Not that much, but maybe enough. Now that I won't have to juggle GMW I'll give PW a shot. Another upside is that without the need for GMW I can move the catalyst to the right hand, which feels more intuitive to me at the moment anyway. I saw somewhere that the Uchigatana doesn't benefit from 2-handing. Is that accurate? Does attack power change in your stats the moment you 2-hand? I never actually looked at those numbers with/without 2-handing. If not, that's another button combination removed from the juggling, haha!
Bear in mind that if you use both PW and GMW they'll both be extended by the Lingering Dragoncrest Ring, which is some pretty cool synergy. No. Every weapon benefits from two-handing. What you read was probably someone who was confused by the fact that two-handing both increases damage and lowers the strength requirement for weapons, which leads some people to incorrectly think that two-handing a weapon actually increases your strength and that's where the extra damage comes from. But that's completely false. You can test this yourself very easily by hitting something with your Uchigatana one-handed and then two-handing it and watching the damage go up when you hit them again.
Gah, the Lingering is the one I don't have yet; I'm wearing the Bellowing plus Crown of Dusk instead, and now totally out of souls, hah. I guess 20k shouldn't take long if I can avoid dying foolishly to Darkwraiths ... I'll try that after a few more attempts. Now that I have 8 spears maybe I'll see how well that + lightning uchi work.
*pant pant pant pant pant* Jesus. I don't ... have this kind of concentration 2 hand now, soul spear now, soul mass now, dodge dodge oh shit close in close in fuck where's my shield AH GET OFF MY HEAD YOU FUCKER soul spear GAH OMG YOU'RE ALMOST DEAD DON'T FUCK THIS UP I did it. * passes out.
The trick to it is that 2h increases damage relative to the Str-based scaling (for the weapons best suited to 2h) and a base number. So Str-oriented weapons tend to get a lot more in terms of damage, and that gets better with high strength characters. The uchigatana will still benefit in terms of damage, but relatively modestly. This gets especially interesting if you are doing a lot of backstabs and parries, where the 2h difference between strength weapons and others gets more pronounced iirc. The main advantage of 2h is often the difference in the moveset and the effect on poise. For instance, the humble reinforced club goes from a limited but effective damage dealer to a poise-crushing machine in the transition from 1h r1 to 2h1, to the point where with certain poise reliant-enemies I'd take it over a much better damage dealer.
So I've jumped back in to this. And killed the Capra Demon on my 4th ever attempt. I will now proceed to bang my head against a brick wall for 32 hours to make up for it.
I struggled against Capra Demon in my new alt last night too. I definitely understand the need for a high stability shield for that fight. Last night, I had the Dragon Crest shield, but I was conserving my Twinkling Titanite, so it wasn't upgraded at all. Finally made it past on the 4th or 5th try. I'm really happy with the build and gear on my new alt. So far I have a Boar Tusk Helm and a Black Knight Shield that have dropped (of course, I had to put like 10 soft humanity on to ensure the latter one). I upgraded my Faith and Dex just enough to be able to weild Astora's Straight Sword, which I think I like more than the Drake Sword for the early game. And otherwise I've just been focusing on STR, END and VIT. Things feel so pure so far! Next step will be to upgrade the shield with the 8 pre-blighttown Twinkling Titanite I've got my hands on, and possibly upgrade a weapon to +10. I'm thinking the Claymore.
I might. I have it now, so I could go that route immediately. I'm not sure I like it though. It's so slow!
This is true, but if you're going STR most of the weapons that scale well with it will be slow. The Zwei is a great intro because it has that ridiculous R2 attack that flattens ... well, a lot of things. Most things, in fact. It was my gateway to other STR-based weapons that may be less sheer fun, but end up more efficient damage wise.
It speaks to my experience with high school quarterbacks that I don't know whether or not this is a compliment.
He's fat and loud?* That seems rather rude. :D *that is seriously the extent of my knowledge about John Madden.
Today's postings gave me the itch to hop back in, and I continue to be blown away by how different everything feels going through on NG+. When I left off, I had just rang the first bell. Today, in the space of a couple of hours, I plowed all the way on through the Lordvessel, including taking some time to do a bit of forest PvP and knocking off Lautrec (who I could have sworn I did not let out of his cage this time). Bosses go down fast, I know quick ways to get where I want to go, I know areas that can be skipped (TTFN, Depths, not ever going back). Everything feels so much more open.
I also did not let Lautrec out, only to find out he came out and murdered my Firekeeper anyway. I guess that's not a thing you can avoid by inaction. However, in my INT/DEX game Leah is still alive and in the Shrine (I'm at Seath's place) since I murdered all the White Way bastards. Mind you she's hostile to me, but still alive! :D And yeah, that was the most amazing thing to me in NG too. After I did the obligatory Taurus I paused and said to myself "Wait a minute. I can go pretty much ANYWHERE now (barring bells and such)." It was kinda eye-opening. The more I play, the more I wonder if NG is the "right" way to play, or if perhaps SL1 is. Looking forward to my INT/DEX getting into NG, that's for sure. My 2 others that are already there aren't fun enough. :P
"Reah". Also, if you get a dark hand as a drop, be sure and use it on her before killing her. That's 7 free humanity for the price of feeling like a complete bastard. I'm at the point where I generally fight her pals in the Firelink, because I'd much rather deal with them there than in the Tomb. I have no idea why it took me so long to catch on to that.
Those are the same guys? I had no idea. Sadly I think it's too late for me :/. When do they leave Firelink, after ringing the first bell?
It's Japanese :P Reah/Leah is interchangeable. Yeah, I just randomly decided to see what would happen, since that one of them going mmm hhmmm hmhmm sounded like he was halfway hollow already. Turned out to be the right choice. 7 humanity's not enough. I didn't save her just to kill her later. :P
You don't have to kill her. NPCs don't aggro when you Dark Hand them, or at least she and Petrus don't.
I've found the Depths to be surprisingly fast and easy on subsequent playthroughs. If you drop down the hole behind the butcher, and then work your way back to kill the caster, it feels like a really small location. I must admit, I usually skip the basilisk area cause screw those guys.
It was one of the few areas that I never felt like I fully grokked on my first playthrough, and I didn't want to face stumbling blindly through those sewers again, even though I've got plenty of curse stones at the ready. I grabbed the large ember; I don't recall there being anything else down there worth getting, so there's no real reason to head back.
Am I the only one that just makes a beeline for the bonfire? Pyromancy trainer and also the first Kirk invasion if you want his armor.
There's the spider shield, if you don't start as a Bandit, which is helpful in Blight Town as it completely blocks all poison and has decent fire protection as well. And Gaping Dragon is a really easy boss, who drops 30,000 souls. I did that on my first playthrough and it felt way longer. I think what makes sense is to go back to the Asylum first to get the Rusty Iron Ring and the Crest Shield, then hit the depths. You can kill the giant rat trivially from above with arrows or fire, and then you can open the shortcut immediately. Then there's nothing really between you and the caster except easy rats. When you get to the caster, you can switch to the Crest Shield briefly to protect from his magic attacks. After that, you'll come upon the bonfire and you can head right to the boss immediately without doing anything else.
STR builds might enjoy the greatax that is treasure down there. My first time through the Depths mimics those feeling (ugh, never again), but now I'll go get the loot and kill the gaping dragon and hoof it out of there. It's not a terrible place and if you know the shortcuts it's really, really quick.
Actually, I was lowballing it. Apparently it's 12 soft humanities for the dark hand and another 7 item humanities when you off her. Right with that you won't need to farm humanity until you get to Manus' Abyss.
I've already got two spider shields from last playthrough and I'm finished with Blighttown (at least, with the blowdart assholes; still need to traverse it to hit up Great Hollow at some point). 30,000 souls I could take or leave.
Ah yeah, that's right. In my head it was just "big number" because the game has been really stingy with the Dark Hands for me lately.
If it's NG+ it's going to be a fair bit more than 30000. Regardless, the reason to go back is to get over that unfamiliarity hump with fully upgraded gear and enemies that aren't a waste of your time in terms of soul drops. I learned upper blight town in NG+, early on, and that gave me a superpower relative to many in the Dark Souls community who spent forever with their tail between their legs over a few ladders and some darts.
Hmmm. Started playing this last night. I found that the best way to minimize my frustration was to play something else more unforgiving before Dark Souls. The Tayla missions in Privateer -- long-ass trips through enemy-infested space, with no landings allowed until the destination or you fail the mission -- were sufficiently curse-inducing so that I merely chuckled manfully when I was summarily slaughtered by the way-too-soon boss in the Undead Asylum.
Yeah. I did probably 20 hours or so in Demons Souls, but gave it up as a bad job. Which is why I waited until Dark Souls was $15 bucks and taking up time otherwise reserved for THE BACKLOG Now, I'm thinking that From should take my $15 and give it to the guy who made DSFix ;)
scharmers, really take a quick look at the guide jeffd put together for people starting out in Dark Souls. It covers a lot of the basics that a number of us learned in the Christmas Steam/Amazon sale buys we did. Really a lot of useful information that the game is pretty obscure about at times. http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/guide-the-newbies-guide-to-the-first-two-hours-or-so.4937/ And welcome aboard!
Already read that guide. Wish I would have read it last night. Figure my current playstyle was too much bullrushing through the castle and not enough harvesting/grinding, so I'm trying again with a new character tonight. Plus I didn't know how to jump last night -- the Undead Asylum is a piss poor tutorial.
