From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[Elwro]

Goddamnit, that's a nice plan, praetor. Chaos it is.

 

[Caim]

Also, free Laurentius ASAP. Your starting spell is useful but it has very limited uses, so you want to look into unlocking more castings as soon as possible. Same goes for powering up your Pyromancy Flame.

Unfortunately you have to do this the hard way (unless you want to cheat in certain keys, that is), by playing normally until you defeat the Capra Demon and get access to the Depths. While he's weak to fire he can still wreck your shit.

 

[Gozma]

You can master key down to Blighttown right away and get pyro spells from the hidden woman, right? Although I never figured out what triggers her to show up.

Beelining for a chaos weapon is so awkward. It's the kind of thing I wish there were bonfire ascetics for, so I could have my weird chaos weapon game pay off by letting me fight NG+ and ++ early game bosses right away instead of just plowing through the regular game.

 

[praetor]

You can master key down to Blighttown right away and get pyro spells from the hidden woman, right? Although I never figured out what triggers her to show up.

having a +10 pyro flame (or being invaded or summoning someone with one equipped)

Beelining for a chaos weapon is so awkward. It's the kind of thing I wish there were bonfire ascetics for, so I could have my weird chaos weapon game pay off by letting me fight NG+ and ++ early game bosses right away instead of just plowing through the regular game.

huh? why? getting through the catacombs right after Quelaag/Ceaseless i'd hardly call "awkward". if anything, it's a more natural progression than getting straight to Sen's/AL, considering the difficulty of the areas

 

[Elwro]

I forgot how insanely good this game is.

After reading here about the 'useless cracked round shield' I started using it for parrying and well, it seems to be as good as the buckler, that is, very good I tried using a rapier in my left hand but got worse results even if they felt more stylish.

It brings me great joy to see PvP still alive in the Undead Burg.

Alright, on to the Capra...

 

[DwarvenFood]

For me it's a bit hard to get into - was expecting an more linear experience, but I'm in the first area after killing the first boss and going through the gate - and it seems there are more ways of starting out this level, some paths leading to enemies that are - for now - too difficult.

Also, I need to think weather I'd want to use the souls for leveling up, or for buying items. Well, I think I'll be meeting the second boss soon..

 

[Damned Registrations]

The non-linearity is my favourite thing that sets DaS apart from the other games in the series; you can even skip the 'first' boss and fight all sorts of other crazy shit first if you so desire. Hell, if it weren't for suggestive level design with the utter weaklings near firelink drawing you towards the burg, you'd have much worse than 50/50 odds of even taking that route.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

To be fair I only found out about the graveyard near firelink like ~5 hours in :D

 

[Elwro]

"Hey, skeletons! These are typical low levels fantasy opponents! That means I'm on the right track!" <-me on my first play through.

I missed the Fire Keeper, blind enough not to see the stairs below the bonfire! Until they CW mentioned 'ruins below'... (yeah, mentioning the keeper was not enough...)


I have to say that when I started playing on PS3 I had to kind of learn the new optics, just to see things in games. I was missing a lot of things, not only in Dark Souls...

 

[Damned Registrations]

I had a similar experience, except I had gone right into New Londo. Ghosts aren't super tanky like the skeletons, so it seemed like a reasonable place to start, especially since I had a dagger drop from one so I could fight them even after dying a ton. Didn't help that the loot there is entirely mediocre (unlike the valley with it's proud knight souls and magic swords), or that back on release, both the ghosts and skeletons had like half or a quarter of their current soul bounty per kill- with such meagre rewards, it seemed like it must be one of the newbie areas. Surely a high levelled player wouldn't be killing level appropriate shit and gaining a tenth of a percent of what he needs to gain one level? LOLz balance.

 

[CryptRat]

I have only play the game once and by chance I chose the master key. I wonder how much more linear the game is if you don't choose it, the game just seems to be better with the master key.
EDIT : I remember it opens the access to the cave with the trolls with maces (near the sleeping dragon) so that you can play all the first part of the game backwards.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can do that without the key by

Spoiler

going through New Londo and opening the giant gate that leads to the valley.

Difficult to pull off until you get used to it, but very satisfying encountering all that shit from the 'wrong' direction.

Somewhat easier and less dramatic route is to beeline for andre and darkroot instead of doing any of the gargoyles and the shit they unlock.

 

[CryptRat]

You can do that without the key by

Spoiler

going through New Londo and opening the giant gate that leads to the valley.

Spoiler

But I thought I precisely used the master key there, I may be wrong of course.

Somewhat easier and less dramatic route is to beeline for andre and darkroot instead of doing any of the gargoyles and the shit they unlock.

It looks like what I've finally done. I didn't go through the valley, I followed what seemed to be a more conventional route (judging by the difficulty) at least at the beginning but I fought the gargoyles much late.

Spoiler

I missed a staircase or something like that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You reach the same location but you don't use the master key on the little gate, you use

Spoiler

the Key of the Seal, from killing the old douchebag on the roof, and open the gates releasing the water.

 

[praetor]

I had a similar experience, except I had gone right into New Londo. Ghosts aren't super tanky like the skeletons, so it seemed like a reasonable place to start, especially since I had a dagger drop from one so I could fight them even after dying a ton. Didn't help that the loot there is entirely mediocre (unlike the valley with it's proud knight souls and magic swords), or that back on release, both the ghosts and skeletons had like half or a quarter of their current soul bounty per kill- with such meagre rewards, it seemed like it must be one of the newbie areas. Surely a high levelled player wouldn't be killing level appropriate shit and gaining a tenth of a percent of what he needs to gain one level? LOLz balance.

iirc, on release ghosts dropped souls only after you killed Priscilla and the skellies in the graveyard didn't drop souls at all as they constantly revived as if there was a necromancer nearby. and before that first patch, everything dropped like half the souls they drop now. it was insane

 

[Elwro]

What, skellies at the cemetary don't revive now? Whoa.

 

[Akratus]

Awww. Needs to be more hardcore!!

 

[Hoaxmetal]

What, skellies at the cemetary don't revive now? Whoa.

They don't. Now a newbie gets in the cave, kills some undead, they respawn behind his back and he gets surrounded.

 

[Raghar]

They don't. Now a newbie gets in the cave, kills some undead, they respawn behind his back and he gets surrounded.

Actually he's first hit even by these "easier" skeletons, then he's dumpstered by these giant skeletons, one hit killed by wraights in cave, and when that one skeleton rises back for 5th time, he moves out of cave to nice place full of sun and happiness like Blightown.

I must addmit that Cave of Giants without lamp is utter pitta. But what can you do when you go down to rescue a cleric?

 

[Elwro]

OK, so the skellies work as they did before. What was that all about? I thought praetor suggested otherwise. I must've been mistaken.

In my last two playthroughs I chose the Master Key. Now it's the Old Witch Ring. So... Blighttown, here we go again!

I got an idea: throw knives at those fucking mosquitoes. We'll see how that turns out.


I killed the three Knights in Undead Asylum using only a buckler and a bandit's knife. Had to parry each of them 4 times, because the knife was only +2. Felt surreal and at the same time, since parrying was something I just couldn't figure out with earlier characters.

 

[Gozma]

huh? why? getting through the catacombs right after Quelaag/Ceaseless i'd hardly call "awkward". if anything, it's a more natural progression than getting straight to Sen's/AL, considering the difficulty of the areas

I was thinking more:

Master key straight to quelaag, get through a billion taurus demons to get the chaos ember (and I guess suicide to get it?), then grind a few green titanite from leeches (or can you buy it from the catacombs guy? I can't remember). Rush dive in the catacombs without a holy weapon to the blacksmith, get your chaos weapon.

Just getting the chaos weapon in the semi-natural place means you can only really "enjoy" it for Sen's->the second half of Anor Londo since it's hardly any different from a lightning weapon which doesn't require you to do any detouring at all.

I guess you could get a different experience by immediately diving through catacombs for a fire weapon and playing through the early game with that at +1 instead of going full get-chaos-ASAP mode.

 

[DwarvenFood]

BTW What are the pro's of restoring some humanity, is it the interaction with NPC's, or does it also affect stats or something ?

 

[Gozma]

It makes chaos weapons/the boss weapon you make with quelagg's soul hit harder up to 10 held humanity, you get more random drops (also up to 10 I think), and at really high humanity you get a bunch of free resists and armor points that are vaguely noticeable (this is like at 50+ held humanity).

Also using the humanity pickup items heals you for a lot. And if you are invading some dude you can pop humanities to heal while you can't drink estus.

 

[Raghar]

I got an idea: throw knives at those fucking mosquitoes. We'll see how that turns out.

Use Great soul arrow. One cast, one mosquito down.

 

[Seari]

A regular soul arrow works just fine...