From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Random]

I have a confession to make.



I have never beaten Dark Souls. I've never gotten past Bed of Chaos. It was not the boss itself that broke me. It was the long, pointless, ardous, boring, fucking frustrating run from the bonfire to the boss that finally broke me. It was a waste of time. It made my fingers hurt. It wasn't challenging in any way. It was just a long, pointless, ardous, boring, frustrating run from point A to B. It was... shitty design. So, so shitty. I can still feel cold contempt rise in me just thinking about it.

Of course I want to see the ending. I want to beat Gwyn (yeah, I spoiled myself). And I know I could beat BoC if I really wanted to. I have killed every other boss in the game ten times over. I have rolled at least twenty different characters, mastered every weapon and every spell. But every time I think of taking on BoC again, I think of the long, pointless, ardous, boring, fucking frustrating run from the bonfire to the boss... and I say to myself: no. Not worth it.

tl;dr Declinator and Stonewolf, my bros, I feel your pain.

now let the hate flow

Out of curiosity, did you find and use the hidden bonfire in Lost Izalith?

 

[Machocruz]

Best way I've found to make Dark Souls earn it's notoriety without shorting yourself on gear or levels, and provided you don't grind a lot of levels: Play the first time and kill every boss helped by two phantoms. Then play again on NG+ with no help at all. If everything goes right, you won't have actually learned the bosses and you'll have to face them on 30%(?) higher difficulty. Works for Demons too.

 

[Damned Registrations]

To be honest the best way imo would be to have played it on release. The patch made things much easier in many, many regards. Higher drop rates, more souls, all sorts of crap.

 

[eric__s]

Out of curiosity, did you find and use the hidden bonfire in Lost Izalith?

I didn't and I've beaten the game twice, where is it?

 

[Random]

Out of curiosity, did you find and use the hidden bonfire in Lost Izalith?

I didn't and I've beaten the game twice, where is it?

It's a tricky one, it's behind an illusory wall at the base of the second black tower, facing the root that leads out of the lava towards the Bed of Chaos.

 

[Linden]

Out of curiosity, did you find and use the hidden bonfire in Lost Izalith?

I didn't and I've beaten the game twice, where is it?

It's a tricky one, it's behind an illusory wall at the base of the second black tower, facing the root that leads out of the lava towards the Bed of Chaos.

I was a Chaos Servant and had opened up the shortcut straight into Izalith, so I used to the bonfire in the Demon Ruins. I thought that was the shortest way. Why else would that shortcut even exist?

But it sounds like the secret bonfire you speak of is much closer. So yay, maybe I can muster up the will to fight Bed of Chaos now...

 

[Dire Roach]

Out of curiosity, did you find and use the hidden bonfire in Lost Izalith?

I didn't and I've beaten the game twice, where is it?

It's a tricky one, it's behind an illusory wall at the base of the second black tower, facing the root that leads out of the lava towards the Bed of Chaos.

I was a Chaos Servant and had opened up the shortcut straight into Izalith, so I used to the bonfire in the Demon Ruins. I thought that was the shortest way. Why else would that shortcut even exist?

But it sounds like the secret bonfire you speak of is much closer. So yay, maybe I can muster up the will to fight Bed of Chaos now...

The bonfire you used is better IMO. The route from that other bonfire is not that much shorter, involves walking on lava, and you have to dodge more monsters along the way. Running the corridor where you meet Solaire is long and boring but much less tedious since you can run past the headless demon without having to block or roll.

BTW I only died twice the first time I beat BoC.

 

[Linden]

I got BoC down to his final form on my first try. After that I just hit a wall. No matter what strategy I tried, I just couldn't make the final jump without him swiping me down into the pit. After some twenty tries I just gave up. Running down that boring corridor again and again - only to be pushed into the pit in 0,5 seconds once the boss fight began - was just too f-ing frustrating for me.

BoC is really more about luck than skill. That's what makes it a shitty DS boss imo.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

pic

The fcuk is that?

An attempted BROFIST! generator (I included the url for the original immage in the picture, but I guess it's not very leggible when zooomed in. The url is: http://www.spinnyverse.com/2013/04/26/04262013/).

Originally it comes from a funny/awesome webcomic called Spinnerette ( http://www.spinnyverse.com/2010/02/09/20100209/) about a Spiderwoman-like (closseted DnD nerd) superhero (and many much more lulzy characters) trying to stop the unleashing of DnD's spider god, Lolth ( http://spinnerette.wikia.com/wiki/Spinnerette).

So the picture is tangentially related to RPGs and was hilarious (for me as reply to Stonewolf) .

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The NES Gaidens are cake.

Bullshit. FFS. Moran.

 

[Jasede]

What? But I played them through many times. Even my former boyfriend turned woman agrees that they were hardly as difficult as people like to say. And that's a girl talking!

What are you trying to say?

I feel a little bothered by your unprovoked insult. That's no way to talk to your fellow forum member.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

BoC is really more about luck than skill.

Except for not.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you consider spoiling yourself by watching a fucking guide before you do anything 'skill' perhaps.

That fight is like a game of minesweeper. There is a huge probability you'll just be instantly killed by something totally unavoidable, whether it's the ground falling out from underneath you or a chaos tempest while you're stuck in cramped quarters. And you sure as fuck can't possibly predict how your character is going to react when you attempt to block or dodge or just plain get hit by the sweeping arm bullshit.

 

[Jasede]

Ground falling without you being able to tell in advance that it will is kaizo-grade bull, in my opinion.

 

[Horus]

Ground falling without you being able to tell in advance that it will is kaizo-grade bull, in my opinion.

That was fairly common in old arcade platformers if recall it correctly.

 

[Jasede]

Can't really recall one where it happens off-hand- though it's possible. But keep in mind that arcade stages are very short, so being forced to memorize a path - like, say, you have to do in R-Type - is really not a huge deal.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

The BoC sucks, no question, but the fact that my first time I probably died 10+ times, and now I can probably do it in around 3 (most of which come from not remembering where to aim for the middle jump), tells me it's not more luck than skill and knowledge. The trial and error to get there is super annoying, however. Might as well look at a guide if it's really the only thing you haven't done yet in the game besides Gwyn.

 

[DragoFireheart]

BoC is a pain in the ass, but I think some people are exaggerating how bad it is.

Anor Londo archers were FAR more annoying on first play through, especially if you sucked at parry-riposte.

 

[AN4RCHID]

BoC is a pain in the ass, but I think some people are exaggerating how bad it is.

Anor Londo archers were FAR more annoying on first play through, especially if you sucked at parry-riposte.

Man, I blew through those guys without really noticing them on my first playthrough. After I beat the game and started reading forums and stuff, I wasn't even sure which archers people were talking about at first. Now on my second playthrough they're stomping my ass mercilessly.

Bed of Chaos is a pretty weak boss fight, but I think it just stands out next the mostly excellent boss fights in the rest of the game. The Kayran from Witcher 2 was way more annoying and unfair, for example. BoC just breaks the established trust between the designer and player by having unpredictable and unavoidable deaths, whereas I usually don't even build up that level of trust in the first place with most games. To be fair though, the fact that your progress is saved does a lot to mitigate the frustration, so the fight to me was just a forgettable annoyance. Pretty Disappointing though; after the Demon's Ruins and Lost Izalith there really should have been some epic level boss. Especially since that was the penultimate boss for most people, they really dropped the ball. It should have been one final excessively giant monster fight before the more subdued duel with Gwen, but oh well.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I didn't actually have much trouble with the archers. I had a heavy shield, and at that point had noticed that enemies recoiling from striking a shield stagger backwards. I just stood in front of the archer on the right and let him knock himself off the ledge. Took me a few tries to GET there mind you, before I realized I needed to roll and go right before left. But there are a number of other ways to handle those guys, like going invisible or using a bow, and having those other options makes it a good encounter imo.

 

[Random]

Pffft, Bed of Chaos isn't unfair at all. If you fell down in any of the pits where the floor fell out then you are colossally incompetent, because it's crazy easy to avoid them if you're moderately intelligent. It's just like every other trap in the game. Now, the jump to the root underneath BoC is total bullshit because of how quickly he swings back and forth at you, but whatever.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I didn't actually have much trouble with the archers. I had a heavy shield, and at that point had noticed that enemies recoiling from striking a shield stagger backwards. I just stood in front of the archer on the right and let him knock himself off the ledge. Took me a few tries to GET there mind you, before I realized I needed to roll and go right before left. But there are a number of other ways to handle those guys, like going invisible or using a bow, and having those other options makes it a good encounter imo.

Going right is much easier.

 

[Average Manatee]

IMO the "trouble" from that fight vs the archers came from the fact that it's the only time in the game that an encounter like that happened, where enemies and terrain really worked together to mess you up. Hell, its the first time you can fight the silver knight archers too IIRC. A more gradual introduction to these types of encounters would have made things pretty simple for all but the dimmest consoletards.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I dunno, it didn't seem that fundamentally different from the blowdart guys in blight town or even the bomb chuckers in undead burg to me. In fact, it seems to me like almost half the encounters in the game have terrain playing a large role. Parts of Sen's, New Londo, and the Catacombs all have things like that too, with melee or ranged units holding some sort of advantage because of the terrain.

The are exceptions, like the area guarded by the Cat Covenant, but I'd hardly say places like that are the rule.

 

[Average Manatee]

Sen's is the only one that I would consider remotely comparable (needing to negotiate the swinging axes while being attacked). But all of those ranged attackers were a mere annoyance, easily able to be circumvented/rushed/hidden from without any special tactics/spells/equipment.