Bjorn

Our living room is somewhat odd (our house is a little oddly laid out because the core is 116 years old and it has been added onto multiple times), but perfect for a projector. It's a long room with no windows on the long walls, so that just leaves windows on the short walls at each end. We just hung heavy, blackout curtains on the windows and close them when we want to watch/game during the day and open them for nice bright sunshine the rest of the time.

Where we're going, we don't need eyes.

Yeah, when I was doing a bunch of research putting mine in, I found a bunch of people in dorm rooms who had set them up rather than try and have a TV taking up space in such a tiny room. FWIW, I've got a 150" screen at the end of a room that is 13' x 20'.

Somewhere in settings there's a few hud options, including one that's adaptive. It will fade out the entire hud, then pop up any hud element currently needed.

:tup: If you've got a room with decent light control, I'd highly suggest looking at the decent entry level projectors (last I looked a couple of years ago there were some pretty nice ones in the $700 range).

I had the same initial reaction, but I think as a visualization it succeeds in matching people's perceptions of each game experience really well, even if DS1 isn't actually that complex. DS1 is that complex up until about Anor Londo, then it becomes like DS2's hub, which is represented in the DS1 drawing (the X right before the end), but that shift to hub-style linearity gets lost in the noise of the first half of the game.

Those Dark Souls map visualizations are so good. I really wonder how much of an anomaly 1 will continue to be due to the kind of time and attention it takes to make that world interlock and wrap around naturally the way it does. Weirdly enough though, so far, I think I would take the DS2/Demon's overall world design over the DS3 design. Each individual area in DS3 is better than the individual areas of 2 (not counting DLC), but I still appreciate the ability to have multiple paths from the beginning that I can pursue rather than a fairly lengthy linear path that 3 mandates before it starts offering branching options (and some of the branches in 3 aren't really branches, in that in one case there is a key at the end of a branch that is required for future progress, so that branch is functionally part of the straight linear path). As a few of us in Slack chat learned last night, there is one integrated major sequence break early in the game where you can intentionally summon a late game boss that will unlock a hidden path, but hoooooly shit is that a next to impossible battle at low level. The boss can 1-2 shot most characters who are sub level-40 and takes at least 4-5 minutes to beat down with low level weapons.

Yeah, I don't know how long it takes, but they seem to just break on their own after slamming into the wall enough (or maybe it's an automatic trigger once you've gone so far past them or something). I backtracked and got an item out of each.

Excellent strategy! I'm amused that a little baby crab apparently lives in that ball, because after it broke I found a single crab wandering around in that room.

Hmmm, I watched a bloodstain ghost die in that spot. I wonder if...

Booo, that's very disappointing. Missed opportunity Dark Souls. I had just assumed...

Oh man, I had been meaning to comment on how much I liked this section as a trap.

On the Souls stream, if either of you really wanted to keep Lord Similar rolling, you're fairly close to an area where you could get the only innately Luck scaling weapon in the game. You would have to kill a somewhat important NPC to get it, but it is a thing you could do. Much later in the game, the ability to enchant any weapon as a luck scaling weapon would become available (there are different coals you can give the blacksmith that let him enchant weapons in different ways, and the coal that allows for the Luck scaling enchantment is I think the last or next to last coal that you find). There's also a respec option that you're not terribly far from, though that would somewhat break the charm of Similar. If you wanted to see a variety of PvP fight stuff, you or someone who watches the stream could set up a fight club. Up to 6 players can be in a world simultaneously. With a fight club, one host will intentionally summon multiple invaders through the red signs Gorm mentioned earlier, and then those two will fight one another, and the victor will fight the next challenger in line, so on until they lose. A lot of times fight club hosts will set up a ring with glowing stones you can drop on the ground, and may give rewards to players who win a certain number of fights. Fight clubs are great for a lot of reasons, but a big one is getting to see a wide variety of gear and playstyles one after another.

Yeah, the fact that you could speedrun the game with a mace, and still crush a lot of late game enemies, was pretty telling to just how vicious striking damage was.

hahaha, awesome

When I first looked up things about PvP, it wasn't clear how matchmaking figured in the weapon upgrade, if it was your highest on you, or just the highest you had ever made. I would assume over time multiple levels of Farron PvP will exist, much like the forest in DS1 and Towers in DS2, where high levels would still troll around in there on a regular basis waiting to be invaded. Edit: Oh, the wiki shows that the range is Host -10/+40 for the Watchdogs, so you should still be in good range. Assuming that's accurate. I do like that they have the weapon level matching now though, that's a much better solution to keeping the low level gankers in line than Soul Memory ever was. At least they won't be able to prowl the starting area with a +10 weapon. I beat the first lord tonight (Abyss Watcher). I am a lord slayer. Yah! Probably the most interesting of the boss fights so far, but only solo. It felt completely trivial when I turned around and co-oped it after I beat it myself (which is true of a lot of bosses, but particularly this design exacerbates that).

Well, it works, just no online component it seems. Which is in and of itself an interesting way to play the Souls games. I originally went through Demon's Souls in offline mode. It becomes a more haunting, empty place when there are no messages, no ghosts, no bloodstains, no sign of the rest of the mass of humanity playing. It's not better, or worse, but it is a different experience. FWIW, I think starting on Dark Souls is probably the best entry point, mostly because I like the world design of its first half so much. Demon's has some of my favorite individual environments, but as a whole, I think Dark is stronger.

Oddly enough, the new sad man at firelink (whatever his name is now) explicitly tells you what you're supposed to do there. I've tried to make it a point to circle around and talk with everyone at Firelink once every three or four times I'm back. Still just trucking along with my Great Axe though, even after having found some swords. I am curious about this pair of double maces I found though. Kind of a high dex requirement for a Str weapon, but I'm tempted to raise Dex to try them out. Apparently joining the covenant (or maybe using it after joining) that lets you re-spec breaks an NPC questline though, which is frustrating. I definitely want to see where Sirris' quest goes since she's someone who pops in and out of Firelink. I'm glad I had read that when checking up on re-specing after finding that covenant last night. I had been tempted to burn a respec to try them last night,but it sounds like I'm still a few hours from the next leg of Sirris' quest. I'm quite digging being a Blue Sent, got summoned for help 4 times last night and beat the invader 3 times. The one non-win the invader ran and hid and I got tired of looking for him. I love PvP, but I know there are a lot of people who don't, so crushing the asshats who invade them is quite satisfying. Twice last night is was just a good duel, the host backed off and just let me take on the invader, which is honestly for the best, since the host's primary job is just to stay alive. Oh, I also stop-watched the stamina regen from the Grass Crest Shield last night. It seems to be between 0.2 and 0.25 seconds faster regen. Not a ton faster, but worth it for me right now where I have the weight to equip it and wasn't using a shield anyways.

So yes, I had in fact completely missed the Cathedral of the Deep, this arguably makes some more sense than what I had done. It certainly feels like doing at least part of the Cathedral before the Swamp was likely the intended route. I had really wondered how I had gone so long without fighting a boss.

Haha, I believe I"ve completely missed the Cathedral of the Deep somehow, entirely. I gotta go back to the Path and check out and see if I missed something.

I'm moving through the game really slowly, my time says I've played for ~17 hours and I'm about through the poison swamp area. That's not surprising at all for how I tend to play these games, my first playthrough moves at a crawl, with lots of backtracking. I've also spent a couple of hours easily co-oping bosses, partly for fun and partly to accumulate Embers and Sun Tokens (assuming they have some covenant role to play eventually). I haven't done any intentional PvP, but I have been invaded 3 times and managed to win two of those. I love early days of a Souls game PvP before it eventually becomes all really good people. Overall I think I'm similar to Gorm, I'm positive on the game but with some caveats. The linearity is mostly bothersome to me because of thinking about future playthroughs. I don't care that the game is linear on a first playthrough, but with both DS1 and DS2 I'd sequence break all the future playthroughs to get the gear that I really wanted to mess around with. It seems like future playthroughs are going to have a slower start, which is a bummer. I love, love, love, love the new covenant system. Being able to swap on the fly is great. A dedicated covenant slot rather than having rings you have to equip is great. Just everything about it is an improvement. I had felt like it was on the easy side until I got to the swamp, which has felt quite a bit more challenging. I'll be curious to see if that continues, or if the difficulty ends up dropping back down once I've leveled up a few times and upgraded my axe again. The change to each piece of armor giving a flat damage reduction is disappointing to me. Historically I've often run with at least one, if not two, pieces of armor removed. Often the helm and chest pieces. It may be that over time I'll get good enough at rolling it won't matter, but for now it feels pretty necessary to have something in every slot. I've also been disappointed by what feels like a dearth of good Str weapons. I feel like I"ve found a bunch of interesting looking dex weapons, but only a few Str weapons. That might be bad luck, or it might be a "Grass is greener on the other side" thing too. I got the Great Axe very early, and have seen nothing that's come close to temping me to move away from it. The Butcher's Knife I thought would be exciting, but it seems a bit underwhelming stat wise. To some extent, the game feels like the real Dark Souls 2 in terms of sequels. It picked up some things mechanically from 2, but lore, story and characters all seem to have been drawn from 1. It feels like total fan service, but I have to admit I kind of "Squeee'd" when I saw the blacksmith in Firelink.

Yeah, I had a big disappointment when I found a piece of the Xanthous armor set last night, and it just kind of looks like dull, stained rags than the bright, popping yellow it has been before. It's like a stained bandage now, or the color of a used cigarette filter. Knock on wood, but my machine seems to be running it just fine, though I am on an AMD card, and the main source of the problem seems to be Nvidia cards. I've swapped around head gear to my heart's content with no problems. Oh, I have had this happen though, in fact it got me killed. I had just walked up and hit an enemy once, and the game minimzed with a low memory warning. By the time I canceled the warning and got back to the game, I was dead. What's weird is the memory usage is just a spike, and I've had it happen in different areas now. I've got no clue what's causing it, but it doesn't seem to be any terrible impact other than auto-minimizing the game due to that warning once every 3-4 hours of play.

I've subscribed since it started, overall been really happy with it. There's only been one month where I owned nearly all the games, and most of them have had at least one game that completely justified the price.

On Dark Souls 2, it is the most contentious of the Souls games in a lot of ways (and I include both Demon's and Bloodbourne in the Souls games). It's the only one not directed by Miyazaki, so some people hold that against it. In terms of story and world, it's not as rich or well designed as any of the others. It lacks the complexity and connectedness of DS1 for sure. It also messed with matchmaking in a pretty terrible way that broke how a lot of people liked to play the game. Matchmaking was based on total souls collected, rather than your level, so you couldn't just hold at one level. A lot of people particularly like co-oping a single area, or like PvP at a certain level, and holding a level wasn't intially possible in DS2 (it was patched in eventually). But, and I count myself in this camp, a lot of people view it as mechanically better and deeper. It's combat is much better. There are so many more options for builds. It's the best dark fantasy barbie simulator, there are so many more armor and clothing options. If I want to go back and replay a game, I honestly pick DS2 over any of the first four games, even though I think it is the weakest game in a lot of ways, just because it has so many different build options that there are still things I've never tried in it after more than a dozen playthroughs. But if I had to suggest a Souls game to someone as their first game, it would be my last pick, because I think as an introductory experience the things the other games excel at are all more interesting for a new player.

It is the Souls way. I ultimately end up finding casters to just be on the boring side after awhile, even though I try running one every game. The new mana point estus flask will probably get me to try again though, shifting the risk/reward over towards tons of firepower but more limited healing. Edited to add: Got invaded for the first time last night. Died, but gave him a run for his money. Felt pretty good with a great axe going against a rapier, the one weapon class that usually destroys me.