Already doing that. Doesn't mean I can't complain a little along the way. There was zero indication whatsoever that my answer was going to cause anything to happen at all, much less cause him to leave forever. Interesting or not, that's a poor design choice. A single line in there that said, "I might be tempted to go looking for it myself" BEFORE I answer him would have solved it, it would have been 100% on me. Instead, they put that line after you answer the question. I suppose I should be happy that they bothered to explain it at all.
I don't see it as a poor design choice. The fact that you cannot predict everything that is going to happen is part of the charm, for me at least. The other characters in the game are on their own quests and have their own motivations; why do you expect to be able to predict their actions beforehand?
Because that's what we've been trained to expect in games. I'm not sure if I agree with Jibble, but I definitely see where he's coming from. Dark Souls plays by its own rules, and although it plays fair by the standards of its own rules, it does take a while to learn them & get used to them.
So I had my first goes at Ornstein and Smough. I revived as human, worked my way to the door, summoned Solaire and went in. Dead. Oh well. Dark Souls. So I go at it again, except this time I get close to the fog door just as it's approaching midnight. I've cleared out all the enemies and I'm ready to summon Solaire, so I just park it on his summon thing and swap the input. Two minutes later my controller starts vibrating. Damnit. Another Humanity lost. I watch the fireworks, return to the game, and I'm standing in some random corner. Odd. There's a bag on the floor. It has a dung pie in it. Apparently this invader doesn't like to murder people who stand still, so he kicked me across the room and left a message instead. Kind of him. I make a go at the boss and die again, but not until after I've taken down one and almost the other. Getting better. This repeats a few more times, with an increasingly soul-filled bloodstain left behind each time. Then I'm on the way into th gig hall and I get invaded again. I haven't killed anything in there yet some figure I'll just aggro these guys and the invader will have to deal with them too. Apparently enemies don't care about invaders, so I basically just got myself killed and lost that big ball of souls for no reason. I probably could have handled the guy on my own, too, since I got a few hits in before the big knights flattened me. Dark Souls. So yeah, done for the night. Is it possible to summon both Solaire and a coop human player? If so I may try that tomorrow to get through this thing.
God damn it this game is annoying. I'm getting quite frustrated with getting to a certain point, being ambushed, say, and then dying two more times to get to the same point, progressing some, and then repeating all over again - usually losing a level's worth of souls along the way. Made it to Parish and defeated the boar thing. Died going around the side agroing a big knight thing in a chapel and after losing another 2500 souls (I'm not high level, obviously) I've had it for the night. There seems to be a way I have yet to explore through that area (not the big black knight with the tower shield) but I'm too annoyed to play more. I don't think I'll have the patience for this game in the long run, although I get the appeal and understand all the good things about it people speak of.
You absolutely can and you absolutely should. A lot of players leave a summon sign near the Solaire bonfire. It is also the number one invasion location in the game, so be prepared for that. One good thing about it is that Anor Londo was the first place I noticed that getting and losing 10-20k souls wasn't that much of a deal anymore. I trust that you've found the blacksmith?
I can fully understand that. I'm not a patient person and I'm amazed I'm still playing and loving it, it really isn't/shouldn't be my cup of tea. I think a large part of it for me is that I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and the combat itself, despite dying so often. I also have to confess I don't hesitate to look things up online when I'm having trouble with a certain part of the game and of course I've been learning a lot here. Sometimes the game does get annoying though. Yesterday I died twice during a boss fight because the camera went wonky and I couldn't see what I was doing or where I was going, then I got lost and got cursed. At that point I used ALT-F4 and played something different for the rest of the evening.
You should explore the far side of the chapel and follow any walkways you happen upon. Trust me when I say that the point where you are now you'll reach in 20 minutes in future playthroughs.
It happens that there is another bonfire less than one minute away. It isn't hidden and there are no enemies on the way there. So the information you had was that there was a) a bonfire behind an invisible wall and an NPC and b) a stairway leading to a new area. That is not a lack of information, it's actually a pretty clear indication of what your options apart from backtracking are. Additionally, when in your 40 hours of Dark Souls has the game used an NPC as a physical wall? Which NPCs are just thrown in for no reason? What did the game ever show you that suggested that just killing an NPC would be a good thing to try? Well, you don't always know how people are going to react to things. If answering that the wrong way deprived you of an upgraded pyromancy flame, and I'd say that was bad design, but hey, I guess that's why From put two other NPCs in the game that also do it. Dude, killing NPCs willy-nilly is what cost you a weapon. It is not bad game design to have consequences for doing that.
BTW... for those of you who are getting tired of invasions, you might want to consider playing offline for a bit. Playing offline allows you to run around in human form all you like without worrying about getting invaded by other human players. Some of the other folks here swear up & down that the multiplayer component is awesome, and that you should always play online if you have that option. I wouldn't know; I only have the XBox version of this game, and I'm too cheap to pay for XBox Live Premium, or whatever the top notch version of XBox live is which allows you to play in online mode. A bit more about this: Although weapon damage for the various weapons doesn't equalize (e.g. a greataxe is always going to do *way* more damage per swing than a scimitar), if you convert weapon damage into a theoretical average Damage per Second,* the dps tends to be comparable across weapons, provided you learn how to use the weapon properly. Although there are a couple weapons that are definitely better than others, (e.g. the balder side sword has the exact same moveset & damage as a longsword, but it has better reach) you can easily get by without knowing the ins & outs of every weapon. (e.g. if you decide to use a longsword, you'll be fine. It's still a good weapon.) There are a couple strange exceptions to the "all weapons are fine" design, though. All fist weapons suck. Terrible damage, terrible range, lousy moveset. Also, whips are generally considered to suck as well: their damage doesn't scale well, plus they have unique attributes that kinda suck. Other than that, though, if you like a weapon's moveset, upgrade it & you'll do fine. *Although this concept will be super familiar to MMO players, Dark Souls' weapons never really boil down to a single DPS stat. There are *way* too many variables in this game for a dps stat to be truly meaningful, not least of which is how good you personally are with the particular weapon.
Yeah... upgrade whatever melee weapon you've found that you like the best. Also, it's a good idea to upgrade your bow one step ASAP; you get a pretty hefty damage boost from that first upgrade with the bow, especially if you're a dexterity-focused character.
Actually the BSS does have different R2s from the standard straight sword moveset. They're usually considered better but they aren't the same. However, the Long Sword is one of the very few weapons in the game that is strictly worse than another weapon (i.e. same speed and moveset and upgrade path but worse stats), but the thing it's strictly worse than (Sunlight Straight Sword) is a pain to get. The Long Sword does have its proponents as a result. Edit: sorry, I misremembered. The SSS is heavier and has higher reqs than the LS.
Yep. I'm having some trouble deciding whether or not to use all these unique boss souls to do what seems to be a massive downgrade for some of these shields/weapons. ETA: Nevermind. Turns out I need some other upgrades before I can use those big souls. Might do some farming to see if I can get that done for one or two of them.
Ugh. I don't mind dying because of ambushes, being where I shouldn't be, difficult bosses or falling of cliffs. I can learn from those deaths. But I HATE dying due to bad camera angles. The game is hard enough as it is, being handicapped by only seeing the inside of my opponent's head is not really my idea of fun. I had to do that Giant Rat fight four times due to this, and now I can't remember where the Gaping Dragon is that I'm supposed to defeat.
Some enemies you are best keeping away from, the Giant Rat is one of them. I always hide in the hallway and smack at him when he gets close so I don't have to worry about that. Once you unlock the shortcut door back to the bonfire, it's a pretty straight shot to the boss, you just go down the long tunnel till you get to the water room with the slimes/rats, and then hook a right down the hallway, first left and you are there.
Oh, there's a setting that mostly fixes this. Go into the game options and uncheck "auto-rotate camera" or some such.
If you know how to get to the Spider Shield you never ever have to fight that Rat. Fairly, that is. Check out the whole kitchen area.
Also you can just go straight to the bonfire and never mess with the rat at all. I might not have killed that thing since my very first playthrough.
Thanks, I'll have to have another go at the Depths in the near future. For now I've legged it to the forest instead, at least there I can see what's eating me :D
Beat them first try with Solaire and a coop player. Went up the elevator, hit the bonfire, headed to the door. There was a message in front: "Be wary of amazing chest." Funniest note I've seen in the game so far.
And now you have the item that lets you teleport to the daughter of chaos, which makes checking for pyro vendor #2 relatively painless. Again, when I suggest starting again you're picturing literally repeating the 40 hours you played to get to where you are now. I think a fresh start would go a long way towards showing you how much you've learned and how trivial a lot of the early challenges are now, which is really important in terms of self-assessing your progress. Also, "amazing chest" signs are popular around Blacksmith Andre.
The giant rat is amazingly lethal in close quarters combat. I always do the shortcut behind the butcher that lets me do the plunge attack on it, not least because at that point in the game 1 guaranteed humanity is a nice get when it's essentially free. Just be sure to backtrack from there (carefully!) if you haven't killed the magic user by the other group of rats, or else he will do to you what he did to jeffd, which is make the boss a lot harder. He only needs to be killed once per playthrough, just like the giant rat. At any rate, the nice thing about the rat is that it's easy to get to the boss from there. If you look at the end of the room there is a giant ramp with water running down it. You can slide down the middle and get put more or less at the start of the basilisk area. Or you can slide along the left side of the ramp, and that will put you right before the entrance to the boss (2nd doorway to your right), right next to the shortcut that takes you back to the bonfire (1st doorway to your right) and you even meet a new vendor. Just watch out for that tricksy slime on the roof.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY GODDAMNIT. This might even fix that annoying camera spin that happens when you walk out of the firekeeper soul in New Londo or up the the roof to the Painting Guardian beams and assorted other places.
Yay. Also spoilers I guess. I'm not starting over. The only reason I've been able to put this kind of time into this game is that I've been on break the last week or so. Once work starts back up I'm looking at two hours a night, if I'm lucky. I'm going to power through to the end and move on to the next one in my stack. Maybe I come back for a new game or NG+, maybe I never play it again. Time will tell.
Those rafters are how I found out about it so it definitely foes fix that... I haven't fallen off once since finding out about that setting. Since I don't know what you're talking about in NLR I assume it fixes that too. :)
Huge progress today. Grabbed the Drake Sword, started cutting fools down with it, got into the Undead Parish and killed a terrifyingly large knight in a church, then got the elevator down to Firelink Shrine. Shortcuts are the best. Many souls gained; no failed corpse runs. Ran the fuck away from giant horned thing near Andre. Hooks are being set.
I just pulled the trigger on this one. My XBox 360 controller should be here in a couple of days and that's when I'll give it a go. I'm already intimidated and I haven't even loaded the game.
At the risk of sounding like a knowitall: I think every most new players should strongly consider snagging the Drake Sword. The game has a megaton of systems to explore, and having that weapon early allows you to explore many of them in relative safety. The margin afforded by being able to one-shot all of the trash (and even carve up a few early bosses) is nice. There's a huge caveat of course: once you have the option to upgrade weapons to any degree you should abandon it. But I found my appreciation of the game was greatly increased by having that thing, even though I haven't equipped it in many hours. Theoretical model: deaths are some function of fight duration (the longer the fight, the more chance you have to fuck up), which in turn is a function of DPS. Early on nothing touches the Drake Sword for DPS. There are other parameters that feed into this function, but for newb players basically they are all close to zero cuz you're a newb and you suck! The Drake Sword allows you to heavily weight one particular parameter, which allows you to work on developing others.
That's a model well-supported by evidence, although sometimes it's difficult to measure and there are other factors at play. For instance, what makes pyro so effective is not just that you can use it at any level, nor that it does reasonable damage to most enemies within normal upgrade ranges. No, it's that it uses no stamina to cast pyro, which is a tremendous advantage against strong enemies. In support of this, there's a boss fight that lays this out cleanly for you, the 4 kings. The entire game is stripped down to "how fast can you kill things or else you will die", and it's pretty much a gatekeeper fight for most first NGs and almost certainly the one that forces many builds to think outside of their comfort zone to squeeze out more damage. So long as you are still trying to pick up the finesse moves like parry, backstab, r2/2h switching, and so on, the drake sword is fine. Like the master key, it can be used by a starting player to avoid some fundamentals in the game that will bite you in the ass later, but I'm definitely a proponent of getting every edge you can early.
