Bjorn

That was a lot of fun running around together! We even played pin the lance on the invader. I don't think I've ever just played with someone who wasn't a random person before. After that, I finally took on the last boss of the Sunken King, Sinh. I actually liked that fight a lot. Took me three tries. The first one I got him two-thirds of the way down before running out of Estus, and decided I didn't want to burn a bunch of consumables to try and finish him off. Second fight I died within 30 seconds, because he could 2 shot me. Third time I gave up my peasant clothes and actually put some armor on so I could at least take 3 hits. I liked him because so many of the big creature fights tend to teach you to superglue your nose into their asscrack. With Sinh, keep medium distance with hit and run attacks seemed like the best strategy. I broke my fucking pickaxe before I could kill him though. That durability patch can't come fast enough. Then I braved the wintery cold of the Ivory King. That first fog gate was hilarious. "Oh wow, a boss fog, right off the bat, that's cool. WTF?!" The lady commented that it looked like something was playing with me. So then I co-oped it and learned that it's really a I haven't even fought it in my own world, and it's already jumped to the top of my favorite bosses in all the Souls games.

No, you don't just suck, they're a pretty bullshit enemy. Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I might have lost more than 20.

Well that sounds joyful. I think I probably found the entrance to that fight with my archer, it had a set of graves similar to the entrance to the trio fight. And I've already fought the Fume Knight (and lost), and pretty sure I found another boss fight, so that only leaves the alt-smelt fight. At least I found some spooky armor next to a bonfire that I elected not to touch, because I was about to quit. I get that being invaded is not fun for quite a few players, but there are those of us who are looking forward to being invaded. I get a thrill when that notification pops up. It's only annoying if it happens in a particularly brutal area to go back through. You can also always elect to go offline for the bell towers, allowing you to explore those areas without worrying about invasions. As for that sense of it not even being fair, that's why I generally don't invade other players, focusing on duels, fight clubs or the dedicated PvP areas. I've done it occasionally, and it always just leaves me feeling kind of dirty if I demolish someone. If someone uses the prostration or no gesture on me when I've invaded, I'll usually just leave. Oh, and the asshats who spam gestures do it whether you give them a good fight or not. You could fight them for a couple of minutes, bringing them down to their last hitpoint before you lost, and they would spell spam those gestures. Because they are asshats. Speaking of invasions, I had a 5+ minute fight against a dude in Bela Luna this evening, during which two other Bellbros were killed, two people I summoned were killed and a red invader appeared who mostly just cheered us on and kept casting Warmth so that we could heal. I ultimately lost, but damn was it a hell of a fight. And I got a compliment from a different fight too! Someone took the time to friend me to send me a nice message on the match.

Take Iron Keep slow, those fucking knights can wreck you in no time. Going back through Earthen Peak to find Gilligan would be a good idea though, he's a neat NPC and has some value/utility later in the game in a couple of different ways. If you happen to be flush with souls when you initially find him, buy anything you want from him then, as his prices go up about 20 percent when he moves.

I went back to my Pickaxe peasant and took another shot at Elena, finally summoning in Bernhart because I could not deal with her and Velstadt at the same time. Aaaaaaand, she didn't summon Velstadt at all. Turns out she's super easy when its just her and some skeletons. So then I decided to try out the notorious trio. By the time I got to their bonfire, it was getting a bit late, but I figured I'd take at least one shot at them. I wasn't doing terrible, but then I botched a roll and Fake Havel backstabbed me I was pretty sure I could do it though, so I went back and pulled it off the second time. I really didn't think it was that bad of a fight. Havel is the only really bullshit part of it, with his infinite stamina and crazy pivot tracking on his swings. It probably helped that my build is perfect for single high damage hits, which makes hit and runs a bit safer. I had the archer killed by my third lap kiting the other two around, then it was just some patience of waiting for openings against the Alva clone. Havel was a pain even by himself though, had to switch to my blacksmith's hammer because it swings faster. There's just hardly enough time on him to get a safe swing off with how often he can bring that dragon tooth down on you. Probably the worst part about that fight is the gauntlet you have to run to get there. The only other place that's comparable to that is going to the Smelter Demon in Iron Keep, where there are so many enemies between you and the boss. I can see how it would be a hair pulling frustration if you had to fight it more than a couple of times. I also did a bunch of PvP last night on the Iron Keep bridge. The Pickaxe is kind of a terrible PvP weapon, but damn is it satisfying to get a good hit in with it. I scored a 1900+ point hit on a naked dude, one shotting him. Not having armor against it is a bad fucking idea. I probably lost 80 percent of my fights though. The most hilarious series were all against someone named Daenerys, who was running a lightning lance, a medium shield, the invisible armor set and casting miracles. Great cosplay, asshat. Anyways, first fight out, Daenerys buffed multiple times, I bowed, and she charged at me with the lance. I dodged out of it, but ultimately lost, and she spammed all the taunting gestures over me. Dragons who don't bow piss me off, especially if they take the time to buff multiple times. Summoned her again, got up within about 10 feet of her spawn point. She spawned, cast the first buff, went into the animation for the second buff, and I pounced on her with the Pickaxe. Dead Daenerys. Summoned her again. She cast the first buff, went into the animation for the second buff, and I pounded on her with the Pickaxe. She managed to get away before I could kill her, sprinted off to chug some estus, and I backstabbed her. Dead Daenerys. Summoned her a third time. This time she just charged me as soon as she spawned. I kept dodging back, and would bow to her each time she exhausted her stamina from using the lance's R2. She finally tagged me, so I figured I'd better start fighting. Hit her twice and got her down to about a third of her health and she Alt-F4'd out. I didn't see her sign on the bridge anymore after that.

And I feel so radically different about the weapon variety, but I'd say that comes down a lot to different playstyles. DS2 in particular just gets fucking wacky in the kind of builds you can make. I made a low level build (capped with the Agape Ring) to screw around in the Bell Towers this week. She's my "shield maiden". In that, she bashes people in a face with shields until they die. Disc Chime for lightning damage, Sanctum Shield for dark damage and Butterfly shield to poison people if they have decent magic resist. It's goofy shit like that that I love the Souls games for, and that doesn't exist in Bloodborne. Which is fine, BB is a different approach, but it's one of the things that keeps me going back to the older Souls games.

And the local police union is protesting that the prosecuting attorney needs to recuse herself because of conflicts of interest....which is probably one of the most audacious things I've seen a police union claim in a long line of audacious bullshit by police unions.

Our powers out, I just spilled a scalding hot cup of coffee in my crotch, then had to take a cold shower to clean the burn. This Friday can fuck right off.

Goddammit!

I also work with my partner, and have for most of the last 7-8 years or so. On the rare occasion one of us needs to leave town without the other for a few days, it is super fucking weird. I honestly enjoy it though, it's good for us to have some time apart occasionally, given that we spend like 90 percent of our waking hours together.

I'd encourage you to go ahead and give the area a shot, just go in after you've spent all your souls, so all you're risking is a humanity. You'll get a few twinks (low level tryhards) in there, but mostly it's going to be other similar level people playing for fun or for covenant rewards. I honestly think the Bell Covenant is one of the better ideas that the DS2 team had.

Yep, in vanilla regular signs are visible so long as the Gargoyles are alive, and small signs are always (I think) available. In SotFS they actually added one NPC (Masterless Glencour) who is available, so you can always have at least one companion. It's not common to see signs, because they get used quickly plus the person who dropped the sign may themselves get invaded, thus erasing their sign. If you really want to help people, you can dash onto the little bridge, drop a sign, and then dash back through the doorway into the Bastille. You can still get summoned, but can go mess around in the rest of the Bastille without worrying about getting invaded yourself.

And it turns out he was playing Threes on his phone while walking down the street.

You can honestly do a fair amount of co-op fine, bosses drop 1/4 of their regular souls and until you get to Iron Keep, regular enemies don't drop enough to really skyrocket you. The Iron Keep enemies do though, it's not hard to pick up several hundred thousand souls there if you're co-oping. It seems that most people hit the mid-point of the game and have between 1 and 2 million souls. When I've made it to Drangleic Castle and have sub-1 million, there are virtually no summons/invasions. For co-op, it's hard to have too many souls (possible, but hard). I think the problems really start when you hit around ~5 million, because at that range you can start picking up people in the 15-20 million range, which can be a huge difference in actual level and power. The Bell Towers have historically been my favorite places in the game. Have you fought the Ruin Sentinels in the Bastille yet? If so, you do have access to the first tower. They are a clusterfuck, but a terrifically fun clusterfuck if you enjoy PvP and can take a zen attitude about some bullshit deaths. Bellbros defend the towers, and auto-invade "trespassers" (anyone inside a bell tower). Trespassers can summon in help from signs within the tower. Cracked Red/Blue Eye Orbs can also be used to invade, really ratcheting up the chaos. They also tend to be the homes of people who aren't terribly good a PvP, because the Bell Covenant rewards are fucking nice and people want them. So these people are depending on being able to gank players who just want to progress through the area and kill the boss to easily farm upgrade materials from the covenant. I enjoy stopping them, so I tend to just hang out as a trespasser with a sign down, waiting to get invaded or summoned. I usually try and see just how long of a streak I can keep going before dying. If you need titanite chunks, slabs, twinkling titanite, or dragon bone, it's well worth your time to join the Bellbros for awhile. The odds heavily favor Bellbros winning the fight, which is why I enjoy stopping them. In SotFS, they did up the total number of concurrent players, which means you can now be invaded by up to 3 Bellbros at a time, which is awful. But I only had that happen the first time I visited the tower. Since then I've found them to be much more like the old times.

Moved from DS1 thread. Yeah, because of the number of characters I've made, I can rush 200K-300K really fast now, usually dropping Last Giant, Pursuer, Dragonrider, Scorpion lady, RRV, the Black Gulch giants and the Rotten all in a little over an hour, which sets me up for at least some of the gear I want to then slow down a bit. I keep thinking about trying proper speedruns, but the reality is that I rarely make it through all that without dying at least once (usually to a botched parry on the Pursuer or just totally cocking up a dodge on the Rotten), so I doubt I can git gud enough to make an entire run without dying. I did make a new character last night though who I'll probably try and keep low SM for having fun in the bell tower. Beat LG, Purs, Rotten and the giants and am at ~80K. I'll probably cap her at either 120K or 140K. Which, if you didn't know, there's a ring you can buy from Straid that freezes your Soul Memory (in that, you no longer collect any souls at all, which makes restocking things like arrows and consumables a pain). Useful if you ever want to have a dedicated PvP character for specific areas (like the bell towers) or you just don't want to cross over to the really high level tiers in late game/ng+. Soul Memory remains the thing that I absolutely hate the most about DS2. I despise that I have to think so carefully about where and how I'm spending souls if I want to manage my tiers for PvP, that I can't just buy a few thousand arrows, or every ring and spell, if I want to.

Just realized we're in the Dark Souls thread! I'm going to move this over to the DS2 thread, since it makes more sense there.

I should have someone in that range, if not I can rush someone there, I've still got new builds I want to make. I'm assuming you're on PC? If so, add bjorndadwarf. I should be on some over the weekend. Where are you stuck at?

Yeah, I don't particularly have any interest in replaying part 1 right now, I've got a pretty good memory of everything that happened in it.

Your Soul Memory, what DS2 uses to do matchmaking, the total number of souls your character has collected. On your stats screen, it's one of the stats at the very top. There are Soul Memory tiers, and each type of multiplayer can connect up and down a certain number of tiers.

That's awesome! :tup: :tup:

Archery has actually been quite a bit of fun, but I (mostly) don't hang back and kill things from afar, I start firing at medium range while continuing to close and then dodge and weave just like always, I'm just firing the bow during openings rather than swinging a melee weapon. I have been falling back more and more on my swords though for mobs, to save arrows, speed things up and have some more diversity in the playthrough. I totally cheesed Amana though. Fuck 'em, lightning arrows for everyone. That's what you get for standing in water. I also delved into the Old Iron King DLC last night, and again, the opening portion of it is one of the strongest designed areas of the game. Exploring these new areas actually make me nervous, which is a feeling I didn't think DS2 could bring out in me anymore. I didn't own the DLC, so for me it was worth it just for that. Otherwise, I generally like all of the changes. The new enemy placement for many areas feels better (and some previously barely used enemies get some use). The lighting in a lot of areas is much improved (forcing torch usage in dark places). Lighting sconces actually serves a purpose in some places (surprising things happen if you light all sconces in at lease a few areas)! A few new item placements open up some builds much, much earlier in the game than previously available. More and better NPC invasions (including one who can invade you in any area). Each individual change is minor, and honestly feels like they could have been patched into the vanilla version, but they overall make for a better game. Whether it's worth it or not I think comes down to whether you want to play more DS2 or not, mostly.

Yeah, I had to play through the final 10 minutes or so again for some reason, not sure exactly what happened.

Am I dumb, how do you start part two? I don't have an ending save from part one, my deepest save is during the final part, and I don't remember exactly what wad done by that point. I had assumed it would just have a save at the very end.

If From ever makes another King's Field game, that thread title is going to be fucking weird.

There's something like 13 or 14 different upgrade materials, some of the upgrades branch off of other upgrades, but only at specific previous upgrade levels, some of the upgrades aren't terribly obvious what they are doing. I'd say play for a few hours to get a feel of what you like, then check out what paths will benefit the style you're enjoying the most.