Sno

I like score chasing though! I want to score chase without having having to focus on dumb side objectives that are tied into unlocks.

1) I don't think there are any bosses in DS2 that are as phenomenal as the O&S or Artorias fights from the first, but there also aren't any puzzle bosses like Ceaseless Discharge or the Bed of Chaos, and that's a huge point in its favor. I mean, and certainly, there are some really great fights in DS2, especially towards the end of the game. 2) I've played most of the game solo and generally found it a bit more forgiving than the first game, though some people are finding it harder than the first. 3) The world is probably actually bigger, but it's less intricate and winding. It's probably designed a little more like the linear areas in Demon's Souls. 4) I'll agree with this one, i don't think the enemy types are as varied as in DS1. I also think a lot of the AI and move repertoires displayed by both the bosses and the normal enemies aren't as fleshed out. These answers alone won't really make a strong case for DS2 though, because most of DS2's strengths come in the nuances of gameplay, they've fixed and improved upon a lot of things.

I spent a few minutes messing around with the control when i first played and i'm pretty sure there was no shoulder button mapping for thrust on the default layout, but after messing around with the control input setting a couple times, i got it where i wanted it to be. Anyways, Luftrausers is pretty cool. I'm actually finding that having to run through all the little achievements is kind of annoying though, i think they distract from the score attack.

Can i not remap the gamepad controls or something? I absolutely hate "up" being bound as the thruster, but every time i try to adjust the controls, i end with the game just being completely screwed and having to go delete the key bind configuration file.

I would love if there was a way to have some data about how many people pulled that lever.

I found that i was actually able to reach all the item locations using the lockstone pool situated above the dull ember. (Clearing enemies out first, of course.)

I found that rolling through the puddle of water created by using the lockstone seemed to last for a couple minutes. There seem to be varying degrees of how drenched you can be. (This effect can be observed much more visibly with the pools of poison in the earthen peak, where if you are only partially submerged in the poison, the effect lasts for less than if you rolled through the pool of poison.)

What bad things are you hearing about DS2? I've said some harsh things about it myself, but i still think it's a phenomenal game. I like it probably a bit less than Dark Souls, but while it's worse at some things, it's better at others things too.

If it's about the stuff in the Iron Keep: I finally beat the Ancient Dragon, that is the worst fight in the game. (Some of it is probably to do with me being a pyromancer, and it being nearly invulnerable to fire. I basically had no option for ranged attacks other than feeding through hundreds of arrows/bolts, which didn't really seem like a wise allocation of resources, so melee it was.) I'm growing more convinced about my theory that poise breaking is causing extra durability damage. I was in the undead crypt fighting one of the knights down there, and i poise broke him out of his lightning sword attack and witnessed like half of my halbred's durablity evaporate from that one hit. (So it also seems to vary based on the strength of the attack you've staggered them out of.) I'm also definitely still noticing some situations where it takes a few seconds until after a fight ends for a big chunk of durability damage to be applied to my weapon, there might be even more factors at work here. Also, you guys know about the seed of the tree of giants, right? It probably doesn't need to be spoilered, it's worth knowing, but i'll do so anyways:

Which area?

Japanese action RPG's generally have a level of crisp, precise control that i don't think you ever, ever see in western equivalents. Maybe some of that legacy with fighting games and character action games bleeding over. Dragon's Dogma might be worth checking out, if you like what Dark Souls did. It's definitely a very distinct game from Dark Souls, but would probably scratch the same itch. It only came out on PS3 and 360 though. (Look for the re-release, Dark Arisen.)

I love Chromehounds to death, one of my favorite games of the last console generation. It definitely had a lot of unresolved problems though.

Regarding the theory about poise break, i'm not absolutely sure about it, but it does seem to coincide. The thing is, it seems to happen a couple seconds after the poise break happens, like it's applied on a delay. I've been in a situation where i've finished killing an enemy and after the weapon is back down by my side, i notice its durability gauge just lose a big chunk out of nowhere. I've definitely seen a lot of people discouraging use of santier's spear, yeah. It sounds kind of dumb and game-breaking. Also, I didn't know two-handing a shield raises it's stability. That would probably help a lot, i'll have to try that out.

Some people were freaking out about the From/Kadokawa news, but it honestly doesn't sound like it'll be bad for anybody.

Edit: *Redundant post removed.*

So i'm at this point where i've started closely paying attention to my weapon's durability to try and figure out what exactly is causing my halbred to degrade so quickly, and i've noticed that sometimes striking an enemy will just randomly eat up massive chunks of my weapon's durability. (Like ten times as much as normal, huge durability damage, way more than should be possible even if we're assuming durability damage for each discreet object in the environment struck.) I think breaking somebody's poise to stagger them out of an attack comes with a large weapon durability cost in this game, and this would explain why a weapon with high poise damage like my halbred degrades so quickly. Also, i'm curious to hear where everybody is at with soul memory versus character level. Personally, my character just hit level 155 and i just crossed 3 million soul memory.

Oh jeez, really? I should go do that then. I hadn't really seen any reason to infuse anything other than my avelyn, so i just hadn't done it yet, and so i assumed it was still like it was in Dark Souls 1. I didn't want to knock my Avelyn down to a +1 or something if i didn't have the ore to carry it through the full progression.

If they could do something that calculated the soul value of your stats and your currently equipped gear and gear upgrades, that'd probably be closer to making a proper amount of sense. I guess they would have to disable the equipment screen once pvp or co-op has commenced though, to avoid that being easily broken as well. Or does that already happen? I've honestly never tried.

Well that makes me feel way better about my soul memory then, heh.

The problem with soul memory is that if you're struggling with the game and losing all your souls, your soul memory is still going up. It's a permanent record of every soul you collect. It's still kind of a bad system.

I've been using an Old Knight Shield +10, which has phenomenal stats for a medium shield, but an unfortunately mid-range dark resistance. Though its main failing is that it has very low durability, but shields degrade pretty slowly to begin with, and corrosion doesn't seem to be applied to anything in the active equipment slots. Also, i didn't even consider trying to infuse it, what affect does that have on shields? My end-game build is a mace +10, mastadon halbred +10, and a pyromancy flame +10 on the right arm. For the left is that shield and a +10 Avelyn with lightning-element bolts for pvp and simple wooden bolts for everything else. (Like i said, the Avelyn is pretty good. I'd like to do a raw infusion with it, but i don't have enough raw stone to max it out.) I have the Alva set +10, which is juuuuust about as good as the knight/elite knight sets, but significantly lighter. I also had one of the encumbrance rings equipped and the ring of blades +1, which the avelyn especially benefits from, and random other things depending on the situation. Around 40 strength, around 30 vigor and endurance, around 25 vitality, dex at its bare necessary minimum, 20 adap, and crappy faith/int. (Pyromancy scales a tiny bit with faith/int because of a fire damage bonus stat, but otherwise still scales purely on the flame, despite its misleading item stats that indicate a huge intelligence scaling bonus. That scaling and the reported value actually seem to only apply to the actual physical heavy attack that you can make with the flame, in which case i'm not really sure how you're supposed to read stats for catalysts and talismans. The clearly defined magic adjust stat from DS1 seems to be gone.) With 20 attunement, I normally keep chaos storm, great fireball, flame swathe, and toxic mist equipped for pve purposes. (Chaos storm obliterates bosses, holy shit. Those big hitboxes giving the spell lots of room for every fire pillar to hit?) I was around 2-2.5 million soul memory the last i checked, i think i'm probably hugely over-leveled for NG, but i'm still running into lots of pvp. There's an illusory wall hiding some good stuff on that platform you exit out onto, the one that is just above the bonfire for the bell tower. That's pretty much it though, there isn't a boss for that bell tower. (Bjorn already mentioned that, i see.)

Ah yes, my old nemesis: Having a post quoted before i think on it and decide that i need to go back to rewrite and add to it. Anyways, common trick i saw people use in the iron keep's bell tower arena was to, once a fight had reached the roof top, just fly off the edge out into the larger arena to try and lure their pursuers down off the roof, and once they followed, they'd bolt for the ladder to try and gain that advantage. Even though i had wised up to it, i often had to follow my allied bell keeper down to keep him from getting destroyed in 1v1, and the second i would step off the roof, the opponent would bail on the fight and bolt for the ladder as expected.

I did a bunch of summons as a bell keeper to farm titanite chunks and can tell you that it's not so fun spawning into a world where somebody is waiting behind your spawn point for a backstab. There definitely seem to be a lot of people who have made it their goal in life to harass the bell keepers. It definitely isn't stacked as heavily in the favor of the covenant players as the Rat King stuff is, the normal healing item restrictions for invading phantoms apply, and since Bell Keepers can be summoned from anywhere, they're often less prepared. I had a lot of good pvp though. Definitely a lot of infuriatingly durable heavy armor builds, but didn't take long to make the leap that a lot of these guys are probably using relatively fragile rings to help with their encumbrance. Started throwing corrosion pyromancies at people and they just crumpled, just crippled their mobility to the point where they're getting chain backstabbed by me and whoever was summoned with me. (I imagine the gear damage was more upsetting than the loss for these people, rings are freaking expensive to repair.) Wizards though. Fuck wizards. Stupid shitty wizards. `Specially hexers. (Still wishing i had that dispelling ring.) Offensive miracles are basically harmless, pyromancers and sorcerers are manageable, but i've been getting ohk'd by hexes. Wizards are usually squishy enough that they'll go down in one or two hits from my halbred, but that doesn't really help when i'm getting murdered by hits through my shield's 50-75% magic reductions, and those hexes are surprisingly difficult to dodge. If i was playing a sorceror or a miracle caster, i could rely on some pretty buff magic resistance spells, but i'm a pyromancer. Also, tons of people using the Avelyn crossbow, and who can blame them? Crossbows are awesome in DS2, but apparently kind of broken with certain infusions, so maybe that'll get nerfed in the future. (Seen lots of stories of people dual-stancing two avelyns with mundane/raw infusions and lightning-element bolts for instant murder.) Netcode is kind of rough too, still lots of ghost hits and impossibly missed swings, but pvp on the whole seems leagues better than it was in Dark Souls, and I got a good 15 titanite chunks or so out of it. It was enough to get all my gear to +10, after which i immediately bailed out of the Bell Keepers and went to join the Pilgrims of the Dark. Those bell tower areas though, they are basically built like deathmatch stages, they're weirdly discordant with how every other area in the game is designed. (Still, the bell tower above Iron Keep made for some really good pvp.)