I have PS3 Dark Souls. Does the DLC ever go on sale or it's going to be $15 for a long time? It's slightly cheaper for PC on Amazon. Do I want the PC version instead? Didn't Lizard King or someone have a post explaining what mods you need to get the PC version working well? I can't find that now.
Oh yeah, there it is. Thanks. I'm sure there's also been some discussion of PC vs XBox vs PS3 in this monstrosity of a thread, but if someone wouldn't mind doing a quick rundown of PS3 vs PC, I'd appreciate that.
I got both version but don't have the dlc on the ps3. Assuming you install dsfix and own a gamepad the pc version is all around superior. Better Graphics, more important stable fps and now with the last patch i believe summoning is equal. Since i got DS on the PC i never looked back.
I assumed the Mind Flayer was a... priscilla, I think they're called. The weird... things... on the ground floor of the prison in the Duke's Archive. The other three you named, though... yeah. Totally alien.
Pisaca, but I'm not sure how we know the name. The Duke's Tower did feel like a second attempt at making The Tower of Latria, just nowhere near as good. They substituted one creepy sound for another that didn't work as well plus it's a fraction of the length. Tower of Latria is probably the best level in Dark and half of Demon. I should really finish Demon's Souls some day.
I do like how the snakemen all run for the exit when the pisaca are released. "Hey, snakeman. Come here and let me kill you. ...wait, where are you going? Uh-oh." Unfortunately, the pisaca aren't fearsome enough once you've engaged them. The Duke's Tower would work better if they were tough enough that avoiding a fight was preferable to engaging them.
I really think the Dukes Archive/Crystal Caves are the worst parts of the game. I find the archive dull and surprisingly "normal" thematically compared to the rest of the game, reminiscent of Anor Londo but without the awesome views, and the caves are just annoying. The other level I find dull is the Oolacile abyss, which is kind of a tomb of giants redux. Great farming, but utterly boring.
The worst part of the game has to be Lost Izalith, in particular the bit filled with lava and dragon legs. It feels like the budget ran out somewhere around there, or they gave that section to an intern or something. Just horrible. Who thought that turning dragon legs into an enemy was a good idea, anyway? The archive has the interesting spinning stairways, a fairly creepy prison (even if it isn't up to the standards of the Tower of Latria), and Big Hat Logan. It isn't my favorite area, but I have no problems with it. The Crystal Caves have an interesting gimmick with the invisible floors, seeing the natural habitat of the Moonlight Butterfly is interesting, and they're very short. (Which is good, since you have to run through the whole thing again every time you flub Seath.) I rather like the whole crystal-as-corruption motif as well, since most fantasy settings equate crystals with purity or perfection.
I was a big fan of Darkroot Garden the first time I encountered it and felt obligated to shift to light armor and the fog ring to navigate it appropriately. But when the DLC had me experience it in a totally different light, I knew for sure that was my favorite Dark Souls setting. Demon's Souls generally had more memorable level design. Latria and Boletaria especially were extraordinary settings, and while I can't claim to ever have loved them, 5-1/5-2 were both extraordinary feats of game balance alteration that only Tomb of the Giants can compare to. Even the gimmick boss was an ultimately empowering and "fair" experience relative to the shitfest that is Izalith and Bed of Chaos. What Dark Souls has more than anything is a sense of thematic unity and transition across an open world that feels genuinely connected. It means that while I value the individual aspects less than I did in its predecessor, the overall experience has a much deeper hold on me. That said, I would give anything to play Demons' with Dark Souls combat.
I'm confused the combat systems are nearly identical what is it you want in Demon's Souls that is only in Dark Souls?
Maybe the equipment upgrade paths? I looked at my Demon's trophy list and I don't have a lick of the weapons ones, and there were a tone. Sharpstone, cloudstone, poopstone? I don't remember a lick of that, either. Sometimes I feel like buying Demon's again and playing it because I've forgotten so much.
Poise and the relevance/balancing of armor in Dark Souls: In Demons', armor felt purely cosmetic with serious downsides if you wanted to do a heavier build, since you were just as vulnerable to stunlocking. Connected to that is the game being balanced around overall weight as a limiting factor for health regeneration and item carrying generally, which makes experimentation and situational application of heavy tools tedious. It shouldn't take me until well past level 100 to even consider doing anything with bits of heavier armor, and that's with an inordinate focus on endurance.I also really like the division between light, med, heavy armors down to the sounds and stamina regen penalties, and the way you can tailor it exactly to your weight allowance and aesthetic/tactical preferences. Shields: Demons' balance between Guard break and stamina was simpler. However, this is one case where I think they are on to something by adding more sophistication to the range of options in Deflection and Stability, and to a lesser extent in terms of parry windows across more fleshed out tiers. While the resulting system is more opaque and complex, it provides a foundation for streamlining down into something more transparent that affords a tactical range that I found more interesting than Demons', which seemed to tend towards more obviously optimal solutions that were only capped by PITA upgrade paths. Pacing: Combat in Demons' feels balanced entirely around <50% of that much reduced range of equip to carry weight. While original version of Dark Souls felt tilted that way at first due to the dark wood grain ring being completely ridiculous, its subsequent nerfing in patches made clear that there's a more tactically interesting series of steps from <25% to >50% options across the board. This also ties in to the actual speed of weapons and combos, which in Demons' had much tighter windows for your responses. Magic and Faith in Demons': Unlimited regen through items or patient use of the ring, a talisman that lets you cast both at the same time, pyro-like attacks being folded into magic. Those are all big differences to me, and I find the cost-benefit decisions in Dark Souls a lot more interesting (as well as the hard limits on NG capabilities in terms of number of casts). I still think there's a lot more room for improvement here, especially in making faith competitive in its own right, but I like where they are headed in terms of streamlining out options that are simply not much fun. Capped scaling and the mess of upgrade paths: Dark Souls represents an imperfect answer to the problems presented by Demons' scaling through 99 and the messy incentives in terms of the PvP arms race especially. But it's a start. Going back to Demons' Souls is really difficult. I love the settings and much about the game's raw originality in terms of level and enemy design. But after being in Dark Souls for so long, in Demons' I no longer feel in control of melee as a spectrum with give and take rather than a binary of win/lose, and as a more vague point I feel like I have a harder time figuring out what went wrong when it does.
Go back and play Demon's Souls. The combat is much quicker and significantly more finicky than Dark Souls. Dark Souls is an iterative improvement but a necessary one. Demon's Souls feels very different now.
Honestly, the encumbrance mechanics changes alone would make it difficult for me to go back to Demons (though it's true that you accumulated less stuff there; or that's what I remember anyway.
So I bought the PC version and the .exe would stop responding every time I tried to launch it. Verify files in steam, reboot, same issue. Tried running just games for windows live marketplace and that .exe stops responding immediately after I try to run it. So that seems to be the culprit. I don't seem to be able to uninstall that from control panel. Thoughts? Anybody have this issue? Using Windows 7.
You might find @Xaroc's tips linked in the OP for how he fixed his install on a windows 8 machine since they seem like good general practices for dealing with XBL problems. Alternately, the dark souls subreddit wiki now has a section on fixing PC installs.
The first site I found on a Google Search says to download the free Microsoft Flight on Steam to fix GFWL issues. Bizarre, but I'll give it a shot.
What a pain in the ass. How the fuck is Games For Windows Live literally the only program that I've tried to install that just flat out doesn't work in Windows 7? (Okay, there was Super Meat Boy, but that was an easy fix) It's made by Microsoft, who should know a thing or two about getting programs to work in Windows! Edit: Finally got it to work, but DSFix doesn't. Hope this will be worth it over going PS3.
I had to stick with DsFix 1.4 because the later versions seemed to have trouble with my setup for reasons I couldn't figure out. Pretty much the only thing I have on is the resolution upscale, though. source
The newbie in me is letting out a primal scream at seeing someone waltzing around with 5,000,000 souls.
Fun appearance note from reddit today: If you leave your first quiver slot empty and only put arrows or bolts in the second slot, it won't show up on your character.
The options are different, but mostly for higher end graphics cards that can really go out there. Like I said, I basically just use the resolution setting and the startup logo removal, and then it's pretty much gold. I tried both the HUD reducer and the field of view modification with no success, so I just leave them alone now. Somewhere after that version, he added an option that my humble 4890 balks at, and I can't be bothered to find it for no real gain.
Charles has just gifted me DARK SOULS. Thank you, Charles, you enabler. I am installing it now and will record my attempt to play the game in one of the DARK SOULS threads somewhere around here. P.S. My plan is the usual one: go in with no plan and knowing as little as possible. I expect this to go very smoothly.
I got this and got the controller. I have a couple of hours in it, but I'm not sure this is for me. I got to the Undead Burg, but I've probably run that area 10+ times now. The lack of bonfires is getting to me. I've managed to reach one in some tower, but outside there's the following: Directly outside - one archer, one swordsman The across a bridge being firebombed, 4 in a room Up some stairs, a fire bomber and 2 more Up a tower, one archer Down the tower, 3 guys with shields that you have to kill via ranged Up some stairs, one more guy Then it's into another tower, with either a guy who can one shot me (downstairs) or something else that killed me upstairs And that's just the mobs I'm taking on, never mind the dozen or so I'm now skipping or the ones that will occasionally aggro. I've died a dozen or more times and only made it to a big demon boss once, with no health potions and almost no health left. I'm getting no gear either. Truth be told, I'm not having much fun. It's tedious.
What's killing me? Undead guys with bombs, undead guys with swords, big boss mobs that can one shot me....stuff like that. And when I die, I go back to the last bonfire...which is a pretty fair ways back and respawns the enemies, which means I have to do it all over again. Not to mention that somehow my 10 healing potions have become 5, making it even harder to get through the area. Not really enjoyable at this stage.
There are a bunch of us playing through this game post x-mas in the Dark Souls subforum 'getting started thread. I too got stuck in pretty much this exact place and had the same frustrations. There are a few things that will probably help you advance further. Understanding the 'kindling' process at the bonfire that increases your health potions per life from 5 to 10. Understanding that remaining endurance determines the success of your blocks. Understanding that your endurance regenerates about five times faster with your shield down than up. Understanding that most enemies at this stage are very vulnerable to the shield block followed by immediate R1 attack. Understanding that keeping under 25.0 weight of worn gear improves your maneuverability substantially. The boss at the top of the tower is the 'right' way to go and can be 'cheesed' fairly easily with a few (3) of the dropping attacks from the ladder. Once you figure out how to get to the tower in fairly short order it is less arduous to die and repeat. When you do kill this boss guy if you explore carefully in the next section for gods sake don't miss that you can kick down a ladder back to the bonfire you are at now. You can wield even the most ludicrously large and seemingly two handed weapons one handed. For example, you can melee all of those guys in the section you are currently in with a little patience even at low levels and with a fairly puny weapon. Since you have a bow I assume you've found the merchant, it might be worth investing in a bigger weapon if possible, going from around fifty damage a hit to closer to 100 makes a massive difference on these early guys especially if you can go from killing in three or four hits to one or two.
I was hoping you can be more specific. What's going wrong, do you think? Are you using your shield and getting staggered? Having trouble dodging? What equipment are you using? Do you know what encumbrance level you're at? I'm not trying to hound you, these are all legit questions that the game doesn't really help you understand are legit. I don't know if you've perused the "Tell me how to get started" thread over in the dedicated forum; lots of great advice in there. With regards to the specifics: - The reason you only have 5 flasks is because you haven't kindled the bonfire in the Burg. Bonfires, by default, give you five flask refills. You should have kindled the one back at Firelink shrine, which is why you had ten. Kindling a bonfire takes one soft humanity, and requires that you be human (which requires you to reverse hallowing, which requires you to spend another humanity). That number next to your health bar? The big 00? That's your current humanity. You should have a few items in your inventory called humanity, they're consumables that will raise that number.
The general rule is that if it is important information then DARK SOULS prefers not to explain. Sometimes if it is feeling generous it will provide an illustrative and immediate death.
That first area is one of the hardest, I think, because there's so much you have to learn to get through it. But that learning ought to be enjoyable. Some things you can try: You can get your 10 estus flasks back by kindling the bonfire in the tower. To do this, use two humanity items to give you 2 inner humanity, then spend them at the bonfire to "reverse hollowing" to become human, and "kindle" to improve the bonfire, which increases the number of estus flasks it will give you. That first bonfire where the bird dropped you off came pre-kindled, which was why it gave you 10 flasks. Enemies that hide behind shields can be countered by kicking. Flick left stick forward and tap right bumper to kick. But curved swords and thrusting swords often have a different move instead of kick. Backstabbing. Let an enemy start their attack, avoid it, get behind them, with your shield lowered, letting go of the movement stick, and press right bumper. Watch the parrying tutorial from the first post. Pressing right bumper after doing various different things will do a different attack move, often faster or more powerful. Try attacking after rolling, after backstepping, and while sprinting. Try out different weapons. They all have different movesets, and you may find one that suits you more. Maybe a spear for long reach, or a fast weapon to interrupt them, or a heavy weapon to kill them in one hit. You can attack with thrusting swords while blocking. If you find a weapon you like, and you happen to have found some small titanite shards, you can take them back to the first bonfire, down the elevator to the ruins, and find a blacksmith, who will upgrade your weapon for you. If you explore the ruins or the graveyard, you can find some more weapons which you might like.
And by 'explore' he means suicide runs to grab the little light item packages during which skeletons will be guaranteed to murder you on a regular basis while you desperately struggle not to get stuck on gravestones :)
