Definitely get used to dropping your shield. Stamina is much, much slower to regenerate while holding it. There are enough breaks in combat to drop your shield and get some of that back. Heck, for some enemies there's enough time to drop the shield, switch to 2h, attack, back to 1h and raise the shield before getting hit.
I picked up on dropping my shield at some point. In typical encounters where stuff dies in a hit or two it's nbd; but against bosses you definitely need to take that breather. Plus attacks with the shield down take much less stamina.
Latest discovery: gargoyle halberd has an entirely different R1 attack when coming out of a roll! Rather than a forward chop it's a quick sideways swipe. Probably awesome for groups.... Neat! This game rules. I like the +5 Gargoyle Tail Axe significantly less. It feels slower, and while it's basic attack is a left to right sweep (so I can hit multiple dudes) it also does significantly less damage. It also lacks the halberd's zany forward reach. So yeah, not a fan!
So I've got a Large Ember. Do I use it to make my shield even more badass, or to turn my gargoyle tail halberd into a serious wrecking ball? Also heeeeeeey I found the guy who can upgrade my pyromancy flame and sell me other spells! This shit is starting to roll downhill. :D
The preferred nomenclature is gargoyle halberd (as in the weapon they use in their hand) as opposed to the gargoyle tail axe, as in the weapon that comes out of their gargoyle rearses. The tail axe is widely regarded as a novelty as compared to the halberd, which is universally acknowledged as a Great Fucking Weapon. In a sense, the tail is a bit of an outlier compared to the excellent halberd, helmet, and situationally useful (ie for low str builds in need of lightning resist) shield. I always focus on damage output first, then shield when it's a question of large titanite scarcity, but sometimes getting to the next tier of stability takes precedence so I do it balanced.
Thanks LK! And assume any nomenclature confusion on my part is entirely due to my own confusion and general addledness. That being said, man that halberd is sweet! I didn't realize it but at +5 it's better than the Drake Sword in terms of damage; maybe owing to stat scaling? I duno. My Drake Sword is good for 200 physical, the Halberd is 207. so that's my new baby. Plus the range on it is pretty comical; against your standard Burg undead I can launch attacks confident that even if they try and attack me I'm out of range. I kind of see the point about offense vs. defense. In a lot of ways, combat in Dark Souls seems to be a war of attrition. Over time the mistakes add up, and eventually I die. While a slightly better shield may let me prolong that time, the fact is that the only stat that seems to improve is stability means the improvements are fairly marginal (unless, as you said, I hit a new tier). On the other hand, murdering shit faster has pretty tangible benefits: the faster a given fight is over, the less likely I am to make a stupid mistake. Regarding shield stability - and I realize this is probably explained elsewhere but I missed it - is the effectiveness of stability a linear or a stepped function? Viz, does 66 to 67 stability matter, or is it only when you go from one threshold to another?
I'm just kidding about the nomenclature. Mostly. It's not important. <twitch> Shield stability is linear in that it's definitely worth it to get one more point here or there, it's just in terms of strategic upgrades that you want to think in thresholds imo. So, for instance, getting the dragon crest shield to +3 is a Noble Goal where you see substantial returns especially in boss fights relative to a shield in the previous tier, but you're still a lot better off at +2 than +1. Unless that could have gone to your primary weapon instead. Does that make sense? That's why in the early going I like having my shield on a separate upgrade path.
Yeah it makes sense; having it as a linear function lets me make (somewhat) informed tradeoffs when it comes to allocating rarer pieces of Titanite. Now that I've uncovered how easy it is to *ahem* farm souls getting weapons / equipment to +5 isn't that big a deal, so it's a matter of where the higher-level upgrades go. Which, as a mechanic, I actually rather like: as cheesy as soul farming in Darkroot may be, it lets a new player like me make an informed decision about what weapons are going to be best for me going forward. Had I not been able to upgrade the gargoyle ax^H^H halberd I wouldn't have discovered how freaking AWESOME it is relative to the Drake Sword.
I think the forest is a great training ground, in every way, even though the damage output requirements can feel very punishing. I wouldn't recommend it to every new player, but the items (stone armor, wolf ring, green grass, Black Bow, Sheva store/drops, fog ring, divine ring, dusk crown), the subtle lethality of the farming when you get it just a bit wrong, the beauty of the setting when you're exploring it, and the boundless FUUUUUUUUU and joy of the covenant make it one of my favorite areas to hit early on.
Heh, sorry to let you down man: I've been farming it via the pathfinding bug that causes them to run off a cliff. Occasionally I'll engage one of them one-on-one when they refuse to take the plunge, but mostly it's crass exploitation of pathfinding bugs. I justify it via a) it's my first playthrough and I use the souls to experiment with weapons, not juke my stats and b) fuck this game for all of the blind attacks it's thrown at me.
Yes, that's actually exactly what I meant by the subtle lethality of the farming. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using it in my view so long as you don't feel like you're obligated to do it (which you clearly don't), but you might be surprised at how tricky the exact route you use can be in fooling their AI and how the choice of the caster (for instance) to use the slow, powerful soul arrow versus the quick one can make him a lot more lethal with unfortunate timing. Also, it was one of the great troll notes of From when they added the two greatsword guys in a patch, as we'd all been doing that run for ages and all of a sudden ran headlong into those assholes (who perma die and thus become a nice gesture rather than a fuck you to farming). While other areas can be more lucrative later on, most notably lower New Londo, the bang for the buck in early levels is really hard to beat. And then when you come back ages later and basically knock the hell out of the guys as if they were Undead Burghers you really feel pretty good.
Good to know! Usually it's the mage who gives me trouble; of the four or five times I've done it he's just stood on the ledge blasting endlessly at me. Fortunately I was able to drop him with a fairly conservative combat approach; I've got no doubt that two of the mobs in that area would drop me. And yeah, I don't see farming as necessary so much as a nice way for me to explore some system that I might not be able to. The game does precious little to provide differentiation between weapons which, in a sense, is OK: it's all about player experimentation! But that experimentation needs to be somewhat informed, especially given how important the upgrade system is. Absent the ability to upgrade stuff to +5 almost at will I'd be left with the conclusion that the Drake Sword really is awesome. Which it undoubtedly is; but without feeling like I could drop however many thousand souls on upgrading the halberd I might not have discovered I liked it more (my basic criteria, again, being killing burg/parish trash in one hit, which is incidentally why I've mostly abandoned the gargoyle tail axe.
Yes, through the hundreds of times I've done it across characters I've got a pattern that seems to work 9/10 times to keep him jumping off with his pals (for instance, wearing medium armor with a slight jangle improves my results over the long run versus wearing quiet torso armor), and I tend to be safer with longer stamina bars but also more prone to leaving them behind if I don't force myself to yog a bit instead of sprinting as much as possible. The details of the route matter, for instance, as I tend to do better going just past the log before turning sharply, but turning just before is a lot safer, and again how much I curve into the woods and where I loop back (and whether I go all they way to the end of the cliff or stop a bit short, and whether I stand still or run in place, and so on). And then sometimes I feel like I'm totally misreading the situation and I'm getting the caster holding back every damned time. Then my stamina goes up or my choice of armor changes or whatever, and suddenly I'm back in the money, and I realize that even something as simple as an AI glitch has gotten under my skin. Also, I think being able to +3 your armor at will is a huge improvement at that point in the game, so I definitely think you're on the right track generally. And who knows, you might come back to some of those failed experiments in weapons and make them into elemental or divine specialty weapons later on.
Like I said, I can handle the caster on his own. in a way I look at it as sort of a punishment. "Want to grind souls? Fine, but you're going to have to deal with this pain in the ass." Where I'm at he does a lot of damage unless I'm blocking. His arrow spell is brutal as well, but if we're in close that never hits so it's a wash. It does make me sort of wonder: the game is so obviously deliberately designed, is something like that on purpose? Did the devs realize that this was an easy farming area and change the caster's pathfinding just so such that he'd occasionally not obediently leap off the cliff, just to add a potential cost toe the farming?
Beats me. AFAIK, the pathing and scenario have not been touched significantly apart from adding the two perma-kill forest knights, and the whole thing was entirely derived from the player base cracking it early on by accident/experimentation and then popularizing it on youtube. It could just be one of those things that was hard to fix while still retaining the simple joy of watching them fuck up, as in general the humanoid forest enemies have a hell of a time with cliff edges in their more aggressive routines. It could be that they view it as something where they are ideologically quite different from, say, [other company redacted in the interests of I don't want to accidentally summon one of its Chosen Internet Folk] in how they approach exploits because they have a much more durable design. I mean, the bottomless box glitch that allowed cloning your gear into new characters was recognized forever, and yet not repaired until the PC version would have (possibly) made it something that they had to work on to include artificially or at least be wilfully blind to; I think the game is better for it being repaired, but I'm glad they didn't take an aggressive stance against it early on as it would have been endless kvetching and arguments everywhere. Again, a place where different designers might have seen it as cheating that needed to be punished or ripped out by the root, and clearly not there by design, and yet once it's a part of the player knowledge base they are careful in how they address it.
I tried that last night and that did work better. I'll keep experimenting with different weapons now I'm not married to estoc anymore, with the strength and dexterity I have I can experiment with quite a few different weapons.
Got this too. It's hard! I am tootling around the Berg with a long sword, some sort of kits shield and some hollowed one armor. I am fine for encumbrance, having upgraded it a fair bit. Have worked dex and str a bit and am contemplating working up to the winged spear - I dunno - or a rapier (I like quick weapons as I am kind bad at timing things and quick stuff seems more forgiving).
Calistas have you found the blacksmith in New Londo down the stairs from Firelink Shrine (behind the tree) yet? There's a free estoc lying around nearby if you want to try out a fast weapon. I found the spear was slower then that, but it has a longer range. Estoc has a good range by itself though, and a stabbing attack which is nice in narrow passage ways.
I tried messing around with a "no magic, just bow and sword" character a bit today, but didn't like it so I went back to my spellsword. And the Capra Demon went down after 4 tries. woohoo!
Just died on the Gaping Dragon. Forgot to kill the mage up top and he killed me. Hilariously I took absolutely zero damage from the dragon itself.
And then FUCK I got cursed by a basilisk. I gather removing this thing is going to entail some annoyance... @Saxman how so? Granted, he didn't seem very tough (especially given that big entrance). If it wasn't for the stupid channeler that I didn't drop I'd probably have one-shotted him.
I got stuck on Gaping from range so long on my first playthrough it was ridiculous. And that's after rolling over Capra quite easily, no less! Anyway if you want to see a real joke of a boss, just wait for Pinwheel.
So how come rats mostly don't fight me any more? Whenever I encounter rats now they just turn their back to me and run. Don't I smell fresh?
That's just it - he is SO easy to beat. Granted if you forget an leave the channeler alive, it can cause some trouble, but the dragon on his own is pretty much a pushover. I dunno, maybe that was From's way of saying, "Here, have this one on the house," after having to deal with Capra.
You need a Purging Stone. You should be able to buy one from the merchant in the first bell tower. There's another merchant in the burg that has them, not sure if you've reached her yet though. She's beyond that gate in the early-game aqueduct.
Yeah I got one from Female. Fucking pain in my ass! Fortunately I had tons of souls in the inventory so I didn't have to grind up the price with half health! Prior to the curse detour I'd managed to drop the channeler; so the stupid boss is going down tomorrow.
There's also an NPC in New Londo that can cure you, of course that may be more painful than the curse.
Most of the time I want to build a statue over the creator of Dark Souls. And sometimes I want to smash his face into a brick wall and scream CRYSTAL CAVES WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING but then I just ragequit a few times and go to bed.
So, more noob talk: After not really seeming to get anywhere with my Pyromancer, I restarted with a Sorcerer. So far I like Soul Arrow (or whatever it's called; in my head it's a magic fucking missle) spell a lot more than the fireball, in that it's way easier to aim and control. I blazed through the first dungeon and then got to where I was before, in Undead Burg I think? Anyway, that's where I discovered that a) I can totally see stats change on weapons if I switch to them whilst leveling at the campfire, which is pretty fucking handy, and b) that the seller near there (he's the one under a staircase hidden by some barrels) has WAY MORE STUFF than I thought because I never noticed I could use the d-pad left to see more item groups. Let that sink in for a while. I, who have been playing videogames since the text adventure games, played a good FOUR HOURS of a game before I realized I could SELECT DIFFERENT THINGS ON A SCREEN. So at this stage, I think that Dark Souls is some sort of unholy Rorschach / intelligence test, and I am failing it miserably. Also, here's a question: When I started the Sorcerer and I got to Undead Burg, there was some fucking fat red ghost thing that I have never seen before and never seen since who took a bunch of fireball grenades TO THE FACE, shrugged them off and cut me in half. What the fuck was THAT?
I love Soul Arrow, honestly. It's range is way better then fireball too, up to the point you can actually kill enemies with it before they spot you. The other nice thing is you can buy it the moment you get to Firelink shrine and have 10 attunement and 10 intelligence to cast it, my wanderer got it right away and it just made everything that bit easier. I've gotten to the Depths myself, that place is scary. Dark and scary. Silent Hill type scary. I found the bonfire there, now I just need to find my way out...
Found the blacksmith and the Estoc, but don't like it much. The longsword's sweeping attack is good for when I slide past people (while attacking) - you can still kill 'em even though they are next to you. Handy. Found one of those blacksmithing shards. Got the holy (?) sword from under the dragon thing before dying to it. Not sure I want to raise that bottom skill 6 points just to wield it though. Found I'm kind of at a brick wall in that every which-way I turn are big bads I am not sure I can beat. Haven't fully explored down under the firelink shrine, however, so maybe there's a route down there which isn't hurty. Getting kind of tired of killing the same bad guys over and over and over again trying to find a way through.
You found the blacksmith, good! He also sells the Soul Arrow spell and a wand, if you ever need it for another character. The holy sword is very handy for a faith character, but if you aren't going to use miracles (faith spells) I wouldn't stick points in faith, they are better spent elsewhere. You'll be able to get the Drake Sword soon once you kill the first real boss. It attacks the same as the longsword I think, so you'll probably like it. Where are you at the moment, have you defeated the boss demon on the bridge in Undead Burg yet? If you haven't, you should do that first probably, and then move on to the area he opens up called Undead parish. Firelink Shrine is a central hub that leads to some zones that are probably a bit too hard for us beginners, especially with the skeleton key which gives us access to places we should go to yet.
