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

[Dosed]

Is there an easy way to respec? Or this being Dark Souls is that a silly question? 

[Brannigan]

You need a soul vessel, fairly sure theres one behind a pharros lockstone in lost bastille

[eot]

There's one in the mansion in Majula (in the basement I think). Take it to the ladies in Things Betwixt.

[Bjorn]

Drilling down into stuff like iFrames, the frames per animation and seriously min/maxing stats is not necessary, and in fact I think worrying about that stuff on a first playthrough would be detrimental, because you'll feel like you're missing out on something crucial.  You're not.  This stuff really only matters for high level PvP and going through multiple NG+ cycles.  Even then I'm not sure it's that necessary, but past a certain point I want to completely understand how something is working and not have any ambiguity. 

 

As for your game, what weapons are you using?  That would be super useful to know in regards to your stats.  Are you upgrading your weapons, or hoarding titanite because it seems so rare early on?  On my first playthrough I was terrified to waste titanite for awhile, and so didn't upgrade past +2 on anything until I had killed...like 7 or 8 bosses.  Of course, I had lightning spears to carry me in boss fights.  Upgrade materials do become much more common eventually, and getting a good weapon to +5 or +6 early on can make a world of difference.  If you wanted to respec (you should be to a point where one or two Soul Vessels are available to you), I would shift 11 points out of Endurance into Health and Vitality.  Unless your current preferred weapons require a 20 Dex, or you're powerstancing weapons, I'd drop Dex down to the minimum you need and dump those into Health or Str if you have an A or S scaling Str weapon.  You could also move any of those points into Faith and/or Attunement to have more miracles.  Emit Force and the basic Lightning can carry you though most boss fights through the mid-game. 

[Winnipeg Fats]

I've started dropping one of my white soapstone marks at the start of any really difficult area and spending my first 2-3 runs through the area as a ghost to get a lay of the land.  I think I beat the Smelter Demon three times as a ghost before taking him on myself, and by then I was able to dance around him solo and beat him without much trouble.  It helps that co-op runs are the only way to truly tap into limitless souls.

 

That's been my favourite change that I've noticed from Dark Souls to DS2 is the multiplayer is just way more fun and accessible now.  At least I find that to be the case. It's possible I just wasn't engaging with it enough before.  Like rolling in a team of three when the world leader gets invaded is a LOT of fun.  I also selfishly enjoy being in the rat king covenant and ruining someone's day as they try to get through either of the areas that I've taken on as my own.

 

For my part I am a pure Dex build, around SL120 now.  I'm at work so I'm running from memory but I know that Vit and End are at 20, ADP is at 23 and Attunement is at 13 (2 slots for a couple pyros)  Strength is at 20 and Dex is at 50. My  Agility is at 101 or 102 now.  Oh and the one that lets you carry more... Vitality?  That's at 24 or so.  I'm wearing the full gear for the

headless (bodyless?) dude you meet in the misty woods)

so I'm at about 55% weight.  Using a +10 falchion as a main with a +7 Broadsword as a backup weapon. I also am using a lot of arrows, since archery has become a damaging enterprise for me now.  I do miss being able to pull an arrow back and let my endurance recharge before I shoot.  That's a bit weird and new.

 

So far I haven't needed to bolster my melee with magic, but I've only beaten the 

two dragonriders

in Drangleic castle so far.

[Dosed]

I'm using the Drangeleic Sword with like +1 on it or something, you're right though, I haven't really upgraded it too much out of fear of using up all the shards. Is this weapon worth upgrading? It seems pretty gnarly so far. Can I re use the Soul Vessel to respec again if I mess up, or will I need to find another one? 

[eot]

It's consumed upon use, but there's like half a dozen in the game I think.

[Winnipeg Fats]

I started out hoarding materials, too.  After a while I just said 'fuck it' and decided that I am using this weapon, it's doing well for me, and I know how it works so I'll see it through.  If I find another weapon that scales similarly but starts with greater damage and I like the way it moves then I'll invest in it, but for now I want to maximize my chances for success in the immediate, not worry about finding titanite chunks later.

[Bjorn]

Drangleic Sword is good early, mostly because of it's speed and the relative damage it can do.  Problem is it takes Twinkling Titanite, which will remain rare until about two-thirds of the way through the game.  It takes 15 Twinkling to upgrade it, and it's entirely possible if you missed a few ores that you could reach the end game without finding 15 (there are more than that in a single playthrough with lizards, some are just missable if you're not scouring each area).  If you like it, keep using it, but I'd think about upgrading a regular titanite weapon as a backup, and because it will likely outperform the Drangleic eventually as you'll be able to upgrade it much faster. 

 

There are six Soul Vessels per NG cycle, and the two late game ones are respawnable via Bonfire Ascetic. 

[coaxmetal]

I did it you guys. I beat the hardest/most bullshit boss. And heres how:

 

The boss is Ancient Dragon. Since pretty much anything he dies is in instant kill, and he has one attack that just covers most of the arena in fire, I survived by wearing Gower's ring, and positioning myself with my back exactly to him every time he does that attack, so that the ring absorbed the damage. The timing worked out to be pretty exciting, as the ring broke when he was almost dead, and as we was flying up into the air to use his fire rain attack, which was going to kill me since I didn't have the ring anymore, I finished him off with a great lightning spear. Very satisfying.

 

Then I went and finally beat Vendrick, who was actually a pretty good fight. Much easier. 

 

Now onto NG+. Also check out my cool guy. He's a cool guy http://i6.minus.com/ikAYUIBaSM7es.jpg

[Sno]

Would using multiple weapons be viable for PvP and PvE? Or would it be better to dip my toe into magic?

In much the same way that carrying a few weapons gives you a lot of options in pve, it does the same in pvp. My character has a pretty heavy pyromancer slant, but i don't actually use those spells much in pvp. (Except for when i'm adjusting my build to specifically take advantage of some pvp pyromancer spells like acid surge.)

 

I generally use my mace against dex builds, my halbred against strength builds, and if i can't chase down a wizard with my halbred's two-handed running R1, i break out my crossbow. (Also useful for catching people who flee from a fight to chug estus.)

Being able to throw spells around isn't a requirement for doing pvp. However, if you have low faith/int on your character, be mindful of your elemental resistances. You will definitely want a shield that can block a lot of that damage.

 

 

So somebody final figured out exactly how Agility and rolling works!  Yah!

 

Short version is that 90 and below is like DS1's slow roll, while 100-105 are like DS1's fast roll and 115 is like DS1's ninja flip.  115 takes a massive stat investment to reach.

 

The two biggest breakpoints are probably 100 and 105.   You get 12 iFrames at 100 and 13 at 105.  So there's no need to crank it up to the softcap of 110, unless you're depending super heavily on throwing knives and need the faster animation.

 

The frame duration of a roll and the iframes in the roll are the same regardless of how far you roll.  So it takes the same amount of time to execute a roll at 0 encumbrance as it does 70 percent (25 frames).  You just go farther at 0.

This is interesting, i might respec in light of this. I hit the soft cap for agility with relative ease since i have 32 attunement on top of a sizable adaptability investment.

 

 

Man, reading this thread makes me feel like an idiot when you guys are talking about animation frames. I barely know what half the stats do. I'm mainly going melee so my build looks like this VGR 11, STR 30, END 31, VIT 14, DEX 20, FTH 20. All the the other stats are at the base ones for a Knight class. I don't know if that's any good or not. Is there some way I could be more efficient for a melee build? I've gone for some magic based stuff just because I've heard it's handy to get some ranged damage in boss fights. 

 

I defeated the Ruin Sentinels eventually. I just got some more stamina and whittled them down. I spent about 2 hours consistently failing, turned the game off, came back the next day and downed them first try. Reminds me of raiding on WoW, but in a good way. I went to the Huntsman's Copse, but I can only find the Chariot boss and he's insanely difficult. I've defeated the Lost Sinner and I don't think there's anything else to do in the Sinner's Rise so I'm at a bit of an impasse at the moment. I am enjoying it though even if it is rage inducing some times. 

 

Also, I used my Smelly Twig of Yesterday on a vendor without realising it was a one use item, so I didn't use it on the lady in front of that pully thing in Majula. Whoops. I hope I find another one soon. 

 

You're done with the lost bastille path, pretty much. Lost Sinner was the endpoint. (Have you found belfry luna and fought the bell keepers and the gargoyles?) Regarding the petrification cure, you should find a few more. I know there's one in Harvest Valley beyond Huntsman's Copse. (Not behind the Chariot boss, don't worry. It is a tricky fight, but it's optional.)

About your investment of points, it looks like you might need to focus your build a little more. If you're doing a quality build or just trying to hit equip limits, the 30/20 on str/dex is probably fine, but consider if you're investing points there that you don't need to. (If your weapon has like b scaling for strength and e scaling for dex, you should not be investing in dex.) What kind of magic are you using though? If it's either sorcery or miracles, you only need to invest in one of those, the other is a complete waste. (Pyromancy scales with both, but can go a long time with any stat investment as long as you keep upgrading the flame. Hexs do need an even investment though, since they only scale with the lower stat.)

Don't ignore attunement and adaptability. Attunement gives you more spell slots, faster casting, and eventually more spell charges. Adaptability increases your agility and your status effect resistances.

 

I'd also put more into health, 11 vgr is pretty flimsy.

If you have a Soul Vessel, you can respec by talking to the firekeepers in Things Betwixt. They're pretty rare items though, so think hard about it.

You know, and when you find gear you're pretty sure you're going to stick with, upgrade it quickly. You get way more out of gear than you do out of stats.

 

 

Drilling down into stuff like iFrames, the frames per animation and seriously min/maxing stats is not necessary, and in fact I think worrying about that stuff on a first playthrough would be detrimental, because you'll feel like you're missing out on something crucial.  You're not.  This stuff really only matters for high level PvP and going through multiple NG+ cycles.  Even then I'm not sure it's that necessary, but past a certain point I want to completely understand how something is working and not have any ambiguity.

 

I'd say a general understanding of the systems is valuable at all levels of the game, but yeah, you certainly don't need to sweat the details in NG.

 

 

I did it you guys. I beat the hardest/most bullshit boss. And heres how:

 

The boss is Ancient Dragon. Since pretty much anything he dies is in instant kill, and he has one attack that just covers most of the arena in fire, I survived by wearing Gower's ring, and positioning myself with my back exactly to him every time he does that attack, so that the ring absorbed the damage. The timing worked out to be pretty exciting, as the ring broke when he was almost dead, and as we was flying up into the air to use his fire rain attack, which was going to kill me since I didn't have the ring anymore, I finished him off with a great lightning spear. Very satisfying.

 

Then I went and finally beat Vendrick, who was actually a pretty good fight. Much easier. 

I fought that stupid dragon the hard way!

Relatively, Vendrick's a much better boss fight, but he has pretty exploitable AI and is thus very easy once you have the giants' souls.

[Bjorn]

I made another new character.  I'm fucking addicted to starting over (DS1 was the same, but DS2 has been even worse for me).  Twin Bloodied Whips and twin Channeler's tridents, and hopefully Old Whips for PvP eventually.   After playing around some on my of my established characters, I decided it would probably work if I managed durability.   I don't even want to talk about farming to get this stuff.  Starting over with the Petrified egg a few times to get the first trident, then farming Smooth Stones with the small summoning sign at Heide's Tower to get the second one to drop.  It only takes 3 kills there to be sent home successfully, so you can crank out sessions quick.  Then having to farm the twin whip guys that guard the bridge to Undead Purgatory to get their fucking rare ass whip to drop.  It's arguably the best whip in the game for usability, since the Old Whip has shite durability for use outside of PvP and the Spotted Whip is purely for poison.   I did get one Old Whip during the drops, just need a second one now for PvP. 

 

All I got done last time I played was farming those items.  But the bit I played around once I had them, I'm absolutely loving it, plays a lot different than any of my other builds and looks rad as hell. 

[Dosed]

Sorry to be that guy... but what exactly does "e scaling" mean? I was going to use miracles for ranged attacks. Should I be investing a decent amount of stuff in to magic? Like is it viable to be a heavy melee hitter with a bit of magic to back it up, or at that point should you just go one way or the other? 

[Trip Hazard]

When equipment scales with a certain stat, it improves when you pump points into that stat. If it's 'E' scaling, then the difference is there but not as potent as if it was, say, C scaling. S scaling is the best kind. Bit of a crappy/vague description, but accurate, I think.

[Bjorn]

Sorry to be that guy... but what exactly does "e scaling" mean? I was going to use miracles for ranged attacks. Should I be investing a decent amount of stuff in to magic? Like is it viable to be a heavy melee hitter with a bit of magic to back it up, or at that point should you just go one way or the other? 

 

Weapons gain bonus damage from the stats that they Scale with.  If they scale with a stat, it will have a letter rating under that stat.  Scaling ratings go from good to bad S->A->B->C->D->E.  Weapons with S scaling in a stat gain the greatest benefit the higher the stat goes, weapons with E gain very little benefit from the stat (but more than 0).  When you look at an equipped weapon, it's damage will say something like 100+85.  That +85 is the bonus from Scaling (and the Ring of Blades if you have it equipped).  Strength Scaling is much, much stronger than Dex scaling, but a high Dex gets great poison/bleed bonuses.  If a weapon has D or E scaling (or no scaling), there is almost no benefit to raising the associated stats for it.  In a case like that, you can just have the minimum stats and invest in other stats instead. 

 

The letters basically give you an eyeball estimate of what kind of scaling you can expect.  It is not entirely consistent between weapons.  One weapon's A scaling may give +125 damage, while another one may give +110.  Each letter appears to cover a range, rather than be a fixed point of bonus. 

 

Eventually you will be able to enchant weapons with elemental properties.  If you do this, ignore the letter values.  They become close to meaningless once you infuse something.  You'll just have to try infusing it and see what bonuses you get after the fact.  When infusing, physical damage drops while element damage is added (or increases if it is inherent).  The physical scaling drops MUCH more than the change in scaling would indicate, while for weapons with innate elemental damage, scaling can increase significantly more than you expected. 

 

Magic scaling on Chimes and Staves is a bit different.  The numbers for those items affect the power of spells.  If you're casting lighting spears, the higher the Lightning damage on your chime, the stronger your Lightning bolt is. 

[Sno]

Sorry to be that guy... but what exactly does "e scaling" mean? I was going to use miracles for ranged attacks. Should I be investing a decent amount of stuff in to magic? Like is it viable to be a heavy melee hitter with a bit of magic to back it up, or at that point should you just go one way or the other? 

Scaling is one of the most critical, core systems in Dark Souls 2.

Virtually every piece of gear in the game scales for an additional amount of defense/damage off of your stats. Weapons scale off of either dexterity or strength, armor scales off of your physical defense stat, and spell catalysts all scale from your elemental bonus stats, which are in turn derived from faith/intelligence. (You can see the derived elemental stats on your player status screen. The magic bonus scales off of intelligence, Miracle bonus scales off of faith, Fire bonus scales off of both, and Dark bonus scales off of whichever stat is lower.)

Look at the weapons you're using, the weapons you like most. Meet their base stat requirements for you to equip them, and then focus on either strength or dexterity, whichever those weapons scale more highly with. (The same is true of spell-casting: If you want to use miracles, you want to focus almost entirely on faith. Points in intelligence are more or less wasted on you.)

 

Another quirk of this scaling system is that since it's scaling off of an item's base values, B dex scaling on one weapon can end up offering less than C dex scaling on another stronger weapon. There's also a bit of variance in comparison of equal values, two equivalent weapons can have B scaling of different strength, but that's... That's getting into invisible percentages and that's not worth thinking about too much.

And yes, it's absolutely viable to be a melee heavy hitter with a side of magic. (I'm playing a strength-focused pyromancer.) What gets you into trouble is not knowing what you want to be, and trying to spread stats around evenly.

 

Infusion makes things way more complicated, probably don't worry about it right away. A normal +10 weapon with decent scaling will get you a long, long way and will often outperform infused weapons except for special circumstances. (Again, upgrade your gear if you haven't. You get more out of gear than you do out of stats.)

[Gormongous]

The letters basically give you an eyeball estimate of what kind of scaling you can expect.  It is not entirely consistent between weapons.  One weapon's A scaling may give +125 damage, while another one may give +110.  Each letter appears to cover a range, rather than be a fixed point of bonus. 

 

To be specific, the letter grade for the scaling of a given skill is how much of the weapon's base damage is available to be dealt as bonus damage. E is from 1% to 24%, D is from 25% to 49%, and so on, with A being 100% and up. Hence, a sword that does 100 damage with C scaling has a pool of between 50 and 74 damage available to be dealt as bonus damage. What percentage of that bonus damage "pool" is actually dealt is determined by the relevant skill, with 10 dealing 5% of the pool (that is, between 2.5 and 3.7 in our example) and 40 dealing 85% (that is, between 42.5 and 62.9). It's apparently a logarithmic curve that's different for every skill, but they all have soft caps at 40 or 50, after which each skill point just gives between 0.25% and 0.5% more bonus damage.

 

But that's all meaningless numbers, really. Basically, the letter grade just tells you how high the potential reward for wielding a given weapon with a high or at least higher given skill is. Anything below C probably isn't worth a heavy skill investment, although a weapon with decent (as in C or better) scaling across two skills can be pretty powerful (like the claymore from the first Dark Souls).

[Sno]

Weapons with good base damage and low scaling are usually the prime candidates for infusion, because they simply won't compete with high-scaling weapons in the normal upgrade path.

[Bjorn]

So far, the only things I have really felt were worth infusing have been weapons with existing elemental damages OR you're intending on buffing the weapon with an enchantment on a regular basis, thus driving the elemental damage up even higher, since spell buffs now give also give a percentage bonus based on the base elemental damage.  

[Sno]

I'm thinking about fire infusing my weapons since i have the flame weapon pyromancy now, but i'm not sure about it. The way game calculates defense values, splitting damage usually isn't worth it.

[coaxmetal]

I'm thinking about fire infusing my weapons since i have the flame weapon pyromancy now, but i'm not sure about it. The way game calculates defense values, splitting damage usually isn't worth it.

 

On the contrary, i've found that it is almost always worth it, particularly when combined with the appropriate buff spell, since those are a fixed bonus + a percentage bonus, including pre-existing elemental damage (30% for all of them except MW, GMW, and Resonant Weapon). That said, I generally have builds that have faith/int as well as, or sometimes instead of, str/dex, so I get scaling bonuses on elements (lit scales with fth, magic with int, dark with the lowest of int/faith, fire with a combination of int/fth). I think the [stat] BNS on the stats is what governs elemental damage scaling.

 

And, to go with the earlier mentions of the letter based scaling, as Bjorn said, elemental damage on weapons will scale even if there is no letter for that stat at all. 

[Sno]

When fighting well-armored enemies, splitting your damage with an elemental infusion can just cripple your damage output. (Instead of one strong attack rating being calculated against one defensive value, you're calculating two smaller values against two separate defense values.) Even with augmentation spells having bonuses for stacking with elemental infusions in DS2, it simply doesn't seem like it's worth it in most cases. Or at least isn't worth it in the case of weapons that get a large portion of their damage from scaling bonuses, since you then also have the compounding problem of the infusion degrading scaling. (I went and infused my weapons to test it out and tried killing a few larger enemies in different areas and my damage output was nearly halved despite the attack rating ostensibly being higher.)

And yeah, the derived elemental bonus stats are what actually govern both spell scaling and elemental damage scaling. (Though in the case of elemental damage on weapons, the scaling isn't nearly as strong as str or dex scaling is.) The fire stat scales off of both intelligence and faith, the magic stat scales off of intelligence, lightning scales off of faith, and dark scales off of whichever stat is lower between faith and intelligence.

[Sno]

I joined the Dragon Remnant to do some straight up duelling and found that there's a completely different tone among the players of that covenant relative to the other covenants. People kind of generally hang back and give eachother time to prepare for the fight and do the little bow and then even show eachother enough respect to not constantly be running off trying to heal. It's a nice escape from the opportunistic ganking of mostly everything else.

Pretty sure i ran into my first cheater though, which... Hey, if it took this long, that's not that bad.

I also abandoned my mace for an estoc mainly because the mace just wasn't cutting it in PVP, even though it's certainly a better PVE weapon. The estoc is superb for duelling though, nobody ever gets out of that R1-R1-R2 combo cleanly. It's an incredibly dull moveset otherwise, though.

[Bjorn]

Holy crap I just had the most amazing series of fights in all the hours I have put into any Souls game.

 

I had decided to try out the Dragonslayer Spear, since I've developed a sudden fondness for power stancing spears.  I bought it, respecced to have the stats to use it, upgraded it to +3, and then discovered that you can't infuse it, which means you can't just turn it into a lightning spear (which is what I was expecting to do).  Figured I'd still try it out.  Killed some enemies, it worked, and headed for the Iron Keep Bell Tower for some PvP.  I put on the Covenant ring, stepped into the bell tower killed the witch and first little bell bro, then dropped a summon sign.  Figured one way or another, I'd have some fun. 

 

it was my first time there on this character, so all the unique one time spawns are there (hence the witch at the beginning).  I killed the next little bro, and then got invaded.  I needed to hang back from going any further, lest I aggro greatsword phantom and the one remaining little guy.  The defender comes down to meet me from the roof.  Some spear poking and a couple of lightning strikes from the Dragonslayer spear and I get him down to about a quarter health when the second defender shows up.  With both of them on me, I have to run.  I get around a corner, heal, and discover that the unique red Berserker phantom has also spawned.  I now have berserker, greatsword guy, little guy and both PC guys after me. Cue the Benny Hill theme.

 

FUCK. 

 

I sprint to the ladder to get the high ground, and almost take a face full of Avelyn since I forgot that NPC was on the roof.  I tag him a couple of times before the defenders get up to the roof, then I run again.  Now I've managed to aggro the second greatsword guy by the exit, who climbs up to the roof to join in on the fun. 

 

FUCK. 

 

I drop back down to the main floor, where I manage to get the second defender killed.  One down, original defender to go.  I sprint around some more and end up with both greatsword guys down below with me, so I head back up to the roof.  I finished Avelyn guy, and enough time has passed that another invader has shown up. 

 

FUCK. 

 

I've never spent enough time in a Bell Tower to get 3 invaders.  At this point my Dragonslayer spear is hosed.  I'd used it's special lightning attack multiple times and shredded its durability.  I switch to my pair of Bloodied Whips.  The new invader catches me near the top of the ladder, where I was waiting on the original defender to climb up.  I hadn't realized the new guy had spawned behind me.  I dodge his attack and unleash a pair of L1 combos on him.  He panics, rolls, and sails right off the roof to his death!  Two defenders down!  That didn't take very long  Just the original guy left, still at a third health.  Now he's on the main floor with two greatsword enemies, the berserker and a little dude.  He actually gives me the SunBro sign twice, bows, and then turns his back on me and doesn't move.  Cool!  He's ceded the fight!  I head for the exit to take care of the two little BellBros who are still guarding it.  But the exit is still closed since I never had a chance to ring the bell.  I need to try and sneak around all the enemies to get the bell rung and get out of here.  I drop down, and the original defender is right there on top of me, swinging!  I guess he didn't give up.  I dodge, and a pair of whip combos later he goes down.  Three defenders in a row killed!  I could have left by the front door and called it good now, but I wanted to exit proper like.  Before I can even do anything though, I get summoned to defend the Tower against a trespasser!  I forgot I had the covenant ring on. Wooo!  As long as I win, I'll get my durability back.  I show up, and there's a great fight going on already between two guys.  I've sworn to stop ganking at the bell tower, now I just watch if there is a fight already in progress.  But I did break out my Channeler's Trident and do a cheerleader dance for my fellow BellBro. Ultimately he prevailed, I did another victory dance, and returned with full Estus and restored durability on my weapons. 

 

Berserker has separated himself from the greatsword twins, so I pounce on him and finish him off.  The remaining little BellBro goes down next, and then I aggro one of the greatswords and kill him.  I'm feeling stupid confident at this point, and of course damn near bit it.  Second greatsword got a combo off on me that took me down to a sliver of health before I was able to finish him off with a pair of power stanced thrusts from my trident and spear.  Now the way was clear to ring the bell!

 

YOU ARE BEING SUMMONED!

 

To another world we go.  I'm fighting a guy in the full Jester's Outfit and I cannot land a spear hit on him to save my life, literally.  He's slowly whittling my health down, so I switch to whips.  People do not know how to defend against whips, and if you don't have heavy armor on, they hurt.  The fight went from him steadily winning, to him being dead in about 8 seconds.  Woo!  Back again with full Estus and durability again!  I ring the bell and begin to strut for the exit, when the announcement pops of another BellBro arriving!  Lucky number 4.  Let's do this.  I've been in constant combat for probably 15 minutes at this point, I'm fucking pumped and I'm getting really comfortable with how the Dragonslayer Spear works.  This guy has what looks like the Drangleic gear, sword and shield.  I poke at him a couple of times until he drops his guard to attack, at which point I roll into a three hit combo, literally.  Roll with downward slice, followed by poke, followed by lightning charged R2 that destroys him. 

 

Four of my fellow BellBros dead at my hands.  It feels gooooooood.

 

And then I strut to the exit, feeling as badass as I've ever felt in a Souls game. 

[Golden Calf]

Why the fuck does it cost a human effigy to fight Darklurker