Dark Souls

[Arinon]

What the fucking shit am I supposed to do with two skeletons firing knockback sword-javelins at me on a tiny ledge in anor lando as a melee. Monumentus bullshit, that is. I lost track of the number of times I ran only to die over and over again to a goddamned knockback. Even if I get in position to block one, the other one hits me in the back.

If it's the spot I'm thinking of you have two dashes to make.  The first one to the pillar for a breather, then you scoot around and dash up to a large wall and hang a right.  I believe once you are tight to the wall the guy on the left no longer has a shot at you.  Still have to deal with one, and on a tight edge, but should be doable.

That was probably the most annoying part of Anor Londo.

[Nerf]

Don't feel bad as a melee, even as a dex monkey with a +9 black bow of pharis that part is cockstabbingly hard.  They're far enough out of range you can't do any damage to them anyways.  Fortunately, there's a bonfire just after and then shortcuts, so you only ever have to do it once.

[Falconeer]

Being done with Blighttown, and the deeps, is like being born again. At the same time, that was gloriously suffocating, morbidly oppressive. And a part of me will miss it and will talk about it to those miserable ones who are not playing this game.

[Nerf]

Being done with Blighttown, and the deeps, is like being born again. At the same time, that was gloriously suffocating, morbidly oppressive. And a part of me will miss it and will talk about it to those miserable ones who are not playing this game.

I take it you haven't been to Anor Londo yet.
It brings new meaning to suffocating and oppressive.

Edit:
Apparently there is a patch in the works that will do some pretty cool stuff - re-balancing weapon stat scaling, changes to magic (unlimited casts was mentioned, kinda meh on this), making the fog ring not an insta-win in PVP, and some other things.  Not sure when it's coming, but it was posted on the Japanese blogs a few days ago.

[stu]

Speaking of the good ol' days, the boss fights thus far don't feel as clever as Adjudicator, Maiden Astrea, Old Hero, Storm King, etc.  And I'm still disappointed I don't see any 60+ rated messages (even 5+ is rare). 

Maiden Astrea might be my favorite boss fight of all time. The music and the dialogue, plus the way it make you feel like you might be the bad guy- good stuff.

Calling in phantoms on Anor Londo will save you a mess of trouble. I called in three (one jumped a ledge within two minutes) and was able to collect all the loot and clear the bosses within an hour. They even took out a black phantom for me squeeeeeee.

[JWIV]

The Maiden Astrea fight was absolutely amazing.  It was heart wrenching, and I've never felt so guilty during a fight.

[bhodi]

Yayy. I got past it by running up until he pulled out his sword, then walking back down off the ledge to the buttress and he fell off. Finally!

I got my Fury sword and opened all the shortcuts, and killed Lautrec. If you're a melee, Iron Flesh is the best spell. It's so worth getting 10 attunement to use it.

[Velorath]

Crystal Ring Shield (made from upgrading a +10 shield with the Moonlight Butterfly soul) is seriously overpowered.  L2 causes it to shoot a disc projectile that does (from what I've read) double the damage of the weapon in your right hand (provided you have the stats to properly wield that weapon).  Seath and Gravelord Nito both went down in around a minute using this thing, which was doing 400+ damage a hit.

[Morfiend]

Isn't crystal stuff impossible to repair, so once its used up, its used up?

[Velorath]

Isn't crystal stuff impossible to repair, so once its used up, its used up?

It's not like the crystal weapons and armor.  The Crystal Ring Shield is repairable, although it doesn't have the greatest durability and you'll want to switch to another shield when you actually need to block.

[Yegolev]

[Falconeer]

I am seriously annoyed at backstab in PvP. Call this a whine if you want. Point is, as far as I know my connection is top notch, I have ridiculously low ping in any game with a server in Europe so I don't know what's my problem here. I got in the Forest Hunter covenant to enjoy some PvP and I keep the ring on all the time, so I got summoned a lot. So far I had about 20 fights and I lost them all, 19 of them due to being backstabbed. That alone would be frustrating, considering the whole fight has been these guys not ever swinging and just strafing until they can get behind. When I did the same thing the fight lasted about 5 to 10 minutes, and that's due to the stupid backstab mechanic that makes it so you never ever can afford missing a swing. But BUT, on top of that, of those 19 times I can swear that a good 50% of those times I was just strafing as good and as fast as my opponent around them, and at some stupid point I just found myself dead, backstabbed, out of what seems to be a lagged hit.

Now, I can only assume people backstab is the way to go in PvP so now that's all everyone tries to do, and I dislike that enough. But how in hell do you protect yourself from a desynched, lagged backstab?

Anyway, I didn't buy this game for the PvP so eventually I will simply remove the ring, but I hate that as of now the whole thing feels a bit beyond my (limited) capabilities. I haven't had a "fair" fight yet and I loved those in Demon's Souls. Did you get all this backstabbing bastards too, or are they only after me?

EDIT: Also, thunder weapons killing anything in 2 hits through a shield


Ok I get it now. Darkroot Forest is were high level players go to farm easy souls knowing that noobs like me instantly wear their cat covenant rings thinking we'll get some easy souls out of farming noobs.

[Velorath]

I've had a few backstabs and occasionally guys with super-powerful spells that one shot me.  From my understanding, Forest Hunters don't have the same level matching in PVP as most of the other Covenants (I think due to the fact that we have other advantages in that we have those NPC's nearby and that there are frequently two Forest Hunters summoned for one enemy.  One on one, I think we are always set up against people who outmatch us, so if you don't have a partner or NPC's with you to gang up on your enemy, you're going to have to hope he just sucks.  Also, use lloyd's talismans as needed to prevent them from healing (especially since we are unable to heal when invading).  I find that if I'm summoned and all the NPC's are still alive, I'll generally win the fight.  If the forest is pretty much empty when I show up, I'm generally fucked unless another Forest Hunter shows up and we work together well.

[Nerf]

Warning: Massive spoiler ahead - Unlimited souls, humanity, twinkling titanite, demon titanite, and dragon scales bugs:
There it is, if you hate farming but still want to play the game with lots of shiny stuff you'd get from doing it, now you can do both.

No mention in the 1.04 patch notes if there are fixes in the works for these, but that's not really all that uncommon, so who knows how long it'll work for.

[Velorath]

If you're using that method, I hope you at least have the decency not to pvp with that character.

[Falconeer]

Nerf's post just made me throw the cat's ring down the toilet. Fuck this.

[Ghambit]

So today I found out the kind folks at Bandai made Dark Souls copy protected.  What does this mean?  You can't use a mem-stick or USB to transfer your savegames between consoles w/o using Sony's cloud service.  Annnnnnd, I cant remove the console (it's built into the wall and shit) I was playing on to copy physically between the two.      Ahahahahahaha, ahahahaahhhddafaddagdlk[ljab;lkernhb[ xc]ncb

[Yegolev]

Since this was the case in Demon's Souls, I'd blame From Software.  In fact, that's one reason I haven't gotten farther in the previous game: character loss.

I've had this complaint about Bioware since KotOR on Xbox.

[Ghambit]

I'm seriously considering "playstation plus" now because of this; which is the only way you can transfer the savegames.  I can drop $17 for 3 months of it or spend 8-10+ hrs getting back to where I was... which isnt too bad really.  But, that's still 10hrs of my life.

[Falconeer]

Just PVPd a guy that took two backstabs from me and shrugged them off as if they were nothing, didn't even move his health bar. Then he hit me once and killed me. Yes with one shot. I'm level 60. Interesting matchups.

[Valmorian]

Well I bit the bullet and got this game on the weekend, and I'm having a hard time even at the beginning stages.  I DO love the combat system, but I do NOT love the fact that when you die you have to go through all the trash you just killed to get back to wherever you died. 

I'm not really sure why I find this game so appealing, to be honest, since dying repeatedly just isn't that much fun.

Right now I am stuck on the Black Knight at the Undead Burg.  Not sure how to defeat him as a Knight.

[Sophismata]

Right now I am stuck on the Black Knight at the Undead Burg.  Not sure how to defeat him as a Knight.

Move on, he's guarding a ring. You can come back later when you're more experienced, and have the Drake Sword.

[Nerf]

Nerf's post just made me throw the cat's ring down the toilet. Fuck this.

Dude, people getting unlimited souls/quicker upgrades is the last reason you should throw your cat's ring away.

You should throw your cats ring away because pvp is horrendously broken right now.  I spent ~9-10hours getting my 3 kills for the fog ring, and 2 out of the 3 kills jumped off a cliff.  This was at SL 63 with a +5 quelaags fury sword, hornet ring, etc.

There's a couple actual invulnerability bugs, where you just can't damage people at all.
There's the lovely Tranquil Walk of Peace (TWoP) PBAE slow that follows the caster around for a minute or so.  That and any ranged means you're dead, since you can't dodge at all.
There's all of the front-backstab bugs, backstabbed-while rolling, etc, etc.
There's the near-instacast PBAE massive damage spells that also knockback/stun

And that's nowhere near an exhaustive list.  Unless you've pumped the shit out of your vitality, expect to just get 1-shot before you have a chance to do *anything* in pvp 99% of the time, at least in the forest.

Someone avoiding several hours of tedious grinding to pvp is no reason to quit pvping - pvp being stupid fucking broken is a reason to quit pvping.  I don't see any difference between using a glitch to get however many souls you want, or running around the forest for hours as mobs jump off a cliff and give you 7k per run - it just lets you get back to actually playing the game sooner.

[Velorath]

I hate to be the guy that jumps in and says "try sucking less", but out of 20-30 fights as a Forest Hunter, I think I've won more than I lost and that wasn't even with any sort of exceptional gear nor would I ever consider myself a great player.  This is with a Dex build with no fancy spells or anything.  I got my fog ring within an hour of joining the Covenant I think.

[Falconeer]

I hate to be the guy that jumps in and says "try sucking less", but out of 20-30 fights as a Forest Hunter, I think I've won more than I lost and that wasn't even with any sort of exceptional gear nor would I ever consider myself a great player.  This is with a Dex build with no fancy spells or anything.  I got my fog ring within an hour of joining the Covenant I think.

 

My experience is the same as Nerf's. Point by point (2 wins out of 30 fights, and one of them jumped off the cliff). Seriously, there is NOTHING I can do to beat these guys. Nothing. I just can't hit them, when I hit them I tickle them. Their lifebars don't move, not even when I backstab them. On the other hand, whatever they do kills me in two hits. Be it an electrical weapon, a flame something, a naked guy dualwielding poison weapons, or a cloth wearer brandishing a flaming tree. I just die in 2 hits, while their lifebars are like frozen in carbonite.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I never attack alone. I always wait for another invasor, so we can team up on the dude. Same result.
Also, as of late, I often invade someone that is already teaming up with someone else, so instead of being vaporized by one god, I meet two at once.

[Velorath]

Just had two fights earlier, both one on one in the forest (the first time because the other phantom died shortly after I zoned in, the second just because I didn't feel like waiting).  The first one I lost because I tried to fight the guy with a spear, which was too slow and too hard to aim when you're fighting someone wearing a fog ring.  Second fight I won by just going in and swinging rapidly with a fire scimitar.  We both had fog rings on and were attacking with fast weapons.  He tried to run off and chug a potion but I managed to catch up with him and finish him off before he could down it.

Also, just beat the game.  Might mess around a little bit with the new game+, but honestly this one was so much longer than Demon's Souls it doesn't really fill me with the same drive that got me to beat Demon's Souls three times in a row.

[El Gallo]

Wanted to like this one, but it's just so much repetitive trash clearing.  I've found the bosses to be easy (through the gaping dragon).  But the trash, oh my god it's so boring to kill the same shit over and over.  It'd be palatable if I could just blow through the trash on reclear, but you need to do the same tedious block-and-counter micromanagement on every trashmob all over again. 

If this is what people mean by wanting twitch in RPGs, I'll take autoattack+hotkeys every day of the week.  If you make me stare with focused attention on something that is mindlessly trivial, I'll get bored with a quickness. 

[Valmorian]

Huh, I feel the exact opposite.  The fact that the "trash mobs" are actually a threat to you, that you have to concentrate when you are in combat instead of just mashing the attack button, is what I LOVE about this game.  Pretty much the only thing I wish it had was more bonfires closer to bosses.

I gave up trying to kill the black knight and instead went for the Tarsus Demon.  Surprisingly I killed it first try...

[bhodi]

Wanted to like this one, but it's just so much repetitive trash clearing.  I've found the bosses to be easy (through the gaping dragon).  But the trash, oh my god it's so boring to kill the same shit over and over.  It'd be palatable if I could just blow through the trash on reclear, but you need to do the same tedious block-and-counter micromanagement on every trashmob all over again. 

If this is what people mean by wanting twitch in RPGs, I'll take autoattack+hotkeys every day of the week.  If you make me stare with focused attention on something that is mindlessly trivial, I'll get bored with a quickness. 

If uninteresting combat is a problem, you should go through the game with a small/medium shield and a thief dagger. Play the parry game.

[Ghambit]

You could also y'know, just run past the mobs.   

[stu]

El Gallo noooooooooooooooo

Hell, I don't even bother to fight 3/4 of the mobs in this game. Unless they drop some sweet loot.

[Morfiend]

If this is what people mean by wanting twitch in RPGs, I'll take autoattack+hotkeys every day of the week.

Well there is the problem, you are just a clearly broken human being. 

[El Gallo]

Hrm, when I ran past mobs I'd usually end up with one of them surprising me from behind when I was fighting later on.  Maybe I just wasn't running far enough away for them all to de-aggro.  I'll give it another go.

Still wish there was a PC version so we could mod some of the suck out. 

[Ghambit]

Hrm, when I ran past mobs I'd usually end up with one of them surprising me from behind when I was fighting later on.  Maybe I just wasn't running far enough away for them all to de-aggro.  I'll give it another go.

Still wish there was a PC version so we could mod some of the suck out. 

You could also find the shortcuts.

[ahoythematey]

Wanted to like this one, but it's just so much repetitive trash clearing.  I've found the bosses to be easy (through the gaping dragon).  But the trash, oh my god it's so boring to kill the same shit over and over.  It'd be palatable if I could just blow through the trash on reclear, but you need to do the same tedious block-and-counter micromanagement on every trashmob all over again. 

If this is what people mean by wanting twitch in RPGs, I'll take autoattack+hotkeys every day of the week.  If you make me stare with focused attention on something that is mindlessly trivial, I'll get bored with a quickness. 

Hrm, when I ran past mobs I'd usually end up with one of them surprising me from behind when I was fighting later on.  Maybe I just wasn't running far enough away for them all to de-aggro.  I'll give it another go.

Still wish there was a PC version so we could mod some of the suck out. 

The trash becomes mostly a nonissue later on, especially with shortcuts being opened and once you get the lordvessel.  If anything should make you fucking quit this game, it's the framerate issues in places, the super broken PvP that is yet to be patched, and the some of the cheap bullshit bosses that aren't hard, but just cheap (I'm looking at you, capra demon).  At least play until Blighttown so you can know what really hating the game entails.