Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
You're so badass and edgy.
Dark Souls |OT4| Victory achieved for Scamco, text defeated
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You're so badass and edgy.
I understand why it's done, I just don't like it. It's usually used to dodge imminent death or the significant risk of such, and I'm fine with a death being effectively the end of a run for all practical purposes. I've also got some antipathy toward it being used to reset bonfires. One of the challenges of a speedrun is that you're not killing a lot of enemies, and that means that they're going to disable some bonfires. Jumping back to the title screen to make a bonfire accessible completely undermines a distinguishing feature of a speedrun, which is that you're sometimes forced to make a choice between either fighting an enemy you'd rather skip or giving up on using a bonfire. Quitting to the title screen completely eliminates that whole mechanic which is kinda silly since it's one of the defining features of a speedrun.
Anyway, this is pretty much all just me yelling at clouds.
Huevos de Oro
Member
Artorias
So yeah, could use some advice on how to level up. Currently my stats are as follows:
Level 100
VIT - 39
ATT - 12
END - 30
STR - 36
DEX - 25
RES - LOL, nevermind
INT - 15
FAI - 14
At the moment I have about 1.1mil souls that I'd like to place somehow. But I dunno where to dump it, maybe I should just raise my VIT and be done with it?
Level 100
VIT - 39
ATT - 12
END - 30
STR - 36
DEX - 25
RES - LOL, nevermind
INT - 15
FAI - 14
At the moment I have about 1.1mil souls that I'd like to place somehow. But I dunno where to dump it, maybe I should just raise my VIT and be done with it?
Soodanim
Member
I don't see how this can possibly have any appeal after about 3 invasions. You're ruining things for people who are most likely new to the game who don't have the skill or equipment you have, so there's no chance of a fair fight. You're clearly skilled, so why not play proper PVP?
Red Liquorice
Member
TwoP and Pursuers, with some Dark bead and WoG thrown in for good measure. Nice, cheap and nearly unbeatable combination.
So starting my first run-through with an INT build caster and looking for tips. I'm SL30 and just hit Blighttown and currently using nothing that is upgraded (mostly chain, grass crest shield, drake sword, bellowing dragoncrest ring, ring of favor and protection). Nothing is too challenging so far but I seem to be relying on melee a bit much for a caster so I'm wondering when/if that changes? At what point will it be mostly spells instead of swords? What do I need to make that happen?
Huevos de Oro
Member
You know what? Fuck Manus. Fuck him up his dark ass.
Crown of Dusk, Big Hat Logan spells. Make sure you get those two things before you head to Anor Londo. You will be wrecking with Sorcery, just use the normal Sorcerer's catalyst and keep leveling INT.
Also, grab the Lightning Spear in Sen's, kill Moonlight Butterfly for its soul. When you get to Anor Londo, downgrade the Lightning Spear to +10 and make the Moonlight Butterfly Horn out of the Boss soul.
You can also make an Enchanted weapon pretty early on too, the Ember is in Gankroot Garden next to the Big Mushrooms and you can talk to the Blacksmith in New Londo Ruins to craft it. Kill some Crystal Golems near the Hydra to get a couple Blue Chunks.
Great info thanks. So, I'm sort of bored with the Drake Sword...should I just hang on to that until I get the Moonlight Butterfly Horn? And should I end up with the Horn or is the Moonlight greatsword better?
Both are good, MLGS is definitely better, but the Horn is very effective as a spear, and it's pretty light.
Ditch the Drake sword and work on an Enchanted weapon, Claymore, Longsword, Rapier, whatever you like to use and have the min stats to wield.
Somnium986
Member
What I get for being grabbed by the Iron Golem. :/
Although I don't disagree with what Booshka syas, without knowing what you want to do with your character its pretty hard to give advice...are you hoping to do NG+'s or PVP, both? What was your playstyle? Do you like to co-op and help on bosses? If so, staying low level gets you more action...I would start a new character for that though. The million souls would go into equipment like lightning bolts for my Avelyn, getting maxed out weapons of various kinds, and if you haven't tried sorcery or faith perhaps you could consider increasing one of those if you really want to stick with that character? If you are goign to NG+++etc. and you don't want co-op or PVP then you can rise all the stats up, but to me that is boring...I always find more fun in starting a new character, helping new players on bosses, living vicariously through their fresh experience, limiting character leveling and spending on upgrading weapons, pyro, then either faith or sorcery.
good advice from booshka, but I would add that you may want to get the red robe (crimson set) in Blightown while you are there...you could have used the tin banishment catalyst earlier as it doubles for an effective stabbing weapon for early game while providing a decent catalyst. the oolacile catalyst is best for early game though, the regular one for mid and logans for late..IIRC. Also, although booshka's advice about making enchanted weapons is fine, I prefer to make regular path weapons and buff them, first with magic weapon from the vendor at firelink, then great magic weapon from anor londo, and finally crystal magic weapon from Dukes.. You can use fire or lightning resins as well depending on your situation and therefore adapt your buff to the enemy you are fighting. For enchanted weapons you can find a falchion and the titnaite catch pole/channelers trident are drops that are already on the magic/enchanted path and if you like them can save some upgrading...the butterfly horn is a great plan though and MGS is one of the best swords in the game , sorcerer or otherwise...its a signature sword that FROM always includes in each game...there is even reference to it in armored core 5.
You know the feeling after being beaten to a pulp lots of times by scary fucking looking giant dudes while playing SP? Remember how traumatized you get? The deep sinking feeling in your (dark) soul that you are a worthless peon of rotting flesh?
You can cause that now. Makes the memories sting a bit less.
Plus, you add to the generally eerie and terrifying nature and atmosphere of the game, which is pretty cool. I think it is a design choice actually, totally intended.
I don't at all think they intended for people to twink out and troll new players, all it does is encourage them to stay hollow or offline for their playthrough.
It's also likely why they introduced stat requirements for armour in DS2 too (they did do that right?), which seems like a great idea.
Homeward Bones are your friends.
Oolacile Ivory Catalyst + Crown of Dusk + Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring + Soul Arrow (you should have 90 of them if you start as Sorcerer). With that you can remain low level, deal ton of damage and never run out of spells.
It's very effective even in Anor Londo.
Regarding the melee weapon, you could make a Raw Long Sword+5. It's much better than the Drake Sword and it would serve you well until you reach Anor Londo.
I agree with this, but I don't see a strong incentive to not be hollow. The co-op on bosses is nice I guess, but I die far too regularly to stay human. Being able to kindle bonfires is a strong incentive for me to remain hollow so I have the humanity available when I need it.
Had the same issue after I upgraded to windows 8.1 (not sure if related). Go into your video card settings ad turn off stereoscopic 3d (I think its called that, it will be called some sort of 3d). Apparently you can use the 3d glasses form movie theaters to play games but I never tried it. Turn that off and it should be fine.
Its definitely a cowardly thing to do.
I loved that one player posted earlier who basically plays like a fair mini-boss for players. Really great idea. Just trying to give a good Dark Souls experience, not some bullshit, offputting one.
Red Liquorice
Member
It's not completely one sided though. The amount of times I've black crystal'ed out of someone's game because they have another white phantom already who is a giant dad type with electro-zweihander/Avelyn combo, or invaded and all 3 of them including the host are like that! It's not like the twinked out invaders are only doing it one way, they're slapping down their summon signs too!
Just a symptom of the age of the game I suppose - it's longevity and replayability.
Just a symptom of the age of the game I suppose - it's longevity and replayability.
Huevos de Oro
Member
With all of the DLC done except for the big, bad dragon I'm afraid to piss off, I have only Kiln left to do before moving onto NG+. I should try and pick up and upgrade the great scythe I somehow forgot to get before that.
Tried to kick Gwyndolin's ass but that damn magic is too annoying for me.
Tried to kick Gwyndolin's ass but that damn magic is too annoying for me.
Arjen
Member
Gwyndolin is really easy, he only has 3 moves and he telegraphes them very well.
1. Big magic ball is really easy to avoid when running towards him.
2. Knife throw, also really easy to avoid while running towards them.
3. Magic missiles. Just hide behind a pillar.
If you figure out when he does what attack, he should be a cakewalk.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
You need that crown!
You say you're relying too much on melee? How many attunement slots do you have? Are you aware you can buy multiple copies of spells to have more shots available?
Ditch the grass crest, it's useless on a sorcerer. I recommend the eagle shield from blighttown.
I highly recommend you purchase hidden body after you rescue Dusk, that spell is amazing.
I personally did a pure sorc run and didn't use melee much if at all, but I put all my points into vitality, attunement and intelligence. And of course buying spells, which is expensive as fuck. Early on you might wanna get those heavy soul arrows... they're very slow so be careful casting them. Later on you can ditch them for better stuff. Saving Logan should be a priority, after you do rush back to Firelink to do some purchasing.
Save EVERY soul item you have... they're very useful for purchasing spells since they don't go to waste when you die unlike the 200k souls you had on you.
All those points you're putting into strength and dexterity and endurance are screwing your sorcerer playthrough.
On my pure sorcerer playthrough I went full caster as soon as I hit firelink shrine. Remember you can buy spells from the blacksmith in New Londo.
As for weapons... something light that takes very little stats and stamina to use... like the rapier. Forget about catalysts, the best one is the one you started with until you hit the Archives and then you can find an upgrade.
From my experience the single most important thing for a sorc run is to kill the hydra as soon as possible and ignore all stats but attunement, intelligence and a little bit of vitality. Once you feel comfortable you can start upping a little bit endurance and some strength to hit the requirement of the Eagle Shield.
It was the easiest run I ever did. Sorcery is so, so imba. At the start you sort of have to use heavy soul arrows which are extremely slow, but afterwards.. oh boy.
I'm going for a strength-based melee character, I'm planning on going to NG+ and beyond with this character. As for PVP, I'm not really sure actually. Which is why I've been rather careful not to over level. I'm currently at lv110 and was thinking about going up to 120 before I decide. Going to chuck a few more points into vit and the rest into attunement for a few more slots to stick pyromancies into.
At the same time I don't want to level too much as things gets too damn easy
This is not true. Oolacile Ivory Catalyst is the one to use in the beginning (and until you you reach 30 int).
That way you can concentrate on increasing stats other than int (such as vit and end) in the beginning.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
You have to kill the hydra for that and people might have trouble doing it early, but true if you can kill the hydra early it is a better choice.
However I would say its better to keep leveling INT (alongside attunement and vitality) because as soon as you blow past that you will get more damage.
You have to kill the Hydra anyway to get the crown of Dusk and her spells.
The Hydra isn't really hard to beat very early but the reward is awesome, especially at that point.
Red Liquorice
Member
Pure sorcery run is lots of fun imo. Killing the Hydra asap using lock-OFF soul arrows feels great when you see it die. Taking out Capra too, no melee improves your evasion skills in general. Wow, so skill, much sausry etc, etc.
It's only later on where things get way too easy because of how OP sorcery becomes.
It's only later on where things get way too easy because of how OP sorcery becomes.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
It's not hard to beat, but doing it early with low endurance for blocking and with low melee damage or only spells is a problem. You can't lock on to the heads, so you have to manually aim the soul arrows. It's not that easy. I did it very, very early, and it was a challenge. The golem was even harder because it is highly resistant to magic and with low hps it was very easy to die as well. I didn't even have the rusty ring neither - I really rushed that one.
The crown is great, the catalyst is nice but to me the real treasure was Hidden Body. It works really well - if you use at Capra's front door and then enter, the dogs won't even notice you haha. And that's just an example.
Besides if you don't have anything against it you can take the easy route and just arrow him to death
I wanted to do a pure sorcery run, so I didn't. I think I may even had to use heavy soul arrows which means prioritizing heavy soul for the easier to aim heads that are closer - I tell you that, if I got good at one thing, was at precalculating what spell to use on every enemy so I could last to the next bonfire.
Ok, so I played a bit more and got the Crown of Dusk and Eagle Shield (that I picked up yesterday). With the crown and the bellowing ring a lot of stuff that gave me difficulty as a dex melee class just became trivial. Havel and Moonlight Butterfly both went down in less than 30 seconds each without really scratching me.
My goal isn't really to go "pure" caster as I'll get the MGS at some point so I just got STR up to 16 which also allowed me to use the Drake Sword for the time being. Now I'm pumping INT. I think my goal will be to keep movement speed medium so maybe Havel arms and legs, eagle shield, bellowing ring, MGS, dusk crown, Logan's catalyst. Not sure about chestpiece yet (currently using crimson set).
One of the nice things about leaning on the Ivory Catalyst, Dusk Crown, and Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring combo early on is that it provides you a lot more leeway to pump your Vitality and Endurance. A Sorcerer start provides you with 15 Int and Attunement to start out with, and if you stick one point into each (for Great Heavy Soul Arrow and a fourth Attunement slot, respectively) you can pretty much consider your Sorcery-related stat expenditures to be completed until completion of the Duke's Archive, freeing all of your soul levels for more than half the game up to be dropped into survival stats. That gives you all the HP and Stamina you need to make a mockery of the Hydra like it weren't no thing, and then you've got access to the big pair of items that make the build tick. One trip to the Lower Burg and you've got the trifecta.
It's a pretty smooth progression for a Sorcery build, really. I usually use either 16 or 31 Int as a good breakpoint until late-game, when I start pumping it in earnest. The 16 build leans heavily on standard Soul Arrow and Great Soul Arrow spam with the Ivory Catalyst, whereas the 31 build uses Homing Soulmass at full power.
For the most part all roads lead to Rome when it comes to Int builds, though. Full power requires 50 Int unless you're angling to focus purely on a NG+ dark sorcery build, which doesn't leave a huge amount of wiggle room before soul costs for levels start becoming onerous. It's mostly a matter of prioritizing when you should start pumping Int, rather than choosing how high to pump it.
This is a perfect description of what I briefly summarized.
You put it in much better words than I did Sir m(_ _)m
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Good good. The Eagle is awesome... low strength requirement, greatshield deflection, second highest stability in game (perfect for that low endurance)... you just can't parry with it.
Learn to pick what spells to use on what enemy... wasting soul spears on mooks is gonna be an issue when you run out of soul arrows later. I don't remember the exact point, but you really want to hit the INT at whcih soul mass gets you 5 projectiles as soon as possible. If I recall you buy that off Logan after you rescue him at Sen's and well, it's very useful.
I personally went 0 poise and picked armor just for looks and had no trouble at all. But you know, choices and all.
Havel and Moonlight went down fast eh? It's just an appetiser. Sorceries are so imba it isn't even a contest hahaha.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
But that means no Soul Spear nor Homing Soulmass after Quelaag.
And vitality is really not that needed anyways... combining both the range and the fact that the sorceries stagger even bosses, vitality is an afterthought.
Dark Souls, lots of choices and everything but if you're making a sorcerer rolling with no soul spear until mid Dukes is meh-worthy.
If you're going half melee half sorcerer... fuck it, even so, you owe yourself to get Soul Spear as soon as possible.
Same here. I never use Hidden Body, so when I attack with spells and if an enemy comes to me I draw my sword and fight it.
With 90 soul arrows, each of them deals ~200-220 damage at 16 int is more than enough in the first half of the game. Just spam Soul Arrow and never run out of them.
My problem with Soul Spear is that there isn't many of them, so I always keep them for bosses.
Soul Spear's actually not very slot-efficient, so I pretty much never use it. One slot of Soul Spear nets you 4 castings of a spell with a ~2.7 damage multiplier on your MagAdjust, whereas Great Heavy Soul Arrow gets you 8 castings with a ~2.16 multiplier. Stacking GHSA gets you more damage output per attunement slot, which is usually the criteria I use to decide on what spells to equip. You also only need one Soul Level to hit the minimum to use GHSA starting as Sorcerer, whereas being able to use Soul Spear requires 21 levels, affording you a lot more stat flexibility in the early going by eschewing it.
Giving up on an early Homing Soulmass is a bit of a sacrifice, though. You'll be pumping your Int by the time you get access to multiple castings and HCS though, so you're mainly giving up a single Attunement slot of it for the time period between Sen's and the Archive. It's a great spell, but a few extra hours without 10 castings of it isn't an onerous burden.
I'm not forwarding the Ivory Catalyst build style as objectively better or anything, I'm just saying that it's a surprisingly strong early Sorcery build that's a highly flexible alternative to a standard straight Int-pumping build. Your typical Sorcery build is pretty much always going to end up at 50 Int, 16 Str, and at least 40 Vit and End, so the real question is when you want to prioritize the heavy Int investment. The Ivory Catalyst build style just delays it until the endgame catalysts and sorceries become available in favor of more early HP and Stamina, whereas the traditional heavy early Int investment build is more of a glass cannon.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
You forgot the one hit ko factor. Enemies aren't a single hp wall but are divided in discrete elements. And besides, vita an end aren't needed much.
I really didn't forget that. High damage spells with low per-slot cast numbers aren't really your go-to spells for enemies with small HP pools that can be reliably one-shotted. They're more the domain of situations where raw damage per second is more valuable than overall damage available within a single attunement slot (PvP and the Four Kings being probably the go-to examples of such situations) or of a character with enough total attunement slots available that individual slots aren't a particularly valuable commodity. I'm operating under the (not unreasonable, I don't think) assumption that if you're equipping a high-DPS, slot-inefficient spell that you're doing it with the intention of using it against a boss, a non-respawning enemy like a Titanite Demon or similar, or against another player, and comparing it to Great Heavy Soul Arrow for such purposes. And GHSA serves as a lower-DPS, more slot-efficient alternative for those purposes with a dramatically lower mandatory stat investment. It's not suited for PvP at all, but for PvE situations it's a solid alternative.
The whole balance of which build is preferable changes rather dramatically if you don't consider Vitality and Endurance to be important stats, but I don't think that that's a very common stance to adopt when considering builds and you proffered an example of a situation where early points in Vitality and Endurance are desirable, i.e. when fighting the Hydra early to acquire Dusk's spells and items.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Whatever your theorycrafting tells you man, but I did that and boom, easiest run ever.
You can keep doing your maths, this stuff is battle tested.
And actually, early game hydra isnt about endurance adn vitality, but about attunements and spell damage. The crystal golem is a bit more requiring in terms of endurance tho, but still needs all those slots and damage.
But of course you can cheese hydra with a bow, enough arrows and lots of patience.
Dunno man, I set up to do a sorc build and Dark Souls became easymode skyrim. Just relaying my experience to other people. You found other ways to do it? Great, whatever, but every road leads to Rome.
And from my experience I found many enemies that required two soul arrows but went down with one soul spear. For a fragile caster two casts is a risk - every cast leaves you open to attack. Having to push two soul arrows means finding the window, casting, rolling around, repeat. For those times when I really needed to dispose of an enemy, soul spear was invaluable. It's not about the mag multiplier, its about removing one enemy when you need that to happen. Same for soul mass.
And you minimize it, but the window between quelaag, all of anor londo, and a good chunk of the archives is a very challenging area for fragile characters since enemies tend to start hitting really hard. Being able to use a single opportunity window to remove one enemy was invaluable.
I really love this post. It starts out by dismissing what I said as untested theorycrafting, then spends several paragraphs categorically agreeing with every bit of it. Heck, you even used the exact same cliche about Roman hegemony in reference to the largely static endpoint of Sorcery builds that I did!
I'm glad to have been of service.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Oh, so you disagree about being several ways to achieve a good result in this game, or do you disagree about a choice of words?
But it is nice how you conveniently ignore any part of the post that doesn't fit that narrative. It works for Fox, guess it's got to work for you eh?
Fuck this thread.
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