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

[Bjorn]

Starting from scratch is my favorite thing to do   I think my favorite part of the game is going from start to around level 100. 

 

And no, you can't respec in Bloodborne.  Which, I'm of two minds.  I like re-speccing because it gives you a ton of flexibility and you can correct for mistakes.  But during DS2's heyday, it was also annoying because it let every fuckwit tryhard respec into whatever the newest OP build was as soon as it was discovered. 

[Dewar]

I enjoy being able to just put points wherever it feels good a the time, then being able to correct later.

[Bjorn]

I finally remembered to copy some of my screenshots from my gaming PC to my office PC.

 

I got to co-op with Jake and Chris!  (I'm guessing not the Thumbs, but still funny to get pulled into this world).   Chris rolled off a ledge and died mere seconds after this shot.  Extra coincidence, this is actually with my character named Bjorn (I always have an axe wielder named Bjorn in any game that allows it). 

 

 

As a co-op partner, we got invaded by someone named FeminismIs****.  I'm guessing the stars aren't a stand in for Good.  I was backing away so I could get a screenshot of his name before beating him senseless....and I walked off a ledge and died.  I've never been angrier about a self-caused death.

 

 

Pickaxe Pete (I can't believe I forgot to shut the hud off, I should go back and take another)

 

 

A perfectly timed 4-man elevator celebration:

 

 

And this is me saying goodbye to my No Man's Wharf tour guide.  Bit of a silent type, but very helpful nonetheless (the torch guy at the beginning of the level won't aggro on you and will actually follow you all the way to the ship)

 

[Reyturner]

Is that torch guy a new addition in the new version? He'd actually have a fun affect on those arm guys. 

 

Tho, that guy screwed me over in the Undead Crypt :x 

 

Friggin' Grave Wardens. I'M NOT WITH HIM!

[Bjorn]

Is that torch guy a new addition in the new version? 

 

That guy screwed me over in the Undead Crypt :x 

 

Friggin' Grave Wardens. I'M NOT WITH HIM!

 

Haha!  The torch guy was always in the Crypt, but he wouldn't follow you.  The torch guy in No Man's Wharf is new, and he's a bit of a setup for the Crypt torch guy much later.  The Wharf one will scare way the freaky arm monsters if you take the time to let him follow you, so you think these passive torch guys are okay.  And of course Crypt torch guy will totally fuck you out of a merchant.  It's a hell of a troll move.

[Gormongous]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK the Frigid Outskirts.  I'd rather go skinny dipping in Blighttown again.  I've tried it 5 times now, twice by myself and three times with NPC help (haven't seen any people to summon).  Either way I can get to the boss, but it's time consuming.  But also either way, even once I'm at the boss, I just get destroyed.  I may need to look up some strategies for it.  Apparently you can also de-spawn the horses if you kill them enough.  If I'm bored and just want to zone out, I might just summon the NPCs and camp the spawn points for awhile. 

 

The Ivory King himself is an interesting fight. I had assumed rescuing the Loyce Knights was kind of optional, but if you're soloing him, not so much.  You need at least 3 of them.  He was one of those weird fights where I died 5 times in a row (twice without even seeing him spawn), then the 6th time it was just a perfect fight and I destroyed him like he weren't nothing at all. 

 

I tried farming the horses out, but it seemed like it was taking forever, and then it didn't matter anyway, because my fresh Greatsword broke shortly after getting the second of the two lions down to half health. I'll also bring my lightning Zweihander next time, but right now I think I've had enough of watching my character walk in one direction in total whiteness for twenty minutes at a time.

 

I really don't get this DLC. I love the level design, the frozen/unfrozen dichotomy, and the other two bosses, especially the Burnt Ivory King, who is great for how his stages progress. On the other hand, the Frigid Outskirts are just a blatant "fuck you" that doesn't encourage any kind of mastery at all (you either get lucky or you spend two or three hours grinding it down) and I just discovered that the Loyce Souls that dropped by the Burnt Loyce Knights during the King's boss fight are something of which I was supposed to be farming fifty (50!) if I wanted the "true" ending to the DLC, technically speaking. It feels like someone designed a great Dark Souls DLC, and then someone else went over it with a "video game bullshit" pass. Cool trek across a windswept field of snow, fighting off demon horses? Drop the visibility to zero and make the horses spawn continually when you're nearby. Awesome multi-man and multi-stage boss fight? Make the first stage drop something unique that needs to be farmed extensively.

[Bjorn]

I was really digging the Ivory King up until the Frigid Outskirts.  Nice interwoven, twisty design.  New puzzle type (with the knight collection and group fight).  Challenging enemies.  Interesting bosses.  Good looking.  And like you said, the idea of the Outskirts is really promising, it's just executed in an annoyingly bullshit way.  What's funny is that area would be crazy good and tense even if you just encountered one or two horses, and put a bonfire at the end.  It would probably be one of the more memorable locations if that were the case. 

 

As for the Loyce Souls, it's...eh.  I don't think you need to get them for anything in the ending to be different.  As far as I know, they only net you a soul and some equipment, and you can get the soul with a long range bow (the lady at the top of the stairs can apparently be shot).  The souls have a much higher drop rate when you are a phantom, so it encourages people to drop signs for that fight.  Which is a good idea!  The same is true of the evil trio in Shulva, you can get some bonus drops from them as a phantom.  I'm just not sure that's clear enough to encourage people to really hang out there and help. 

[Gormongous]

I was really digging the Ivory King up until the Frigid Outskirts.  Nice interwoven, twisty design.  New puzzle type (with the knight collection and group fight).  Challenging enemies.  Interesting bosses.  Good looking.  And like you said, the idea of the Outskirts is really promising, it's just executed in an annoyingly bullshit way.  What's funny is that area would be crazy good and tense even if you just encountered one or two horses, and put a bonfire at the end.  It would probably be one of the more memorable locations if that were the case.

 

Yeah. If I were to guess, there was definitely a mandate at From that each DLC had to have a traversal-and-survival gauntlet in a single bonfire at the beginning encouraging co-op, especially since signs placed outside the DLC entrances by players who don't own the DLC can be seen at the start of each of said gauntlets, but no one actually likes playing them, because they're long, tedious, and prone to sudden host death. I didn't really care with the last two, because fighting three phantoms and fighting a buffed Smelter Demon both weren't really anything to write home about, but here the gauntlet is so creative and the fight itself is pretty interesting, but both are obscured by the deliberate difficulty spike.

 

As for the Loyce Souls, it's...eh.  I don't think you need to get them for anything in the ending to be different.  As far as I know, they only net you a soul and some equipment, and you can get the soul with a long range bow (the lady at the top of the stairs can apparently be shot).  The souls have a much higher drop rate when you are a phantom, so it encourages people to drop signs for that fight.  Which is a good idea!  The same is true of the evil trio in Shulva, you can get some bonus drops from them as a phantom.  I'm just not sure that's clear enough to encourage people to really hang out there and help. 

 

I had a sign up for a long time, maybe an hour, and didn't get summoned. The three Loyce Knights are just so easy to get and their presence doesn't raise the Burnt Loyce King's HP, which is incredibly low going solo, so I think most people rightfully don't want to co-op that fight. It bums me out, because it's a cool locale in which to fight, if nothing else.

[Trip Hazard]

I wanna do some co-op with you guys, but can't afford Sinner right now

[Bjorn]

I wanna do some co-op with you guys, but can't afford Sinner right now

 

Odds favor I'll still have active characters whenever you do get it, since I've been playing Souls games more or less non-stop for like 7 years now. 

 

 

I had a sign up for a long time, maybe an hour, and didn't get summoned. The three Loyce Knights are just so easy to get and their presence doesn't raise the Burnt Loyce King's HP, which is incredibly low going solo, so I think most people rightfully don't want to co-op that fight. It bums me out, because it's a cool locale in which to fight, if nothing else.

 

I'm generally surprised at how much more active the main game is compared to the DLCs.  I don't know what a good soul memory is for them.  I've been in them with as little as 300K and as much as 3ish million, and haven't noticed much difference in how much I get summoned, or how many signs I see.  I don't know if more people are generally higher soul memory than that, or if they just aren't that populated.  I'd love to help people co-op bosses down there, but yeah, I'm not going to kill massive amounts of time waiting.

[Gormongous]

I'm generally surprised at how much more active the main game is compared to the DLCs.  I don't know what a good soul memory is for them.  I've been in them with as little as 300K and as much as 3ish million, and haven't noticed much difference in how much I get summoned, or how many signs I see.  I don't know if more people are generally higher soul memory than that, or if they just aren't that populated.  I'd love to help people co-op bosses down there, but yeah, I'm not going to kill massive amounts of time waiting.

 

Having played through all the DLCs, there seems to be one boss that's incredibly popular, with no correlation to the "main path," and then the other two are dead as can be. In Sunken King it was Elena, in Old Iron King it was Alonne, and in Ivory King it was Aava. I honestly had to stop putting down my sign outside of Aava's fog door, after getting summoned a half-dozen times by different people who all didn't have the Eye of the Priestess but were fine with fighting an invisible boss that could one-shot them anyway.

[Bjorn]

This is my new favorite DS2 video.   Fucking asshole archers.

[Stuart]

This is my new favorite DS2 video.   Fucking asshole archers.

 

 

That's fucking amazing hahah.

[dartmonkey]

Lighting sconces actually serves a purpose in some places (surprising things happen if you light all sconces in at lease a few areas)!

Woah, really? Finding out that lighting all sconces does NOT get you a Zelda-jingle and pat-on-the-back was a big moment for me. What happens now? I'll be disappointed if it's anything but revealing an insanely over-powered enemy that's been hanging unseen on the roof.

[Bjorn]

Woah, really? Finding out that lighting all sconces does NOT get you a Zelda-jingle and pat-on-the-back was a big moment for me. What happens now? I'll be disappointed if it's anything but revealing an insanely over-powered enemy that's been hanging unseen on the roof.

 

There are 4 things that I know about, there may be more:

 

In the gutter, lighting every single sconce spawns a new NPC invader (who apparently drops a rare clothing set)

In the Things Betwixt, lighting all the sconces also spawns a new NPC invader

In Aldia's Keep, lighting all the sconces activates the bone dragon at the entrance (used to activate just when you walked in), which also now gives you the key that opens the door across from the room with the bonfire.  There are 4 sconces, and a Forlorn invader spawns with every single one. 

In the Ivory King DLC, there's a door that opens by lighting 4 sconces

[Dewar]

Also, the game lighting seems a bit darker from what I've seen, meaning the additional light is helpful by itself.

[Bjorn]

Also, the game lighting seems a bit darker from what I've seen, meaning the additional light is helpful by itself.

 

Very, there are quite a few places where a torch is actually useful.  Oh, and a big change is that:

 

spiders are now afraid of light/fire.  So going through the second half of Brightcove, you don't even have to fight the spiders if you don't want to, just light a torch and walk through unmolested. 

[Bjorn]

Well I had a pair of firsts last night, my first hatemail on Steam and my first hacker (the first I've for sure known was a hacker).

 

I was running my archer (literally named Robin Hood) and getting in some Dragonbro fights on the bridge.  I'll admit that bows are incredibly frustrating in PvP if you don't know how to handle them.  But the same is true of a bunch of other weapons.  If you know what you're doing, they aren't any worse than other good weapons.  They're great though because they really fuck with all the habits that people have developed to deal with melee.  You don't roll against a bow, you will get hit 9 times out of 10.  You block and move laterally, circling and closing.  You also stay right the fuck on top of a bow user, give them no space, force them to change weapons.  If you don't do those two things, you're gonna have a bad time. 

 

So, with that context, I got friended and had this lovely little exchange last night.  I bow or wave to everyone I fight, both at the beginning and at the end if I win. I (almost) never taunt. 

 

 

 

And then shortly thereafter, I got invaded by the Hunter of Yarnham.  I was excited!  That sounded like a fun build.  I started to do the prostrate gesture when I saw the name start coming over the bridge, and by the time I saw him it was to late to escape.  He was blue, but the wrong color blue to be in the Blue Covenant, plus I was sin free, so a blue couldn't have invaded me anyways.  He hit me once with a Drakekeeper's Axe and it:

 

1. Killed me from full health (50 Vigor)

2. Broke all my armor and rings

3. Hollowed me by the equivalent of 6 or 7 deaths. 

 

There had been several reports on reddit in the last week of equipment breaking hackers, including some who will kill NPCs.  I went to the BDSM tree and got all my shit fixed for free (thank god that exists), and went back to the bridge out of curiosity.  There were very few signs.  I put one down, and the Hunter of Yarnham summoned me.  BC'd out.  Put down another sign.  Hunter summoned me again.  BC'd out, and decided to go take care of some PvE areas I hadn't finished.  Then I got a message from a friend asking me to help twink some armor down to a lower level character.  I switched to a character with 136K SM in FoFG, and within a few minutes of loading, got invaded by the Hunter of Yarnham here.  WHAT THE FUCK.  Same steam account, according to recently met players.  I alt-F4'd, first time ever doing that in a Souls game.  That was the last time I saw him, but I did find a thread on Steam this morning of several other people reporting being killed by the guy last night. 

[Trip Hazard]

You know, you are kind of a dick tho

(I kid!)

[Deadpan]

"Bow cheesed" makes it sound like you used the gesture excessively. Or got up on some hard to reach ledge and whittled away at them with arrows. Seeing how they summoned you and you even telegraphed the bow theme in advance, how's using a bow in a straight fight any different from using ranged magic though?

 

Bowing after a win is something I never read as gloating, even though I get quite frustrated with invasions. In something like Hearthstone, the "Well played" emote can sound a bit smug, but in Dark Souls there's much more rude options that the actual douches go for.

[Bjorn]

"Bow cheesed" makes it sound like you used the gesture excessively. Or got up on some hard to reach ledge and whittled away at them with arrows. Seeing how they summoned you and you even telegraphed the bow theme in advance, how's using a bow in a straight fight any different from using ranged magic though?

 

Bowing after a win is something I never read as gloating, even though I get quite frustrated with invasions. In something like Hearthstone, the "Well played" emote can sound a bit smug, but in Dark Souls there's much more rude options that the actual douches go for.

 

I realized how confusing the bow vs bow might be after I posted that   I think some asshats just think anything they don't know how to counter is automatically cheesy.  Which, if you surveyed a dozen people, you'd probably eliminate every single weapon class in the game. 

 

I PvP with a bow in a very similar way as I do with a melee weapon, I typically stay at medium to close range (no more than twice the distance a whip can travel) and look for openings or mistakes by the opponent before drawing the string back.  I find that people are much, much, much more likely to Estus when facing a bow, so I need to stay close so I can switch to a melee weapon to punish a heal.  I've now gone through the entire game focusing on a bow, and have killed (almost) every boss with just a bow.  It's taught me a bunch about the timing and windows of using a bow in close range. 

 

I found my win rate to be similar to my win rate with other weapons I'm really good with (about 60-65 percent win rate).  People with daggers destroyed me.  I fought one guy powerstancing a Smelter Sword and Gyrm anvil Hammer who just fucking crushed me (literally) 3 times in a row.  The powerstance L1 with that combo seemed to come out a bit faster than you expect.  Heavy armor was really challenging, as it cut the damage on the bow down a lot more than it does even on melee weapons.  Spell spammers were about 50/50.  I did kill an estus chugging havelmage without ever taking a single hit.  Fight took like 4 minutes.  I was super pleased with that fight

[Deadpan]

I'm writing something about Dark Souls at the moment, so here's a thought I had along the weay about dying in these games.

[Bjorn]

Pickaxe Pete has become King of the Peasants, but elected to turn away from the throne.  Spoilered images are of the new, alternate ending, just because I like seeing my peasant in such an epic, dark fantasy, dramatic setting. 

 

 

 

 

 

He also finally finished off all the DLC bosses last night, killing all three in the Old Iron King and FINALLY BRAVING THE BLIZZARD AND KILLING THOSE FUCKING CATS!  My original goal with this character was to solo every boss with the pickaxe.  I had to fudge with the pickaxe a few times, as it broke on me during fights.  Ultimately I just could not solo 3 DLC bosses though.  Elana, Alonne and the kitties were just too much.  I'm sure I could solo Elana and Alonne with a different build and some more practice, the cats....no.  The only reason I got through them is a guy I summoned for Alonne (and died with) friended me to ask if I needed more help.  I died on that one with just a sliver of Alonne's health left.  I actually killed him on the next run with someone else, but that guy offered to help me with any other bosses, as he was bored and wasn't getting summoned much.  So he helped me with the cats.  The fight against the cats was epic, by far the most challenging co-op fight I've ever had. 

 

I did burn a Brightbug (two, since I died once) ultimately to beat the Fume Knight, the only time I've used that item.  It helps, a ton, pretty significant defense and damage boost.  I was getting soooo close and just needed a bit extra.  Cool Ranch Smelter I didn't find too bad.  I just exhausted the enemies in the first part of the shortcut, and then sprinting through to him was easy.

[Yasawas]

I finished this with my STR (my first ever!) character yesterday, it was mostly fun. I think Forest of Fallen Giants and Shrine of Amana have been made worse but most of the rest of the revised placements and changes were really welcome, even down to little things like not requiring you to keep re-equipping the King's Ring to open a door you'd previously been through. I haven't touched the DLC but I'm going to take a wee break to play something else then come back to experience that for the first time, then NG+ for the platinum again. It's an odd game this - it feels dated already, a lot of the bosses are shit and it's remarkably ugly in places but it's still got something that draws me in.

 

Spoiler tag this if required but I only found ways in to two of the DLC areas - the snow one and the first one they released. How do I obtain access to the other, I must've missed a key item somewhere.

[Bjorn]

Spoiler tag this if required but I only found ways in to two of the DLC areas - the snow one and the first one they released. How do I obtain access to the other, I must've missed a key item somewhere.

 

In SotFS the keys are hidden around the world (in the original version you just got the keys in your inventory when you bought them). The keys are (in case anyone misses them):

Iron King: It's in FoFG in the pit with all the fire salamanders in it. You either need the cat ring or the key you get from Iron Keep to open the door by the Last Giant.

Ivory King: Super easy, just laying on the ground in Drangleic Castle

Sunken King: It's in the small treasure room locked by the Forgotten Key in the pit in Majula.

 

 

 

I'm still messing around with some of my other builds after finally finishing everything with my Peasant.  I respecced my goofy Shield build to try out the Majestic Greastword.  That thing is awesome!  It's Artorias' sword from DS1.  The stat requirements are ridiculous (25/25/20/20), but it's got good damage and a great moveset. You get bonus scaling damage when wielding it left handed.  It gets several unique moves, including a double spin and a crazy jumping somersault flip attack.  Apparently power stancing it has another new move as well, but that's going to take a bit to get my stats there, since I had to gut my stamina and health just to wield it.