in its own way. It's a pain to fight, but unlike every other 'multi boss' situation, the two cannot clip through one another, and it very quickly becomes a battle of control and positioning -- using one enemy to hold off the other. I also think it's got a great "lol fuku" moment when the battle goes into phase 3.

 

What are you guys talking about? I just finished the Ivory King. I liked it. It certainly puts what I liked about Iron King in perspective. I liked the verticality in Iron, the claustrophobia in Sunken, and the cold isolation of Ivory. I beat the boss on my first try, I had the four knights with me so it wasn't too bad. One of them even made it with me when the boss made his cool entrance.

However, Ivory features the strongest phantoms, and I mean that figuratively. The sneaky dude was hilarious, the caster next to the giant knight was a fun tug of war. Bosses were ok, usually with Dragons or Dogs I just hug the hind leg, and free aim away.

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Last order of business: Sir Alonne. I get him to half health but the guy never gives me a second to heal. He dashes across the stage like Artorias and wipes me out.

 

one of the Greatest Boss Fight Ever up there with Senator Armstrong


The Ordeal:

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still had the shitty shield with me, instead of the stamina inc one. used the Drakeblood set (my fav)


pressure rises, nerves kick in, mistakes occur

a most compromising position

yeah, not gonna make it through this one

That one really hurt cuz I knew I had him. I got so giddy that I decided to just wail away at him, horrible decision but ultimately a humbling one

With sweaty palms and a racing heart, I dodged his swipes, I attacked with one swipe at a time. In due time, I persevered with minimal damage taken.

The feeling of besting a master washed over me, the pathos. RIP Sir Alonne, you are a legend

 

I was referring to the optional 'challenge' route in Ivory King.

The DLC is great; the challenge route is horse rape.

well, reindeer rape.

 

Yeah I had to look that up to see that I had missed it. Also, I got a soul from one of the knights. It hints that the spirit may lay it to rest but she doesn't "take" it. Anyway, I guess after the blizzard area, it's final final boss time.

 

Playing schola for a bit and this game absolutely rapes me for some reason, even though I've completed the game with numerous characters before. I dont know if it is because it's been a while since I played it, got too used to my high level chars high adaptibility or the new monster placment etc., or I just need to git gud, probably a combination of all.
they really changed a lot and the game is a lot harder. Enemies use moves I've never seen before and the fights against the pursuer with lots of added archers, dogs and so on were crazy fun. Lots of paths to early easymode weapons are now item blocked or changed too.

If you can get it for cheap its really a nice and fresh souls experience.

Now, for that fucking dragon at heides tower....

 

What is the Key to the Embedded for again? You use it on that dude who chained himself to the door, free the Milfanito... and then what? I don't remember if she gave you anything or unlocked something for you.

 

that's a fair description of all 3 DLCs: the regular stuff is amazing, probably the best Souls "game" to date, while the optional challenge routes are easily the worst thing in a Souls game ever (yup, i still think gank boss is beyond stupid. don't see what's so cool about it other than the meta-mockery of gank squads, because it just devolves into "run circles around the environment until you manage to separate one from the other 2. parry/backstab. repeat until dead". it's beyond stupid and excruciatingly boring. it's actually not only easier, but also better (probably the only souls "boss" that is better in multi) with some players 'cause it doesn't devolve into mindless circle running ad nauseam)

 

You should check out King's Field IV, if you haven't already. It's basically Sunken City: The Game, with a very similar aesthetic and Looking Glass quality level design.

 

It's mostly what weapon and shield you manage to get, since armour matters way less than in Dark Souls 1. I played through almost the entirety of the the game and the DLC while wearing the jester hat, jester pants, prison tatters and any decent gloves I could find, just so that I wouldn't miss any drops (I thought bosses worked like Dark Souls 1). It really didn't affect the amount of damage I took all that much. The weapon, however, makes a huge difference. Finding the Guts sword completely changed how I played with its amazing range and damage. The only thing that compared was the Fume Knight sword, though it didn't have that lovely crowd clearer. I think the only bosses I actually wore armour for were the Fume Knight and Alonne - just for the slight edge it gave me.

Well....

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You do get something eventually if you keep grinding them. It's not worth the hassle, though the dialogue is nice.

Rudolph sucks and it's just a chore to get to the boss. Boss is itself is kind of lazy, but oddly cool.

She gives you the ring of the dead and the other ladies also give you some stuff (one gives a fire seed, I think?). She doesn't unlock anything as far I know.

I haven't played it, so thanks for the recommendation! Going to be tricky to find it though...

From Software just makes so many good games. It's really frustrating that most of them will never get ported to the PC.

 

You may not notice armor's effect early on, and especially if you level HP, but if you play with low HP you'll find that even 500 armor is a big deal. The ring of steel protection is especially good as it has an extra % reduction for PVE enemies.

Elemental resistance works differently than physical, it's all % based, and so even early on stacking something like 400 of any one elemental resistance type = about half damage.

As a side note, I never play with shields. I find them terribly boring. Try playing with a rapier next. You'd be surprised how much damage per 'phase' you can do with that flimsy weapon compared to the Guts sword.

I don't disagree, I just personally found it fun. Smelter 2.0 was okay too, really no different than Ornstein 2.0 other than his smelter2's timing was even more different. They way I saw it was that those areas were tacked on wayyyyyy at the end and so the quality was obviously crap.

Gank squad is solid farming tho for upgrade mats, especially now that Aerie is straight up hell to farm.

 

True, but I hate feeling like I might be missing out on a rare drop. I'd rather get send back a bit more frequently than risk not getting nice loot. I just try to keep a close eye on what attacks they're using and pick the right shield for blocking most of the damage + appropriate ring. Or dodge like crazy. No shields though? I rather enjoy carefully feeling out their range behind my shield and then giving them a good smack when there's an opening. Putting on Stone Ring + Ring of Blades (+1) with a solid greatsword means you can just lash out from behind your shield and send everyone flying. And with bosses it feels far more like a duel if you're both whipping out your shields - like with the Mirror Knight. You prefer dual-wielding or two-handing?

I've never really given the rapier a shot because I can never get into a good flow with the parrying mechanic, I just went for dual-wielding blacksteel katanas for my dex-build instead. Is it worth using without the parry?

 

Finally Finished.

For some reason, I felt comepelled to solo the whole game (save for the magic Smelter since fuck that grind just before).

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fuck these assholes. It was similar to the Darklurker double trouble fight. And fuck the 3 minute trek to get to him.


favorite armor set

goodbye

I never played NG+ and instead opted to make new characters. Is it worth it here? I don't like the idea of the same enemy placements with stat buffs.

 

DS2 has more stuff in new game cycles than any of the other souls games. It's def worth it, IMO.

 

If you haven't done any bonfire Ascetics for specific boss fights before, you'll see that there are new loot drops in NG+. There are some new additions here and there, for example a big surprise in Bightstone Cove Tseldora , new enemy placements in the world and in boss fights. I'd say it's well worth playing DaS2 in NG+ at least once just to see all the new stuff. It's much more worthwhile than in DeS and DaS.

Anyhoodles~ I've done the Ivory and Sunken DLC. Where were the guys responsible for the DLC when the base game was being made?? If From could deliver a Souls game with this kind of consistent quality from beginning to end then I'd be a happy camper. I'm surprised at how much effort they put into the DLC. The new areas so much better than pretty much anything we've seen From put out before in a Souls game.

 

If this interview is to be believed, they essentially had second thoughts about their design about half-way through. Because they couldn’t afford to remake the game, they had to repurpose part of what they already had, but which no longer meshed with their vision of what the game should be like. The re-using parts isn't that surprising, but the amount that they apparently had to do it suggests that it had an impact on the quality. The DLC, however, had none of those old designs and was created from the ground up. For example: the initial cave where you start was actually supposed to be about a fight with a dragon, that you had to figure out how to deal with.

 

Now that Sir Alonne taught me how to master dodging, I'm steamrolling thru NG+ and it's not even that fun. Are red phantoms pretty much normal enemies with stat buffs? I've come across some red turtles and they don't seem to take more hits than usual. Also, I didn't know that taking out the Pursuer in the first encounter meant that you wouldn't need to fight him later in the arena. But he still shows up in Last Bastille/Things Betwixt, yes?

 

There's actually multiple Pursuers. As far as I know, the first one is the only one that changes location if you fail to beat it in one go. So yeah, the one at the Bastille should still be there.

 

I heard you like pursuers so I put pursuers in your pursuers so you could get pursued while you pursue.

I think the poor quality of my build is starting to catch up to me. Having real troubles with the DLC areas. Is magic damage shit, split damage shit, or are the enemies just pretty tanky in general?

It's not like 54 int is very good either way, but I wanted to try those high int spells(spoiler alert, they suck)

 

Spell casting only works when you can 1-2 shot enemies. I went into the Sunken DLC area with my Mage and it takes me like 4-5 hits to kill a single enemy with 50 Sorcery and a Magic Staff of Wisdom +4. The problem is that the enemies usually come in packs, have lots of health and do a shitload of damage. It's a real nightmare to deal with as a squishy caster. I'm not sure if I want to subject myself to the torment of trying to beat the DLC with this particular character lol.
And, yes, Sorcery damage is indeed shitty and hardly worth the time in this game.

 

All elemental damage (including arcane/magic and dark) are resisted with % reductions where-as physical damage is linear.

So in NG+ all enemies get a bonus to their resistances, and the DLC enemies are already more resistant, which really curbs the efficacy of magic and infused weapons. In late game (level 200+, ng+ cycles) you'll want to focus on physical damage near exclusively. This is especially true with split weapons as it is with pure elemental spells.

Basic strat is to use a high poise break weapon or a poise destroying moveset; a greathammer's 2hr2 to 'pancake' enemies is very effective as is any 2h 30+ poise break weapon like a mace or axe.

Magic used to be a bit OP and it has been consistently nerfed, causing me to remove using sorcery altogether from my conventional PVP builds. It's still good for most of the base game, but the DLC enemies are especially resistant to it.

EDIT: the cap for elemental resistance is 900, at which point you are nearly resistance to all of it with very few if any damage seeping through depending on the setup. Stack 900 sorcery resistance and blue smelter does 0 damage to you after he goes into his powered up phase. Likewise, stack 900 fire resist and guardian dragon + ancient dragon's fire breath does 0 damage to you.

With the inclusion of +3 quartz rings and the ridiculously powerful +1 dispelling ring, this has become doable for every element, and often with the same armor set (black witch + chaos items + GMB or flash sweats).

 

I haven't even been using sorcery that much, mostly the blue flame +5 (and before that magic ricard's rapier). Blue flame is actually a really strong weapon, and good poise damage too.

I'm considering just blowing a soul vessel and respeccing into Str/dex for the curved dragon greatsword. Dat 400 damage and B/S scaling seems p stronk.

I see. What a shame.

 

Magic can still be useful mind you, and your catalyst kind of matters too. Blue flame is neat but it has poor scaling compared to a dedicated sorcery catalyst like Staff of Wisdom.

BTW STR > DEX in raw values. Rough guideline is that for the same scaling values you get 2x as much damage from STR than DEX. So STR weapons will have the highest AR values, but typically dex weapons tend to be faster.

The curved dragon sword is p good for PVE, for PVP you're nearly always better off with fast weapons unless you're an MLG master.

Keep in mind, something like the Sacred Chime Hammer or Black Gravesword are AMMMAAAZZZZIINGGG when infused and probably should be infused to really maximize their potential, but for stuff like conventional non-pre-split weapons like the Greatsword or Dragon's Tooth -- you're better off just +10 natural. At that point you'll get almost as much AR from the STR scaling and also it will have less damage reduced.

 

Meh, I don't really pvp that much. Dunno why. I should, because I remember having a lot of fun ratting people. I just wish it was easier to combine pvp play with progressing in pve. It is such a shame they fucked up the blue sentinel/apostle/invader eco system.

 

Yer, I'm at 1.4mil right now and it's a pain to get invaded but easy as pie to invade others. Just annoying to stop and farm arena for orbs every now and again, tho I guess I need the red points anyway so eh.

Not looking forward to 500 blue points again... jesus.