Dark Souls SL1 / Starting Build Discussion

Yup, that's exactly it. Once you are flush with chunks you can soup up everything in your shields and armor, which makes SL1 a lot less painful. I don't find getting to Oolacile township all that practical as a source of core upgrades (ie getting your basic armor and shield to +6/+10), for which the leeches in Btown are well suited for any enterprising farmer with a fog ring/rusty ring to sprint from the bonfire and then a gold ring/rusty ring to clean them out. If nothing else, the mass drop of five green shards is handy for making that one divine weapon you'll need and bonus fire weapons for experiments.

Ultimately, what I end up doing is silver ring/gold ring farming the darkwraiths for chunks, and then investing the souls I get into large shards at the giant blacksmith, but obviously that latter option is about as practical as Oolacile for much of the game.

I mean, I would love to go to Oolacile township, but I'm going to want most of my gear at +9 and my shields at +14 long before I get to that point in the gating of the game. YMMV.

Yeah, this is probably true at SL1 actually. I'm trying to remember as this was over a month ago for me, but I definitely did have both of my clubs and my shield maxed out by the time I beat Artorias and I guess my Lightning Light Crossbow was at +4. My pants were the only normal armor I had on, and they were pretty low, probably only shard upgrades at that point. I think the shield is probably the only must-upgrade-before-Oolacile though, because you're going to be using pyromancy on the bosses anyway (or at least that's what I did).

Still: I still have most of those large shards, because I spent time farming them beforehand. So it really comes down to whether you'd rather push to get to Oolacile relatively early and have a harder time because of relatively underpowered gear or spend time farming it up and then not having a very compelling use for the easy pickings you'll eventually get.

Yeah, it's tricky to be sure just because your margin of error at SL1 is so much slimmer. Long term, though, I think that I've been wasting my souls with large shards and that small titanite is probably the only one that isn't more cost effective to farm once you've got access to the big farming areas. I just get nervous every time I break 200k or so with souls and want to put them somewhere.

It would be a lot easier if Darkwraith weren't such a no brainer and Frampt such a pain in the ass to keep around to break up chunks.

Once you've cleared much of the game, though, I think there's near infinite value in experimenting with all of the different armor combos. I love invading people with nothing but +9 armor that people rarely use outside of "bad" new player choices.

As long as you're using a weapon that will kill them in one backstab (I'm using a +5 Lightning Battle Axe) and a shield with reasonable stability, yeah, they're pretty easy. Even with a lower damage weapon it would just mean a follow up hit or another backstab.

You can easily get enough chunks for a single lightning weapon without setting foot in NLR. This playthrough I didn't even both doing great hollow, and you don't need a +5 lightning weapon, +3 or even less would probably do it.

The question you asked was "I know one thing I'm *really* not looking forward to, is farming titanite chunks. Any SL1 tips for that? "

In an Sl1 playthrough, the only thing that chunks are going to help you with damage-wise is a lightning weapon, because you don't have the stats to make the normal upgrade paths worthwhile past the obligatory +10 (and even if you did, it would mean access to lower NLR). Lightning requires access to the blacksmith in Anor Londo. By the time you get to him there are five chunks that you can absolutely guarantee for yourself without going to NLR:

(1) from the Black Knight in Undead Burg
(1) from trading rubbish to Snuggly
(2) from the giants in Sen's Fortress
(1) in a chest right outside the AL blacksmith

There's also another guaranteed chunk in Great Hollow, plus 10 lizards. You also have a decent shot at chunks from the other lizards you come across. At minimum, by the time you can make a lightning weapon at all, you can make a +3 one, and with a little luck you can get a +4, or just go right to +5 if you kill stray demon and use his slab.

Prior to that, fire is definitely your best bet, though you'll probably want a +10 regular (I used the one I had earmarked for lightning upgrades) or +5 divine weapon (you'll probably want one for Nito eventually) to kill Quelaag.

Here's a video of the farming path I use for chunks in NLR. This was mostly a test run of Bandicam, but I figured I'd share the results.



There's one Darkwraith that I skip, the one around the corner from the Four Kings boss fog, because he tends to come with three ghosts, and I find it quicker to just ignore him. I also use fire orbs to kill Darkwraiths 3 and 4 since I pulled them both at once, but it's possible to pull them individually and backstab them (or pull them both and backstab them if you're feeling brave and/or lucky). It's actually a little fast than I thought, almost exactly four minutes.

I dunno. I still found them pretty easy on my SL1 run. Once you understand their moves & attack patterns (which I'm sure you do) it's not hard to backstab 'em.

Well you either parry/backstab them or nuke them with pyromancy, either of which should one- or two-shot them. I mean, it's a sliding scale. There's not a lot in the game that's like easy easy at SL1, but as far as endgame enemies go, darkwraiths are probably the easiest apart from bloatheads.

ProTip: make a divine or magic crossbow. I found out while working on my upgrade guide that crossbows get roughly the same benefit from divine and magic as they do from fire and lightning (besides the ability to get the most out of lightning bolts, but honestly I found them pretty underwhelming anyway), so they're an excellent outlet for those materials which are otherwise useless. I think divine is probably empirically the best option because of the added utility, but then again blue chunks are the most convenient to farm, so it's up to you. But either way you save yourself the trouble of using up the in-demand normal chunks or the serious-pain-in-the-balls red ones.

Not that it's relevant to Charles' question at this point, but since we're talking about particulars, there are two routes I adopt, and both with humanity 3+ and both covetous rings.

One is the "I am in a reasonable soul level to be summoned here, so I want to increase my odds of that", in which case I clear the ghosts on the top and in that first room to get transient curses (usually around a minute or two), and then drop down to do my darkwraith route (which cancels the summon sign at the top, unfortunately).
-That starts with 1 darkwraith in that lightly flooded area, then I put my sign down at the base of the stairs of the chapel. Then I kill the darkwraith by the chest by pulling him out (typically I nail him with a crossbow bolt or a throwing dagger or something if I can spare the space because I don't want to run out there and run back). That's 2 darkwraiths.
-Then I run up the stairs and just into the chapel on the left side of the door, and depending on who shows up first either pull back and kill the first chapel darkwraith or kill the two ghosts and then kill him. Then I run in, kill the second chapel darkwraith (we're at 4 dead now) and the third and final ghost.
-Then I go around the corner to the right, kill the 5th darkwraith, and then drop down on the left side of the 4k entry to (usually) slow walk into a backstab of the 6th darkwraith.
-Then it's time for the main building, where I run just in the door to make line of sight with the darkwraith on the right, which I pull and kill in the doorway or the flooded area. Then I walk to the left, pull the first one on the left stable thingie, and kill him in the doorway as well. Then I get the second one in the right stable (7,8,9 darkwraiths ah ah ah). Then I take out the one just beyond the next doorway, usually pulling him into the building so I don't cancel my summon sign til the last minute. Sometimes you need to hit a wall if you're in light armor and he'll oblige, or again crossbow/knife. (10 darkwraiths).
-Then I sprint through that doorway to the last darkwraith by the wyverns (no 11), which cancels my summon sign. No big deal, as I then homeward bone back and start again.

The main change if I don't think summoning is viable is that I cut out all of the top ghosts and the chapel, apart from the easily pulled first darkwraith. That means I'm still hitting 8 darkwraiths and going about twice as fast. It really hinges on whether you have a weapon that can one shot backstab, or if you need to soften them up, then backstab. What you don't want is to waste time double backstabbing, imo, if you don't need that much additional damage, but it really hinges on the attack patterns they go for what's more efficient. Parrying them is really easy with their dash attack, less easy if they are coming for you from up close since you might get kicked or r2'd. Parry does give you additional souls, even more than the bonus for a backstab overkill; in NG it's about 1800-1900 if I recall correctly vs the 1440 or so you get with just backstab and silver ring.

You can actually shoot that guy w/out opening the wall. (Just stand to the far right of the wall, and you'll have a clear line of sight to him. I think you can even get a lock on him.) 9 times out of 10, he'll run off the bridge to his own death. (The other time he'll open the wall himself and you can kill him normally.) If I remember correctly, you don't get any chunks when he commits suicide, but you do get some free souls.

Have you done it lately? I think they increased the drop rate in the last patch. I get 10-15 a run usually. :/

Artorias down. Definitely the hardest SL1 fight so far, having cleared all the non-DLC content except Painted World and Gwyn. The small margin for avoiding damage is exacerbated by the fact that he leaves you so few opportunities to counterattack without leaving yourself potentially open to attacks that will one-shot you. I only attacked him when he did the bigger leaping attack and the straight-ahead sword charge, which both generally left him vulnerable long enough for me to strike and back or roll out. As a result he was the second longest fight for me after Stray Demon, and Stray took a long time mostly because I was using a fairly weak weapon and only hitting him for like 60-70 damage.

Co-op Kalameet with me pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

Well, LesJarvis and I just wrapped up thirty or so attempts on Kalameet, and here's what we learned: screw Kalameet.

Goddamnit, I wanted in. I figured 3 on 1 would be no problem.

Don't worry, you'll have your chance. None of those thirty attempts were successful. Not sure about it being no problem though. He has a lot of one-shots. Anyway I'm happy to do it as a threesome another night if you guys are.

I'm in.

I added you to my steam list, although I guess I can only communicate with bags via the xbl messages he doesn't read.

So I went back to Stray Demon with my +5 Fire Reinforced Club and took him down after about 4 tries. Maybe I'm overestimating how difficult SL1 is going to be, but that seems like a fairly easy boss to me. I think Quelaag took me about that many tries, and that was with Maneater helping.

With the exception of a couple points (screw you, Anor Londo archers) I didn't find my SL1 run all *that* difficult. Fun & challenging, yes. I had to learn how to play in a new way. But it wasn't bash-my-head-against-a-wall difficult. Then again, Dark Souls really isn't about bashing your head against a wall most of the time. It's generally too well designed for that.

Disclaimer: I didn't do any of the DLC content on my SL1 character. I don't know why... I just didn't. I've heard that those areas are *much* harder for SL1 folks.

Your mistake was assuming I can read.

No, but you've send me XBL messages? I don't think I've seen any :/.

This has been my experience. O&S was the hardest thing in the main game (I've done everything but Gwyn so far and I seriously doubt Gwyn will be even close to as hard as that), and 4K was tricky, but the rest of it wasn't so much incredibly difficult as it just made me learn some new skills and think through possible ways of doing things a little more. But Artorias and Manus are both very tough and Kalameet is ungodly difficult. I decided to make my first SL1 playthrough a kill-all-the-bosses run, otherwise I'd be in NG+ by now.

I have not found a single slab there the entire time I have been farming and I have probably run that easily 20 times.

I pull the extra dude and there are 2 beyond the stables. That one right outside the door and another nearer to the drakes.So what 11 total?

I counted ten just above Charles' post. I have several characters that have gotten slabs off them. I would say where the "bonus slab" from the crystal lizards in the great hollow ranges from 1-3, this one ranges from 0-1 if you have good item find (gold ring and 3+ humanity). Only once iirc have I gotten multiple slabs in one run. You have ample experience in other places optimizing your loot runs so I won't belabor the point, but it really is very lucrative overall if you can squeeze in the silver ring alongside the gold.

I have run 20+ runs with 410 item find (gold ring and 10 humanity) and found 0 slabs.

Also this map indicates 11 dark wraiths: http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/1770/newlondoruins.jpg which matches up with what I remember from my runs.

Yeah, I miscounted around 4-6. Fixed it in my post. Anyway, I don't know what else to say except that my point was just that it's a real drop that happens to me often enough that I've come to hope for at least one per playthrough. Note that I'm typically going not in terms of runs but in terms of gear I need upgraded, so I'm guessing it's a fair bit more than 20 runs per character.It's marked as a "very rare" drop, fwiw.

If you want fairly certain titanite slabs (as opposed to "nice bonus but not counting on it), I suggest going to the Great Hollow crystal lizard run which takes about ten minutes while you're figuring it out, noticeably less with the advantage of PC load times and the like once you know what you are doing. My average there is 2-3, easily, and I've never gotten 0. Other than that, the guaranteed sources are the Stray Demon, the waterfall by Kalameet, and Siegmayer/Sieglinde if you are fortunate enough not to mess up his path. Good luck.

The lizards do not like me, and of the 60 or so I've killed, not a one has given me a slab. Jerks.

I think I've had four total from Darkwraiths.

I finally got a slab off of the darkwraiths. Hooray +15 Scythe. BTW, this character was supposed to be a strength character, then a split str/dex character, and now has more dex than strength because I like the BSS and the Scythe so much.

Out of curiosity, were you wearing the gold ring/using soft humanity? Opinions are split on the degree to which they affect the quality of the drops, if at all. I always go with 3+ humanity and gold just to be on the safe side, but I guess I've been lucky.

Obligatory DARK SOULS*

*my STR character had neither the BKS nor the BKH drop. :/