• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Dark Souls |OT3| This thread moves faster than the Blighttown framerate

Status
Not open for further replies.

sixghost

Member
maomaoIYP said:
Re-quoting this, because I was asleep for the past 7 hrs.

It doesn't rank down if you stay with the covenant as you move into NG+, because your covenant sticks with you as you go into a new playthrough.

Also, the number of people you've helped to get into the warrior of sunlight covenant is cumulative over all playthroughs with the same character. I have a character who only managed to help two people successfully in NG, I boosted my faith to only 40 in NG++ and joined the covenant.
Do you know if the Chaos Servant+2 shortcut in Lost Izalith closes once you leave the covenant? I definitely want the shortcut for NG+ but that's not the covenant I want to stay in.

Can I just start my NG+ in Chaos Servant, then switch and still use the shortcut?
 
I realize that on my current playthrough I haven't gone back and fought Sif yet. I really hate the damn forest.

Everytime I go there I have to go into Hollowed form just so I don't have to worry about Chak-Ti and the Champions of the Forest or whatever the fuck that covenant is calling themselves jumping into my game.

And I really, REALLY hate having to fight Sif. He's just protecting his master's grave.
 
Raxus said:
Pyromancy has some crazy shit but the best spells are all purchased. The ones you REALLY have to work for are hardly worth it when Great Combustion owns anything that isn't a fire creature. Aside from the annoying boss soul weapons I have most of the elemental weapons ready to reach their max level. I think I just need to go around and collect some more slabs. I have raw and lightning done and I have enchanted, magic, regular just about done.

Worst weapons are the rare drops, like Channeler's Trident. That and needing Sif's soul 3 fricking times. I'm sure there are others I was angry about, but it's all obscured by the hate for the Channeler's Trident.

The upgrade trophies are easy -- by the end of first run, I was missing Chaos/Magic/Divine/Standard and I think that was it and it was only slabs I was missing.


Sinople said:
So much hate for Bed of Chaos :(
I loved this fight and don't see what is so frustrating with it.

When you've spent over an hour dying, running from demon's ruins through the shortcut to Lost Izalith, taking out the prowling demon, only to get to bed of chaos and have it pull some "knock you into the hole or 1 shot you", it's easy to hate. I know I do!


sixghost said:
Do you know if the Chaos Servant+2 shortcut in Lost Izalith closes once you leave the covenant? I definitely want the shortcut for NG+ but that's not the covenant I want to stay in.

Can I just start my NG+ in Chaos Servant, then switch and still use the shortcut?

You can switch once you've gone down to and touched the wall. Switch before and the mechanism will NOT unlock.
 

2AdEPT

Member
24FrameDaVinci said:
Holy shit those two archers in Anor Londo are driving me nuts, how do you go about taking them out?
Make sure you have some poise, and shield stablity, equip a spear (the lightning one is best) and just run up to the one on the right. Hold shield up, mash attack button...either he falls off smashing into your shield or he dies from your stabs...usually done well before the other guy shoots you...but if you are always in attack mode with poise the arrow will only cause damage, not knock you off. Roll when you hear the bow animation sound previuos to reaching the knight.

My first startegy was force...andthis worked for some people with high faith, but not me with low faith....so the above is my poreferred strategy now....onetime in PVP the host went left and still died despite me completely neutralizing the right one....boo brother quartz! ;p
 

Dresden

Member
Bed of Chaos is bullshit, I hate that boss. It's pure shit. Once you figure out what to do it's pretty easy but there's still a lot of frustration associated with it and there really isn't a catharsis or whatever for beating it either, you're just glad you finally can move on from that entire pus hole of a zone.
 

2AdEPT

Member
AlphaDragoon said:
I realize that on my current playthrough I haven't gone back and fought Sif yet. I really hate the damn forest.

Everytime I go there I have to go into Hollowed form just so I don't have to worry about Chak-Ti and the Champions of the Forest or whatever the fuck that covenant is calling themselves jumping into my game.

And I really, REALLY hate having to fight Sif. He's just protecting his master's grave.
Try to tell yourself he has rabies and must be honorably put down....the fact you are doing it with lava balls is irrelevant! ;p

If you want it over quick jsut take one extra pyro phantom with you..... I heard SIF was near impossible at my SL so I summoned a dude.....we were both pyro's it turned out.....he didn't do any of these animations for me as he was up in smoke faster than
 
2AdEPT said:
Try to tell yourself he hasrabies and must be honorably put down....the fact you are doing it with lava balls is irrelevant! ;p

It made me sad on my cleanup NG++ partial run when I killed him for the 3rd time; He finally showed signs of damage and did the "swing so hard I fell on my back" thing... I was sad, then I realized he wanted his belly rubbed. I couldn't reach, so I had my homing crystal soulmasses do it. :lol
 
Okay, any tips on easily getting rid of the knight golems in front of the Anor Londo boss? I'm trying to go in human form so I can summon help, but the first time I tried the golems killed me, and the second time I got invaded and killed before I could kill them or get help. This is really annoying.
 

Dresden

Member
Incendiary said:
Okay, any tips on easily getting rid of the knight golems in front of the Anor Londo boss? I'm trying to go in human form so I can summon help, but the first time I tried the golems killed me, and the second time I got invaded and killed before I could kill them or get help. This is really annoying.
Just nuke them or do the 'shield up while circling clockwise' tactic.

Btw plenty of people put down signs on the bridge or by the bonfire, just summon there so they can help you clear it before the boss.
 
Incendiary said:
Okay, any tips on easily getting rid of the knight golems in front of the Anor Londo boss? I'm trying to go in human form so I can summon help, but the first time I tried the golems killed me, and the second time I got invaded and killed before I could kill them or get help. This is really annoying.

Walk up slowly so only one gets pulled, I tend to stay to the left of the stairs. When he comes down, roll through his legs and he'll likely try to shield pound you which can't hit behind him. Own with weapon of choice while his back is open and repeat. Works on any of them, not just the ones at the stairs.

Had to figure out a good way to fight them without a shield/pyromancy/etc. as my character is an Iaito-only 2H user, and this method works for me quite well.

EDIT: Realized you mean the ones inside, but it works on them too.
 
Incendiary said:
Okay, any tips on easily getting rid of the knight golems in front of the Anor Londo boss? I'm trying to go in human form so I can summon help, but the first time I tried the golems killed me, and the second time I got invaded and killed before I could kill them or get help. This is really annoying.

I've almost never chanced fighting them, I generally RUN.
Some of the worst enemies in the game for me.
And if you don't kill them and go into S&O fight, MOVE AWAY FROM THE FOG DOOR IMMEDIATELY.

Best answer is check the bonfire or open the main doors and go check the bridge for summon signs, I'd say, like someone else said. :) That way you can tag team the big bastards.

If you're going to solo S&O, you can use my 90% evasion technique: -- drop off the stairs near the top so you land close to the bottom, sprint back to the midsection -- the first one closest to the door should be following you up the stairs... the one in the middle of the room should notice and start coming too... shield up, back up the stairs again -- you should be able to get them so they're halfway up the stairs -- immediately drop down the same way, toward the bottom again, and sprint for the fog door. Toss a healing potion just before you hit x to enter and you're good... just move away from the door so the halberd toting jackmonkeys can't rape you in the back from beyond the fog door.
 

2AdEPT

Member
Incendiary said:
Okay, any tips on easily getting rid of the knight golems in front of the Anor Londo boss? I'm trying to go in human form so I can summon help, but the first time I tried the golems killed me, and the second time I got invaded and killed before I could kill them or get help. This is really annoying.
Just run through, or hire help. I can kill those dudes myself slowly if I take my time....so I know I can do it....no need to prove myself further and waste time if it itakes three tries for the bosses...... might as well just run right through from the bonfire. As a side note, I find that most people summon near the start on the bridge after the first bonfire and just run through....the whole team.....no sense pissin around in the castle. As such those who are having trougble summoning/assisting at SL 60 should look for stones/drop stones on the bridge longer as opposed to waiting at the door....I've never rarely had trouble finding PVP opportuinities in ANor Lando....even better was the painted world as there are tonnes of farmers willing to take help.
 

mattp

Member
finally at the infamous
archers in anor londo

that fucking trick everyone uses on youtube doesn't work!
i run up to the guy on the right, get him to pull out his sword, start running back down the path
and instead of following me, the fucker just gets his bow back out and shoots in me in the back
 

2AdEPT

Member
AlphaDragoon said:
Walk up slowly so only one gets pulled, I tend to stay to the left of the stairs. When he comes down, roll through his legs and he'll likely try to shield pound you which can't hit behind him. Own with weapon of choice while his back is open and repeat. Works on any of them, not just the ones at the stairs.

Had to figure out a good way to fight them without a shield/pyromancy/etc. as my character is an Iaito-only 2H user, and this method works for me quite well.

EDIT: Realized you mean the ones inside, but it works on them too.
BUt the ones inside explode on you then heal...I fought these guys so much that I can usually do them only uisng a couple estus....but no guarantee they won't heal and get lucky on me....I would prefer FULL estus for the boss....running through just has too much upside...particularly on subsequent runs if you die...beating them once is enough.
 
Okay thanks. I have a thief/pyro build so it's hard for me to do outright damage to them without wasting my pyro spells, which I want to save for the boss. I've run through before as a hollow but I wanted to kill them as a human so I could summon people. I tried summoning people on the bridge but they always fail. :(
 

2AdEPT

Member
mattp said:
finally at the infamous
archers in anor londo

that fucking trick everyone uses on youtube doesn't work!
i run up to the guy on the right, get him to pull out his sword, start running back down the path
and instead of following me, the fucker just gets his bow back out and shoots in me in the back
see my post 9005
 

Baha

Member
NG+ on the last boss, got a question:

I've seen people say use iron flesh + pyromancy if you suck at parrying. So my question is, if I have an ascended +5 flame from Queleena, what pyromancies should I use to make quick work of him with 1-2 iron flesh castings? I have all the pyromancy spells.
 

Ra1den

Member
mattp said:
finally at the infamous
archers in anor londo

that fucking trick everyone uses on youtube doesn't work!
i run up to the guy on the right, get him to pull out his sword, start running back down the path
and instead of following me, the fucker just gets his bow back out and shoots in me in the back

I'm surprised at the difficulty people have with this. Both of my playthroughs I just walked right by the archer on the right, with my shield up. He generally falls off.
 
2AdEPT said:
BUt the ones inside explode on you then heal...I fought these guys so much that I can usually do them only uisng a couple estus....but no guarantee they won't heal and get lucky on me....I would prefer FULL estus for the boss....running through just has too much upside...particularly on subsequent runs if you die...beating them once is enough.

When they go for the shockwave they have a pretty big tell, that normally should give someone enough time to evade it.

For fighting Ornstein and Smough though, I agree that just running past them is easiest. When you have to beat them (says, farming for chunks or you just can't shake them), then I use the rolling under the legs strategy.
 
Baha said:
NG+ on the last boss, got a question:

I've seen people say use iron flesh + pyromancy if you suck at parrying. So my question is, if I have an ascended +5 flame from Queleena, what pyromancies should I use to make quick work of him with 1-2 iron flesh castings? I have all the pyromancy spells.

How many slots do you have?
I raped his face off with iron flesh and homing crystal soul mass earlier today in NG+...
From my experience, if you probably want great fireball, probably great combustion (though I'm not a fan), maybe great chaos fireball if you have slots to spare? Worst case, take fire orbs.
 

K' Dash

Member
Dresden said:
Bed of Chaos is bullshit, I hate that boss. It's pure shit. Once you figure out what to do it's pretty easy but there's still a lot of frustration associated with it and there really isn't a catharsis or whatever for beating it either, you're just glad you finally can move on from that entire pus hole of a zone.

Man, all these comments make it hard for me to look forward to finish the game.
 

2AdEPT

Member
Incendiary said:
Okay thanks. I have a thief/pyro build so it's hard for me to do outright damage to them without wasting my pyro spells, which I want to save for the boss. I've run through before as a hollow but I wanted to kill them as a human so I could summon people. I tried summoning people on the bridge but they always fail. :(
Every once in a while I get a string of failures (usually when there are lots of people on during peak times like late sat night/sunday am.) This was actually the same in Demon's Souls....you have to be quick as a host as other hosts are all competing for the same helpers and failures are likely occuring because you see the sign there, but in reality, someone else already summoned and beat you to it. Also there are people using the "drop stone multriple times to find friend routine" There were lots of complaints about PVP vs. the old Demon's souls method, but to be honest I haven't found much difference...both are unwieldy and less than desireable...... but equally so.... and tolerable. I actually found there to be more times I could't summon in Demon's souls than Dark.
 
Psy-Phi said:
Lost izalith, in the shortcut from demon ruins.

Man, I love those "sunlight maggots". Creepy as hell, but makes Tomb so much more enjoyable when you don't have to worry about cast light or skull latern. And they're great for adjusting the lighting for proper binocular use in chamber of the princess. XD
 

Baha

Member
corrosivefrost said:
How many slots do you have?
I raped his face off with iron flesh and homing crystal soul mass earlier today in NG+...
From my experience, if you probably want great fireball, probably great combustion (though I'm not a fan), maybe great chaos fireball if you have slots to spare? Worst case, take fire orbs.

I've got 5 slots atm, though I could use that ring that gives me an extra slot. Also, only my faith is high (38), my INT is 18 so I can't rely on sorcery for this fight.
 

maomaoIYP

Member
sixghost said:
Do you know if the Chaos Servant+2 shortcut in Lost Izalith closes once you leave the covenant? I definitely want the shortcut for NG+ but that's not the covenant I want to stay in.

Can I just start my NG+ in Chaos Servant, then switch and still use the shortcut?

That I do not know for certain, but I suspect that the door will close. Two reasons for saying that, 1) NG+ strips you of all keys and progression critical items except the ring of artorias (if I recall correctly), and 2) I ranked up to chaos covenant +2 BEFORE I obtained the lordvessel, and switched covenants. The shortcut never opened.
 
MotionBlue said:
Piddling around in Crystal cavern. I don't like this place.
The path is quite short once you know where to go. I saw a lot if messages revealing the hidden bridges when I did it. You can run past solo the enemies pretty easily.

About the blacksmith in The Catacombs, I can hear him working behind a brick wall but I can't seem to break it. How shop I get to where he is?
 

Baha

Member
maomaoIYP said:
That I do not know for certain, but I suspect that the door will close. Two reasons for saying that, 1) NG+ strips you of all keys and progression critical items except the ring of artorias (if I recall correctly), and 2) I ranked up to chaos covenant +2 BEFORE I obtained the lordvessel, and switched covenants. The shortcut never opened.

You lose half your offerings if you leave a covenant so in NG+ he would only have to offer 15 humanity to hit rank 2 IF he switched but he would retain rank 1 status from his previous run. That's how it went down for me anyways. This would explain why the shortcut didn't appear for you since you left the covenant and lost half the offerings you made to hit rank 2.
 
toasty_T said:
The path is quite short once you know where to go. I saw a lot if messages revealing the hidden bridges when I did it. You can run past solo the enemies pretty easily.

About the blacksmith in The Catacombs, I can hear him working behind a brick wall but I can't seem to break it. How shop I get to where he is?
if you noticed from going through the Catacombs a spiral staircase that leads to nothing, you have to drop down from there.
 

2AdEPT

Member
AlphaDragoon said:
When they go for the shockwave they have a pretty big tell, that normally should give someone enough time to evade it.

For fighting Ornstein and Smough though, I agree that just running past them is easiest. When you have to beat them (says, farming for chunks or you just can't shake them), then I use the rolling under the legs strategy.
That's funny, I found the shield smash to get me if I went between legs too much...I use the circular strafe method as I am a full speed high endurance kinda character...you only have to get half way around before a quick jab form the lightning spear gets them...once they get hit once they lock, so a full R2 attack, and one more in succession if you have the stamina, will kill the guys on the stairs in one combo of ligtning spear....the ones inside are quicker, smarter, and hence take more time, even if you can avoid explosion attacks. Aggreed on all points though.
 

maomaoIYP

Member
Baha said:
You lose half your offerings if you leave a covenant so in NG+ he would only have to offer 15 humanity to hit rank 2 IF he switched but he would retain rank 1 status from his previous run. That's how it went down for me anyways. This would explain why the shortcut didn't appear for you since you left the covenant and lost half the offerings you made to hit rank 2.

I was fully expecting the door to auto open once I got to +2, but since you need to touch it to open and I couldn't go there because I didn't have the lordvessel, it never opened. I wanted to open it to farm demon titanite, I actually like fighting the dinos.
 

Zzoram

Member
UrbanRats said:
Thanks man.
I'll do it today.. also, what was that thing about staying low level for the PVP? I'm level 84 (or something like that) should i stop leveling up? I also play most of the time with the PS3 offline (i rarely connect the console to the internet) but still.

For PvP purposes I'd recommend staying below SL 120 for now. It's unclear where the community is going to settle in level range, but in Demon's Souls it was SL 120.
 
Baha said:
I've got 5 slots atm, though I could use that ring that gives me an extra slot. Also, only my faith is high (38), my INT is 18 so I can't rely on sorcery for this fight.

I know most people swear by great combustion, but I always prefer to have a bit of distance if possible. You're going to need 1 slot for iron flesh. That leaves 4, maybe 5 if you use the darkmoon seance ring. You should probably consdering the use the lingering dragoncrest ring if you have it, to prolong the iron flesh time and give you time to destroy him.

Here's what you do -- test how much your +5 flame with certain spells does on a clean hit on one of the black knights in the kiln -- no shield blockage, etc.

It took me about 5-6 homing crystal soul masses on him, though some of those weren't full hits. My soulmasses were doing 1500 or so on a clean hit to the black knights -- pending similar scaling, if it took me 1 shot to nail a black knight and 6 to nail him, you can do the math that his health will be 5-6x the amount of casts it takes to kill a black knight. Just a guess though.

Using this, you can figure out how to budget the remaining spells and if you need an extra slot.

I'd definitely try great fireball, great combustion, fire orb and great chaos fireball. You could try rolling with the 10 humanity it's supposed to scale with to see if that helps too.
 

Zzoram

Member
Carcetti said:
How can you guys do that soul glitching trick? I considered it but it would ruin the game for me since Dark Souls is so much about achieving something despite the huge challenge. I could cheat in some another game but just thinking about this makes me feel dirty especially since it can (and will) affect multiplayer despite the level reqs.

Depends on how you use it.

If you're maxing out your character, that's obviously stupid. If you're just using it to buy all the spells in the game and Titanite Shards/Large Shards, all you're doing is reducing the amount of boring grinding you would otherwise have to do to get trophies, but otherwise not impacting your game.

Many veteran players plan specific character builds for particular levels, for example they only want a SL 20, 80, or 120 character for PvP or PvE. Having unlimited souls doesn't make the game much easier for them, since they have purposely set limits on their soul level anyways.
 

2AdEPT

Member
corrosivefrost said:
Man, I love those "sunlight maggots". Creepy as hell, but makes Tomb so much more enjoyable when you don't have to worry about cast light or skull latern. And they're great for adjusting the lighting for proper binocular use in chamber of the princess. XD
Fuuuuugh. I rage quit my first character at SL64 after I lost the vendor in the bsain for cast light and chamelon etc., fought all the way through to the boss door in the ruins to get the helmet, took me hours of death and multiple tries...only to find that it was locked....I guess the reason was that I kpet the vessel for Kaathe, which now means I can resume that character if the new one screws up for whatever reason' I guess one character can turn dark and do dark fun shit and the other can side with jungle breath ;p
 

Zzoram

Member
Sotha Sil said:
Playing the game without a guide (and reading this thread) is turning out to be an amazing idea. Counting on helpful players and signs is much, much more fun.

So yeah, just chiming in to say Dark Souls is awesome.

For a first play through ya that's fun. For either NG+ or a second character, you want as much guidance as possible to get all the trophies since a lot of things are borderline impossible to figure out accidentally.

PS isn't your name based on a Morrowind thing?
 
How many
eye of deaths
do you need to rank up
Nito's covenant
to +2? I'm assuming you need to donate all of them in one playthrough to get max?
 

Zzoram

Member
IMO pyromancy is imbalanced.

It's entirely item based, so any character with 10 INT and 10 ATT can have at least 4 chaos fireballs doing 900 damage, meanwhile a Sorcerer needs to have 50 INT to be doing the same kind of damage with sorcery. Of course, the advantage of sorcery is being able to shoot more times, but I don't feel that's properly balanced against how much INT you need to catch up in damage with pyromancy.
 
maomaoIYP said:
I was fully expecting the door to auto open once I got to +2, but since you need to touch it to open and I couldn't go there because I didn't have the lordvessel, it never opened. I wanted to open it to farm demon titanite, I actually like fighting the dinos.

It is a little easier than using the last bonfire in the tower in lost izalith, but if you have homeward miracle, i don't think it's a huge deal -- slight annoyance, since you have to ensure the firebreathing asshats aren't following you, but nothing horrible. I was farming him for a bit because I needed the titanite catch pole.
 

Zzoram

Member
Dresden said:
Hollow Soldier Shield + 15> Eagle Shield +15 by 1 stability, lol.

Eagle Shield has better protection against lightning, Hollow has better fire protection.

As for pvp, you can't stand still and cast soul arrows at people - instead focus on maintaining homing crystal soulmass orbs and get a soul spear off at the right time.

And then there's always the strong magic shield for invincibility. >.>

People seem to think players are hacking or are infinitely higher level when they do no damage to invaders. I think what's really going on is they used strong magic shield for 30 seconds of invincibility.

As for Eagle Shield, where the heck is it? I didn't find it.
 

2AdEPT

Member
Zzoram said:
For PvP purposes I'd recommend staying below SL 120 for now. It's unclear where the community is going to settle in level range, but in Demon's Souls it was SL 120.
Because demon's world was small in comparison to Dark....deciding on a SL was important as location was almost irrelevant....best options were the start of 4.1, the reaper pit in 4.2, and the start of 1-4. but I tend to think that with so many options for location, that location itself might end up being an important settling point as well as SL for Dark....aslo depends if they widen parameters for PVP like they say they may with Dark.
 

Zzoram

Member
sleepykyo said:
So you wanted to pull the dirty move that I wanted to pull (I really don't want to farm in painted level for reprisals) and finding you're dying to another dirty move?

It does raise interesting point on whether keeping the soul level really matters. In Demon's Souls it was huge deal, because it was level matching but in Dark Souls, the forest, the dragon, etc aren't based on levels, might as well not bother.

Now question is which SL is best for the Warriors of Sunlight coop.

Most PvP occurs outside the forest or dragon covenant so I would say maintaining a low soul level is still crucial for PvP.

I spent several hours as a blue phantom avenger invading the guilty to get my 10 reprisals. It seemed to always match me up against players at about the same level as me (SL 110).
 
Zzoram said:
People seem to think players are hacking or are infinitely higher level when they do no damage to invaders. I think what's really going on is they used strong magic shield for 30 seconds of invincibility.

As for Eagle Shield, where the heck is it? I didn't find it.

Near the bonfire on the way from the depths down to blight town -- there will be part of the concrete stucture you're on where you can walk out/down a slope and find it on a body at the end.

--

How does dragon covenant invading work, exactly?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom