Blackadar, if you really don't know what to do with your souls, eventually you will want to buy a repairbox, a weapon smithbox, and an armor smithbox, all of which are sold by Andrei the blacksmith. Not very glamarous, but better to sink some souls into those items than to lose the souls outright.
I lost the 12k souls I was toting after killing Taurus Demon and am really no worse for it. I probably farmed that many just slaughtering everything in the Undead Burg trying out different weapons (those two spear guys on the roof near the entrance are hilarious -- they pace back and forth sloooooooooooowly and then try to stab; parry, axe, boom every time). So it goes.
Yea, if you have the souls use them. They are a resource to be used after all. You don't need to fret if you do lose them, but put them to use. With 10k souls at that level you can probably upgrade 5 levels, or buy those useful items mentioned above.
I dunno, I just like the way it looks and swings. My approach to Dark Souls, as with most things, is fairly unscientific.
I did a bit of save-scum to find out, and the attacks are identical. Of course, it's also bigger and flops around like a giant dildo, so there's that.
Blackadar re: Taurus Demon I rolled through its legs. I didn't even think to go onto the tower to do dive attacks. I also used Firebombs. Speaking of Firebombs, I used them almost exclusively to kill the Capra Demon, because fuck that motherfucker.
Yeah but one of those messages, at one place in the game, leads to the Covetous Silver Serpent Ring. /me sits back and eats popcorn while Jibble throws himself to his death all over the place while cursing.
Or you can find it the way everyone else did, by youtubing the item in question; you really can't go wrong by treating player messages as a sign to slow down and look around and only taking dev messages (marked with an elite knight) as certainly true. Generally I only trust a jump message if I can see where it is going and it seems reasonable. Prism stones are nice for illuminating downward efforts if you're curious; the sound of them breaking is distinctive and lets you know the landing will kill you.
I read them all, because sometimes you'll get awesome ones like Rubbish or the Strange Doll.* *even better, they actually make sense.
I dropped the Rubbish in the nest and the damn bird took my stuff and didn't give me anything in return. Evil bird.
Did you quit and reload the game? Or leave the area and come back? Actually, I'm not sure the latter even works, I always just do the first.
I did, it may be something screwy with the DSFix - Turn off starting logos setting maybe. I may try again tonight with something else with a meager reward.
Can you tell me how? I can't figure it out and a quick googling provided no other help. In particular, it would be nice to compare what the vendor is selling to what I've got equipped.
Oh, I read it, which is why I knew what it could be used for. I just never had an occasion where I thought for even a second that it would be worth my time running around to every damned cliff with a "TRY JUMPING NEE HEE HEE" sign next to it and throwing a rock off the side to see if it would kill me. It's safer and less time consuming to just assume that it will. Worst side effect would have been missing one item, which I now know about anyway.
Nope. DARK SOULS! Edit: Not "Nope." as in "Not telling." "Nope" as in "You can't compare vendor items to equipped items. Dark Souls."
As far as I know, there isn't an item comparison for items in a vendor's inventory. (I know, I know, that's one of the most common times you would like to have that feature.) However, once an item is in your inventory, if you try to equip it all the stats that are lower than what you're currently wearing appear as red text, while all stats that are higher appear in blue text. Identical stats appear as white text. The inventory-only comparison is more helpful than you might think, especially when you need to increase a certain stat (fire resistance, for example) and you'd like to see how badly your other stats get screwed over.
Ahh. I thought Hammet was saying this was possible, but I guess he meant something else. Darn. Well, oh well. I guess once you pick a weapon and go with it, you aren't visiting the vendor too much anyway.
I'm sorry, I misunderstood your question. I thought you meant if there was an item description for the stuff in the vendor window, which there is. I normally frequent this page to look up weapons I'm curious about. (I don't like to admit this, but it took me ca 100 hours to figure out what key to press to get item description up in the game.)
Stat comparison wouldn't be all that useful for weapons anyways, for two reasons. First, as you upgrade weapons their stat scaling sometimes (but not always) improves, which makes a *huge* difference in the damage they deal if you're focusing on the stat in question. The only way to know about the scaling changes would be to look up the weapon on a wiki such as this one: http://darksouls.wikidot.com/weapons. More importantly, differences in weapon stats don't matter that much; the damage that a weapon deals is a function of how much damage it does per swing (which appears as a stat in the item description) versus how quickly you're able to swing it. (which doesn't appear anywhere; you have to test the weapon out yourself to find out.) You can often guesstimate a weapon's swing speed based on its weight; lighter weapons usually swing faster than heavier weapons, as you would expect. When it comes to weapons, it's all about how they feel to you when using them. And most players keep a small arsenal of 3 to 5 weapons upgraded so they can use the weapon appropriate to their environment. For example, my strength character usually used Dragon's Tooth, which is a huge club. But in the Tomb of the Giants, I found that it kept bouncing off the ceilings or the walls & I simply couldn't swing it. So out came my long sword +12, and I used that instead. Yeah, its damage wasn't quite as high as Dragon's Tooth, but I was able to actually swing it. Anyways, back to what you were talking about: item comparison. That feature is usually useful for armors. Doubly so because you're often trying to fit the best armor possible onto your body that doesn't take you over a certain weight threshold.
Whoops, I think I just done fucked up. While messing around with an inventory screen I accidentally bopped the smith guy in Undead Parish, right before the forest part. He went crazy - well, fair enough really - so I hiked back the bonfire a floor above him and reset, hoping he'd be fine. He wasn't, so I ended up killing him. On the plus side, I now have a crest to open that door in the forest. On the EXTREME MINUS SIDE, I now have no smithy. So on a scale of one to fucked, how fucked am I? Should I restart another character?
Oh, well, thank goodness. For a moment I thought you were going to... Oh. Well, for future reference, you go back to the guy you meet after beating the gargoyles up in the bell tower, and pay him for absolution. This resets NPC aggro. Absolution costs scale with level. Well, it kind of depends. Did you at least get the armor and weapon upgrade kits?* What kind of build you were envisioning? The main thing you've been robbed of is the normal upgrade path, which means you can feasibly consider any build that relies on pyromancy or magic or elemental weapons, all of which are available to you with the other blacksmiths. Fire is actually ok because you just need to get to +5 normal to modify to fire, which you can do with the kits. Lightning might be out of your reach apart from the one lightning weapon you find later as you need a +10 weapon to modify to lightning, which you can no longer make. The second big thing you are robbed of is divine upgrades, which means the the humble straight sword of astoria is your best bet to get a weapon that perma-kills undead the first time through the catacombs. That's not optimal, but it's not the end of the world. However, there are many boss soul weapons out there, and many are damned good primary weapons and will upgrade just fine once made/cut off a boss. If you aim for some of them you can survive this. Also, this is a good time (what? too late?) to say that dsfix includes a save backup option. Might be a good time to turn that on in case you want to have a backup that is maybe a few minutes or whatever back. Overall, I would consider starting again and maybe coming back to it when you decide you want to experiment with living without Andre. Because it's kind of tough and annoying, which I can say after mostly surviving it on the xbox. *the armor upgrade kit allows you to upgrade from 1-10. The weapon upgrade only allows you to upgrade in 5 point increments, at which point you need the relevant blacksmith to modify to the next tier.
I do have the upgrade kits, so I'm not entirely out of luck. I was mostly using him as a place to buy titantium. I'm on a tank build right now - strength and endurance, with some dex. I've completely ignored magic entirely, just for kicks. Damn. Sounds like I should restart, but I think I have a better idea of how to build a character now anyway.
You probably don't have to restart. See if you can score a black knight weapon, especially the axe or the halberd. If not, maybe the Dragon Greatsword or Dragon King Greataxe if you're going for uber strength, or the Silver Knight Straight Sword if you aren't. There are only a couple of boss weapons available to you and they probably won't be a good fit for you. You do also have access to fire and chaos weapons, but they might be a waste if you have good stats.
I'll echo that. If you can score a black knight weapon then you'll be fine. Another thing to keep in mind is the crystal halberd, though it requires some active management. It's just like a halberd +10 (and upgraded tracks to +15) but you can't ever repair it. Instead you can upgrade it and that resets its durability. At +5, though, it's almost used up (and getting it to +5 requires a slab). If you use it only when you need it, you can make it last from when you find it to the end.
I would restart. Yes, you can soldier on & finish the game anyways. Hell, you can do that almost no matter what you do, if you're good enough & know the game. But killing Andre cuts you off from a *huge* part of the game. You can't have boss weapons, which are super fun to play with. You can't upgrade any shields past +5, which means you're pretty much forced to farm the Silver Knight Shield & use that. (It's a good shield, but you've just cut off an array of other shields. And farming it can be kind of a pain in the ass.) And you can't upgrade your weapons along the normal path (let alone lightning), which means dex & strength based builds are severaly gimped. Summary: if you continue, there's a good chance that you'll see a weapon that you think is cool, or you'll want to try something out, and you'll be cockblocked by poor Andre's death. You monster.
I cannot express how hard I am fighting the urge to dig up a dead horse and beat it with a giant club.
I ended up restarting. Killed that first demon in the Asylum FIRST TRY. Yeah, FUCK YOU demon that I spent an hour killing on my first play through! I also realized that I had been basically ignoring Vitality in my last run, so hopefully I will have a more well-balanced guy-that-likes-to-hit-things this time.
This is an excellent illustration of something that has been brought up multiple times in this thread, which is that even if you manage to bork your game, returning to where you were pre-bork takes very little time, relatively speaking, and is extremely satisfying in its own right.
And I beat the Belfry Gargoyles tonight. I farmed for a while to get my broadsword (which I love) up to +5, and then banged my head against them for a while. After, oh, five tries with the same result (constant death pretty much right after the second one comes out) I switched strategies and killed the fire-breather first, then went back to the first guy. This proved fruitful. Although I did have to chug my entire Estus flask, but I chalk that up to not paying close enough attention to my stamina. But I made it. I got the Gargoyle Tail Axe and the Gargoyle Helm, which is better than my basic starting Knight's helmet, so I'm happy. It looks cool too. I also killed that fast black knight guy below the bridge in Undead Burg. Now to figure out where to go next. I guess I'll try the underground ghost town again, because I can't figure out what to do about the skeletons in the graveyard, so the game seems to still be telling me that's not the way to go yet.
That's not the official "next place to go", although you can, of course, go there & succeed if you want to. But since you don't have a divine weapon yet, it will probably be too hard for you. You have 3 choices on where you can go: 1) Into the forest just beyond Andre. 2) If you have the maser key, you can go down to the ghost city, but when you get off the elevator, go to your right and go through the locked door. Blightown is through there. 3) You can go back across the bridge with the wyvern to where you met Solaire, and go through the locked door there, for which you should have the key now.
Thanks! I forgot about that forest path. I think I may try that, since I'm right there. I don't know if I have a key to open a locked door near Solaire. If I do, I don't remember getting it, or who I got it from.
Outside the front door of the parish (i.e. the one with the 3 lightly armored knights standing by it) and down the steps you'll find the portcullis that leads to the area where you encountered the mechanical boar. Just in front of the portcullis is an item you can pick up: it's the key for that door. It's not really hidden; most ppl (myself included) easily find it and then immediately forget about it again.
