From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Murk]

praetor & Mikayel

Thanks for the advice! I was actually joking a little, some of your posts been really helpful and I missed the spoiler asking for more info from me. As to my preferences: I played almost whole game in heavy set with shield and great sword. I wan't something fresh. I'm up for builds without shield, that rely more on agility. A two handed weapon or dual wield sounds noice. Something fast and tricky, something aggresive, outsmarting and outskilling the player is what I seek instead of relying on very heavy defenses and mistakes of the opposing player to hit him once or twice. I have almost 400k souls and im fine with total respec. I've been hoarding all the stones so I can reinforce any weapon if need be. So, what would the weapon/style suggestions be? What stat's should I get, I'm unsure if the requirements you posted above (like 1400 HP) are unbuffed or with rings etc...

this site can help you plan some stuff out, or simulate stats

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls2/

IMO stats you should have (at minimum) are at least 40 vigor (up to 50 max; after that it's 5hp per point) 30 endurance (I'd suggest 40 if you like to be more aggressive) and 100 agility (26 adaptability, depending on your attunement score).

From there, capitalize on offensive stats of STR/DEX. going 40/40 isn't a bad idea but it leaves you about 30 points to spare for other stuff like int/faith. If you want to focus more on melee + magic then maybe raise your main offensive phys stat to 40 and the secondary to 30 and that gives you 40 points to put into attunement and int/faith while still being around level 175 (depending on starting class, of course).

For weapons, I'd suggest you use two different weapons that are not powerstanced and to periodically swap out a weapon. Try this, straight sword in right hand (longsword, varangian sword, sunsword, ashen warrior sword) and a rapier in left (estoc, espada ropera or the regular rapier; get ricards if you get very high dex). Sidenote: estoc's r2 attack pierces shields, less damage but fucks up some turtlers.

For your secondary weapon in your main hand, I'd suggest something with some reach or power like a halberd, a spear, a greatsword, or maybe a great hammer. Leave that for rare situations tho -- or when you feel like messing around. A dagger is also a good call if you need to get a fast stab in.

The main play with the two weapons is that they can 'boost' one another. Slash with sword then poke with rapier and the rapier's attack comes off faster. Also, they attack in different ways -- the slash has less range but good tracking where-as the poke as good range but poor tracking. They do separate damage types but that's not super relevant in PVP as no one has more than a 200 armor type gap between types. But, the two different types of attacks give you an opportunity to bamboozle your enemy -- especially if they're a twitch reaction type who moves when you do. They may be watching your right and not realize your left came at them.

powerstancing is cool but I find it's too predictable... still, test it out -- maybe you'll find something you like?

A common tactic I use against purely passive players is to swap weapons constantly to throw them off their game. Most spazz types just stand around waiting for you to do something so they can dodge it/hit you -- for these cats I'll swap weapons or throw out feints (pretend to attack but backstep last second) to get them to do something and hit them during it.

If you ever see someone with a greatsword or curved greatsword with their back to you walking around weird -- they're gonna spam run attacks p much every time. For those guys you can't really afford to trade hits unless you have a VERY high counter weapon like a rapier or katana.

BTW if you want to get serious with this then what I suggest is to dick around in the arena (keep in mind, SM isn't much of a thing there so you'll fight high and low levels) and just take the losses as they come to build up a general idea of how different playstyles work. Then, later, make a new char and rack up them points.

Note, I didn't comment on vitality because I assume you'll want to use flynn's ring in which case you'll leave it around 9-10 to use with third dragon ring for the full 50AR bonus it gives.

as a general rule of thumb, any weapon with natural 25 poise break when two-handed will ALWAYS break poise -- even against a full havhole like your filthy scrub ass ;D

 

[MapMan]

Ok, those are great and really helpful posts. I need some time to digest all that info and fuck around. One thing I don't see mentioned. Weapon upgrades. What should I go for?

 

[LivingOne]

Anyone knows wtf is going on with the servers and/or soft-bans right now? I've seen a lot of people complaining about not finding summon signs/getting rematched with the same people over and over in the arenas even if they have done nothing whatsoever to get banned. Not only appaerently restoring saves via backup doesn't earn you a ban (obviously) but some people are reporting the same problems even when didn't even do that. And it's the same for me and I've done no hacking, no cheating, no restoring backups, bone of order doesn't work... And I wouldn't attribuite it entirely to the servers since the community manager did confirm a wave of soft-bans...seriously what's going on?

 

[Murk]

Ok, those are great and really helpful posts. I need some time to digest all that info and fuck around. One thing I don't see mentioned. Weapon upgrades. What should I go for?

Depends. Elemental damage tends to do bigger numbers but is curved more heavily. Elemental resistance is % based, have 900 in any element = 0 damage (in pvp) from enemies. So something as simple as GMB means you take about 30% less damage from all elements. Physical damage is linear and so you just take a flat number off. Roughly, there is a 1:11 ratio where for every 11 points of armor you take 1 less damage. So, 1000 armor = 95ish damage less and AR and damage seem to be just about equal when you 2hand a weapon (not 100% but roughly).

So... it depends. Elemental is easier to reduce but has higher damage, physical has a bit lower but is more consistent. I would suggest you stick to using normal upgrades except for those weapons that have really low scaling or none (like malformed skull) and infuse those with raw. Otherwise, if you like to buff, infuse with whatever element you enjoy more. You're usually better off with dark or lightning but against GMB no element is useful.

I personally only use elemental infusion on some weapons like the crypt sword, sacred chime hammer, or moonlight greatsword. Weapons that are pre-split and get the most benefits from those infusions.

For now, since you are near low level, try infusing with what element you like (You mentioned flame weapon so infuse with fire) then try that out.

LivingOne I periodically get a wave of matching same person in arena/during invasions (fought same guy 5 times in a row) but if I take a break from the game and come back I find myself matched all over the world and with a bunch of people. I donno what the deal is but I can say that sometimes it's a coincidence -- and someone has told me that once you connect with 1 person you are more likely to keep connecting with them. This may be bullshit but I donno.

I don't think you have to worry about being soft banned unless you're fucking with the game files tho -- and backing up isn't really an issue unless you're editing shit or using it to cheese stuff. Otherwise every speed runner ever would be banned super hard as they backup saves all over.

 

[Murk]

Also, patriarchy souls.

some hot chick streamer invaded me while I was in my throway dick around character (chainmail gimp with chain stalkings, chain long gloves, n metal gimp mask; hugh woatmeit) and i poke her to death. Then she invades the SL 1 scrub I was there to help get to smelter -- he dies but i barely get in n kill her after.

http://www.twitch.tv/luxxbunny/b/566663775

skip to 1:25 (hour twenty five minutes) to see the action.

I guess she was playing some music and so the sound is muted, too bad I wanted to hear her thoughts on ma pokey pokes.

the creighton set is seriously creepy without the chest piece. try it, it's fuggin' weird.

 

[praetor]

Otherwise, if you like to buff, infuse with whatever element you enjoy more. You're usually better off with dark or lightning but against GMB no element is useful.

as an addendum: if you have a "pre-split" weapon (fume sword, dargonslayer crescent axe) and don't have the full power of the element or near enough (i.e. 40-50fth or int or whatever), then leaving uninfused + using resins is usually a much better idea than using spell buffs (other than duration, maybe). and resins are also better than spells on pure physical uninfused weapons 99% of the time

I don't think you have to worry about being soft banned unless you're fucking with the game files tho -- and backing up isn't really an issue unless you're editing shit or using it to cheese stuff. Otherwise every speed runner ever would be banned super hard as they backup saves all over.

seems they're banning mainly on SM alterations, so backing up saves can get you banned (i guess if you restore an older save with significantly lower SM, or more likely just putting you in a lower bracket so theoretically even a 10 SM difference can get you banned ). meanwhile they do nothing to people who go around fucking up others' games

 

[Murk]

If you're doing the sm limiting shit that was on reddit, yeah for sure. I mean if you back up your saves in fear of corruption you'll be fine. On the other hand if your char is at sm 4million when in reality he should be at 400 million then something's gonna look fishy. SM is just the easiest way to moniter i guess.

 

[praetor]

If you're doing the sm limiting shit that was on reddit, yeah for sure. I mean if you back up your saves in fear of corruption you'll be fine. On the other hand if your char is at sm 4million when in reality he should be at 400 million then something's gonna look fishy. SM is just the easiest way to moniter i guess.

you mean metacap? yeah, they were banned for that (although not in great numbers, from what i gather, and metacap isn't all that big of a problem since it's quite "generous" and fair for the SL->SM limiting and most of the "extra" SM you'd gather is from co-oping, invasion kills, and experimenting. i'd argue metacap is a good thing since at least you won't be unnecesarily penalized for playing the game and experimenting with weapons/farming for the shit with bullshit drop rates). because there were people reporting being softbanned just for using backups. which makes sense if the main method used is the SM bracket you're in. it would explain why people are rarely banned for using backups since it's not all that likely that your backup is in a lower SM tier, particularly in the higher tiers when the range is more than 1mil

 

[Murk]

Yeah, p much. I back up my saves basically before logging into the game and so I'd revert at most a few mil if I get invaded a ton by some high levels, but in the face of 400+ mil SM it's not really going to stand out. Tho I haven't needed to actually restore a save so far.

Still, according to some guy who emailed bamco -- backing up saves is fair game.

The irony is that if all the metacap users got banned onto a 'cheater island' of their own, they'd basically have exactly what they wanted. Well... that and the occasional visit from santa.

As for stuff like farming... there's just too many ascetics to go around. I'd rather spend 2 minutes in the abyss than bother dicking around with files and reloading the game's menu to farm. Plus, the higher the cycle the higher the drop rate anyway.

 

[praetor]

As for stuff like farming... there's just too many ascetics to go around. I'd rather spend 2 minutes in the abyss than bother dicking around with files and reloading the game's menu to farm. Plus, the higher the cycle the higher the drop rate anyway.

i meant that the SM system "punishes" you for farming because you'll get shittons of souls from farming enemies for that stupidly rare drop (and then if you use ascetics to respawn 1 time enemies like you suggest, you'll have to kill the boss again which is even more souls) and if you don't have the 1st DLC (or even if you have and don't use yearn/skulls to avoid killing enemies) you'll get similarly "punished" for farming for the unnecessarily rare "special" upgrade materials. metacap gets rid of that since you'll be at a fixed SM regardless of your farming and experimenting with different weapons/armour

tl;dr: nothing new to see, SM is still the most stupid, idiotic, retarded matchmaking system any human being with less than 2 functioning neurons could conjure from the depths of hell

 

[trym88]

I think I beat gargoyles on my second try but I had a lot of trouble with Royal Rat. No poison moss and had no gear with poison protection at the time. Had I known he was optional I would have came back later. So I had to kill the poison dogs without getting poisoned or had to try to heal through the poison without getting hit by the big dog. Was awful. Died like 10+ times on that fight.

I also had him dead once as he spewed his acid attack. I was relaxing because I thought it was over. First time seeing the attack and the acid spread around me, but I couldn't get out of it before dying. Had to do the whole fight over again.

If you play a melee fighter and have at least 2 attunement slots, you can use lingering flame against the rat authority. Just put the flames side by side in front of the small rats and as soon as you approach them, they will run towards you and all die. If one of them survives, it's not that bad, just finish it off and then kill the boss with your melee weapon.

Edit: Forgot to mention that you should put the flames on the left side in front of the entry. This way you can kill the rats and make a decent amount of damage to the rat authority at the same time because the authority always jumps on the same place when the fight starts. This is definitely a boss where traps are really worth it. Maybe you won't pull this strategy perfectly off the first time because sometimes the flames won't hit all of them or only two of them but it won't take you many attempts.

 

[Grimlorn]

I think I beat gargoyles on my second try but I had a lot of trouble with Royal Rat. No poison moss and had no gear with poison protection at the time. Had I known he was optional I would have came back later. So I had to kill the poison dogs without getting poisoned or had to try to heal through the poison without getting hit by the big dog. Was awful. Died like 10+ times on that fight.

I also had him dead once as he spewed his acid attack. I was relaxing because I thought it was over. First time seeing the attack and the acid spread around me, but I couldn't get out of it before dying. Had to do the whole fight over again.

If you play a melee fighter and have at least 2 attunement slots, you can use lingering flame against the rat authority. Just put the flames side by side in front of the small rats and as soon as you approach them, they will run towards you and all die. If one of them survives, it's not that bad, just finish it off and then kill the boss with your melee weapon.

Edit: Forgot to mention that you should put the flames on the left side in front of the entry. This way you can kill the rats and make a decent amount of damage to the rat authority at the same time because the authority always jumps on the same place when the fight starts. This is definitely a boss where traps are really worth it. Maybe you won't pull this strategy perfectly off the first time because sometimes the flames won't hit all of them or only two of them but it won't take you many attempts.

Yeah i just made a pure melee build. Putting points in all of the stats to help with that made it so I couldn't really afford to get any magic. Plus I made it to RRA early in my playthrough.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Try to backup your saves = soft banned.

Alter memory so you have infinite health and can spam Soul Spear Barrage = youtube videos.

From pls.

 

[LivingOne]

LivingOne I periodically get a wave of matching same person in arena/during invasions (fought same guy 5 times in a row) but if I take a break from the game and come back I find myself matched all over the world and with a bunch of people. I donno what the deal is but I can say that sometimes it's a coincidence -- and someone has told me that once you connect with 1 person you are more likely to keep connecting with them. This may be bullshit but I donno.

I don't think you have to worry about being soft banned unless you're fucking with the game files tho -- and backing up isn't really an issue unless you're editing shit or using it to cheese stuff. Otherwise every speed runner ever would be banned super hard as they backup saves all over.

Yup, things seems back to normal now. I guess they put some non-banned users and some soft-banned ones in the same matchmaking queue (if that's even possible) and now are fixing it?

oh,well...

 

[Rolk's Drifter]

Try to backup your saves = soft banned.

Alter memory so you have infinite health and can spam Soul Spear Barrage = youtube videos.

From pls.

What's a soft ban? I want to try some cosplay invasions but it's such a hassle. I was hoping I could back up my saves. Urgh.

Speaking of infinite health and youtube. Has anyone seen videos by a guy called 'x WAKA x' ? His has a video for a char called 'The Peeper' who 'hilariously' takes crotch shots of people he supposedly parries. I say supposedly 'cos my first hacker was the exact same char as his. Except he was even shittier than me. He had infinite health so I kept R2ing him with a Chanellers Trident to take the piss. He got me in the end. By parrying me. With a monastery scimitar. I had it on video too but... oh well. Could have been an imitator I suppose. But a commenter on that video said a Japanese player had already done the same thing. So I'm 99% sure he's full of shit. You have to be really bad to get hit by me!

 

[DragoFireheart]

What's a soft ban?

It basically prevents you from co-oping/invading anyone that isn't soft-banned.

 

[praetor]

Speaking of infinite health and youtube. Has anyone seen videos by a guy called 'x WAKA x' ? His has a video for a char called 'The Peeper' who 'hilariously' takes crotch shots of people he supposedly parries. I say supposedly 'cos my first hacker was the exact same char as his. Except he was even shittier than me. He had infinite health so I kept R2ing him with a Chanellers Trident to take the piss. He got me in the end. By parrying me. With a monastery scimitar. I had it on video too but... oh well. Could have been an imitator I suppose. But a commenter on that video said a Japanese player had already done the same thing. So I'm 99% sure he's full of shit. You have to be really bad to get hit by me!

there were already claims of imitators on reddit when he posted his first video. plus, you can see in his vids he's rarely (if ever) at full health so i guess he misses quite a few parries. so yeah, a shitty imitator (not that the original was especially good, but...)

 

[Murk]

His videos were made on xbox as well, not that it's impossible to use cheats on xbox, but if you're on pc then... well

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Grandpas of Donglake, unite!

Spoiler

 

[flabbyjack]

I thought soul mass for casual PvP and game matching was capped out after like soul level 150 or so? It only really matters for brackets in the ranked lineups at the Blue Cathedral & Undead Purgatory?

I'm at SL215 now btw at like 10,000,000 soul points. ~30str/~30dex for weapon requirements and ~40faith (For lightning buffs) + vitality-type stats to get good health and stamina. They nerfed Lightning spell uses Does my high SM make it hard to find co-op bosses?

What are some of the best places to co-op drop my summon sign?

I almost always use LTNG infused weapons, for both PvP and PvE, should I not be infusing?

I'll probably maybe re-roll as a Dark caster, I think I have a good staff I need to dark-infuse.

In PvP I usually use a LTNG claymore, or alternatively black scorp stinger and ricards rapier. I love how I can make my guy look like a schizo serial killer like leatherface. Ricard's Rapier power R2 is just plain silly, I love it, but both it and black scorpion stinger are really hard to hit because it's no good for circle-strafing dodgers due to their 'straight ahead only' attacks. Sometimes I like dicking around with the big weapons like the Greatsword or the giant anvil, both of which can flatten enemies.

Should I try out the whip since it can actually hit after patch 1.08?

 

[Correct_Carlo]

My game corrupted my save files once and I had to revert to an older copy through Windows registry.

Is that sort of thing a bannable offense?

I always keep extra copies of my saves given how DS2 has a tendency to corrupt your saves if the power goes out or your computer crashes.

 

[flabbyjack]

My game corrupted my save files once and I had to revert to an older copy through Windows registry.

Is that sort of thing a bannable offense?

I always keep extra copies of my saves given how DS2 has a tendency to corrupt your saves if the power goes out or your computer crashes.

No. Apparently they only ban you for dorking around with your stats, basically.

I hard power-off my DS2 game (sic ragequit) on PS3 all the time and never had any issues.
lolwut@windows

 

[MapMan]

Hey! I'm back with some info on what I did. I respeced and went 40/40 STR/DEX for a quality build. In my right hind I use sun sword + 10 and in the left I have estoc + 10. I start to see the benefits of dual weilding and the benefits of weapons I used to consider are useless. Also being lightweight is better than I initially thought. Having the speed and agility to roll around like in the witcher 2 allows to dodge a lot of attacks. I played about 15 duels (arena and both invaded and got invaded) and lost only two, once where a dude lagged like shit and hit me from very far away, even though he shouldn't be able to and the other dude was weird. He initiated an attack, missed and I immidiately countered, while he was still doing the attack animation but... he riposted (wat?) and crit me so hard I didn't stand a chance. Anyway, it's not bad. I don't have the DLCs yet, so I'm going to have a little fun before I buy those and then I might choose some other weapon combos you suggested. I have a few questions though (some unrelated to pvp and builds)

1. How far should I progress before there is no return and I have to go to NG+? I think I cleared everything besides throne of want and. I still have to kill darklurker... He's a fucking pain in the ass for my current pvp melee build I went ahead and killed the final boss, even easier than Vendrick in DaS.
   
2. Does anyone actually get DS lore? I played DaS and DS2. For me, it's totally surreal world, I don't get ANYTHING that's happening in it. Is the world we're playing in some kind of a purgatory? Who are the undead? Curse? What fucking curse? How? Why is everyone so wicked? Was that land ever normal (the memories suggest so...)? What in the shit is going on. Is there somewhere a good summary of the lore? A guide that explains some of the stuff in the world, like who's vendrick and what he has to do with all this etc, what is the game world etc.
3. Armor for pvp. What should I get? I know about jesters for chestpiece, gyrm warrior greathelm if I don't care about FashionSouls. Or maybe I'm wrong? What about the rest? Also, I never upgraded any armor. Should I get all armors to their maximum reinforcement level?

 

[praetor]

1. it's Gwyn, not Vendrick . if you want an easy time with darklurker, put on the southern ritual band +1 for 2 attunement slots and attune chaos storm/fire tempest and flame swathe. cast the firestorm as soon as he starts the split animation. bam, dead. on one hand, i recommend doing it this way 'cause the run to him is annoying as fuck and spending a human effigy every time you want to fight him is stupid, but on the other hand beating him pure melee is a great feeling . btw, don't go to NG+ yet. the arena in NG is a much better experience than NG+ (particularly if you level cap yourself), and finish the DLCs before you go to NG+ (they get obnoxious amounts of health and damage boosts in higher cycles... and some retarded black phantom spawns in the 2nd DLC)

2. the land was never normal (DaS1 was the first "iteration", what followed are basically "variations on a theme"), the undead are humans branded with the darksign (i.e. those who posses a shard of the dark soul, i.e. the soul of the furtive pygmy [for some reason, some believe this to be manus]). the curse is the curse of the undead/humanity/want. vendrick tried to stop the curse (the further along a "cycle" the world goes, the stronger the curse gets 'cause the [first] fire gets weaker, so some poor soul has to burn some really powerful soul(s) to reset the cycle every once in a while). i'm not sure what they were trying to say with the whole "things betwixt is between worlds" implying, as you said, that drangleic is another dimension or whatever. and the bonfire ascetics directly contradict the lore of DaS1 (since the creators of 2 didn't really care all that much...)

3. didn't they nerf gyrm greathelm? dunno, never cared about optimized armour combos in 1 or 2. from what i saw of Mikayel and others, the most optimal would probably be havel legs + hands + jester's top/black witch robe + the best helm (not sure which one it is now). but go for fashion above else, defence (other than elemental) is not all that important. and yeah, definitely upgraded them

 

[Kanedias]

Praetor's suggestions earlier were great, I don't have anything to add, really.

--



Apparently From cut some Heide Knights from the game, namely the ones that were going to use the alternate Heide helm and Lance/Greatlance. A shame, as they looked somewhat finished. Also, I wish we could get that cowled version of the Heide Knight Iron Mask

--

Apparently the game has some translation issues too, I found this a great read. Really recommended if you're a fan of Souls: http://pastebin.com/gy6v34YE

In between other stuff, I found it very interesting how the name "Pyromancy", something that I have taken for granted since Dark Souls 1, is apparently mistranslated, and the original, jujutsu, is more like "shamanistic arts" which explains the swamp pyromancers and the non-fire related pyromancies like Iron Flesh and the poison ones.