Yay my first coop. Also my tank character scored a Black Knight shield from the BK in Darkroot Garden. Woo!
Remember when I had all that angst over Capra Demon? I just one-shotted him on my tank character (who doesn't yet quite have the stats to wear all the heavy armor I want him to wear....)
I don't really use the Zwiehander because I don't like how slowly it swings. I did start out using a Broad Sword, but I think if I were to go back and do it again I'd choose Long Sword instead, which is what the Claymore is closer to (only bigger). I really like the flexibility of being able to either slash or thrust. And the Claymore has so much range! I really don't know what I'm going to upgrade how beyond +5. I might just keep upgrading the Claymore to +15 and make the Broadsword an elemental weapon. I also have a Scimitar at +5 which I might upgrade some other path. Not sure yet.
Took down Capra Demon in lower Undead Burg tonight. Only took 3 tries, which was better than I expected. First couple of times I panicked in the close quarters and started mashing L2 to block instead of L1. Didn't work well. From there I decided to hunt down the Pyro trainer so I headed to the depths. Found and killed a butcher, then promptly fell down a hole. Then I fell down another hole into a pit full of bug-eyed frog things that spewed poison gas. Hacked them up for a while, along with some rats and one BIG ASS rat. Then noticed that I was down to one swig on my flask and no idea where I was going or how to get back. This seems dangerous in a game like Dark Souls, which is perfectly damn dangerous enough when you do know your way around an area. Was pondering what to do when a slime dropped down on me from the ceiling and started eating everything north of my shoulders. Lived through that, but only barely. Was just coming to terms with losing the 11k+ souls I had on me when I remembered: homeward bone. It was as effective as it was silly sounding. Will explore that area some more tomorrow.
Oh! Also I found a ring that sounds like it's supposed to give me health from each enemy I kill, but after equipping it I wasn't sure it was working.
Sweet, thanks. I want to get one of my characters into the Sunbros; I'm just going to park him somewhere coop friendly and watch TV and do the occasional boss run. :D
Why on earth are you not allowed to put Blooming Purple Moss Clumps in your quick item slot? Blight Town isn't hard enough that when I get hit by a dart with dudes running at me, I have to open a menu and go frantically searching through a giant list of all my items to find the one that cures poison and toxin rather than just poison by itself?
I've got that ring on my Pyromancer, and I found it was pretty great for a while. Eventually you get to the point where if shit hits you it's HITTING you and getting a smidgen of health back when you finally kill it might not be worth a ring slot, depending on what rings you've got available.
Here you go. But unfortunately I don't understand your question. Afaik, you can put any item from the consumables etc category in the quick item slot , although a fair number of them would do nothing. Blooming Purple Moss definitely works just fine in the quick item slot. But because you need it relatively infrequently, I actually recommend manually sorting your inventory so that stacks of that and other useful but not omni-useful items are at the top or bottom of your list. Obviously if you're about to take on snipers then quick item it is.
Thanks guys. I'll admit it, I rage quit. But I also laughed about it. DARK SOULS. Blight Town is a lot harder than any other area I've been to in a while. I'll have to try again. I don't know why it wasn't working, I kept pressing the button, but nothing happened. I may have to look at what was running in the background that might have disrupted my controller. At my PC I have a keyboard and mouse most of the time but when I'm playing Dark Souls I pull a controller in front of them, and I might have hit something when I was started by one of those lizard men guys. I tried wearing the Thief Armour at first for its poison resist, but quickly switched back to my full armour set for the poise, because I couldn't dodge those big club guys on the little catwalks well enough. I could have also just been doing something wrong.
Aside from bosses, Blight Town is the first major difficulty jump in the game, from what I can tell. And what a little tickle of a jump it is! So here's my latest DS story, and why I love the game: I'm in Anor Londo, making my way through that part where you're fighting on ledges against the spear wielding gargoyles. There's that part where you descend an incline and at the bottom is a chamber with two gargoyles in it, and man they just had my number. If it wasn't them it was the dick firing arrow^H^H^H^H^H^giant spears at me. I got it into my head to draw the gargoyles out onto the ledge, where the archer can't fire at me, but uhh they hit me off the ledge. Stole my thunder. Then I realized that the incline I'd headed down was bordered on either side, and if I just brought them to the incline I could fight them one at a time with no chance of flanking/falling off cliffs/giant spears/etc. Oh look, the encounter is now trivialized. Pay attention to the environment. If it sucks, see what around you might not suck! Incidentally, of maybe three dozen total fights against those gargoyles (not just those two, in general... I died lots); I'd guess half ended with the gargoyle happily leaping to its death. Fools!
I rang the second bell! I'm very happy to get out of that swamp. I did gather enough shard to upgrade a few weapons and a shield before I left. Quelaag took me a few tries, but once I let my new best friend Mildred tank her while I hung back she was easy enough. Before heading to Sen's I think I'll see if I can tackle Havel for his ring, and perhaps get the Dusk Crown as well. Things are looking up!
It works, it's just worthless. It gives you like 10 hp per kill or something ridiculous like that. You won't notice any benefit unless you are killing great swaths of enemies at once. Also congrats on getting Capra Demon in three tries; I still find him to be the hardest boss in the game.
I had a lot more trouble with the Gargoyles than I did with the Capra Demon too. I think that's because fighting the Gargoyles taught me to fight a boss without relying on locking on so much ... or at least to learn how to turn it off / reposition / turn it on better. That skill came in very handy for the Capra Demon fight.
I credit getting Capra in 3 and the gargoyles in 2 to reading threads like this one. I knew to lure Capra up the stairs and jump down to get a breather when low on stamina/health. I knew to toggle target lock on/off with the gargoyles to avoid fire and flanking, and to expect a second one when the first was at 50% health. And that it was okay to use blocking on bosses, but that you had to frequently back off and lower your shield to regain stamina without over committing yourself. So basically, I'm saying I couldn't have done it without you, the little people. Also Drake Sword.
Yeah, see, this? Even if you know it, the actual chances of *making it happen* are pretty goddamned hard.
I don't think it took me more than two tries to beat him. I went in, ran up the stairs, killed both the dogs, dropped on him, rolled away, ran up the stairs again, dropped on him, etc. I think maybe I had to drop on him 3 or 4 times. I may have even gotten him first try but then again I had faced him on the Xbox before as well and don't remember how many times I died there.
Sure. That's when things go right. But it's one of the few fights in the game that has a seriously bullshit random element to it. If the dogs end up in the right position, you can't get to the stairs without killing them, and if they attack at the wrong moment while you try to kill them, you'll eat a hit or two from Capra at the same time. If you can get past or deal with the dogs in short order, the fight is simple. But dealing with the dogs itself is just random. I can one shot almost every boss in the game at this point, but I'll still sometimes take 2-3 tries for capra simply because of those motherfucking dogs.
So I got down to the blacksmith in the Catacombs and +5 Fired up my Baldur Side Sword and left the catacombs. I was tired of dealing with those skeletons, and wanted to explore a bit more and try out the new sword. Used it to finally take down Havel for his ring, built up a tower shield to play with, and started exploring the Great Hollow. I love the feeling of tension and confidence that I go between in this game. Confidence once I know an area and being able to navigate it quickly and kill off foes that used to give me trouble, and the tension of exploring and then realizing it's not so bad and being confident again until I get surrounded and backstabbed because I was too cocky! Also, was glad to finally have that depressing guy at Firelink Shrine go hollow and attack me. First time he got me because I wasn't expecting, but the second, he went down quick!
So true. I didn't kill Capra in 3 like Jamie or anything, but taking out the dogs quickly has a serious luck component to it. That became clear pretty quickly.
Serious luck component is Bed of Chaos. Moderate luck component is Capra Demon. I know because the latter I can almost entirely reduce to having a 60+ stability shield or not in terms of the odds of something bad happening, whereas the former has almost no mitigation variables above decent stability just to make it possible, beyond knowing the pattern really, really well and being lucky. You really only have control over the pattern if you are constantly in motion from safe point to safe point, which is beyond me unless I'm practicing and even then it's prone to last minute fuuuu. It's one of the few parts in the game where I've had flawless attempts (in a row, even) and disasters, and can't tell the difference between my end of the outcome.
Yeah, true enough. But I've been getting better at Bed of Chaos. The only thing that fucks me generally is a fire strike in the tunnel. Of course, that's using bow strategies for the sides.
Yeah, I definitely agree with this. I'm not even sure Capra has much of a luck component at all, to be honest. If I'm under 25% weight (which I always am) and have a good shield (which I always do), I'm probably over a 75% success rate these days, and the times I miss are almost always my own screw-ups rather than me getting screwed by fate.
Hearing and reading about things like the Bed of Chaos makes me wish the lore were a little less obscure in this game. I understand that it's there if I want it, and most of you like it the way it is, but there are hints at a cool mythology in this game that I really can't parse easily at the point I'm at.
Check out the lore videos and posts. They can be spoiler laden but if you're not catching much of lore and story bits anyway you're not really spoiling much as you probably would have missed much of it anyway. The only part I really wish was more exposed was the meaning of your choice at the end of the game, the end is somewhat anti-climactic if you're not aware of the meaning of the choice you're presented with.
Stand back, I'm hauling out a metaphor and stretching it beyond its safe distance. The story in Dark Souls is like a ziplock bag of puzzle pieces. At one point these pieces had a box, and if you had that box you'd know what the big picture was and could thus build toward it. You have to go through the entire game to get that big picture, and with it you can then go through again and see where all the pieces go. It's possible, but terribly impractical, to solve the puzzle without the big picture. Sure, even the most oblivious can at least find the corners, and the more dedicated can assemble the entire frame. But filling it in is probably not the best use of your time when the other option is to hunt down the big picture. And even if you DID assemble the whole thing without the big picture, you wouldn't appreciate all the pieces. All you were doing was trying to find the picture, not how the pieces fit into it. In other words, play the game twice and don't spoil it with YouTube because it won't make any damn sense there either. Now excuse me, I need to get that metaphor to a hospital.
Yes, it was (I guess) something that seemed a lot more obvious than it was. Hopefully jeffd adds it to his guide. Added to lore thread. That's good stuff.
I got the Crown of Dusk and Havel's Ring, and only died a few times. I upgraded my shield, my bow, and turned my Claymore +5 into a Magic +5. With Havel's Ring I can wear the full Elite Knight armor and still be at medium weight, at which I've been playing all along. Plus it looks great! Feeling well prepared, I went into Sen's Fortress. And promptly died about 3 times before even making it past the first two guards. Then I died falling off the pathway with the swinging axes. Yeah, this is going to be a fun zone, I can already tell! (I'll try again tomorrow when I'm not so tired)
I picked up the Great Scythe on my lvl 12, I think. IT SUCKED. :P I came back later with a divine claymore and an actual ability to block and it was cake. I would suggest giving it a shot but if you get too frustrated just come back a little later. It becomes vastly simpler with just a wee bit of decent gear.
Sen's is brutal. Its a significant difficulty spike; I found it much harder to handle initially than Anor Londo has been.
Kept on truckin today and got Capra on the second try and Gaping on the first. I'm using the Drake Sword and Spider Shield in preparation for Blighttown. One thing of note -- I was surprised how fast I went through the sewers. Drop down the hole behind the butcher, gank the giant rat with my Shortbow, slide down the waterfall, go up one floor and I'm at the boss/shortcut/Blighttown hub. I actually opened the shortcut before lighting the bonfire. And the plans for the Great Scythe are on hold since I don't want to spoil (yet) how to get into the Valley of Dragons.
Sen's is brutal because of all the surprises that can kill you. Once you figure out what's around every corner (or at least what all the traps look like) and how to kill snake people one vs one (you only fight two at once in the beginning and there's a trick for them), it's not that bad.
