Nick Plays FROM; Currently - Bloodborne

[SuperBiasedMan]

Just saw the climactic O&S defeat, congrats Nick!

 

It's a shame he didn't

 

attack Gwynevere because I think the way the level changes after that is fun and interesting. Tho admittedly it makes it slightly harder to go through the Duke's Archives.

[Problem Machine]

Seeing Nick playing with the Gravelord sword inspired me to try to do a pseudo-speedrun using it. I say pseudo because I didn't really route it and didn't really learn any of the weird exploits that speedrunners use, just tried to go as quickly as possible with the knowledge I have of the game. I managed to get past O+S at around an hour and 40 minutes, which is slower than I would have hoped but still pretty fast I think. I died 10 times or so to O+S, which I think is punishment for getting cocky after owning them with the bandit knife, and also ran into substantial problems just getting ganged by hollows and stun-locked. Nick has dodged a bullet finding the wolf ring pretty early and never having to know the pain of having less than 40 poise, which would particularly cramp his cheatin hitman style. I think if I practiced this route I could probably finish the game in less than two hours, though to be completely honest I actually am not loving the gravelord sword as a weapon. The R1 is deceptively slow, both 1h and 2h, and the attack coming out of the roll is also slow and weak. However, its R2 is slow but NICE -- it was doing like 450 damage to Ornstein when I could land it. Also, its running and backstep attack is a small leaping attack that has a different animation from the standard leaping attack, comes out real fast, and does good damage, so that's also A++.

Unfortunately this is one of relatively few weapons you can get early on reliably that's strong enough to stay viable until the end of the game without requiring getting the large/very large embers, both of which are detours.

[Nick Breckon]

Streaming around 2pm Pacific today. I'll stay at it for a good while since I cancelled on everyone yesterday. 

[TychoCelchuuu]

1 hour ago, Nick Breckon said:

Streaming around 2pm Pacific today. I'll stay at it for a good while since I cancelled on everyone yesterday. 

Okay that explains why yesterday I loaded up the stream and nothing was happening even though I could swear I got an email notification that something was happening not too long ago.

[TychoCelchuuu]

[TychoCelchuuu]

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

[TychoCelchuuu]

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

[SL128]

Nick starts the stream https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/CalmClamBORT

Nick tries a shortcut https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/SleepyCrabCougarHunt

Nick sees an amazing chest ahead https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/HomelyFrogFrankerZ

 

Also, I'll be compiling the clips in the OP soon.  If you have any clips, but haven't posted them, please do so, or send me a PM.  All of your clips can be found at clips.twitch.tv.

After the game is beaten, I plan on compiling them all into a single video; if there are any moments which haven't been clipped, remember that you can still make them from Twitch vods.

[Kyir]

Is there any NPC Nick will hesitate to attack?

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ColorfulVultureOMGScoots is the only good clip I've taken probably.

[Problem Machine]

I need to try this clip-making thing, I've never clicked the button and some of these are great

[TychoCelchuuu]

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

[TychoCelchuuu]

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

[TychoCelchuuu]

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

[Upthrust]

Nick had a really nice social eating stream today:

 

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

 

It was very good.

 

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

[eot]

Someone in the chat said Nick was overlevelled, and Janel said something like "but he never levels up!", which is a fair point. It's a tricky issue with these games. You have the most fun with them when you're just at the sweet spot of the power curve. It's not like Diablo where overlevelling just makes the game more fun. For O&S Nick was slightly underpowered, because he understood the fight well yet still struggled to win it, but for Manus he was slightly overpowered; I think Nick is good at the combat, but in that fight he didn't apply much skill, he won by having a large enough health pool and high enough attack rating. The problem with that is that much of the design that went into making the boss fight be an interesting fight is wasted on the player. In Dark Souls I think they probably give you too many Souls for boss kills, meaning that most players naturally overlevel slightly as the game goes on.

 

 

That's why I hoped he'd have done the DLC earlier

 

Also, Nick is terrible for not saving Sif.

As for the gravelording thing, it's a bug, you only get gravelorded in NG+

[Nick Breckon]

2 hours ago, eot said:

Spoiler

That's why I hoped he'd have done the DLC earlier

Also, Nick is terrible for not saving Sif.

 

In my defense, I did not think I'd beat the boss -- that everyone was constantly pumping up as a big deal -- on the second try. 

 

Which actually begs the question: what's the difficulty level of DS2 in comparison to DS1/DS3? So far, at least in my playthroughs, I'd say DS3's bosses were trickier on average than DS1's. But then again, I was new to playing the game, so maybe I'm just better at combat now and DS3 will seem like a cakewalk when I replay it? 

[Problem Machine]

On 12/3/2016 at 7:27 AM, Problem Machine said:

Seeing Nick playing with the Gravelord sword inspired me to try to do a pseudo-speedrun using it. I say pseudo because I didn't really route it and didn't really learn any of the weird exploits that speedrunners use, just tried to go as quickly as possible with the knowledge I have of the game. I managed to get past O+S at around an hour and 40 minutes

I took another run at doing this today after the back half of this run died in Izalith with me trying over and over to get the last two demon titanites I needed for +5 from the titanite demon on the bridge. I feel confident in saying this is probably the single nastiest non-boss enemy in the game, and probably nastier than most bosses. Anyway, my original plan was to get the Drake Sword and then switch to the Crystal Halberd in anor Londo, but I decided also to kill the black knight in undead burg just in case and lo and behold got the black knight sword. To make a long story short, I got through O+S in 1hr10m and now have a weapon much more suitable to handling the back half of the game, which I'll attempt later. Hoping I can pull the entire run off in <2 hours, but we'll see.

[sclpls]

58 minutes ago, Nick Breckon said:

 

In my defense, I did not think I'd beat the boss -- that everyone was constantly pumping up as a big deal -- on the second try. 

 

Which actually begs the question: what's the difficulty level of DS2 in comparison to DS1/DS3? So far, at least in my playthroughs, I'd say DS3's bosses were trickier on average than DS1's. But then again, I was new to playing the game, so maybe I'm just better at combat now and DS3 will seem like a cakewalk when I replay it? 

 

 

DS2 bosses gave me the most trouble out of any of the games, and I never finished it. But I don't know if my experience is typical or not. I agree that DS1 bosses aren't too difficult with a couple of notable exceptions. Getting better at these games is definitely a thing though.

[Gormongous]

29 minutes ago, sclpls said:

DS2 bosses gave me the most trouble out of any of the games, and I never finished it. But I don't know if my experience is typical or not. I agree that DS1 bosses aren't too difficult with a couple of notable exceptions. Getting better at these games is definitely a thing though.

 

I also feel that DS2 was most prone to out-of-nowhere "fuck you" tricks with its bosses. DS3 and DS1 tended to be of a piece with boss design: most bosses were about learning the full moveset and then exploiting it, although DS3 bosses tended to have a larger moveset (or to have two moves that had an equal chance of triggering in a given situation) that made them slightly trickier the first few times but not appreciably harder overall.

[eot]

3 hours ago, Nick Breckon said:

Which actually begs the question: what's the difficulty level of DS2 in comparison to DS1/DS3? So far, at least in my playthroughs, I'd say DS3's bosses were trickier on average than DS1's. But then again, I was new to playing the game, so maybe I'm just better at combat now and DS3 will seem like a cakewalk when I replay it? 

It's tricky to say, because as you point out the first game tends to be the hardest one. Dark Souls is probably the easiest game to overpower with just gear. The poise mechanic can make you nearly immune to being staggered (you probably don't even notice it, but if you put on light armor your next stream you'd be getting staggered a ton), 20 Estus is the most of all the games (probably too much) and pyromancy is extremely powerful. I think your flame is only at something like +6 and despite that your Great Chaos Fireball is still useful. That glove goes to what is essentially +20, although you really have to grind to get it that high.

 

Dark Souls 2 is interesting. I've heard people say it's easier, but personally I'd say it's harder (balance tweaks in SotFS notwithstanding, haven't tried it). I'm not going to go in to too much detail since you haven't played it, but to me the game felt like it wanted to play in to the idea that these games are about difficulty and it seems to take more glee in punishing you than the other games (it slips into the unfair territory too often if you ask me). There are a few design decisions specifically to counter cheatin' hitman, for example. You start off much less empowered, and if you were to pick Deprived in Dark Souls 2 too you'd really feel it early on (I dare you hah). The gear and character progression is tuned such that it'll take longer for you to become a wrecking machine, but at the same time there really isn't the same kind of progression wall type boss like O&S. I'd say many areas are more difficult, while many bosses aren't, at least the base game bosses. If I had to put money on it, I'd say you're going to struggle more with DS2, but it might not be in a pleasant way. If you don't find it challenging enough there's a covenant to make it harder. It's possible I remember this game as harder than it was because of a stupid challenge run I did.

 

Dark Souls 3 sits somewhere in between I think. A first time player going in blind wouldn't struggle as much as they would with Dark Souls, because DS3 is made to be more accessible, but even if you know what you're doing it's not as easy to break the game and becoming utterly overpowered. Nameless King is probably the only very challenging boss, but on the other hand the game doesn't have any atrocious boss either, which I think every other game in the series does. It's middle of the road honestly.

 

I'll briefly mention Bloodborne too. It's different from the other games in that you can't really do a tanky build, you're forced in to an active play style. The mechanics are tuned to accommodate that however. The first area can be very challenging, even if you've played all the other games, but a bit like Dark Souls I find that it's kinda easy to out level the game without meaning to. If you dig into the optional stuff there are some very challenging bosses though.

 

My prediction is that you'll like Bloodborne the most, because it kind of is the best game even if it's not my favourite, and find DS2 the hardest. Welcome to the dumpy.zone.

 

[Kyir]

I have to agree on the first Souls game you play generally being the hardest. A lot of the skills you need are cross-game even with slight mechanical changes. DS2's bosses destroyed me on my first playthrough, but I'm doing it again with the Covenant of Champions on and I'm one-shotting bosses, so I expect most of them to not be a huge problem for Nick once he has two games under his belt (at least for the first few streams.) Can't say the same about the DLC content, so it's good it's getting saved for last.

 

Also, just so you know Nick, you should probably be getting the Scholar of the First Sin version of DS2. It comes with DLC included, and has some tweaked enemy/item placement that I found to improve the game a lot.

[eot]

You love the game so much and you've not beaten it twice?

 

Tsk

[Kyir]

2 minutes ago, eot said:

You love the game so much and you've not beaten it twice?

 

Tsk

 

I did my whole playthrough a week before DS3 came out, so I haven't really had the time to go back to it until now.

[Problem Machine]

6 minutes ago, eot said:

You love the game so much and you've not beaten it twice?

DS2 is by far the longest of the three, to be fair, especially if you include the DLC

[eot]

7 minutes ago, Kyir said:

I did my whole playthrough a week before DS3 came out, so I haven't really had the time to go back to it until now.

 

 

Come back when you've spent 10 hours on Throne Watcher/Defender SL1 CoC melee only without DLC items