Sully907

Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

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Cool, and thanks! 

 

 

Quality? 

 

Weapons have several special upgrade tracks they can go on that do things like add fire damage, holy damage, or change the stat scaling on them. Quality is one of those traits. I wouldn't worry about it yet, it takes a while before you unlock the abilitiy to play with those extra traits.

 

I posted this in the quitter's thread. But my weapon selection for my character (sorcerer/rapier) boiled down to being frustrated that I kept hitting walls when trying to use the long sword and wanting something with a straight jab. Once I had settled on the weapon, I started uping Dex (which also inproves spell casting speed) and kept my eye out for more rapier type weapons. Eventually, I had played enough of the game that I hopped into the wiki and took a lot at the special named rapiers in the game, picked one, and went with that. I think being comfortable with the move set of a weapon is far more important than the actual stats of the weapon, as all the different smithing options in the game make most weapons viable.

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Some of the rapiers deal hilarious amounts of damage when combined with enchanting spells. You give up the kick with the rapiers though, i didn't like that.

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It didn't bother me losing that since it only seemed to work about 1/2 of the time anyway. Something about the way it controls just seemed iffy for me.

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It didn't bother me losing that since it only seemed to work about 1/2 of the time anyway. Something about the way it controls just seemed iffy for me.

 

But you're missing out the fun of kicking that one hollow in New Anor Londo into the sea!

 

Also a really great weapon for STR builds is the club. Fast and with an A for STR scaling.

 

Also the club's really good for SL1 runs, as it's one of the few weapons that you can actually equip.

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I have nothing to back this up, but I believe the reinforced club does less damage but does bleed damage as well? I don't quite remember why I chose the club over the reinforced club.

 

I do think there's something primal and quite brutal about the club, which I enjoy a lot.

 

Edit: Looked it up, and whilst the reinforced club does more damage, it has worse scaling of C to B, instead of A, so it's better for SL1 runs, as the scaling isn't important when you can't level up :/

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Yup, in SL1 runs you stick to elemental weapons which don't scale (except the light crossbow!). The best thing about the RF Club in my opinion is that it's quite effective at staggering enemies. It's just got poor range (it's quite easy to miss because of that), and lacks a proper R2 attack. It's strong, just a bit boring to use.

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Just an odd update that I had to tell someone...

 

I managed to beat the first boss on about my 3rd try. However, despite me feeling like I was doing well, he jumped off the edge. I didn't get a single soul for killing him...well for letting him suicide. Couldn't stop laughing though.

 

To make it even better, the first thing I did when I encountered him was roll off the edge. I was a little bit disappointed I didn't get to kill him normally, I had his attack pattern down and it was merely just time to finish him off.

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The bosses play by the same rules as you! That's one of the great things about the game. You should get the souls though, it might be delayed by 10 or so seconds, but you should get them (he only gives you 3,000 though).

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You're right, I did get the souls, but it wasn't for about a minute. I guess it glitched out or something. *Shrug* 3000 is a lot for the start, I got a couple of soul levels out of him. 

I'm not sure where I should be dumping my points though. I got Str and Dex to 14 as recommended, then have been putting the rest in endurance. 

 

Another question:

 

When blocking, I sometimes take damage despite a 100% phys block shield. Is this to do with having low stamina as I'm getting hit? So like stamina debt being paid by HP. 

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If you lose stamina, I believe you just get a traditional hit stun. I also think it has to do with poise. I can never remember what that does though.

 

What's probably causing you damage is other stat affects that the attack has, like fire or magic. Probably.

 

To be honest, It's been a while since I played dark souls, and might be getting confused with DaS2.

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When blocking, I sometimes take damage despite a 100% phys block shield. Is this to do with having low stamina as I'm getting hit? So like stamina debt being paid by HP. 

Yup, you notice it more with some bosses that have very hard hitting attacks. With normal enemies the bleed over damage is going to be quite small, the dangerous part is that if you don't have enough stamina you also get staggered when you try to block.

 

As for the stats, as long as you do a mix of vit / end / str / dex it's hard to get it wrong. Might not be optimised but it'll be fine. Just take note of which attributes your weapons scale with.

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You're right, I did get the souls, but it wasn't for about a minute. I guess it glitched out or something. *Shrug* 3000 is a lot for the start, I got a couple of soul levels out of him. 

I'm not sure where I should be dumping my points though. I got Str and Dex to 14 as recommended, then have been putting the rest in endurance. 

 

Another question:

 

When blocking, I sometimes take damage despite a 100% phys block shield. Is this to do with having low stamina as I'm getting hit? So like stamina debt being paid by HP.

Just to be complete: the stability stat on a shield tells you what percentage of the damage of an attack will completely be absorbed by the shield. The remainder is then applied to your stamina. If there's then still remaining damage, it will apply to your HP, plus you will be staggered.

This makes stability the most important stat on shields besides having a high block%.

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Thanks again. Learning these mechanics is probably the hardest part, but also the most useful. 

 

I have a couple of more questions if people don't mind:

 

1) Parrying. I'm pretty OK at it, but it feels like chance a lot of the time. I came across a dude below the first boss who is wielding a massive fuck-off mace. I managed to parry him once but any mistake I made left me with zero health. What is the sweet spot? I just can't seem to get it consistently. Also is parrying viable against bosses?

 

2) Bleed damage. I "found" uchigatana (foolishly attacking the merchant in a panic when I saw someone) and looking it up on the wiki it says it adds 33 bleed. What does the "33" mean? Is that 33 damage per X seconds that then adds another 33 per X each time I land a strike? Or is it not 1:1 like that? Does bleed work on bosses and how long does the bleed stack last? DoTs are one of my favourite ways to do anything in RPGs and having a reliable DoT would really go a long way to getting my playstyle down. 

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1) from my recollection, only one boss is parry-able.

 

2) I believe the 33 is the bleed build-up. Every time you hit him, you add 33 bleed to your enemy. So if you hit a guy 3 times they have 99 bleed, assuming they don't have any bleed resistance. when a hit exceeds their bleed threshold, it applies a damage bonus equivalent to something (I think counter? I can't remember). I think in general the bleed threshold is a %, so you add 33% per hit, minus their bleed resistance. After the bonus attack, the enemie's bleed resistance decreases back to 0.

 

It works the same way as poison build-up.

 

I hope that helps, but I'm probably wrong.

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You're right about bleed Ninja, it's not a DoT it's just a chunk of damage. For all but one or two weapons in the game the damage is 30% of the enemy's total health. It does work versus bosses, but it can be quite hard to trigger.

 

1) Parrying. I'm pretty OK at it, but it feels like chance a lot of the time. I came across a dude below the first boss who is wielding a massive fuck-off mace. I managed to parry him once but any mistake I made left me with zero health. What is the sweet spot? I just can't seem to get it consistently. Also is parrying viable against bosses?


The hard part about parrying is that every enemy has its own timing, and some enemies like to delay their attacks to throw you off. That guy you fought does insane damage, so trying to parry him is quite risky. He does telegraph is attacks though so once it clicks you should be able to do it consistently. You want to parry just slightly after his club is over his shoulder and starts tilting forwards. You can keep holding block while you parry, so if you're too late you still block. If your timing is just slightly off there's also something called a partial parry, which doesn't let you riposte but negates most of the damage.

 

For a lot of enemies I like to block until they do the one attack I know I can parry, because some of them are way harder than others. Finally, you can only parry humanoid enemies that are roughly your size.

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Ah, so I can't DoT and turtle against bosses. Still, 30% is a large chunk of health. 

 

I assume the guy at the bottom of the tower is worth killing. He looks it anyway. I managed to get him to 3/4 health by dodging and back stabbing him, but I only did about 30 damage per back stab and eventually I made a mistake and was squished. I thought maybe parrying would be more reliable. 

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Parrying only really becomes viable with lots of practice. But once you're there nothing beats it.

A small note: almost every direct attack is parryable, it's just that only normal-sized humanoids are ripostable. In all other cases you'll do a partial parry.

Partial Parry

When you parry a little too early (i.e. already entered recovery frame) or trying to parry an unparriable attack, you will do a "partial parry". You don't actually parry the attack (no parry SFX), and you don't technically block the attack either (no deflection), but it has several properties:

You still take damage, but the damage is partial. The damage taken is calculated from your weapon's actual blocking abilities divided by 2 (e.g. a partial parry by a Target Shield will give you 39% physical damage reduction instead of the normal 78%).

You don't suffer any kind of block stun, hit stun, or Poise damage.

You can do this to almost all kinds of attack in the game, including projectile attacks. The only exception is grab attacks; you must dodge those.

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For all the hundreds of hours I have put into the 3 Souls games, I am still terrible at Parrying.  Just never got it down.

 

Since you're probably going to favor Dex weapons (based on previous part of the discussion), I'd say just raise your Str when you find a new shield you want to use, otherwise focus on Dex.  And then evenly distributing between Health and Stamina is always a good investment.

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I left work early because of reasons and played some DS. To my amazement I killed the gargoyles on my first go. Could not believe it. Adrenaline normally makes me play worse, but I've definitely got to more of a play style I enjoy, and it's rather conservative.  

 

Now I'm a bit lost as to where to go. 

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Nice, congrats!

 

What starting gift did you take?  You've got a few options now, and you can probably handle at least exploring most of them.  One of the options can be easy to miss.  If you've found any keys and haven't unlocked the matching door, you might look around for that. 

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Explore around, there are multiple paths to take at this point (including the path to the boss that you were having a hard time with before you restarted.)

 

Regarding the guy with the big mace (named Havel the Rock) there are videos on youtube of people killing him strictly using parry and risposte, so it's definitely possible. The thing to keep in mind about that fight is that it is optional, and that you got to it earlier than most because you started with the special key. Following the "regular" path of the game, it would be a few more hours before you came to him, and even then he'd be pretty dang hard.

 

Edit: Oh, posion and toxic do DoT damage to bosses and there are several ways to inflict them, but generally the DoT damage is low and slow enough not to make a difference unless you can get yourself in a cheese position where the boss can't hurt you.

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Edit: Oh, posion and toxic do DoT damage to bosses and there are several ways to inflict them, but generally the DoT damage is low and slow enough not to make a difference unless you can get yourself in a cheese position where the boss can't hurt you.

Like standing outside the boss room :D

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So I did a bit of exploration and managed to kill Havel and grab the cool ring he drops. Also went out and took down the Hydra. I suppose I'm going to keep pushing along that path and see what I find.

 

I took the master key, so I don't know if that makes something more interesting. I'd quite like to steer clear of the boss I was struggling with before because I feel like it'll slow my progress down. I'm actually having a lot of fun so I don't want it to end prematurely in frustration.

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The area down past the Hydra is where I went on my playthrough. Be warned, it isn't easy (but what is in Dark Souls, eh?)

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