Tell Me How To Get Started

Gaping Dragon gapes no longer. Ended up using the run around and arrow him to death at great length strategy, after my two runs using gold pine resin ended in getting sat on.

Hydra down. I have a new outfit:



Nothing says business like a Wedding Dress and a big fucking Claymore.

That actually looks really good. Nice job!

I had a strange start in my new game - I sailed through stuff practicing riposte to great effect til I came across the Taurus Demon. I died five times to that fucker and couldn't figure out why. I had one-shot him the first time I played, what the hell was going on now?

So I put myself in the newb mindset and equipped all the terrible Hollow armor I'd found (including the shield) and the awkward-but-big-numbers Battle Axe. And instead of trying to dodge like a pro I just held block like a newb whenever I so much as suspected he was attacking. I won without dropping below 90%.

Then I forgot to open the shortcut between the Berg and the bridge. DARK SOULS

Quick FYI: the legs from the Hollow armor set are actually really, really good. They have an excellent defense:weight ratio, and the Hollow Soldier legs even give you some poise.

(But yeah... the rest of that armor set does indeed kinda blow. It looks cool, though.)

Can anyone give me advice on dealing with the spinny bone wheel skeletons? Those guys straight up have my number! I should mention I'm in the tunnels in the Painted World, where dodging isn't much of an option. One on one I can take them sometimes; but if I run into more than one I'm doomed.

Those things are a bitch. If you have a shield with good stability and decent stamina you might be able to outlast them, but I found it was usually easier to lure them to a junction and let them go past, then chase them down and take them out once they stop spinning. Of course, this potentially leads to aggroing more of them, so you kind of have to be careful with it.

Last night I only played for a bit, but acquired the Drake Sword. I'm too weak to use it, but only by a couple points, and more riposte and backstab practice will get that fairly quickly next session.

Acquiring said sword took quite a few wasted arrows. About five minutes after that victory, I discovered that my life would have been much easier if I'd known to hit the left shoulder button to actually aim directly. If I'm following correctly, I think the term here is DARK SOULS. I blame the sheer embarrassment of that realization to how thoroughly I got murdered by the poison rats under the bridge, which didn't even touch me the first time I'd met them. (I took that as a sign to go to bed.) On the upside, said rat-murdering is how I learned they're poison rats and why not getting touched is especially important.

Yes, shield stability will help. Do you have any ranged option, fireball, soul arrow? Fog ring/hidden body would give you the ability to get in R3 lock on range without them coming at you.

I managed to get through them. Fighting them in a wide open chamber helps, though it's still dicey. Ugh.

Next q: With the exception of Dat Skirt, I'm still rocking my starting Pyromancer gear (currently at +6). Is there any other gear I should be keeping an eye out for to replace it? I feel as if I should be finding better armor, but I'm not!

Oh, hello. I finally dove into this game and have spent almost as much time reading guides and watching videos as I have playing the game. I'm about halfway through this thread and have found lots of good info, but considering it'll be a few more hours until I get the rest of the way, I was hoping someone would tolerate my just asking a few questions even if the answers may already be buried upthread.

ONE: I have the Drake Sword and the Dragon Crest shield, but I also have lots of souls and those shards for upgrading gear. I know people say "just find a weapon with a move set you like and start upgrading" but would I regret just picking any old vanilla weapon and upgrading it, or should I hold out for some special or unique weapon? I just beat the gargoyles and rang the bell, but unfortunately I didn't get an axe or halbred drop from the gargoyles, so that's out.

TWO: Basically same question for armor. I just have the starting Pyro rags and a Hollow armor set. I know about the encumbrance <25% and <50% guidelines, but should I be saving my shards for better armor to upgrade?

THREE: I dislike being invaded and want to avoid it, at least for now. Take this as a given. I don't want to play offline (I like the messages and bloodstains), so I'm staying hollowed most of the time. Is there any disadvantage to staying hollow beyond having to go through the unhallow/invaded/ganked cycle each time I want to kindle a bonfire?

FOUR: Sometimes there will be a little sunburst appear briefly around my character's head. Not getting souls (e.g., not from a mob that stumbles off a cliff off camera). It looks different, kind of a more yellow or orange color. What's up with that? Is that signaling that my ghost is appearing in someone else's game or something?

FIVE: When you strengthen a bonfire (forget the term) to get more potent flasks, that applies to flasks from ALL bonfires, right?

SIX: When can I get the ability to fast travel between bonfires? If it's an item or unlock, I would like to do this ASAP.

Also, fwiw, I find fireball (or fire orb or whatever) almost useless for real ranged combat; it's range is just too short).

Don't worry. You can buy upgrade materials that will take a weapon up to +5 and +10. You won't ever lose on making something normal. If something better/cooler come along, use it. The only materials that are scarce are demon titanite (used for boss weapons, which are made from boss souls, much further along), and dragon scale (upgrades dragon weapons like that drake sword, best to save those and not use it on the drake). Materials like green and twinkling titanite are somewhat scarce in the first half of the game, but there are vendors further along that sell them.

I think that armor is tertiary to weapons and then shields. As I level up my END I'm always swapping armor out for my changing encumbrance level or as situations change. I really wouldn't bother upgrading until later.

No disadvantage to being hollow other then you cannot summon help for bosses.

Unsure. Sometimes if someone is near you and uses an estus flask you can get one back that way. Next time it happens see if you have more flasks (maybe even more than 10).

No, you have to kindle each bonfire individually.

Mid-game. It is a fair bit off.

Yes, I forget when and why that happened. Good call on the NPC invaders, there is one that is quite valuable (not spoiling for Jamie's benefit).

Don't "USE" the firekeeper souls with your char, you will meet npc firekeeper who can upgrade your estus flask with it.

Thanks, guys. Using the Firekeeper souls to get the +1 modifier for Estus flasks is what I was referring to.

At this point I've killed the gargoyles and just found the entrance to the lower Undead Burg area. Seems there's a boss down there that I guess will be my next goal (the Taurus Demon I've been hearing so much about?) And I've already gotten the ring that lets you carry more off the armored guy at the bottom of the spiral staircase. Which was a pain, by the way. Any cool and/or important stuff I might be missing?

Did you start out using a Broadsword by any chance? I'm digging the sword attacks in this game most of all, and I'm thinking Claymore is going to be my next logical step. Does it share the same moveset as a Zwiehander?

Are you using the Blue Tearstone Ring?

You can avoid missing them by just checking a guide once you reach a boss-like fog gate to see if there were any NPC invaders on the level and then just hustle to the appropriate area with your humanity on. Having said that it's not a tragedy if you miss them there is a lot of cool viable gear in the game so missing three or four bits of it from some NPC invaders is something you won't really notice.

One thing it is worth doing with humanity even while not actually human is keeping your number of 'soft' or active humanity (that number in the top left) up above zero as having even 1 soft humanity will increase your item find stat a huge amount and since you don't need to be human, and you get the humanity back if you retrieve your corpse it's only about as risky as carrying around a bunch of souls is. I let it pile up in my inventory for the first half of the game while erroneously believing I'd have to be human to benefit from the increased item find.

Why, yes I am.

k. I have the Drake Crest Shield. I'll have to check the stability on that.

Also, I just remembered that I also haven't explored the area under Andre. I poked my head out there and something huge shot a lightning ball at me.

Huh. Any handy links? Or should I just go to any wiki and search by the area name?

Yep, exactly that. I slightly prefer the 'black' wiki but both of the two prominent ones should cover the spots where the NPC invaders crop up and since you'll have done the rest of the level by then you won't be spoilered if you are concerned about that..

The Claymore has a different move set and it's much faster than the Zwei of course. I've been using a divine one for the catacombs and have been enjoying it. It's R1's are big wide swings, and the R2 is a nice pointed stab, which I keep having to remind myself isn't the large overhead chop I so love about my Zwei. Managed to make my way down to the blacksmith down there and now have a nice +5 Fire Baldur Side Sword I look forward to trying out a bit for those times I need a quicker weapon than the Zwei.

THIS. Sigh. I used my first one from the Parish thinking that using it was the way to upgrade my flask. Sigh. DARK SOULS.

What does it do if you use it from your inventory? I had luckily watches some videos that talked about it. Most of them showed how to get one from the ghosts, but I haven't done that yet. Mine came from somewhere else, either the Parish of Undead Burg.

Also, I wonder if NPC still invasions happen if you're offline. A bit cheesy, but I could see taking the system offline just long enough so you can go human and do the NPC invasion without worrying about other players.

You know, I've heard people do this before but I think people just aren't paying attention, myself included. So the next time I got a firekeeper soul I read it and lo and behold, it told me stuff!

This is the item description in game, specifically 'use' at the expense of reinforcement:


I actually learned in Demon's Souls that you don't 'use' special souls, and the firekeeper soul looked special to me so I held onto it and kinda stumbled on the option at the fire link shrine.

Sure do. You can only get invaded one at a time so I wouldn't worry about it for NPCs. There's some covenant stuff (forest, darkmoon) and game states that may change this, but I'm not well versed enough to say what, but with respect to NPC invasions it should not matter.

The X button is the most important button in this game.

Yes, yes they do... I learned that the hard way!

I tend to do what Cheesy does: prioritize weapon & shield upgrades, and only upgrade armor when my weapon situation is more-or-less sorted. Instead, I do lots of swapping based on my new & improved endurance scores.

Having said that, though, the pyromancy armor set is suprisingly good. Like... use-it-in-end-game good. It's defense-weight ratio is pretty phenomenal for all its pieces, plus it gives great resistences & non-physical damage reductions. For a long time the pyromancer wrist piece was being used by all my characters because they really are that good. I finally stopped using it for the same reason I stopped using the claymore & the gargoyle halberd: because I was sick of seeing those flechettes every time I opened my inventory screen.

I have long suspected that while I love video games, I might not be very good at them.

So am I still considered starting out if I am 20 hours in and have only killed the Taurus and Bell Gargoyles? Level 24-ish Wanderer with a +5 Claymore and no magic. I did lose 13k in souls once b/c I trying to save up for the Deeproot Forest door key rather than buy boring stuff. That one stung a bit.

Currently hanging out at the 2nd Catacomb bonfire before I decided to back and try to take on the Capra Demon.

Starting out? No. But as anyone here will tell you (at least, the ones who weren't broken by the game), time alone is not the key variable, nor even raw progress. It's really a conceptual thing in terms of how much of a handle you have on game fundamentals, whether it's parry/backstab, dodging, or efficient employment of your weapons of choice. So I guess it's really up to you in terms of how many of your current limits in progress are self-imposed for good reasons and how much of it is just not wanting to move into unexplored territory. I think my first playthrough was probably around 80-100 hours, and I really don't remember what the hell I did for most of it. But I'm sure there's a part of me that will never forget it.

With respect to armor upgrades Mark M :
Lots of different ways to skin that cat, really. While I do agree that weapons and shield take priority, it's easy to miss just how much a relatively cheap jump to +3 in your starting armor pieces will change in terms of your ability to take a hit. Since as you get better you hang on to more soft humanity through those opening bits (and spend less on sub-optimal stat investments), it's a lot easier to see that as one of the cheapest ways to boost your survivability early on relative to going up in weight category or getting a lot more vit.

Also, what do you mean by "flechettes"?

I think I'm going to go DEX and want to try the Great Scythe. Is there an ideal point progression-wise to grab it, or is it practical to just die my way to it early on?

Not only practical, but glorious! It depends on whether you want to clear to there cheaply and methodically with an un-upgraded sword of astora, a modestly upgraded dragon crest, and a ranged weapon of some kind to take out the necromancers as you go, or just rush it; the latter can be tricky, but if you know the route and go for it, you might just get there and then just watch a rain of skeletons go by. The hardest parts are surviving the first bridge switch (which might require a suicide run, because that will be a lot of pissed skeletons standing on a very narrow area with exploding guys nearby and spike statues), and then either making a tricky fall off the end of that bridge (which I've only heard is possible but never done), especially given the skel/necro combo there or going to the next switch and opening that door so you can drop in there.

The long and short videos do a good job of letting you visualize your route.

Whoops. I just looked them up, and they're "manchettes", not flechettes.

Which goes to show you that I didn't know what either word meant until I looked them up in a dictionary just now.

Before you try anything in the catacombs, you want to make sure you pick up the Dragon Crest shield which has high fire resist. (for use against the necromancers) Fortunately, it's obtainable from the very beginning, courtesy of a suicide run to the Valley of the Drakes.

As for the Great Scythe in particular, that particular item is actually kinda deep in the catacombs. Even if you know exactly what you're doing & where you're going, you'll still need to kill a couple necromancers & fight your way through a bunch of (now mortal) skeletons. There isn't any shortcut straight there, unlike the handy route to Pinwheel. So what you're proposing to do is actually pretty tough. I would say that when you're able to successfully fight the skeletons in the graveyard, that's when you might be ready to go after the Great Scythe. When that time is depends on you, really. There isn't any clear progression milestone you need to pass first, unless maybe you want to create a divine weapon first.

BTW, if you happen to be playing a faith-based character, Astora's Straight Sword (located right next to the Dragon Crest shield) will be a huge help. In fact, I'd say you could probably go into the catacombs immediately if you get both items from your Valley of the Drakes suicide run.

I've made that fall w/out much problem; I don't think it's that tricky. However, I can't imagine successfully doing a suicide run to hit the bridge switch. *That* would be a tall order.

BTW... isn't that "tricky fall" the only way to get the Great Scythe? I seem to remember that it's located on a raised walkway which is only accessible from the ledge you hit by falling off the bridge.

Watch the videos. There's the "jump from the bridge" move in the short one, once you've got the bridges turned, and the "drop from the broken stairwell" in the long one. What I meant as purely "I've heard it might be possible" was dropping off the end of the first bridge (where the necro and two skeletons are) in order to land on the broken stairwell and then drop down to the scythe.