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Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin |OT| Your weapons are weak, old man

Made it halfway through the freaking Iron Crown on NG before remembering I need the Ashen Mist heart (only killed the old Iron King) to get the Bewitching Alonne sword.

Fuck.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
I think Black Gulch has to be my most hated level out of any Souls game. Fuck those poison statues, seriously. So glad to be done with that.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Just the regular edition for me. I didn't realize there would be something preventing me from continuing once I teleported. That makes sense.

When would be a good time to explore all of the DLC (I do plan on buying it)?
End-game. They're harder than anything else in the normal game. Don't worry about accidentally going to NG+, when you kill the last boss and the credits roll, you aren't taken to NG+ yet and can still explore, so you can actually do the DLC then if you didn't get around to it by then.

I always viewed the DLC as near-end game areas. For example, at the area your were at, the enemies have ridiculous amounts of poise and hardly ever stagger. You gotta roll or block...or better yet, parry, or you'll get destroyed.
Or wear the
stone ring
. ;)
 

Ferr986

Member
For all the shit it gets, the Twinblade is an awesome weapon in PvE, atleast my Dragonrider Twinblade.

Infused with magic with my INT character, not only it does great damage, it staggers the enemies in the DLC (starting around SL130) without the stone ring. Its making my DLC run far easier than my first DEX Chaos Blade character. And never got the weapon broke once before reaching a bonfire, atleast the Dragonrider one, the duration is fine.

It's downside, PvP. It sucks so much on PvP. It's too easy to parry.
 
I think Black Gulch has to be my most hated level out of any Souls game. Fuck those poison statues, seriously. So glad to be done with that.

It is an interesting twist on the poison swamp cliche of Souls games in that in theory you can avoid every single poison spit and/or destroy every single stone statue that spits poison ergo: never get poisoned at all.

When I was going through The Gutter "is there a poison lake down below?" was constantly echoing in my mind. There wasn't and Black Gulch happened.

The area is just too short to be of any importance. I didn't know about the 2nd bonfire (started unstoning all statues only before last boss) and I had to run from the first bonfire to the Rotten every time I died (a couple of times). Wasn't that bad?

There is definitely some missed opportunity here - Black Gulch should be longer and multilayered IMO.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
For all the shit it gets, the Twinblade is an awesome weapon in PvE, atleast my Dragonrider Twinblade.

Infused with magic with my INT character, not only it does great damage, it staggers the enemies in the DLC (starting around SL130) without the stone ring. Its making my DLC run far easier than my first DEX Chaos Blade character. And never got the weapon broke once before reaching a bonfire, atleast the Dragonrider one, the duration is fine.

It's downside, PvP. It sucks so much on PvP. It's too easy to parry.
Nice. Ever tried the sorcerer's twinblade? I wonder if it's any good.

Twinblades are the shit. My favourite new weapon from DS2.
 

Tarkus

Member
For all the shit it gets, the Twinblade is an awesome weapon in PvE, atleast my Dragonrider Twinblade.

Infused with magic with my INT character, not only it does great damage, it staggers the enemies in the DLC (starting around SL130) without the stone ring. Its making my DLC run far easier than my first DEX Chaos Blade character. And never got the weapon broke once before reaching a bonfire, atleast the Dragonrider one, the duration is fine.

It's downside, PvP. It sucks so much on PvP. It's too easy to parry.
YES. I love parryblades. Especially Red Iron and Santier's Spear.
 

Fhtagn

Member
Ok, so pvp hitboxes being way longer than they should be is something you just get used to right? Cuz I keep dying in the arena to weapons that aren't even close to me.

The fights that felt fair have been a blast even when I lost (90% loss rate so far) but the laggy weirdness is gonna take some getting used to.
 

Serpico99

Member
Question

I am going for a Str build for my first time playing this game. I went Str in DS1 with the claymore and zheidhander. Now my issue in this is the new stats like adaptability and the split health/vigor. At the beginning how should i focus on building up my stats?
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Question

I am going for a Str build for my first time playing this game. I went Str in DS1 with the claymore and zheidhander. Now my issue in this is the new stats like adaptability and the split health/vigor. At the beginning how should i focus on building up my stats?
Whenever you beat a boss or just have tons of souls to spend on a few levels, spend at least 1 or 2 points on ADP early on, until your agility reaches 99 or 100 then you can stop doing that. It'll pay off later. Focus the rest on STR for damage and END for stamina, and of course occasionally raising VIG for health as that's good too. VIT for the carry burden is OK too but not as necessary as you can always strip armour to keep the fast roll (<70%).
 

Tarkus

Member
Whenever you beat a boss or just have tons of souls to spend on a few levels, spend at least 1 or 2 points on ADP early on, until your agility reaches 99 or 100 then you can stop doing that. It'll pay off later. Focus the rest on STR for damage and END for stamina, and of course occasionally raising VIG for health as that's good too. VIT for the carry burden is OK too but not as necessary as you can always strip armour to keep the fast roll (<70%).
This.

Also consider a VIT respec to 14 once you get Flynn's Ring. That plus Ring of Blades +2 on STR build -- sogood.gif
 
Watching streams on PS4, I see some really cool gear. How do I get anything that isn't the generic gear or fodder enemy gear?

End-game. They're harder than anything else in the normal game. Don't worry about accidentally going to NG+, when you kill the last boss and the credits roll, you aren't taken to NG+ yet and can still explore, so you can actually do the DLC then if you didn't get around to it by then.
Really? How do you trigger NG+ then?
 

Tarkus

Member
Watching streams on PS4, I see some really cool gear. How do I get anything that isn't the generic gear or fodder enemy gear?


Really? How do you trigger NG+ then?
Buy it from Maughlin in Majula after you beat bosses or find it on corpses.

Trigger NG+ by speaking with the Emerald Herald at the bonfire in Majula. It's an option on her dialog box.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Buy it from Maughlin in Majula after you beat bosses or find it on corpses.

Trigger NG+ by speaking with the Emerald Herald at the bonfire in Majula. It's an option on her dialog box.
Pretty sure that's wrong, and that it's an option at the Majula bonfire actually. It'll stay "Start Journey 2 to Drangleic" under "Travel", "Burn" etc.
 

NinjaBoiX

Member
So much for putting this game down, just killed Alonne, Vendrick, Elana and Sinh in the last half an hour!

Got very little left to do, Crown of the Ivory King DLC and that's it. I didn't even realise that the first DLC was Shulva/Dragon's Sanctum/etc, I thought I still had two DLC areas left.

Still got a fair few gaps in my bonfire page, I must have missed a few areas...
 
Man I'm really liking some of the areas deeper into the game compared to some of the earlier ones. I'm really liking Brume Tower and Drangleic Castle.

Brume is really nice with how large it is compared to most of the other zones in the game. It's got some difficult and cheap areas but nothing to bad really, would be a pain though if I was primarily melee.

Just gotta use those powder keg carrying skeletons appropriately :p
 

Talonz

Member
Fuck the Frigid Outskirts! Thankfully I somehow one-shotted the boss so I didn't have to spend any extra time running though that place again... ugh.
 
Fuck the Frigid Outskirts! Thankfully I somehow one-shotted the boss so I didn't have to spend any extra time running though that place again... ugh.

I feel the same way about the Iron Passage, you pretty much have to summon a trio to get through that gauntlet.

That smelter demon has ridiculous defense though :/

Got him to around to 30% and died after he charged up his blue flame sword that has stupid reach. The guy in my group who was tanking him died and I was able to dodge it for a while but he was able to land a 3x hit on me even while I was dodging :(
 

kewlmyc

Member
Running around with a bastard sword, mace, and long bow, and this game is pretty fun so far. Just beat the gargoyles. The constantly dropping health after dying is as annoying as I remembered from when I first attempted DaSII vanilla, but at least there's a ring that helps with that.

Jesus Christ at what they did to Heide's Tower of Flame though. That's one way to force the player to get good at parrying.

Also constant Pursuer battles are annoying as hell. The fights aren't even hard since every move is super choreographed, but they just feel tedious. At least they drop twinkling titanite.

Mace wrecks everything so far. No wonder half of the ghosts I see running around have a mace in their hands.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Running around with a bastard sword, mace, and long bow, and this game is pretty fun so far. Just beat the gargoyles. The constantly dropping health after dying is as annoying as I remembered from when I first attempted DaSII vanilla, but at least there's a ring that helps with that.
Scholar gives effigies like candy. Just revive. Or drop a Shade summon, help someone for 5 min, then revive with your Estus refilled and gear repaired.

Also constant Pursuer battles are annoying as hell. The fights aren't even hard since every move is super choreographed, but they just feel tedious. At least they drop twinkling titanite.
I liked them a lot. I liked how Pursuer finally lived up to his name, haha. The only place he pissed me off a bit is in that area with all the dogs.

Mace wrecks everything so far. No wonder half of the ghosts I see running around have a mace in their hands.
Yup mace is OP.
 

NinjaBoiX

Member
Really not feeling this Frozen Eleum Loyce area. Loads of fog and invisible enemies? Yay! Fun! I dunno, I'm really not having a good time with this area, it's horrible. I hear the bosses are bullshit too.

I'm putting this game down for a while, after 60 hours and 90% completion I'm done. Finshed the main game, I consider that a victory! Third time lucky, lol.

Cheers for the help and advice guys, laters.
 
Is there any way to stop the right stick rapid camera rotation? As in you push the stick half way to the left or right and the camera rotates around max speed. It makes just walking around frustrating. Left stick movement has similar issues, but I've tried changing deadzone settings and adjusting the speed in options, and it just feels horrible after taking a break to play DkS1 and BB.
 
Really not feeling this Frozen Eleum Loyce area. Loads of fog and invisible enemies? Yay! Fun! I dunno, I'm really not having a good time with this area, it's horrible. I hear the bosses are bullshit too.

I'm putting this game down for a while, after 60 hours and 90% completion I'm done. Finshed the main game, I consider that a victory! Third time lucky, lol.

Cheers for the help and advice guys, laters.

Of all the 3 DLCs I thought this area was the 2nd best. It has the most opportunity to explore and replay IMO. Brume Tower and the rest of the Crown of the Iron King DLC was cool, but it felt too constricted. Frozen Eleum had both, vertical spaces and and a bigger area to explore. I haven't done the frozen skirts, but the other chunk was really good.
 

Tarkus

Member
Of all the 3 DLCs I thought this area was the 2nd best. It has the most opportunity to explore and replay IMO. Brume Tower and the rest of the Crown of the Iron King DLC was cool, but it felt too constricted. Frozen Eleum had both, vertical spaces and and a bigger area to explore. I haven't done the frozen skirts, but the other chunk was really good.
If you finish the Outskirts, then you are a trooper. I hate that fucking area.
 

Ferr986

Member
Yesterday I did beat the Frigid Outskirts (ignored it on my first character after the boss raped me badly) and really... I don't think it's that bad. Those deers hit like a truck and they're hard, yeah, but when you learn their movements, there's really nothing else in the area. They will come one by one if you're fast enough and as far as I saw they don't appear if you're in a building. Boss is hard as fuck though.

Both the Iron Passage and Cave of Dead have harder enemies (well, more gank opportunities). Iron Passage boss is the easiest cause well, you already know him. Have yet to beat cave boss because fuck gank squads.

It's true that in Iron Passage and Cave of the Dead you can "speedrun" till the fog door, avoiding all the enemies , while it's way harder (or imposible?) to do in the Outskirts.
 
If you finish the Outskirts, then you are a trooper. I hate that fucking area.

That boss is fucking BS, had an easier time dealing with the Ivory King than those 2 nasty creatures.

ause well, you already know him. Have yet to beat cave boss because fuck gank squads.

It's true that in Iron Passage and Cave of the Dead you can "speedrun" till the fog door, avoiding all the enemies , while it's way harder (or imposible?) to do in the Outskirts.

You definitely can, you don't have to follow through the "path", you can circle around through the edge of the area and no enemy will bother you.
 

silva1991

Member
Just beat Fume Knight


giphy-21.gif


yeah he is still the hardest boss in the series followed by headless bloodletting beast.
 

daxy

Member
Just beat Fume Knight

yeah he is still the hardest boss in the series followed by headless bloodletting beast.

Beat him today as well, what a relief. Took me countless attempts to find the right moments to roll through his attacks. The Fume UGS was worth it though.

Question

I am going for a Str build for my first time playing this game. I went Str in DS1 with the claymore and zheidhander. Now my issue in this is the new stats like adaptability and the split health/vigor. At the beginning how should i focus on building up my stats?

I went for Str as well, but I balanced my points between adaptability and stamina at first. Then I put points into strength to use the weapon I wanted. I invested in vitality once I had the points for my weapon (Greatsword) because it's so heavy, and only after that did I put points into vigor. I found the base health to be enough until the later parts of the game if you got the ring of binding.
 
Preach brothers!

Fume Knight is a fucking asshole. I felt so much joy and accomplishment when I downed him. I literally put this game away for some time because I could not beat him.

(not my pic)
maxresdefault.jpg


EAT SHIT AND DIE YOU FUCKER
 
Fumie is probably my favorite Souls boss. Beating him at sl1 is one of my finest gaming moments.

This right here, the fact that he could heal with that one last Nadalia remnant I couldn't destroy since I was out of smelter wedge by that point made him even more of a challenge, not to mention I beat him using bone fist only(Favorite weapon in the game, fell in love after I found it in Eleum Loyce)

Also, is the steam version pretty much dead at this point? I was just doing my NG run and I could never spot a single summon sign or have any invaders come for a fight, not even in the bell's keeper area, game isn't as fun without some human interaction.
 

Wagram

Member
If I had one wish for Dark Souls III it would be an epic rematch with Gwyn. Not the same fight of course, but a different one with different mechanics. He's the best final boss in the series in my opinion (excl. BB cause haven't played).

We need Undead vs. Gwyn II at Soulsamania for the Lord of Cinder title.
 
If I had one wish for Dark Souls III it would be an epic rematch with Gwyn. Not the same fight of course, but a different one with different mechanics. He's the best final boss in the series in my opinion (excl. BB cause haven't played).

We need Undead vs. Gwyn II at Soulsamania for the Lord of Cinder title.

False King Allant

latest
 
Doing a socerer/no shield run. Really struggled at first but once you get some upgrades and ascetic a couple of bonfires, build gets insane. Ancient Dragon just got completely melted.
 

kewlmyc

Member
This right here, the fact that he could heal with that one last Nadalia remnant I couldn't destroy since I was out of smelter wedge by that point made him even more of a challenge, not to mention I beat him using bone fist only(Favorite weapon in the game, fell in love after I found it in Eleum Loyce)

Also, is the steam version pretty much dead at this point? I was just doing my NG run and I could never spot a single summon sign or have any invaders come for a fight, not even in the bell's keeper area, game isn't as fun without some human interaction.

Steam version can't be dead since it has more people than DSII playing usually. I guess splitting the community didn't help. I only managed to find one non NPC summon sign and the dude was literally teleporting around the room. Not sure if it was hacks or just a hilariously bad connection.

If I had one wish for Dark Souls III it would be an epic rematch with Gwyn. Not the same fight of course, but a different one with different mechanics. He's the best final boss in the series in my opinion (excl. BB cause haven't played).

We need Undead vs. Gwyn II at Soulsamania for the Lord of Cinder title.

Play BB. The final boss in that is better imo. He can't be easily parried like Gywn can.
 
So I've done a shield and light weapon build, ugs build, pure sorcery build.

Looking for a new build to play through the game. Would do ng+ if needed. Just looking for something fun to do.

Was considering a Lost Sinner cosplay.
 
I think you can get the uchi from mcduff after you give him the ember, so all you need to do is beat the pursuer boss in FoFG

I'm thinking about doing something similar too, The Alonne set + dark infused katanas or something. Right now dark espada roper with rob+flynn is getting me through NG+
 

Fhtagn

Member
I beat Fume and Sir Alonne solo this week. Fume I did shieldless but took a bunch of hits; having 50 vig and knowing how to bait openings to heal makes the fight a lot easier.

Sir Alonne is an amazing fight, other than the complete bullshit that is his vacuum grab stab attack. Second worst hitbox in the series (OHKO hippo grab chomp being by far the worst.) In general, the Souls series really needs to move to having hits do proportional damage based on what part of the swing you got it by, where on your body. I know that's the case already in some fights but a lead cause of me saying "that's bullshit" to myself during a boss fight is when the very end of a swing clips the very edge of my hitbox and I take full damage. It's visually dissonant. They should pick a distance to be a maximum for the character to be pulled into the grab attack, and if not, have the player take damage but don't do the grab.

Ok, rant over.

Fume and Alonne are what I'd like to see more of in Dark 3: genuinely intelligent designs that bait the player to attack or heal and respond to player character position & actions in smart ways. Fume's not just hard because he hits like a truck and has a ton of health, he's hard because he's so smart.
 
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