MMBosstones86
Member
fuck those statues most of all. The whole level is a gauntlet. I got tired of clearing them the first time and just sprinted to the fog door. Felt like a game show.
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Dark Souls II |OT++| Bearer of...Seek...Seek...Lest
- Thread starter Vazra
- Start date
fuck those statues most of all. The whole level is a gauntlet. I got tired of clearing them the first time and just sprinted to the fog door. Felt like a game show.
Pyromancer tattered cloth set doesn't give you a casting bonus I'm afraid.
Yeah, I liked Black Gulch. I'm not sure if people realize this, but the statues dont respawn if you use the bonfire (just if you die/travel), so you can pretty easily tank the poison damage and slowly clear them
Orochinagis
Member
Oh my bad it is the straid helmet piece, you can get it pretty early to also the lion set you need to waste a branch to get access.
Laurentius
Member
I actually liked Shaded Ruins and Harvest Valley. Harvest Valley especially. (But I also like Lost Izalith, except for Bed of Chaos, so there's that.) Tseldora was really the one area in DS2 that I didn't enjoy the level design or aesthetic for.
Plus it actually looks nice too unlike the lion mage set.
Laurentius
Member
I finally gotthe screenshot I was trying to take around 20 times
Awesome shot.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Yeah I think Black Gulch looks cool, art-wise. I also liked Lost Izalith's art. Well, not the blindingly bright lava XD But the Angkor Wat architecture was really cool and unique, and I really felt the "super old city lost to the ages, buried under the core of the Earth" vibe. Too bad level-design wise (and especially boss-wise) it was kind of bad, because I really liked the art direction.
Platform? SM? Not to mention it's uh... kind of easy to get?
Better idea is to get min dex requirements for the weapons you want to use, most people go to about 25 DEX for Chaos Blade, then make everything Raw. Eschew scaling and get a flat damage boost from Raw, put some consumable resins on your weapons and you will deal alright damage.
Having those spare levels from not wasting them in Dex can go to END so you can swing, roll, and sprint for much longer than most players. You will need the extra stamina to whittle down most players as they will be doing nearly twice your damage output.
It's possible though, and kinda feels like old school dex builds of Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls. Real travesty what happened to physical scaling in Dark Souls 2. I only ever really care about pure physical melee builds in Souls games, and they got the shaft in this game, so it's hard to whip up a new build with that in mind.
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
Z..
Member
Yeah, but below a certain INT level, the S scaling with lower base damage will result in lower total damage than the A scaling with higher base damage, no?
- I am using it. That's the whole point. It barely makes any difference at all! Am I doing something wrong? Don't have the WD Parma, only just arrived in Aldia's Keep.
- I have Blue Flame and do like it. But the scaling isn't that great. There's plenty of B scaling weapons if you infuse. Same for Dragonrider weapons. Aren't there any other A or S scaling weapons besides the MLGS?
- I killed him. Can Cromwell revive? Either way, I don't use summons other than for PvP, so Agdayne is kind of pointless for someone like me. Besides, I've been hollow since things betwixt and intend on keeping it that way until I finish this playthrough.
- Because the binoculars suck ass for aiming. I waste way too many spells thos way. Besides, I use the staff on my left hand, and aiming with R1 feels weird.
Too high FTH requirement. Staff diatribution in this game is horrid if you're pure INT, as all but one of the good early ones require high FTH, which is bullshit.
I'm a spellsword, not a pure mage. MLGS is my best friend.
your dagger +10 is the parrying dagger? I use that, I do not have a mundane build but I couldn't do more than 1k when I tried to use it after a parry. that's why I though you need high DEX since the weapons scales (A) with it.
XBX360, 33,565,977, and despite that knowledge, I can't get them to drop it.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Dammit, sorry, I meant to write Staff of Wisdom, not Amana. Total brainfart there. Staff of Wisdom is by far the best staff for sorceries, no faith requirements. Okay, so you aren't there yet. Don't worry, there will be a better one. Did you try the Witchtree branch before that? It has no faith requirement and it served me well until I got the Staff of Wisdom. I was a mostly pure mage too and it was plenty strong when upgraded.
I don't know, sorry.
A good rule of thumb in Dark Souls is to not kill NPCs if you aggro them, but run away and use the pardoner. I don't know if you can speak to his tombstone or whatever. Not a big deal but he was a pretty good vendor, and he gave you his set, which is one of the best light sets of the game (looks cool too).
You can buy infinite amber herbs from Ornifex (might be at some point later in the game, but I know for sure you can). Spell wasting is not an issue starting mid-to-late game.
Eh? The Staff of Wisdom has no faith requirement. [Edit: can you believe it, I wrote "Amana" instead of "Wisdom" again, geez!]
Laurentius
Member
Such a great idea.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Ohhh sorry I thought you wrote Malformed Shell, not Skull. Goddamn I need another coffee, can't write or read properly today. XD Anyway, I'm on PS3 and have no one with anywhere near that SM, so I can't help. :\
I saw that the other day, that dude is fantastic.
The scaling is actually still similar to what we have in DS1. The only thing is it's calculated off the base weapon without upgrade even when it's +10.
I'm almost convinced it's a glitch.
MMBosstones86
Member
oh shit that's awesome. So he's basically invading people in the bell tower...and killing bellbros? Fantastic.
Well, my major issue is that scaling through leveling isn't consistent whatsoever. Watch the scaling bonus as you go from 20-30, compared to 30-40, night and day. 20-30 has nearly no scaling bonus, whereas 30-40 is actually pretty good.
Fix that tiny little detail, and pure STR scaling would actually be pretty damn good, Dex scaling still needs work though, since it goes toward bleed and poison damage, instead of physical scaling.
I too noticed the scaling bonus for weapon upgrading does pretty much nothing as well, +10 and +0 Estoc both get 87 damage bonus from scaling at 40 STR. Upgrading a weapon should obviously increase its scaling bonus incrementally, and each new tier in upgrade materials (Titanite-Large-Chunk-Slab) should have a good bump in scaling as well. Not sure what is so hard about that.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Demon's Souls still had the best dex scaling. Dual kats or turtlestoc FTW. Didn't even need Curse Weapon to be viable, and when you painted them purple it became OP as hell.
Hahahaha that is great. I love invading the Belfry but that's a really cool idea and the video is really well made. This is the of DkSII PvP that's fun, not the Havelyn Hexers zzz.
Red Liquorice
Member
Agree with that, I always like going through the Shaded Ruins from a gameplay pov. But Shaded Ruins and Harvest Valley could be helped just by lightning a think, they're too plain looking to be so well lit. I think if they were darker and had moodier lightning that would help a lot without even thinking about the colour schemes used.
But I agree, as they are they're horrible and bland looking. There's some real highs and real lows in DS2, it runs the extreme of the some of the best and very worst in the series.
Love this. Would like to see more of this kind of thing.
What's the sword he used that has the special magic/wind type attack?
Laurentius
Member
Drakewing Ultra Greatsword.
It's like they had to fill the poison-area quota.
Valley of Defilement was great, Blighttown was pretty damn good, Gutter and Black Gulch are pretty uninspired and badly designed.
Luckily super short.
Red Liquorice
Member
Thanks.
Laurentius
Member
I was about to go take a screenshot of Harvest Valley to show what I liked about it, but forgot I just started NG+. Oh well. Suffice it to say, I do like the overall aesthetic of the area a lot.
It's got quite low requirements with only needing 20/18 with D/B scaling. You can only do the special 7 times though before it breaks it costs 10 durability a gust.
Yep I noticed the weird increase change in the 20-30 range. I also agree with having a good bump in each new upgrade tier.
The fact that scaling is a flat bonus now and not based on the base damage doesn't make sense. The whole thing is a travesty like you said and makes me wonder what the designers were thinking when they implemented it. I'm sure it's easy to fix if they wanted. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that this scheme is messed out.
Like Morrigan Targaryen said, Demon's Souls had the best dex scaling.
See that tremendous increase in scaling bonus when you use that rare and precious pure Bladestone. It makes it worth the trouble of hours of farming to get it.
I miss this so bad.
MMBosstones86
Member
Is that standard or with the Bracing Knuckle ring?
Hmm, I'll consider this. Thanks!
I'll admit that I usually don't put points into END after 20 when it drops to 1 per level.
Standard with the bracing knuckle ring +3 on you get extra about 3 or 4 gusts depending on what you've done before hand.
Ya same thing happens with Crushing at +5, that huge bump in damage is so satisfying. Pure Greystone is also much easier to get lol.
Z..
Member
That was a reply to Orochinagis' suggestion of Witch staff.
As for the Wisdom staff, it'll eventually be my main staff, but is there really that much of a difference to Amana? They're both S scaling, shouldn't be that drastic, right?
I gave up on it after 7 hours wasted farming for it.
But yeah, Dex builds in DeS were the shit!
I have just discovered the wonders of using the binoculars. So much better than the shitty lock-on system. Shame I only just discovered this near the end of NG+.
I destroyed a guy using them and Sunlight Spear. I was trying to get summoned near Lost Sinner and was invaded by a blue arbiter. Guy spawns pretty far away and has to run across the narrow bridge to get to me. I go up to the side chambers where you light the fires and snipe him on the other side of the bridge.... one shot KO, he never saw it coming. Beautiful.
What's the deal with the blue arbiters? It seems like I'm getting invaded every couple of minutes. I spent a lot of souls absolving my sins, and that did nothing. They have a knack of spawning at the worst possible moments, too.
I destroyed a guy using them and Sunlight Spear. I was trying to get summoned near Lost Sinner and was invaded by a blue arbiter. Guy spawns pretty far away and has to run across the narrow bridge to get to me. I go up to the side chambers where you light the fires and snipe him on the other side of the bridge.... one shot KO, he never saw it coming. Beautiful.
What's the deal with the blue arbiters? It seems like I'm getting invaded every couple of minutes. I spent a lot of souls absolving my sins, and that did nothing. They have a knack of spawning at the worst possible moments, too.
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
Absolving your sins only ceases NPC aggression, it doesn't erase your sin. So if you've invaded a lot, killed NPCs etc. whether it was in NG or your current play, you will be invaded until you have been slain enough times that your sin level is reduced. That is the only way you will stop getting invaded.
KillerDark
Member
That is absolutely amazing hahaha
I must have wracked up a lot of sin. I probably kill them more than they kill me, but I've still died a number of times to them.
Laurentius
Member
This song is great. Even better than his DS1 song, I think. (Which was more lighthearted and fun, but still good.)
bob_arctor
Tough_Smooth
Holy Shitballs. Darklurker, you effigy wasting asshole. Goddamn. So close that time. So damn close.
Real last boss? Real last boss.
Real last boss? Real last boss.
Red Liquorice
Member
Ha, yeah a bit. The woods certainly look better don't they. Those repeating textures in the ruins part need all the help they can get. And it is the SHADED Woods afterall!You mean like this?
