From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Elwro]

Guys.

I can't stagger anyone with my Large Club +10 when I'm summoned as a phantom. I think I could do that when I played in June. Now I can't break anyone's poise, even if it's a lowly enemy that I stagger easily in solo PvE.

I cannot also hit any buttons as a phantom. I guess that kinda makes sense (only kinda).

Is that how it's supposed to work?

Guys, anyone?


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And I have to say that the optional trio fight in this DLC was pure poetry.

Finished the thing today; even if two of the bosses were kinda rehashed, level design was fantastic and if they keep up this quality we have much to be looking for!

 

[sea]

How is the pc version, do I need to wait for dsfix2 ?

It's excellent, but made better by this:

http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=567

Basically GeDoSaTo is a generic resolution downsampling tool so you can run 4k resolution on games on a sub-4k monitor for better image quality. But, it also has several graphical improvements included for Dark Souls 2, like better ambient occlusion and lighting effects, with very little performance impact (and the resolution downsampling is not required).

 

[StaticSpine]

Guys.

I can't stagger anyone with my Large Club +10 when I'm summoned as a phantom. I think I could do that when I played in June. Now I can't break anyone's poise, even if it's a lowly enemy that I stagger easily in solo PvE.

I cannot also hit any buttons as a phantom. I guess that kinda makes sense (only kinda).

Is that how it's supposed to work?

Well, can't tell about the staggering. But you can't hit buttons as phantom for sure.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Guys.

I can't stagger anyone with my Large Club +10 when I'm summoned as a phantom. I think I could do that when I played in June. Now I can't break anyone's poise, even if it's a lowly enemy that I stagger easily in solo PvE.

I cannot also hit any buttons as a phantom. I guess that kinda makes sense (only kinda).

Is that how it's supposed to work?

DLC enemies have lots of poise. It also seems to increase with bonfire intensity. I beat this thing at max and it can take up to 3 hits from a 60 poise damage weapon. The knights with crossbows/falchions have infinite poise it seems. So you shouldn't rely on staggering enemies unless you're counting how many hits it takes.

Also - buttons/pillars can only be activated by host. Phantoms of any kind are screwed on this one.

 

[StaticSpine]

The mobs in the DLC are so aggressive, and overall difficulty is harder than the rest of the game, I've played for 3 hours and couldn't advance further than the second bonfire.

I summoned some Havel sunbro there, we ran to the Jester phantom, he fucked us both up by a couple of hits

BTW are ther a lot of summon signs in NG+ or higher? In NG there are few.

 

[Elwro]

DLC enemies have lots of poise. It also seems to increase with bonfire intensity. I beat this thing at max and it can take up to 3 hits from a 60 poise damage weapon. The knights with crossbows/falchions have infinite poise it seems. So you shouldn't rely on staggering enemies unless you're counting how many hits it takes.

It takes me 2 hits to kill the 'regular' enemies, and the strong attack makes them fall to the ground, which is what I kinda relied upon. I got summoned recently and the same enemies also took 2 hits to kill but none of them ever dropped to the ground. Well, with 700+ dmg/hit counting hits is not the most precise method... I'll try to be more perceptive. Thanks!

 

[Murk]

praetor

UndetectedButthurt and I noticed this, it seemed almost random but yesterday (or the day before?) I noticed someone saying it was because of frames and my experience fits into this, as I often drop frames to about 40 or so depending on how much shit is happening. I've also noticed this, annoyingly, in PvP as in one case I kept riposting someone for 700 damage with a +10 mundane dagger which should easily have done 1.2k+.

Team B don give minimal fucks.

BTW ganksquad has a cheese spot where only the archer can hit you, it's behind some of the stalagmites near where the ramp up from the water area is. You can walk behind it and the NPCs won't attack you but will charge at you allowing you to hit them with a big weapon like the gatsu UGS.

Elwro the 'pancake' animation is tied to poise as well (at least from our testing it definitely seems so) and it could be that their poise is buffed enough that you won't pancake them. Assuming enemies work like players, your hits 'stack up' and if you keep at it you will pancake them eventually (tho you may kill them before that). I'd suggest you just backstab them tho. Very easy to do that on nearly all the sanctum soldiers and knights. Only the drakeblood's are risky, and for them you should be able to pancake much easier.

It seems the DLC enemies were designed to counter common player PvE strats and it more or less worked. Sept for the backstabbings.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

DLC enemies have lots of poise. It also seems to increase with bonfire intensity. I beat this thing at max and it can take up to 3 hits from a 60 poise damage weapon. The knights with crossbows/falchions have infinite poise it seems. So you shouldn't rely on staggering enemies unless you're counting how many hits it takes.

It takes me 2 hits to kill the 'regular' enemies, and the strong attack makes them fall to the ground, which is what I kinda relied upon. I got summoned recently and the same enemies also took 2 hits to kill but none of them ever dropped to the ground. Well, with 700+ dmg/hit counting hits is not the most precise method... I'll try to be more perceptive. Thanks!

It also seems that they might've implemented some scaling in terms of poise. I remember being able to pancake the first sanctum soldier with dragon tooth + stone ring on first hit, but with mikayel as a phantom it took 2 hits to pancake.

 

[Murk]

Same with ruin sentinels before the last patch; alone I could poise break them with maces but not with a phantom. Seems all their stats get bumped up.

 

[Kanedias]

The DLC enemies actually have a stack of hyper armor that goes away in 1 hit. They can tank a 2h r2 from a great club if it's the first hit, but I stagger them really quickly with my 2h sun sword. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

 

[Murk]

Poise works like that regardless of hyper-armor, on humans too.

it 'stacks' and you don't get the stagger/poise break until you deplete the meter, which then immediately fills. You can swap weapons and do this, and also note that 2handing a weapon adds more poise break. The general ratio we came up with was 1:3. For every 3 poise the character has, you have to do 1 poise break of damage. Not sure if NPC enemies follow this rule exactly, but they follow the general trend -- just might be a different ratio.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

The magic number for pvp is 163 - enough to poise through any single 2H R1 with 20 poise break. 2H R2s are a different matter - any dagger R2 will break anything even with iron flesh.

 

[StaticSpine]

I went for Elana. She summoned Velstadt, I killed him, she summoned...another one Is this her usual behavior or I'm so lucky?

 

[praetor]

I went for Elana. She summoned Velstadt, I killed him, she summoned...another one Is this her usual behavior or I'm so lucky?

usual behaviour

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I went for Elana. She summoned Velstadt, I killed him, she summoned...another one Is this her usual behavior or I'm so lucky?

If you're really lucky - you can have 2 at the same time!

 

[praetor]

i think the ganksquad is by far the worst boss in the entire souls series. yes, worse than BoC. i'd rather fail that jump 50 times in a row than fight that shitty "boss" even once more. holy fuck it's retarded

 

[Murk]

It's absolutely stupid, but I love it. It basically boils down the creativity of From to a fine reduction thick with hackness and cheap shots.

If it had a lance user it'd be the best snapshot of the game ever.

 

[ghostdog]

So, I started playing DS2 yesterday. My thoughts are:

FUCK YOU PURSUER FUCK YOU TILL KINGDOM COME.

Oh well, after at least 15 deaths I managed to kill him with my shitty hollow sorcerer. At least I got better at rolling.

 

[Murk]

don't worry, soon you'll git so gud you'll fight two of them at once

btw don't forget to invest in ADP for iFrames while rolling.

I started a new character, at like 20k sm right now. If anyone needs any help or just wants to co-op hit me up.

 

[Kanedias]

These some spell icons from the last DLC, as you see some still aren't in the game so they could be for future DLC.

Someone found them in the code, here they are (don't mind the casting speed / casting animation / catalyst, only the effect)



Here's the other hex that doesn't appear in the above video



And here's a new ring. It gives you 5 dexterity, 1 agility, and makes you invisible during rolls. This could be potentially obnoxious if it breaks lock on, but then again, Promised Walk of Peace and Flynn's Ring (two things I thought had high potential of being very broken) turned out to be balanced, so who knows.

 

[StaticSpine]

I started a new character, at like 20k sm right now. If anyone needs any help or just wants to co-op hit me up.

Let's go for the gank squad... you just need ~ 1 500 000 more SM to help me out bro

But hey, gank squad is really hard.

 

[praetor]

those new magicks are pretty disappointing. bigger combustion, black blinding bolt, black insta-fire homing soulmass (i think this is what affinity should've been in the first place to differentiate it more from HCSM), and targeted heavenly thunder. and that new ring effect looks really cool (but i don't know which ring i'd swap out on my dex build for it. RoB+2? no way. Cloranthy? nope. 3rd dragon? nah. and, unless the invis breaks lock [which is just annoying], life, soldiers, clear bluestone all seem more useful and provide more benefit than the 5SL in dex you'd save [and that's why pretty nobody uses the +5int or fth rings])

 

[Murk]

Got max rank in BoB... finally. Fucking took forever. Now... to do the same for blue sentinels.

Why do I play this goddamn game =(

 

[StaticSpine]

bros, I have a DLC lore question:

Spoiler

Why is the king called Sunken if he was killed by dragon's poison?

 

[ghostdog]

This game just loves to troll you. A couple of days ago I had easily beaten the Lost Sinner in a friend's PS3 with a worse character than the one I had now. But what the hell, I said, since I wanted to summon that Lucatiel dudette and see her story, just to make sure she didn't die I went for the sidequest of making the sinner's dome more bright. A sidequest where you had to kill those fucking gargoyles... Hey, one gargoyle in DS1 was fun, two gargoyles were fun... 4-6 gargoyles on a fucking small roof, are NOT fun.

Goddamn, that fight was even harder than the pursuer. I mean sure, I managed to beat them with fewer retries than him, but those gargoyles were pure mayhem. I was just lucky they didn't try their crazy magics too much and lucky to land many quick blows in the beginning.

And after all that crap I beat the sinner in 30 seconds. while previously I might have needed a bit longer. Damn game.