From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[potatojohn]

Man they say DS2 has bad AI summons - the gaping dragon just two shot solaire in my game

 

[Mystary!]

It is difficult to not love and hate this game. Its so extremely frustrating at times, failing over and over and over and over, but the feeling when you do succeed is fucking priceless.

Also is maxing Endurance first dumb? I dont know how to survive without blocking

 

[StaticSpine]

It is difficult to not love and hate this game. Its so extremely frustrating at times, failing over and over and over and over, but the feeling when you do succeed is fucking priceless.

 

[Shadenuat]

Also is maxing Endurance first dumb? I dont know how to survive without blocking

Not really. I think first thing people do is get it to 20. You'll want a decent shield to be more stable. Try kite shields for beginning, like grass shield.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Also is maxing Endurance first dumb? I dont know how to survive without blocking

Endurance is easily the best stat for a melee character whether you block or not, so the answer would be no. As a new player though, you may have trouble with your damage at certain points in the game if you don't put some points into Str/Dex.

That said, having a good shield and upgrading it, as well as keeping it lowered as much as possible (stamina regens slower with your shield up), can let you get away with low stamina for most of the game, even if you block a lot.

 

[Murk]

The shield parade is definitely a great trick. Basically you let off the button and press it again a moment after -- raising your shield is much faster in DS 1 and so you can afford to sprinkle some bursts of faster stamina regen.

Other thing of note: when you are sprinting, if you block then pressing the sprint button again will cause you to roll instead of the jump. This is a good way to avoid getting hit and to remove the delay.

Also, when falling, if you tap the sprint button to backstep (or to roll) you can bypass the "ow, I landed" animation.

 

[Mystary!]

When should you start to upgrade shit? I dont like to spend a bunch of resources only to find a better item 10 minutes later. Im at the gaping dragon at the moment, using drake sword or halberd and knight shield mostly.
The great thing about endurance is that even if you miss a couple of times you can always keep swinging until you hit. Very noob friendly stat.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Upgrade whatever weapon you like the moveset of. You can finish the game with anything, assuming that it's fully upgraded. Also, most of the "objectively better" items you can find upgrade with different materials than regular ones, and only to +5, so there's no reason to hold back. The entry level crafting materials (Titanite Shards, Large Titanite Shards, Green Titanite Shards) can be bought at vendors eventually, so use those as you will. Higher level ones are more precious, as they need to be farmed beyond a certain number of fixed placements, but you won't even be able to use those till you're close to endgame.

In general, the upgrade system is kinda obtuse and complicated for no reason, I think you can safely just wiki it.

 

[Akratus]

Indeed. A lot of people say that looking up information on the internet is a shameful thing to do. But I would say it only is, if you look up easy ways to defeat enemies, boss guides, etc. Looking up gameplay systems themselves I think is only something that prevents you from smacking yourself in the head because of your mistakes in building your character/using certain weapons/upgrades and whatever else.

There's no problem looking up what the stats actually do or what upgrades do etc. , before playing.

 

[potatojohn]

Oh so you can't buff enchanted weapons with magic weapon like in DS2?

I went through all the trouble of making an enchanted dagger +4 and my character shrugs when I try to cast it.

Then again it does 900 dmg with a parry. That's pretty good isn't it?

 

[Murk]

Daggers do ridiculous damage when riposting/backstabbing.

DK 1 does not let you buff 'infused' weapons -- they also usually lose scaling. Fire and lightning, for instance, lose all scaling so str/dex stops mattering for damage output. Enchanted on the other hand does magic damage and scales with int more so than str/dex.

 

[Silva]

Is the dagger in DaS1 better then the Bandits Knife in some way ? I have a +14 Bandits and its awesome.

 

[Murk]

Nope. At least, not as far as I know but I never went super hardcore with testing weapon differences. Apparently in DK2 the standard dagger has a magical bonus to backstabbing/riposting but in DK1 the bandit knife is better.

I used a bandit knife on my mage and loved the bleed effect -- it let me melee plenty of early enemies that otherwise would be a pain in the ass to actually melee without resorting to parrying or backstabbing... which I later ended up doing anyway

 

[Silva]

In all honesty, while I love the Bandits Knife, I think DaS2 depicted it better by ditching its critical damage and letting only the bleed. While the Dagger has a great crit but no bleed. I mean, the dagger is slimmer and thus more propense to hit internal organs, right ?

 

[Damned Registrations]

The dagger is slightly faster than the bandit's knife. Maybe ~10%. Probably doesn't make up for the lack of bleed effect.

 

[Silva]

Can a Silver Knight Spear be occultinized ?

I just came back from Ariamis painted world and remembered the plot to kill the gods involving the black ember and all that, and then I went back to order an occult weapon from Andre. I want to see if the occult effect is really good as the fluff says, I will test it against Anor Londo Silver Knights and Ornstein & Smough.

EDIT: forget it, just found out that Velka Rapier does occult damage. And man, what a move set this rapier has, really insane shit.

 

[potatojohn]

First try

Didn't even mean to fight them, was just clearing out the castle. Then I noticed that I was human from the kindling so I thought why not

 

[agentorange]

Killing Smough last on first run. Good luck on NG+ when you try to get Ornstein's soul

 

[Murk]

You mean Solaire killed them and you sat around pew-pewing amirite?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Bragging about killing O&S with Sorcery and an NPC summon, Ornstein first. We need a specialolympics.gif here.

 

[potatojohn]

I see we got a buncha badasses over here

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

you either beat the game at sls1 with broken sword on you first blind pure melee run or you dont brag about it on internet. dude its DS afterall what did you expect?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Real men use a Bonewheel Shield exclusively.

 

[Shadenuat]

Solaire is fine imo, he doesn't help with O&S that much, I remember him being truly effective only in Gargoyles fight.
But pure melee is just mandatory to get real fun from this game.

 

[potatojohn]

Melee is dumb

Think about it; the witches weaved great firestorms, nito unleashed death and disease, lord gwyn and his knights peppered the sky with lightning spears.

And you? What's your superpower? Oh, you're really good with a sword? Well ain't that special.

Fuck that. The hero of Dark Souls is clearly supposed to be a great sorcerer