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Dark Souls II |OT++| Bearer of...Seek...Seek...Lest

The porcupines are not as bad as the wheel skeletons at all.

They're still pretty bad! Fortunately they're not as aggressive as the Bonewheels in DS1 but even then as a melee fighter they are a pain to go up against. I had one shuffle into me from off-screen as I was running away from a group of them and it did more than half my HP. Thankfully I had the Blue Tearstone ring on or I would have been done for.
 

2AdEPT

Member
These DLC have been mostly great, especially the second one (the third one was the prettiest but least interesting one, from a gameplay standpoint, aside from a couple of great ideas).
The biggest disappointment have been the bosses, either too familiar, or even straight up reskins, with a couple of exceptions.

HOWEVER, i just feel like i'm burned out on the game, yesterday i went through the *you know what* to do the optional boss of the third DLC, and kind of rolled my eyes at the fact that it follows their lame philosophy of "
the same you did before, but two of them!
".
The boss itself is pretty easy all in all, yet when i died, i had absolutely zero willpower to do that road up the boss all over, and i just ALT+F4.

Bottom line is, after 344 hours, i'm burned out on the game, i have no more stamina to play it, and i'm afraid if i keep playing out of sheer completionism, i'm gonna get to Bloodborne with very little will to play that one.

Anybody else felling similarly? Not faulting the game (after 344 of mostly fun, how could i?) just the fact that.. i feel i've had too much Souls for the year, lol, and i don't want to risk ruining Bloodborne for me.

This year i've played nothing but this game, weirdly enough (aside from the couple of hours First Light took me to beat).

This is just a bump on the timeline...you will take a break for a few weeks , maybe a few months, even play a whole new game like Witcher or something in between, then will be starved for SOuls once again. I have put more time into souls games than anyone else I know,,,well over 3000 since 2009 and that's just with gameplay...this year I started making and editing videos and making musical compositions to go with the videos; this has doubled or triples my time investment in souls! Prolly spent $4000 on my consoles and equipment to boot. I am getting burned out more than ever before...but I know that once I take a break after the DLC is done I will be raring to go for Bloodbourne. I am pretty much set for life even if the franchise goes belly up as I have a backlog of tribute videos and music I want to write for these videos, but will never get even close to having the time to record, edit, and compose what is necessary for the ideas to come to fruition.

Witcher 2 was a good break game, was good eye candy, had a decent story, and yet made me crave souls with the absolutely awful, mash X to win combat. I couldn't wait for the DS1 DLC and for DS2, despite being burned out after DS1 and multiple runs, countless "lets help a noob by throwing my sign down sessions", SL1 no upgrade, bow only, challenges etc.

Take your break...but you'll be back! ;)
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
This is just a bump on the timeline...you will take a break for a few weeks , maybe a few months, even play a whole new game like Witcher or something in between, then will be starved for SOuls once again. I have put more time into souls games than anyone else I know,,,well over 3000 since 2009 and that's just with gameplay...this year I started making and editing videos and making musical compositions to go with the videos; this has doubled or triples my time investment in souls! Prolly spent $4000 on my consoles and equipment to boot. I am getting burned out more than ever before...but I know that once I take a break after the DLC is done I will be raring to go for Bloodbourne. I am pretty much set for life even if the franchise goes belly up as I have a backlog of tribute videos and music I want to write for these videos, but will never get even close to having the time to record, edit, and compose what is necessary for the ideas to come to fruition.

Witcher 2 was a good break game, was good eye candy, had a decent story, and yet made me crave souls with the absolutely awful, mash X to win combat. I couldn't wait for the DS1 DLC and for DS2, despite being burned out after DS1 and multiple runs, countless "lets help a noob by throwing my sign down sessions", SL1 no upgrade, bow only, challenges etc.

Take your break...but you'll be back! ;)

But The Witcher 2 is a better game than Dark Souls 2
 
This is just a bump on the timeline...you will take a break for a few weeks , maybe a few months, even play a whole new game like Witcher or something in between, then will be starved for SOuls once again. I have put more time into souls games than anyone else I know,,,well over 3000 since 2009 and that's just with gameplay...this year I started making and editing videos and making musical compositions to go with the videos; this has doubled or triples my time investment in souls! Prolly spent $4000 on my consoles and equipment to boot. I am getting burned out more than ever before...but I know that once I take a break after the DLC is done I will be raring to go for Bloodbourne. I am pretty much set for life even if the franchise goes belly up as I have a backlog of tribute videos and music I want to write for these videos, but will never get even close to having the time to record, edit, and compose what is necessary for the ideas to come to fruition.

Witcher 2 was a good break game, was good eye candy, had a decent story, and yet made me crave souls with the absolutely awful, mash X to win combat. I couldn't wait for the DS1 DLC and for DS2, despite being burned out after DS1 and multiple runs, countless "lets help a noob by throwing my sign down sessions", SL1 no upgrade, bow only, challenges etc.

Take your break...but you'll be back! ;)

But Bloodborne is not another souls series but a casual eye candy action game.
 
I just want to go into Ivory King for the Bone Fist.

I was doing another power stance Caestus character, but the crappy range was killing me and I got the moon Longsword so I switched to that. Really just reinforces my feeling that Dark Souls 2 was built around a much more vanilla experience. I beat Gargoyles in one try with the Longsword and a 100% block shield. The roll is less of a movement or dodge mechanic and more of an emergency brief invincibility, and the frequency with which the game throws 3+ enemies at you means agile characters are sometimes limited to just dodging around and chipping away. Dodging is less of a reaction and more of a muscle memory, especially with so many slow fake-out attacks and the huge number of active frames compared to huge number of vulnerable frames in your roll. I've played a good variety of characters, and the only melee character I've had any particular luck with used an Uchigatana. Falchion was not great, Halberd varied between great and mediocre, greatsword/ ultra-greatsword has been pretty questionable, Sorcery rolled everything.

It's pretty disappointing, because my preferred way of playing Dark Souls 1 was to just pick a weapon at the start of the run, two-hand it, and just play like an action game.
 
I just want to go into Ivory King for the Bone Fist.

I was doing another power stance Caestus character, but the crappy range was killing me and I got the moon Longsword so I switched to that. Really just reinforces my feeling that Dark Souls 2 was built around a much more vanilla experience. I beat Gargoyles in one try with the Longsword and a 100% block shield. The roll is less of a movement or dodge mechanic and more of an emergency brief invincibility, and the frequency with which the game throws 3+ enemies at you means agile characters are sometimes limited to just dodging around and chipping away. Dodging is less of a reaction and more of a muscle memory, especially with so many slow fake-out attacks and the huge number of active frames compared to huge number of vulnerable frames in your roll. I've played a good variety of characters, and the only melee character I've had any particular luck with used an Uchigatana. Falchion was not great, Halberd varied between great and mediocre, greatsword/ ultra-greatsword has been pretty questionable, Sorcery rolled everything.

It's pretty disappointing, because my preferred way of playing Dark Souls 1 was to just pick a weapon at the start of the run, two-hand it, and just play like an action game.

DLCs will push your tanky build to suffer like it is intentional to force change builds for the sake of progression
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
I just want to go into Ivory King for the Bone Fist.

I was doing another power stance Caestus character, but the crappy range was killing me and I got the moon Longsword so I switched to that. Really just reinforces my feeling that Dark Souls 2 was built around a much more vanilla experience. I beat Gargoyles in one try with the Longsword and a 100% block shield. The roll is less of a movement or dodge mechanic and more of an emergency brief invincibility, and the frequency with which the game throws 3+ enemies at you means agile characters are sometimes limited to just dodging around and chipping away. Dodging is less of a reaction and more of a muscle memory, especially with so many slow fake-out attacks and the huge number of active frames compared to huge number of vulnerable frames in your roll. I've played a good variety of characters, and the only melee character I've had any particular luck with used an Uchigatana. Falchion was not great, Halberd varied between great and mediocre, greatsword/ ultra-greatsword has been pretty questionable, Sorcery rolled everything.

It's pretty disappointing, because my preferred way of playing Dark Souls 1 was to just pick a weapon at the start of the run, two-hand it, and just play like an action game.

I just played through the entire game as a melee and I dont feel that way at all. Also disagree with everything you said about rolling (it is both reaction and muscle memory) and dodge's primary function as always been to gain brief invincibility.
 
I play through the game is melee almost every time. You always used the roll to cheese straight through attacks in the first game, but Dark Souls 2 doesn't even try to hide it. Because if you try to use the dodge as an actual dodge instead of as invincibility, you'll get wrecked thanks to magical enemy rotation. Obviously you need reflexes to dodge the attack, but there are so many fake-out delayed attacks (Sinh gets me with that shit 90% of the time), you also need muscle memory. There's no just being good enough to dodge it, you have to know what's going on or you die. Which you think, sure, Dark Souls is all about knowing what to do. But Dark Souls 2's implementation feels far too "haha, got you," like it just loves nothing more than tricking you into rolling early.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
I play through the game is melee almost every time. You always used the roll to cheese straight through attacks in the first game, but Dark Souls 2 doesn't even try to hide it. Because if you try to use the dodge as an actual dodge instead of as invincibility, you'll get wrecked thanks to magical enemy rotation. Obviously you need reflexes to dodge the attack, but there are so many fake-out delayed attacks (Sinh gets me with that shit 90% of the time), you also need muscle memory.

No you need to learn the attacks. I like the tracking on overhead attacks cause it punishes you for just immediately smashing dodge. And I've never really had problems with delayed attack except for timing parries (I hate you royal swordman!) And I'm not sure how Dark Souls 1 was "hiding" it since there are plenty of tracking and delayed attacks in that game (hello Havel, hello stone giants, hi crystal soldiers). There are tons of attacks that pretty much require I frames to exist.
 
Delayed, but with fewer active frames. Do we really need to get started on the broken-ass Ruin Sentinel attacks, or that you need to dodge thrust attacks by rolling FORWARD straight into the attack, because rolling sideways guarantees you're going to get hit? It's stupid because some of the enemies don't have to commit to their attacks. Turtle dudes and giant mace knights literally just rotate in place to keep you from getting an advantage against them, both during and after their attacks. It's a brute force fix to the exploitable tracking and backstab cheesing in the first game. That you need to actually put points into a stat to dodge attacks you have visibly avoided is ridiculous.

Yeah, Havel delays his attacks and can track you, but that's because he's a unique Hollow. He uses an actual weapon and adheres to the same rules as the player. He's just doing dead angle turns, not straight up rotating in place like he's one of the dudes in tabletop hockey. You can cheese the hell out of Dark Souls 1 with light roll, of course. But Dark Souls 2 deliberately tries to thwart that, and rather than ending up with a game that's less cheesable, it's a game that's still just as cheesable, but with the clusterfuck of active frames, enemies defying friction, and Adaptability. Right, and the awful parry system. Granted it was easy as hell to parry in Dark Souls 1, but having multiple parry speeds, certain enemy attacks being so quick or confusing (fuck you royal swordsmen) that they can't even be parried on reaction (Alonne Knights overhead), and needing to wait a full second for the riposte was absolutely not the solution. I hadn't been having trouble with Dark Souls 2 for a while, but then the Iron Crown DLC just reminded me of all the dumb shit Dark Souls 2 has.
 
Delayed, but with fewer active frames. Do we really need to get started on the broken-ass Ruin Sentinel attacks, or that you need to dodge thrust attacks by rolling FORWARD straight into the attack, because rolling sideways guarantees you're going to get hit? It's stupid because some of the enemies don't have to commit to their attacks. Turtle dudes and giant mace knights literally just rotate in place to keep you from getting an advantage against them, both during and after their attacks. It's a brute force fix to the exploitable tracking and backstab cheesing in the first game. That you need to actually put points into a stat to dodge attacks you have visibly avoided is ridiculous.

Yeah, Havel delays his attacks and can track you, but that's because he's a unique Hollow. He uses an actual weapon and adheres to the same rules as the player. He's just doing dead angle turns, not straight up rotating in place like he's one of the dudes in tabletop hockey. You can cheese the hell out of Dark Souls 1 with light roll, of course. But Dark Souls 2 deliberately tries to thwart that, and rather than ending up with a game that's less cheesable, it's a game that's still just as cheesable, but with the clusterfuck of active frames, enemies defying friction, and Adaptability. Right, and the awful parry system. Granted it was easy as hell to parry in Dark Souls 1, but having multiple parry speeds, certain enemy attacks being so quick or confusing (fuck you royal swordsmen) that they can't even be parried on reaction (Alonne Knights overhead), and needing to wait a full second for the riposte was absolutely not the solution. I hadn't been having trouble with Dark Souls 2 for a while, but then the Iron Crown DLC just reminded me of all the dumb shit Dark Souls 2 has.

Hitboxes are worse with big slow enemies that cancels frames or instant turn towards you to match you or reach you since by the laws of the game you could overcome them pretty easy and stun them in their wake up animation still present in medium and small size enemies.
 

ElFly

Member
Delayed, but with fewer active frames. Do we really need to get started on the broken-ass Ruin Sentinel attacks, or that you need to dodge thrust attacks by rolling FORWARD straight into the attack, because rolling sideways guarantees you're going to get hit? It's stupid because some of the enemies don't have to commit to their attacks. Turtle dudes and giant mace knights literally just rotate in place to keep you from getting an advantage against them, both during and after their attacks. It's a brute force fix to the exploitable tracking and backstab cheesing in the first game. That you need to actually put points into a stat to dodge attacks you have visibly avoided is ridiculous.

Ok quick reality check; you cannot avoid things in real life by rolling. The only "visibly avoided" thing that counts is when weapons don't really touch you at all.

DS1 had a static amount of iframes per load level; the only change is that you get less or more depending on a stat. This is not more or less realistic. The only problem is that you don't have feedback on how many iframes there are. Both games should make the character another color during the iframes, or something like that.
 
The prisoner head peace can help too instead of using that clumsy clown helmet piece

But... the clumsy clown helmet was my favorite part. It cracked me up seeing 3 players running around with their tongue hanging out.

Of course it also increases souls, which don't matter to me anymore, and does slight HP drain which is easily offset with infinite life gems. I would switch back to real armor once the boss came out, to legit help the host.
 
That's BS... why would they do that?... Unless, they are just trying to show to us that we in fact broke the cycle?

I suppose to try and encourage people to keep doing the DLC and have the item somewhat balanced. The thing I love the most is that it makes the Nashandra fight even easier heh. Her main difficulty for me came from the curse build up, which with a crown is now nonexistent.
Ok, i will keep going. Forgot about prisoner tats. This is a wierd grinding method for a Souls game, but I guess From wanted to ensure lots of coop partners were available.

Yeah I kinda like it. With just a Gold Serpent Ring +2 and Symbol of Avarice I was getting about 3 of them each time I got summoned. Now i don't know what to do, I have like 10 extra, I wish they gave some souls when you consumed them...

Ok odd question...

Is there a way to customize the button map on a controller? I swear I had changed my jump button at some point but I can't remember how.

I have 2 achieves left in this damn game..hehe

I just changed my stats to have 99 vig/end to see what it did, in case you wonder why it is set that way.

Csd1dLw.jpg

Holy crap 88mill SM, I thought my 20M was a lot. Either you PvP a shit ton, or you're in like NG+10.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Ok quick reality check; you cannot avoid things in real life by rolling. The only "visibly avoided" thing that counts is when weapons don't really touch you at all.

DS1 had a static amount of iframes per load level; the only change is that you get less or more depending on a stat. This is not more or less realistic. The only problem is that you don't have feedback on how many iframes there are. Both games should make the character another color during the iframes, or something like that.

Thats goofy as shit.
 
Ok, i will keep going. Forgot about prisoner tats. This is a wierd grinding method for a Souls game, but I guess From wanted to ensure lots of coop partners were available.

Yeah, it's weird but I really enjoyed the fight and always liked to co-op so it didn't bother me. I spent time helping people for all the prior DLC bosses, so this just gave me a specific goal for it.

Yup, didn't even get a thank you.

Just a loud moan...uuuaaahh ah :p

That was his "thank you!"
 
Dark Souls Arena F2P incoming. Create A player and use a generic set of weapons and armor types with extra weapons and armor sets as microtransactions.

Is it bad that I wish this was a thing? I have spent a ton of time on Jedi Knight Series, Chivalry, Mount and Blade, Blade Symphony and dark souls still has my favorite melee combat of any of them. What I wouldn't give for a balanced arena mode with dedicated servers and locked levels.
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Naw.



It does do that a lot more than the past games, that's true. But Dark Souls 1 had the whole "roll forward into the attack" thing too.

Oh but it is and I should know. I actually finished both.

It was also more satisfying than Dragon's Dogma.

And Dark Souls is better than Demon's Souls.
 
The new Hex "Dark Dance" is very cool. Basically a combination of DS1-style Wrath of the Gods and Affinity. The 60 faith requirement however, is not so cool.
 
Finally beat the optional area. A sun bro made the "boss" easier. I was about to quit when I saw his/her summon sign. I had to rely on the NPC summons earlier because there were no signs.

Had to fight solo for a while to see if it was better to coop or go solo. In the end Vengar and another player made my life easier.

I enjoyed the DLC a lot but this area was unnecessarily difficult...

Now I just need to farm some particular type of souls...
 

Hypron

Member
They're worse than the DkS2 bonewheels but not the DkS1. But that might be because the DkS1 always come in nasty groups. I dunno, I found their dash very easy to avoid and the one time it did hit me, it didn't drain my HP the way the DkS1 bonewheels did. The spikes hurting you just by being near is a bit annoying, though. But they die pretty fast too.

Yeah. They are very easy to interrupt with a bow too. Anyone should have a bow anyway, they're really useful in lots of different situations.

But The Witcher 2 is a better game than Dark Souls 2

I'm not sure, I really love both games. The story in TW2 is more interesting than DS2's, and the characters are more likeable and memorable, but Dark Souls 2's gameplay is way, way better on every possible level.
 

Hypron

Member
Saying everyone should have a bow doesn't acknowledge the issue the rabbits have for melee only players.

Well yeah they're troublesome for melee players (I did kill quite a few of them with melee weapons without too much of an issue though - although, my current character is full-on scrub mode, with heaps of health), but the bow makes things so much simpler.
 

burnfout

Member
Question about farming with the help of Bonfire Aestetics. Using one will make the enemies NG+ level right? But I read about people using unlimited BA's to farm items.

Will this increase the enemies level each time? Will I be fighting NG+50 enemies in my NG?
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Question about farming with the help of Bonfire Aestetics. Using one will make the enemies NG+ level right? But I read about people using unlimited BA's to farm items.

Will this increase the enemies level each time? Will I be fighting NG+50 enemies in my NG?
Yes but I think the bonfire intensity caps at 10, so if you farm it infinitely it'd be NG+10.

Speaking of that, if I want to farm the Prowlers for the berserker blades, which bonfire should I use ascetics on? And will it respawn a boss?
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Yes but I think the bonfire intensity caps at 10, so if you farm it infinitely it'd be NG+10.

Speaking of that, if I want to farm the Prowlers for the berserker blades, which bonfire should I use ascetics on? And will it respawn a boss?

Why not just farm the mad warrior and not use any ascetics?
 

HK-47

Oh, bitch bitch bitch.
Yeah. They are very easy to interrupt with a bow too. Anyone should have a bow anyway, they're really useful in lots of different situations.



I'm not sure, I really love both games. The story in TW2 is more interesting than DS2's, and the characters are more likeable and memorable, but Dark Souls 2's gameplay is way, way better on every possible level.

Not necessarily. Choice and consequence is a gameplay feature The Witcher does better than nearly all other games.
 

RVinP

Unconfirmed Member
I'm not sure, I really love both games. The story in TW2 is more interesting than DS2's, and the characters are more likeable and memorable, but Dark Souls 2's gameplay is way, way better on every possible level.

I like them both..

TW2 "This I like"
.3D Models
.detailed Textures
.colors
.plot (its heavy on heavy, you know what to do and where to go)
.music
.direction for in-game cinematics
.NPC conversations (that first old'e group meeting in a Tarvern at Flotsam)
.progression fork in middle of the game
.after playing TW2, every other game feels very low on Story/Plot

DS2 "Prepare to die"
.combat gameplay (enemies die or kill in a few hits, depends on various elements)
.ambiguity of the story
.that unknown adventure element (where you don't know what to do and what is your precise goal)
.progression diversity (I can go to Crown of the Sunken King DLC area direct to get certain items, with some self restriction attributes)
.speed runs
.Online interaction and COOP (major contributor to why I like this game)
.after playing DS2, every other game feels shitty in combat (like combat feels like paper, there is no impact/punch and there is no reward/satisfaction to win in combat/fights)
 

UrbanRats

Member
This is just a bump on the timeline...you will take a break for a few weeks , maybe a few months, even play a whole new game like Witcher or something in between, then will be starved for SOuls once again. I have put more time into souls games than anyone else I know,,,well over 3000 since 2009 and that's just with gameplay...this year I started making and editing videos and making musical compositions to go with the videos; this has doubled or triples my time investment in souls! Prolly spent $4000 on my consoles and equipment to boot. I am getting burned out more than ever before...but I know that once I take a break after the DLC is done I will be raring to go for Bloodbourne. I am pretty much set for life even if the franchise goes belly up as I have a backlog of tribute videos and music I want to write for these videos, but will never get even close to having the time to record, edit, and compose what is necessary for the ideas to come to fruition.

Witcher 2 was a good break game, was good eye candy, had a decent story, and yet made me crave souls with the absolutely awful, mash X to win combat. I couldn't wait for the DS1 DLC and for DS2, despite being burned out after DS1 and multiple runs, countless "lets help a noob by throwing my sign down sessions", SL1 no upgrade, bow only, challenges etc.

Take your break...but you'll be back! ;)

Oh i know i'll be back.

Infact, i still want to tie up a couple of loose ends with my character before i take a break.
 

Mistel

Banned
Why not just farm the mad warrior and not use any ascetics?
Prowlers have 6 guarrented spawns unlike the mad warrior who spawns infinitely but rarely, mad warriors drop table means that you'd have to use an ascetic anyway if you wanted a second beserker blade as it only drop a single one per cycle. And 6 of them you can kill with little or no hassle at all so easy to farm.
 

BeeDog

Member
Does anyone have an estimate of how many fucking reindeers I would need to kill in the Outskirts in order to despawn them completely? Feels like I've gone through tons of deers, yet they still keep coming.
 

Fuz

Banned
Any good place to farm twinkling titanite without having to use bonfire ascetics? I need tons.

Also: any insight on last dlc's lore? Other two were kinda obvious, but I can't wrap my mind around who the Ivory King might be.
 
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