Gear Discussion

Got questions about gear? Opinions about gear? Trolling about gear? Post it here!

What's the deal with raw weapons? I can understand crystal, but raw? In a world with +15 and crystal, raw is a solution without a problem.

Importing this discussion between me, Charles, and Hammett from a different thread:

Knight Leggings have comparable physical defense just with the shard upgrades, which are immediately purchaseable and also pretty cheap. Also really excellent poise, which DAT SKIRT lacks completely. More to the point though, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the Crimson Waistcloth; it's very good. It's just not omg-this-is-the-best-by-far-I-can't-believe-From-is-making-me-not-wear-shoes good.

Just poorly designed, I think. They should be the physical equivalent of elemental weapons--high base damage, no (or very little anyway) scaling. They need much higher base damage than they have now though, because as it is the scaling gets tanked and you get a few measly points of base damage added in return. This is something I really hope they fix in the sequel because raw weapons are completely useless now.

I'm kinda serious about using whatever you think looks cool or fitting for your character and let your playstyle evolve from that. Of course, I'm not at all interested in the PvP aspect of the game yet.

Well, aesthetics are probably the most important consideration for me too. I know I've outfitted some of my characters in gear that's pretty much just not very good for the sake of looks. Lately though I've been enjoying min/maxing weight and looks and stats together. It's a fun minigame.

Yeah, for instance I tried for a long time to "get" using the scimitar/falchion and used Quelaag's Chaos Blade for some time, but it's not working for me. It feels too weightless for me. So I've quit that and might try Server for a bit, but katanas are by far my favorite weaponry. Which is why going Total Stamina Regen with both the Grass Crest and the Cloranthy works really well imo. You want to get in a series of attacks for the Bleed effect to kick in.

My raw comment aside, I don't know why some of the gear exists (at least outside of lore reasons). Like magic/enchanted, divine/occult, fire/chaos, lightning/crystal (I don't get it either, but it make sense with the chart). I suppose I see the light/dark side of things, but in practice I don't see much difference between them. On top of that you have INT scaling magic/enchanted that is totally gimped by the butterfly horn and moonlight greatsword (at least providing you know this).

Fucking Dark Souls. I start a new character with the intent of focusing on a dexterity build. I kill the first black knight and the sword drops. Tempting, but I can deal with that. I then proceed to kill the black knight up in the tower. I'm all, "Come on, shield, come on shield!", but of course Dark Souls is all like, "NO U TAKE GREATSWORD NAO, HAVE FUN WITH STR BUILD, THXBYE, LOL!1!!"

Fucking Dark Souls.

So the "strength" guy has switched to Havel's over favor full time (so to speak). Right now he's wearing the thief mask, black leater armor, black leather gloves (iirc), and silver knight leggings. That + longbow, zwei, and silver knight shield puts him at something like 27.x/120.x. Should I be considering other gear? I should point out that not a single BK item dropped in all the available BK in the game sans Kiln and the one in the Catacombs. I'm heading there next (just got Gargoyle Halberd to divine +5). But I think I'm going to push his stats to where he can use the BKH, and maybe also the ginormous bow. He'll get more vit (20 currently) and maybe at some point more end for fancier armor.

That's a rough break with drops. I find that I get flooded with items if I carry as little as 1-3 soft humanity at all times.

If I were you, I would consider going even lighter on armor and looking at the heavy shields. They get a bad rap for lacking parry but they can be a real breath of fresh air to open up an easy stagger for a heavy weapon hit. I've even had good results in PvP with the humbler options just because people expect you to turtle rather than employ it selectively. Enemy pings off shield, 2h, smash.

The Dragonslayer bow is a lot of fun, but it's really tough to justify the weight. I keep it on call with my BKH character, but rarely carry it standard over a stronger shield or more armor.

Black leather torso I find works for a lot of my characters as an early investment, but it's hard not to like the dingy stats. Also, iirc the paladin armor is only marginally more heavy than the embraced and significantly closer to true heavy armor levels of protection.

I don't have any real heavy shields currently; I never grabbed eagle and haven't gotten quite far enough into the game to find the others I'll see (this character is SL 54; and has done the archives, but still has quite a bit to do. 4k, sif, cats, giants, demon ruins, izalath not to mention the painted world, the tree, valley of the drakes; I mean that's over half the game really). I'm rather fond of the SK shield which I currently have at +4 I think (76 or so stability). From the sorceress I do know that the heavies can be really effective in some situations.

I'm thinking primarily of the giant shield, the tower shield, and the stone shield (which you don't even have to upgrade). They are progressively heavier but their effect in muting bosses and attacks generally can be quite dramatic. It's a fine line just because the silver shield and black knight shield are so damned good, but it's fun to go all in on the strength build I think.

I should also note this character did all of this stuff before I was really starting to be savy about carrying humanity and such. I mean, I usually don't carry any soft but I've started to for certain farming (I have found that the ghosts in the dlc farm plenty fine with just the gold covetous, though). Hmmmm, I just got to the first darkroot bonfire (behind the wall, near the forest covenant door), and realized I have no earthy idea how the pyro is going to kill the butterfly. I guess summon beatrix kiddo and plink with a bow, I think that's what i did on the fighter.

If I do go "all in" on strength (assuming of course you still want lots of vit), should I be aiming for something in particular above the BKH? Should I be looking to trade out my armor for even lighter stuff? I do have the stone shield (I always forget about it because its so heavy). I can buy the giant shield now that I think about it.

Well, the game once you know you can beat it becomes more about how you can beat it, and maintaining x amount of humanity feels good especially as the items rain in. Since you do get diminishing returns from 1-10, I think somewhere between 1-3 is a great balance.
Killing the butterfly is a piece of cake with almost any build. Your priority is either learning to roll out the attacks (hard, comparatively) or getting the crest shield or comparable magic resist to weather the storm. You can either wait til it starts to settle down in midair and nail it with something basic like Fire Orb, or wait til it lands and combust the hell out of it. I don't recommend the dusk crown here because you don't need the damage and it's not worth the resist decrease if for some reason you whiff a block or a roll.

With strength weapons I love the BK Halberd, but it's fun to mess with the others. For speed and power, though, it's tough to beat.

Really, with a strength build you're just stretching the dimensions of unstoppable ass kicking. Do you like smashing things with a halberd? Have you played with the joy of blasting enemies across the room with the 2h r2 Dragon Greatsword and a pile of repair items (again, remember 2h a weapon gives you access to higher level stuff if you're not willing to dump all the strength points past 40 for laughs)? Have you tried Dragon's tooth and it's bizarre (but enchantable!) moveset?

Hell yeah. It's impractical as hell but I love the Greatshield of Artorias. If I have enough strength, I'm going to use it, damn the torpedoes.

This guy has 25 strength currently (did not mean to invest that last point. . . yet). It's the most strength I've ever had in the game. I have dragon's tooth of course and the BK stuff should eveentually reveal itself to me (alas, not until late in the playthrough). I have no pyromancey on this character (this is a mistake in hindsight. . . speaking of which. . .).

The pyromancer could take over this character's play time, since that class will build as this one did except I need more attunement (the fighter barely has any). I had trouble hitting the butterfly with lightning when it was resting on the bridge, maybe fireballs will bring me better luck but I was thinking I'd need another strategy entirely. I think I want to get the divine ember, take a reinforced club to divine, and then try dipping into the catacombs for Pinwheel/rite of kindling. In fact, I might even try to run for the gold covetous ring from there, and then run out from the catacombs bonfire. This will be my first great act of sequence breaking (well, darkroot to get the ember is the first I guess; and I have done that before). All the pyrmancer has done is Gargoyles + Capra (beaten solo for the first time, using fireballs, zwei, and the dragon crest shield). Anyway, it seems like this guy could also be high strength without it being a screwey usage of my souls. That might be inefficient but even the sorcey has to slice up things quite a bit.

I find the idea of going without a shield terrifying; I am not that good at the dodging (though I am better now than I used to be).

Did someone say sequence break?

That first Painted World shortcut is fantastic. Going to have to work on that.

Question about stat scaling.

Some weapons, like the halberd have two stat requirements STR and DEX. Does the base damage scale the same regardless of how those points are allocated (assume that both have the same stat bonuses). For example, would 20 STR and 20 DEX yeild the same damage as 30 STR and 10 DEX?

If they're rated the same in both stats, yes.

Is anyone going full 2H more or less? I've dabbled in it but never really gone all-in with it.

People usually don't do this because it's good to have flexibility, but I did actually do it for most of a recent playthrough. I got the BKH drop early, pushed strength and dex just enough to two-hand it and left them there for the longest time. It was kind of neat. This was on a dedicated pyromancy character, so I didn't even equip a weapon most of the time and just combusted everything, but then I'd pull up the inventory real quick (including mid-fight) if I needed to break out the halberd. It worked ok. Not sure I'd recommend using a two-hand-only weapon exclusively, but I suppose you could do it if you just trained your reflexes to switch from one-handed to two-handed mode quickly and automatically.

I'm using 2H more on this build than I ever did before. I won't say 'exclusive' but the damage bonus is pretty great. This is my STR build, FWIW.

Aha! Reason I was asking was that the BKH dropped for me on my Dex "build" and I'm now one point in Str from being able to 2H it. Not much of a sacrifice since I needed 20 for the Washing Pole anyway. I have a Fire +4 Scythe I'm twohanding quite a bit, to get a feel for it. I'm just jumping around in The Great Hollow now, I'll see if I can invade Sen's with the BKH in 2H mode later tonight.

You so crazy.

Only on the Zwei when I know I can flatten something right off, or on a boss fight when I know a shield is only useful a small fraction of the time. I still keep it on my back though.

It's surprisingly easy. Just make sure you aren't carrying any other weapons first.

Alright, I watched this whole video and damn that guy is amazing. Not really even because of the shortcuts--I knew a lot of them already and most of them are easily repeatable--but just the amount of style he has. Also he wears almost the same outfit in that video that my sorcerer wears, complete with rapier (though not the same one), so the contrast between him and me is that much more stark.

Balder shield is getting a bit long in the tooth. I have it at +9 and I killed Sif so I'm thinking of turning it into Artorias's great shield and trying that. Worth it?

I got some silver knight shields, too, so I might upgrade them and try them out.

Finally got to 32 STR and am trying the BKH. Too soon to comment.

Fuck yeah. It's unbelievably heavy and not honestly very practical as a result, but it's just too boss to not use if you have the strength. Also, highest stability in the game, no upgrades required.

I've never been very clear on this: What does the occult effect on Velka's Rapier actually do?

Certain enemies take extra damage from divine, and certain other enemies take extra damage from occult. In either case, the percentage of normal damage dealt is whatever it's rated for in divine/occult, so since Velka's is 110 occult it deals 110% damage (10% extra, in other words) to the appropriate enemies. I can't find a comprehensive list right now, but the ones that take extra damage from occult weapons are gods and things connected to them in general, so black and silver knights, etc.

Do you actually know this for sure? (I ask because I myself don't know) Is scaling completely linear until you hit 40?

Just to be clear: enemies that take extra damage from divine don't take extra damage from occult, and vice versa. Also, the biggest purpose of divine weapons (allowing you to kill skeletons permanently) doesn't hold for occult weapons; occult doesn't keep the skeletons down.

The knights and the harpies are pretty much it, I think.

I have often calculated by hand the AR of weapons before having the stats/upgrades in place, and in my experience it's always worked out to S=6, A=5... E=1 for all stats up to 40. That's for melee weapons only, I know that spell tools do have variation within letters and I think ranged weapons might too, but I'm not sure.

I may just be destined to never understand how ranged weapons and ammunition work. I noticed the other day that lightning bolts were only dealing a relatively small amount more than standard bolts, which might make sense due to split damage except that it's a lightning crossbow so it's already dealing split damage. So meh. I stocked up on heavy bolts and sniper bolts (which actually seem to be the most useful overall), and while I think I'll still carry some lightning bolts just in case I'm no longer convinced that they're such hot shit. This also means I'll be maxing out a fire crossbow to go with the lightning one, as using non-elemental bolts makes that make more sense.

Man, I just cannot express how awesome the Gargoyle's Halberd is. It seems to be consistently the near best weapon of choice for ascension to fire/chaos or lightning for me. I love the moveset (it is fantastic for nailing those high-flying mosquitos in Blighttown) and the requirements are stupid easy to get early on (15STR, 12DEX). Right now I only have a lightning Gargoyle's Halberd, but I think I'm gonna make a fire/chaos one as well even though I have Quelaag's Furysword, because damnit I love that R1 attack so damn much!

They clearly only included lighting crossbow bolts so they could include the phrase "Lightning Bolt" somewhere in the game, the fact that they're basically useless simply adds to the comedy. Joke's on you Extar!

I have also realized that my STR dude was lucky to get the child's mask from Pinwheel, too.

Oh. Shit. So, basically, it's more or less pointless to upgrade, say, my uchigatana to +15 (445 total Physical damage at 40 Dex, 20 Str) instead of +5 Lightning (247 Physical, 252 Lightning) - unless I'm fighting something with major lightning resist?