That knight's bark is bigger than his bite, as long as you don't get bit. Dodging works wonders against that guy.
Did you find the blacksmith bonfire? Go around to the right of the church and you'll see a path leading off into the woods. There is a bonfire down there, which is the most convenient place to launch attempts on the belltower from.
Thanks for the tip, and no I didn't. I also didn't find the merchant in the Undead Burg until I realized I had never actually walked over that way. I seem to have a talent for missing anything important the first time through!
There are kind of two paths you can take to get around to the right side of the church, and be aware, you'll likely have to fight at least one Baldur Knight, depending on which way you go :).
I definitely do this. There seems to be no way to know in-game what a +15 Claymore will be like in comparison to a +15 Scythe. I don't really find it to detract from the experience to look up what other players have discovered about weapon stats. In fact, it's made me want to explore more in a way. I looked up weapons which would have good Dex Scaling such as the Uchigatana or the Great Scythe, and then I had to go find them ;).
Don't overly fixate on stats, as they are largely meaningless (unless you want to know about scaling). The reality is that your best weapon is the one whose moveset you like most. The damage numbers don't mean a whole lot because what damage you actually do changes based on your stats, and on top of that, they don't reflect a weapon's speed. So a faster weapon with 200 might do much more damage than a slower weapon that shows 250.
I died so many times on Seath trying to chop off his tail. They haven't made that harder to do over the last year, have they? I don't remember dying so much before. Actually killing him was cake after that. I've never come close to getting cursed by him before. Is standing in his crystal breath for the entire duration once enough to curse you with regular armor?
Bell Gargoyles down, with a little help from my bent phoenix knight friend. I also went back to the Burg and handled the Black Knight which felt much less intimidating after the gargoyle fight. I think there is another guy I unlocked with my Master Key so I may pay him a visit now that I'm a little more comfortable with target lock, dodging and reading movement in general. I'm liking how there are all these options and no real pressure to do anything specific if I'm not feeling up to the task.
Cheesy's method for seath is pretty great, which is let him break the crystal himself. While he's gearing up to breath on it, run around behind and you get some free tail shots. I don't know about curses, I've never been cursed in that fight and I don't even bother with curse gear anymore. If you stay close to him in the front or move beside/behind him you are extremely unlikely to get cursed.
Armor that doesn't have unusually high curse resistance. I guess there is quite a range. I forget what I was wearing. I think Mask of the Mother + Painting chest and arms + balder leggings. So a little under 30 from armor, which seems low for that fight.
Yes, it is. :) I put on Leeroy armor and the Cursebite ring for that fight just to eliminate that likelihood - it only needs to happen once to be super annoying, and reducing that capability almost trivializes the fight. You can make multiples mistake and as long as you remember to chug regularly come out swinging again.
I often use Dingy Robes, myself, just because sometimes I haven't gotten around to clearing Nito yet. It is good to bank on being hit with curse with a few times just because it's really annoying when it does happen, and fortunately both the Paladin and Dingy sets are good enough in their own right that it's not a waste of resources to invest in them. Another fun thing I learned in a recent playthrough is not to be a miser and unequip gear to protect it before being nuked by Seath the first time. I'd just never managed to get cursed in that fight and for some reason the strange sequence it used to curse and kill me meant that I was still cursed when I respawned despite using the rare ring of sacrifice. It was kind of annoying since I didn't have any curse curse since I hadn't gotten cursed in ages. So now I gird for curse before that one, too.
Funny how things work. Last night failure. Tonight Seath went down first time and did it solo. Dark souls.
Hoo boy, fell down a sewage drain in the Depths, got myself cursed and then promptly ran into a Gaping Dragon. What a rough series of events, though I did get the dragon down to half life before he belly flopped (or something) and I died instantly. Anyhow, after testing the Zweihander I'm not sure how I'm supposed to unequip this thing. The animations are way too much fun.
Man I don't know why, but I could not make that jump in the Catacombs to get to the Giant Blacksmith. I must have died four times. I've never had trouble with it before, but tonight it was a fucking disaster. Ugh!
The giant blacksmith is the one in Anor Londo. This is the fire blacksmith, or possibly the giant dwarf blacksmith. I think he's talking about the jump from the bridge to the broken stairs above the great scythe, not the fall in the hole above Vamos itself. But yeah, the steps in there are fine if you just yog off the edge.
Nah I'm talking about the hole. I thought you had to roll from the stairs to the first platform; I kept almost but not quite making it. I got down there eventually, but man it was annoying!
I seem to recall just running off the end of the stairs and landing on that platform without trouble.
Gaping Dragon downed while cursed. Kind of makes me feel like riverdancing. Thank goodness for the repetitive nature of this fight. I did NOT want to lose those souls.
Yeah, I only lose this fight (well not anymore, but on 1st and 2nd characters) when there are other people (NPC or other) around and the rhythm gets out of whack. Usually it's a couple of tries with help, then I go in by myself and take him down with no trouble. 's weird.
Summon help. Hell, if I were in your SL range I'd gladly try to pop in. It ups their health, but with competent people wailing away you can take them down fairly easily.
I think my strategy is just borked. Going to try them again tonight with high poise and just beat the shit out of them.
For me it was all about getting in there and trying to take them down as fast as possible. If you have more than one of them on you at a time, you screwed up.
What's your level Sinfony? Are you on the PC? I could help out maybe if you're around and playing this evening!
Basically stamina-maximizing because in my early fights I kept running out. So I went full gold-hemmed set and no shield so I could stay under 25% equip load without Havel's Ring so that I could use Cloranthy instead. But that's very little protection and I spent a ton of time healing because I was rubbish at dodging attacks. I went a little higher armor and Havel's after hitting on the strategy to switch between heavy swings with Gargoyle Halberd and swapping to pyromancy to no-stamina attack while recovering stamina, but still not enough armor and susceptible to getting interrupted all the damn time (including while healing). I got them down to around 25% health a couple of times, but the wrong combination of attacks will destroy me every time, so I need more survivability and more attacking. My thinking is that heavier armor with higher poise will help with that.
Well poise is helpful but the problem with going up in weight is that it can make it harder to get out of the way of their grabs. Really the best thing is to just learn to dodge and heal when it's safe, but I know that's not necessarily the solution you're looking for. The other big thing, as Jibble says, is damage output. Do you have much of it? What's your magic situation like? Is your flame upgraded? If so I would forgo weapons entirely and just hit them with max power Combustions/Great Combustions/Black Flames and using the stamina to dodge everything. That method makes you fast, lets you dodge constantly, and gives you enough damage output to never let them double up on you for sure... IIRC Great Combustion hits between five and six hundred damage on them with the full setup, which is more than most weapons will anyway, and certainly more than any weapons that's as fast as those spells are.
My flame is +8 or so. Great Combustion definitely wasn't hitting that hard, although I was thinking about farming a bit before my next foray to pick up the Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring. I've been two-handing my Gargoyle Halberd, so it's hitting for 200-300 damage depending on what attack I use. Anyway, even at 25% I haven't been able to dodge the grab, although I've gotten reasonably good at dodging the big purple AOE thing.
Ah. Yeah I meant Ascended Flame +5 + BCDR + Crown of the Dusk. But just adding the last two to your current flame will still make it pretty awesome (40% more damage than whatever you're getting now).
There are some essential components to the "unskilled" defeat of the 4k, and I say that as a staunch advocate of such an approach. I have beat them by evasion, and I find it nerve-wracking and prone to unpleasant surprises. 1. +11 or better flame. You can do it with less, but it's still pretty cheap through +12, and that's just at the point you hit the cost of the Bellowing Ring. 2. 2 attunement slots or better, with great combust and regular combust. 3. Mask of child + bellowing ring OR (riskier) dusk crown + cloranthy ring OR dusk crown + bellowing ring - note the dusk crown does increase your vulnerability to magic so you can't miss a block against the spells and especially the sword attacks with your shield (as they are not scaled to your HP iirc). 4. Crest shield at +3 or better 5. Armor piled on to your comfort level. I've done it with almost 100% equip weight, and I've done it at just under 50%. Your two main criteria are magic and physical resist, followed by poise. Recommend focusing on extremities first, then torso.(this is why I like having a stamina item, and sometimes stamina grass). 6. 20 estus flasks at +2 or better You just stand next to it and blast with pyro, and with no summons (NONE tell that witch to fuck off, she's not worth the extra HP on the bosses although a good human summon might be) you should do ample damage with your combusts to kill them all. You might need to swap to a weapon for the last one. Here's the thing. You are constantly moving to their side, you have your shield up only before they hit, and you don't bother with dodges. You brought 20 estus flasks because you are going to often want to drink a second one (by tapping x again in mid drink animation) when you can see that you are going to get whacked mid drink. The pyro is important because it keeps your stamina high, which means you can keep your shield up (especially for the all important magic blasts and the big sword swings). That means you can attack a lot more quickly and even though you may do more damage with your favorite weapon, the stamina cost frequently means you are better off with pyro (exceptions for really good physical or dex damage weapons which just do unbelievable damage once you can get out of the way of most of the telegraphed attacks). The goal is to kill the first ones fast enough that you actually have wait time in between them, which you may not hit at +11 but it should be close. Now, you can tweak this in all kinds of directions, I'm just offering the "pure gear" setup that works for me even when I'm summoned by complete idiots. And it does take practice not to get overwhelmed, so it's not on you regardless. I just want to lay out a low skill roadmap.
I just cheesed Ceaseless Discharge in the most hilarious way possible: I ran away from him and he fell in a hole.
Tried to get summoned into some coop for Seath, but the host kept dying. Interestingly, had my first PvP duel victory --followed immediately by my second! The first one we doubled up on a guy when he tried to ambush us while walking across the invisible paths in Crystal Caverns. Lame. The second one was one-on-one, though, because my host was faffing around in the archives when the invade rushed me. He was bad. Worse than me, evidently. Finally got fed up with trying to coop Seath, so went and solod him pretty easily. I managed to get in some sweet spot right up in his grill where he couldn't hit me. Wasn't sure what area to go to after beating him, so I consulted the wiki and OH HAI CEASELESS DISCHARGE. Calling it a night.
