From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[Blaine]

I decided to start playing Dark Souls again instead. It's been about a decade since I last played, so it's feeling fresh.

I rolled a sorcerer today and just finished cheesing the first Black Knight from that rampart up a short ladder, and am smugly proud of myself. I plan to exact my belated revenge for the ever more severe magic nerfs implemented in subsequent DS games and DLCs. No doubt invaders will make short work of me, but that's never bothered me a bit.

Of course, even in DS, a sorcerer has to do some dirty work with regular old weapons when he can to save magic juice. Maybe it's just me, but parrying and riposting seem far easier in the "Remake" version of DS. Might have something to do with higher framerates?

 

[Lyric Suite]

 

[Ramnozack]

I decided to start playing Dark Souls again instead. It's been about a decade since I last played, so it's feeling fresh.

I rolled a sorcerer today and just finished cheesing the first Black Knight from that rampart up a short ladder, and am smugly proud of myself. I plan to exact my belated revenge for the ever more severe magic nerfs implemented in subsequent DS games and DLCs. No doubt invaders will make short work of me, but that's never bothered me a bit.

Of course, even in DS, a sorcerer has to do some dirty work with regular old weapons when he can to save magic juice. Maybe it's just me, but parrying and riposting seem far easier in the "Remake" version of DS. Might have something to do with higher framerates?

Cool, gonna try to invade you with my sl 20 twink with max level giant armor. When the deed is done I’ll throw some shit pies at your corpse. Prepare yourself!

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So doing another Scholar run.
This time I started as a Swordsman, because I wanted to try power stancing.
Its kind of fun, you do have some good damage out put and I can see it being useful for applying poison or bleed. The problem though is that some power stanced movesets lock you in place for a while and you can't redirect, so against a humanoid opponent you'll probably get backstabbed. Against something large and easy to hit though it's pretty killy.

 

[Blaine]

Right, in my last post from a month ago, I mentioned that I'd be playing DS1 instead.

Well, now I'm fresh out of DS1 and back into DS2... just in time for the matchmaking outage, but oh well.

I do believe I've gotten better at the Souls series over the years. I'm working my way through Huntsman's Copse now, and not a single NPC black phantom has yet managed to kill me throughout the game; I've died once fighting the Pursuer during his boss fight, my only boss death so far; I have dozens of effigies saved (although there's a PvP outage); and I'm generally having a blast.

Rapier and shortbow + stone ring are fantastic for PvE and NPC phantoms. Falconer armor looks awesome.

That's all for now.

 

[Myobi]

This pretty much sums up why Dark Souls I was the only one I didn't bother replaying.


Edited: Sorry, I think I had a fucking stroke typing that.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Rapier and shortbow + stone ring are fantastic for PvE and NPC phantoms.

Stone ring is absolutely fucking mandatory if you don't want to outright trade hits and HP with NPCs if you're using a light weapon. It's ridiculous as quite nothing except heavy weapons manage to stagger them or stun them or interrupt their attacks. Once I realized this, the stone ring never left the equipped slot anymore.

 

[Cryomancer]

Any great weapon like moonlight greatsword but for a Hexer instead of a sorc? Any pure dark scaling melee weapon?

 

[Blaine]

Stone ring is absolutely fucking mandatory if you don't want to outright trade hits and HP with NPCs if you're using a light weapon. It's ridiculous as quite nothing except heavy weapons manage to stagger them or stun them or interrupt their attacks. Once I realized this, the stone ring never left the equipped slot anymore.

Well, there is parrying. For example, dual-wielding knife rogues will always get one swipe in on me before I can land the first hit on them with my rapier, even if I've just blocked them--and they may also backstep away before that first hit even lands.

Parrying takes care of that entire problem. Normally I can't be bothered to parry or backstab mook enemies, but those guys annoyed me so much that I started parrying them (very successfully) out of sheer exasperation.

Parrying in general is powerful and satisfying, but of course requires a fair degree of skill and experience to routinely achieve the proper timing. It's high risk, high reward.

 

[Reever]

Any great weapon like moonlight greatsword but for a Hexer instead of a sorc? Any pure dark scaling melee weapon?

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Crypt+Blacksword

 

[Blaine]

Any great weapon like moonlight greatsword but for a Hexer instead of a sorc? Any pure dark scaling melee weapon?

Nope. All Dark-infused weapons are split damage (some have more Dark than others) and none have higher than C Dark scaling.

https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_(Dark_Souls_II)#Dark_weapons

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Crypt+Blacksword

He wants pure damage. The MLGS's damage is 100% magic, not a bit of physical, and with very high INT scaling as well.

 

[Sunri]

DS II is truly the best.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

First image doesn't work. Is that the cut content where she steps on the player?

 

[Sunri]

First image doesn't work. Is that the cut content where she steps on the player?

Right click image copy to browser, and it will work I don't know why codex can't load imgur gifs

https://imgur.com/bpe2Xvt

 

[Caim]

Would've dared enter that magical realm.

Something something Dark Souls someting something hard.

 

[Blaine]

As it happens, I've just worked my way through Earthen Peak. The bad thing about triumphing over Earthen Peak is that you are almost literally going from the frying pan into the fire.

It's a shame the servers are still down, because once again the option to burn the windmill flew over my head, and a message might have helped. I even walked up that little rock outcrop and scratched my head. It took fighting the boss in a full poison lake (I came damned close to winning, too; proud of myself) to finally jog my memory.

So far, that area probably holds the record for the most deaths I've suffered, most of them being failed jump attempts. Once, those two shield-bearing, attack-spamming manikins at the top of that one ladder managed to kill me (not the first time I encountered them), and boy was I mad. The shield kind are absolute cancer when they're together.

 

[fredsteel]

As it happens, I've just worked my way through Earthen Peak. The bad thing about triumphing over Earthen Peak is that you are almost literally going from the frying pan into the fire.

It's a shame the servers are still down, because once again the option to burn the windmill flew over my head, and a message might have helped. I even walked up that little rock outcrop and scratched my head. It took fighting the boss in a full poison lake (I came damned close to winning, too; proud of myself) to finally jog my memory.

So far, that area probably holds the record for the most deaths I've suffered, most of them being failed jump attempts. Once, those two shield-bearing, attack-spamming manikins at the top of that one ladder managed to kill me (not the first time I encountered them), and boy was I mad. The shield kind are absolute cancer when they're together.

Dark souls 2 summons and messages are P2P. Unless you meant that they are temporarily down.

 

[Blaine]

Dark souls 2 summons and messages are P2P. Unless you meant that they are temporarily down.

I saw tons of phantoms and messages the first couple days playing, but after they shut down their servers due to the exploit, P2P doesn't work either because DS2 won't go online at all.

You still have to connect to their servers to play in online, P2P or no.

 

[fredsteel]

Dark souls 2 summons and messages are P2P. Unless you meant that they are temporarily down.

I saw tons of phantoms and messages the first couple days playing, but after they shut down their servers due to the exploit, P2P doesn't work either because DS2 won't go online at all.

You still have to connect to their servers to play in online, P2P or no.

Jesus Christ I’m reading up on the exploit lmao. What a shitty way to get your pc bricked.

 

[Blaine]

 

[d1r]

Dark Souls 2 had the best character generator of the Souls series.

 

[Blaine]

Nice Geralt+Yennifer cosplay, bro. You do need a second sword to make it perfect, tho.

I got lucky and it only took me a full hour or so to farm a Sea Bow wearing all of the expected item find gear for a NG cycle, so I celebrated by farming two nearly full sets of Desert Sorceress gear.

By the end, I was running through that one little crevasse by the bonfire backstabbing both sorceresses without even paying attention to what I was doing.

Is the Sea Bow worth it? Not really, but I wanted it. It's bizarre that this game is full of mediocre bows and then one amazing bow, maybe two depending on your tastes—and this does not apply to other weapon categories, because amazing melee weapons can be had from the beginning of the game (see: rapier).

 

[Caim]

Nice Geralt+Yennifer cosplay, bro. You do need a second sword to make it perfect, tho.

"As you can see, I carry two. Every BEARER-SEEK-SEEK-LEST does. It's said, spitefully, the silver one is for monsters and the iron also for monsters once the first one breaks."

Is the Sea Bow worth it? Not really, but I wanted it. It's bizarre that this game is full of mediocre bows and then one amazing bow, maybe two depending on your tastes—and this does not apply to other weapon categories, because amazing melee weapons can be had from the beginning of the game (see: rapier).

As primary weapons bows aren't really worth it. They cost souls to use, don't do that much damage and most enemies will try to bumrush you anyway. As a tool to either detonate barrels (infuse it with fire) or to poke them to draw attention from targets one at a time they are fine, but don't build around them unless you want a challenge run. The Sea Bow in particular is a bitch and a half to get as a drop because of its drop rate, and apparently it's got the longest range of all bows. So it might be useful for the poking bit, but if you really want to use a bow as a weapon... eh, might as well pick the Short Bow for its rate of fire.

 

[Silverfish]

Why are you playing as SumDrunkGuy?

 

[Blaine]

Well, that's Iron Keep finished. More of my souls were claimed there than everywhere else combined up 'til now, probably; >50,000, I'd say. The thing is, this is also the point when you start getting tons of souls, so I didn't really care.

In one death, I stepped off a bridge a little too carelessly—not under any real pressure, just being a dumb asshole. In another, I saw that item in the bull's head flames (near the boss door), knew that I shouldn't touch it yet, knew there must be a bonfire somewhere up ahead, didn't remember the flames can be turned off right before the boss, and so of course I tried to grab it and then died. Also, a trap floor dumped me when a ninja turtle ran over it, and it took me a bit to realize why. The rest of my deaths (three or four) were "normal" deaths.

I never died at any of the times when I might have expected I would, such as the "fall down safely" jumping section, or the ninja turtles crammed into one-turtle-wide corridors, or the boss (lmao).

I got the Alonne Greatbow, assorted katanas, and all of the Alonne armor pieces along the way, which was my true goal. The lava sprints can wait until I can be fucked to give a damn.