From Software The Dark Souls Discussion Thread

[CthuluIsSpy]

I never liked how they locked Kaathe like that. Its really easy to miss him, because most new players would immediately place the lord vessel without fighting the 4 kings first. I really don't like that. You even miss out on some important Lore. Shouldn't Kaathe always try to speak to you, even if you agree to work for Frampt? You'd think he would try to convert his rival's chosen warrior to his cause. I guess Kaathe has low confidence or something.
How they hid the Darkmoon Blade covenant was better. As long as you have the ring and know where the tomb is, you can always join it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

you can get most of content from NPCs if you aren't killing them straight away like some sociopathic dick

Haha no. Unless you're autistically scouring the world between every boss kill, half of them will disappear and never be seen again. It's not like there's a compelling reason to go back to firelink after killing taurus/capra/gaping, so if you just keep going till you ring the bell and come back, that whole cleric questline is basically gone. Likewise for onion bro, shiva, the important pyromancer, and probably some more I forgot.

 

[Wunderbar]

Haha no. Unless you're autistically scouring the world between every boss kill, half of them will disappear and never be seen again.

a lot of NPCs aren't just disappearing - they simply move to another location (like Logan and his apprentice, or Lautrec).

It's not like there's a compelling reason to go back to firelink after killing taurus/capra/gaping, so if you just keep going till you ring the bell and come back, that whole cleric questline is basically gone.

I never failed that questline at this point, I didn't even know that you can fail it. Rhea was always waiting me with those two hollowed bodyguards, even if I chose to visit tomb of giants at the very end of the game.

Likewise for onion bro, shiva, the important pyromancer, and probably some more I forgot.

Quelana can be found if you have +10 pyromancy flame, and disappears only after you beat Bed of chaos without ascending your flame to +10. Which means she can be found by every player who chose to be pyromancer.

 

[Lutte]

DS1 really has a lot of somewhat unpredictable stuff.
For example, you have a specific time window you can't be aware of to get Rhea's spells since you mention her, and plenty of potential fail states :

• If you kill Patches prior to rescuing Rhea in the Tomb of the Giants, the next place you will encounter her is in the Duke's Archives, as a hollow.

Utterly unpredictable if you don't already know what was going to happen in tomb if you meet patches before and the guy fucks you up it's kinda logical to hit him back.

• After freeing Rhea from the Tomb of the Giants, killing 2 of any of the following bosses results in her death. Note that they must be killed after rescuing her, it doesn't count if you killed them beforehand: The Gaping Dragon, Bell Gargoyles, Priscilla, Sif, Nito, Quelaag, The Bed of Chaos, Iron Golem, Ornstein and Smough, The Four Kings and Seath.

There is some foreshadowing about Petrus killing her but you don't know how it's going to happen and it can also lead to a bug if you kill Petrus :

• Killing Petrus after rescuing her may have a chance to make Rhea disappear from your playthrough.

Basically there is a chance of not getting the spells if you don't have the souls or don't farm the souls from mobs when you have the time window for buying them (and most people probably just stick to spending souls after killing bosses).
Loads of conditions and potential fail.

Truthfully, gameplay wise it doesn't matter -that- much because the cleric path is pretty worthless in ds1 outside of buff spells and wrath of the gods is more of a PVP tool than a PVE offense. But for completionist purpose the game does loads of obtuse stuff. The worst of which is how to save Solaire, that one absolutely makes zero sense whatsoever and you are meant to be able to save him, he has dialogue and can become a useless summon for Gwyn if you save him. You need to kill a specific monster where Solaire is going to spawn to stop him from getting the sunlight maggot. There is no way to have previous knowledge of how to do this whatsoever. The only way to save him on a blind playthrough is to be obsessed with the chaos covenant and unlock the shortcut wasting so much humanity on a useless covenant and ending up killing the mob before you reach the fail state for Solaire. That's the very definition of RANDOM.

Note that it's possible to do this without the chaos covenant but it requires even more meta previous knowledge of the game than the actual intended solution : cast a mist spell toward the locked door to kill something you're not supposed to know is there.

Finishing DS1 blind doesn't take any meta knowledge whatsoever, but the side content is riddled with "lol, wut?"

 

[Damned Registrations]

Quelana can be found if you have +10 pyromancy flame, and disappears only after you beat Bed of chaos without ascending your flame to +10. Which means she can be found by every player who chose to be pyromancer.

Sure, assuming the player decided to wander around the great swamp after clearing it and not finding her the first time. Which I would do why exactly? I mean, if all the NPCs moved to a jailcell in the undead asylum after you cleared it with no hint as to why, they haven't *technically* disappeared, but you're still never going to find them without a fucking wiki.

I played through the game blind, and the only questline I really got was the lautrec/firekeeper one. And even that, I missed a bunch of lines lines regarding Rhea because I didn't go talk to him after every boss fight, I just played the game. I tried talking to the crestfallen guy several times, and given how little dialogue he had, I figured I wasn't missing anything important elsewhere either. I think they might have changed the behaviour of Rhea in a patch at some point though. There was a lot of confusion about the various questlines back in the day for sure.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I admire Porky's dedication in pursuing his goal to complete Dark Souls with a dexterity build, despite clearly being terrible at it.

Au contraire, my Morrowind-loving friend, I am actually pretty decent at it, it turns out. See, I thought I was bad at it due to bad reflexes, because my parries wouldn't work, but it turns out it was mostly a distance issue, as I pointed out earlier. When I am face hugging enemies, I have a pretty decent parry rate. And that's parries, which are the hardest thing in Dark Souls (other than that guy who beat the game by just walking and side-stepping). If I was using a rolling dexterity build, it would be easy as cake. Like I rolled against Pinwheel, and beat him on 3rd or 4th try.

And yeah, I agree that DS has so much content that's hidden away, that it's an absolute blast to explore. I have looked at guides while playing, but for general stuff (like how to parry or how to upgrade equipment or kindle, etc, the game is very obscure about this kind of stuff), or for specific annoying enemies (like black knights, or bosses). Have not checked any guides for how to find areas or where to go, and still was able to find a LOT of hidden away stuff.

When I was taking the elevator up and down from Firelink to Parish, I noticed that there is a tower with a staircase around it rising up from Firelink, that you cannot access from the ground. This got me thinking, which got me exploring that area. Finally, I decided to jump off the elevator, and ended up on the higher platform. From there, after like 30 tries, managed to jump onto one of the ramps leading to the tower. From there, got to the treasure on the roof above the cleric, and to the raven's nest, where I saw you can pretend to be an egg, figuring he d then take you to another area. Still haven't done it, as I wasn't sure I am high level enought to go to that area. Still no idea where it goes exactly, but I found it!

Yesterday I found the depths almost by accident. I've cleared out the lower Undead Burg a while ago, but totally missed the door leading to the depths. I made it to Blightown backwards, through New Londo Ruins, using the Master Key, but while there, I was looking through the keys in my inventory, and saw a key saying it leads from lower burg to depths. I was like wth, went back to the lower burg to explore again, and found that freaking door.

Cool stuff.

 

[praetor]

Lutte yeah, but... why would you expect anyone to do (or even be able to do) everything on the first, blind playthrough? it would have next to 0 replayability that way. i'm not denying it has some bullshit in the questlines (Rhea and Siegmeyer. i don't agree Solaire is a big problem, and it wouldn't be a problem at all if the game gave you any hint that levelling up that covenant would open that shortcut), but a lot of the charm of the game comes from the vast array of obscure and hidden stuff you can discover on subsequent playthroughs (f.e. DS2 is a complete failure in that regard. no hidden areas, no hidden bosses, with only the Navlaan NPC questline requiring some thought. you can do pretty much everything on playthrough one, nearly everything blind, you're only locked out of NG+ specific stuff that can't be accessed by ascetics)

not everybody is a retard like DR, who complains about a pyro-specific NPC who appears in a really obvious spot that's pretty much in your way when you're making your return trip from Quelaag/Blighttown to Firelink. i've seen plenty playthroughs back in the day by bumbling morons, most of them picking pyro because it's easymode, and most of them having a +10 flame by that point, so stumbling upon her blind when you're playing a pyromancer is pretty much guaranteed

 

[Lutte]

praetor
There wasn't much judgement as much as acknowledgement of obscurity in DS1 in my post. Whether that obscurity is positive or negative was not really the point in as much as going against the absurd idea that DS1 didn't have obscure stuff. It did, aplenty.
I do in fact agree that DS2's NPCs were particularly lacking because they didn't have enough of an agenda of their own and mostly stuck around Majula after you met them. This went too far the opposite end this time.

I do find some specific elements of DS1 like Solaire's end of quest line to be borderline on the "this shouldn't even be a thing" line. But overall I am not hostile to content that can only be found through multiple playthrough or talking to other players once you've done a blind run. Solaire crosses the line for me because it's not just obscure, it's just plain meta. Having to kill some random mob in the world to save a NPC before that NPC reaches the area without anything hinting you toward it and the base intended path being hidden behind a useless covenant that asks the player to throw away valuable resources (humanities) onto something that, if you don't know about the quest, clearly seems to be pointless, doesn't even begin to make sense. Hidden content is fine, absurdities are not.
Rhea actually offends me less because while there's a tiny window of accessibility that you're unlikely to be aware of on a blind run, everything about the questline makes sense. You can't know everything beforehand, but the connected dots do mean something once you've learned. Except for that bug where killing petrus can sometimes make her disappear but that's not intended and I don't hate developers for making mistakes.
Comparatively the Solaire thing really is an asspull.

 

[Atomkilla]

While there are obviously some obtuse and handwaved things regarding NPCs and their storylines in DS1, I for one always liked and appreciated the fact that you could (and most likely will) miss so many things regarding other people while playing. That, combined with the fact that (almost) every mistake you make leaves a permanent consequence, really lent a lot to the feeling of a world inhabited by (admittedly a handful of) individuals, not unlike yourself. Each of them with a personal goal and unique personality, moving out and about the world, slowly progressing on their quests...

Spoiler

most of which, like yours, turn out to be ill-fated and end more-or-less tragically. This fits very well into the overall theme of Dark Souls and nicely reinforces it - that of loss, melancholy, despair and cruel purposelessness in a dead world which is slowly fading away.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I admire Porky's dedication in pursuing his goal to complete Dark Souls with a dexterity build, despite clearly being terrible at it.

Au contraire, my Morrowind-loving friend, I am actually pretty decent at it, it turns out.[...] If I was using a rolling dexterity build, it would be easy as cake.

Like I rolled against Pinwheel, and beat him on 3rd or 4th try.

Hmm.

 

[Lutte]

(admittedly a handful of) individuals,

More than that. Not everything you kill is mindless, they just don't talk to you.
The men serpents of Sen for example aren't mindless hollows. Just guardians of the fortress.
The various demon bosses that also become random mob 21341241 in demon's ruins are no mindless beasts either. They are there to serve as a test for the strength of the undeads who may want to follow the path to link the fire and stop the weak ones from advancing.
Queelag, one of the chaos demons, was originally intended to have dialogue but the dialogue was cut from the game because Miyazaki wasn't satisfied with her portrayal.
They have a culture. They were already demons when they built the architecture of what became ruins in Demon's Ruins/Lost Izalith.
The forest hunters aren't mindless hollow and stop attacking you if you join their covenant. And plenty of other stuff like that.

There is a shitton of ""individuals"" in DS1, it's just that they're all hostile to you. Sometimes because their purpose in living is to test you, other times it's because they just oppose you. And the ones that are neither have nothing to say to you because they just don't care about you.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I admire Porky's dedication in pursuing his goal to complete Dark Souls with a dexterity build, despite clearly being terrible at it.

Au contraire, my Morrowind-loving friend, I am actually pretty decent at it, it turns out.[...] If I was using a rolling dexterity build, it would be easy as cake.

Like I rolled against Pinwheel, and beat him on 3rd or 4th try.

Hmm.

What? Beating a boss on 3rd or 4th try is bad now? All you keyboard warriors act like you beat everything on the first try when DS is famous for everyone dying a lot. I bet if we saw you and Zed actually play, both of you probably died 40 times to the first shieldless skellly in the Northern Asylum.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Beating a boss on 3rd or 4th try is bad now?

It is if that boss is Pinwheel.
I'm only joking, which is very easy to do with this game in particular because of the whole "git gud" thing.




...seriously though, Pinwheel??

 

[Lutte]

What? Beating a boss on 3rd or 4th try is bad now? All you keyboard warriors act like you beat everything on the first try when DS is famous for everyone dying a lot. I bet if we saw you and Zed actually play, both of you probably died 40 times to the first shieldless skellly in the Northern Asylum.

You are being butthurt. Someone who dies to pinwheel is either going for it right after killing the asylum demon or has still failed to understand anything about the game despite having killed many much "harder" bosses than that. We're not throwing eggs at someone who died to Manus here.

Like it or not, not everyone is so fucking inept at video games that they would die to something that takes only so few hits to be killed. Pinwheel's hitpoints are based around the idea of a very, very early encounter with an unupgraded weapon. I believe it was done on intent to allow bad players to get the rite of kindling early, to give them 20 estus flasks as another easy mode alongside greatshields and armor.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I am not butthurt at all, but you are full of shit, objectively speaking. This is a game that has a combat system based on learning the patterns of your enemy. So to die to any boss a few times is natural, as you are learning what the hell he does. So please, enough of your non-sense.

 

[Strange Fellow]

What you're saying makes perfect sense, but still you might be the very first person ever to have died to Pinwheel.

 

[Lutte]

I am not butthurt at all, but you are full of shit, objectively speaking. This is a game that has a combat system based on learning the patterns of your enemy. So to die to any boss a few times is natural, as you are learning what the hell he does. So please, enough of your non-sense.

This is also a very forgiving game for the timing of most enemy attacks past some late game bosses, a hitpoint system that features almost no enemy one hit kill if you properly upgrade your vitality along your game progress and enough healing items to last years, particularly once you've killed said pinwheel which himself was given so few hitpoints because you are meant to be able to easily bring him down just mashing that r1 button on a decent upgraded weapon.

Jesus fuck, you've drank the "le hard game" souls bullcrap too fucking hard. I want to see you play arcade games of old.

 

[Jezal_k23]

My memory of pinwheel is him just idiotically jumping around, barely really doing anything, occasionally shooting hilariously inaccurate and slow moving projectiles at you so you don't have to run, you don't have to roll, you don't have to do anything other than just walk up to him and hit him, and if he's a fake one then you repeat this process until you find the right one. Just walk up to them and hit them until you find the right one. If you do get hit by something he does, his attacks do low damage too so 5 estus flasks should be well enough to last a long time in there.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Years of shitposting online must've made you drink your own kool-aid. Here's a little hint: people that are actually good at something generally don't say things like "git gud, bra". Which is why I am pretty certain all of you claiming how easy that or this boss is are full of shit, and probably took 300 times to beat every single boss after reading/watching every walkthrough. But hey, if you want to keep bragging like a lil kid, keep doing it. At the end of the day, YOU know how many times you died, and nothing you say will change that.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've had Pinwheel be an annoying boss on rare occasions, by spamming his clones and generally being out of reach for long enough to start surrounding you. But nine times out of ten the fight is over in under thirty seconds. Leeroy will easily solo him for you as well, which is not a thing for most other bosses you can bring phantoms to. He's definitely the easiest boss in the game. Taurus is way more dangerous, for example. I suppose if you fight him cautiously and don't notice the clones initially, dying on the first attempt would make sense. But whatever, people's experience varies. Sometimes you faceroll the hard boss and die on the easy one.

Also, lulz at the butthurt over Quelana (and npcs in general) being missable. Not everyone runs back to firelink to spend all their souls on upgrades and talk to every NPC seven times every time they kill a boss. Plenty of reasons you might not have a +10 flame by that point in the game. I don't even have a +5 weapon when I fight quelaag half the time on replays since you can fight her so early if you want to. And my first playthrough I skipped Depths entirely. I think I found it much later, maybe, like after the vessel? Been a long time.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Not everyone runs back to firelink to spend all their souls on upgrades and talk to every NPC seven times every time they kill a boss.

Those who don't, miss things. Sucks to be them.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You can't miss what you don't know. My DS1 playthrough was fucking awesome. Getting the wolf ring by jumping off a cliff onto an enemy felt badass as fuck.

 

[Atomkilla]

(admittedly a handful of) individuals,

More than that. Not everything you kill is mindless, they just don't talk to you.
The men serpents of Sen for example aren't mindless hollows. Just guardians of the fortress.
The various demon bosses that also become random mob 21341241 in demon's ruins are no mindless beasts either. They are there to serve as a test for the strength of the undeads who may want to follow the path to link the fire and stop the weak ones from advancing.
Queelag, one of the chaos demons, was originally intended to have dialogue but the dialogue was cut from the game because Miyazaki wasn't satisfied with her portrayal.
They have a culture. They were already demons when they built the architecture of what became ruins in Demon's Ruins/Lost Izalith.
The forest hunters aren't mindless hollow and stop attacking you if you join their covenant. And plenty of other stuff like that.

There is a shitton of ""individuals"" in DS1, it's just that they're all hostile to you. Sometimes because their purpose in living is to test you, other times it's because they just oppose you. And the ones that are neither have nothing to say to you because they just don't care about you.

I'm very well aware of all that you have written, but you seem to have misread/misunderstood my post. I was referring specifically to human/Hollow NPCs you meet along the way (Solaire, Siegmeyer, Lautrec, Logan etc.) which are actually characters you can talk to, the characters who are most like you, who aren't hostile NPCs. No need to get overly pedantic about it.

 

[Deflowerer]

Not everyone runs back to firelink to spend all their souls on upgrades and talk to every NPC seven times every time they kill a boss.

Those who don't, miss things. Sucks to be them.

Missings things is fine though. The idea of having to clear every single tile in a game or complete a checklist for 100% completion is retardo and decline-enabling.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

What? Beating a boss on 3rd or 4th try is bad now? All you keyboard warriors act like you beat everything on the first try when DS is famous for everyone dying a lot. I bet if we saw you and Zed actually play, both of you probably died 40 times to the first shieldless skellly in the Northern Asylum.

I've written previously that the only Dark Souls enemy I had much trouble with on my first playthrough was the Gaping Dragon, who is generally considered an easier boss.
On the other hand, I beat Capra Demon on my second try (was stunlocked by the dogs on my first attempt) and triumphed over Ornstein & Smough on my first attempt (with Solaire summoned).