Problem Machine

Well, IdleThumbs is

I don't think she's easy for someone who's new, but she's GOTTA be easier than the pursuer/sentinels. The boss run is a pain for sure, though.

Really? I think she's a good fight but too easy. Why don't you like her? Royal Rat Authority is probably my least favorite -- it's just so damn lazy -- though Ancient Dragon is a REAL stupid fight too.

All the hollows down there carry/drop torches, it's all good

It finally happened: Nick's first duel against the ALMIGHTY SAGAT https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/TameQueleaRiPepperonis

Though to be fair like 8 hours of that were Calamity Gwyn runs

Yeah for me I don't have to put on an extra persona or anything, I just have to be "on" in a way that I'm usually not for any extended period of time. Left to my own devices I usually don't talk a lot and spend my time on quiet pursuits like art and reading, so pushing myself into a sociable state is an act of some exertion for me. It's like going to a party, I have fun but I feel tired afterwards. It's distressing when it's just throwing that energy into a void, though. However, now that this ring of Idle Thumbs reader/streamers is starting to pick up a bit of steam, maybe it's time to give it another shot. Another obstacle for me personally is I have a very difficult time sticking to schedules, due to extremely erratic sleep schedule and generally anti-temporal attitude. Perhaps I can view streaming as an opportunity to address this, though. Well, perhaps after XMas will be a good time for me to try to set up something regular and see if I can stick to it for a few weeks. I'm super impressed by the setup you've got going already, with dedicated mic and webcam and nice schedule banner and an extremely ambitious schedule. I'm glad you're finding it suits you so well. I'm noticing looking back that I didn't mention something I maybe should. If any of y'all like Symphony of the Night, a few months ago I played through it in a fairly thorough fashion trying to highlight my favorite parts of the game and talking about what I could learn from its approach to art and game design. The playlist for that is here.

Well he could go on the copse path now too, but he may as well do all of Bastille now that he's there

Hm, interesting question eot. The pig spawns aren't normal spawns, since rather than just stopping spawning the three little pigs get replaced by two normal-sized pigs with a higher drop rate, and then when farmed out those two pigs get replaced by one giant pig that you can kill once for three cracked orbs. Checking on discussions about this, this apparently means that you can't farm using CoC. I grabbed a bonfire ascetic and respawned them to get another 12 cracked orbs, and will probably be making my way to iron keep so I can find Chloanne (who sells more ascetics) and Magerold (who sells rusted coins, talking carvings, jester's hood, and gives the covetous gold serpent ring +1) after the next stream. (ah damn, just discovered that the coins last for 5 minutes instead of 30 seconds or whatever like in DS3. Guess I wasted most of my coins)

https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PoorJayBleedPurple https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/HealthySheepFuzzyOtterOO

Okay I've got a dual Caestus+5 Sagat cosplay character in the 50k Soul Memory bracket and 9 cracked red eye orbs LET'S DO THIS SHIT

https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/FairToadOSsloth https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ExcitedBeaverBloodTrail https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AliveWalrusCoolCat https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/CleanZebraOptimizePrime https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GentleGorillaSoBayed https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/CuriousMallardSMOrc

There was a big discussion about this a while back Short answer I think basically boiled down to: Sean got busy, and the rotating expanded cast was scaring away new readers. Hopefully he'll be able to guest more in the future, since I really miss his wider view of the industry -- he brought some really interesting discussions of the role games play in our society in general, which is something the other thumbs have interesting thoughts on but rarely comes up in the course of a typical thumbs conversation. lol owned

Souls are like exp, but the soul reward/challenge curve of the game is such that you can mostly rely on the souls you get for bosses to get you the levels you need. Especially before Sen's the souls you get for killing normal enemies are really minimal. I don't know if Nick actually knew that going in, though, so he may still have been being silly, it just works out okay for him regardless.

There's a lot of good dex weapons. Rapier and Drangleic sword can both be gotten early and are quite strong

Yeah, as I said I think the rules might be weird for player-style jumping attacks because they allow for manual directional input during them. This is a good decision in that they would otherwise be useless in pvp, but leads to wonkiness vs npc opponents

I don't think Nick would like playing a caster much. I think he should go dual wield

Excellent, added and followed. Also added Feeona while I was at it, hopefully she won't mind.

My experience with attacks in DS2 is that they have a windup phase and then an attack phase. They track VERY well during the windup phase and basically not at all during the attack phase. Leaping attacks are kind of interesting in DS2, because they're one of the attacks that you can manually input the direction of, so it's possible they're notably weird. And yeah, not all of the attacks Nick complains about are BS, but I think more of his complaints were valid during that fight than usual.

eot, I am a huge Dark Souls boss apologist but Gwyn has Issues. The biggest issue is that some of his attacks have absurd tracking, most notably the 2nd hit thrust and 3rd hit overhead sweep. Thrusts are, in the design of Dark Souls, consistently code for 'powerful, long ranged attack, vulnerable to lateral dodging', so giving an enemy a thrust that can track 135 degrees right up until the moment of impact is horseshit. The overhead sweep is also an attack usually coded to be vulnerable to lateral dodging, yet we saw Nick multiple times do a roll that took him directly BEHIND Gwyn only to have him turn 180 in the middle of the attack animation and land the attack. Plus I think it's super questionable to have the floor of the room in the final boss battle be subtly sloped just enough that he misses 30% of his attacks! It's a beautifully conceived boss and not without its good points, but it's hard to pretend there's not some bullshit in that fight

Ah crudbucket just realized I didn't have notifications on for Feeona's streams which explains why I haven't been getting any notifications. Oops.

(we will)

I think making an enemy so aggressive that healing is difficult is a cool change of pace, but odd to introduce on the last boss fight. I suppose black knights and balders have the same tendency to punish estus by rushing you down, but they're easier to get away from, and in Balder's case don't do nearly enough damage to actually dissuade the chug. I think it's fine that they made that choice for the boss fight, but it's a bit fucked that they then gave such a wonky arena to do it in. If the pillars behaved more predictably, like the ones in the O+S fight, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Also, oddly, the unevenness of the floor means that a lot of his attacks just straight-up MISS, which is nice sometimes but also makes it even harder to come up with a consistent plan. I think there needed to be a tighter communication loop between art, design, and QA for that fight. That's basically what he's been doing, just having a hard time getting it consistent since the pillars are so uneven and some of Gwyn's animations are so wonky -- and he has to get it VERY consistent, since the calamity ring leaves a very small margin of error.

Oh I thought you were streaming at noon. I guess you meant high noon in the metaphorical sense

https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PreciousJayBabyRage