I was messing around with my first character save last night, which I copied to have a backup right at the end of the game before going into new game plus in order to be able to access the state of the world at that point. Since it is my first and main character, I made it a point to try and get at least one of every item in the entire game, and I have almost everything that is known of at this point, except for a few armor set pieces and a handful of weapons (like the straight sword that the eagles drop at Stormveil, need to grip one next time I play it). On this copy of the save I levelled extremely high so that I'd be able to use every weapon and am getting very close; at level 223 the stats are (with Marika's Soreseal) at: 60 VIG - 16 (21) MND - 50 END - 60 STR - 50 DEX - 18 (23) INT - 33 (38) FTH - 15 (20) ARC. Wearing a combination of the Veteran's Set and the Bull-Goat Greaves, and using the Bull-Goat talisman, puts poise at something like 113 (or it could be 108, I can't remember off the top of my head), and with power stance greatswords I can attack through a fair amount of hits and only seem to regularly get knocked down by colossal weapons or boss special attacks. The only human-sized enemy melee attacks that stagger me are colossal and great swords (like the Mausoleum Knights that wield them all over Deeproot Depths) and ranged attacks from bows and crossbows. Frost and Rot still completely fuck me up if I'm slow and get caught up in a AOE of them.
Anyway as I was messing around last night checking out which dropped armor or weapons I'd missed it occurred to me that I was missing the Albinauric Bow and two pieces of that blue chain armor, so I headed out to the Inner Consecrated Snowfield site to farm the two on wolves and five on the ground that are spread out before Ordina Liturgical Town. At that high level, with a near maximal amount of poise (at least effectively), and a leftover Morgott's Great Rune putting my health bar over an inch to the right of the center of the compass, I lost over a million runes trying to farm them for the missing gear. I forgot how fucking insane those things are. Fighting one of the wolf-back archers with its backup wolf is one thing, and not overly difficult if your focused and patient, but I caught the attention of the second one with its attendant white wolf, and the one sitting on the ground with her multiple wolves. I went to do a jumping L1 with my Claymore and my Sacred Relic Sword and next thing I know I'm being smashed around left and right repeatedly, being loaded with arrows while the wolves take turns lunging all up in my grill. I died so fast I didn't even process what had just happened, and there was nothing I could think to do in the moment, I was just completely caught with no means of escape. I couldn't even manage to two-hand my Claymore which has Bloodhound Step for emergencies because I was stun-locked to death. Then, I went to recover my runes, popped another Morgott's because I was just taught a lesson but had it in my mind that this was just a fluke, that I can roll back there and grab my runes and get my revenge one by one, and it happened again, lol. At that point a million plus runes isn't even a big deal but it made me laugh at how overwhelming my beatdown was because I'd gotten lazy and thought I was unstoppable.
Once I accepted the loss and became determined to farm the bow and the remaining armor pieces, I put on my Rotten Winged Sword Insignia and my Silver Scarab talisman, took one last Morgott's (I have like 60 Rune Arcs and play the game entirely offline, I rarely actually use them) and just before attacking the first wolf-back archer, I downed a Wonderous Physick with the Opaline Bubbletear and the Thorny Cracked Tear, slapped on a Golden Vow incantation, snatched up a Flame Grant Me Strength incantation, pulled my Claymore back out and went to town on them. It took 8 instances of killing all 7 of them and their wolves to complete the missing armor pieces, and I ended up with 4 of the bows. Each round was troublesome, there just doesn't seem to be a good way to take them on without getting hit a bunch of times, especially by the arrows combo and then the magic arrows combo; the only easy ones are the two sitting down relatively isolated if you get the jump on them, and then with the three on the opposite cliffside you can knock the lower one down the cliff and jump down to finish it where the two above can't reach you and the wolves take the long way around. Those things are seriously the only enemies left that pose a challenge for this particular character, and its really only because of the way they are grouped deceptively together.
On my new game plus save I'm still trying out different builds before I commit to one and begin to make actual progress, but I can't make up my mind. I thought a cool armor set up for my character that I think I've settled on is the Nights Calvary Armor with the long black cape, the Royal Knight Greaves (the intricately engraved ones that Loretta wears), Blaidd's Gauntlets, and either the Bandit Mask or the Iron Kasa from Yura. To me it looks awesome, but I'd gotten used to having maximal poise and need to practice to adapt to a less aggressive style. My second favorite power stance setup is the Godskin Stitcher and Great Epee (which I love to wield while wearing Lionel's Set), and I also like to use Bloodhound's Fang or Morgott's Cursed Sword with the Icon Shield. I have a whole bunch of weapons across most classes, both somber and otherwise, either fully upgraded or at the second to the last tier, like Giant Crusher and Axe of Godfrey, the Halo and the Winged Scythes, the Bloodhound Claws, Maliketh's Black Blade and Godslayer's Great Sword, Commander's Standard and Nightrider Glaive, the Lance, Nagakiba, Hand of Malenia and Serpentbone Blade, multiple great swords, &c. The only approach that I am weak in is Sorcery; my intelligence is high enough to wield almost all of the weapons that require it except for a few like the Dark Moon Greatsword, but I'm not sure I would actually enjoy a Sorcery-focused character. Some of the spell casting animations are fantastic and I really like the appearance of many of the armor sets and staves, but I can't help but feel the urge to get up close and engage with enemies physically. I suppose I could look into bumping up Arcane and Intelligence and use the infamous katanas or even twinblades but, I don't know.. Whatever I end up settling on for the time being, I'm sure it will be fun, I really love this game and can't even remember the last time I maintained more than one save on a game simultaneously, or even attempted a new game plus.
