melmer

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

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Yes! I have. I did a dozen duels last night when I got to the mandatory lava area Iron Keep. Really had a lot of fun even though I lost most of them. I felt that Dark Souls adrenaline rush when I see them getting low health. Absolutely loved it. 

Only complaint (because I have to have one!) is that my opponents were switching out gear constantly, while I'm stuck carrying one weapon due to equip load being bullshit. I was rocking a great club, which was hilarious to use as when my opponent made a mistake, I punished them HARD. However being able to switch to a different weapon would have been very useful.

 

So adaptability affects agility which affects iframes which is important for rolling. That's so obtuse! 

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Iframes is probably the most important but adaptability/agility effect a few other things too, for example how quickly you can use consumables. I remember watching videos of someone struggle through the early game because they started with the Bandit class (3 adaptability), so they were chugging potions much slower than they would be in DS1. 

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It was that vague sense of things feeling slightly off which caused a lot of frustration to me in the early game, resulting in lots of easily-avoidable deaths. When my adaptability was at 20, I was totally comfortable with it.

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I beat the three lanky knights (can't remember their actual names) in the Lost Bastille on my first try, which I'm pretty chuffed about. I played DS1 earlier this year but didn't finish it because of how it dragged on and the boss battles became less and less engaging. I think I stopped some time after I beat Nito. I'm enjoying DS2 so far (7 hours in) but that might change.

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I did some more PvP. Damn is it hard to get out of the habit of holding my shield up constantly. Got beaten by a lot of people who were using the guard break attack thanks to my PvE habits.

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I did some more PvP. Damn is it hard to get out of the habit of holding my shield up constantly. Got beaten by a lot of people who were using the guard break attack thanks to my PvE habits.

 

I eventually gave up on shields in PvP.  There are certainly ways to use them, but (as you discovered), you have to approach it completely differently.

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The guard break is usually pretty telegraphed tho isn't it? So you can roll once you see it coming and punish... I don't successfully PVP much so don't listen to me.  :getmecoat

 

Speaking of frustrating PvP: in Drangleic Castle

The looking glass knight started summoning human invaders (guess he always does that but I lucked out in my NG playthrough) and I just did not know how to deal at all. He covers so much ground that focusing on an actually challenging human opponent + him feels next to impossible. I got more frustrated than I've been with DS2 in a while after losing multiple times to that nonsense

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The guard break is usually pretty telegraphed tho isn't it? So you can roll once you see it coming and punish... I don't successfully PVP much so don't listen to me.  :getmecoat

 

Speaking of frustrating PvP: in Drangleic Castle

The looking glass knight started summoning human invaders (guess he always does that but I lucked out in my NG playthrough) and I just did not know how to deal at all. He covers so much ground that focusing on an actually challenging human opponent + him feels next to impossible. I got more frustrated than I've been with DS2 in a while after losing multiple times to that nonsense

 

About your spoiler

 

My understanding is that drawing a human opponent on NG is much, much, much less likely than drawing one on NG+. You can also stagger him out of the summoning animation, stopping the summon, with fast attacks (fast melee weapons or certain spells).

 

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I did some more PvP. Damn is it hard to get out of the habit of holding my shield up constantly. Got beaten by a lot of people who were using the guard break attack thanks to my PvE habits.

I eventually gave up on shields in PvP.  There are certainly ways to use them, but (as you discovered), you have to approach it completely differently.

The guard break is usually pretty telegraphed tho isn't it? So you can roll once you see it coming and punish... I don't successfully PVP much so don't listen to me.  :getmecoat

 

The only reason I paired a Tower Shield with my Greatsword in my strength build was to make invaders look at me and think of me as an inexperienced newbie with poor equipment management who's going to keep his shield up too much. Then they start fishing for backstabs and I get at least half their health with the shield-bash AoE. It was a nice trick to have up my sleeve, but yeah, I barely use my shield otherwise.

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Actually, I kinda lied with what I said about shields and PvP.  I did continue to carry shields on me, but strictly to use against magic. 

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The guard break is usually pretty telegraphed tho isn't it? So you can roll once you see it coming and punish... I don't successfully PVP much so don't listen to me.  :getmecoat

  

It is, it's really obvious. The difficulty is getting over a habit ingrained from like 100 hours of playing PvE. 

 

I managed a parry in PvP last night. I was super happy about who I did it to. This jackass jumped me, flinging lightning bolts while I was still fighting some enemies. When he finally came close I took him down with a parry. Probably pure luck, but felt real good.

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Shit. I think I'm starting to burn out on this game already (10 hours in). I just beat 3 bosses in less than 2 hours and they were all really bland. Also the level design is starting to really grate on me with how predictable the "surprises" are and the formula of walk this way for boss or this way for optional stuff find key or open door for shortcut/item room. I liked invasions when I played Dark Souls 1 but in 2 they seem like they've made them specifically for people who like PvP so I just get wrecked every time and the lag seems way worse.

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OK I think I'm back in! I'm at a point where I have three different areas to go to and the atmosphere of the last one was great. The Gutter seems pretty eerie and it reminds me of Blighttown which was my second favorite zone in DS1 even with the fps drops, except this place is dark as shit so I might actually have to use my torch for once (I have over an hour of juice on that thing).

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Definitely Sen's Fortress. The traps, first encounter with a mimic. I really liked how the environment was an enemy but not like other zones where the fear of falling off things or poison pits is pretty common. The boss fight was not great if you killed the giant throwing the bombs but it wasn't bad either. My favorite boss fight in DS1 was the gargoyles. The different stages of it, the move set of the gargoyles, using the environment to your advantage(the slanted roof), the threat of falling off. Just great.

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Now that all the DLC is out, I've been thinking about playing through this again. Did they ever fix the 60 fps durability bug on PC?

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Now that all the DLC is out, I've been thinking about playing through this again. Did they ever fix the 60 fps durability bug on PC?

Not that I've seen.. and they've recently released a couple of patches. They do a lot of fixes and equipment tweaks, but they don't seem to acknowledge the bug.

 

For what it's worth, I'm hitting 45-60fps and haven't had the issue. It seems to occur most frequently in mob fights, so maybe my cowardice saves my weapons. I almost never get an At Risk alert, unless I'm doing a run through a whole area and don't stop at bonfires.

 

You could tweak it to limit framerate, or just add some graphics patches to make it prettier and slower. It's tough to depart from the over 30 fps rates after you're used to it, though.

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Weapon degradation probably isn't as noticeable if you never played a console version to see the difference (it's huge).  I only had serious issues with it with whips, particularly the Old Whip, which is already made of tissue paper to begin with.

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I was having pretty significant durability problems for the first quarter of the game or so. I forget what weapons I was using at the time. I definitely noticed that Rapiers break way too quickly to be of use.

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