Demon's Souls Coming to America.

[ffc]

Honestly, I would just play through with out worrying about it the first time. You can then try to work on tendency ether with a new character or in NG+(+).

I'm going to have to do just that.  My brain broke trying to map out an optimal path not to skip anything in one go.

[Nerf]

Rolled up a thief this weekend to play on the girlfriends copy - rolling around and stabbing shit is a lot of fun, but I've been having issues landing backstabs in combat.  I can sneak up on most stuff just fine and backstab them before it starts, but once they start coming at me getting a BS to land is really hard, any tips?

Also, after helping my brother through 4-1, he helped me through it as well and I picked up the crescent falchion and compound longbow.  Holy shit does the crescent falchion kick ass.  I went from taking 15-20+ hits to killing the 4-1 skeletons with my dagger to 3 shotting them.  Even with only 10 magic I'm doing a metric fuckton of damage.  Soul level 25 at the moment, only did 1-1 and 1-2 before, and then 2-1 after I got the falchion.

[ghost]

Backstab seems to be easier to land with piercing weapons, e.g. spear, mail breaker, etc.  This may be BS, but it seems that way to me.

[Nerf]

Until i got the crescent falchion I'd been using a dagger, and will switch back to it as soon as I can.  I don't like the way the rapier or mail breaker swing.

[Kageh]

Yes, backstabs are harder once the enemy is aware of you, because you need to be facing their back within a certain angle to be able to backstab. And the moment the enemy notices you, they will always start turning towards you, even the slow-ass stuff like dreglings or stonefang miners. It is possible, however, just hard to pull off. I've had the best results by disengaging target lock, dodging around madly, and getting a lucky trigger of auto-lock once I had rolled behind them. The problem is that auto-lock greatly hampers your movement by constantly having you face the enemy. Thus, you cannot dodge to the side and then ahead past them, you'll always land at their feet.

As for daggers/rapiers, my understanding is that the "angle" that you are allowed to deviate from while facing their back "straight" is wider with piercing weapons, thus allowing you to land a backstab easier. But I too am not very fond of the fact that they only hit a single target. I found weapons that swing in an arcs (i.e. swords/maces) to be superior for when you fight more than one mob. I do have a rogue for kicks which does pretty cool damage with an upgraded sharp secret dagger, but I'm stuck at farming bladestone chunks in 4-2 and not feeling like moving forward.

Regarding character tendency/world tendency stuff, it's indeed easier to not bother with them during the first game. My take on it: I would recommend doing  it if you want a particular  weapon or armor set

[ghost]

Until i got the crescent falchion I'd been using a dagger, and will switch back to it as soon as I can.  I don't like the way the rapier or mail breaker swing.

You'll need "stabby" weapons for some enemies.  To be honest, get the winged spear on the bridge at 1-2 and you can use it on a lot of enemies.

[Kageh]

Until i got the crescent falchion I'd been using a dagger, and will switch back to it as soon as I can.  I don't like the way the rapier or mail breaker swing.

You'll need "stabby" weapons for some enemies.  To be honest, get the winged spear on the bridge at 1-2 and you can use it on a lot of enemies.

The ones that are vulnerable to piercing (stonefang miners, are there any others?) are vulnerable to magic/faith damage as well, not to mention bows and crossbows. They just have higher defense against slashing and crushing. The crescent falchion/blessed mace will work on them just as good as the spear.

The spear/rapier weapon class has two things going for it though, the fact that you can attack while keeping your shield guard up and that you will not move an inch while doing so. The first is a nice bonus which you will probably not need much once you get accustomed to the fighting, the latter is pretty handy in all of the Tower of Latria levels. I wish we could do the spear charge move that the 1-3 red eye knights can perform, that would be pretty cool.

[Trippy]

Can you convert the items you don't want into something more useful (souls, resources, etc.)?

[Kageh]

Sadly, no. No conversion means, and you can't sell anything, either. You can bank the unneeded stuff or just drop it to the ground, in which case it will stay there and vanish after you zone out. For banking, I read you can bank up to 99 of each item. Not that I would ever want to find out!

[Trippy]

Thanks, that's what I figured.

[Nerf]

For backstabbing, is the +5 fatal secret dagger the best dagger, or is there another path that works better?  I'm assuming that this enchant makes it kind of suck for normal melee, so you'd want to switch to something else if you have to actually fight shit.  I picked up the compound long bow and got it to +2 sticky pretty quick, and I'm loving that shit on my thief.  Oneshotting crystal lizards is awesome.  Alternatively, I think that flame toss 1hits them, but I haven't tested it multiple times to confirm, so it may have been a glitch.

[schild]

Lava Bow one hits crystal lizards, is pretty much the best bow in the game, and doesn't require you to sneak up on anybody. Best of all you can get it with minimal grinding pretty early on and the requirements aren't as stupid as one would think.

[Sauced]

So, yeah, no more angry posting from my phone.

Anyway!

Saturday was much better.  I just had to accept that this game punishes you for being a hero, and wanted me to face facts - if I wanted to win, I just had to bring 200 arrows, hide behind a corner, and plink my demonic foes to death like a coward.  And now I'm "alive" and cruising through 2-2 (I missed the ring of fire res. and that giant lava pit scared me into fleeing with my souls).

The benefit to my sad trials in 1-2 is that I'm fairly early in the game still and already at SL 25.  At least, that seems fairly high to me at this point.

[Morfiend]

Something that always sort of bothered me. Has anyone found any real reason to duel wield? It seems like maybe you swing a tiny bit faster if you alternate weapons, but overall I cant see why anyone would use a weapon in their off hand over a shield.

[Nerf]

Something that always sort of bothered me. Has anyone found any real reason to duel wield? It seems like maybe you swing a tiny bit faster if you alternate weapons, but overall I cant see why anyone would use a weapon in their off hand over a shield.

I was reading that the parrying dagger has the most forgiving parry animation, so if you dual wielded a fatal dagger and a parrying dagger, you could theoretically parry everything and then get your massive +critical bonus on the counterattack.

[Yegolev]

I assumed that I would see a benefit from dual-wield if I was able to parry with the offhand, but I totally suck at that so I went shield when I wasn't using both hands on a one-hander.

[Kageh]

Something that always sort of bothered me. Has anyone found any real reason to duel wield? It seems like maybe you swing a tiny bit faster if you alternate weapons, but overall I cant see why anyone would use a weapon in their off hand over a shield.

There are some tactical choices, like putting a fast dagger in the off-hand and being an incredibly annoying melee opponent or trying to stagger a shield user via stamina drain to open up for a big hit with the main hand, but all those are pretty far-fetched. My usual dual wielding use is to put sword of searching in the off-hand, then two-hand grip the main weapon and go farming stuff (like the dual-wielding skeleton in 4-2 or geckos). Other than that, it's really shield all the way. Some people like to put their MP/HP regen weapons in there once they have better main handers. For example, Phosphorescent Pole at +5 is  the best mana regen item, but is pretty meek as a weapon.

For parrying, it's too hard to pull off reliably, even with parrying dagger. And since there's stuff that you can't parry, it's too much of a hassle. Although it does look cool when you counterattack.

@Nerf: I'm not sure about fatal daggers, haven't bothered with that kind, I went for "sharp" modifier on my rogue. Too many important fights (all bosses, for one) don't allow for backstabbing, so I felt there's no real reason to go for fatal. As for the bow, Lava Bow is indeed a good choice but I feel like it loses a lot in NG+ and afterwards due to poor scaling. The three bows that people usually go for are Lava Bow, Viscous Compound +5 or an upgraded White Bow. White Bow is pretty cool and a drop from a BP right at the start of 1-4, can be easily gotten relatively early -  because you still need to complete one world fully for getting past tower knight door -, but has pretty steep requirements (30 STR/24 DEX iirc). Lava is certainly the easiest to get at start, because Viscous requires tons of spiderstone.

[Nerf]

Brother and I just tried to do some invading in 1-3 with his meat cleaver, it went..poorly.  Got a couple kills, but it seems like every single person we ran into had a falcion and absolutely raped our asses - is there a trick on using slow weapons, or are they always that easily dodged and countered?  Also, it seems like magic weapons are indeed pretty sweet against shield users, even with a +7 purple flame we were still taking quite a bit damage through the block without it breaking.

[Morfiend]

Dark Silver Shield is your friend. It has 100% physical and 100% magical block. Although it makes your own magic do less damage.

On my main guy I use a Sharp Uchigatana +5 with the Dark Silver Shield +5. When PVPing, I use Light Weapon on myself, and then Anti Magic field. Its pretty effective.

[schild]

knife party is born.

If you get invaded by an Asian chick who actually looks Asian (TROPY: MADE A NONUGLY GIRL BUT STILL KINDA UGLY) named knife party, you're going to die.

Also, tutorial boss defeated. Word.

[Morfiend]

I cant find shit for multiplayer on the asian version any more. I think most of my characters are to high level.

[schild]

Or too low level.

Edit: Also, Ostrava of Boletaria just died to my rapier filled hand.

[Nerf]

I'm pretty sure it just shows your steam ID tag, and not the characters name, or at least thats how its worked when I did blue phantom stuff with my bro.
Your cool name is wasted, bummer.

[Kageh]

Also, tutorial boss defeated. Word.

Heh, well done. What class? Knife meleer? I'm still working on that guy myself. Got a character slot I keep deleting just to re-create and run 5 minutes through the tutorial to end up one-shotted by big dumbo at the end.

@Shields, what Morfied said, although I actually find the +HitRes on the Dark Silver (65 at +5) sometimes too low for PVP. I've run into lots of people doing dodge attack rolls with crescent axes and sword of searching, and you'll end up staggered or even hit if HitRes is not high enough. A very good alternative is Purple Flame, it gets you to +82 HitRes at +10 quality level and is cheaper to upgrade (Hardstones vs. 5 Colorless Demons souls). I also think that fire magic counts as fire damage, not magic damage and thus, fire resistant shields would be actually better against common magic - most mages use firestorm/fireball. For kicks, I did okay with a +5 Adjudicator's while stacking all my regen (Regenerator's Ring and a Blessed weapon), but the HitRes on that is even worse as it caps at 50.

[JWIV]

To interrupt you awesome people.  AUGH.   1-2 had its way with me and my armor broke during the tower knight fight.  WEEEE JESUS armor repair is expensive.    Course, now I get to try and grind souls nekkid. 

[Kageh]

Cheap armor: . Cheap armor is cheap to repair, too, and armor is really not that effective. If you can't afford armor repairs, just repair the shield and block, blocked hits don't affect you at all.

I do totally know what you mean though: At some point I was convinced that Ancient Kings is UBER and EPIC and was wearing it all the time. Then I went to fight that incredibly annoying black phantom with the scraping spear at 1-4 and had to pay something like 16k per piece. Since then I'm a converted leather armor fan!

[schild]

Also, tutorial boss defeated. Word.

Heh, well done. What class? Knife meleer? I'm still working on that guy myself. Got a character slot I keep deleting just to re-create and run 5 minutes through the tutorial to end up one-shotted by big dumbo at the end.

I always start as a royal. I think it's my sixth of seventh time beating him.

[Kageh]

I really, really need to get my act together and kill him. I must've died 7 or 8 times by him. This is personal now!

[Morfiend]

I like the black leather armor with the hard leather pants. It looks good, which most of the armor doesnt.

[Nerf]

Is the monks headwrap just a random drop, and is there any way to get it if he doesn't drop it when you kill him? I wants more magic damage!

[Morfiend]

Is the monks headwrap just a random drop, and is there any way to get it if he doesn't drop it when you kill him? I wants more magic damage!

I believe it only drops if you kill him when he is another player, and even then its only a chance.

[Nerf]

When he's another player? How does that work, can you go queue up in that room to be the boss?

[Kageh]

Morfiend is right. If you are online, the Old Monk can summon a player Black Phantom which is queued for invasion to fight you as his champion. The head wrap can drop only from them. If you are not online, or no appropriate PK is queued, you get a standard NPC BP to fight instead.

[AcidCat]

I guess the Royalty is easy mode to start off with - I'm sure it gets harder, but aside from the death to the tutorial boss, I only died once in the first real level, because I got greedy and kept going for more of the treasure right below the dragons. The last time I was too slow getting out of there before the dragon came back.

Ironically so far what has stumped me is some stupid thing in the nexus after you kill the first boss, the chick tells you "the monumental awaits thee above" - I ran up and down that place for a solid 20 minutes and didn't find any fucking "monumental" awaiting me. It was frustrating because I know it's something totally obvious I probably ran past three times. Eh, it was bedtime anyway.

So far I am really impressed with the combat. The Royalty seems powerful but I want to try out the different classes and see how their weapons play.

[Kageh]

Royal gets the best attribute distribution (starting at level 1 so you can evolve in whatever direction you want for cheap) and the Fragrant Ring, which is an awesome starter item. Soul Arrow is also a lot better than Flame Thrower (the mage starting spell).