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Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition |OT| Durante Does In 23 Minutes What From Can't

Seems so. You can expect almost every PC game to be pretty active but GFWL is a cancer and there's no two ways around it...

Oh man, that's really too bad. Are the console versions better in this respect? Might double dip in the far future because all these amazing online systems are being wasted here :(
 

dezolis

Neo Member
About saving
Siegmeyer
, I did this on the PS3 version, but
I killed all of the monsters with a bow & arrows before jumping down into the pit. Sieg then said something about how disappointing it was that he couldn't help me out after all I'd done for him, gave me a ring and then went on his merry way. When I went to Ash Lake afterwards, neither of the Siegs were there and I had been doing his daughter's story line up until then. I went to Ash Lake more than once just to check (and I wanted that slab)and no dead Sieg. No idea what happens to his daughter because I never came across her again in that playthrough.
I think that counts as saving him.
 

NBtoaster

Member
Oh man, that's really too bad. Are the console versions better in this respect? Might double dip in the far future because all these amazing online systems are being wasted here :(

DLC comes to console on the 24th, it will certainly be more active then.

If you want pvp on pc the forest area is still active.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
Seems so. You can expect almost every PC game to be pretty active but GFWL is a cancer and there's no two ways around it...

I'd be in favor of a complete network mod/crack that cut out GFWL completely, hosted the game on servers supported by donations and had anti-cheat protection.

Besides a bunch of balancing and engine tweaks this is needed, or expect the PC Souls community to dry up within a year or two.
 

Forkball

Member
This shit's never going to happen with Ornstein and Smough. No humanity, crystal halberd is almost broken, and I can't do any damage. I got Ornstein halfway down before I died after using all my Estus. I'm using Havel's armor which sucks for rolling but I would die in about one hit with my other armors. I would have to backtrack and farm until the end of days before I even have a chance against these guys. I was managing the game just fine but now it's a brick wall.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
This shit's never going to happen with Ornstein and Smough. No humanity, crystal halberd is almost broken, and I can't do any damage. I got Ornstein halfway down before I died after using all my Estus. I'm using Havel's armor which sucks for rolling but I would die in about one hit with my other armors. I would have to backtrack and farm until the end of days before I even have a chance against these guys. I was managing the game just fine but now it's a brick wall.

Farm the Silver Knights for loose humanity, then summon Solaire to keep one of them busy.

Use lightning for Smough, fire for Ornstein.

Roll, and stick and move, and wait for your spot to come.

Wear lighter armor, or no armor, and simply wait for opportunities and move in and out using the pillars for cover or healing when needed.

Once you've killed one of them it's a easy fight if you got their telegraphs down, and again, out distance them and wait for opportunities.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
What is loose humanity? The item you keep in your inventory? Do silver knights even drop those?
Loose/Soft humanity is the kind you earn which goes directly into your humanity counter. Hard humanity is the item that can be consumed.

Silver knights do not reward soft humanity, to my knowledge, the only things that do in Anor Londo are the Painting Guardians.
 

Grief.exe

Member
Loose/Soft humanity is the kind you earn which goes directly into your humanity counter. Hard humanity is the item that can be consumed.

Silver knights do not reward soft humanity, to my knowledge, the only things that do in Anor Londo are the Painting Guardians.

Soft comes from anything you kill in an area if the boss isn't dead. So silver will work.
 

Haly

One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee.
It's only certain enemies, there's actually an internal logic to it. Basically things that were once human count, while a lot of other stuff doesn't.

At least, that's what the wiki implies, and it is in line with my own experience. I've farmed Silver Knights for a long time for their weapons on my latest character and not a single humanity tick. But two passes through the painting guardians and I get 1.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
It's only certain enemies, there's actually an internal logic to it. Basically things that were once human count, while a lot of other stuff doesn't.

At least, that's what the wiki implies, and it is in line with my own experience. I've farmed Silver Knights for a long time for their weapons on my latest character and not a single humanity tick. But two passes through the painting guardians and I get 1.

You do get loose humanity from Silver Knights, I've farmed up 10 SL's killing every one of them during the routine, and eventually you'll get some.
 

Ridley327

Member
Where's the preferred summon area for it? I really prefer to bro-op before I explore a place myself. :/

You're not going to find very many summon spots in Blighttown itself, really; they're largely going to be at the bottom, near the bonfire or right before the boss (which includes the one that you can find by defeating the NPC invader that shows up down there).
 

ixix

Exists in a perpetual state of Quantum Crotch Uncertainty.
What if, and I'm just throwing this out there, it was a Reverse Cthulhu?

A Reverse Cthulhu has the front and back flipped, so that'd lead to tentacle hair. A Cthulhu with the head on top and the tentacles on bottom is more commonly known as a Topsy-Turvy Cthulhu or, as we called it in the old country, an octopus.
 

Booshka

Member
Not really, unless you are looking to duel. It's easy to punish and will lead to a loss more often than not.

It makes for a shitty fight, if neither player heals and just fights to the death, the fight is much more fun and fair. If someone is chugging estus, or healing with humanity/blessings, it makes the fight a war of attrition and backstab punishing.

If you get invaded and are just trying to summon people, get to the boss and progress through the area, then do what you gotta do. Even if the invader dies, they can take some solace in the fact that you had to use some estus for the fight, and not for the level/boss.

If you are waiting around to fight invaders, then healing (unless you use a spell) is in poor form in my opinion. You always have a chance to win even with low health, so healing just ruins the good fight you had up until that point.

It's a Rules of Engagement thing, I won't heal first, but if they do, I'll heal or backstab punish.
 

Forkball

Member
Farmed the knights for like an hour and didn't get one humanity drop. I went to the white ninja room and gods be praised, found one, but I fucking died against those stupid demons in that small ass room trying to get back up. I died again trying to regain it.

I don't know why they would just dead end players like this. The boss fight is impossible with my gear and set up, I get slaughtered and trapped in a corner as my camera spazzes out due to the lock on, and the game flips a coin between running and rolling. They couldn't have put a humanity merchant or a damn rat anywhere near the boss? It just sucks that I managed to get this far but then some crummy things happened and now I can't progress. Throw me a damn bone here From.
 

krakov

Member
Farmed the knights for like an hour and didn't get one humanity drop. I went to the white ninja room and gods be praised, found one, but I fucking died against those stupid demons in that small ass room trying to get back up. I died again trying to regain it.

I don't know why they would just dead end players like this. The boss fight is impossible with my gear and set up, I get slaughtered and trapped in a corner as my camera spazzes out due to the lock on, and the game flips a coin between running and rolling. They couldn't have put a humanity merchant or a damn rat anywhere near the boss? It just sucks that I managed to get this far but then some crummy things happened and now I can't progress. Throw me a damn bone here From.

There is an optional area close by with some rats in it, though you will need a key of sorts. Backtracking isn't as demanding as it may feel. It takes less than a few minutes to be back in Firelink with almost no enemies on the way there.
 

Booshka

Member
Farmed the knights for like an hour and didn't get one humanity drop. I went to the white ninja room and gods be praised, found one, but I fucking died against those stupid demons in that small ass room trying to get back up. I died again trying to regain it.

I don't know why they would just dead end players like this. The boss fight is impossible with my gear and set up, I get slaughtered and trapped in a corner as my camera spazzes out due to the lock on, and the game flips a coin between running and rolling. They couldn't have put a humanity merchant or a damn rat anywhere near the boss? It just sucks that I managed to get this far but then some crummy things happened and now I can't progress. Throw me a damn bone here From.

If your Crystal Halberd is about to break you can upgrade it with a Titanite Chunk, you should have at least one. It will make the weapon stronger and bring it back to full durability. It's risky to use a Chunk on a Crystal weapon, but it may be worth it to help you progress. Chunks aren't too hard to come by, and you can always farm for them later.

If you really need to get out of Anor Londo and refresh, just run back up the way you came in and go back to Sen's Fortress, then you can go back to the beginning part of the game and restock on humanity/supplies and level if you want.

Not sure if you are playing online or not, but you can always throw your summon sign down to get some souls, humanity and most importantly, some risk-free experience with the level and boss. Learn the enemies and level layout in someone else's game (don't use the Crystal Halberd here, use another weapon) just try to learn as much as you can before you tackle the area in your game.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
5JdY6.jpg


Spent about a hour and a half trying to farm one of these in Sen's, just to come to find out I can't wield it two-handed with my base stats. :(
 

zkylon

zkylewd
That's kinda weird though isn't it? Balancing is a bit off then.
Nah, Demon's Souls was just like that too. They let you have a little fun at first but it slowly gets harder, thought it was definitively less easy in Demon's NG+. In general I don't think I've had much trouble with anyone or anything but the Four Kings and maybe S&O, but even in that case it was more me trying to get Smough dead first, than their own difficulty.

And I thought Dark Souls was in general a lot easier than Demon's, and, more importantly, less frustrating about dumb stuff like upgrade material drops (though I hear it there was way more grinding on console launch) and how long it took running to a bosses. Bonfires were really a masterful solution in many aspects, it's amazing how much better it is.

I'm not sure 100% about not changing my mind, but I think those changes make it the superior game. I'll forever miss Boletaria, though...
 

RIK

Neo Member
About saving
Siegmeyer
, I did this on the PS3 version, but
I killed all of the monsters with a bow & arrows before jumping down into the pit. Sieg then said something about how disappointing it was that he couldn't help me out after all I'd done for him, gave me a ring and then went on his merry way. When I went to Ash Lake afterwards, neither of the Siegs were there and I had been doing his daughter's story line up until then. I went to Ash Lake more than once just to check (and I wanted that slab)and no dead Sieg. No idea what happens to his daughter because I never came across her again in that playthrough.
I think that counts as saving him.

No it doesen't.
He should still be in the pit and talking to him again at this point would make him suicide. To prevent this, there are actually five monsters down there you need to get rid off. You can see four of them from upstairs, but there is another one around the corner that usually hurts Siegmeier enough to ruin his story. Best thing is to get down there and kill the "hidden" monster, then go upstairs again and kill the rest from above with ranged attacks. Arrows or Soulspear works fine. Just make sure to let one monster live with a sliver of health left, talk to Siegmeier to make him jump and finish off the last monster.
 

Thrakier

Member
There is always a bonfire close to a boss room with extremely few forced fights in between.

No, it's sometimes between 1-3 minutes which is far too much. It has several issues. First of all, it's just not a fun gameplay mechanic to run the same way over and over again. Second, you run past by all enemies, essentially "breaking" the game and therefore also breaking the immersion. Third, there is just no reason for not having an retry option. In average I probably died about 10 times to boss enemies. With an average run of 1 minute and let's say 10 boss battles in the game I wasted almost two hours of my lifetime for something which is not fun, tedious and could easily be avoided.
 

zkylon

zkylewd
No, it's sometimes between 1-3 minutes which is far too much. It has several issues. First of all, it's just not a fun gameplay mechanic to run the same way over and over again. Second, you run past by all enemies, essentially "breaking" the game and therefore also breaking the immersion. Third, there is just no reason for not having an retry option. In average I probably died about 10 times to boss enemies. With an average run of 1 minute and let's say 10 boss battles in the game I wasted almost two hours of my lifetime for something which is not fun, tedious and could easily be avoided.
The Dark Souls Experience™ strongly depends on the risk-reward management of your actions. Every action you take is a gamble for your Souls, your Humanity and your time, and it's the source of much of the tension and fear of death you feel in the game.

If you remove some of that punishment you'll get a less frustrating game but you'll also remove big part of the essence of the Souls games, and I don't think that's worth it.

I also don't think that running past enemies is "breaking the game", as Dark Souls is a very meta game that expects you to cheese enemies by slowly shooting them afar, exploiting the AI, reading guides to learn many of the impossible-to-figure-out stuff, etc.

Any sort of help in the way of a "retry" button or a quicksave or whatever, that would really break the suspension of disbelief, since it'd be mean the game actually gives a shit about you.
 

Defuser

Member
So I was on my way to 4 Kings, kill the first darkwraith which resulted a loot for me to pillage so I thought "Hey another titanite chunk for me!" But holy shit! I got a Titanite fucking Slab instead. Of all my hours of playing I never thought I would get a slab out of those darkwraiths thinking it would be impossible due to it's very very low droprate.
 

jns

Member
So I was on my way to 4 Kings, kill the first darkwraith which resulted a loot for me to pillage so I thought "Hey another titanite chunk for me!" But holy shit! I got a Titanite fucking Slab instead. Of all my hours of playing I never thought I would get a slab out of those darkwraiths thinking it would be impossible due to it's very very low droprate.

I can't remember If i posted it here or not, but I got 4 in one night. I think it only took about 6-7 runs too. Haven't got a single one since though lol.
 

Thrakier

Member
The Dark Souls Experience™ strongly depends on the risk-reward management of your actions. Every action you take is a gamble for your Souls, your Humanity and your time, and it's the source of much of the tension and fear of death you feel in the game.

I knew you would say this. ;) I do think that it's true, but letting the player do tedious runs to boss encounters over and over again for me is not part of the overall feel of "anxiousness". Having to redo certain parts of a level (like in classic 2d jumpn runs), yes. Do a chessy run to an boss encounter, no.

If you remove some of that punishment you'll get a less frustrating game but you'll also remove big part of the essence of the Souls games, and I don't think that's worth it.

I do think that you can remove the frustration and still keep the tension. A less frustrating game is a better one. That's true for every game, Souls games are no exception to this rule.

I also don't think that running past enemies is "breaking the game", as Dark Souls is a very meta game that expects you to cheese enemies by slowly shooting them afar, exploiting the AI, reading guides to learn many of the impossible-to-figure-out stuff, etc.

Using glitches? It's those scenes which show how rough around the edges this game is imo. I don't feel From Software did this on purpose, but just because they weren't able to do it any better. It is true that this is part of the charme, but I don't think it's the defining charachter of the game. Like I said before, more polish and more thought out concepts could make it a much better game. As it is, it's just "very good" (which is certainly enough). Don't get me wrong, I put more than 50 hours in it. I didn't do this for a long long time for any other game (except multiplayer sessions).
 

Mxrz

Member
You really don't want to play Demon's Souls then if you think Dark Souls is too unforgiving with the bonfire mechanics. But I can almost understand questioning it, since bonfires already plop you down so close to the bosses. That's half way to a "Retry" option already. This is without a doubt the worst change they made imo. It really nuked the sense of challenge from the levels themselves.

/grump
 
Farmed the knights for like an hour and didn't get one humanity drop. I went to the white ninja room and gods be praised, found one, but I fucking died against those stupid demons in that small ass room trying to get back up. I died again trying to regain it.

I don't know why they would just dead end players like this. The boss fight is impossible with my gear and set up, I get slaughtered and trapped in a corner as my camera spazzes out due to the lock on, and the game flips a coin between running and rolling. They couldn't have put a humanity merchant or a damn rat anywhere near the boss? It just sucks that I managed to get this far but then some crummy things happened and now I can't progress. Throw me a damn bone here From.
If you need humanity and you don't want to farm enemies that drop it, simply drop down your own summon sign - for every person you help defeat the boss in co-op you get souls and a humanity. You can also buy some from some of the merchants.

Co-oping is really the best way since you will also be getting experience of fighting the boss if you are having trouble.

Remember with O&S only concentrate on one of them - you can never kill both of them before the cutscene and one of them supersizes - decide who's armour you prefer because that will be the one you can purchase, so kill them second. People say Smough is easier, I've never had a problem killing Ornstein second and it's my preference to do so.

When you see either of them going for the butt smash, roll back, back back. And get your armour down to 25% equip. load so you can fast roll. Carry a 100% block, high stability shield. If you want to still wear decent armour, use the DWGR or Havel's ring.

I think I'm right in saying they are weak against fire - so pyro and fire/chaos weapons.

It can be frustrating to summon in Anor Londo because it's such a high traffic area for invading, but there should always be plenty of summon signs down in the bonfire room, so summon a couple of helpers then run to the boss fog, dodge the giant guards, no need to deal with them.
 

Ridley327

Member
You really don't want to play Demon's Souls then if you think Dark Souls is too unforgiving with the bonfire mechanics. But I can almost understand questioning it, since bonfires already plop you down so close to the bosses. That's half way to a "Retry" option already. This is without a doubt the worst change they made imo. It really nuked the sense of challenge from the levels themselves.

/grump

I don't have a problem with the proliferation of bonfires since the game's structure demands it. You could get away with how Demon's Souls handles its checkpoints because the levels themselves are already segmented in such a way where going back to the beginning isn't the end of the world. Having a vastly more open design to the world, where you have to account for players going off the beaten path, justifies the switch. Not to mention that you don't have to grind for healing items anymore (best change of all)!
 
Sad panda. My 5850 cannot maintain 30fps at Blight Town @ 1080p even if I OC it with all other settings off. I guess this is how the peasant version plays. V_V
 

EasyMode

Member
I feel bad for those running low on humanity trying to summon in Anor Londo. Given how unreliable summoning is, it seems they're more likely to get invaded by some twink that can 1 or 2 shot them.
 
I must've gotten extremely lucky with O&S, because the first time I fought them I summoned Solaire and one random phantom and beat them first try. After that I decided to help 2 other random people and we also beat them on the first try each time.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
I feel bad for those running low on humanity trying to summon in Anor Londo. Given how unreliable summoning is, it seems they're more likely to get invaded by some twink that can 1 or 2 shot them.

FX1VC.png



This is true, happened to me in Sen's and Anor Londo. It's pretty annoying.

There should've been a covenant that prevents you getting invaded. But in return you can't invade either. So you could only summon or be summoned. Something like that.
 
I must've gotten extremely lucky with O&S, because the first time I fought them I summoned Solaire and one random phantom and beat them first try. After that I decided to help 2 other random people and we also beat them on the first try each time.
Never had a problem with them either, but they are a pain in the ass for a lot of people.

I recently solo'd them using only the giant blacksmith's hammer +5 and it was probably the longest I've ever spent in that boss battle, made me appreciate how important rolling/dodging and keeping that 25% equip load is. The fast roll is one of the most important things for me throughout the game any way, so it's rare I use heavy armour.

Anyone having trouble with O&S - summon, learn to roll/dodge and keep light on your toes. And if you don't like getting invaded, keep an online play item like the white soapstone active in your hotkey items, when it greys out you know someone is trying to invade and have about 15-20 seconds to do whatever you're doing or quit to the menu - at least that's how it works on console. Or once they invade, run through the boss fog and and then homebone out - *evil grin*
 
Has anyone played on both 360 and PS3? I'm wondering if there's a big difference in the size of the online community between the 2 on account of PSN being free and Demon's Souls being on the platform. I was thinking about picking up a copy in time for the DLC release if there's going to be a lot of people online since the game can be had for pretty cheap now.
 
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