Dark Souls

Fuck. So picked this up in prep for DS2, and wow game raped me the first few hours while I figured everything out. Managed to finally start making progress (Though slow, fuck blighttown) and then was stuck on those god damn assholes O&S. Jesus I spent the last 5 days trying to beat that fight (As a sword+board knight) and FINALLY did it today. God it feels good. But fuck Im bad at games these days. Anyways not sure where to go next, Im in the painted world at the moment but I think what I like the most about this game is that no matter how long I play or how strong you get, everything and anything can fuck you up so quick if you get lazy. Its made me a better player.

That's what it does, it punishes you to make you better. And don't feel like you're a bad gamer, all the dumbed down ez-mode shit they've been shoveling the past decade or so has just made us a bit soft. DS isn't really that difficult, in and of itself. It's just difficult compared to the previously mentioned shit. And the O&S fight is one of the hardest in the game, and most people struggle with it. Dying a lot in a DS game doesn't make you a bad gamer. Ragequitting and never coming back to beat it does.

Frikkin old NES and SNES games were hard as fuck, people have just forgotten, or never played them.

I rerolled again and this time doing a strength build with dark knight greataxe. This weapon is insane and its fun as fuck. Going medium roll mostly to be more tanky, and for 4 kings just rocked some Havel's armor, said fuck dodging and just face tanked them. Turned one of the worst fights into one of the easiest.

I'm concerned with scaling of this weapon since it only upgrades to +5. In ng+ do other str weapons surpass it?

Yeah other str weapons will be better in NG+. One of the last updates to DS1 nerfed the R1 damage a bit of the BKGA, on top of which you cannot use weapon buffs on it. It will still plow regular NG though.

BK GA has more than 100 damage on the Mace, the other big Strength scaler, I don't really see how just going +5 hurts it here. They're completely different upgrade paths, remember weapons that can go +15 start with much lower damage. An axe also generally has massive poise break, nothing like making bosses stumble.

Khalan_sl said:

Fuck. So picked this up in prep for DS2, and wow game raped me the first few hours while I figured everything out. Managed to finally start making progress (Though slow, fuck blighttown) and then was stuck on those god damn assholes O&S. Jesus I spent the last 5 days trying to beat that fight (As a sword+board knight) and FINALLY did it today. God it feels good. But fuck Im bad at games these days. Anyways not sure where to go next, Im in the painted world at the moment but I think what I like the most about this game is that no matter how long I play or how strong you get, everything and anything can fuck you up so quick if you get lazy. Its made me a better player.

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The biggest thing to remember is to look at the game more like a strategy game and less like a twitch game. With no animation cancelling, your moves need to be precise. The biggest thing is just take your time, learn the patterns and use the environment.

Dabamf_sl said:

I rerolled again and this time doing a strength build with dark knight greataxe. This weapon is insane and its fun as fuck. Going medium roll mostly to be more tanky, and for 4 kings just rocked some Havel's armor, said fuck dodging and just face tanked them. Turned one of the worst fights into one of the easiest.

I'm concerned with scaling of this weapon since it only upgrades to +5. In ng+ do other str weapons surpass it?

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As Quin said, +5 is essentially the same as +15, the difference is the base damage for twinkling titanite weapons is much higher--so they have a different upgrade path, but just because it has less + doesn't mean it's worse (+5=+15, they just have different values per grade). There are better "damage" weapons than Black Knight Great Axe, but move sets are important. Great Axe has a great move set, with good range and speed. For me, that's even more important than the numbers on a weapon. (The only other difference is you can't buff twinkling titanite weapons; so you can't put resin on it.)

I used the Man Serpent Great Sword, and the Great Club for my strength play through (Didn't get the axe until the end). But I really like the great sword move set.

Still need to play this thing. It's been sitting in my Steam library for a while now, but I didn't have a controller and then my laptop died. What's the best class to play to make winning easier?

eVasiege_sl said:

Still need to play this thing. It's been sitting in my Steam library for a while now, but I didn't have a controller and then my laptop died. What's the best class to play to make winning easier?

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Mage is easymode.

90% of my deaths are falling off a cliff, or a tiny ledge, or into water

There's nothing wrong with the kb/m controls, other than the default settings for some, which you can change.

spronk_sl said:

90% of my deaths are falling off a cliff, or a tiny ledge, or into water

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Are you doing that on purpose to find hidden spots?

Trollface_sl said:

played it for 3 minutes before quitting because keyboard and mouse contrl is wtf...

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As Raes said, with a few mods, Keyboard and Mouse works fine...but I'd highly suggest the MS windows controller. It works with a ton of games now, and for most of them outside of FPS and RTS, it's just as good or better (And you can play in your lounge chair.)

Would one of you mind posting what your dsfix ini looks like? Did you alter any other things like ambient occlusion, etc? Things still seem a little chunkier than they should be. Especially in blighttown.. I'm chugging through that area and figure my new fancy gtx 770 oc should be able to handle it.

Playing as a wanderer with knight shield and a Balder Side Sword. Also, haven't found any replacement for my wanderer noob gear yet, but have come across some shadow armor, leather, elite knight, standard.. even another set of wanderer.. any tips on armor or should I start upgrading that starter gear?

If I remember, I played through all of Demon's Souls with starter gear, aside from weapon. But I don't think armor was upgradeable in that one, aside from shield.

Ive been playing entirely KB/M. Just get DSfix and DSMfix to get everything working properly.

ShakyJake_sl said:

Oh God, I'm on Gwyn now and I can't cheese this with iron flesh. Looks like parrying is the only real way to beat this guy?

It's dumb that I'm level 96 and stuff still destroys me. It's like level doesn't really mean anything.

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christopherodd beat him in his playthorugh two weeks ago without parrying. it took him many, many tries but it is possible

I've never bothered with parrying on Gwyn, definitely doable without.

You can cheese him with spells by strafing around objects so his attacks get goofed up by the obstacle in between you two, enough to let you cast. Probably also works for melee but I haven't tried that yet