From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Caim]

So I just got to the Old Iron King in SotFS and I'm wondering if there's a certain order I should do the DLCs in. Like is there a difficulty curve through them or will some of them not make sense if I go through them first?

From my experience Old Iron King was the easiest. Sunken King will kick you in the balls if you're not careful, and will kick you in the balls twice as hard if you go to the optional area. Ivory King is a pain in the ass.

 

[Gentle Player]

I found Sunken King, and particularly the Sunken King "challenge area" to be the easiest of all. Iron King overall was the hardest for me, with its boss battles that were designed for action game players (very well designed fights I must admit, but not my cup of tea).

 

[Multidirectional]

Most people on internet seem to be of opinion that Iron King is the toughest. Sunken King is the only one in which I bothered finishing the challenge area, ones in other two expansions were just too discouraging. Though I did retry the one in Iron King plenty of times before giving up. Didn't bother retrying Ivory King challenge after first two attempts. There are fun challenges and then there's tedious bullshit.

 

[Mozg]

IK just has long stretches of bonfireless combat against dangerous enemies like the headless golems and the archer things with a flaming sword. Sunken King is more thinky-puzzley. I mostly just found the ice king shit annoying (like the stupid ice hedgehog enemies) rather than hard or interesting.

Follows my pattern of thinking mostly the first expansion a game gets is where people put in the good ideas they had during production but couldn't get to, then the later ones are where they're stretching and running out of budget.

 

[80Maxwell08]

So what's a good weapon to use in SotFS for a primarily melee/physical character? My trustworthy mace is still doing ok but there's been several situations recently where it hasn't done so well like group fighting or enemies that don't stun too easily.

 

[Mozg]

Pretty much everything. Greatswords are nice for sweeping attacks that cover a lot of area so you can hit multiple things at once. The club and craftsman hammer are similar to the mace but have a faster and wider sweeping moveset iirc.

You can also tele-backtrack to the starting area and kill the first hippo monster, which drops the stone ring. The ring ups the stunning ability of weapons enormously. If you two-hand something, even low-poise damage stuff like an estoc or spear, with stone ring it will one-hit stun pretty much anything that is designed to be reasonably stunnable.

 

[Rolk's Drifter]

So what's a good weapon to use in SotFS for a primarily melee/physical character? My trustworthy mace is still doing ok but there's been several situations recently where it hasn't done so well like group fighting or enemies that don't stun too easily.

1) MURAKUMO. It's fast, powerful and fun as fuck. The one handed sweeps are excellent for multiple enemies. Stuns well too! If you haven't reached Ornifax yet, you can get a boss version by trading the Flexile Sentry soul with Straid. Don't forget to 2HR2 enemies off cliffs when possible for maximum lulz.

I'm guessing you're a strength build? Some alternatives that spring to mind are:

2) POISE up and continue to use the mace. The 1hR2 is pretty good for hitting multiple mooks so long as you can take some hits. Which happens a lot in DS2 anyway. May as well fuck them up while they're at it. Not a strat for higher New Games but trading damage is viable for now.

3) ZWEIHANDER. You say you've reached the Iron Keep so I assume you have it. Really awesome weapon as long as you don't mind the speed.

4) LARGE/GIANT club. Slower than the mace obviously but a lot more fun imo. The pancake attacks can trivialise much of the game. Both a blessing and a curse. But there's more to them than that one attack.

Personally I don't like dual wielding but that is another option. It's very stamina consuming though. Not a problem if you use the broken straight sword (BSS) but it does limit your options. Some combos I like:

1) Rapier in right hand, BSS in the left. This gives you thrusts, sweeps and parries. Good for any situation really. Not so great for stunning but you kill so quickly it's not really needed. However with the stone ring it does alright. I love this combo because it's fast, deadly and uses very little stamina. The low damage of the BSS might seem crap at first but it's damage is gravy imo. It's real benefit is that it gives you sweeps with a rapier. And for fuck all stamina. Besides the BSS is still ok when infused with elemental or mundane.

2) Rapier in right hand, katana in left. Like option 1 but it uses more stamina in exchange for even greater damage. This is an excellent combo if you are conscious of counter damage. And you don't have to use the sweeps all the time so it's pretty easy to manage stamina. Chaos Rapier + Chaos Blade against enemies weak to fire is a combo of immense and profound beauty.

 

[Redlands]

So what's a good weapon to use in SotFS for a primarily melee/physical character? My trustworthy mace is still doing ok but there's been several situations recently where it hasn't done so well like group fighting or enemies that don't stun too easily.

1) MURAKUMO. It's fast, powerful and fun as fuck. The one handed sweeps are excellent for multiple enemies. Stuns well too! If you haven't reached Ornifax yet, you can get a boss version by trading the Flexile Sentry soul with Straid. Don't forget to 2HR2 enemies off cliffs when possible for maximum lulz.

I'm guessing you're a strength build? Some alternatives that spring to mind are:

2) POISE up and continue to use the mace. The 1hR2 is pretty good for hitting multiple mooks so long as you can take some hits. Which happens a lot in DS2 anyway. May as well fuck them up while they're at it. Not a strat for higher New Games but trading damage is viable for now.

3) ZWEIHANDER. You say you've reached the Iron Keep so I assume you have it. Really awesome weapon as long as you don't mind the speed.

4) LARGE/GIANT club. Slower than the mace obviously but a lot more fun imo. The pancake attacks can trivialise much of the game. Both a blessing and a curse. But there's more to them than that one attack.

Personally I don't like dual wielding but that is another option. It's very stamina consuming though. Not a problem if you use the broken straight sword (BSS) but it does limit your options. Some combos I like:

1) Rapier in right hand, BSS in the left. This gives you thrusts, sweeps and parries. Good for any situation really. Not so great for stunning but you kill so quickly it's not really needed. However with the stone ring it does alright. I love this combo because it's fast, deadly and uses very little stamina. The low damage of the BSS might seem crap at first but it's damage is gravy imo. It's real benefit is that it gives you sweeps with a rapier. And for fuck all stamina. Besides the BSS is still ok when infused with elemental or mundane.

2) Rapier in right hand, katana in left. Like option 1 but it uses more stamina in exchange for even greater damage. This is an excellent combo if you are conscious of counter damage. And you don't have to use the sweeps all the time so it's pretty easy to manage stamina. Chaos Rapier + Chaos Blade against enemies weak to fire is a combo of immense and profound beauty.

In addition to this, I've done pretty well with a fully upgraded Greatsword (? just one of the normal ones). It has a pretty good wide attack and also a good precision attack. It's also S rank with Strength when fully upgraded.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

In addition to this, I've done pretty well with a fully upgraded Greatsword (? just one of the normal ones). It has a pretty good wide attack and also a good precision attack. It's also S rank with Strength when fully upgraded.

Rather bizarrely, the weapon simply called a Greatsword is classified in the Ultra Greatsword category rather than the Greatsword category. I also found it to be quite useful with a strength-based character, upgrading it but not infusing it with any elements. I'm not sure why the Zweihander, which is also an Ultra Greatsword but has a lesser strength bonus, is considered preferable.

 

[Murk]

The moveset. The 2h swings of the zwei have wide arcs that are easier to hit and manually aim with, where-as the 2h GS (guts sword/UGS) have a top down smash that are harder to aim with.

The drakekeeper UGS is kind of a middle ground of the two, but has worse range.

 

[Multidirectional]

So what's a good weapon to use in SotFS for a primarily melee/physical character? My trustworthy mace is still doing ok but there's been several situations recently where it hasn't done so well like group fighting or enemies that don't stun too easily.

Mace hits hard but I never liked it because I found it simply boring to use. Boring moveset and poor range. And all the clubs I tried in general didn't appeal to me. If you are going for STR build I suggest not overlooking Butcher's Knife and Red Iron Twinblade. I rarely see anyone recommending those and have no idea why, both are great.

 

[Mozg]

You don't get the RIT until the last 1/4 or so of the vanilla game and no other twinblade works like it.

The butcher's knife is really good - has the speed of a fast axe/hammer moveset, reach of a greatsword, more damage and more poise damage than most weapons in either class. It's very heavy and has low durability so you'll probably end up having to menu-switch it a lot.

The battle axe or bandit axe from the wharf are early fast axes that are lighter and more durable while still hitting hard if you want something lower-maintenance. The red rust sword is a machete thing with an axe moveset that's very similar.

If you want some variety on a strength build the red rust scimitar, gargoyle bident, and chariot lance are all strength scaling versions of mostly dex or quality weapon classes like the red iron twinblade is, and unlike the red rust sword they don't get different strengthy movesets.

 

[pakoito]

Double caestus or burst.

 

[Multidirectional]

The butcher's knife is really good - has the speed of a fast axe/hammer moveset, reach of a greatsword, more damage and more poise damage than most weapons in either class. It's very heavy and has low durability so you'll probably end up having to menu-switch it a lot.

You didn't mention that is also slightly heals you with each hit. Weight can be a problem for people who are shooting for really low weight percentage but durability was never an issue with it for me.

 

[Redlands]

I'm guessing the durability issue really only affects PC gamers using large weapons, at least from what I understand about durability in the game.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

I only had durability issues with Alonne Sword, which has purposefully low durability

 

[pakoito]

I'm guessing the durability issue really only affects PC gamers using large weapons, at least from what I understand about durability in the game.

It was patched out, at least to a point where you didn't have to fix your weapon after every bonfire.

 

[Mozg]

At this point durability 50 or 60 weapons only get near the breaking point if you've cleared everything out of a fairly long exploration run ending with a boss. Durability ~20 or so stuff is still notably super-fragile. At 30-40 "weapon at risk" will come up a fair amount and you'll want a backup.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Well I've been using the Arced Sword and Great Club, switching whenever the situation changes and I can't believe I missed these on my first few play-throughs. Also, I've been going through the DLC areas slowly and I really like them. I started Old Iron King's first and got through the whole challenge area and that was great, even if I don't like how annoying it is to get the item drops. Now I've almost beaten the sunken king areas, minus the challenge area which has gone untouched for the moment, and all I have left is the boss fight against Sinh. Debating leaving it until after I talk to the ancient dragon but I'm right here and it's so tempting.

 

[Murk]

I played prepatch and while weapons would get near break, I never had actual issues with it. I was upset when they tried to correct it -- if anything they shoulda made armor more easily breakable. Plus, it was kinda fun to cycle through 3 weapons and not just use the fire longsword I mean battle axe I mean mace I mean craftsman's hammer I mean donglake greatsword.

 

[Caim]

What's the best way to deal with the Super Giant Bros living in the Black Gulch, by the way? I mostly use hit & run tactics, but is that the way to do it?

 

[ghostdog]

What's the best way to deal with the Super Giant Bros living in the Black Gulch, by the way? I mostly use hit & run tactics, but is that the way to do it?

I remember cheesing the hell out of them, but mostly because those fuckers scared the shit out of me when they appeared in the dark. Maybe they can be taken on face to face foot, with the classic "rolling under/around big guys" technique.

 

[Grimlorn]

I think it's too difficult to separate them, but if you can it becomes much easier. But what I would do is just try to get both of them to attack me at once and then roll through their legs and start attacking the guy who was second to start their attack, so I could get a few hits on him.

 

[Mozg]

Kite them while you kill one with poison daggers, then kill the other one normally.

 

[Ippolit]

I usually run into the little cave beween them and kill them with poison clouds. Even playing non-pew-pew-Chars, i just can't forgo the utility spells. And for reminding me of the mediocre quality of the XBone-Controller (vibrating foot stomps ) every time i fight them they deserve to get cheesed.