I'm probably going to switch to Vit/End with most of my points now. Idk if I'm going to do NG+ -- I think I'd rather try a totally new character like a Sorcerer or a STR guy (maybe Obsidian Greatsword). When should I worry about the DLC stuff? E: Also considering Attunement so I can play with more Pyromancy.
FWIW I never dodge with a marginally adapted or low level build, apart from derping around as a summon. So long as you have a shield in the low to mid 60s and compensate with your stamina accordingly (green grass is a short cut, and is really easily farmed these days right nearby), I find normal movement in and out a lot more efficient, especially with a short stamina bar. The other thing that makes it a lot easier is using pyro as your main damage dealer, because then (as with the 4 kings) every drop of stamina goes to defense.The one thing you have to know for sure is the tell for the spinning attack, as being on the way in vs on the way back from that can make a huge difference for wimpier shields. Just to provide an alternate option.
My bad, I thought the great scythe would scale like the scythe, but it doesn't. Scythe > Great Scythe.
Any time starting now, although it's probably the hardest of the post-O&S areas overall. You can go in and out of it freely though, so there's no harm in poking the head in now. Also there are a couple of really choice dex weapons if you can make it past the second boss, so that'll be a nice treat for you.
For anyone who wants more humanity there are 10ish rats down the corridor to the right of those slimes you can wipe out really quick and pickup some humanity while you are at it.
Jeremy, if you keep what you have now you are going to really like the Gold/Silver tracer in the DLC. The former as a daily driver with A dex scaling and great moveset, and the latter with the best backstab/parry dex crits in the game (it can get downright obscene if you have the hornet ring). Mostly I'd say keep working on Endurance primarily to broaden your opportunities to get to <25% with lighter armor and havel's ring, and get that all important stamina up, and throw a point towards vit every now and then just to improve survivability. Both increase quite nicely through 40. Depending on how rigorous you are about tightening your build, there are some "just for convenience" upgrades depending on need, like getting INT to 14 for the light spell if you have no better options for the tomb of giants, and getting (in ng+) 20 strength for the laugh-a-minute of using the dragonslayer bow + fog/hawk ring to utterly annihilate a certain Duo of Archers in Anor Londo. In terms of optimizing what you have now, in my experience the most efficient two attunement slot pyromancies are combust and great combust with the dusk crown and the bellowing ring. They absolutely demolish the time-sensitive bosses like O&S and the 4k, as well as everybody else. Also, unless you like the look, consider trying heavy-medium armor legs and arms rather than torso, as that significantly increases your aggro radius (from noise) and is a relatively inefficient way to boost poise/damage resistance at significant stamina regen cost unless you are shooting for very specific targets.
So how bad are Ornstein and Smough, really? I'm about to take them on and I keep finding myself not loading up Dark Souls because I'm intimidated.
So, guess who had a sinus infection, a sick day, and a copy of Dark Souls? This guy. Wrapped up in Blighttown, exploring a giant hollow tree. Know what's worse than having to carefully navigate down a treacherous path to the bottom of a tall area to do a corpose run? having to do it three times. Then I saw Ash Lake and was like eeeaah... Nah. So rang the bell and proceeded to clear out Sen's Fortress. First area I actively disliked --hated, even. This is not a good platforming game. There should not be platforming. Finally cleared it out and watched the NPC summon deal with the Iron Golem in a comically easy manner. Also, screw Mimics. I attack every chest on site now. On to Anor Londo, which looks freakin fantastic, but has more platforming BS. Oh man, that one part where you have to run up the buttress while those two archers stand back and give it to you ...up the buttress? Rage. Finally got past it using the fog ring and the heaviest shield I could find to get in one of their grills and turtle up until he knocked himself off the ledge. Then I took five steps and fell off the ledge myself. Farmed Silver Knights until I got a silver knight shield, which I'm upgrading as I go. Then worked my way forward and got to the end. Man, Ornstein and Smough. Bleaugh. I came SUPER close to beating them on the first try. Like, two hits from victory, but then I got one-shotted by super saiyen fatty. From there, never got close. I can get one down, then just get demolished in short order by the powered up second. I'm even using the NPC summon. That burns a humanity every time I fail, though, and I'm running low. That's where I've decided to take a break for now.
1) Help someone as a phantom first. 2) use the Solaire bonfire. 3) summon a real person with Solaire. Maybe two and ditch Solaire. Also, you guys know that when your sign is down you can't see summon signs, right?
Haha, after being all intimidated I almost brought them down on the first shot. Had Solaire not glitched and spent the first half of the fight trying to charge back through the white gate (and taken a ton of damage in the process), I might have. The big guy got me when he caught me with his charging attack (I haven't quite yet mastered dodging it) and followed immediately with his explosion.
Where should I put down a summon request? I'd be worried about invasions if I waited to do it until I cleared out the guardians.
See item 2. I.e. the Solaire bonfire. If the law firm killed you then you shouldn't have to worry about bring invaded. It's good practice and will get you the humanity to reverse hollowing. If you get two humans, or even one, you can run past the sentinels and go right to the fog gate.
One thing I'm finding is that my Demon's Spear is barely hurting them; it does like 63 damage per hit... I guess maybe time to try another weapon. This is my first time trying to summon help, and I'm like 5/5 "Summon Failed." I assume there are some settings on my end I need to try and fix?
I think the OP in the main thread has some stuff you can fix, but don't expect those failures to go away. It's the biggest technical flaw with the game and one the existed on the consoles. Ornstein & Smough? Really? Their name screams ambulance chasers. That and Smough's hammer looks like a gavel.
There's a lot of Smoes going around the classier video makers. I put them in the OP of the original thread. It's basically port forwarding and UPNP. The Demon's Spear is a lightning oriented weapon. O&S are lightning enemies, especially in Final Form (up til the Smough can be done with anything but he generally has decent resistances on average). Fire is the element of choice, or physical (normal), or magic. Faith kind of sucks because the lightning spears are not so great. Pyromancy with the dusk crown and the bellowing ring absolutely destroys them.
Gosh, if only I had a Fire Gargoyle Halberd on my alt. Wait, I do! :D Alternatively I can switch back to the main and finish them with GIANT PYROMANCY, which has sort of become his thing. All of the dubiousness I expressed about pyromancy went away when I got the ascended glove.
So I get invaded in the room w/ the two big knights. Dickhead is standing there behind one of the knights taunting me to come at him. WTF does he expect me to do? Finally he comes and ganks me. Annoying! He didn't have to waste that much time; I'm obviously not any good at PVP. Bleh, now that I've finally gotten to Law Firm: this fight is just so fucking frustrating. I don't have the patience for it right now. I kind of get what I want to do: drop the little guy first, but I have to keep kiting the big guy away otherwise he just messes me up. But I've done enough dying in the past while to not have the stomach for it. Plus I'm sick of killing those two huge elite guardian guys.
Backdoor method to banish invaders (highly situational): go through fog gate, invader is sent home. Homeward bone back to bonfire If you're going in solo you don't need to kill them, run by them. If you're summoning Solaire he makes it easy to take them down as one of you always have a clean shot at their back. Using Solaire's bonfire run over and kill the Silver Knight, summon Solaire and then kill them. Of course this will cost some of Solaire's health. And maybe get a human summon, too.
Yeah, the invader wasn't annoying me. It was mostly several deaths after my first (quite successful) attempt at O&S . Had I known Smough was vulnerable to fire, I'd have dropped them on the first shot! Or rather, it was just the invader's desire to get me to fight him AND one of the guardians that annoyed me. I stood back in a clear area and he took a solid 3-4 minutes to get bored and attack me. Do people seriously expect I'm going to come chasing after them while there's a giant bad guy nearby? As it is, since then I have yet to kill them both. I don't know what happened in that first run, other than some god positioning let myself and Solaire unload a megaton of pain on Ornstein while Smough fiddled around. Or maybe, in retrospect, Solaire's desire to go back through the fog gate distracted the Law Firm enough for me to do tons of damage on my own.
I would say big slow pyromancy is not really your best path. You want something small and predictable with a margin of error, since the main asset you want from it is keeping your stamina up and that shield in place. I recommend 1 of Great Combustion (often kills Ornstein before Smough even catches up, if you can get into that left cornerish area) and 1 of regular Combustion to finish the job. I've done this fight alone and with just Solaire dozens of times now, and generally I find that the dusk crown + bellowing ring + lightning ring + stone armor extremities is my best survival profile. I also do well with <25% setups emphasizing the cloranthy ring over lightning (since it never hits me), but because I know the tells and get out of the way. Or you can just summon any of us and it will be over in minutes. But if you master O&S the rest is downhill.
By lightning ring, do you mean thunder stoneplate? And fwiw the combustions are my go to pyromancy. The other stuff is just too unreliable. So when I say BIG PYROMANCY mostly I mean walk up and set it on fire.
Yes. It's really dependent on which moves you find take the most out of your survivability; with <25% variants sometimes the steel ring or Havel's is a much better choice. Me, I like just standing there with the Eagle Shield and knowing that nothing but a directly overhead Super Smough butt slam can take me out.
Yeah I'll have to see how the pyromancer does on this one. I suspect Great Combustion + the crown/ring combo (which I'm in the process of acquiring) will make short work of them. He's a <25% character; I'd need like another 8 stamina to equip the Eagle Shield so I guess quick and nimble and MURDER ORNSTEIN FAST is going to be the way to go. Once Smough is on his own I'm pretty confident in my dodging + pyro to take him down.
I died two or three times running by those guys to summon Solaire. They make it up the stairs pretty quick. You need Solaire with all the health you can get for the boss, imo, so I'd highly recommend killing them before summoning him.
That was sort of my approach. Those guys aren't hard so much as they are tedious: a fairly cautious approach ensures you'll win, but their propensity to heal means you may or may not drop them quickly. If there's one thing about Dark Souls that annoys me, it's the placing of fires relative to bosses. Sometimes they basically put it next door and it's easy to go from a beatdown to another attempt. Other times they throw just enough bullshit in the way to make it slightly annoying. Other other times (e.g., from what I can see of O&S) they throw some fairly severe obstacles in the way that makes the run back to the boss room longer than the actual fight!
O&S is a really easy run if you're not summoning Solaire, fwiw (at least assuming you can kill one or two silver knights without major incident).
FWIW, I just kill the two silver knights with a hit/backstab for less well geared characters and then sprint past the giant knights, sometimes after looping around and killing the archer if I'm feeling vindictive and like I want a somewhat dented Solaire in there with me. With sufficient damage output (and even a minimum ascended pyro glove with the ring/crown is more than sufficient), it's a very quick fight. In Demon's Souls there was one very poorly designed boss, the last one, that had a catastrophically unfair distance to cover before getting to him for another attempt. They did not repeat that mistake in Dark Souls. It just feels that way sometimes when you are stuck in a rut with basic enemies and can't get a fast solution for them.
The Silver Knights are a joke, but right now I am summoning Solaire. Maybe on my Pyro I'll let him take a few hits; but on my tank I don't know that I can afford it. That said, the most successful run I had was one in which Solaire did get hit, and then acted like a tool for half the fight. So who knows! O&S definitely strikes me as an execution fight. Like, when it was just me and Super Smough I got into a pretty good rhythm of dodging and whatnot and while I wasn't doing much damage per hit, I could tell that as long as I kept doing everything right I'd win. And it's not like everything is that complex; it's just that the margin for error is unusually low. Smough's charging attack was the one thing that fucked me; in retrospect I think the answer is to unlock and run toward him at an angle (shades of gaping dragon) and gamble that he can't turn toward me very quickly.
I just stay on top of Smough and to his side, and then back off when he's about to get airborne. Like most big guy opponents, he sucks at protecting his undercarriage.
That's basically what I was doing the first time and it was working nicely. What screwed me was a combo: he hit me with a charge while I was kind of near a while, so I got stuck in near the wall and couldn't get away from his follow-up buttslam quickly enough. Now that I know about his vulnerabilities I'm sure I can drop Super Smough with no problem (I've gotten pretty good with that +5 Fire Gargoyle Halberd), but the subsequent runs saw me die before Ornstein went down. Mostly because I was sloppy about ensuring Smough wasn't nearby before I started unloading on Ornstein; I was able to do some pretty horrific damage but inevitably Smough would come over and paste both Solaire and I. Which I think is a long way of saying I get how the fight needs to work (note: says the guy who hasn't actually beat it). I need to lure Smough away from where Solaire is tanking Ornstein, then walk over and take a few hits before going back to kiting Smough It's just a matter of me executing on that knowledge. In that sense, Dark Souls reminds me more than a little bit of my time as a WoW raider. And hey, if Solaire decides he wants to tangle with Smough I'm pretty sure the halberd and I can drop Ornstein like a ton of bricks.
Thanks! Probably I'll be back in here tomorrow crying about how they're kicking my ass. :) Hey, I'm just the messenger. The two games really do bear some serious similarities.
