Bjorn

After getting to Depth 3 dungeons last night, I can see why co-op would be useful though. The difficulty spiked a bunch going from 2 to 3, and I'm guessing it will be similar going to 4. The fight against Undead Giant v2 was actually really useful to me though. A big problem I have with all the Souls games is having patience (see my repeated frustrations with the Martyr). You would think after four games I would know this. UGv2 had an attack that could one-shot me after his halfway point, which left me no option but to be careful and patient with approaching the battle. A couple of my favorite fights have now happened in the Dungeons, I'm really warming up to them. Things I learned last night: 1. Illusory walls do exist! But only in dungeons 2. Worn out weapons do less damage. I usually repair all my stuff every time I'm back in the garden, but I was farming some vials/bullets/echoes to restock (the Cannon chews through bullets!) and noticed that my damage rating on both my weapons had dropped ~40 points or so on my status screen. 3. Blood bullets stay on you when you warp from the Garden to a new location. I usually just give myself 5 bullets right before the first enemy of an area, then attack to get most of that health back. But if you're going into an area where that isn't easy, or you're sprinting for a boss, you can get the blood bullets, heal, grab a vial from your chest, and start an area with full vials, full health and full bullets. I went back to my Str build last night to mess around with the Wheel. I want to like that weapon, I really do, because I've loved my big dumb strength builds in every Souls game. But big, slow weapons just don't have a good role to play in Bloodborne. Messing around with it, the Axe and the Tonitrus each at +6 with a 35 Str, there were just no advantages to the Wheel. The Axe does slightly less damage, but it's range and diverse moveset completely make up for that. And the Tonitrus has the same range, but is faster and does more damage when charged (plus has the bonus of hitting hard against physically resistant enemies).

HR was a fantastic game to me because it supported (mostly) a non-lethal playstyle that turned every area into a 3D puzzle to navigate and solve. If they pull that off again, I'll be happy with it.

I had completely forgot about Titan Souls. Definitely back on my radar now.

The anti-progressive/women/minority faction in sci-fi predates the organized abuse in gaming by a long, long time. It shows what a lot of people have pointed out, that gamergate never existed in a vacuum, that there's a cross-pollination of shitheadedness that includes most of the traditional "nerd" communities.

For all I know this is obvious, and I never looked at the buttons on the notebook screen, but . I had seen the gestures, but had assumed that I was missing some groovy item to do it.

The Hintertomb chalice it's talking about allows you to co-op any dungeon at any depth without spending resources. But before that, you can co-op any dungeon for which you have the chalice and have opened the dungeon associated with it at least once. So after the BSB, you could co-op the first Phtumera dungeon, since you'd have the materials to open it right off the bat. That Hintertomb chalice just makes co-oping easier at later levels.

I love carmelized onions, they're the best.

Yeah, sounds that way, here's the instructions from one of the wikis: In order to Co Op a Chalice Dungeon you must have created the Chalice of that Dungeon yourself at least once. You CANNOT join Chalice Dungeons that are using Chalices you have not yet acquired and made. You can Co Op with a friend by giving them your Chalice Glyph or by them giving you theirs and entering it in at a Ritual Altar in Hunter's Dream. All Chalice Dungeons can be Co Oped, but only some can be PvPed. In order for PvP in a Chalice Dungeon, the player must have created or joined a Dungeon that was made using a Root Chalice or a Sinister Chalice. There is one Sinister Chalice of each type: Pthumeru, Hintertomb, Loran and Isz. It is important to remember that only the host's progress is saved, so in order to clear the entire dungeon you will have to take turns hosting and being summoned. Summoned players vanish after each boss is defeated. Once you have defeated the last boss of the Lower Hintertomb Chalice, you will receive the Short Ritual Root Chalice which can be used at the Makeshift Altar in Hunter's Dream. This will allow you to quick search for Chalice Dungeons to join as the guest, host or invader. You can use the Short Ritual Root Chalice Co-Op search feature with a password (to help connect to the desired target) to be summoned in their dungeon at ANY layer they are in. Whatever chalice they are in gets placed at the Makeshift Altar, granting you a FREE dungeon to go through from the start if you wish. You can remove the chalice that is placed in the Makeshift Altar and begin your Co-Op search anew for any other people who you may want to help. In addition Co-Op through the SRRC method has a chance of placing you in a completely random room of the dungeon. In order for this to work the Chalice Dungeon must be SHARED AND OPEN (not Closed)

Oh, there's a "password" you can set in Network settings, and if you do that, you will ONLY match up with people who have the same password. That's how you make sure you're playing with your friends, or an organized group.

Co-op ranges seem pretty generous and straightforward, +/- 10 levels plus 10 percent of your total levels. So a level 50 could co-op with 35-65 level characters. Dungeons are a little unique in how you co-op (there's a setting in a menu, and you need to both have loaded the same dungeon? I think), we'd probably want to check a guide to make sure we weren't wasting time/materials.

I've thought about killing that NPC a couple of times to see what drops. Was it any good? I should add some of you folks to co-op dungeons with. Pretty sure my PSN is bjorndadwarf.

I banged my head against the Martyr again last night with my Bloodtinge build. Got really, really close (twice!) to soloing him before finally giving up and summoning help again. I totally see how he's doable now, it just takes more patience than I usually have, lots of waiting for openings. I got the Evelyn up to +6, and holy crap, guns can be useful. Popping a bone ash makes the next shot do ~350 damage, and I'm not even close to its damage ceiling yet. Now I've got the Chikage, which is the last weapon I need. I never liked Katanas in the other Souls games (in part because of their popularity) but I'm really digging it the bit I ran around with it last night. I also never played with any of the weapons that cause self-harm, so that's a new experience for me.

Each dungeon has 3 layers, and each "location" (there are four?) goes to at least a depth of 4 or 5 (at the third layer of each depth, you'll get a new chalice that lets you go to the next depth). There's at least one unique weapon that's only in dungeons, at least one Rune that's only there, deep dungeons are apparently the best source of Blood Stone Chunks and the dungeons are the only way to get Lost and Uncanny versions of weapons. The Lost and Uncanny versions are identical in stats to regular weapons, but have different configurations of gem slots which opens up some new combinations of how you can configure them, like giving you both triangle and crescent gems on the same weapon. Edited: What griddle said.

I never got Kalameet's tail, it's the only thing in Dark Souls 1 I wasn't able to pull off.

He's doing a non-lethal run, obviously! Doesn't even want to accidentally shoot someone. I did all three...and don't remember anything about any of them. At all. Sooooo, for me whatever they pick will feel like the right choice!

Brownback won in Kansas by less than 2 percent of the total registered voters, or about 30,000 votes. If a higher turnout would have happened in the right areas, we would have seen so far: No radical change to the school funding formula (this is going to be the third or fourth time in a decade where the supreme court is going to have to step in about school funding again) No elimination of a permit for concealed carry (anyone can now carry a concealed weapon...yeah) No new abortion laws, meaning we wouldn't have become the most restrictive state for abortions in the country No removal of sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes for government jobs in Kansas That's the pinnacle of what they accomplished in just over 3 months. And there's a whole bunch of other bullshit that's been introduced that hasn't made it to his desk yet. We've got almost 4 more years of this. The liberals and moderates of this state who didn't vote should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

I've been a bit disappointed that there isn't something like a Mimic. Like, even if it wasn't exactly a mimic, some sort of trap that gets you excited, but then crushes your dreams. I started another new character last night, because that's what I do with these games. It takes me forever to finish my first playthrough because I keep wanting to experiment. I used the Forbidden Woods skip to get to Cainhurst quicker than normal. The Witch of Hemwick was already one of the easiest bosses, but once you know how to backstab, she's a joke. Every time she appears, you can Charge Attack, Back Stab, then get another hit or two in before she disappears. I wanted to get to Cainhurst to get the...

The Pursuer is probably my favorite boss of all four games, in a large part because he managed to scare the crap out of me three different times. Especially when he shows up in the Iron Keep. Runners up would be both Artorias and Magus. From Demon's Souls, I actually have a fondness for the Tower Knight. Not so much because the fight was that hard, but for the awe of walking into his arena for the first time and seeing this sky scraper sized knight waiting on me, having no clue how to even approach him let alone win.

I'm going to be really curious to fight the Martyr with my Arcane build and see how that goes. The Arcane build has felt stronger to me every step of the way. I did it with my Str build last night, because I wanted And really, not much matters more to me in a Souls game than being stylish. You can't murder well if you don't look good doing it.

I'd say it's pretty easy to tell. On his moves: It might be that I'm terrible at that fight, but the angst I found online from other people and the dozen messages on the ground of "bring a cooperator" makes me think that he's a nightmare for most people solo. If he had like 20 percent less health, and did 20 percent less damage, he might be one of my favorite fights in the entire series. Many of his attacks do 30-50 percent of my health (level 61 with 29 Vitality), so there's just no room for error. I love the area he's at the end of though:

And the line from King's Field through Souls is one of the more obvious ones. I played King's Field 2 back on the PS1, and the first time I was playing Demon's Souls I had this feeling that it was similar somehow, without remembering at all that From made the Field series as well

My attitude is that etiquette only exists for consensual duels. I wouldn't bow during an invasion, the inability to dodge out of them just leaves you vulnerable for like 3-4 seconds. It's a terrible decision that DS2 resolved by letting cancel those animations whenever you wanted. As for healing, invaders have previously been barred from healing in other people's worlds, so couldn't heal, and people being invaded should always heal because they didn't ask for some asshat to come try to murder them. Speaking of invaders, I killed my first one! I think I just had him outclassed on equipment and levels, as he went down fairly easy. On another topic, Martyr Logarius can get right fucked, preferably with a spiked wheel. I didn't have much time to play this weekend, and basically spent the entire three hours I had last night throwing myself at him again and again and again. I hadn't hit a brick wall like this before. Probably burned 150+ vials and bullets (each), 30+ molotovs, 10+ oil urns, 40+ throwing knives, 10+ fire paper, 10+ bone marrow ash, and a few other miscellaneous items. I had to go farm items and echoes multiple times to restock. I went into other people's worlds and helped them beat him so I could have more time and space to observe his attacks. And that fucker must murdered me, and murdered me, and murdered me. I finally gave up and summoned in help, and then died by rolling off a ledge. And then I burned like 5 insight trying to summon again and no one got summoned. Finally got another guy, and he got murdered late in the fight, but I was able to finish it myself. I understood his patterns and knew the tells for all of his attacks, I just couldn't keep my self from taking damage. If you go searching for advice for this fight, it's really unhelpful as you'll find tons of posts of "He was the easiest fight in the game, just parry him a dozen times and he's dead." Every one of those people beat him because he glitched out on them and they didn't realize it. Apparently in a very long play session (many, many hours) there is a memory leak that eventually builds up enough that it fucks up enemy AI, and completely wrecks bosses because they can't use 90 percent of their movesets. It's most obvious with Logarius because if it happens to him, the attacks he has left are the least dangerous ones he has.

I beat Darkbeast Paarl on my first shot tonight! That was intense, was completely out of heals and molotovs at the end, and only had about a third of a health bar left when I finished it off. Those are probably my favorite boss fights, when you manage to squeak through with a win on your first attempt. And I also had a super weird glitch tonight. I was fighting the boss of the Forbidden Forest and...

I just lol'd so hard at this at work. Spoilered for trap location (Forbidden Woods)

Yeah, there's a tool you get after a boss fight. Have you found...it's called Hemwich Lane or Hemwich village, or something like that? The path to it is to the left of the Great Cathedral (if you're facing it) if you've found it.