The Gaming Den

Archmage Joda wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:Man, I wish you guys were over on Balmung so I could be less bored. Playing alone sucks.

Probably because new character creation on Balmung is nigh-undoable because it's already full most of the time, being a legacy server and all.

It's silly, because most of the servers are sparsely populated in comparison to Balmung, Gilgamesh and Sargatanas on the Aether data center. Gilgamesh being the primary "raid" server for Aether, and Sargatanas for being a secondary raid server.

And yet you can still buy transfers to Balmung. Kind of blows my mind.

Kaelik wrote:But yeah... In DS 3, you will want to pull out a dagger, and two hand it, and use it's weapon art as a short jump to bypass the otherwise crippling movement restrictions in the 6 swamp sections, 2 oh which are like, the entire goddam level is swamp.

Speaking of swamps, I hope you are not playing a sorcerer, or hoping to keep Orbeck of Vinheim as a NPC, because two out of four sorcery scrolls are in the fucking Farron's Keep swamp.

Speaking of all this Dark Souls stuff, seeing people talk about it almost makes we wanna get into the Dark Souls series myself, but when I tried playing the first one on xbox, I was complete balls at it and couldn't get past the second boss not counting the tutorial one. Would 2 or 3 be any good to get into for someone who didn't play demon's souls or dark souls 1? And would PC be a good platform to play on?

Archmage Joda wrote:Speaking of all this Dark Souls stuff, seeing people talk about it almost makes we wanna get into the Dark Souls series myself, but when I tried playing the first one on xbox, I was complete balls at it and couldn't get past the second boss not counting the tutorial one. Would 2 or 3 be any good to get into for someone who didn't play demon's souls or dark souls 1? And would PC be a good platform to play on?

I'm playing it on PC with mouse and keyboard just fine, although it runs like shit on my system even on lowest settings.
Neither 2 nor 3 require knowledge of the previous games, but 3 is filled with a bunch of call-outs and references, so that's just stuff you won't get, but I don't think it detracts from the experience. I feel like 3 is easier than 1 and 2, because I've never died on a boss after the tutorial boss, but I could have gotten lucky or gud.

If you've already played DS1 or Demon's Souls you can skip DS2 fine. There was some problem with developing the game midway through where they switched around the directors (meanwhile Miyazaki and the Dark Souls core team were working on Bloodborne) so parts of the game have haphazard level design which makes for less interesting enemy placement and not quite as memorable bosses. If you must play DS2 though, the Scholar of the First Sin expansion is well regarded as the core Dark Souls/Bloodborne guys worked on that one.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is also a fun game that feels like a Capcom brawler of the late 90's transplanted to today. As it came out after Dark Souls I guess maybe you could call it "Souls-like" but it's more like halway to being Devil May Cry. Also you can climb hills and climb on flying monsters then fall off to your death as your NPC helper sets its wings on fire.

I experienced my first Dark Souls 3 Cheater today, and I won. I was in the area after Pontiff, and I had killed all the churchmen and one of the giants, and was going up the stairs when an Aldritch Faithful invaded me. I stood right behind him and chopped him 4 times and knocked him off the edge then plunging attacked down on him, he took no damage.

At this point, I thought he must have been desynced or something when I was attacking (since I attacked him right out of his spawn animation) so I chopped him a few more times, and then realized, "Oh fuck, he must be cheating to not take damage." So at this point I started running back towards pontiff, on the idea that I would die, and then I could pick up my souls there quickly. When I got there I sat down, and waited, he ran up and without even the slightest gesture of acknowledgment, started hacking me, so I rolled away, and decided "Fuck this asshole, I'm going to make him miserable" and started running laps around the area. I ran past the giants then back around through the pope area like 5 times, and he chased me the whole time, then I realized... I could kill him.

So I ran up to the next area, and dropped down onto a ledge, where the legion of Silver knight archers couldn't hit me, and the entire area was just one big ledge to be knocked off of. He didn't follow. So basically, I just stayed on ledged locations, and used arrows and sprinting past to bypass or kill all the silver knight archers, and then took the evelator up, he then left my world.

Apparently this guy is such a shit that he gives himself infinite HP, and invades, but runs away from all combat near ledges, because he doesn't trust himself to actually fight anyone anywhere he can die at all.

I had an experience like that with a dude calling himself LORD OF SOULS back in DS1. He invaded me in the Catacombs and I backstabbed him three times and he took no damage, but he wouldn't follow me out to the bridge or anything.
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I killed the Abyss Watchers, been around the Cathedral and down to the smouldering lake.

So far: I need to find a good grinding spot. I'm starting to hit the point where I need me some armor or SOMETHING. I've found one respawning enemy that I can grind and get some good practice in, but yeesh.

-After a year of Bloodborne, I play Dark Souls 3 and run into more wolf abominations. In a poison swamp. Yaaaaay.

-Speaking of Bloodborne, the enemies seem more like those--a lot of grab attacks and surprise moves.

-I tricked a demon into being killed by skeletons. Lulz were had.

-Respawning Black Knights, man. I use them to practice on. Bloodborne left me a little cavalier about taking damage, and I can't be like that in Dark Souls. Maybe I'll just grind me out a set of Black knight gear on that Ultra-greatsword fella in Farron.

Do any or all of the Dark Souls games have an offline mode? Because I am curious but I don't want to deal with other players trying to kill me because I've never won a PvP match in any online game I've ever played, ever.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Do any or all of the Dark Souls games have an offline mode? Because I am curious but I don't want to deal with other players trying to kill me because I've never won a PvP match in any online game I've ever played, ever.

1. Yes.
2. Invasions don't happen all that often. I've been invaded maybe six times in 17 hours.

Invasions are pretty rare, especially if you play not on release. So 1 and 2 are probably ghost towns now.

That said. They all have offline modes.

I finally got inside the cathedral.

I love the architecture in this game. I really do. I'm not wild on giants or demon grandmothers, but this is a majestic setting.

Okay, one thing is frustrating me about Dark Souls III.

They made the side-quests in a style similar to Demons' Souls and Bloodborne, and not in a good way.

Most of the NPCs are hard to find, and their quests very easy to get locked out of. I missed out on most of them on my first run through the game.

icyshadowlord wrote:Okay, one thing is frustrating me about Dark Souls III.

They made the side-quests in a style similar to Demons' Souls and Bloodborne, and not in a good way.

Most of the NPCs are hard to find, and their quests very easy to get locked out of. I missed out on most of them on my first run through the game.

Yeah, if you don't have a wiki, you basically aren't going to do any NPC quests to completion on your first run.

I did everything for Siegward, even randomly finding him in a well, and even running into patches before beating the boss that permanently locks him in that well. Except then, after eating soup with him, I didn't find him locked in a cell in the dungeon that you can only get to from the Capitol and requires a key in the Capitol that is after they place where he is. So his quest was not completed.

Then there's the lady who literally tells you to go fuck yourself if you respec your character.

Then there's the quest line where not only do you have to go into optional areas and find every single time they show up and talk to them, you also have to make multiple decisions, and if you ever make the wrong one even once, it ends prematurely.

Then there's the NPC that you can give tomes to, and if you give her half the Tomes in the game, you get the BAD END. And you'd have to be fucking magic to know which Tomes are Bad and which are Good from the name alone, so I hope you were reading the item descriptions on Tomes.

Then there's the NPC that everyone starts the questline of, who then dies, (and oh yes, you are definitely punished for doing well and not dying in his quest line) and if you don't talk to the lady who shows up in a completely out of the way corner of the shrine the very first time she shows up, such as because you just leveled up, and upgraded your weapon, and therefore never once were in a location you could even see her, then she leaves and never fucking comes back.

Yeah, basically, fuck the NPC quest lines in this game.

I didn't have any problems with Anri's questline, because he's always in the areas you'd visit anyway, and the only tricky part is going into the Smouldering Lake and killing Horace before moving on. Which I did, because I check the optional areas before going after the bosses.

However, Irina and Siegward can go fuck themselves. There's absolutely no indication that giving Irina dark tomes is a bad thing, and if you don't give her the dark tomes, then the next NPC who'd accept them is fifteen hours further into the game and will refuse to take the tomes the first time you ask. Siegward... finding his cell is easy, because again, I explore optional paths before going after the boss. But finding the door to his cell is a fucking nightmare, because you have to know that on a one special roof in a one special area there is one special place where you can jump into a fucking window.

Also, good god Champion Gundyr is brutal. I died four times on him, which is the largest number of times I died on a boss. Overall I feel like bosses in DS3 are easier than they were in the previous games, but maybe I just got gud.
Also also, I got softbanned, because Namco decided that everyone who played when Steam was offline on maitenance is a stinking cheater. Which isn't really much of a problem, since I couldn't play PvP anyway because of the lag.

Longes wrote: Also also, I got softbanned, because Namco decided that everyone who played when Steam was offline on maitenance is a stinking cheater. Which isn't really much of a problem, since I couldn't play PvP anyway because of the lag.

How do you know, out of curiousity? Do you get a message or something?

You get a message at the start screen saying you've been penalized for breaking terms of agreement for online play.

Kaelik wrote:Invasions are pretty rare, especially if you play not on release. So 1 and 2 are probably ghost towns now.

That said. They all have offline modes.

Having played dark souls 1 fairly recently, I can report that as of 2 months ago there was still a fairly active PVP community.

So what weapons have y'all been using in DS3. I'm still early in the game with an uchigatana and bow for luring enemies. Wondering if I should bother sinking points into strength to eventually use the washing pole and murakumo, or sink points in to wear heavier armor for the sake of fashion souls.

Some tips I found on reddit are...

-Simple infusion gives you regenerating focus points even if it's on your back. Weapon arts can be used even if you only have 1 FP to spend. So having a Simple dagger on your back as you two-hand a weapon means you can keep on using weapon arts every 4 seconds.

-Various enemies get stunlocked by fire, so having a torch or fire infused dagger on the off hand lets you stunlock them. The hollows that erupt into a black mass become easy kills with this method.

- Magic is terribly underpowered, you need 50+ INT for it to start dealing damage.

I busted ass until I found a Claymore. That let me hang in there until I found my one true love: The Black Knight Sword.

Armor is Drang body with Black Knight gauntlets and leggins, and the Silver Mask.

Looks fairly snazzy, gives some protection. For my shield, I've been using the Shield of Want for the walking-around souls bonus, but I'll switch to the Black Knight Shield if something else shows up.

I started as a Pyromancer, and keep some spells for that around, in case I don't want to get close to somethign.

I've been using Uchigatana and Farron's Greatsword for most of the game, until I found Washing Pole. I'm also using pyromancy as a backup, because it frequently kills enemies in 1-2 hits, because almost everything in the game is weak to fire.

Longes wrote:I've been using Uchigatana and Farron's Greatsword for most of the game, until I found Washing Pole. I'm also using pyromancy as a backup, because it frequently kills enemies in 1-2 hits, because almost everything in the game is weak to fire.

How's Farron's Greatsword? I literally flipped a coin between that and the Artorias sword.

Maxus wrote:

Longes wrote:I've been using Uchigatana and Farron's Greatsword for most of the game, until I found Washing Pole. I'm also using pyromancy as a backup, because it frequently kills enemies in 1-2 hits, because almost everything in the game is weak to fire.

How's Farron's Greatsword? I literally flipped a coin between that and the Artorias sword.

Pretty fun, if you are good at parrying (I'm not). Its right mouse button attack makes those dashing and spinning attacks you see the Watchers do during the boss fight. It is reasonably fast for a Greatsword, but you can't two-hand it. The "two-hand" button pulls out a dagger for parrying.

I run two characters, one uses Anri's sword, the luck scaling blade, and a hollowed Washing Pole.

The other uses a Refined Dark Sword.

In Prehistoric Dark Souls news, fuck Ornstein and Smough.

(Also, fuck those two archers, too. I resorted to poisoning them with arrows from the extreme edge of their range - I generally don't like to resort to semi-cheesy solutions, since it's likely I'll need the skills I should have learned there later, but after two hours of pointless rushing up to that goddamn ledge and getting sniped in the back, screw that.)

So far, I don't see my way through the O&S fight. I mean, I'm sure it exists, but right now I'm at the "get to room, dodge madly for thirty seconds or so, get murdered" stage of the learning process.

MisterDee wrote:In Prehistoric Dark Souls news, fuck Ornstein and Smough.

(Also, fuck those two archers, too. I resorted to poisoning them with arrows from the extreme edge of their range - I generally don't like to resort to semi-cheesy solutions, since it's likely I'll need the skills I should have learned there later, but after two hours of pointless rushing up to that goddamn ledge and getting sniped in the back, screw that.)

So far, I don't see my way through the O&S fight. I mean, I'm sure it exists, but right now I'm at the "get to room, dodge madly for thirty seconds or so, get murdered" stage of the learning process.

Yeah, the archers are not fun. My first time through, I also ended up poison arrowing them. It's a cheap tactic, but they are a cheap tactic. My second time through, I somehow managed to run up and melee them one by one on my first try. I suspect I got very lucky. I think I went back to poison arrows for my NG+ run.

Regarding O&S, the two things that I eventually internalized that made fighting them easier were:
1. Always know where the nearest pillar is, and
2. Never try to hit one of them more than one or two times before you run away behind a pillar, because otherwise you will get fucked.

Neither is an especially profound piece of advice, but they did help a lot.