From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[sullynathan]

Forget the archer on the left. Sprint up the beam, evade the arrows, get close to the knight on the right until he switches from bow to sword then retreat backwards and he'll follow and fall off.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I have this compulsion to never let enemies fall of, because "WHAT IF THERE'S LOOT INSIDE". It's more of an OCD than anything rational.

 

[Deflowerer]

Playing as the tankiest tank who ever tanked, that section was probably the toughest and most infuriating section of the game.

 

[Perkel]

Fucking amazing.
Managed to fix online for Dark Souls.
It plays even better now than at release !


I am currently replaying all DS games because DS3 is released in a month and i wanted also to see if people still play DS1 because A) it is few years since release B) DS1 PC networking is garbage (wasn't good for consoles too)

Now i can constantly summon people without single "summoning failed message" for literally hours. Also i can easily get myself summoned.
Not only that but i also see when someone cheats so i can kick cheaters easily by pressing F1


TUTORIAL HOW TO PLAY DS1 ONLINE WITHOUT ISSUES:

A) Get DS
B) Get Dark Souls PVP Watchdog - this shows how many people are connected to you (max20 at the same time) and shows if someone cheats. In case of cheating there are various ways you can deal with motherfuckers. From ignoring them to kicking them from your instance.
C) Dark Souls Region Filter tool - DS online is region locked. Not only does it have shitty network code but also takes into account people from literally few neighboring nations. This program allows for customization. If you want always to have full people count choose wordwide option and voila no problem with amount of people you can play with.

Get Dark Souls PVP Watchdog doesn't like any other injector aside from DSFix. Which means all of stuff like D3Doverider, Dxtory, MSI afterburner and so on are no go.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I am also replaying the DS games because of DS3. Also, got past Anor Londo and then did the Duke's Archives and Demon Ruins / Lost Izalith today (which is probably my least favorite part of the game). The Crystal Cave is also more annoying than anything. At least now that I got the worst late game areas out of the way, I'm only left with the DLC (which is fun) and the Tomb of Giants (which I recall being pretty cool).

Also went through The Great Hollow / Ash Lake just for completionism.

 

[Perkel]

I am also replaying the DS games because of DS3. Also, got past Anor Londo and then did the Duke's Archives and Demon Ruins / Lost Izalith today (which is probably my least favorite part of the game). The Crystal Cave is also more annoying than anything. At least now that I got the worst late game areas out of the way, I'm only left with the DLC (which is fun) and the Tomb of Giants (which I recall being pretty cool).

Also went through The Great Hollow / Ash Lake just for completionism.

Heh you did what i did. I also finished storylines of Solaire and Catharina guy.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Finished up the game today and I'm gonna start DS2 tomorrow. Toughest boss overall for me was Manus because he never stops attacking.

 

[Perkel]

Finished up the game today and I'm gonna start DS2 tomorrow. Toughest boss overall for me was Manus because he never stops attacking.

Sif summon is great help there. Either way this is one of those bosses where you need to actually dodge stuff. His dark attack aside from one you can dodge.

Speaking of DLC arthorias fights loocked amazing but was fucking easy as hell. I did it sl30 with +10 winged spear no less.

edit:

Sanctuary guardian was way harder than arthorias.

 

[Explorerbc]

I just finished the Painted World of Ariamis and I really enjoyed the level design. Once you open the shortcut you realize it is such a small area, but it's filled with all sorts of different passages and secrets and it feels huge. And to think that if I wasn't a walkthrough scrub I would have missed it

On another note, I've been doing ok with my +10 Zweihander so far, but I am not sure how to level from here. I've been dumping everything on Vitality, Endurance, Strength and got them around 30, plus a bit on dexterity. Should I keep raising them together or should I focus on only one from now on ?

 

[Jezal_k23]

The first time I played the game, I nearly missed The Great Hollow. I admit I only didn't miss it because I came across a post somewhere talking about it, and then I looked it up.

 

[Perkel]

I just finished the Painted World of Ariamis and I really enjoyed the level design. Once you open the shortcut you realize it is such a small area, but it's filled with all sorts of different passages and secrets and it feels huge. And to think that if I wasn't a walkthrough scrub I would have missed it

On another note, I've been doing ok with my +10 Zweihander so far, but I am not sure how to level from here. I've been dumping everything on Vitality, Endurance, Strength and got them around 30, plus a bit on dexterity. Should I keep raising them together or should I focus on only one from now on ?

Painted World is closest thing to Demon Souls in DS. It uses same design where you teleport to location which is not connected to rest of the world. It takes away ability to move away from there at your own leisure it gives you only one bonfire up until boss and when you finally find shortcut you feel "fuck yeah". Aside from that like DeS there are ton of "secret" areas.

As for you weapon of choice. Zwei is cool stuff. It was also my first choice.

As for stats if you have 30 in all three then you already are overleveled. 40 is soft level cap for most of the stats and rising above 40 stats usually don't give you that much.

I just finished my spear playtrough of game and i finished it with lvl 60 and mostly because i didn't know what to do with souls anymore as i bought up almost anything from stores.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Painted World is closest thing to Demon Souls in DS. It uses same design where you teleport to location which is not connected to rest of the world. It takes away ability to move away from there at your own leisure it gives you only one bonfire up until boss and when you finally find shortcut you feel "fuck yeah". Aside from that like DeS there are ton of "secret" areas.

As for you weapon of choice. Zwei is cool stuff. It was also my first choice.

As for stats if you have 30 in all three then you already are overleveled. 40 is soft level cap for most of the stats and rising above 40 stats usually don't give you that much.

I just finished my spear playtrough of game and i finished it with lvl 60 and mostly because i didn't know what to do with souls anymore as i bought up almost anything from stores.

Uh..what?

You can just run along the bridge and get the fuck out whenever you like.

 

[Perkel]

Painted World is closest thing to Demon Souls in DS. It uses same design where you teleport to location which is not connected to rest of the world. It takes away ability to move away from there at your own leisure it gives you only one bonfire up until boss and when you finally find shortcut you feel "fuck yeah". Aside from that like DeS there are ton of "secret" areas.

As for you weapon of choice. Zwei is cool stuff. It was also my first choice.

As for stats if you have 30 in all three then you already are overleveled. 40 is soft level cap for most of the stats and rising above 40 stats usually don't give you that much.

I just finished my spear playtrough of game and i finished it with lvl 60 and mostly because i didn't know what to do with souls anymore as i bought up almost anything from stores.

Uh..what?

You can just run along the bridge and get the fuck out whenever you like.

No you don't. Because you need to first get to courtyard and open that passage.

What i meant by that is that Painted world has similar structure to DeS levels. One bonfire and you need to go from that bonfire up until the end of level sometimes using newly found shortcuts with level ending with boss fight.

DS changed that to bonfire every once a while mainly due to open world design and DS2 changed that a lot more with bonfire every 5 steps.
Take for an example Forest of Giants where you literally have bonfire every 3-4 "rooms" and that pattern doesn't change that much for rest of the game.

 

[Zep Zepo]

No you don't. Because you need to first get to courtyard and open that passage.

Hmm... I don't remember having to do anything special "to leave"
only to "get there"

Run the bridge and jump to leave...What am I forgetting?

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

But...overall

I am touching myself (hard) awaiting Dark Souls 3.

Zep--

 

[Perkel]

heh i have this need to test out resistance stat. Never added anything to it because i have read it sucks and there is softcap on defense which will be capped eventually.

then i read more and people usually just talking out of their ass playing same tape without actually checking anything themselves.

edit:

This article goes in depth about attack and defense in dark souls.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/396507-dark-souls-stats-i-damage-formula-and-analysis

So yeah soft capped stats seems to be way more important at higher levels than just additive numbers which also explains why they are softcapped to begin with. If they wouldn't be soft capped then each level would essentially make much bigger changes to fight than few levels earlier.

Which also explains that +2 to damage on 250 damage weapons is much more than +2 to damage on 50 damage weapon.
Similar situation defense. + 5 to armor at 600 defense is way more than + 5 to armor at 10 defense.

Due to that there are actually 2 calculations to damage (one where weapon has higher attack than defense of opponent and where defense is higher) those additional 5 points of armor at high level can be difference between twice the damage received. The more defense you have the less amount of weapons there are than can pierce through you defense stat and get better calculation.

It also explains quite nicely why my +15 winged spear does more damage than Dragonslayer spear +5 despite having better attack value.

In summary in case of winger spear whole damage is applied as one calculation where in case of Dragonslayer Spear there are 2 calculations for physical and for lightning damage thus as they are being stacked against armor winger spear has higher chance of dealing more damage because it's damage despite being lower one is counted as one calculation thus ignoring much of armor of opponent.

Dragonslayer Spear on other hand has trouble going through armor but this is offset by usually lack of resistance for lighting damage for other players and monsters.

So going back to original idea Resistance stat is not useless, in fact it is both practical at start and at the end game.
At start because it provides lot of "free" armor and at the end because it decreses amount of weapons that can effectively damage you.

 

[Raghar]

heh i have this need to test out resistance stat. Never added anything to it because i have read it sucks and there is softcap on defense which will be capped eventually.

You shouldn't trust everything you read. 15 RES is nice otherwise Blightown WOULD be pain.
They nerfed lightning damage in patch, thus normal +14 is now always superior.

 

[praetor]

no.

Resistance is useless both at the beginning and end of the game because both at the beginning and end pumping humanity will achieve more in boosting your defences but won't touch your SL, and a comparable investment to End or Vit (for more armour or health) will yield greater survivability. only a complete moron and irrational muhyazaki fanboy would even attempt to defend the complete and utter uselessness that is Resistance

 

[Invictus]

Hey guys I just got a new monitor and while adjusting DS Fix a bit for the new resoultion I decided to add the HD texture pack and to be honest I dont like it that much; it feels like too much of a deparature from the original textures to my liking, for example they feel a bit too bright in the aqueduct tunnels...maybe too detailed?
I would have been fine witt just upscaled original textures but anyway, I had some weird stuttering and apparently you need to add the large address aware patch to the exe to get rid of those.
Since I dont play online with my gaming PC I managed to patch the launcher but the actual DATA exe I cannot patch.
Has anybody tried that before? Does it work or pure bs?

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Hey guys I just got a new monitor and while adjusting DS Fix a bit for the new resoultion I decided to add the HD texture pack and to be honest I dont like it that much; it feels like too much of a deparature from the original textures to my liking, for example they feel a bit too bright in the aqueduct tunnels...maybe too detailed?
I would have been fine witt just upscaled original textures but anyway, I had some weird stuttering and apparently you need to add the large address aware patch to the exe to get rid of those.
Since I dont play online with my gaming PC I managed to patch the launcher but the actual DATA exe I cannot patch.
Has anybody tried that before? Does it work or pure bs?

HD texture pack didn't work reliably for me even with 4 GB exe patch, you will experience heavy FPS drops when entering catacombs no matter the specs you're running.

 

[Invictus]

Hey guys I just got a new monitor and while adjusting DS Fix a bit for the new resoultion I decided to add the HD texture pack and to be honest I dont like it that much; it feels like too much of a deparature from the original textures to my liking, for example they feel a bit too bright in the aqueduct tunnels...maybe too detailed?
I would have been fine witt just upscaled original textures but anyway, I had some weird stuttering and apparently you need to add the large address aware patch to the exe to get rid of those.
Since I dont play online with my gaming PC I managed to patch the launcher but the actual DATA exe I cannot patch.
Has anybody tried that before? Does it work or pure bs?

HD texture pack didn't work reliably for me even with 4 GB exe patch, you will experience heavy FPS drops when entering catacombs no matter the specs you're running.

Fuck it then, it is not like the Dragons Dogma textures which made it look very nice and there was little problems with performance. The port is shacky enough to give it more problems anyway

 

[Perkel]

Hey guys I just got a new monitor and while adjusting DS Fix a bit for the new resoultion I decided to add the HD texture pack and to be honest I dont like it that much; it feels like too much of a deparature from the original textures to my liking, for example they feel a bit too bright in the aqueduct tunnels...maybe too detailed?
I would have been fine witt just upscaled original textures but anyway, I had some weird stuttering and apparently you need to add the large address aware patch to the exe to get rid of those.
Since I dont play online with my gaming PC I managed to patch the launcher but the actual DATA exe I cannot patch.
Has anybody tried that before? Does it work or pure bs?

HD texture pack didn't work reliably for me even with 4 GB exe patch, you will experience heavy FPS drops when entering catacombs no matter the specs you're running.

There are two different things to Dark Souls. Chugging and FPS drops.

Chugging is made by some shitty streaming system they used for port so when you travel in some places game can stop for a second to load things.

FPS drops on other hand are because game is default Vsynced. So if your game does 55 fps it will go down to 30 and if you will get 28 it will go down to 15.
Which is why Blightown on PS3 was such a garbage with constant 15fps throughout whole blightown.

FPS on other hand in Dark Souls heavily relly on CPU. The faster it is the more places you can get at 60fps. With my i5 i can get almost all of them - parts of demon ruins. People on upclocked K versions said they don't experience slowdowns.

 

[Explorerbc]

So... I just finished the game after 50 hours at level 95 :D

Overleveled is an understatement. My character had become the living embodiment of chaos and destruction near the end, all the end game bosses got annihilated. My final build was Havel's set + Zwaihander +15 , Black Iron Greatshield +15

I think all this fuss about the difficulty is very exaggerated. To be honest, I sucked hard at the beginning, I probably lost to the Taurus demon 15 times or something, but the more I progressed the easier it became. And I managed to finish the game without ever mastering or using most of the more complex moves like parrying etc.

 

[Perkel]

So... I just finished the game after 50 hours at level 95 :D

Overleveled is an understatement. My character had become the living embodiment of chaos and destruction near the end, all the end game bosses got annihilated. My final build was Havel's set + Zwaihander +15 , Black Iron Greatshield +15

I think all this fuss about the difficulty is very exaggerated. To be honest, I sucked hard at the beginning, I probably lost to the Taurus demon 15 times or something, but the more I progressed the easier it became. And I managed to finish the game without ever mastering or using most of the more complex moves like parrying etc.

Did you found havel's armor on your own ?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Took me 80 hours to finish DS1 first time I played it. I don't understand how you people do it in 50. Why rush things, don't you ever explore or just read items descriptions, or talk to NPCs?