Sully907

Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

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I can't get this game out of my head, just finished a second playthrough and I think I'm going to try a SL1 run as well. One thing I love about it is that it knows so well what it is, and what it isn't. In some other developer's version of Dark Souls, Sen's Fortress would've been an elaborate puzzle level. There is a noise / aggro range mechanic, but they never formalize it or make it mandatory with a stealth level. Is it weird to praise a game for what it isn't? I just find it impressive that they never* resort to gimmicks.

 

*Bed of Chaos, but they ran out of time so whatever.

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Together with Osmosisch, I defeated Manus this evening, and almost slayed Kalameet, and now I won't be able to sleep at all tonight. My face is still just flush with excitement. Damn you.

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I've done some stuff out of order here and there since I skipped the Capra Demon, but I guess I'm supposed to be going to blight town now. I feel like I've made a ton of progress, but I guess I'm only a 1/3 of the way through the game?

 

Edit: I guess I've done a good section of the Darkroot areas and the Valley of Drakes, which explains why I've taken so long to get only a few steps into the thing. I guess I should try to take on the Capra Demon and get to the depths again.

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It depends on your starting gift mainly. If you have the skeleton key you can take some alternate routes, but otherwise yeah you need to head through the depths into blighttown.

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I actually made it to Blight Town through Valley of Drakes, but I got really deep into there from that entrance without a bonfire, so I chickened out to keep my souls. I had no idea until a few days ago taking a quick glance at the recomended path that the gardens were so far ahead of the curve. Yay for Great Heavy Soul Arrow I guess.

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Holy shit, so that means you went blacksmith -> darkroot -> drakes -> blighttown. A tough route! A lot of upcoming stuff will be easy by comparison I think.

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Indeed, I have three different versions of the magic arrow, so I was cheesing the drakes and the big angry suits of armor pretty hard. I also killed the butterfly,despite being weak enough that one hit did me in every time.

 

Last night, I finally killed the Capra demon. I think that might have been the hardest boss fight so far for me, just because of the tight space you have to work with. The Depths has been pretty easy compared to that, for sure. My problem is once I hit about 10k in souls I chicken out and back my way out of the area. Bonfires are pretty scarce in these areas.

 

Edit: It's especially annoying going into the Depths without the Firelink Shrine bonfire.

 

Edit 2: Dang it, the bonfire was right there behind a locked door that I now have the key for. Oh well, at least it'll be easy peasy tonight.

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Man, such a good game. Reading stories like yours brings up such intricate memories and details. No other game series does sense of place so right.

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You'll love this. I never found the path down to the lower area with the mute lady at the Firelink shrine, so I missed out on the sun medal that you get from releasing the guy up in the chuch, and was completely mistified when the Firelink shrine stopped working. The fact that this triggered because I went into the blight so early is really messing up my game right now.  I also missed talking to the head cleric lady because everyone told me not to approach her looking like I did, so I had to run back to the Blacksmith to stop at a bonfire and get turned back to human. She was gone before I got back. Stupid Lautrec.

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Has anyone else attempted/completed a soul level 1 run? I have a save sitting at the bonfire just before that fucking crystal place with Seath the Scaleless and I've just about given up. The lack of health doesn't bother me as much as the lack of stamina. I can cheese most stuff with either my ridiculously upgraded starter axe or massive array of pyromancy (having nothing else to spend souls on simplifies things, at least), but having such a low stamina pool means you have to be ridiculously conservative with your blocking/dodging, especially against bosses. I'm trying not to think too hard about tackling places like Tomb of Giants or Lost Izalith (fuck the dragon butts, I'm farming humanity for the shortcut). Then there's the Abyss stuff which will be all new to me. I don't want to stop playing until I've at least experienced that stuff, but I'm also far too stubborn to abandon SL1 and just turn it into a normal run.

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The Lost Izalith dragon butts are a non-issue these days thankfully. Their aggro radius is essentially zero since the Prepare to Die patch.

 

Also holy shit Dewar, that's amazing :D

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I beat the boss of the Depths twice yesterday. I threw down a summoning sign and went in as a shade the first time. I felt bad because I was kinda getting in the way on the way to the boss, but I proved my worth when we got there by doing about 3/4 of the damage in the final fight. I also got to see that there was an NPC summon in the area. Second time through (this time in a real body) I summoned both another Player and an NPC. We trashed the boss pretty dang quick.

 

I'm getting comfortable running around as a human now, despite the occasional invasions which are basically instant death. So far, I've been invaded 4 times and lost each, though one of those times the red shade was nice enough to drop ten titanite, let me pick them up, then stabbed me when I was waving thanks. It was a net gain at least.

 

Edit: After hearing how easy it is to miss the covenants, I decided to look at a wiki and see what they are. I'm really sad that none of them will really benefit my sorcerer/rapier playstyle very much, but it is making me kinda want to start again as a Faith character. It seems almost unfair how many perks they can get.

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I'd say stick with your character. My first character was a paladin type dealie with some faith spells and I never felt like the covenants were really necessary, more circumstantial. Besides that, faith spells tend to make the game a little more manageable and predictable, which is great if you're having trouble, but I wouldn't say it's a really "fun" playstyle in and of itself unless you enjoy being very defensive.

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Question guys. My friend is utterly shit at this, so I was going to coop in with the mod and help. I'm 20 and he is 8. Does this mean he can't see my signs? We started new character but gave up when I realised I needed to get to the guy on the dragon bridge to get some soapstone. Is this the only way we can work it?

Also, how long does a summoning last! Can we keep playing together as long as we want. I know this isn't really in the spirit of the game. But I'd like to show him more of the amazing sights!

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Check this out!  :tup:  If you're playing on the PC, definitely use DSCfix (if you're not already), as it makes it a ton easier. 

 

You need do need soapstone to put your sign down. The host needs to be human in order to see the summon signs. You can only summon people to help you in an area where you have not yet defeated the boss. They stay summoned until the area boss is killed, they die, or you die. Hope that helps!

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Awesome Lu, thank. Is the boss live/dead dependent on the host? Also, is there a boss in fire link or isn't a free area?

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Yes, it's dependent on the host and I don't think you can summon in the fire link area, but I'm not sure about that.

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It occurs to me that of all the cryptic things in Dark Souls, the way the multiplayer/co-op functions is probably the most egregious.

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I think that's intentional. They really don't want you to know what exactly is going to happen when you touch a summon sign. I kinda like it, or I would if it didn't fail so much. I've finally gotten to the level of confidence in my abilities that I walk around as human most of the time, with 5 or so Humanity with me. It's an interesting surge of adrenaline when you get the invasion message, and I had a lot of fun assisting another player to kill the boss of the depths. I'm going to join the Sun covenant as soon as I score a couple more co-op boss kills and find my way to the not-so-easy to get to altar.

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Hmm, beat Quellag twice, once as a phantom and once for real. Finally get to enhance my Estus flask.... and I seem to be missing two Fire Keeper souls, one of which is the one I need to start the Firelink shrine back up. I guess I'm going without this game. I don't know where they would have gone.

>Edit: Nevermind, I guess you don't get her soul until I kill Lautrec.

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I cheesed the big dragon and got to the Sun Altar today. I also found the guy who makes magic weapons, and upgraded my Estoc to a Magic +4 weapon through judicious farming in the Depths. Finally, I made it all the way through New Londo right to the gate where you can lower the water, but since I don't have the Lord Vessel yet, I can't get the key apparently.

 

I also died twice in a row to ghosts, losing the 5 humanity I had been walking around with. Thankfully, I have 20 humanity items stored up from running through the Depths repeatedly, so I can afford the loss.

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