Dark Souls

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ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,598
19,181
I'm pure melee. I can get him to half health by rotating around that one rock formation at the front. He just starts going nuts at some point and wears me out.

Let me know if anyone would care to summon my ass and help me finish this playthrough. I'm on a PS3. PSN name is djgLXXII
 

Dabamf_sl

shitlord
1,472
0
I just beat him with a str melee build. High poise armor and great shield of artorius (or other high stability shield) made it easy. Medium roll, dodge when you can, as some of his swings leave him open for a single counterswing. Block the rest of the time, and temporarily drop guard when you can to regen stamina.

Caster strategy seems to be kill him before he kills you. Tank strategy is all about patience
 

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,598
19,181
I placed down a summon sign, got summoned. Help the dude defeat the boss and then got booted back to where I initially was. Does defeating bosses in co-op not count?
 

bytes

Molten Core Raider
957
638
It does, for the dude who summoned you. If you want to beat him in your game, you have to summon someone else to your world. But actually, just parry his ass, it's really not that difficult against him.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
I did it! By myself. No parrying.

What a shitty ending. What the hell.
The good ending is - there's actually two choices when he dies - the other is to walk away and just zone out. [with its own better ending IMO]
 

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,598
19,181
The good ending is - there's actually two choices when he dies - the other is to walk away and just zone out. [with its own better ending IMO]
I didn't even realize that. I just saw the bonfire and immediately thought "I better light this shit before something stupid happens" and whamo ending.

Anyway, the strategy I used was basically to circle that stalagmite formation towards the front and jab at him with my +4 crystal halberd. It has such a long ass reach that I had no problem hitting him through the formation. It still wasn't easy though. I just couldn't get down the parry timing and you die so quick against this guy it makes it very hard to practice. And, up until this point in the game, I had never parried anything.
 

Angelwatch

Trakanon Raider
3,053
133
The second ending (where you walk away from the Bonfire) makes a lot more sense if you return to the Abyss and talk to the Primordial Serpent there. He's VERY different than Framp (the one in the game's central hub). If I remember, there are some other criteria to getting the 2nd serpent to appear (I believe you need to beat the 4 Kings before getting the Lord Vessel or something like that).
 

Szlia

Member
6,547
1,310
I beat Gwyn the way you are supposed to beat him: with Knight Solaire tanking and me throwing lightning spear at the guy!
 

ShakyJake

<Donor>
7,598
19,181
I beat Gwyn the way you are supposed to beat him: with Knight Solaire tanking and me throwing lightning spear at the guy!
Yeah I read where you can summon Solaire. I'm guessing I must've did something wrong because I never saw a summon glyph.
 

Szlia

Member
6,547
1,310
I think you need to summon him for all the previous battles where he is available and deal with him properly in Old Isalith (sp?), so it's pretty much impossible to do it in your first play-through without using spoilers.
 

Dabamf_sl

shitlord
1,472
0
I've done a couple "speed runs" lately. I use quotes because I suck too much for a real one. My first character that beat the game had 25 hours played. My first attempted speed run using pyro was 5.5 hours. I still die on some bosses a lot, too much for a real speed run.

I did another run because my first guy got a dark knight halbred so I shelved him as I wanted to do a pyro build first. Dakr knight halbred guy finished in 4.75, so quite an improvement. About 30 minutes of that was on quellag because all I had was a hand axe at that point.

Anyway, if you haven't tried out running for speed, give it a go. It's pretty fun even if you start way too slow at first. More frustrating than anything if you still have difficulty with any nonboss area of the game, or with more than a couple bosses.
 

eVasiege_sl

shitlord
359
1
Still trying to get my gamepad to play this properly. For some reason the right analog is messed up. Up is left, down is right, etc. Changing the inverted settings does nothing and none of the 3rd party software seems to help.
 

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,021
29,920
I think I mainly used terrain staffing (as Dab described) and a spear type weapon against him. If you have a lot of poise and stamina, you can literally beat him down purely by blocking and counter attacking with a longer spear or halberd. Honestly, he was not that hard compared to some of the other bosses in that game. If you are a pure caster with no poise to speak of, then you pretty much have to master parrying, however.
 

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,021
29,920
Yeah I read where you can summon Solaire. I'm guessing I must've did something wrong because I never saw a summon glyph.
You have to know about the back door that opens with max covenant status with the chaos mother guild and escort him safely through that part. The back door access to that area also makes that whole zone a lot easier, but it means a big humanity farm to do it.
 

Dabamf_sl

shitlord
1,472
0
Also, for anyone having trouble with some bosses, the first alternative you should try is to put on Havel's or stone set and face tanking the boss. regardless of build. So many fights that were really hard became ttrivial with face tanking.

Oh, and figure out how to run past trash. The run back to some bosses is really long, and clearing trash just makes it that much more frustrating. Everything can be skipped. I'm looking at you Nito, 4k, and seath
 

eVasiege_sl

shitlord
359
1
Not sure if it's just poor optimization or what, but I'm only getting 25-35 FPS at 1280x720 medium AA. Granted I don't have the best gaming rig - A10-4600M Quad Core Radeon HD 7730M 8GB, but I can get better frame rates on much more demanding games at this resolution. I have DSfix, but not sure what to adjust.
 

Raes

Vyemm Raider
3,249
2,707
If you go into the DSfix.ini the various options have explanations included. Also want to make sure to disable AA in the actual game settings.
 

Hinadurus_sl

shitlord
131
0
So mine was crawling as well, with what I thought were the correct settings for dsfix. Well, under Framerate and a bunch of scary warnings (which is why I didn't change it in the first place) is an 'unlock the frame rate' option. I set unlockFPS to 1 and the game runs beautifully. Serious night and day difference.

Anyhow, I'm just now heading into New Londo ruins. Ornstein and Smough gave me trouble, but I pushed through and felt I learned a bit about being more aggressive in combat. Also, in Demon's Souls I never once used parry/riposte, in Dark Souls it is my bread and butter, yet the first time I spent time to learn it I was already in Sen's Fortress. Such is life as an undead..