Dark Souls SL1 / Starting Build Discussion

It's the same as a standard greatsword, right? I have to say I'm continually impressed by the RC. I don't know if I'm just seeing the world through SL1-colored glasses already, but I'm starting to think it could be a legit choice for regular builds too... it's very high damage for a weapon of its size and speed and I don't know of any other weapon that attacks as fast and breaks poise as well. So good!

Oh lord, I wouldn't dream of trying it without even Solaire. I'll let you know if/when I give up on doing it with just him.

Well, with the crown and the ring, there's a decent chance that you'll kill Ornstein before Smough has a chance to do much. But in case the former takes his time or the latter is unusually quick, that's where Solaire comes in.

Say, what spells do you use for boss fights? I've been rolling with whatever because it doesn't matter much for the likes of the guys I've been fighting, but this one seems like it will. Is 2x Fire Orb ok, or is GCF better? I don't have GF yet because I did a bad job planning for this eventuality.

Combustion is the way to go, IMO. And it's much easier (in my opinion) to kill Smough first. (He's the one you use the combustion on.) Just run up to him and flame away. He drops toute suite, leaving souped up Ornstein behind. That's when your other weapon comes into play: your crossbow. Just keep a pillar between you & Ornstein, and plink away.

But even if you decide to kill Ornstein first, Combustion is still a lot easier. The fireball spells just take to long to cast; it's rarely safe to use them in that fight. Combustion, on the other hand, is quick & easy. You can cast it real quick after he misses an attack, or after you've blocked a charge, or if he gets hung up on a pillar momentarily. (Which he should do often, since you should always try to stay near pillars & use them to block his approach when appropriate.)

I use either 2x regular combust or combust + great combust. The latter combination works really well, as even with my +10 (at the time) glove I was able to take down Ornstein really, really fast, and then Smough in just 5 or so flurries of fire. I think the safest place to be is right next to them, although ymmv depending on how good you are at rolling back from the butt slam (at <25%, usually two rolls is completely safe, at 50% I just backpedal quickly and take the hit on my shield). When either of them whiffs, then you pelt them with up to 2 combusts depending on your comfort level.

I just find that I don't have much electricity resist without the Eagle or Silver shield, even with the ring, so I much prefer an easy to predict moveset like Smough to Ornstein's glitchier, faster bullshit.

I didn't really start needing pyro for non-bosses until Sen's, and even then I could probably have gotten through without it. Definitely need it in Anor Londo, though.

All Reinforced Club all the time. Eh, I dunno, it seems like a Hand Axe might be worth doing too, I just can't see myself prioritizing it when the Reinforced Club is as good as it is. I have fire and lightning RCs now, maybe when they're both maxed out along with my shields and crossbow and flame and primary armor I'll look at the Hand Axe. I don't think there are any other real choices though. I did try out the Cestus and it was terrible as expected.

Hey Lizard_King, are you on NG+ yet? Do any other weapons pay off at that point?

I think it's probably pretty close. The best thing about the RC though is the poise breaking ability, which is huge but also kind of less noticeable in Undead Burg/Parish. I have a hard time envisioning actually getting off a lot of consecutive hits with the Hand Axe. Where the HA might come into its own though is if you use Gold Pine Resin, since that applies a flat damage bonus that benefits more from the higher speed. Whether or not that's actually worthwhile would require testing, but I think that's probably the HA's best chance.

Edit: although come to think of it if you're using resins the Dagger might even enter the picture.

Well, Law Firm down and not easily. I blew through all my humanity on half-baked attempts and dumb deaths on the sentinels, so I had to solo it without even the benefit of Solaire. Really pretty tough, but after a few heartbreaking near misses, I finally got them. The winning combination for me ended up being Combustion for Ornstein followed by Fire Orb and crossbow for Smough.

After that I farmed enough chunks to take my Lightning RC to +4, and now I'm off to collect my slab from the Stray Demon.

Be wary of that fucker. He's a lot scrappier than I thought he would be.

I tried him when I made the early trip for the ring and Crest Shield and he was a jerk, but then again I usually think he's a jerk. Best I did then was to get him to around a third of his health, so hopefully with better pyro and more stability I'll get there. We'll know soon enough.

Yep, first try. Oh Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring. How I've missed you, old friend.

So I read this tip somewhere (probably /r/onebros) about trading boss souls for slabs, but is that really possible? Who makes these trades? Also, how is it even possible to intentionally connect with someone if they aren't level 1-11, and if they are, doesn't that mean they either don't yet have any slabs or else want to hold on to them?

Geez I think I'd even trade for some chunks at this point. Sentinels have gotten stingy and I need sooooo many. :/

Why are you farming sentinels? I typically get 1-3 chunks per lower New Londo run with 3+ humanity and a gold ring, and I actually got 3 slabs from it this last game over the course of an hour or two.

Good question. They've been my preferred farming spot from the beginning, but the why is a mystery given the one chunk I got in half an hour last night. I'll try the darkwraiths. What's a good farming route for them?

Pretty much what you'd expect. I like to warm up with a transient curse and killing ghosts upstairs until someone drops transient curse (WE ARE NOT GOING TO RUN A CURSE DEFICIT BRO) then rolling down, killing the darkwraith that's immediately upset at your arrival, placing down my sign for no one to summon, then clearing the chapel and its 3 ghosts and 2 wraiths. Then I kill the guy by the fog gate, roll down to the guy in the courtyard to my left from the fog gate, and clear the large cathedral one by one while delaying as long as possible to cross out the other side of the cathedral and break the summon. Then I run out, kill that last guy by the wyverns, and homeward bone. My record is 5 chunks and 1 slab, but honestly I think the game's suffering engine was afflicted with indigestion or something.

Alright cool, guess I'll try that tonight at some point. I haven't drained it yet, but I gotta do it sometime.

My new knee-jerk for that is SHOOT INGWARD WITH ARROWS WITHOUT GOING THROUGH THE GHOST LEVELS. But I know I'm always going to want to kill those fuckers.

Wait, so you don't even have to go up and collect the key from his corpse if you do that? That's neat. I feel bad about killing Ingward, though... I guess I'll see how annoying the ghosts decide to be this time around.

It's at about 1:30 or so in this video that I linked previously.

Clearly I need to actually watch that whole video.

Killing Ingward with the crossbow and binoculars was fantastic and the darkwraiths did make for much better farming. I stopped at ten chunks, enough to max out my Lightning Light Crossbow and take my shield to +12. Also farmed up the rest of the red chunks I needed and then some, so both of my clubs are maxed out now.

Bed of Chaos did something pretty neat just now. I tried for the jump as normal, got interrupted, and then as I was trying to line up the jump again it scooped me onto the ramp very nicely and saved me the trouble. Thanks! With those souls the flame is maxed out too and I'm in pretty good shape. I may do the optional Anor Londo bosses next... we'll see.

Made it to Gwyn yesterday. so it's time to tie up loose ends. Priscilla and her much more lethal level went down today; once again, the crossbow carried me through along with the fog and hawk rings. The chicken ladies are just too lethal if you're trying to get through it with minimal deaths and still collect a majority of the items. Luckily, the crossbow was able to eliminate the two dark ember ambushers from the walkway that leads to the ember, and it also two-shotted the majority of the toxic spewers since I don't really have a weapon with reach.

I'm fed up with image hosting options today, so not going to post screenshots, but I really want to stress how much easier it is to aim the crossbow with the hawk ring (straighter trajectory) and the fog ring (see through your character so you can shift aim accordingly).

Do you not use the binos? I found that they work pretty great.

Also, sorry if you've already answered this, but are you on NG or NG+? And also, how did you find the DLC?

Boy, Priscilla's difficulty was sure exaggerated to me. First of all one fire orb to the butt got the tail off. Second, I never turned her visible again, I just whaled away in her general direction, healed occasionally, and then she died.

You monster! Have you no shame!

I do use the binos. But what I found was that after firing I had trouble verifying in what direction and by how much I was missing. With the fog ring, I can see through my number one obstacle. This isn't important for flat shots but if you're doing angled shots at crow persons on rooftops it helps a lot. Especially since one of them seems to have all kinds of invisible walls.

NG. Haven't gone into DLC. I'm sure it will be slow and pyro-reliant, as the split damage of the elemental weapons whiffs on the forest enemies and I am uncomfortable with the range of my two main weapons against the humanity ghosts. I don't anticipate huge problems with bosses other than Kalameet, but I suppose Manus could be a handful.

Ah, gotcha. For my part I just availed myself of that shortcuts video, which made Painted World a snap.

Sanctuary Guardian was super easy for me, which I kind of expected. Artorias is being about the normal amount of a pain so far.

I'm methodically clearing levels for the most part, as I'm curious about how the limitations of SL1 affect you with different enemies. Large enemies remain about as difficult (as do bosses) but mobs of small enemies are pure murder, and when you have potential for mobbing and one shotting as with the crow women (or the forest people) it's a real mess. But I'm trying to get all of the items so I can drop things for people when I theme invade them.

What shield did you use? If you want to give coop a whirl, I definitely want to for Kalameet at least.

Tower Kite. I thought about investigating higher lightning defense options but it was easy enough to just dodge the lightning, block the head butts, and combust away.

As for Kalameet, yes I definitely am interested in co-op. I will leave him alive until we can arrange it.

Beat Artorias in probably ~20-25 tries. Pretty tough! I'm not sure if he was harder than Ornstein and Smough, but it was close. Anyway I just now made it to Oolacile Dungeon. The bloathead funhouse was one of the trickiest non-boss parts of the game until I remembered about the crossbow, which was a real lifesaver. That took some time though because I haven't used it in a little while and I'm still not accustomed to considering the ranged option. Don't really mind though, because this is pretty cool:



No idea what I'll use them on, if anything, but it's still fun.

I recommend themed armors for invasions of questionable practicality. Don't run away from me, the Balder Knight just wants to give you a hug!

Huh. So while trying out my SL1 hunter run, I stumbled across something that y'all prolly already figured out... but it was new to me, damnit!

Upgrading the drake sword (for classes that can both get it & wield it once they have it) is actually a pretty good idea.

It does feel weird to spend dragon scales upgrading that sucker, but then again... what else am I gonna spend them on in the early game? Or ever, for that matter?

Edit - lol. I just checked the stats for the various classes, and it looks like exactly two classes can both get it* and wield it: The hunter & the warrior. So... this tip might not be quite as cool as I thought it was.

*Unless you have *way* more patience than I do & are willing to try to get it with a crossbow.

Armor! Upgrade your armor, Luke!

Upgrading the drake sword at any time, for any reason, is a terrible idea.
If you're going to do an SL1/starting-class-level run, none of the starting classes can use the drake sword 1h, and if you're going to 2h a weapon, any of the other upgradeable(and elemental-able) ones are far better choices.
If you're going to level up anyway, literally anything is better to spend dragon scales on than the drake sword, and if you do upgrade the drake sword, you're going to have to farm drakes for scales later(if you want to use dragon weapons, such as the Obsidian Greatsword or Moonlight Greatsword), which is a significant pain in the hindquarters.

In the long run, probably. But there's a pretty large window (all the way up until you meet the Giant Blacksmith in Anor Londo... and possibly beyond, depending on your setup) where the drake sword is a great go-to weapon if you need a chunk of physical damage, and don't mind doing the "switch to 2 handed use" dance when you want to actually strike.

Plus its 2-handed R2 attack is really, really useful. Espeically if you're a low-health, crappy-armor-wearing SL1 character.

Plus, it gives its fire & magic resistances even when you're ineffectively single-hand wielding it, which is nice.

Oh, definitely. If you're doing a normal run, upgrading the drake sword is a *terrible* idea, no argument there.

Another helpful tip for SL1 characters: if your class can't use magic, then make sure to free Grigg's ASAP, then kill him. He drops the Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring, which is *super* helpful. And besides... you don't have a lot of ring choices in the beginning anyways.

Additional tip for pretty much anyone:
You can get the key that frees Griggs by killing the male undead merchant. So don't waste souls buying it! Just buy the Bottomless box off him, any weapons or armor you want, then assassinate him. It's what the Gods would want you to do.

If you can use the Drake Sword, you can use the Claymore. That about settles it, I think.