From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

More upgraded/potent gear definitely makes the fight a lot easier to manage. Strolling in with something like a Reinforced Club+5, Balder Side Sword +5, Drake Sword, Jagged Ghost Blade, or whatever else will make the fight easier, if only because fewer hits need to connect to kill a gargoyle. With any of those weapons (or even stronger ones, like a Black Knight armament) it's possible, and none too difficult, to kill the first gargoyle before the second one even lands. Gargoyles aren't a total "gear-check" fight like one of the later bosses, but good stuffies certainly help.

Still, multi-boss fights in Souls games are subject to a lot of randomness; certain overlapping patterns can be extremely hard to find a safe opening in for certain gear/stats combinations. Sometimes the bosses get in a rhythm that never lets up, with one boss always attacking as the other(s) are in recovery frames. Souls characters don't have the capability to make their own openings, like player characters in pure action games (e.g. Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta), and as such are more reliant on the goodwill of RNGesus.

 

Good. Now look forward to fighting them in part 2.

 

That was the easiest bell to ring.

 

Edward_R_Murrow, when you say one of the later bosses is a gear check, do you mean

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Quelaag

? That's the only one that comes to mind.

 

I thought he meant

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Four Kings

It felt like a gear check to me at least on NG+ and above.

 

my bet is

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Capra

 

For Capra you just have to memorize his move set. For anyone who's playing the game normally (as in, no grinding and no perfect knowledge of where everything is) i doubt you can get there with good enough stats or gear that you can actually block his stronger attacks.

 

Gearcheck among last bosses? Why, it's certainly Nito we are speaking of.

 

Damn Capra should have the codex troll head and the wavy-cord arms.

 

I came pretty close to beating the Capra Demon twice. There's just so little room for error.

90% of the time I die without landing any hits because of the damn dogs

 

Ah, the times when this game was hard..

 

Huh, Capra. Spent 2 minutes running to the fog gate, got stuck by the dogs, instagibbed by double overhead smash, repeat. Over 20 times.
Finally practiced enough to survive long enough to kill the two dogs. Then too scared to actually attack, instead just strafe around Capra with shields up, carefully poke him once, strafe for 10 sec, poke him once, repeat.

I guess Capra Demon was the best boss that really mess with your emotion and psych: Facing him the first few times, the moment the scary music kicks in, along with him in-your-face attack, could really scare people enough (me at least) to paralysis from fear. I still remember that there were several fleeing moments that I SAW him starting to do the overhead smash...yet I was so dumbified with the thought OMG HOW DO I DEAL WITH HIM that I could do nothing but holding up my shield, thinking I could survive.

After dying like 10 times in a row, frustration really kicks in. Very few games could make me want to throw my controller at the screen.

But hey, Dark Souls makes me stronger in the end.

 

The Capra demon?

Use the fucking stairs. Easy peasy.

 

Yep, kill the dogs and kite him up the stairs, throw firebombs, he gets close you jump down, kite him up the stairs again. No need to even engage him in melee.
Hardest one on my first run was Ceaseless Discharge, as I didn't know the trick to beating him without fighting. I eventually killed him wearing full Black Iron set, including greatshield, for that max fire def, though not without dying shitload of times anyway.

 

Just kill the dogs he says. I'll file that right next to shoot the cyberdemon until he's dead.

 

This is one of those games where i wish i could drink a potion to erase my memory every time i play it.

 

Don't expect DS2 to fill that gap. It's not a bad game by any means, just a soulless imitation

 

The game leaves it up to you to decide how hard you want it to be. After beating the both DaS1/2 multiple times, melee 2H without a shield still provides a fair challenge.

 

You can cheese the Capra fight by throwing firebombs over the wall before entering the fog; at least you get rid of one dog.

 

H-K pinpointed the boss I was thinking of, but praetor's mention could definitely qualify as a gear check, given that certain "strategies" (scare quotes because of how shitty, and uninteresting said boss fight is) do have equipment requirements. I can also see how Cowboy Moment could have come to his conclusion as well.

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Capra Demon is a gear check insomuch as people who want to poise tank the dogs or block them will need sufficient armor or a shield with high enough stability, respectively. Both of those methods allow the player to easily kill the dogs, and then destroy the Mexican Goth Satyr. Shitty boss design that rewards trial and error or meta-knowledge as opposed to having sufficient command/understanding of the core mechanics. DkS1 had way too many bosses like this, especially in places that newer players were likely to find. Bosses that are "hard" until you know what to do, which then become a complete joke once you learn ONE|WEIRD|TRICK (Old Gods HATE him! Click to learn why!).

Four Kings comes across as a gear check because of the way the fight works. The Kings are on a spawn timer and players that can't kill them fast enough will be faced with two or more Kings at a time, making for a pretty rough fight. Being able to kill them quickly, however, makes the fight into a total joke as a lone King is scarcely much a threat. In my replay of DkS1 a few months ago, an Abyss Greatsword +4 with ~4-6 humanity (dat Artorias LARP) was enough to kill Kings with time in between spawns, and that's not even a "top-tier" weapon.

I can see how Quelaag could be interpreted as a gear check, though. She's the first boss to seriously resist magical damage types and thus have good reduction against split damage weapons (and resin'd arms). And she's also the start of the big defense/HP boost, which continues into Sens/Anor Lond/Lord Soul Areas, that will render newbie weapons like the (unupgraded) Drake Sword less useful, if not obsolete.

I really like Quelaag, though. Extremely solid boss design with no bullshit. Easily in the top 3 bosses of the vanilla game (along with the end boss and the Gargoyles) and the top five including the DLC (add in Artorias and Kalameet)

 

As long as you have a weapon with a decent moveset and got it to +5 (which by the time you get to Capra is very doable) you can kill both the dogs in one swing. Something like Claymore should suffice.

 

I disagree with the demon being a gear check. It doesn't take long to figure out to climb the stairs to kill the dogs, and once they are dead you can easily learn how to dodge his attacks. Gear check to me means you absolutely need to the right gear (or stat) to beat a particular obstacle, which isn't the case with the Capra.

Ho, and Abyss Greatsword IS in fact an end game type of weapon, and by the time you get it you are pretty much a match for any of the endgame bosses. So you can in fact say that Four Kings is a gear check because you can really get there while playing normally without having amazing gear.

 

If you're a squishy caster, the Magic Shield spell combined with a 100% phys shield turns the fight from a nightmare to a cakewalk (and honestly, it's the only fight that I remember being difficult as a caster, even when using kb+m). Block the initial onslaught, then kite and kill. People on various forums say that Alluring Skulls (or the appropriate spell) work too to distract the dogs while you kill them, but that doesn't actually work in practice.

it only took me about 15 deaths to figure this out...

 

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Quelagg is a gear check in my mind, because it's one of the first bosses where you need a decently upgraded weapon to do any kind of reasonable damage. Gaping Dragon has a lot of health, but he's basically harmless, while Quelaag has attacks which can actually kill you, so taking forever to whittle her down with a shitty weapon actively makes her more difficult.

Four Kings is a gear check in theory, but in practice it's not nearly harsh enough to make a difference for most players. You rarely see people complain that they don't do enough damage to kill 4K in time.

Nothing reproduces the experience of your first Souls game. Playing DeS after DaS doesn't do it either, even though I'd assume you wouldn't consider that one a "soulless imitation", or whatever. However, if you just want challenging combat, DaS2 is the best game in the series for that, while DeS is the best for atmosphere and visuals.