Sully907

Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

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I'm doubtful it'd be possible without the trolls, but I'm confident it won't be with them. Wasting all estus as soon as they respawn.

Also, staying away from all DkS3 footage. Gonna play it anyway.

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Looks like the twitch stream went backwards. They're now at character creation again?

 

*Shrug*

 

Does anyone know how this happened? Did the channel change some parameters and start over? Or did the troll contingent that was trying to quit the game get its way and, subsequently, a new game was selected from the main menu?

 

Edit: I'm inferring from the chat that it was a quit, and the real beauty now is that they're actually stuck in character creation because they're in an advanced customization menu and need a back button to get out. However, it looks like the back button was unbound in order to facilitate rolling. There's literally no escape.

 

5:02 fwjwt: Twitch Plays Dark Souls is the Dark Souls of Twitch Plays

 

Heh.

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There are no secrets left in Dark Souls.  But damn do I love how he talks about game design. 


 

"Well, there aren’t any undiscovered items, or specific bits of gameplay," he says. "But Dark Souls is in some ways an incomplete game, and I like to think that it has been completed by players, by their discoveries, as they moved along. I’d love to say that the nature of this incompleteness was completely deliberate, but it is both deliberate and by accident, in different ways." 

 

Miyazaki reveals that during development he thinks about the different ways that players can enjoy the experience. "I am conscious of that when I make these games: I try to make a game that has beautiful open spaces, gaps, room for players to enjoy it in ways that were not authored," he says. "I never want it to be where you have to follow the rules completely, where you have to do things exactly as the designers intended. 

 

"I like to think that this way of creating – leaving spaces – is satisfying. So if there are incomplete aspects of Dark Souls III, please forgive us. When the player is inside the world of the game, there are various places where they feel they may be able to peek behind the curtain, pry open a window and see beyond."

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Watching Nick & Chris get into Dark Souls 3 on stream and seeing people talk about it on Twitter has made me want to go back to the original and see if I can finish it. I’ve put about 40 hrs in intermittently over about the last two years (I started when it was the free game with Xbox Gold) and I think I’ve made decent progress in that time but I really have no calibration for how many bosses I should have beaten by now, etc. Also, I’ve been doing my best without guides & I think there are still major systems I don’t understand. I would welcome any advice or input veterans have to offer (either in the form of ‘this is how X works’ or ‘Y is something worth figuring out on your own.’


 


One specific thing that I’m wondering about is how best to approach the story of this game. People speak really highly of the environmental storytelling, etc, and I have basically no idea what is going on. I’ve talked to the NPCs I’ve met so far, but even if I hadn’t split my play time up over a couple years, I still don’t feel like I would know even basic things about what’s happening narratively.


 


Anyway, assorted stuff:


 


I started the game as a Pyromancer. Lately I’m using a sword & shield, with very occasional Fireballs and Soul Arrows. My stats / items:


 


Level 42


Vitality 19


Attunement 14


Endurance 17


Strength 22


Dexterity 10


Resistance 17


Intelligence 18


Faith 8


 


Tin Banishment Catalyst


Longsword +5


Grass Crest Shield +2


Tattered Cloth Robe +4


Ring of the Evil Eye


Wolf Ring



 


I’m in Blighttown right now. I made it down to the bottom & attempted Queelag once or twice a while ago, but this time through I’d completely forgotten how to get there so I finally looked at a map and found the closer bonfire.


 


Bosses I’ve beaten:



Taurus Demon - by cheesing him off the bridge pretty much accidentally


Moonlight Butterfly


Capra Demon - with help from another player 


Gaping Dragon


Gargoyles - with help from another player



 


Systems I don’t feel I understand:



Covenants - something to do with PVP I think? I have “Way of White.”


Humanity - I know that I need to be human & not hollow to do multiplayer, but other than using a Humanity item I don’t understand the conditions under which the number ticks up - it seems to happen randomly and infrequently - nor the effect of having more of it (improves item discovery, I think? is this important?)



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Getting the story of the game requires a lot of observation. The best advice is to read the description on every item, and to talk to NPCs again at later times as they might have different things to say depending on where you are in the game. You're not quite to the point where the story starts really kicking off either, so I wouldn't sweat it yet.

 

As for your systems you don't understand:

For covenants, they are mostly multiplayer (both co-op and PvP) focused, but there are some items you can only get by being in certain covenants. I wouldn't worry too much about it unless you get hardcore into multiplayer, then I'd just go read about them all because they're a bit tough to pick up the info for in game.

 

There's really three different things that Humanity can mean, so I'll divide them up to make the separation clear.

Being human (not hollow) - Allows multiplayer interactions besides just reading messages, allows you to kindle bonfires, and increases your item find.

Humanity (the item) - Humanity item on your person that cannot be lost. Use to increase your liquid humanity, the number at the top of your screen, by one.

Humanity (the stat) - Often called your liquid humanity, this is the number at the top of your screen. It is not safe, as you leave your liquid humanity with your souls when you die, and then have to recover them. Combined with being human, each point of liquid humanity ups your curse resistance and item find. Liquid humanity can be gained by using humanity items, or by killing a bunch of enemies, though it is still unclear how many "a bunch" is and what the limits on this are.

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Don't have time for a proper response, but don't put any more points into Resistance. It's a junk stat, and there's no way to respec.

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The reason your hard humanity sometimes ticks up is because there's a hidden kill counter for enemies that were once human, and by killing enough of them you eventually accumulate enough for one humanity (different enemies increment the counter at different speeds). If you pay attention to the soul sucking animation (I think you get what I mean) you can see that when you gain a humanity it looks different, and you can see the humanity sprite being scooped up :)

You can gain a max of 10 in each area I believe, and only before killing the boss. You could say it's one of the subtle ways the game ties its "story", or maybe world building, to its mechanics. For example, there are certain enemies that don't look human at all but still increment this counter because (in the lore) they were actually human at some point.

It's hard to discuss the storytelling without making an essay out of it, and even harder when you haven't beaten the game. I'd say it's pretty normal to not understand what's going on when you're in the middle of it. It's more something you piece together later, but I would recommend the bonfire side chat podcast. They dissect the entire game, area by area, so it can be fun to listen to after you've gone through a particular part of the game. The subsequent seasons they did weren't as good, but I like the first one.

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Thanks so much, everyone! This is all very helpful and I'm looking forward to getting back into this game and doing my best to be observant.

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Yeah you might want to look up some info on stats. If you're not planning on going deep into sorcery stuff that's really high int, and resistance is, as mentioned, not a great stat. Mostly you want to pick a damage stat (str, dex, int, or fth) and pump the hell out of that up to like 40 where the benefits drop off sharply. You can pump two of those, but instances where you want to invest heavily in more than two are pretty rare -- what you're moving towards now is sort of a barbarian-wizard build, which could work, BUT I should mention that int and faith don't affect pyromancy damage. If you're going to focus on strength, you should try to look for a weapon that scales well off of strength: if you look at the detailed info for weapons in the equipment menu, you can see letter grades for how well they scale off of each stat. Longsword IIRC is like C in str and dex, so only really reaches maximum effectiveness with both those stats pumped. It's good enough for Blighttown, but something you should start to look into.

 

Endurance is basically the best stat in Dark Souls. It both increases your equipment load, which lets you either put on heavier armor or lets you roll better and recover faster, and also boosts your stamina. Once you get your damage up, endurance is top priority. Also, this was a big sticking point for me, you pretty much never want to go above 50% equipment load: The relative load determines how well you can roll -- below 25%, you get a very fast and useful acrobatic roll, above 25% but below 50% you get a slower but serviceable roll, and above 50% you get a 'fat roll' where your guy just slams his bulk into the ground and slowly gets up. You can also technically go over 100%, but your character will just slowly walk around and be unable to roll or run at all. For a first time through, you should probably try to stack as much defense as you can while below 50%.

 

Story-wise, you mostly just want to soak it in. Don't worry too much about the nitty-gritty until you finish the game: By then probably a lot of things will make more sense, and you can do additional research as you like to fill in the gaps.

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Your post sounds overly worried. You are maybe 25% of the way through the game, and you're doing fine. Lots of players get help on the gargoyles and the Capra Demon. (Especially Capra. Fuck that guy and fuck the camera in his arena.) Some more specific help:

 

Covenants: They're basically multiplayer modes grounded in the narrative. Leveling up in covenants can unlock shops that sell special items, but you can absolutely finish the game without messing with one. Just read a wiki if you want more info about them.

 

Story: Try reading item descriptions, but you aren't really far enough to put much together. I didn't really understand the story until I started engaging with community content about it, particularly the Bonfireside Chat podcast mentioned above.

 

Humanity: Sometimes you randomly get one when killing enemies in an area with a boss you haven't beaten. If you find yourself with two, you should go human and kindle a nearby bonfire. If you haven't figured that out you will be so happy when you find out what that does. The item discovery stuff isn't really something you should worry about.

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I'm replaying it too, trying to learn to use a real sword and shield instead of just the bow. Speaking of bows, I got to a big roadblock. The big shitty archers in Anor Londo.

 

One thing I never figured out is how to raise poise? No armor seems to affect it, nor do any stats. Presumably there's a way to get it above 0 eventually.

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I'm replaying it too, trying to learn to use a real sword and shield instead of just the bow. Speaking of bows, I got to a big roadblock. The big shitty archers in Anor Londo.

 

One thing I never figured out is how to raise poise? No armor seems to affect it, nor do any stats. Presumably there's a way to get it above 0 eventually.

Poise is entirely based on the armor you're wearing.  Very light armor (eg. anything that's just cloth) generally confers no poise at all, so you'll probably have to go heavier than whichever pieces you were most likely looking at.

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There is also a specific item that raises it.

The Wolf Ring, it's located in Darkroot Garden

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Yeah poise is the real reason armor is useful: The damage reduction is nice but stacking defense to max makes you take maybe like 1/3rd damage vs being completely naked, so the marginal benefit of full havels over something mid-tier isn't especially worthwhile... but being able to take an enemy's attack without stumbling is SUPER useful.

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Man, I want to repaly Dark Souls...and Demons' Souls.

 

How tough is Demons' Souls to get into? I loved Dark Souls, bounced pretty hard off of two, and loved 3, so I'm feeling a Souls-shaped hole developing in my life. Maybe Demons' Souls is the way to go.

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How tough is Demons' Souls to get into? I loved Dark Souls, bounced pretty hard off of two, and loved 3, so I'm feeling a Souls-shaped hole developing in my life. Maybe Demons' Souls is the way to go.

My intro was at Dark Souls, and a little while ago I bought Demon's Souls to see what it was like. The overall structure is more like DaS2 (hub area and segmented spokes off of it), but an individual area is a bit like DaS or BB in that there's only one "bonfire," and progressing through involves a lot of shortcut-finding. I stopped playing mostly because I got distracted by other, newer games at the time, but I've been thinking about going back.

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Yeah, it's so amusing when people complain about how they have to go to the central hub in DS2 and 3, when in reality DS1 is the outlier in the whole series. 

 

I think the main difference between the nexus and Firelink Shrine is that in DS2 it's an area where you can walk to, and it's one continuous area. Same with 3 - bar firelink shrine - you warp to a large contiguous world map. Bloodborne has the largest similarity (to Demon's souls) in my eyes, with the different graves you have to pray to, and the levels are divided up.

 

Also Demon's souls has a lot less bonfires, and no estus flasks - instead having moss like the blood vials in BB.

 

Man, I want to repaly Dark Souls...and Demons' Souls.

 

Do an SL1 run. It's a lot of fun!

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I really wish I could try Bloodborne, but I don't have a PS4 and I'm not in a financial position where buying a console for one game is a real possibility. But I'll probably end up giving Demons' Souls a shot. It sounds interesting in its differences from Dark Souls. It might even help me understand Dark Souls 2, and possibly change my mind on it.

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As someone who bought a PS4 just for Bloodborne, it's not really worth it. It's a good game, but it feels quite light compared to the other ones and is not as re-playable. I think the people who love the game are the ones for whom the theme really clicks. It's a bummer to me that a lot of the stuff it does best is the new stuff, but the things it messes up are things the other games had already done well.

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Demon's is often delightfully oppressive in a way that exceeds even the other games.  The Tower of Latria is still probably my favorite area to hate of any of the games.  So fucking spooky. 

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As someone who also bought a PS4 for Bloodborne (but also aware that other games down the line were going to be good), it's the better game out of Dark Souls and Bloodborne! By a billions!

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Demons' Souls was tough for me to get into, mainly because I kept moving while playing. So there'd be weeks I didn't play and I forgot everything, requiring me to restart. 

It's simpler than Dark Souls in many ways, and the world design is more like Bloodborne (although better I think, at least more interesting). It also demands you use your shield much more than the other games. 

 

I'd love to do a SL1 run of DS, but I have no way of playing it! I was planning on buying a PS3 at some point so I could play through Demons' and Dark Souls, also so I could give Dragon's Dogma another punt and play a few odd games like Catherine and Binary Domain.

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