Tell Me How To Get Started

Seath is not so bad once you get to know him. Helped some sorcerer get his tail tonight which was fun as they knew what they wanted and held the attention of Seath so I could chop. Coop on bosses sometimes makes you realize how good/bad others are and how you must look to those you summon sometimes. Wandering about getting slammed by various creatures.

Lots of cheesing fights tonight. First Ceaseless Discharge and The Hole. Then Lautrec ... I was able to use my Pharis Bow to aggro his two helpers and dispatch them at the end of the room without him coming at me. That allowed me to take him on alone, which helped. Having no Estus was annoying!

Then I took out the bridge wyvern with a lightning spear by running up, stabbing him in his big toe once, then running back down. Repeat. It was tedious and stupid but it worked. I don't see how you could kill that guy otherwise. Even in the super fire-resistant robes I got from Ceaseless Discharge's room, I'd still get almost completely killed by his breath weapon. Oh well, it's over now.

Wait, wait, wait. You took out Hellkite???

I think you have to leave this thread now.

I think the Bridge Wyvern is the toughest boss in the game (well maybe tied with the law firm), even the cheesy methods to kill him are kind of drawn out (and therefore prone to the make one mistake and die problem). He's even worse on NG+ with all his health and attacks powered up, I think it'll have to try the DLC great bow on him next time.

I killed him pretty well. You have to tease him down, make a quick attack to draw him forward, then run behind and attack from behind/in his legs. If he takes off, run back like buggery, because you won't survive that attack.

Yeah, he's tough. I just never managed to kill him for the longest time. I've only been able to do it recently because loldarkbead.

He is my nemesis. I use the arrow from side opposite stairs, head strike with medium weapon 2hr1, run down stairs approach. It takes a little bit but you can get a good routine going assuming you pay attention to your timing on shoot-run-hit-run. Also, you don't need the DLC bow (in case 27 str is a reach), the regular dragonslayer (20) works fine. Nowadays I don't make a NG+ character without it.

I was even more conservative than this. I ran up, waited for him to jump down, ran out of cover to stab him once, then immediately ran back down.

That said, I think it only took about eight two-handed hits with the unupgraded lightning spear to kill him. He doesn't have a lot of HP.

I like how the weaknesses of enemies in this game hold up against the lore. A guy named Ornstein the Dragonslayer does lightning damage and hey what do you know! Dragons are vulnerable to lightning!

I already have the Dragon slayer in my regular NG+ setup but since I have ridiculous strength on that character (BKH + Greatshield of Artorias shooting for Havel's for the lols) I thought it might be fun to try the even better DLC version which I regret not remembering to pick up in NG. Though, actually getting back there might be more work than I'm willing to put in :)

DO IT. Depending on your level, odds are good we can coop. The DLC is insanely lucrative with the soul upgrade of NG+.

You have to be a monster to get Gough's bow.

Either you have a weird threshold for "monster" or you're thinking of his armor.

I am a card carrying member of Friends of Dragons.

Anyway, haha, read the wiki and I only got it with his armor if you follow my meaning. So, yea. I'm the monster.

Man altoholism is a pain in the ass! I keep starting new characters to try stuff out; currently I'm tempted to try out the (seemingly popular) dex/int sorcery build.

Huh. I haven't started any alts. I'm going to finish with the first character I rolled.

Of course I know if I start a dex/sorcerer I'm going to end up with the Black Knight sword from the guy in the berg. Just because Dark Souls.

I wonder if the next game will have ways to swap items between characters. Maybe something that only opens up after NG+? I guess there would have to be some restrictions.

This game used to have a way to do that. >_>

I spent a fortune ascending something so that I could forge the Greatsword of Artorias, only to discover that I need like 25 levels worth of stats in order to use it. That's annoying.

Wikis are your friend.

So I finally handled the Four Kings by a) going back to basics and b) farming. I just wasn't doing much damage with +10 Gargoyle Halberd and +8 pyromancy flame (unaugmented by gear). So I hit up Painted World and farmed a shitload of souls* in order to upgrade my flame to +15, buy the Bellowing Dragoncrest ring, and level VIT and END to improve survivability. Then I finally got around to finding the Very Large Ember and pumped my Uchigatana to +15.

In terms of tactics, I realized that, while the two-handed leaping R2 attack with the Gargoyle Halberd was doing reasonable damage, it was costing too much stamina and taking too much time—I usually couldn't get an attack in and then recover in time to dodge whatever the King did. It also didn't seem like all my armor chicanery was doing me any good, so I went back to gold-hemmed set with Stone Helm (although I still went sans-shield), Bellowing Dragoncrest, and went back down for one last attempt before giving up for the night.

And, thus armed, I fucking destroyed those bastards. +15 Uchi was hitting for more damage 2-handed R1 attack than my +10 Gargoyle Halberd leaping R2 could manage. +15 flame/Bellowing meant Great Combustion was also crushing and even regular Combustion was hitting for more than the Halberd. I sprinted up to the first King, dodged his swing, cut, dodged, flamed, dodged, cut, etc. All those attacks moved quickly enough that I had plenty of time to get ready to dodge. They never even got out two Kings at once. Sure, I almost died a couple of times when they hit me with the eating attack followed by the stupid AOE, but rather than immediately trying to use Estus, I learned my lesson and first dodged the subsequent sword attack, which gave me enough time to heal without getting chopped mid-swig.

* You know that feeling when you go to the bank and take out a bunch of cash and then tuck it away and nervously take it to wherever you needed a bunch of cash for whatever dumb reason? That's how I felt waltzing out of the Painted World with ~130k souls, especially when my first attempt to leave ended in getting pounded into rubble by that giant knight on the bridge. Had I failed to recover those souls, I would probably be down one monitor right now.

And I forgot the best part! As I was heading back to the Anor Londo bonfire from Painted World in order to warp down to Firelink, I was close to another level's worth of souls, so I knocked off a few guys, intending to give VIT one last bump. But I was in such a hurry to go after 4K because it was getting late, by the time I actually hit the bonfire, I had completely forgotten, and did not realize until I was running down the stairs to The Abyss. Certain that I was going to die, I became preemptively cranky about the loss of 32k souls to my own idiocy (I'd previously lost about ~47k down there). Upon victory, I immediately turned those souls into stats.

I stuck around New Londo Ruins last night with my summon sign out just in case you'd find me. Never got summoned though. But I did manage to get a slab off of one of those Darkwraiths. Actually that was a great run. Probably 6 chunks and 1 slab. Of course the next run around down there only yielded 1 chunk to make up for it.

I tried to summon people a couple of times, but my frustration with the boss was such that I was shortcutting like mad and hightailing it for the fog gate, so I only ever saw signs right outside the gate and couldn't stick around long for the summoning to work. Which it never did.

Hrm, sorcerer is kind of interesting. What's the early-game idea (say, up through Blighttown). I guess it's get 60x Soul Arrow and then crank INT while meeting the minimum stats for a halfway decent weapon? I'm thinking the Winged Spear, since I'll want to convert it to the moonlight butterfly spear, along with a selection of katanas.

No, you convert the lightning spear from Sen's to the moonlight butterfly spear, since you have to go through Sen's to get to the Giant Smith who makes the boss weapon, and you can just downgrade it to a +10. Early weapon, a sorcerer actually makes a lot of sense to go for the drake sword, IIRC, due to the str being needed for the moonlight greatsword. And you can get 90x soul arrow once you get Griggs from the lower burg, since Rickert has a copy as well. I found myself using the weapons for the lower HP guys and saving soul arrows for more dangerous guys that I wanted to engage at range.

That's a good call re:lightning spear! In that case, I guess I'll just get a Drake Sword, and then head down to the Lower Burg (I just got the basement key). Then it'll be back to watching Netflix while waiting for Gargoyles coop!

I just got summoned by a naked dude with a club (not reinforced) and a wood shield. Jolly co-op indeed! :D

I finally had some jolly co-op! Decided to throw down my sign outside the Four Kings fog gate and wait. Had to wait forever, but somebody finally bit, and we went down there and ruined some kings. Then I popped over to Duke's Archives. Running into Seath by accident was surprising, but I got my souls and humanity back and have plowed through to the bonfire on the balcony near where the downward stairs open up. I sense that I am approaching the dreaded Crystal Caves, so that should be fun.

Killed the Firesage Demon boss, and then headed through the fog wall to greet ... another boss! Dark Souls.

Aaaaand credits rolling right now. Last boss took me 3 tries, but he was pretty fun because he wasn't a gimmick fight. Consistent with the approach that the game takes to telling its story elsewhere, the game just ended and I have no idea what really happened. Guess it's time to watch some lore videos. I can't decide if the game would be better with a stronger, more coherent narrative. It's still a great game without it, but I don't really think the whole "WTF?" aspect to the story is actually making it better.

Still, one of the best games I've played this generation. Looks like I put in 64 hours (level 89 character), which is really unusual. I'll probably come back to it and start a caster character at some point, but not right away.

Dark Souls.

That's really bizarre, since credits are rolling for me right this minute. Co-opped the final boss with two other guys. Failed the first time with a sliver of health left in him (I'm sure my co-poppers were facepalming at that one), but called both of them back then took him done without any trouble.

I'm pretty sure I clocked in more than 64 hours, which is unheard of for me. I'll write a more complete post about the whole thing in the other thread after I get some damned sleep.

Edit: Got back to the title screen. Two characters (yes, despite all my protestations I restarted, took me 20+ hours to get back to where I was, do shut up about it) at levels 65 and 91. Total play time: 99 hours, 17 minutes, 14 seconds.

Funny enough I saw the credit roll today, too, except I honestly forget how many times. My first character went level 96, IIRC, and an equal number of hours, though there was a fair amount of AFK in that (hollow of course). This latest character took 24 hours and my previous was 25. I usually take my time, though. I wonder how long a personal speed run would take?

Jamie Madigan

Regardless, the lore thread awaits! It is definitely a game that you get a lot more out of once you can stop and enjoy the view on the second playthrough.

On to the lore thread, I guess. I'd settle for a to-the-point summary of what exactly happened in the game and what my character did. Regardless, it's a game to be enjoyed for its excellent design and mechanics, not a narrative.

That's brilliant re: lightning spear.

I once again failed to focus on my sorc, so I'm a sorc with 20 STR and 22 DEX. Still, so far I'm pretty much destroying things left and right (right equipment makes up for stats) so I don't think it'll be a problem. Right now it's all INT to Soul Spear. My loadout is enchanted Iaito, Homing Soul Mass, 20 Great Soul Arrows and a situation-dependent utility spell, Crimson outfit, Bellowing Ring and Havel's. I offhand situation dependent shield and a +7 or so crossbow after reading some threads here. So far it's proven pretty darn useful!

That is the entry point, yes. But I think you might be surprised with what underlies that in terms of setting and the experience of "living a myth" that is around you all of the time but easy to miss when you're just trying to get by. Regardless, there are scores of lore videos in that thread, and just looking at what Kaathe has to say when you're not allied with Frampt might help flesh things out. The lore thread also has some lore picture-summaries, so they might be accessible options as well. The main thing is, imo, approaching it as participation in the creation of a myth that is informed by other myths rather than the usual "here's how we fit conventional storytelling into our game mechanics, and we're frontloading the expository text". There are a lot of ambiguities that we can't resolve definitively, but when you look at the difference between what we "knew" before the DLC and afterwards, it's absolutely fascinating how you as the player experience so many surprisingly deep narrative threads.

It's just that you do it as an epic hero might, focused on the struggle rather than the view.

Just went back to my Pyromancer for a spell. Can the ascended glove be upgraded anywhere than at the lady in the Blighttown swamp? It's a pain in the ass to travel all the way down there every time I've got a spare 30k souls to throw into the damn thing...

The pyromancer guy you rescue from the depths should be able to do it at firelink.

ooooh haha I totally forgot about him! I just sort of assumed that he could only do a regular glove. Thanks!

edit: nope, when I attempt to it says "No weapons for ascension." Looks like that wtich really is the only one, dammit!