Dark Souls

Considering there is no upper limit on who can be invaded by a forest covenant member I'm highly skeptical that's the case.

I had no idea this game could be so terrifying. Like climbing a ladder while wearing a Hollow Warrior Waistcloth.

Sorry to contradict you, but it absolutely isn't. I've specifically asked hosts there both as a summon(don't judge...) and as invader, and they've been on NG+ when I haven't. The forest is infamous for being no restrictions, no rules, anything goes, and being designed as such so a Forest Hunter invader might one time invade a level 1, the next a level 700+. Normal Darkwraith and Darkmoon level restrictions still apply, but NG+ doesn't matter at any time.
There is no NG+* restriction for anything except gravelording, which is just a hard limit placed to ensure that nobody below NG+ gets the black phantom enemies(NG players still get infection messages and can invade the gravelord if they find his sign). The game director didn't want to totally discourage players on their first playthrough. I'll admit, I'd be kinda frustrated if my first ever game was suddenly full of horrible monsters who'd oneshot me every time. Kinda sucks for NG gravelords, though.

How long did you stay on the NG+ character, and did you try to get summoned immediately after logging on to it? The game populates its list of IP addresses "connected" to your world a little wonkily, as described here.

I started a faith(ish) alt. Man, the straight sword of astoria almost makes me not care about the drake sword right off the bat. I'm already at 16 str and 12 dex; I figured I'd level strength enough to equip the drake sword because the distinct lack of stam and the distance of getting good offensive miracles means I will need to lean on melee somewhat. So I'll get some stam (not sure how much) and then a bunch of faith. I assume you can stack miracles the way you can sorcery?

I feel the Drake Sword is a n00b sword. Use if your first time to help you get over that initial hump, but after that you don't need it. I used it only for my first character and haven't bothered with it since, only getting it on my sorcerer for the achievement.

That's more or less true but it still does more damage ATM than anything else. Also, I wanted to see if I could duplicate my super secret hellkite kill (spoiler: I failed).

It's fine, but the truth is that most weapons +5 will be in the 170-230 range and you can choose your moveset (and you would never really choose the Drake Sword's). I think the reason it's so good for new players has more to do with how long it takes a new player to work their way through those early areas than anything else, because it blows away everything before you get to upgrade things but after your first playthrough you usually find yourself upgrading things almost right away, sometimes even before killing any bosses. So I haven't really bothered with the Drake Sword on most of my characters... it would be different if it were lying around somewhere but taking the time to shoot the tail off is a pain in the ass and I could easily collect my early-game weapon of choice and upgrade it to +5 in the same amount of time. I did use it on my sorcerer because it let me funnel every single soul into either intelligence or new spells and because melee combat was such an afterthought anyway, though.

Also fwiw I think Astora's Straight Sword is potentially decent for a faith character. Not outrageously good or anything, but if you were pushing strength and dex a little bit with highish faith you could get it to around 450 AR easily enough which is very respectable. I think it plays a role in that kind of build by being available as your divine weapon without requiring white titanite, which is better used for occult since that ends up just doing more damage in most or all cases. I'd say it's to faith builds what the Silver Knight Straight Sword is to dex builds; you take a somewhat worse moveset from what you'd probably use otherwise in exchange for much easier upgrading, and that's just fine.

No argument there. But I'm not going to be ready to upgrade anything for a bit longer, I suspect. 15 end and 19 faith. I think I'll start putting my sign near the gargoyles and see if I can go ahead and reduce the faith requirement since I'm one away fron being able to use lightning spear (I will then desperately need attunement; I started cleric).

I do agree the real benefit is picking the moveset that suits you. My strength guy (well, he's str 24 end 30 right now but I think I may start pushing strength) is using Zwei but I'm not super thrilled with it. It's so slow (otoh, the R2 attack is so f-ing hilarious and I've gotten pretty good with the timings on both attacks, but it gave me a little trouble against Gap dragon, where I basically wiffed a lot as I dodged away from trampling limbs and thought "and now I can slice it, oh shit it ran by again").

I simply marvel at it's power so early. I have no earthy idea what I'd want to use father into the game (I mean, besides occult, not that I new that before).

I ditched Astora's straight sword fairly quickly with my faith build. I think I got it up to +3 before abandoning it. I got the gargoyle halberd and was going to take that to occult +5 so I made it divine and pretty soon it was better than the straight sword, plus it had better range.

Well, yeah. Like I said it's not amazing, and if you're inclined to use halberds or whatever it's probably not going to perform all that well by comparison. I just think it's a reasonable alternative to other straight swords.

I will not read 133 pages to see if someone has compiled a guide or tips or how to make the camera not wonky as shit with a mouse and keyboard. Could someone maybe link them or tell what I could search for? I bought the game 1 hour ago and know next to nothing.

Read the first post for that and similar stuff and see if it's covered. In this case, the best answer is "use a controller," but the second-best answer if you don't like that one is that there's a mod linked in the first post for better mouse and keyboard controls.

I was going to say "use a controller", but, yeah.

The camera is pretty wonky no matter what set-up you're using... learning to anticipate the camera's movements & control it is one of the biggest skills that players gain as they become good at the game.

You'll probably want to switch to a console-style controller ASAP, though. The game is pretty strongly designed for it; I can't imagine how you'd set up a mouse + keyboard to give the ease of functionality that a controller delivers.

So the improved resolution on the (fixed) PC version occasional reveals things that I missed when I played on the PS3, like the fact that the ground at the bottom of New Londo is literally made of dead people. Pretty metal! Kind of creepy too.

What wonkiness are you talking about? I haven't had any since I disabled that "make the camera wonky" option ages ago.

I think there's still room to be critical of camera issues at a number of points in the game that you just don't notice once you've been playing it for a long time, specifically close quarters/obstructions generally, the old bow aim vs bulky armor problem, and areas like the roof walkways in Anor Londo and walking out of the firekeeper soul room in New Londo. They're not a huge deal but are probably magnified in m+k.

I like the move set, actually, especially for PvP, but the damage output is so terrible that I think the initial scarcity of twinkling titanite makes it a poor choice even for faith builds. Split damage and low damage is a recipe for failure regardless of its initial slight advantage over unupgraded gear. YMMV.

The caveat to that is if you have the stats for it already it might serve as your divine weapon to clear the catacombs initially, since even low damage is preferable to respawning skeletons. But only if you're in a real hurry. Again I really think investing the twinkling in other early access items is going to increase your survivability much more, and the gargoyle halberd is such an excellent default divine weapon for so many builds that it's hard to see past it.

Exactly. By now I automatically adjust for the sometimes bizarre or inconvenient camera motions. But when I first started, the camera was my second worst enemy. My number one worst enemies were cliffs. I had a *major* love affair with cliffs. If there was a cliff within 50 yards, odds were 50/50 that I'd be going over it within the next minute.

What makes it especially a default divine weapon in your opinion? It's a fine weapon overall but I'm unaware of anything that makes it especially well-suited to divine.

Another tail cutting tip: for Priscilla, a single Chaos Fireball thrown at her tail before you start combat will get you her dagger. I had a fully upgraded flame, Bellowcrest ring, and the dusk crown. I'm not sure what the minimum flame upgrade level is for this trick to work.

The calculators told me so. It has the highest divine damage output for a weapon that doesn't require an investment in strength, and you get it after the 'first' boss.

Charles, I'd make fun of you for the crest stuff, but the inscription on the back of my iPad 3 says

"If only Androids could be
so grossly incandescent"

so I can't really talk. :) Good luck, and post the results here!

To bring in two complementary phrases from the game, it could be "Laudare Sol, Vereor Nox" (roughly "praise the sun, fear the night"). It seems nicely symmetrical to me and also it makes use of the only latin in the game that I remember offhand.

I really meant why divine, not why the GH. Doesn't it have some of the highest damage output for little stat investment in any stripe?

Rhea says that when you talk to her in the church. And by "that," I mean the latin phrase "vereor nox," not the English equivalent.

Did you see a pendant and some humanity on the altar of the church after that? That's kind of the bad end of her story. But yeah, her story is really cool and complex, and you could easily miss all of it and forever see Petrus as nothing more than a random vendor.

Did I ever tell you guys about my first Dark Souls character that accidentally firebombed Rhea, Petrus, and her whole entourage? I had to kill the whole crew with a very carefully planned guerrilla war all around Firelink shrine. This was before I read the Internet and leaned I could forgive my sins and reset aggro. I tried to talk to one of her henchmen and hit the use item button by mistake, which happened to be a firebomb. It was totally like that Penny Arcade comic, where the guy is like "Don't light them on fire, don't light them on fire"