From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[praetor]

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

i'd agree with that if sorcery wasn't easy-mode pew-pew-pew and was actually fun and diverse like Dragons Dogma

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I don't think ranged combat will ever be on par with melee in Souls. They'd have to overhaul too much of the core design, assuming they're even good enough to handle it. It's not just about the combat system either, the level design itself assumes close-ranged combat to a large extent. There are certain spots in Undead Burg, for instance, from which you can snipe nearly all enemies without ever being in danger. The game simply isn't built with ranged in mind, I wish they'd just overhaul it into a utility role, kinda how a lot of Pyromancies are - defensive and offensive buffs, AOE spells for builds without AOE weapon options, crowd control, and so forth.

 

[potatojohn]

With bows, maybe. But sorceries barely outrange the lock-on limit.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

That's just an example, this shit is everywhere. You can kill nearly everything in upper Blighttown while standing on a platform above it with spells. Or the first bridge in Sen's Fortress, there's a serpent mage shooting at you from above, and this forces melee to carefully engage the serpent warrior on the bridge in the mage's deadzone. A ranged combatant, on the other hand, simply kills the mage. There's a ton of stuff like this in Souls games.

 

[potatojohn]

You say that as if it's the simplest thing in the world.

In reality, he's very likely to get off his lightning spear before you lock-on and cast your sorcery, then you're stunned and the other serpent kills you because a real sorcerer has no poise.

 

[Gozma]

Solaire is fine imo, he doesn't help with O&S that much, I remember him being truly effective only in Gargoyles fight.

He helps a ton - you just attract whichever one of O or S that isn't aggro towards him and kill him. It's the main fight Solaire can make easier in a really fundamental way. They are both extremely weak bosses moveset-wise if you split them apart. He does make fighting Super Ornstein a little more dangerously unpredictable though. The only fight he's no help in is Gaping Dragon IIRC.

 

[Silva]

Damn it potatojohn , you used to be my hero on Stalker vids, but now youre a complete noob. What a disappointment. I think Ill invade you and rape your fag ass because of that.

Hey, can I invade specific users in this game ? Is there a search function for invading, or a command line or something (">Invade Potatojohn") ?

 

[potatojohn]

Well this is my first time playing the game.

So anyway, I have quelaag's furysword and the moonlight butterfly horn, which one should I upgrade? I already have an enchanted dagger +4 so I'm thinking the sword, but my dex is only 12. Will it still be good?

 

[subotaiy]

Get Seath's sword.

 

[potatojohn]

So melee is supposed to be the harder way to play the game? Because I'm not finding it harder than magic. Or am I over-levelled for this part (level 51)?

 

[agentorange]

Look, buddy.

Whatever you are doing. You are doing it wrong. And you are a casual.

 

[Gozma]

Well this is my first time playing the game.

So anyway, I have quelaag's furysword and the moonlight butterfly horn, which one should I upgrade? I already have an enchanted dagger +4 so I'm thinking the sword, but my dex is only 12. Will it still be good?

The furysword is pretty good if you keep over 10 liquid humanity on you (the counter in the top left). It will be fairly suboptimal against the DLC bosses though, because it does kinda low damage per hit, split into two types, and they have a noticeable bump in armor over the main game stuff. The butterfly horn does low damage but it will probably be a little better just from being one type and getting intelligence scaling. If you finish the area you are in and get the tail cut on the boss you will get a greatsword that does much higher pure magic damage scaled by intelligence (upgraded with dragon scales) that will chop up the DLC bosses pretty easily.

 

[DragoFireheart]

How good are the Lightning Spear spells in this one? It's the one thing I never got around to using. They're quite godly in Dark Souls 2.

 

[Gozma]

They hit hard as hell, like everything you can dusk crown + bellowing ring, and have a relatively large number of shots per attunement. They're as slow as the heavy sorceries though and obviously 99% useless in PvP.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Amusingly enough, Duke's Archives is actually one of the more difficult areas for spellcasters.

But who knows man, maybe you're just naturally good at games.

You say that as if it's the simplest thing in the world.

In reality, he's very likely to get off his lightning spear before you lock-on and cast your sorcery, then you're stunned and the other serpent kills you because a real sorcerer has no poise.

It is really simple (relative to everything else you need to do in this game). For one, a melee character will have to dodge the lightning spear as well, in addition to not being able to do anything about the mage. That's not that big of a problem though, since ranged enemies in Dark Souls suck at dealing with moving targets.

 

[potatojohn]

Alright I meleed Seath to death. Also got the moonlight greatsword.

Then when I levelled up I accidentally put points into dex instead of str. I wanted STR but I depred up. Shit. Is there some way to fix this?

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Alright I meleed Seath to death. Also got the moonlight greatsword.

Then when I levelled up I accidentally put points into dex instead of str. I wanted STR but I depred up. Shit. Is there some way to fix this?

if pc mustard race than the simplest trainer found on google lets you change values of your stats.

 

[Caim]

"Failed to load SAVE DATA"

Well fuck you too, Dark Souls.

 

[praetor]

"Failed to load SAVE DATA"

Well fuck you too, GFWL.

fix'd

 

[Caim]

"Failed to load SAVE DATA"

Well fuck you too, GFWL.

fix'd

To be fair, I think it's just the game being meta: Dark Souls is so hardcore it will attempt to kill your save file when you're not playing.

That's even more hardcore than that mech piloting game that deletes your save file if you don't eject in time when your mech gets destroyed. You know the game, the one with the massive peripheral that allowed you to pilot the damn thing.

 

[Caim]

Finally beaten the Gaping Dragon... and then I get killed and killed again before I can get my 26k+ souls back.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Lesson learned for the future: Homeward Bone after bossfights if it looks like you're going to be fighting enemies again. A good amount of bosses actually drop Homeward Bones for this very reason, it's FROM Software telling you not to be a retard.

 

[potatojohn]

You can farm up 26k souls in a couple of minutes next to the first bonfire in anor londo

 

[Murk]

It's a big hit if you're new to the game and most enemies give 100-200 souls.

Don't worry bro, in time you will lose 100k souls and be like "meh".

 

[TheGreatOne]

To be fair, I think it's just the game being meta: Dark Souls is so hardcore it will attempt to kill your save file when you're not playing.

That's even more hardcore than that mech piloting game that deletes your save file if you don't eject in time when your mech gets destroyed. You know the game, the one with the massive peripheral that allowed you to pilot the damn thing.

Steel Battalion on Xbox? Breath of Fire 5 actually had a system similar to that:

The real genius (or downfall, depending on how patient you are) of Dragon Quarter's gameplay is the Dragon Counter system. Once Ryu acquires his staple dragon powers, a counter comes into play that raises from 0 to 100%. As Ryu walks around, it slowly increases, a timer ticking away towards your inevitable death. As Ryu uses his dragon powers, the counter rises much faster. When it reaches 100%, the game ends and you will have to start over. From scratch. This is massively intimidating, because it severely limits the amount of times you can use your powers, saving them for only the most drastic of situations. In turn, the dragon powers are far, far, far more powerful than anything seen prior in the series.

Though IIRC it's a lot shorter than the average JRPG, 9-12 hours or something like that.