From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Damned Registrations]

Lots of the fake walls in DS1 were hinted at. In anor londo, aside from the fireplace itself being weird, there's a window into an inaccessible room, in darkroot, you can see the bonfire from outside the wall, several others are at the end of dead end passages (like the one in Sen's near the entrance,) etc.

But here they put them in completely random spots with no indication at all. There is no way you'd ever find the one in the forest of giants, for example, without just searching every wall you see. And they've all been like that from what I've seen. I can't think of a single hidden passage who's location was logical, aside from maybe the one in huntsman's copse, if you can call that hidden (it's pretty clearly a door, the only thing hidden about it is the fact that it can be opened with the examine button even without a prompt.)

Edit: Another major difference is the fact that previously, walls could be found just by hitting them. So you could accidentally discover them while playing. Even something like the fair lady could be found this way during an invasion. That's no longer a possibility.

 

[Murk]

The breakable walls have different textures and those are definitely fine. The 'examine' walls, not so much. The Ruin Sentinal boss fight has at least 3 secret doors on the first floor; one of which is a ladder up to the chest on the second ruined floor, one of which is a chest with the 'traget shield', the other of which is just an empty room. Possibly a trap to stick you in with a closet troll.

You could roll into invisible walls before which made the whole process easier than running around hitting 'examine'. The worst part? This paid off for me in 3 different locations. Large Shard in no man's wharf (first floor of the building with the shortcut gate), Iron Keep (Black Knight Greatsword (Sword)), and the Ruin Sentinal room. Oh right, and the balcony thing in Lost Bastille... though arguably that one is clearly hinted at because it's basically a hallway that dead ends. Oh right, and the fuggin' bonfire and chest above Baneful Queen Mytha.

The strangest thing is that all of that was easier for me to find than the fucking bonfire/flame-thrower switch before Iron King. Now that was fucking "well hidden (in plain sight)".

I am not horribly against this; but it does make for some tedious moments when I'm trying to tell some other guy to examine it and he keeps attacking the wall. I try to help the bros out; but they won't even help themselves.

Side-note: the censoring system is ridiculous. I got summoned by some dudebro named Xant**ous. He was so scandalous, he put the 'ho' in 'xanthous'.

Question: when From said they were "going for the Skyrim audience", they meant they're gonna put in the Varangian sailors/pirates, right? Cuz that and the original bandit armor (from DS 1) is about as Skyrimy as this game gets.

Real question: I totally forgot this, but when you first get to Sinner's Rise you can hear and see a dragon off in the distance. Can you fight that thing in Lost Bastille or is that just LOL REMEMBER THE BRIDGE FROM DS1!?

/cue non-linearity argument one more again

 

[80Maxwell08]

Real question: I totally forgot this, but when you first get to Sinner's Rise you can hear and see a dragon off in the distance. Can you fight that thing in Lost Bastille or is that just LOL REMEMBER THE BRIDGE FROM DS1!?

/cue non-linearity argument one more again

Dragon? The only thing I heard or saw there that made noise was the gargoyle.

 

[Surf Solar]

I half expected that dragon to reappear when walking back on the bridge to straid, but alas the dragon never showed up again..

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

I also thought it was a gargoyle, looked like it anyway

 

[Murk]

Oh, maybe. I saw thing in distance with big wings and assumed dragon cuz later, Dragon Aerie and... ya know, dragons.

Oh, I guess that's what they meant by Skyrim audience. Fucking dragons. Then a game of pop-the-crystal-lizard.

Also, red crystal lizards? Beware of Mimicry, indeed.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Oh, maybe. I saw thing in distance with big wings and assumed dragon cuz later, Dragon Aerie and... ya know, dragons.

Oh, I guess that's what they meant by Skyrim audience. Fucking dragons. Then a game of pop-the-crystal-lizard.

Also, red crystal lizards? Beware of Mimicry, indeed.

Red kamikaze lizards.

 

[Shadenuat]

Regular crystal lizards and red crystal lizards and their hitboxes are my top 1 reason for actually carrying a Lightning Spear in pure melee build.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Regular crystal lizards and red crystal lizards and their hitboxes are my top 1 reason for actually carrying a Lightning Spear in pure melee build.

I didn't find the ground-level hitbox itself the hard part in trying to kill those little bastards in melee, but the fact due to their detection range by the time you rush them down they've either committed suicide or are next to a wall which makes thing complicated when you clang against that on the swing. A high damage spell is just much easier for dealing with them.

 

[Shadenuat]

There are also mobs guarding them sometimes. Like a dragon... well okay, dragons are easy... but I raged a bit at crystal lizard on a cliff on a road to Skeleton Lords. There are three guys who ambush you right away and lizard runs right into the center of that ambush.
Also, they have ability to vanish even when humping a wall, there is probably just a script which removes them after a while.

 

[Murk]

Correct; they disappear after a time. I found that ranged attacks (strong bow, strong spell) do the trick if you can't peg 'em with a one-off. Weapons that have a overhead swing for the running attack are solid.

Some throwing knives can do the trick too. I don't think I found throwing knives so goddamn useful in DS 1 but holy shit I never leave Majula without at least 30 now. They're so good if you don't want to fuck with weapon switching or to one-shot those exploding corpse fuckers.

 

[praetor]

one of the worst parts of CL is that sometimes they randomly run into random directions instead of opposite you (at least those in Aerie) and now you can't just quit/reload but you have to go back to the goddamned bonfire. so much for removing the unnecessarily tedious parts of Souls. they really were full of bullshit in their PR

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Wow, those Salamanders in the fire pit are retarded. I definitely dislike the idea of unblockable attacks in Souls - it's a cornerstone of the combat system that everything can be blocked (with varying effectiveness), and this is the case in DaS1 as far as I'm aware. Here, I've already seen two types of enemies which cannot be blocked - the Salamanders, and those Giants under Black Gulch.

I think I've found my new favourite Souls boss theme. Thus, Velstadt has dethroned Flamelurker. The boss itself reminds me of Artorias - relatively simple mechanics, but demands good execution to get anywhere. Also, really great presentation in general, the way he looks and moves is just cool as fuck, and is also kind of amusing in that it's the exact opposite of Artorias.

i agree his presentation is really cool (by far the best in the game), as is the music (easily the best in the game, along with the Lost Sinner), but mechanically he's a bit too easy. once you go past that initial "he swings that huge chime hammer like a piece of cardboard" he becomes a pushover, and his power-up move is waaaay too easy to punish due to the small arena, the time he does it and the amount of damage he receives while he does it. he's just not aggressive or relentless enough to pose any kind of threat

I found him more difficult than Artorias, actually. Everything about Artorias' swing patterns is very intuitive (to me anyway), and openings are very obvious. Meanwhile, Velstadt has some really odd attack patterns - most bosses have like a 2-3 swing combo, and then an optional swing at the end (Smelter Demon's "Maybe I'll AOE and maybe I won't" is by far the nastiest example of that I've seen). Meanwhile, Velstadt usually does a single swing, but sometimes follows up with a second, and even though I've killed him, I still don't really know if he has any attacks he can't follow up. He also has a second attack after the "sweep and disengage" move a lot of Souls bosses have, which is pretty unusual. As well as the fact that he can move into a thrust (with really surprising range) straight from a backstep.

That said, I can imagine that he's easy with a fast weapon or ranged attacks. Unless there's some simple way to cheese him in general, but I haven't figured one out.

 

[Murk]

Item placement still confuses me; secret rooms with chests full of garbage -- potentially game altering gear and upgrades just sitting around in easy to see/spot places.

Also, the crows are fucking stupid. Before, they exchanged useless items for other potentially useful items or they exchanged useful items for other useful items. Now, they exchange useless items for... random items. And only 4 specific types of useless items.

What the fuck. Just make it a random item instead of a smooth/silky stone -- that's all anyone is going to use those for anyway. There's a lot of just "tedious because tedious" shit going on in this game that I can only imagine is a result of a lack of polish and beta-testers being too busy queefing at flowing capes and combat to realize "man, this idea makes no fucking sense."

pre-emptive: yes, you can drop items all in succession and grab them without reloading -- great... but why even leave that tedium? These items serve no purpose (other than to restore hp? seriously?).

and fucking the small white soap stone? just give a random reward. Is it that hard to code a random variable?

 

[abija]

What exactly are some people using in pvp that they take really low dmg (50 or even less) from a maxed out defender greatsword? Full havel+5 doesn't come even close to that.

 

[praetor]

What exactly are some people using in pvp that they take really low dmg (50 or even less) from a maxed out defender greatsword? Full havel+5 doesn't come even close to that.

GMB + dispelling ring + elemental ring (+2) + black witch set + black hollow mage hood/warlock mask = almost immune to 1 type of element/greatly reduced damage from the other 3

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

Throne watcher & Throne Defender was a better fight than the final boss... eh.

 

[abija]

GMB + dispelling ring + elemental ring (+2) + black witch set + black hollow mage hood/warlock mask = almost immune to 1 type of element/greatly reduced damage from the other 3

They were all in heavy armor (bunch of havels, 2-3x smelter and like 5-6 kings from what I met). The setup you mentioned still takes considerable damage from sword attacks in my experience.

 

[Kanedias]

I know what it is: overlevelling.

I have fought SL 150s with full havels and higher levels with worse armor and the higher levels still resist more damage. Overlevelled people are extremely OP.

Havels does make you resist a lot of damage, it's true, but some people blame all the enemy's resilience on that set when a lot of it comes from the levels themselves.

 

[Murk]

So... there's no real reason to stop leveling, is there? It's only soul memory that is used to match... and apparently soul memory increases whether you use the souls or not?

Or is it only for souls you used? The manual tells jack all shit.

 

[Stonewolf]

Welp, trying to bring myself to do another playthrough, this time with ironclad tank, heavy armor with some big hammer . Question: do you think it make sense to add faith/sorceries/hexes without hefty caster stat investment for weapon buffs?

 

[Shadenuat]

I know what it is: overlevelling.

I have fought SL 150s with full havels and higher levels with worse armor and the higher levels still resist more damage. Overlevelled people are extremely OP.

Havels does make you resist a lot of damage, it's true, but some people blame all the enemy's resilience on that set when a lot of it comes from the levels themselves.

You don't get it man. The 260-300 is real PvP. Before that it's not real PvP, no builds, and people at 150 don't know what skill is. When you hit 260+ you can fast roll in full Smelter armor and one-shot people with Great Resonant Souls and shoot everybody with invisible crossbows... ALL IN ONE! It becomes all about skill!

...no, I never PvPed in DS but watched a ton of videos now and it does seem like fun, I would probably like to sun-bro too... but community seems kinda split and a bit retarded about NG and NG+. But since I already beaten the game I think maybe I'll do the "true" DS run, kinda afraid of FPS drops since I have to use really old video card now... people will probably hate shadenaut the noob

 

[Silva]

Richards rapier is AMAZING early on.

Rapiers are for faggots. Real men use Bandits Knife.

I see that fatto thief you meet in Iron Keep sells the whole Thief package from DS1, but the bandits knife is totally useless (it doesnt even scale with Dex). Does it get better with physical scaling ? And is the thief outfit any good ? (I use the wanderer outfit, how it compares to that ? )

 

[Surf Solar]

Is SL 150 really the agreed upon meta now? IMO that is already too high, you can have a plethora of stuff you can do already and mish mash with different "classes". Now I may be wrong on this since I didn't nearly play DS1 pvp as much as this one, but it seemed to me that builds were a lot more specific in DS1, weren't they?

This whol soul memory shit needs to go. Wasn't this done because of ganking low level players was a thing in DS1? FFS, perfect excuse to establis the blue sentinel covenant for this thing, shouldnt it?

 

[Shadenuat]

Agreed? Heh, communities even write some sort of rules which define what is honorable to do in DS2, and what is not. Which leads to some great drama, but I mostly seen that in youtube comments and on a few screenshots.

I don't think anyone should agree to anything in DS, it's not chess, or Unreal, or Jedi Knight, where everyone enters level with a "1" gun and 100 hp, and then it's all about reflexes, memory and skill.
It's fun to read about that as a noob outsider, but apparently there are some strange things going within community: http://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/22xdqu/pvp_honor_in_dark_souls_2/
People who farmed up to NG3+ would probably know more.