Topic: Dark Souls: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Death

[gpw11]

AAAAAAAND it looks like all my points are going into endurance.

[gpw11]

You may not want to bother with it right now, but that glowing door will be worth your time to unlock sooner than later.  It's a fairly excellent early-game soul farming point.

By soul-farming, you mean dying, right? I ran in there, started fighting some dude and just got my ass kicked.  Ran back in, could see some treasure in the distance, ran for it, turned out to just be one of those light flowers.  I was now being chased (I'm bone dry on souls and humanity at this point, so dying isn't the biggest deal but whatever), by what sounded like 10 dudes and just kept running around until I found a chest.  Opened it and found some "stone armour". Sweet?

Was killed as soon as I stopped to grab the armour but tried it on, seems pretty good, but heavy.  I kind of wanted to play a lighter character but all the armors I'm finding are heavy as hell.   In either case, ran back through those doors and followed some messages that made me think I should lure dudes to a certain spot by the stairs.  I tried it and it seemed like they'd bug out when running out of the forest and go up the stairs only to fall over me and die.  Well, some of them would.  The others not so much and they'd just murder me.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong or I misread the clues and I'm on the wrong track completely but I think I may be too low level to farm here.

[K-man]

That's precisely how you farm that area.  Lure them in, stand by the side of the stairs.  and they will fall to their deaths (most of the time).

to make things a little easier, there is a bonfire behind a false wall near the glowing door entrance.

[gpw11]

Yeah, I actually found that bonfire first time to the area thanks to a handy message.  I'll try to farm the area better, at least to gain a few points.  I was actually fucking stressed running through there trying to lure mofos though.

[gpw11]

Did a bit more farming in that area.  Yeah, it works well.  I also ventured into Darkroot Basin, killed some crystal guys, ran away from something launching what could only be described as water missles from one section of the map and opened a locked door only to find that mother fucking enemy that has been kicking my ass at the bottom of the Undead Burg tower this whole time.  Well, at least I know what's on both sides of him.

On my way back down I took the other route and fought a hard battle against a Black Knight who dropped a Black Knight Halberd...which looks amazing but requires me to upgrade my strength by like 20 fucking points.

Decisions....

[Quemaqua]

I played a much lighter character and geared up to allow myself to cartwheel all over the place. Never did get far into my second playthrough so he's far from maxed out, but I really enjoyed the build I used. There are a lot of unique items you can use in conjunction with one another for strange and useful effects in the game, and most builds are going to be very heavily dependent upon what gear you've chosen to use. Mine was geared toward getting just enough encumbrance reduction to stay super fast but still pack a punch with one of the game's big weapons.

[K-man]

Yeah I like light gear as well.  I'd rather dodge than take punishment.

[gpw11]

I guess it's always an option to just keep running around as a tank until I find some better light gear.  It's not like I'm allocating points to focus on heavy stuff or anything.

[K-man]

It's really however you want to spec your guy.  I mean light/medium armor is by no means a requirement.  some people make very very successful tank toons.  but I prefer dodging for my style of play.  I find it more fun.

[idolminds]

Also you can eventually find a ring that greatly enhances your equip load, so heavy armor won't slow you down as much.

I actually kinda want to try a real tanking character, just stand there with a massive shield and block shit.

[gpw11]

Yeah, I think I'm not going to plan too far ahead and just see where what I find naturally takes me.  So, I guess for right now that means Stone Armor.  I'd love to use this sweet Dark Knight Halbred, but I don't think I can grind for 20 strength points, even at that sweet spot by the stairs.....OR CAN I?!

[gpw11]

I can.  I stood there and farmed souls until I had enough to wield that weapon.  In doing so I got cocky and started running in the other direction in that area until I tracked down a light and got some Eastern Armor (running to treasure and grabbing it right before you are brutally killed seems to be a very viable strategy in this game). I farmed some more, upgraded my armor and returned to Darkroot Basin...where I slaughtered EVERYTHING.

I then traveled to the Ruins under Firelink Shrine and got Ghost Raped, which was the worst thing ever. I figured I"m not meant to go to that area so I went back to Firelink and had to look up that I missed a door in the Berg that lead to the slums.....where I again murdered everything. The boss went down easy as well.


That said, I fear I may have to stop playing.  The frame rate is shit for some reason (like 15fps in a lot of areas) and It's actually starting to really bug me.  As much as I'd love to keep going it's driving me crazy. Well, that and it's summer.

I may put it down and come back later or just jump into Dark Souls 2 with better hardware...who knows?

[MysterD]

@GPW11

This is how I solved the 15 FPS problem in areas w/ lots of special effects & in some Boss Fights on Dark Souls: PTD - turn SSAO off in DSFix.INI's settings completely.
DSFix's SSAO is a framerate killer in this game..

This is the line(s) I'm talking about:

# Enable and set the strength of the SSAO effect (all 3 settings have the same performance impact!)
# 0 = off
# 1 = low
# 2 = medium
# 3 = high
ssaoStrength 0

EDIT:
About dealing w/ the ghosts in New Londo Ruins....

(click to show/hide)

...you need Cursed items, cursed equipment, or Transient Curse to even be able to deal w/ them.
Otherwise - forget it.

[PyroMenace]

You seem to be having an easier time with the game than I am gpw. Though I've only put in 2 big play sessions so far in like a week and a half. I'm playing as a thief right now and I'm up to the bell gargoyles which feel like they are impossible to kill it seems. But after doing some wiki reading on the game I'm finding that my issues are that I'm playing a thief which I'm not playing very well at and some other stuff I didn't know about like the humanity system. So I decided I'm going to restart as a bandit which feels right up my alley (it's pretty much how I'm playing the thief), 100% defense from the shield sounds so good to me. Plus since I've practically memorized the first areas that I'm up to, I should be able to regain where I was at pretty quickly.

[MysterD]

You seem to be having an easier time with the game than I am gpw. Though I've only put in 2 big play sessions so far in like a week and a half. I'm playing as a thief right now and I'm up to the bell gargoyles which feel like they are impossible to kill it seems. But after doing some wiki reading on the game I'm finding that my issues are that I'm playing a thief which I'm not playing very well at and some other stuff I didn't know about like the humanity system. So I decided I'm going to restart as a bandit which feels right up my alley (it's pretty much how I'm playing the thief), 100% defense from the shield sounds so good to me. Plus since I've practically memorized the first areas that I'm up to, I should be able to regain where I was at pretty quickly.

About battling the Bell Gargoyles...

(click to show/hide)

I suggest you first find Solaire; release him; summon him before battle; let him do his thing as a meat-shield to help you battle the gargoyles;
AND you switch to two-hand your weapons to hit the gargoyles as much as you can and especially from behind for massive damage.

[gpw11]

You seem to be having an easier time with the game than I am gpw. Though I've only put in 2 big play sessions so far in like a week and a half. I'm playing as a thief right now and I'm up to the bell gargoyles which feel like they are impossible to kill it seems. But after doing some wiki reading on the game I'm finding that my issues are that I'm playing a thief which I'm not playing very well at and some other stuff I didn't know about like the humanity system. So I decided I'm going to restart as a bandit which feels right up my alley (it's pretty much how I'm playing the thief), 100% defense from the shield sounds so good to me. Plus since I've practically memorized the first areas that I'm up to, I should be able to regain where I was at pretty quickly.

If anything I think I've just put more time in.  The area from the beginning of the game up to the Bell Gargoyles was by far the hardest section for me so far.  Now the world seems to have opened up enough to the point where if I get my ass kicked entirely I figure I'm supposed to come back later.

Oh, but fuck Curse status.  Seriously.

[PyroMenace]

Yea so my second play through has been going so much fucking better. I was able to get up to the bell gargoyles in half the time I was playing with the thief. I also got the drake sword. With that and summoning solaire for the bell gargoyle boss I complete destroyed them with barely any effort. Then made my way to depths, discovered how much curses suck as gpw noted, made my way to the next area boss, the gapped dragon, it was a little challenged but I managed to take him down on my first attempt. What saved me a handful of times was this blue tearstone ring, which basically boosts your defenses by 50% when your health gets low which had kept me from dying many times. Now I have the key to blight town which I'm reading many bad things about, wish me luck.

[K-man]

Blighttown isn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be given its reputation.  The two main things are:  1) Prepare for lag, and 2) bring as much poison cure as you can.

[K-man]

My Dark Souls bros will appreciate this:

[TheOtherBelmont]

Hahaha that is great!  I love how that pose that Solaire is doing is an actual in game pose.

[Quemaqua]

Hahaha... that's brilliant. Good luck, Pyro. Blighttown is fun times.

[K-man]

I got a few spare minutes yesterday so I decided to jump back into Dark Souls.  Went back down into New Londo Ruins to try and find the boss.  I'm obviously out of practice because I kept dying to darkwraith knights.

then I find a fog door with no apparent exit except to die. Then I find later I was supposed to put on the ring I got from killing Sif.

Stellar play session

[K-man]

And this morning I follow that terrible showing by kicking four kings ass on my first try.

I'M BACK

[Cools!]

Haha

[PyroMenace]

Got in a good play session this weekend. Got through Blightown, I will admit it was a bit frustrating at first, those fat guys are the worst, however the biggest issue was just navigating through it and dealing with the camera. I've had deaths attributed to just not being able to fucking see anything because some geometry in the environment was in the way, oh and those fucking fire hounds, fuck those guys. I found a wanderers set of armor which had the best poison resist that I could find which worked pretty well when I got to the bottom. Quelaag was a bitch, but is beatable if you are just patient and smart when moving around her, but it still took a quite a bit of deaths before getting her. After that I starting farming humanity and titanite shards to reinforce my armor a bit.

Today I went back to the asylum and cleared that area out, that was more of a task than I thought. Fighting knights in really tight corridors is a bitch and that stray demon was awful. But again, it came down to repetition and patience. So yea, I'm moving along.

[K-man]

Hell yeah.  You'll inevitably go back to Blighttown for a few things (I'm 99% sure you've missed some items, and there's a vendor that will appear there later if you do the right things).  I struggled with the Asylum as well.  I didn't actually kill the Demon until way farther into my playthrough.

So I've been thinking that reading up on this game actually is somewhat of a detriment sometimes.  I just went into that four kings fight willy nilly and basically owned it.  Then I read afterward that if you don't kill them quickly they'll pile up, they can two hit you, etc etc.  I never had those problems.  I just went in two handed and owned them.  If I had read up beforehand I would have been trying to anticipate all these things and probably wouldn't have fared nearly as well.

I guess what I'm saying is, PRAISE THE SUN!

[Quemaqua]

Jesus Christ, you're lucky. Those fuckers are so so so goddamn annoying. I'm not sure how many times I died, but it was plenty. Asylum I didn't have much issue with, though... my super speed came in handy.

[K-man]

I praised last night in probably the longest play session since dad got sick.  I messed around in the Tomb of Giants for a while, but decided that the skull lantern was not cutting it as a light source.  So I went to the demon ruins to grab the sunlight maggot.  Or at least i thought it was in the demon ruins.  Fortunately I was able to beat both the Flame demon and the centipede demon without too much trouble. 

Now I'm in Lost Izalith.  Holy crap.  This has to be near the end of the game.  I can't see it getting much more ridiculous.  If i hadn't lucked out and cut the tail off the centipede demon, I wouldn't have had a ring to minimize lava damage.  Then I would have died quickly.  The game doesn't tell you any of this.  I LOVE IT.

[Quemaqua]

That's the best part! I highly recommend the first play-through to be completely blind, no guides or anything. You'll realize how lucky you got sometimes, and also succumb to some fantastic deaths and frustrations that make you smile later on when you figure out how you should tackle it.

[K-man]

Course I think "man i'm near the end" only to realize that I haven't even touched the expansion content yet.  Hell, I don't even know how to access it.

[Quemaqua]

I still haven't touched that stuff myself. I'd love to get back to this and play through again on the PC. I never got the expansion stuff for PS3.

[gpw11]

EDIT - Uh... whoops. Love, Que

[Quemaqua]

Sorry dude, I don't know why, sometimes I click the edit button on the last post instead of reply. I was trying to quote you thus didn't connect that I'd edited rather than replied until it was too late. Apologies.

And as per the original post:

and i was trying to get good at golf.

I don't even know how to respond to this.

[gpw11]

Ahahhaha.


A.) I hate you
B.) Golf is like real life Dark Souls. 

[idolminds]

I would play Golf Souls.

[K-man]

I played last night.  Finally got the sunlight maggot, but I'm afraid I have done something wrong and I am going to have to kill Solaire.  Spent some time in Tomb of the Giants getting my ass whipped.  Decided to backtrack to the Darkroot Basin and fight the hydra.  Um...not sure why I put him off so long.  It's pretty simple.

Anyway behind the hydra is where you access the DLC, but you have to go to the Duke's Archives and defeat a specific golem to get a broken pendant for the pathway to open.  I entered the DLC realm, lit the bonfire, and had my ass handed to me 10 seconds later by the boss.  WELCOME TO THE DLC!

[Quemaqua]

Nice! Also, don't think you did anything wrong, that's just how it goes with the maggot.

[K-man]

There's a way to save him, but it involves offering humanity up to the spider lady covenant to open a specific door so you can go in the back way.

[Quemaqua]

Huh, I did not know that. And that was my covenant. I forget what I did and didn't do, though, it's been so long.

[idolminds]