Well, I haven't watched the video and I can parry pretty well. My main barrier is that my old man reaction time isn't fast enough to switch from blocking to parry when they wind up for a big move, so I have do decide if I'm going to block or parry on each strike (and if they go for a light attack, I'm likely hosed). Since I was able to beat a Black Knight using only parries (and a fireball to pull) I must be doing something right.
FWIW you can parry while blocking, I believe. The video LK is talking about is very much worth watching; some badass parrier went into detail analyzing - frame by frame - how parrying works. I found it interesting and a bit useful. Parries are less a matter of reaction and, IMO, being familiar with two things: - The parry timing for the shield you're parrying with (it's different for each shield!) - The enemy you're parrying. Getting a feel for what animation is going to give you what incoming attack is crucial.
So one of the things that I've faced on this, my first playthrough, is being paralyzed with choice when it comes to armour. There are so many different pieces, and so many ways to optimize weight that it has never seemed worth it to upgrade a single piece since it will almost always be better to swap it out for something else. Finding the Fanged Boar Helmet was great because it had such great stats and looked cool ... but a little part of me was disappointed because I had just spent a ton of souls on Twinkling Titanite to upgrade my Gargoyle Helmet to +5. I realize that helmet will still come in useful for its elemental resistance, but I'm almost more committed than ever now to not upgrade armor at all, because it will be a waste of money. Maybe this will change in a future playthrough, but I was wondering ... do you guys who have been playing for a while tend to rush to a particular set and then stick with it and upgrade it?
I've found that by the time you clear Anor Londo you'll have a pretty clear idea of where you're going, armor wise. Before that you definitely face some decision paralysis since - as you pointed out - there are so many options. And that leaves aside the possibility of keeping around different sets for different scenarios. One thing I've learned is that you should not worry about being frugal with upgrades. For my first thirty hours with the game I was definitely paranoid about "wasting" Titanite and souls; now I just don't care; I'll ugprade a weapon to +10 just to see what it's like.
I'm doing that too because I like to experiment, but on my next playthrough I want to be a little more focused. For example, doing a DEX build has its limits. The stat scaling with Uchigatana has been great ... but not so great that it's worth not being able to wield some of the bigger, more stable shields, which I'd kind of like to be able to do.
Yeah, you're definitely getting into the realm of tradeoffs. I'm actually not a huge fan of the uchi (what little I've used it); I just brought a Great Scythe up to +10 to play around with it. For some reason I seem to like the options long reach weapons give me.
I'm using the Great Scythe as my fire weapon. It's extremely fun. The Uchi has surprising reach though. Its strong attack is a lunging thrust which is great for hallways. What I love most about the Uchi though is the way the short attacks do exponential damage with each hit. If someone is staggered or facing away, running and and starting to slash like a madman will whittle them down in surprisingly little time.
I love weapons that inflict bleed, hence my devotion to the Uchi. It's also pretty fast compared to my other high-use weapons (Gargoyle Tail Axe and Gargoyle Halberd). While going through Demon Ruins, I got Taurus Demons down to a science: approach slowly, then roll through their legs as they come in with the leaping attack (which they usually do), then spin around and slice four times with the Uchi and down they go without even getting off a second attack.
Huh. My preference seems to be for steady reliable damage dealers; I should probably give the uchi more attention. When I'm done with my Great Scythe!
I think you're reading the damage numbers wrong. The number that displays is the total damage done in that combo (or however you want to think of it), not the damage of the most recent hit. So if you hit a guy three times and the number goes 120, 240, 360, you did 360 damage, not 720. No weapon does different damage on subsequent R1 hits from what it does on the first one. However, if you're seeing things die faster than you expect bleed is probably what you're noticing.
This isn't really that big of a deal. 16 strength is all it takes to get top-tier stability (Eagle Shield). Silver Knight Shield is also very high stability and that's only 14 strength.
I was that way also, but if you are using the Uchi the same way that you are using a Claymore, you won't see half of its greatness. Just darting in for a single hit and then darting out again will seem like it does relatively low damage. You need to get a couple hits in for damage to really stack. Happily, it's a fast weapon, so this is possible. I have no idea if that's because of a bleed or not. It's not obvious to me when an enemy is affected by bleed.
It wouldn't surprise me if I was reading the numbers wrong, but I'm certain I've seen the damage increase with every hit also. Observing a boss's health bar, I see each hit do increasingly larger chunks. Looks like I'll have to read up on bleeding!
But I've found some awesome looking shields like the Black Iron Greatshield or the Tower Shield, which not only have amazing stability, but 100% physical reduction, and I want to use them! :)
Almost every piece of armor has a niche even in lategame, once it's upgraded. The gargoyle helm in particular is a standout piece of gear for the weight. What I suggest to people is to find something they like and short of a handful of things there are always intelligent ways to complement it with other things that will suit your weight goals. I find it's useful to have a <25% set and a <50% set, for instance, and while that takes different forms if I'm accommodating a giant weapon or shield, it means there are a lot of places for something to fit into my arsenal. For raw optimization, helmets tend to take the hardest hit just because there are two excellent headpieces (the dusk crown and the child's mask) that are tremendously efficient for some builds, and it takes a bit to get over their charms for what really matters. Which is looking good. Twinkling titanite gear in particular is a bargain. The crystal lizards especially will get you over the hump early on, but once you hit Anor Londo and the giant can take extra souls off your hands for them, or you beat Seath and can farm them easily, it's a lot of fun to experiment. Alternately, you can farm darkwraiths in New Londo for titanite chunks, and have Frampt turn them into large shards as needed if you don't want to bother with large shard farming. It's really only making a piece of gear +10 in armor or +15 in weapons that you should think about, since slabs are much harder to come by. For most everything else, investing a reasonable amount once your weapons and shield are taken care of (and your pyro/magic/whatever) pays off quickly in the boosts to survivability. So, for instance, I rarely leave the Undead Parish without all of my armor at +3, and I rarely leave Blight town without part of it at +4 or 5, and so on.
Taurus down, parry video watched (I am now amusingly better at parrying the quick attacks than the huge strikes because I go too early)(I'm to understand it happens to a lot of men YEAH, HEADED OFF YOUR JOKES) but now I'm frustrated again because I got killed by the drake, then I found the way to go below the bridge and got killed by the venomous rats, then I got past all those and got killed by Armor Pig, and each time I missed the bonfire that's apparently in that area, so I'm sick and tired of fighting my way back there from the Burg bonfire. I'll be looking out for it next time.
When you go down the stairs from the Hellkite Wyvern, on the other side of that chamber will be another set of stairs leading downward to the bonfire. Also if you want to farm souls, that area is a good one to do it. Run up from the bonfire to the bridge, provoke the dragon into strafing, run and hide while he burns the undead. Then back to the fire to reset them. +555 souls each time. That's peanuts and IMO it's a waste of time since you can just play a bit longer and have opportunities for MUCH GREATER soul acquisition, but I probably spent a good 20-30 minutes on my first character doing that. If you're up for it, it's an option.
I hate to just aimlessly gush but it is so cool making great use of Havel's ring all game long only to stumble upon his set of armor and have one of those AHA! moments. And of course it's in this city that's as beautiful as Blighttown is dingy and gross.
Only one lord soul stands between me and the endgame. Once more into the goddamn stupid fucking Catacombs. Also, Solaire :(
No... parries and blocks are mutually exclusive. That's why learning to parry can be kind of a pain in the ass: every time you mess up, you're pretty much guaranteed to get smacked. Not quite. All items that allow you to parry grant you a certain "window" in which you can successfully do a parry. If you press the parry button outside of the window, your parry fails & you get hit. If you press the parry button right on the edge of the window, you'll hear a weird metallic clanking sound and you'll take partial damage. (The parry was considered semi-successful.) There are three discrete parry window sizes. The smallest window (i.e. the one that's hardest to parry with) is granted to you by any medium shield. The midle-sized window is granted by almost any small shield. And the largest window (i.e. the one that's easiest to parry with) is granted by a couple special items: the parrying dagger, and... I can't quite remember what else. I think the target shield does. And I think there's one or two other items that grant it as well.
That's also why poise can be really handy to let you recoup from the whiff and roll away to reset or whatever. As the video describes (iirc) there are two stages to attack animations and two stages to parry animations. For the attack, phase A is the windup and B is the actual going to hit you animation. For the parry, A is the parry, and B is the recovery. What you want is to match up the B of the attack with the A of the parry, ideally as early as possible into that B stage of attack. It's good to look at the video though since it's hard to visualize just how much of the parry is recovery until you see it cut into frames. I'm not absolutely sure about that smallest group with the largest parry window, but the video is. You're right about the main thing, which is that medium shields have the smallest window and so on down in size. Despite some items (like the Catarina Armor bits) being described as improving deflection or what have you, I have seen no evidence that anything other than the parrying item itself affects the ability to parry. There are some shields with special properties, such as Sheva's round shield having both greatshield deflection for its block and medium shield parry, or the goofy-ass shields that have an attack instead of a parry, but that's kind of a separate question.
Four Kings: done. Took three tries total. And thirteen fucking estus! I was pretty panicking when I got a chance to heal so I was swigging 2 or 3 at a time just to be safe. They weren't as tough as I'd feared; though I'm guessing the Ascended Flame +5 helped. The two failures I got greedy and ate hits I didn't need to eat; and on the second failure that combined with one of the dicks spamming his magic AOE attack and just ripping me apart. I weathered the spam, but my health was so low that a single mistake cost me.
Seath the Scaleless down in one try. The Crystal Caverns were actually way harder than the boss itself (it helped that I read to equip the cursebite ring before heading in) which was a nice change of pace. I can't imagine the frustration of trying to navigate those caverns without a guide though. I fell once and immediately went to youtube to find out how to get through.
Tonight should be my second session attempting to solo O&S. Why solo? Because why waste the humanity if I know I am going to die anyway. I am literally prepared to die. I did get Orenstien down to less than 10% health last night though. And I am learning how to keep an eye on both of them, but dang...
You can do it! The Law Firm will probably have some of the most summon signs you'll see in this game, maybe a bit less than the gargoyles. I fought them a couple times as a summons, to get a feel for the fight and then summoned two people with ease and the fight was short work between the three of us. I didn't try it solo, so I almost feel like I am missing a challenge part to the game, but with all my stupid deaths elsewhere, I've made up for it!
10% was my next-to-last attempt before finally doing it the other day. <orange glow>Good luck!</orange_glow> I am once again on the Four Kings and slowly, very slowly figuring it out. So far I got one king down, which doesn't bode the best ... :P Still trying to figure out what range I should be at. That frickin' sword is super long, and the lack of perspective means I can't actually tell how far I am. I *think* that magic at my level (great soul arrows basically) is not gonna cut it - takes too long to cast and I get hit with something. However, when I get in my melee I feel like I'm dodging ALL the time without the ability to hit, so King #2 pops up way before #1 is down. I'll keep trying though. Not much choice, the place has been dead the last 2 evenings so no summons help (although I was able to be summoned while doing the Darkwraith run). :/
I did it melee and the trick I found that worked was to stick extremely close to him and strafe. Only back away for his aoe. Doing this should allow you to avoid his grab too. I also found eating some green grass for the fight helped me keep my damage going. I never did master the art of getting one King down before another popped though.
What you carry in your inventory doesn't encumber you; what you have equipped does. Take a look at the weight stat of what you're wearing. Maybe take your helmet and gloves off, see how that affects your movement speed.
Roll credits. God damn, that was an experience. Went into the final fight at SL88 or so—40 DEX, 40 END, around 30 VIT, 16 STR, and everything else at whatever the Pyromancer starts with. Loadout: +15 Uchigatana, +15 pyromancy flame, +5 Eagle Shield, Stone Helm, Gold-Hemmed Black everything else, Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring, Havel's Ring. After Gwyn crushed me on the first attempt, I looked up some strategies and saw that I was supposed to run around and prepare the world for NG+ by, e.g., kindling all the bonfires and farming various areas, including Kiln of the First Flame for chunks. But no fucking way am I going to spend time farming when victory is near! Of course, I accidentally farmed the Kiln by getting destroyed by Gwyn over and over again. In the final encounter, I never even took out my sword: 8 Great Combustions and a handful of regular Combustions turned the Lord of Cinder into, you know, a dead guy. I think I'll step away from Dark Souls for a bit, as there are a load of other games I've had on the backburner that I want to play a bit more. But who knows when the urge to hop in and level up toward some of those Greatswords will strike . . .
So, thanks to the lovely guide by jeffd, I'm now at the point in the game where I've stopped looking up every step on a wiki and am pushing into Darkroot Basin. This game really teases my long-dormant old school gaming masochism. I was thinking about a strength build, and I picked up a Black Knight Sword. Is that worth the points into DEX (18) to use, longer term? Woo for my first invasion being by Buttsuck89 who killed me easily with a katana looking sword that caused bleeds.
The black knight sword does a lot of damage early on, but it's generally regarded as a lower tier strength weapon due to its moveset. If you are doing a strength build, the 18 dex won't go to waste if you end up getting a BK halberd, which is a fantastic weapon for str. But I would stick with the zweihander, myself, and save the dex in case you get a large club or something like that and decide that works for you.
Yet like most areas, once you are fully familiar with it, it's pretty easy. I've mastered Tomb of Giants these days and can blast through it without many issues. Ultimately, after my full experience with the game, I feel Duke's Archives is the hardest part of the game. Mostly because of those goddamned Channelers. They can fuck up your shit at the drop of a hat, as well as move around.
It's pretty much the easiest once you get the hang of it. I agree with Charles, TDA is the hardest of the four once you're well-versed in all of them.
Same. The Duke's is still my most difficult level from the original game, especially because freeing Logan requires either clearing the level methodically or running the gauntlet a couple of times, which makes going quickly a dangerous proposition. The tomb seems to lend itself to being a solved problem for most builds once you get the hang of it. But it is a very intimidating proposition at first, to be sure.
Interesting. I'm sure I'll feel differently once I've done them all more, but I found the Duke's Archives to be one of the easier ones. At least you can see where you're being attacked from and the enemies don't hit super hard. If I were ranking them in order of difficulty for beginners it would be: - Lost Izalith - Duke's Archives - New Londo - Tomb of the Giants
