Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

[Gormongous]

What a crazy afternoon.

 

So yeah, I beat the Capra Demon on the fourth try. First death, I took a bite of my sandwich because I forgot how quickly you traverse fog and didn't look up in time. Second death, I couldn't find my bloodstain and got trapped in the back of the room. Third death, I got him down to maybe one hit and stopped playing properly in celebration. Finally, smooth as butter. I think my only flaw is that I always seem to dodge left, which was right into his blades sometimes.

 

Then I killed a giant rat and wandered around the sewers for a while, generally having a good time while being nervous as heck. I found the bonfire nearby and went human to kindle it, but was invaded almost immediately. The guy was kind of a dick? I don't know, I've been invaded three times, one of which was like being PK'd by a level 99 in Diablo 2, another of which was a tense fight that ended with a lucky kick by me, and the last of which was this one, where he trapped me in the bonfire room, stood at the end of the long hall, and just shot arrows at me until he apparently got bored, then came in and swung randomly at me until a hit finally connected and I died. I swear I hit him with at least one fireball and a half dozen sword hits, since there were animations and sound effects, but he didn't pause for a moment and generally seemed unafraid of being hurt by me. He didn't even have his shield out or try to block or anything. It was not the way I was thinking to end my night.

 

Anyway, I've had a great time tonight and feel really accomplished with how easy the Capra Demon was and how smart I was in the sewers. I look forward to playing more tomorrow or the day after, although probably as a Hollow.

[Bjorn]

Could have been someone cheating, though that seems unlikely.  A cheater probably wouldn't have wasted time with the bow.  Might have just been shitty lag.  My PvP in DS1 was always a mixed bag.  Either terrific, mystifying or insultingly frustrating because of shit like what you just described.  That said, it was still one of my favorite parts of the game.  You were pulling the slot machine of experience every time you got the invasion notification.

 

Sewer was a fairly popular place for mid-level invaders.  People farm rats for Humanity, and its not uncommon for someone to go Human because they suddenly have a ton.  Its a long enough run to the boss that you have a chance to catch the host before they get there.  There's an NPC phantom down there, somewhere, and if someone was bound and determined to hunt all those, then they would have to go hunting through the sewers as a human.  Finally, the sewers are technically an optional area if you have the Master Key, so you can leave the boss alive for a long time if you want to.  

[Gormongous]

Could have been someone cheating, though that seems unlikely.  A cheater probably wouldn't have wasted time with the bow.  Might have just been shitty lag.  My PvP in DS1 was always a mixed bag.  Either terrific, mystifying or insultingly frustrating because of shit like what you just described.  That said, it was still one of my favorite parts of the game.  You were pulling the slot machine of experience every time you got the invasion notification.

 

I didn't think it was lag, because I was hearing and seeing hits, but it didn't seem to stop him. It was all faintly terrifying, but whatever. I got back the humanity he cost me while killing rats when I went to get the first pyromancer trainer anyway.

 

Okay, I have an actual Dark Souls theory question. I've been using the Drake Sword since... well, forever. I have a Claymore I'm upgrading on the side and since I found the Large Ember to ascend it, I figured I'd give it a spin. Wow, it is so much more effective at +6 than the Drake Sword. I figured, since it had a damage of 156 and the Drake Sword had a damage of 200, I'd need to hang onto the latter for a few more levels, but that is definitely not the case. Is it just because of the strength bonus? Do I have to equip an item and then look at my character sheet to know if an item that's weaker on paper is actually better in practice?

[osmosisch]

Yeah, the scaling is coming into effect there. The claymore scales with both Str and Dex at C (this type of split scaling is comonly called 'quality'). You don't get to see the result of this scaling until you try to equip the weapon. There's several views you can switch to when switching equipment that will show you the effects on your stats.

[Gormongous]

It's because of how damage and resistance interact.

The drake sword's damage is split between fire and physical. That means that any enemy you hit with it gets to apply both their physical and their fire defence against it, making the overall damage probably lower unless the enemy is weak to fire.

 

Interesting! So, in this game, is resistance a base number that gets subtracted from damage, in which case a dual-damage weapon would have two different numbers subtracted from it and almost always be less damage overall than a single type? I'd figured resistance subtracted a percentage of total damage, which wouldn't make nearly as much difference as a flat rate.

[osmosisch]

Sorry you caught me before my edit. That post does apply, just not to the drake sword, which does pure pysical but just flat out does not scale.

And yeah, you've got the gist of it, though it's not actually flat reduction. I'm not certain of the numbers, but basically resistances have nonlinear scaling, where the first couple of points take off a lot more damage than further increases.

So, let's say you've got 200 damage incoming. Your resists are 100 physical 20 fire. If the incoming damage is 100% physical you would take (wild guess) 120 damage. Adding 20 points of physical resist would reduce the damage you take to (again wild guess) 110.

Now, if the damage is 50/50 physical/fire you would probably take more to the order of 90 damage, because those first 20 points of fire resist reduce more damage than the 20 extra points of physical in the 100% physical damage example.

[Gormongous]

Sorry you caught me before my edit. That post does apply, just not to the drake sword, which does pure pysical but just flat out does not scale.

 

I guess I've got to sit down with a wiki and learn about weapon scaling. I thought the letter ranking was a ceiling beyond which a weapon couldn't scale, for reasons I can't say, but apparently it's a weird percentage-of-a-percentage thing? Whose job is coming up with arcane RPG systems, anyway? Is it just people who get tired of designing tax forms and writing lateral thinking problems?

[osmosisch]

The letter ranking tells you how strongly a weapon scales, ie. the percentage by which its base damage will be increased by increasing that particular stat. This makes, for example, the Bandit knife a lot better in the lategame than it looks at first glance because its dex scaling goes up to A at +14. That's all one truly needs to know, the rest comes naturally with experimentation.

Above all else I'd advise you to relax about this whole thing and just try every weapon out for a bit to see whether you like the moveset. It's almost impossible to screw up a character in Dark Souls as long as you don't put points in resistance.

As far as I can tell, the reasons Dark Souls' system is rather arcane (with the diminishing returns etc) are firstly to encourage the type of dialogue that's going on in this thread (helpfulness among comparative strangers - a sense of mystery) and secondly to prevent total investment in a particular stat to be completely overpowered (they arguably failed in this respect with Int).

[Gormongous]

Above all else I'd advise you to relax about this whole thing and just try every weapon out for a bit to see whether you like the moveset. It's almost impossible to screw up a character in Dark Souls as long as you don't put points in resistance.

As far as I can tell, the reasons Dark Souls' system is rather arcane (with the diminishing returns etc) are firstly to encourage the type of dialogue that's going on in this thread (helpfulness among comparative strangers - a sense of mystery) and secondly to prevent total investment in a particular stat to be completely overpowered (they arguably failed in this respect with Int).

 

Yeah, I wasn't freaking out and didn't mean to sound like I was. It was more just gentle teasing at a game I'm quickly learning to love.

 

I beat the Gaping Dragon after I spent a couple hours trying to find that phantom invasion Bjorn mentioned. It was a good time but I was also kind of disappointed by how clumsy it was next to the Capra Demon? Whatever, it's done, I'm good, and now I get to see that Blighttown that everyone hates. I also got invaded twice more and aced both guys. I think one guy was trying to have fun and be dramatic, constantly gesturing and running around, but I was so hardened from the fuckfest last night that I just started swinging the moment I saw him and cut him short. This is such an odd game, for sure, but I am digging it a lot.

[Dewar]

Yeah, I wasn't freaking out and didn't mean to sound like I was. It was more just gentle teasing at a game I'm quickly learning to love.

 

I beat the Gaping Dragon after I spent a couple hours trying to find that phantom invasion Bjorn mentioned. It was a good time but I was also kind of disappointed by how clumsy it was next to the Capra Demon? Whatever, it's done, I'm good, and now I get to see that Blighttown that everyone hates. I also got invaded twice more and aced both guys. I think one guy was trying to have fun and be dramatic, constantly gesturing and running around, but I was so hardened from the fuckfest last night that I just started swinging the moment I saw him and cut him short. This is such an odd game, for sure, but I am digging it a lot.

 

Nice. I don't think I ever won in an invasion that wasn't an NPC. You'll find there's a large variety bosses running the gamut from huge and unwieldy to deceptively quick and unpredictable. Depending on your character design, you'll find some bosses super simple and others really challenging, at that will change between playthroughs.

[Gormongous]

I don't think I ever won in an invasion that wasn't an NPC.

 

It's odd, because when I try to prepare for the invasion and use the environment against them, I always die, but every time I've charged them and just gone crazy, I kill them. This might be an example of correlation not being causation.

[Dewar]

I think part of it was my heavy reliance on sorceries, which between lag and rolling I don't think I ever managed to hit anything.

[Bjorn]

Yeah, I wasn't freaking out and didn't mean to sound like I was. It was more just gentle teasing at a game I'm quickly learning to love.

 

I beat the Gaping Dragon after I spent a couple hours trying to find that phantom invasion Bjorn mentioned. It was a good time but I was also kind of disappointed by how clumsy it was next to the Capra Demon? Whatever, it's done, I'm good, and now I get to see that Blighttown that everyone hates. I also got invaded twice more and aced both guys. I think one guy was trying to have fun and be dramatic, constantly gesturing and running around, but I was so hardened from the fuckfest last night that I just started swinging the moment I saw him and cut him short. This is such an odd game, for sure, but I am digging it a lot.

 

Couple of hours?    I hope that's an exaggeration, and I didn't burn a couple of hours of playtime by mentioning that.  He shouldn't be that hard to find, but he will only appear if the area boss is still alive.  So if you killed the boss, then went looking for him, he wouldn't show up.

 

He's actually one of the more interesting invasions, as he shows up in 3 separate locations and has an actual purpose, unlike many of the NPC invaders. 

[Gormongous]

Couple of hours?    I hope that's an exaggeration, and I didn't burn a couple of hours of playtime by mentioning that.  He shouldn't be that hard to find, but he will only appear if the area boss is still alive.  So if you killed the boss, then went looking for him, he wouldn't show up.

 

He's actually one of the more interesting invasions, as he shows up in 3 separate locations and has an actual purpose, unlike many of the NPC invaders. 

 

The two hours were spent on a couple of things, really. I briefly tried to farm large titanite shards to get my Claymore up to +10. I also get lost really easily in the sewers. In the end, I'm pretty sure I killed the Thorn dude, because someone spawned in front of me with the animation that NPC summons get, the message "YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED" popped up, and he got a Claymore through his chest. Fun stuff. What "purpose" does he have, anyway? I'm sure it's not a spoiler.

[Bjorn]

The two hours were spent on a couple of things, really. I briefly tried to farm large titanite shards to get my Claymore up to +10. I also get lost really easily in the sewers. In the end, I'm pretty sure I killed the Thorn dude, because someone spawned in front of me with the animation that NPC summons get, the message "YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED" popped up, and he got a Claymore through his chest. Fun stuff. What "purpose" does he have, anyway? I'm sure it's not a spoiler.

 

It kind of is a spoiler, so I won't be super specific.  He's linked to one of the covenants, and he's invading to further the purpose of that covenant.  So he's really acting like some PC invaders might, if they were focused on ranking up in a covenant.  Whereas a lot of the NPC invaders just seem to be random invasions to add some flavor. 

 

Once you've defeated him all 3 times, his armor set will appear near the covenant leader, which is what really makes it clear what he was doing.

[Griddlelol]

): I want to play!

Great to hear you're making some progress gormoungous! I didn't manage to kill that giant rat so I just ignored it. Might go back to it at some point and smite it for the trouble it gave me.

I spent most of my time playing as a hollow, saving humanity for kindling and thinking that it might be a currency of some kind (which so far isn't true). So I missed out on lost of the invading, which is a shame.

[eot]

You can spend humanity to rank up in some covenants.

[Gormongous]

): I want to play!

Great to hear you're making some progress gormoungous! I didn't manage to kill that giant rat so I just ignored it. Might go back to it at some point and smite it for the trouble it gave me.

 

I honestly had a really unrestful sleep because all I want to do is play the game, but I find it so incredibly stressful. I'm taking a break of a day, at least, because I made it through Blighttown all of yesterday and basically spent the entire time incredibly, uncomfortably angry. Mostly with myself, but mostly with the level. I swept it pretty clean, but I never want to have to come back except on my way to somewhere else, so I pulled up a map and grabbed the couple of chests that I'd missed. Quelaag is waiting for me!

[Bjorn]

One thing about Blighttown, for all the universal hatred it gets, no one will ever forget it. 

[Sno]

I kinda like Blighttown.

[Reyturner]

90% of the Blighttown hate is the crazy performance hits (on console anyways).

The rest is Toxic.

[Griddlelol]

My hate was the camera. Dying from finding blind spots sucks.

[Gormongous]

My main complaint is really just overall design. It's dark and difficult to find your way around. The terrain penalizes exploration even more than Dark Souls is otherwise wont, because you can aggro enemies you can't even see two levels above you and you can't use the camera for situational awareness in the same way to which you've become accustomed. Not yet in this game had I looked at a corpse with an item on it and thought to myself, "I have no idea how I'm supposed to get there," and then just had to wander around killing zombies until I found the magic combination of ladders and ledges. I got used to it by the end and actually like some things in hindsight, especially the fallen pylon and the toxic basin, but I felt the whole time like the level was designed to get me lost and then kill me. I didn't really feel like taking it in stride as much as I have been Dark Souls' other little "fuck you" moments, I don't really know why.

[eot]

The mosquito are the worst part. A lot of weapons can't hit them, they respawn endlessly, mess up your camera and get stuck on geometry.

[Trip Hazard]

I love Blighttown, always having to watch your step and watch your back. Can get a bit annoying if you're being repeatedly toxified and running out of blooming moss, though it tends to force an element of haste in an area that calls for care. Devious level design.

 

Those mosquitos down in the swamp, though, grrrr.