melmer

Dark Souls 2 (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor))

Recommended Posts

Edit: Anywhere else I can see those patch notes? Reddit is blocked at work.

 

 Reddit had better formatting than the official notes, but you can see the official ones here.

 

Not a fan of weapon balance changes for games like Dark Souls when so much of the experience is mining information and trying out combos. Now do I have to sit down and try every combo I've used all over again?

 

You could make an argument that there should be separate balance changes for PvP vs PvE, but that would get super unwieldy.  The balance changes need to happen for PvP, where certain top tier weapons or combos emerge that can crush most of their competition.  Like I tried the dual Helix Halberd build weeks before it caught on with the wider community, and it was god mode.  My win rate in PvP jumped up to 90+ percent from about 50 percent with any other build.  Buffed, I was tearing through some bosses in two stamina bars.  I had to stop using them because they were so grossly overpowered.

 

I was passingly familiar with every single weapon and had deep knowledge of several dozen weapons.  There are weapons that I thematically liked, but were just too underwhelming to use extensively.  Looks like some of those are going to be better now.  If you're a new player, nothing has changed, this is the world you are entering, you'll just be learning like normal.  If you're an existing player, maybe there are things you tried that you wished were just a bit more powerful, now you can go back and try again.  This is all just number adjustment, it's not like movesets or combos are changing.  So if you tried a setup that you hated because of the moveset, that's not going to change.  I think it's a positive for new and old players alike. 

 

 

On another note, I stopped playing this after seeing the king for the first time. I kinda know where to go because I read a little, but man they don't give you any direction at all on what to do at that point. I just haven't felt like going back to it since then.

 

Actually, I think they are as clear as they ever are by then.  By the time you've seen the king, you'll be in two states.  Either there are paths you haven't explored, in which case you should do that.  Or there was no where else for you to go that wasn't previously blocked.  But throughout the game, you would have found (this isn't a spoiler for Dewar, more for people who aren't at this point yet): 

 

several giant black doors that prompted you to "Produce the symbol of the king" when you approached them. You get the King's Ring when you find the king. The natural thing to do at that point is to revisit those 3 (I think 3 total) locked doors and see what happens.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, I made that connection, but as much as I like the mysteriousness, I'd like the game to at least directly give me an idea what my general goal is, but not necessarily the steps to get there. Dark Souls 1 did a pretty good job of setting goals. First, the opening tells you to ring the two bells, then you see the fortress gate open so head through there, then talk to the queen and the serpent to gather the four souls, then go through the door that unlocks right in front of you. There were definitely parts of Dark Souls 1 that I didn't know why I was doing things (the conversation with the Queen was especially baffling) but at least I had an idea which direction I was heading.

 

This may be a case where knowing at least a little about the next step is confusing as me more than if I knew nothing....

 

I gather that I need to enter dreams of some sort to reduce the defense of the king so I can kill him, but he doesn't seem all that interested in fighting right now anyway, and nothing in the game has really pointed at what these other areas have to do with the king at all. 

 

Maybe it'll make more sense when I head toward wrapping the game up. First though, I'm going to have to go through all my armor sets over again and see if what I'm wearing is good anymore.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh shit, I didn't mention it in my original post.  The patch doesn't come out until next Friday. 

 

On your spoiler:

 

The King is completely optional fight. There are items that lower his defense, and you do get some of them in the "dreams", but that's not the reason to go there. The goal is actually something else. This is the part where it can get really confusing.   

 

Your armor is probably fine.  It looks like they are nerfing the strongest armors, but leaving everything else alone  I would guess the strongest are still going to be really good, just not as good.  There have been setups (combos of rings, spells and armor) in PvP that essentially let you cut physical damage to a tiny fraction.  It looks like they are trying to cut down on that without nerfing any one thing into the ground.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Since I'm approaching the end of the game, I went back and read a walkthrough for this chunk of the game (along with a couple of NPC stories I wanted to finish up.) Apparently, I missed a conversation or two, because the walkthrough implies....

 

The queen tells you that you're supposed to get the Ashen Mist Heart, and then the Giants' Souls after. I know she came and talked to me after I got the King ring, but I don't remember her saying anything useful. Oh well, Giant Memories completed, so time to kill the last couple of bosses.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Since I'm approaching the end of the game, I went back and read a walkthrough for this chunk of the game (along with a couple of NPC stories I wanted to finish up.) Apparently, I missed a conversation or two, because the walkthrough implies....

 

The queen tells you that you're supposed to get the Ashen Mist Heart, and then the Giants' Souls after. I know she came and talked to me after I got the King ring, but I don't remember her saying anything useful. Oh well, Giant Memories completed, so time to kill the last couple of bosses.

 

On your spoiler, that's not the queen.  She's the Emerald Herald, who may or may not be the last firekeeper and has a spooooooky, mysterious past.  The queen is the big lady sitting in the throne room.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ah, I guess I was supposed to go back and talk to the queen then. I just watched a youtube video and the Herald just tells you to find the door that opens with the King's ring to head to the far east/ Funnily enough, she specifically says that you are destined to walk those lands "without knowing why," which is just hilarious :)

 

Edit: And past that, the item descriptions kinda hint where to go from there, so I guess I can see the path. I still don't understand what exactly the Giant's Kindship is, but that's another matter.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Giant's Kinship gets into some of the deeper lore.  I don't think any of this would be a spoiler for you at this point, it's all buried somewhere in the world:

 

The Queen is an outsider, from "somewhere else". The King fell in love with her when she arrived, and over time she gained more and more influence over him, eventually convincing him to wage war on the giants. He stole something, what he stole is never clarified. It might be the Throne of Want, or something used to build or power the Throne. Or it could be the Lordvessel, shards of which can be found in the basement of the mansion in Majula, weirdly enough. Or breaking the Lordvessel might be what let the King build the Throne of Want. It was probably just the throne itself though.

But whatever he stole, it was incomplete. It lacked the "key" for it. The Giant's Kinship is the key to unlocking its full potential.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Victory is mine! I manged to clean up all of the NPC quest lines except Pate, because I couldn't be bothered to figure out where I had last talked to those two. Getting Benhart's involved running the Old Giant Lord 4 times using Bonfire Ascetics. I looked down after doing that and realized that I had a half a million souls. If before I was having a hard time finding co-op partners, now it's probably going to be impossible. I don't see myself going back to DS2 anytime soon anyway, so no worries. I also bought every piece of boss armor, and quite a few of the available miracles. If I do decide to move on to NG+, are there any other limited items I should buy before I move on?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Congrats!  If you use spells at all, you could go stock up on the items that restore casts.  If you think you might try a no bonfire run on NG+ (some people prefer to do it on +), buy a ton of repair powders.  Buy all the limited stones the stone lady sells.  But really, it's not that big of a deal.  It doesn't take that long to get really deep into the world in NG+, since you know where everything is.

 

Friday's patch is also widening the summon range, so if you do go back, there will probably be people to summon thanks to that.  And I have yet to have an issue summoning or being summoned because of too high a SM.  My problem was always rushing to develop a new character, and being way too underleveled.  But I took a couple characters up to a fairly high SM in NG and still saw plenty of signs.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had made it high enough in the regular game that there weren't summons at any of the bosses except the boss of the game. I don't know my soul memory, but I was character level 160. Now after doing those Giant Lord runs I'm something crazy like 180-190. I'm high enough level that I honestly don't know what else I would do to level up. I'm pretty happy with all my stats at the moment. NG+ eases up on those restrictions some, but I was hoping to max out the Sun Bros before I finished up.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, I made that connection, but as much as I like the mysteriousness, I'd like the game to at least directly give me an idea what my general goal is, but not necessarily the steps to get there. Dark Souls 1 did a pretty good job of setting goals. First, the opening tells you to ring the two bells, then you see the fortress gate open so head through there, then talk to the queen and the serpent to gather the four souls, then go through the door that unlocks right in front of you. There were definitely parts of Dark Souls 1 that I didn't know why I was doing things (the conversation with the Queen was especially baffling) but at least I had an idea which direction I was heading.

 

This may be a case where knowing at least a little about the next step is confusing as me more than if I knew nothing....

 

I gather that I need to enter dreams of some sort to reduce the defense of the king so I can kill him, but he doesn't seem all that interested in fighting right now anyway, and nothing in the game has really pointed at what these other areas have to do with the king at all. 

 

Maybe it'll make more sense when I head toward wrapping the game up. First though, I'm going to have to go through all my armor sets over again and see if what I'm wearing is good anymore.

 

I'm only about 6 hours into the game I think, but I've noticed this as well. It's much more difficult to get a sense of what I'm trying to accomplish/where I should be trying to go. Felt like Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were much better at telegraphing that info subconsciously even if they never explicitly told you where you should go.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"Without knowing the reason why" is one of the game's core themes, so I find the vagueness to be forgivable in that sense, though it clearly isn't the most approachable game design.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Trying to compare it to the directionlessness of Dark Souls 1 is difficult. I went into it not knowing a thing except "don't go down at the start." I went into this similarly not knowing much. I know a lot of people in Dark Souls 1 got lost after ringing the first bell, I ended up going a completely different way and skipping the depths entirely because I was scared of the Capra Demon. Still, during that entire time trying to force my way to Blighttown through the back door, it felt like a huge adventure, while this felt kinda like a slog.

 

Now, typing this out, I think I know what the difference is. In Dark Souls 1, I started out lost but the end goal of the game felt like it was getting more focused as I went along. In Dark Souls 2, it feels like it starts to take focus around about the time you get to Drangelic, but then looses focus again and feels lost. I think the drive of "if I keep on going, this will all make sense" is what's missing from Dark Souls 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's an interesting question, I think. Both games start you off with a "quest' - ring two bells/gather four souls. Then there's a bunch of exploration/boss killing while you get that sorted. Both involve regular recrossings of your own path, but in 2's case it's only really by teleporting to Majula constantly rather than finding out how areas interconnect. I wonder whether beginning to understand that interconnectedness leads to a more general feeling of knowledge about the world.

The core paths are structured differently for sure - 1 starts more linear, branches out towards the end and then contracts to a single point again. 2 Begins more diffuse and becomes almost entirely linear after that.

1: 2 bells -> sen's -> Londo -> 4 great souls -> Gwyn

2: 4 great souls -> drangleic -> amana/crypt -> Aldia/Dragon aerie/shrine -> memory -> Nashandra

I think 2's greatest offenses in lack of direction both involve the Ashen Mist Heart. Realising that it interacts with the fallen giants and/or that you need to talk to the Queen to be told about it isn't very obvious. Then, realising that having slain the Giant Lord will add an extra boss to the Throne of Want is also not trivial.

Overall the lack of a Frampt in 2 who is easily available and clearly tells you what to do is probably the largest difference. The Emerald Herald and Ancient Dragon are too cryptic (must be a dragon blood thing) and the Queen too out-of-the-way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So I've been playing this game way more than I ought to be, and I'm finally getting my feet under me at the Iron Keep. Then again, I thought I had my feet under me after I'd navigated No-Man's Wharf successfully, so maybe I just don't have a fix on what this game wants from me. Still, I don't see how I'm ever going to get the fire defense to cross some of these gaps, even with a bunch of gear and rolling through water, and I don't like that the Dull Ember, one of the most important items in the game, takes a jump that I've missed twice. Gripe gripe gripe.

 

I know a lot of my difficulties with this game are my fault. I keep seeing people in plate armor carrying rad Buster-style swords and I'm so jealous, but I committed to a different kind of playstyle, so here I am. It helped a lot to respec my character from a Dex fighter who spends spare points on Int to a Int caster who happens to have a high Dex score, but I don't know how it'll pay off in the long term...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I never bothered with fire def...it's not needed to complete iron keep.  Throw on some nikes and land that jump for the ember!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's nothing particularly interesting in the lava except a pyromancy as I recall. But if you insist, to get the items in the lava you need to get wet (roll through one of the water urns or a pool of water) and cast Flash Sweat. Popping a big lifegem beforehand also helps.

Unmodified fire resistance won't cut it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Something downloaded (about a gig or 2 big) and it opened up the new area,.

in the room after the rotten

but the door is closed. I guess I just have to wait till next week for the damn door to open. :(

 

I retract my excitement.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got a download too even though I had mine set to not update :(

I liked my binoboost

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So has anyone else started in on this DLC?

 

Man it is tough, but mostly in a good way. The one halfway-spoiler I would offer is that it's not too far between where the Rotten was and the first bonfire, just do not engage the dragon unless you are a freaking bawss.

 

I spent like an hour just trying to despawn the first little section o'dudes there after the bonfire. I think this will be fun but I really can just barely hang with my crappy skillz. And for a marker, I'm in NG+, level 210 or so and rocking a FTH/STR build for what it's worth.

 

Good times though! We definitely needed a tough DLC.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I haven't even bought it yet, was debating on just waiting until Episode 2 was out to have more content, but if the difficulty is nice at high, then it might be worth getting now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The environment is pretty awesome, easily one of my favorites from the game - the paths weave around one another a bunch in a way that makes exploration pretty fun, and the art is really cool. Two of the three bosses are utter garbage though, reusing models/mechanics from the rest of the game, and I didn't find the final one very interesting.

 

Overall I've still been enjoying it though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I've given up on DS2. I've managed to get about 90mins of a working controller, but nothing does it any more. I spend another 4 hours today dicking around with different fixes, none of which seem to work.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now