Sully907

Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

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Also been invaded a couple times, got spammed by fireballs the first time, second time i just completely destroyed my invader.

Twenty to thirty hours in you've only been invaded twice? Have you been a white or black phantom in anyone else's world? Have you summoned in any other players to help with bosses?

Half the reason I'm considering renting (probably don't hate myself enough to buy it) this game is the interesting online systems, so I'm hoping they're a bit more involved than a couple of instances over thirty hours.

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Twenty to thirty hours in you've only been invaded twice? Have you been a white or black phantom in anyone else's world? Have you summoned in any other players to help with bosses?

Half the reason I'm considering renting (probably don't hate myself enough to buy it) this game is the interesting online systems, so I'm hoping they're a bit more involved than a couple of instances over thirty hours.

This is kind of a hard question to actually answer, because there's just so much going on with the online systems. It's extraordinarily involved, there is a huge meta-game happening, but it's absolutely not a multiplayer game.

I mean, i talked a bit about some of the basic things the game is constantly populating your world with, the ghosts and messages and bloodstains.

So yeah, beyond that, there's red and white phantoms as the most basic real player interactions.

For co-op, you place a sign on the ground, somebody sees that sign and summons you into their game. That has a few conditions - They're within ten levels of your character, actively exploring the location where you placed that sign, have human status to enable them to even see your co-op sign, and even then only if the game's networking has chosen to show this random other person in that area your co-op sign. There's a lot of factors going against the co-op, it kind of requires that the people playing understand how everything works, but co-op still happens pretty frequently. (Especially before bosses, since that is what yields real rewards for the white phantoms, you'll frequently see co-op signs near bosses.)

There's no risk for the white phantoms though, no punishment for death. The game basically encourages co-op as a simple way to farm souls. It's probably something that will become a more and more rare occurrence as the active audience dies down and the hardcore and casual players stray further apart in levels and locations. Right now though, it works, i've done a lot of co-op.

As for having had so few invasions, there's a few things i think that have led to this. I think i can only be invaded if i'm in a human state, which i've only been triggering when i know i'm going to need it. (The benefits to being human instead of hollow are fairly ambiguous at first, but they are very important. Such as it is, the primary reason you would invade somebody is to steal their humanity.) I'm also in the Way of the White covenant, which is believed to reduce the frequency of the game's networking matching you up with hostile invasions. (Way of the White is a covenant you can access at the very start of the game.)

So the covenants are another wrinkle in this, they serve as a loose faction system in the game and offer some basic questing and item vendors, but certain covenants focus largely on the metagame. For example, one later covenant you can join has you hunting down and invading players who have accumulated "sins". (Which, one way to accumulate sin, is to have invaded and killed another player, and for that player to then have used an expendable item to mark you.) Some of the stuff certain covenants do to the meta-game just gets really nested and crazy, it's really truly layered and insane.

It's all very impersonal though, the game enforces limited communication, and everything is matched up randomly. (In fact, on the 360, if you try to party chat in co-op, the game boots you to the main screen. The only communication you will have is a small series of collectible in-game emotes.)

So it's not a multiplayer game, it's a single-player game with this crazy nested meta-game that is totally integral to the experience, but does not make it a multiplayer game. So that's kind of the un-answer i have for you, it's a weird game. I definitely encourage trying it, but i don't think it's for everyone. If they tried to make a game for everyone, it wouldn't be one ounce as special as it is.

Also, about renting this game, i'd just warn against trying to play it on a deadline. That is about the worst thing you could do with this game, playing it like you have to finish by a set time. Moving fast makes you make mistakes, making mistakes makes you lose potentially hours of progress. I mean, it's still not as cruel as particularly hardcore rogue-likes can be or anything. You keep items you find, mini-bosses and bosses you kill will stay dead, and of course you can corpse run if you had amassed a large stockpile of souls and humanities before having an opportunity to spend them.

Oh man, about the online though, that's not even everything. Holy shit, there's even crazier stuff, things like vagrant items. Dropped and unwanted gear roaming the network and appearing as black phantoms to attack random players, slowly gaining experience and rewarding the player who finally kills them with hugely leveled-up items. (I haven't even seen one of these, only heard about them.)

This post is too damn long, one last aside - I have actually wrecked probably half of the special events/sidequests i have come across, but with the game's manic auto-saving, there are no older save states to revert to. So i'm over thirty hours into the game and and i just killed a valuable NPC because i was freaked out and nearly dead and he looked aggressive.

I actually kind of respect that the game lets you fuck yourself over that badly, and then give you no way to back out of it. (To be fair, it doesn't seem like you can render the main quest unwinnable, it just lets you break nearly everything else. Even crucially important items that enable the multiplayer aspects seem to be missable if you're playing like an idiot.)

Edit: Man, this is a long fucking post.

I apologize for this did-not-sleep stream of consciousness.

Edited by Sno

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Yeah, I'm aware of the basics of many of these systems and never even mentioned the word "multiplayer". That said, thanks for replying as your first post just freaked me out because out of context it seemed like those were the only two experiences you had with the online systems and I was worried they were much less important than I'd hoped. I'm glad to hear you've actually experienced a lot more of it.

As for the renting, I don't intend to really play it "on a deadline", I have no intention of trying to finish Dark Souls within a rental period. Truth be told I don't really have any intention of finishing Dark Souls at all, which is kind of why I'm thinking rental. I want to play this game, want to experience its uniqueness, but I'm relatively sure that I'll have a set limit of how much of it I can handle while retaining any sense of fun so that's why I'm not going to buy it.

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Really nice set of posts there Sno, you're doing a good job of articulating what makes this such a unique gaming experience. I'm not quite as far in as you, but I'm loving it just as much.

First I'll get the 1 or 2 bad things out of the way, so I can get to the raving. I don't like the small changes they did to the reccomendation system. Since you have to use an item to reccomend or leave messages now, it makes it slightly more cumbersome, and I think it results in fewer people reccomending messages(which gives a instant health boost to the player that left it)

second, the framerate can be downright terrible at times, even worse then demon's souls. I'm not normally a stickler for things like this, but in an exacting, demanding game like Dark Souls, it can lead to deaths, which isn't fair, but, it's understanable, becasuse this game is freaking GORGEOUS. The enemy designs, seamless level transitions, animations are all superb.

You mentioned something about dropping weapons coming to life? Do you know the specifics of that mechanic sno? And how can you tell if you are fighting one?

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As for the type of character I'm creating. I'm going for a pyromancer battlemage type character, so I can experience a lot of spells, and a lot of weapons on my first play, even though I won't be particularly adept at either come endgame.

Sno, did you allow that golden knight laurtec out of prison and have him kill the firelink firekeeper? I did, and I know I can get her soul back eventually, but it looks like my pyro teacher dissapeared as well. Do you know if he goes anywhere else?

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second, the framerate can be downright terrible at times, even worse then demon's souls. I'm not normally a stickler for things like this, but in an exacting, demanding game like Dark Souls, it can lead to deaths, which isn't fair, but, it's understanable, becasuse this game is freaking GORGEOUS. The enemy designs, seamless level transitions, animations are all superb.

Apparently both the 360 and PS3 versions have severe framerate problems in different areas. On the 360, it's blight town and the swamp below. (Can be very frustrating since, in the town itself, you're fighting high above the ground on very narrow walkways.)

You mentioned something about dropping weapons coming to life? Do you know the specifics of that mechanic sno? And how can you tell if you are fighting one?

I'm not really clear on it myself. From what i've heard, if you encounter one, it'll apparently appear as an invading black phantom that will drop an item if you defeat it. It doesn't seem to be anything you can engineer happening for yourself.

As for the type of character I'm creating. I'm going for a pyromancer battlemage type character, so I can experience a lot of spells, and a lot of weapons on my first play, even though I won't be particularly adept at either come endgame.

My dude is a little bit boring, i guess. Knight in heavy armor with shield, greatsword, and bow. Also a couple miracles, one for healing and one to cast area effect slowing. (Which is an amazingly incredible ability to have.)

Sno, did you allow that golden knight laurtec out of prison and have him kill the firelink firekeeper? I did, and I know I can get her soul back eventually, but it looks like my pyro teacher dissapeared as well. Do you know if he goes anywhere else?

I was warned ahead of time about the prisoner, so i killed him. I think he just quietly kills off all the NPC's at Firelink, mirroring an NPC from Demon's Souls that did the same to the hub in that. Anyways, I haven't had any Firelink NPC's mysteriously disappear from my game. (I also apparently haven't even found half of them, ngh...)

Random, unrelated aside. - (Not a story thing, but I'm going to spoiler this because it's so very weird and surprising.)

I got infested by parasites and had a tumorous fleshy egg replace my head for a while... It prevented me from wearing a helm, made me extra vulnerable to fire, and was siphoning off my souls to grow. It was fairly easy to cure, though. However, if you let it mature, it apparently replaces your guard-break kick with a new attack wherein your tumorous head egg splits open and a giant parasite lashes out from within.

So... Yeah...

Edited by Sno

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Random, unrelated aside. - (Not a story thing, but I'm going to spoiler this because it's so very weird and surprising.)

I got infested by parasites and had a tumorous fleshy egg replace my head for a while... It prevented me from wearing a helm, made me extra vulnerable to fire, and was siphoning off my souls to grow. It was fairly easy to cure, though. However, if you let it mature, it apparently replaces your guard-break kick with a new attack wherein your tumorous head egg splits open and a giant parasite lashes out from within.

So... Yeah...

Yeah, I believe for the Witch's Covenant you have to get infected with those or something. Not totally sure.

Regarding classes; how are you guys finding yours? I'm still debating what to make when I play it. Currently mostly considering Knight or Bandit as they seem the easiest. Pyromancer is supposedly very strong early game but then becomes progressively harder, has that been your experience at all Sully? Knight is obviously strong by way of having so much armour, whereas the Bandit is a little flimsier but has high starting HP and I think moves faster than the Knight, which should make dodging easier.

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Choosing Knight as my starting class, i got the impression that your starter gear is much, much more important than your starting stats. I ended up using that basic suit of armor for the first ten hours or so that i was playing. A lot of the starter gear for many of the classes is actually extremely good relative to what you find in the early parts of the game. So that is something to consider.

As a knight, I've never really felt that i was offered that much protection. In a lot of cases, it's simply that i'll die in two or three hits instead of one, which is still usually enough to try and pull back to heal up before heading back in. I really can't dodge anything very effectively at all. I rely mostly on my shield and the stats relevant to staying standing against strong hits, but some attacks from larger enemies still just totally overwhelm my defense. Even if that doesn't happen, blocking those strong hits with a shield just devours stamina. If that stamina bar bottoms out, your guard is broken anyways.

I honestly don't know if it's easier or harder than something more evasive and agile, but it has at least seemed like a totally viable way to play. I have gotten awfully deep into the game and have completely destroyed several hostile invaders. I have also, on the other hand, generally heard that spell-focused builds are potentially some of the stronger builds. It's interesting though, everybody i've talked to about the game has a really different approach that they swear by, different styles of weapons they've gravitated to. It seems like a very well balanced game, just in general.

You know, everything in this game seems very deliberate, like it's exactly the way it's supposed to be. Like... The pebbles you can throw off ledges to determine if a leap would be fatal or not, listening for whether they break or not, that is awesome. It's such a dumb little thing, but it works well and it's intensely valuable in the context of this game.

Edited by Sno

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Sno,

did you allow that golden knight laurtec out of prison and have him kill the firelink firekeeper? I did, and I know I can get her soul back eventually, but it looks like my pyro teacher dissapeared as well. Do you know if he goes anywhere else?

Fixed, you git.

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Well I'm dissapointed now. Because of some decisions I made, I essentially am going to miss out on 3 fire spells and the ability to upgrade my spell damage for the rest of the game as far as I know :(

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Well I'm dissapointed now. Because of some decisions I made, I essentially am going to miss out on 3 fire spells and the ability to upgrade my spell damage for the rest of the game as far as I know :(

Your disappeared pyromancer?

I read up on it some more, and he shouldn't have disappeared because of that side quest, so i don't know what happened.

There is a second pyromancer trainer you can find though, and he's not too far into the game. Different spells, but i think you can at least still upgrade your pyromancy flame.

It's one of the Chaos Servant NPC's, which is a covenant focused mainly around pyromancy. Just take care not to accidentally kill him, he looks exactly like all the other disfigured and hostile egg people in the area. (If you join that covenant, attacking any of those enemies will count as an action against that covenant.)

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Yea I also read about that thing you mentioned after the fact. I killed him for obvious reasons, and I only just found out he's actually an NPC last night. So I'm pretty much boned now. I hear the pyromancer teacher actually goes to another level, but becomes inaccessible as a merchant :(

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I somehow accidentally attacked the NPC that happens to be the only guy who enables you to be forgiven by NPCs that you accidentally attack (Oswald of Carim). Fuck.

Really considering starting from scratch, I kindof like whipping through stuff again when I know exactly what to do. Plus I've learnt some lessons on stats with my cleric.

Edited by Raff

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I somehow accidentally attacked the NPC that happens to be the only guy who enables you to be forgiven by NPCs that you accidentally attack (Oswald of Carim). Fuck.

The guy in the belltower?

He's more important than you think, he clears you of "sins" just in general. So if you've racked up sins by invading other players and don't want to end up being constantly harassed by Darkmoon players, he's kind of important. He also sells a lot of unique, important items. (In particular, indictments and the book of sins.)

Seriously, don't attack things unless you're absolutely certain they're hostile. This game just loves to throw valuable non-hostile NPC's at you right when you're tense, barely alive, and really trigger happy.

I nearly killed the only NPC in the game that can cure curses at one point. Dude's sitting in the middle of a dungeon with menacing looking robes, surrounded by ghosts, looking like he's going to start hurling fireballs at you if you get close. (Also, I did kill the same guy Sully killed.

I mean, he looks exactly like the monsters you may have spent the last half hour fighting!

)

I'm looking forward to doing an NG+ run, trying to make good on all the side events i've fucked up in this NG playthrough.

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Seriously, don't attack things unless you're absolutely certain they're hostile. This game just loves to throw valuable non-hostile NPC's at you right when you're tense, barely alive, and really trigger happy.

Oh I didn't even try to attack him, just squeezed R2 by accident. I've not used my Demon'sSoulsStation 3 in about 3 months.

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So I've been following the conversation here, and reading reviews, and reading them again, and watching video reviews (which I never do) and I just bought the game.

Looking forward to it, though I never got all that far in Demon's Souls. Let's see if I will actually enjoy this! If it really is HARDER than Demon's Souls..... Well I don't know. We'll see!

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If it really is HARDER than Demon's Souls..... Well I don't know. We'll see!

Looking past the marketing pitch and reading about what people are actually saying, it might be more accurate to say that it's more balanced than Demon's Souls.

They fixed a lot of exploits in the design, plugged a lot of holes in the game mechanics, but there's also a lot of things that are purposefully a bit more forgiving. (It doesn't, for example, become harder when you die. The world tendency system is gone. You also don't lose half of your health bar when you die, the differences between human and hollow states are less pronounced than the Demon's Souls analogue. Even just a lot of general things too. Armor is apparently far more useful and shields can now block a much greater majority of enemy attacks, etc.)

It's still absolutely a really brutal game that has induced bouts of swearing in me, but i also definitely don't think any of it is especially fucked.

I mean, you can play like a reckless lunatic, you can end up in a nearly unwinnable state, but it would take some blind effort to end up there. It your game stalls out like that, if you really hit a brick wall, it would pretty much have to be your own fault. Learn how the game works, make deliberate and cautious progress, be smart about your resources.

It is a game that assumes the player is smart.

I like that, there's not enough of that.

Randomness -

I was playing earlier and realized that every time somebody views one of your guide messages, you magically get an extra estus flask beamed to you as you play. (I think you also get a free humanity if they upvote one of your guide messages, i'm less sure about this one though.) I also realized that you can only place so many messages before new ones start overwriting your oldest ones, and instead of me manually going and deleting the ones that were not performing for me, i ended up accidentally erasing some of my upvoted messages that were getting me lots of bonuses. Boo.

I already understood most of the mechanics and stats in the game, but this detail had eluded me. (I never really clued into why i would be exploring and suddenly have one estus flask over my normal limit for the bonfire i had been at.)

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Randomness -

I was playing earlier and realized that every time somebody views one of your guide messages, you magically get an extra estus flask beamed to you as you play. (I think you also get a free humanity if they upvote one of your guide messages, i'm less sure about this one though.) I also realized that you can only place so many messages before new ones start overwriting your oldest ones, and instead of me manually going and deleting the ones that were not performing for me, i ended up accidentally erasing some of my upvoted messages that were getting me lots of bonuses. Boo.

I already understood most of the mechanics and stats in the game, but this detail had eluded me. (I never really clued into why i would be exploring and suddenly have one estus flask over my normal limit for the bonfire i had been at.)

Actually I think the extra estus flask might be when someone in another world uses humanity to kindle the bonfire you're using. I had heard that before. Of course it's possible both systems exist - but if I remember rightly having your message uprated in Demon's Souls would give you a small heal, so it's possible that is still the way of things in Dark.

Moral of the story is there are a lot of weird online mechanics that are even more inscrutable than the general gameplay mechanics. I've thought a little about whether Dark Souls' refusal to explain much of its design is a good or a bad thing, but you can't argue that it is a rather unique and strange thing. Its online systems are perhaps its most unique and innovative features, and yet they're almost never mentioned in marketing and are barely acknowledged by the game itself until they actually happen in front of you. What western developer/publisher would keep so utterly silent on such a big selling point? Bizarre.

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So I didn't manage to pick up a copy after work last Friday and instead ordered it off Amazon. I've been averting my eyes from the conversation since but today it finally arrived. Yeah!

Preparing to die as I type. Preparation involves a nice hot cup of tea and a biscuit of course.

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Looking past the marketing pitch and reading about what people are actually saying, it might be more accurate to say that it's more balanced than Demon's Souls.

Yup, Kevin Van Ord was pushing that idea quite hard. I must say, that sounds very encouraging. The original Demon's Souls didn't feel crazy unbalanced to me, but early on I got to a point where I really just didn't want to keep trying anymore.

I got the game yesterday, and am hoping to get my lectures written in time today to get started this evening. Really, what most excited me and finally motivated me to buy it was this idea of exploring the world. Also, gear seems more important this time? Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention in Demon's Souls or didn't really get far enough.

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My rental copy finally arrived today and I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot so far. Some of the tension is actually quite enjoyable. I'm desperate to get past this particular black knight, though, and it's really not working out for me. I know I should probably just accept it and move on, but there's something that looks really shiny past him and I'm starting to consider weird dodging runs to try to get past him, get the thing and then get back to somewhere where if he manages to kill me, at least I'll be able to recover my souls.

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My rental copy finally arrived today and I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot so far. Some of the tension is actually quite enjoyable. I'm desperate to get past this particular black knight, though, and it's really not working out for me. I know I should probably just accept it and move on, but there's something that looks really shiny past him and I'm starting to consider weird dodging runs to try to get past him, get the thing and then get back to somewhere where if he manages to kill me, at least I'll be able to recover my souls.

Ok, pretty excited about finally getting started later now. This reminds of me of a very similar encounter very early on in Demon's Souls.

I completely wimped out.

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I actually eventually managed to defeat him! Required a combination of firebombs and making my weapon do lightning damage and kiting him like a crazy person and abusing the spear's long reach. When I killed him I actually cheered, which finally gave me an insight into why so many people enjoy it.

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Ok, pretty excited about finally getting started later now. This reminds of me of a very similar encounter very early on in Demon's Souls.

I completely wimped out.

Ha, I know EXACTLY what your talking about, it's that's the farthest I have ever gotten in Demon Souls because I'm a wuss that wants a less repetitive game after I die a gazillion times.

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Yup, Kevin Van Ord was pushing that idea quite hard. I must say, that sounds very encouraging. The original Demon's Souls didn't feel crazy unbalanced to me, but early on I got to a point where I really just didn't want to keep trying anymore.

You're more or less on a rail until you ring the first bell, not that the world is artificially closed off to you, that's really just the only task you could reasonably accomplish as a starter character. After doing that, you have many options for where you could go and what you can do. If something seems too hard, backpedal out of that situation and go find some other location to explore for a while.

I got the game yesterday, and am hoping to get my lectures written in time today to get started this evening. Really, what most excited me and finally motivated me to buy it was this idea of exploring the world. Also, gear seems more important this time? Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention in Demon's Souls or didn't really get far enough.

As i understand it, shields and armor have been considerably buffed to make heavy builds much more viable. (If you want to use heavy weapons, pay attention to your poise stat. High poise will let you take hits without being staggered, important for slow high-damage weapons.)

Also, just in general, make sure you're upgrading your weapons and armor. At the disparate ends of the upgrade tree, even a basic starter longsword can become a capable weapon viable for the end-game.

One other general thing relevant to gear, i believe there's actually two thresholds in the encumbrance system, one of which is invisible. If your encumbrance is below half of your total, you're a fast character. You can sprint while locked-on, you dodge faster and move faster, i think you even regain stamina faster. That invisible threshold there is what you want to aim for if you want to be fast, equip the best gear you can without going over that. If you're going for a heavy build, just wear the best stuff you can without hitting the limit on your stat sheet. (Raising your endurance raises your encumbrance limit.)

Moral of the story is there are a lot of weird online mechanics that are even more inscrutable than the general gameplay mechanics. I've thought a little about whether Dark Souls' refusal to explain much of its design is a good or a bad thing, but you can't argue that it is a rather unique and strange thing. Its online systems are perhaps its most unique and innovative features, and yet they're almost never mentioned in marketing and are barely acknowledged by the game itself until they actually happen in front of you. What western developer/publisher would keep so utterly silent on such a big selling point? Bizarre.

This is definitely a From Software kind of thing, nothing is ever explained, the player is never pushed in the right direction. It's the sort of mentality that led to Chromehounds being reviewed by many publications as a single-player game. (Which is a TRAGEDY, the solo in that game was a literal tutorial for an incredibly vast faction-based multiplayer metagame.)

Man, i really miss Chromehounds, boo-hiss at Sega for shutting down the server for that game. Really thrilled to see Armored Core 5 being kind of a spiritual successor though, bringing back a lot of that factional metagame stuff.

My rental copy finally arrived today and I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot so far. Some of the tension is actually quite enjoyable. I'm desperate to get past this particular black knight, though, and it's really not working out for me. I know I should probably just accept it and move on, but there's something that looks really shiny past him and I'm starting to consider weird dodging runs to try to get past him, get the thing and then get back to somewhere where if he manages to kill me, at least I'll be able to recover my souls.

The game will throw at you a lot of enemies you are simply not ready to face. Those black knights, when you come across them early in the game, are harder than the bosses you will fight. Owing to the open-ended nature of the game world, you can always come back later and take another crack at them once you've leveled up some.

Edited by Sno

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