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Dark Souls II |OT| The Dark Souls of Dark Souls

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edit: the technical performance on PS3 is abysmal and FROM should be ashamed. Pictures in menus often take time to load in and when I'm talking to an NPC, their menu sometimes is very delayed in popping up. The character creation was a nightmare, as it took several seconds for any change to appear to on the screen. Is my PS3 broken or is the game broken? I've had no loading problems with other games.

This has been my experience too. :(
 

MilkBeard

Member
It was funny listening to the guys on the GB Monday podcast talking about how From's removed your ability to farm, because they were speaking from a perspective of playing a considerable amount of the game with the online off. From my perspective, I've spent nearly three hours running around in co-op helping other players kill bosses and I came away with a crapload of extra souls.

Yeah, now more than the previous games, Dark Souls II is harder offline. The reason being you can just co op and get tons of souls. Boss do give lots on your own, but it seems like some people in here are leveling to insane levels simply by helping people beat bosses over and over. I wonder if From is going to nerf the souls you get from being summoned.
 

mattp

Member
Guys? :/

I got falchions but I wanna know what works for people.
Also, any good shields like the grass crescent shield in DS1 with a regen effect?

im not very far yet so i dont know, but there is
a regen ring in the forest of fallen giants you can get after you beat the first boss
 

ironcreed

Banned
Anyone? I would really like to try a different weapon after using heide knight's sword for 10+ hours but I'm too scared to upgrade anything at the moment in case I find something better and can't upgrade it.

Just regular shards? I have been finding them here and there as I go. Plus, the Blacksmith in Majula sells them. As for different weapons, I have a +6 mace that scales with strength and is just beastly. I was never a huge fan of maces, but they are super effective in this game.
 
Doing Belfry Luna and being invaded constantly lol, haven't lost yet but I can't figure out how to summon that thing you get if you're a blue sentinel being invaded. Also fuck
the belfry gargoyles

Oh man, that was a scary fight. I got it on my first try. but man it was stressful as hell.

On the topic of invasions, I joined that
dwarf bell tower
covenant and got randomly summoned to invade someone in another completely unrelated area (I won't say which since it's pretty unimportant). I ran right past the guy I invaded and he starting hitting me with some sort of spell and I was like "fuck fuck fuck". I was down to my last bit of health and I hid around a corner and I'm like "oh well, I won't heal since there won't be any consequences anyway. but I won't go down without a fight." Used Homing Soulmass and peeked out just as the guy was coming up to the doorway; killed him with just that. I had a pretty hard laugh because I got really lucky and I don't think I deserved the win. lol

If you're out there, dude I invaded, just know that it was a fluke.
 

Sullichin

Member
Yeah, now more than the previous games, Dark Souls II is harder offline. The reason being you can just co op and get tons of souls. Boss do give lots on your own, but it seems like some people in here are leveling to insane levels simply by helping people beat bosses over and over. I wonder if From is going to nerf the souls you get from being summoned.

I think I like this change. It encourages more people to play online.
 
Beat the
Ruin sentinels and the gargoyles
. Decided to go with a strength build instead of a dex build, there just isn't any decent dex weapons early on it seems. I still remember in Dark Souls you could get the uchigatana in 15 min from the first vender. Maybe when people start figuring out some shortcuts to get a decent dex weapon early on I will try another character out, but alls I seem to have been finding is strength weapons. Plus for some reason the strength weapons appeal to me more in this game. Maybe it is the new animations or maybe I have changed but I do like them as apposed to hating them in Dark Souls.

Honestly I'm thinking of doing this, I want katanaaaaaas.
 

sixghost

Member
What spells have you guys found useful in PvP? I just found the second sorcery vendor and got stuff like
Soul Shower, Soul Vortex, and the homing soul arrows
, but none of them really seems to be as effective as spamming soul arrow and using the magic weapon sorceries. Hopefully I'll find the homing soulmass ability soon, as I remember that was pretty badass in Dark Souls.
 

Vazra

irresponsible vagina leak
I defeated the
3 sorcerers with the followers.
on Brightstone Cove but I cant beat the
giant dog with rats.
Absurd
 

Manus

Member
I'm SL 73 and about 30 hours into the game. Anyone else this far in and think their's a lack of armor? I've barely found anything good besides after what you find after the Pursuer boss. Maybe they come later? I know you can buy a couple from vendors, but I felt like I was finding a ton of different armor sets in Dark Souls.
 

AngryMoth

Member
Just regular shards? I have been finding them here and there as I go. Plus, the Blacksmith in Majula sells them. As for different weapons, I have a +6 mace that scales with strength and is just beastly. I was never a huge fan of maces, but they are super effective in this game.
I've bought all the ones from that blacksmith and haven't found any more for several hours which is why I was getting worried. Wasted a bunch on armour and a shield that I'm now not even using.
 
I hope they can create a patch that changes the way the game is installed on the HDD so that it actually works. I'm getting flashes of Bayonetta pre-patch here.

That would be great
but surprising.
Oddly, these performance issues didn't seem as apparent in the beta. I don't remember any lag with menus or anything.
 

RoeBear

Member
What spells have you guys found useful in PvP? I just found the second sorcery vendor and got stuff like
Soul Shower, Soul Vortex, and the homing soul arrows
, but none of them really seems to be as effective as spamming soul arrow and using the magic weapon sorceries. Hopefully I'll find the homing soulmass ability soon, as I remember that was pretty badass in Dark Souls.

From what I've seen with coop miracles seem to do more damage than spells :/

I'm SL 73 and about 30 hours into the game. Anyone else this far in and think their's a lack of armor? I've barely found anything good besides after what you find after the Pursuer boss. Maybe they come later? I know you can buy a couple from vendors, but I felt like I was finding a ton of different armor sets in Dark Souls.

I changed armor to something lighter and I found the damage semi negligible.
 

stupei

Member
Yeah, now more than the previous games, Dark Souls II is harder offline. The reason being you can just co op and get tons of souls. Boss do give lots on your own, but it seems like some people in here are leveling to insane levels simply by helping people beat bosses over and over. I wonder if From is going to nerf the souls you get from being summoned.

I used mine so I could dual wield falchions. No regrets.

(A fair amount of those three hours was spent watching the host rush in without dodging and die pretty quickly, then reloading. I used to worry about playing co-op in Souls games, thinking I wouldn't be good enough and might drag the team down. Yeahhh, no.)
 

BRKsEDU

Neo Member
Anyone? I would really like to try a different weapon after using heide knight's sword for 10+ hours but I'm too scared to upgrade anything at the moment in case I find something better and can't upgrade it.

They are not rare, just take your time and you'll find enemies that drop them. You'll know once you get to where I mean.
 
I can't believe hidden paths aren't opened by striking them anymore. I pretty much have to back track all the way from Betwix to see what I've possibly missed.
 

thejpfin

Member
Almost got spoiled by youtube. A video popped up in my recommended with final boss fight as the title...
I get tons of DS2 vids in my recommended list. Luckily nothing major spoiler stuff yet.


Currently using halberd+3, really good weapon, I love it.
But, about first boss battle and halberd:
Last Giant was easy with halberd, spin attack-->spin attack -> spin attack etc... and the boss is down. That thing can't really hit you when you spin/move
 

ironcreed

Banned
Sounding like you have to use online..kinda bums me.

About 16 hours in and I have not summoned, invaded or helped anyone yet. I have not had many enemies disappear at all, either. Of course I have not farmed a lot because I don't really need to. Everything seems to be balanced better in this game, but at the same time, I am finding it much more challenging than the first one.
 

Astral

Member
But what about the
rats around it
Im a sorcerer so I might need to pump some points on other areas to make it work

That boss pissed me the fuck off. I had to kill it twice because it killed me right when I killed it. The
little dog rat things are the biggest problem really. I to just go in there and two-hand them, praying that I killed them all at once and didn't get inflicted with toxic while doing so. After that it's just like the other guy said. Stay under it.
 

hey_it's_that_dog

benevolent sexism
Sorry if this has been asked already a ton of times, but does lighting sconces achieve anything other than providing more light? I tried to light every one in the starting area but couldn't get to one of them.
 

Fhtagn

Member
Almost got spoiled by youtube. A video popped up in my recommended with final boss fight as the title...

Yeah, stuff like that is why I'm summoning for bosses this time through. I'm exploring areas solo, then fighting the bosses a couple times, and not feeling bad about summoning to get past them. I'll defeat them all solo later. I'm prioritizing being surprised by the environment and figuring out the story over fighting the bosses, and I think this will maximize my enjoyment and help me get to the point where "spoilers" don't matter so much.

I will avoid reading boss strategies until I've soloed them all, unless I get thoroughly painfully stuck.
 

Tactics18

Member
I've beat
The Pursuer by firing a bolt at him, and Dragonrider by him falling off the platform.
I feel kind of bad about it.

Had no luck with
Ornstein. Hope that I'll fare better against the Flexile Sentry.
Have to say, i'm loving the game so far, and it runs pretty smoothly on 360.
Some of the sound design is awful at times though.
 

Maybesew

Member
Wow, just joined the
bell
covenant this morning and the pvp is insane. constanly invading and getting invaded. nice rewards to
titanite chunk
 

Dorrin

Member
I made it quite a way through the Forest, saw pursuer for the first time etc but found myself getting fairly low on health so I decided to go back to Heide's to get the certain item which would help out on that life percentage loss. Those sentinels are wrecking me even using the Heide sword(not upgraded), I've leveled up my warrior a few points but besides the sword I'm using staring equipment. Should I keep trying here or go back to the forest and use an effigy to get back to full and continue there? Would Fire Longsword work better on these guys or perhaps another weapon? Just feel like I shouldn't be there yet.
 

MilkBeard

Member
I really appreciate that gravity is a formidable foe again.

Yeah, and it seems at least more consistent than it was in Demon's Souls. In Demon's, it felt like falling did very little damage, and then all of a sudden it was instant death.

On a side note, I think I might have mitigated fall damage in DS II by rolling off of a high place. I did this thing where I rolled off, and immediately when I hit the ground I rolled again, and no damage. I think I remember seeing something about that, or maybe I'm just mistaken.
 

Audioboxer

Member
Does Pyromancy really need a split between INT AND Faith? Hopefully it's more one sided than the other and doesn't require a lot of "wasted" points being spent. I've 100% decided on going a Cleric and focussing on STR/FTH on my first playthrough - Would like to throw in some pyro spells, but not go and have to spend a lot on INT.
 
Any sorcerers in this thread? I decided to put in a couple point into strength so I at least have a crappy shield I can use then put the rest of the points into INT, Attunment, HP and Endurance. I sure hope I get some better gear thats related to INT builds.

I am not a glass cannon but a glass pistol right now.
 

njean777

Member
Interesting, I have not tried this. I was using a piece of head gear that increases item drop though, and I didn't notice any appreciable difference. The drop rates are actually pretty good, I guess to make up for the fact that they stop spawning.



I believe this hallway is behind one of the doors that you can unlock with the key you get after fighting the boss. The locked doors all look the same.



How do you unlock that second fight? I feel like I was in the area where this should have happened.

You have to use one of those items that you stick into the faces on walls. I forget what they are called but the area you do it in is the bonfire after the sentinels.it is right under the bonfire room.
 

blackflag

Member
Loving the game so far. It is very very easy though.....except those
Ruins Sentinels
...holy crap. Seeing those though, I'm confident there will be plenty of tough bosses. I hope. Either way I'm having a blast.

Also doing something I never really bothered with in previous souls games. I'm helping other players in their world. Did the spoilered boss a ton, had a lot of fun with the fight, and gained a bunch of souls at the same time.
 

Clevinger

Member
Also (I am waiting for PC) whats this de-spawning people are talking about?

Individual enemies stop respawning after you kill them 15 times or something like that. There's an item you can use to reset the spawn limit of an area, but it makes the enemies there harder as well. Each time you reset the spawn limit the enemies jump to a new New Game+ difficulty. So say you reset the spawn limit three times, then the enemies become what you would face on New Game+++.

IIRC that difficulty hike of each modified area carries over to New Game+.
 

ironcreed

Banned
I've beat
The Pursuer by firing a bolt at him, and Dragonrider by him falling off the platform.
I feel kind of bad about it.

Had no luck with
Ornstein. Hope that I'll fare better against the Flexile Sentry.
Have to say, i'm loving the game so far, and it runs pretty smoothly on 360.
Some of the sound design is awful at times though.

Oh, you will definitely fare better against him. I also went to the Wharf before going back to take care of our good buddy up in the Tower. ;)
 
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