From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Cowboy Moment]

-even worse difficulty curve than DS1, only 1 estus, weak shields, hp loss makes early game even harder while not changing late game that much

Huh, I thought this is actually where the developers' obvious focus on "difficulty" paid off - DaS2 is pretty consistently difficult throughout the game, and certainly the endgame is more challenging than everything that came after Anor Londo in DaS1. Unfortunately, this is mostly limited to combat, and against normal enemies rather than bosses, but it's still an improvement. I've certainly had one hell of a time in Dragon Shrine as melee, and the Drangleic Castle -> Shrine of Amana -> Undead Crypt sequence.

What I missed were areas where navigating the environment is as much of a challenge as combat, like Blighttown or Catacombs. Much of DaS2 follows a kind of Anor Londo-esque "difficulty defined by combat encounters" design. Gutter's pretty decent, but not as good as Blighttown, and Black Gulch is too small and concentrated - could have been great as a larger level with a more confusing layout; Huntsman's Copse had some nice ideas with the poison butterflies, but didn't use them enough. Only the foggy part of Shaded Woods and Shrine of Amana stand out as areas with interesting environmental dynamics.

 

[Murk]

Might be late but lolllll

 

[Shadenuat]

Might be late but lolllll

That just made me think again how better DS2 would be if it had some nice beats. Most areas don't even have music.
Something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbnJMqLuDiQ would fit, say, Grave of Saints perfectly.

fashion souls

A lot of armor looks underwhelming to me. I think developers went too far with lightning, washed out colors and dark metal. Even paladin's set is barely distinguishable from hollow armor. Remember how glorious it looked before?

Spoiler

Everything is just too fucking dark.

 

[Murk]

That's Leeroy's set? Jesus it's a straight 1:1.

I think they spent too much time on capes tbh. Look at things like hard leather set and falconer set, both are basically "a bunch of cloth wrapped around and flowing in the wind"

In DS 1 I think the armors fit much better thematically. Stat wise, shit is the same, but things just made more "sense". In DS 2 the cleric starts with the heaviest armor... the knight starts with light armor/clothes and no helmet, despite that set having a helmet.

The knight armor doesn't look 'cool', it looks GOOD and fits a knight's role as nothing special but strong and sturdy. The fighter/warrior in DS 1 had hard leather which makes sense if you're a mercenary -- you can't be traveling around in full plate all goddamn day. Etc. etc. This is also true when you look at the Alva set, which I guess is the new equivalent to the elite knight set (or maybe the faraam?) which has more "cool guy" stuff going on than sensical design.

tho I guess the drangleic set is the new scrub/nub uniform, so maybe that's closer to the elite knight set in terms of "who wears it".

Lautrec's Armor is better/cooler looking than most actual armors in this game, where-as things like the robes definitely look better than _most_ of DS 1's cloth stuff.

I'm usually running around naked or with a lion cape on tho so the fuck do I know? Tho I do miss my swag coat from Chester.

Tho, on the topic of armor, for the longest time I thought that havel's helmet had the visor up way high, similar to a frog helm -- not realizing the curved vertical part is the visor. So to me, havel looked like an arrogant asshole holding his chin up and literally looking down at you as he fought. Later, when I got the set, I realized "oh... that was just me being butthurt."

For music, so far the best song I've heard is definitely the Ruin Sentinels theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG-Y7EeNFg4

Tho from DS 1 probably it was Gwyn's fight theme. Just really drove the point home that the game has no such thing as success, only degrees of failure.

 

[Shadenuat]

"a bunch of cloth wrapped around and flowing in the wind"

Yeah and what bothers me is that it always flows in the wind. My Llewellyn basically has repeating animation. It's like I'm a villain of a cartoon, my capes knows who I am and always flows dramatically.

And I pity wizards who have to wear rags to be effective. Haven't seen a single BlackCat or guy in Chaos set. Those actually look fabulous.

 

[Kanedias]

Oh hi everyone, I have been busy with both real life stuff and Dark Souls 2.

I finished a pyromancer build that uses the Chaos Blade. First, pyromancy is awesome, even at 10/10 stats, quite effective and very fun to use. Throwing Great Fireballs without lock on, catching roll backstabbers with Fire Whip (which is now really powerful, it staggers like crazy and does a lot of damage if they get caught in the whole thing, plus it has a deceptively long range). Second, I'm sad that the Chaos Blade is OP, because it's an amazing weapon in terms of moveset. Very fun to use - katanas in general are very fun to use. I never liked them that much on the first game, but in this one they can do a lot of neat things which I didn't know, because everyone just spams run attacks and r1s. For example, after a run attack you can do a jumping attack instantly, very useful for catching people that roll backwards after getting hit, or ones that try to parry (it's quite useful to whiff a run attack on parry spammers and then combo it into a jumping attack, they'll usually try to parry again). After a running attack you can also do an r2, and it comes out way faster than normal. This doesn't stunlock, but it's very good at catching rolls to the sides, especially if they don't have 39% equip load, or to trade with people. Chaos Blade has a 150 counter rating, which means that the r2 will be massively damaging if they try to attack and trade with it. All this sort of stuff gives a lot of depth to the weapon, depth that I believe is missing from other popular weapon classes such as greatswords.

After having a lot of success with that pyro build and getting to rank 2 in the Brotherhood, I started working on another character. I wanted to make use of the excellent moveset of katanas while being creative, and the build is shaping up to be very good. I power stance a Warped Sword with a katana, which grants me the curved sword powerstance moveset plus the special L2 of the Warped Sword (a spin attack similar to Flexile Sentry's). So yes, it's a dex build. No buffs or infusions. It will be quite interesting, I can't wait to do serious PvP, I just did a couple invasions since I didn't finish levelling him yet. As for the katana, I'm yet undecided on which one I will use. Chaos Blade has very good damage, but Blacksteel Katana has a very nice moveset, and Washing Pole has an absurd range which would make my special spin attack very ridiculous (it was never intended to have long range, normally you can only use it with other curved swords...). I'm probably going to upgrade all katanas and try them out and switch them around as I see fit.

"a bunch of cloth wrapped around and flowing in the wind"

Yeah and what bothers me is that it always flows in the wind. My Llewellyn basically has repeating animation. It's like I'm a villain of a cartoon, my capes knows who I am and always flows dramatically.

And I pity wizards who have to wear rags to be effective. Haven't seen a single BlackCat or guy in Chaos set. Those actually look fabulous.

The Chaos Set is pretty good, way more effective than those Lion rags in my opinion. I don't think those rags are actually effective, you sacrifice too much defense for a very slight increase in cast speed that is hard to notice. The Chaos Robes have a lot of elemental defense, and you can mix them with some heavier armor to get very balanced defenses all around. Lion Mage Set sorcerers are extremely squishy.

 

[Stonewolf]

So apparently the current speedrun record is under 50 mins by using bino exploit and getting into Drangleic 15 mins into the game via another exploit.

 

[Kanedias]

There's an out of bounds exploit that lets you skip the King's Gate that leads to the Throne of Want, too. You still need the Giant's Kinship to find Nashandra (so right now its useless), but if they manage to find another exploit to get past the Aldia's Keep gate, they will be able to skip most of the game.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I've said it before - all of the armor sets were designed around havok cloth. ZOMG CLOTH PSYCHIX SO NEXTGEN.

 

[Murk]

A few things:

1) I keep forgetting to say this, but props to whoever put all the alluring skulls in random places in the game. They are always just barely out of reach and easily attainable, often pulling you into an ambush or otherwise bad spot... just like how the item is used by the player. Apparently the PC is a type of undead it works one XD

2) I pulled the silver medallion trick on a rat today. I can't believe it worked given how that video got passed around. Holy shit was it hilarious. I was on my caestus character too, so the rat ran away healing while I chased him down and punched him to death after. Fucking ridiculous, can't believe it worked.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's obviously up to the individual players; my own experience is that bellkeepers are sanctioned gankers. For the brief time I joined to try to earn some chunks I found that I would always wait and let the other guy (if 2 of us were summoned) do his thing then I'd attack -- tho that's still unfair since there are NPCs and also the loss of resources/health. At some point it's just obnoxious ganking.

For sure, but I figure in the Bell tower it's basically expected. The ones that bug me are where you'll get a duel summon and the bastard will have full buffs as you spawn in then start hitting you while you bow or try to put up any buffs/figure out where he is. It's nice when you beat people like that though.

 

[Elwro]

Nashandra

My Large Club +10 can't seem to hit these curse orbs she spawns. Is that how it's supposed to be? I tried with a Dark Bastard Sword +10 (my favourite weapon) and it also passed right through them.

 

[potatojohn]

Respec into a cleric and throw lightning spears at her

 

[Elwro]

Heh, I decided not to respec at all and go for a pure-melee playthrough, without a single spell. My question is: are these orbs really impervious to physical damage or am I somehow hitting them incorrectly?

 

[praetor]

Nashandra

My Large Club +10 can't seem to hit these curse orbs she spawns. Is that how it's supposed to be? I tried with a Dark Bastard Sword +10 (my favourite weapon) and it also passed right through them.

definitely not. i co-oped a bunch there on my str/fth with the same weapon (+sexy dragonslayer axe as backup) and i could definitely smash those orbs without problems

Kanedias
don't forget the Darkdrift! it's the least damaging but that R2 going through shields is awesome, and it's very light (and possibly slightly faster than other katanas, but it needs testing). and Manslayer is always a useful addition. btw, did anybody confirm if the Berserker blade does in fact have a random crit chance? i've heard rumours about it but i never used it enough to notice and didn't see anybody test it. and you explained pretty well why katanas are my favourite weapons: ok damage, great moveset and comboing potential (that post on reddit detailing those "momentum swings" [the attacks comboing into faster R2] opened my eyes )

 

[Murk]

Thing I noticed. Had the engraved gauntlets as I invaded a guy, he was AFK tho. So I was running around like an idiot waiting for him -- during that I would try to jump at him. So, jumping at someone is considered an attack. Not from above, mind you, just sprint + jump like you would over a gap. It has an attack sound, the other guy would scream as if he was hit and he would flinch (despite being in full Alonne gear) and since I had the gauntlets I even managed a crit on one of them (no damage, but extra sound the crit makes).

Huh. I wonder if you can stun/stagger someone with the jumping? If so, maybe you could use it to break someone's attack?

 

[abija]

Does the binocular glitch work with spells or I just met a standard hack? Was quite amazing seeing 3 GRS flying towards me...

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/218200/Dark_Souls_director_is_From_Softwares_new_president.php

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the first two Souls games, has been promoted as the new president of From Software.

Not sure if this is good or bad news. I rather wanna see him have a hands-on role as a director on future games.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Does the binocular glitch work with spells or I just met a standard hack? Was quite amazing seeing 3 GRS flying towards me...

It seems to work with spells. I've never done it but yesterday some guy paused and then suddenly flew at me and nuked me with a hit and 2 simultaneous soul greatswords. It was over so fast, I had to laugh.

 

[Murk]

Seems the glitch speeds up everything, not just movement.

 

[DragoFireheart]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/218200/Dark_Souls_director_is_From_Softwares_new_president.php

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the first two Souls games, has been promoted as the new president of From Software.

Not sure if this is good or bad news. I rather wanna see him have a hands-on role as a director on future games.

So much for the theory of him being pushed out.

AngryEddy

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Game finished, quite sad, even with the flaws i still enjoyed it immensely.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/218200/Dark_Souls_director_is_From_Softwares_new_president.php

Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the first two Souls games, has been promoted as the new president of From Software.

Not sure if this is good or bad news. I rather wanna see him have a hands-on role as a director on future games.

congrats to all of them, that souls team is the entire reason the company was bought. Good to see them being rewarded for it.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

dat voice alone could bring me to climax.

 

[Kanedias]

definitely not. i co-oped a bunch there on my str/fth with the same weapon (+sexy dragonslayer axe as backup) and i could definitely smash those orbs without problems

Kanedias
don't forget the Darkdrift! it's the least damaging but that R2 going through shields is awesome, and it's very light (and possibly slightly faster than other katanas, but it needs testing). and Manslayer is always a useful addition. btw, did anybody confirm if the Berserker blade does in fact have a random crit chance? i've heard rumours about it but i never used it enough to notice and didn't see anybody test it. and you explained pretty well why katanas are my favourite weapons: ok damage, great moveset and comboing potential (that post on reddit detailing those "momentum swings" [the attacks comboing into faster R2] opened my eyes )

People have been saying the Berserker Blade has a chance to do "crit damage" on normal swings or whatever, but it may just be the 150 counter modifier the weapon has. I didn't test it myself, but I'm skeptical about it.

And true, I forgot about the Darkdrift. I never used it, will definitely have to give it a chance.

 

[Shadenuat]

Bridge pvp is totally derp for me now (SL 180). Got summoned 6 times, 4 ganker squads, 2 tortoises with binoculars.
NEW META

Spoiler

Went to Heide Tower instead... okay, mostly duels, less chaos.

edit. love when people do arenas with rainbow stones. I wish I could get summoned only there forever

edit edit. killed about 4 Gutses from Berserk today. Why no Griffiths? No Cascas? ...and don't think I will respect your avellyns and pyromancies even if you're "cosplaying" you can't hit me for shit with your sword so you just spam lightning crossbow bolts... good fucking job at cosplaying Berserk. bah!

 

[Kanedias]

I wonder if this promotion to president means Miyazaki will have even more influence, or if this will keep him busy on a desk job and prevent him from working on other titles.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

 

[Invictus]

Miyasaki beign named president can only be a good thing.
When I was a corporate lackey there was a concept which I to this day find very good for judging realtionships with other companies; this is called "tone at the top" meaning the big boss will usualy get like minded people to work for them and this culture permeates all the levels of a company.
If the boss of a company is a creative person more concerned with the end product than the hurdles like an auteur game director like miyasaki then he will find like minded people with the same philosophy and viewpoint
I usually got the "I am the boss and I am sublime" bosses who didn't care if you stayed till 3 am helping out on a company wide proyect and bitched and moaned over a single mistake on your work and who got the blame for any problems; I didn't care for hand wrigling over problems and focused on finding solutions and nowadays most of my employees follow the same idea, the whinners and people who can't handdle saying "my fault" don't last long with me
Maybe Miyazaki will be less hands on with his new projects but will get more like minded people, no more of that "2 directors" bs and defiently the Dark Souls series is done but Souls can continue to evolve