Tell Me How To Get Started

I would say that this is usually true unless you have low vitality and are coming from an unkindled bonfire, in which case it's wise to just pop a Blooming Purple Moss Clump if you have one. But yeah, it's kind of like the invisible pathways in the Crystal Cave, in that the standard areas you go through are not that dangerous in terms of toxic and it's only during the runs for precious treasure that it gets a lot trickier.

I mean high Dex. You know, like dreams of Black Bow of Pharis/Great Scythe +15. I just thought having a fire weapon was a good idea for some fights?

It's a good idea for before you have high dex or strength. Once you do, though, there's not a lot of point to it.

Edit: I should add here that I don't really have a ton of experience with dex builds, so I could be wrong. But from my experience with strength and other builds with access to high physical damage weapons, I have never seen a benefit to using an elemental weapon over a comparable physical one.

Toxin was originally every bit as bad as it seemed, and it's still substantially more dangerous than poison. Just be aware that not all toxic or poison states are created equal; PvP toxic, especially from toxic cloud, can go up to like 6 hp/sec, so if it happens there you might want to address it a lot more promptly.

Fire and lightning were a lot more unbalanced in early versions where in fact even with good stats normal scaling weapons just weren't competitive. Now they are primarily for access to weapons that you can't optimize through scaling, which can be a lot of them for low str/dex builds or relatively few. They are also a great way to jump up in damage tiers if you know where to dredge up the materials and embers quickly if you are trying to keep a build slim on levels early on.

Also, there are some people that swear by making fire bows for strength builds and the like to get the most out of a bow, fwiw.

I totally don't mean to dismiss the severity of toxin. The first few times I got hit by it I died pretty quickly because I didn't recognize what was happening, and I was engaging other stuff (barbarians, hollows) that were doing damage to me on top of the toxin, and I died sooner than I would have because of the toxin effect. I just think that once you get what toxin is doing to you it's manageable in the same way that poison is: be aware of what you're pulling, and pop Estus flasks as necessary. If you're in Blighttown you're either on a suicide run in which case fuckit, or you're serious in which case beeline up to those dart popping fuckers and kill as many of them as you can because unlike you they don't respawn.

Hi folks. Well, I think Dark Souls has defeated me. Got up to the Dragon in the Depths and made it in to Blighttown from the back way, but just feel like the game is becoming a struggle - probably because I'm not very good at it (3 or 4 goes at the dragon, runs to repair, etc, bah!)

Also, I no longer have an Xbox controller (sold Xbox, thought the other controller worked, it didn't, so had to ship my one remaining controller :(

I've enjoyed it, buy my tolerance for "work" is exceptionally low. It's not you, Dark Souls, it's me!

Thanks for all the tips and advice you've all provided.

Low tolerance for Work??!! This from the man who built a mine car shotgun in Dwarf Fortress?? I kid, but come on back anytime!

More progress yesterday. Trekked back to the Darkroot Garden area and cleared that out, finding the +poise ring (nice) and the entrance to Darkroot Basin. Killed the giant moth boss and got a drop that I guess would be exciting if I were going for a int build. And a divine ember.

Also went back and bought the seal that opened the area with the rather powerful humans. Killed a few of them and then had to call it a night. So I'm on the verge of getting the fog ring, right? I think this is the area with that covenant where you have to invade and kill other players. Any easy to miss but terrible to miss opportunities here?

Easy to miss: the stone armor, the eastern armor. Useless but also easy to get: the enchanted ember.The forest covenant gives you a ring that lets you invade from anywhere. Typically it's best to wait until another invader shows up and gang up on the more powerful invaded, but things are unpredictable in the forest and you can play it a bunch of different ways. After 3 successful invasions (where the player dies, but not necessarily by your hand), the cat will give you the fog ring when you go and talk to her (you can also trade a skull lantern to snuggly for this ring if this proves impossible, typically takes me about 20 rapid fire invasions to win 3). The other thing is you can't attack the ai humans without breaking the covenant, but they won't attack you, and if you go down to the water wheel in blight town while in the covenant you can buy any of the curved swords from Sheva. Most commonly, people get the fog ring, buy what they want from Sheva, and then break covenant by killing Sheva and his ninja for the item drops. Just be aware you only get the one shot at them per absolution/re-covenanting, so go big or go home if you choose to do that (or save scum).

The forest humans can be farmed using the forest farming technique of running at the log (once you've killed the first fog-ringed two h sword guy, who will perma-die) behind the caster, banking right, and looping around to the edge of the cliff. An AI glitch makes them run up the stairs when they follow you to that point, at which stage they will most often run off the edge and fly over your head to their deaths. You can youtube a bunch of different pull routes for getting them to follow you under forest farming and the like.

Hrm. Trying to do the invading thing and having no luck. Keep getting smoked.

Did this change? When I originally did this, they beat me in Blighttown and were then back in their positions in the forest for however many more attempts it cost me, and several times I've done it just by joining and immediately attacking them in the forest, and I've definitely gotten infinite tries at them then. This is all pre-DLC though.

What level are you at? I have a couple of forest hunters who are always up for some randomized attempts at cooping enemies.

I'm at level 42. I'm guessing that I'm wildly outgeared. Most of the opponents I'm facing one shot me and I can't damage them, though maybe it's because I only have 18 vit. I've been putting points mostly in end and str. If you want, I'd take the help.

Also, I went farming and now have 3 large titanite shards, 2 titanite chunks, 2 green titanite shards, and a blue titanite chunk. And I gave the divine ember to Andre. I'm currently using a +5 halberd (which I like), a +5 Knight Shield and some +3 armor. Also have vanilla Zweihander, which I meet the 1hand reqs for.

Pondering whether to take the halberd fire or work on getting it to +10. And wondering if I should take the Knight Shield up?

Knight Shield is not really good enough to warrant that ihmo.Tower kite(you can buy it from andre) or balder are all a bit better and lighter if i remember it correct.Later you also can farm for the silver knight shield that is probably the best all around shield.

Halberd is good for elemental and with its bad scaling makes only sense in a quality build.

If it makes you feel better, there's a pretty good chance that you're fighting cheaters in PC PVP. Especially if you're in one of the famous gank spots.

I really hope they redesign PvP in the sequel. Move it all to an arena zone I say. The world has moved on from gank-based PvP. They could add more NPC invaders to compensate, but honestly I think the whole invasion mechanic should be sent back to the drawing board.

I'm playing on PS3. Agree about the gank-based PvP. I think the "defend the forest" covenant PvP missions are brilliant, actually. I just wish there was some kind of matchmaking or way to compensate. The people I've run into seem like they're farming the area for humanity or something.

This is a terrible idea.

Dark Souls does not slave itself to current trends. This is a good thing.

Invaders create a real risk/reward dynamic to being in body form - you can summon help, but there's always the chance that someone can invade and ruin your day. Without the possibility of invasions, you have no reason not to summon three guys and move as a group at all times. With invasions - you need to ask yourself if you're ready to PVP here. I've found myself choosing to solo a section that help would make easier because I wasn't confident that I could PVP in that area - first run along the top of Blighttown, for instance.

Killing invasions would make the game more appealing to the mass market, without question - but it would be destructive to Dark Souls' niche.

That about does it.

Basically, for serious forest invading you really want 14 int and the chameleon spell. That means you can become essentially undetectable after you run away, and can wait for another invader to show up if it's a 2 on 1. I've had great luck with 2v2 matches as well as crazy ones where it's 1 guy trying to summon as we toy with him, and then a darkwraith invades and decides he's going to go ahead and back up the invaded for shits and giggles.Mostly, you need to be aware that anyone above SL1 who is within level range of you and actively waiting to be invaded is going to have maxed gear and a variety of spells, more than likely, so you never want to give them breathing space once you start. Stamina and vit go a long way in the forest, so I suggest a <50% of the best damage resistance (fixed level armors like the stone armor bits and the like are your great equalizer in this field) you can get along with your best shield (I tend to use greatshields because I have trouble in the hilly terrain and lag with parries) and the cloranthy ring/steel ring combo to get the most out of your HP and Stamina.

For casual forest invading you just find a place you like farming, like the lower New Londo, and wear your ring along with the awareness that once you get called to invade you can start swapping out gear for PvP (including the cat covenant ring which is only needed to trigger the invasion). You'll lose most of them, but end up with a bunch of xp and materials regardless, and it really does a lot to boost your confidence in your PvP skills when you start being able to see differences on your end in terms of how easily you get drawn into the same traps.

I didn't know you were on PS3, which is the only platform I can't help you on. Sorry.

We've talked about it before, but beyond the technical stuff they need to think through the marginal covenants a bit more. The rewards and things don't have to be proportional, but they do need some sense that they all have something to offer you for that particular gametype especially with respect to coop. It's a real shame that Way of White and Princess Guard never got finished.

Invasions have already been radically redesigned/nerfed once (Demons' free-for-all to Dark's essentially covenant-based). Was that destructive to Demons' Souls "niche?"

FROM saw the gankfest coming and added a mechanic specifically to punish it - Indictments and Darkmoon Police Force. This wasn't enough, largely because killing helpless newbs in Unread Burg is more fun than playing cops and robbers when you know you'll be going up against people who put a lot of thought into being the twinkiest griefers they could be.

A different way to solve the problem without damaging your ability to gank scrubs would be to make Darkmoon a tool of griefing against griefers. For instance, if you get killed by a Darkmoon, you can't invade for 20 minutes. There'd be plenty of people lining up to ruin griefers' playtime like that. That'd be a solution that stuck with the spirit of the game while still providing a fix for what I think is a pretty big problem.

Yesterday I wanted to get Mildred for the Quelaag fight, so I humanized or whatever. Before I could even walk out of the pipe the fire went out and the home bones went gray. I'm certain it was a player invasion (Mildred is triggered further away), but I didn't stick around to find out. I exited to the menu and plug pulled.

Why? Because the kind of person that camps the 30' span between the fire and the Mildred trigger isn't looking for a fair fight. There is no "freshness" or "tension" there, just pure griefing.

And yes, I'd play in offline mode if there was an option on the PC for it beyond turning off my internet connection.

This isn't at all how the Darkmoons work or even how they're conceived. They're more there for story reasons than anything else. They're obviously not there to punish people for ganking, because truly low-level players are less likely to be able to hand out indictments than higher-level ones, and anyway taking someone who clearly enjoys PvP and punishing them by giving them more PvP makes no sense. And I've never ever once heard a single Darkwraith complain that they're getting invaded by too many Darkmoons; in fact, what I have heard is Darkwraiths requesting indictments always, because they lead to more PvP.

That's no fix at all. Not all PvP is griefing, and if you view invasions as a negative that needs to be discouraged you just shouldn't have them in the game. Which obviously would be ok with you, but ultimately my answer to that would be that there are plenty of games that don't have invasions, and only two that do, so in my mind it's good if the series that has them isn't made to conform to the way every single other game works.

I don't like actual griefing either though, and if you think of an actual solution to it I'd like to hear about it. But any such solution would require figuring out a way to separate griefing from legitimate PvP, and I'm not sure that's a solvable problem.

Ok, I've had my whine about PvP so let's move on!

I decided to clear The Catacombs based on how close I was to the end. Pinwheel was hilariously easy. Then I moved up to the Tomb of the Giants and realized I was probably in over my head, so I left and headed for Sen's.

I really hate "trap" dungeons so I used a walkthrough. I don't regret it!

After playing around with the Great Scythe I've realized it's not enough of an "all-around" weapon for me, so when I got to the top of Sen's I farmed up a Balder Side Sword. This thing is great. I've got it at +9 right now.

Then I went on to Anor Londo and was pretty confused til I figured out to walk up the flying buttress. I made it into the building on the other end and fought the painting guards, but fell to my death in the catwalks. I trek back to get my stuff and miss the buttress -> balcony roll, which is insta-death. With nothing holding me in the zone, I left with the intent of finally going to the Asylum again. The painting guards reminded me I'd need to go there and grab the doll at some point.

When I reached Andre's bonfire I decided to go grab the Pharis bow from Darkroot. After grabbing that and some other shinies and losing ~20k souls because I pressed the wrong button and slid down into the pit with the three cat-wolf-dogs, I'm finally heading to the asylum again.

One question: I talked to the Kitty in Darkroot and she said something I hadn't heard before, which I assumed was DLC related. Then I got a YES/NO popup without realizing she'd asked me a question. I picked no and she said mean things about me and told me to leave, so I did. What was that about?

Yeah, I don't like the Great Scythe at all really. If you want to try out another large weapon that's appropriate for a dex build, check out the Scythe (not actually a scythe; the naming of polearms in this game leaves a lot to be desired), which has the same moveset as the Gargoyle's Halberd. The Balder Side Sword is really fantastic, though. There's a large contingent of players (formerly including myself, but a couple other things have edged it out in my opinion) that considers it the best overall weapon in the game.

That was about joining the Forest Hunters covenant. I'm not totally sure offhand but I think you can probably just talk to her again and still join if you want to. It's a PvP covenant, but even if you don't want to PvP you might still consider joining because it gives you access to a merchant that sells some stuff you can't get anywhere else, and who you can kill to get even more good stuff. If you actually follow the covenant through to its end goal (kill three opponents, harder than it probably sounds), you get the Ring of Fog which is definitely worth having, but you can also get that another way that I personally find to be less hassle.

I'm in the Chaos Servant one right now so I don't think I can switch. And you can get the Fog Ring by trading those Necromancer lanterns, right?

You can always switch, but if you've already made progress toward turning in that humanity (if that's the reason you're in the Chaos Servants) it's probably not worth it right now.

Yeah. You only need one, which I find pretty easy to get and pretty not worth using otherwise, so that's how I tend to do it.

Consistency is a virtue I do not feel bound by!

You know what? That's a great idea, I'm going to do the same!

ugh, Sen's is mean. If I wanted to explore death trap ruins I'd be playing Tomb Raider, at least there you get save points in between. I haven't touched the game all day, I couldn't face those boulders and swinging axes again.
Is there a bonfire in there at all, any way at all to heal up before the boss fight?

There is a bonfire, yes. It's on the roof. You have to walk off the side of the roof to get to it though, so it's hard to find for a new player.

Yeah I would definitely look up the Sen's roof bonfire. It's easy to cruise through the fortress in a few minutes once you know it but it can seem like a nightmare trek the first time and I for one really appreciated that bonfire at the time.

thanks, I'll look that up!
I make such a lousy explorer, hehe. I fall off every ledge, get hit by every boulder and set off every trap... multiple times! If I was my character I think I'd give up right there, hole up in a corner and spend the rest of my undead life selling all the loot I've found off to others braver then me. Those merchants have the right idea, I swear!

The trick for swinging axes is to move the camera up and above your character. That way you won't misjudge the distance, ever.

Sen's is an interesting level, namely because it's not a trap level in terms of reflexes. Once you know where you are going and what's around the bend, it's there to show you the lengths to which things that on the surface seem platform-y are solveable in the same way as the rest of the level. If you use the three lower blade bridges to orient yourself (long one at the start, number of separate blades), the second one with two clusters of blades and the serpent mage at its end, and the third with one continuous row of blades that you sprint through, it becomes a lot easier to get organized before the fourth and final long bridge where the blades are just there to distract you from the serpent mage to your left. Basically, it's a place for people that aggressively employ their ranged options, always look at the floor and figure out where things are going to be coming from, and there's no substitute for experience. Just as my wife mastered the Catacombs-Tomb long before I did, I learned Sen's before she did and there was a long training wheels phase where we relied on each other's summons as escorts. Just be methodical in your progress and pay attention to the difference between the last room and this one, and you soon realize how small the level really is.

Plus, slumbering dragoncrest ring, lightning spear, shotei, a vendor at the top with Balder shields and green grass...what's not to love (apart from the fact that is a hard level with hard enemies)? I also recommend a bunch of poison arrows, because there are a lot of problems you can solve by creative sniping and patience that seem insurmountable when you first get to them. Like a certain grenade tossing giant who's trivial to run through when you know the level but is a world of hurt before then, not least because it can make pursuing the bonfire before dealing with his shit incredibly dangerous.

An alternative to a walkthrough is using the summon system. Consider using the Broken Forum steam group to add a couple of DS junkies to your list, and I'm sure any of us would be happy to give you the grand tour if you're not enjoying the exploration.

I am now a member of the Forest Covenant. The Hydra is dead. Sif is dead (didn't feel great about that one; pretty sad when he starts limping). Still not mentally prepared to pop into Blighttown, so I'll probably hit up the Asylum next.

When I went through there, I didn't find the bonfire and I didn't find the key for the shortcut elevator.

My Iron Golem run started from the Parish bonfire.

Yeah.

If you beat Sif, you'll be fine in Blighttown.

I found a Baldur shield from a drop. How big a deal is this?