Dark Souls 2

Armor is worthless in this game like others have said except for caster's armor. Their armor gets very nice bonuses. Just Fashion Souls it up if you are playing melee.

Tuco_sl said:

So what's a good set of armor to get and upgrade for a first dark souls 2 playthrough as a typical warrior? I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers but I don't like that I am hesitant to use upgrade mats in this game because I don't know when I'll run into the next set of gear.

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Kill Maughlin when you first get to town, equip his Tseldora set for the bonus souls. Later on, kill the Brotherhood of Blood covenant leader when you meet him and use his armor (hood drops, chest is sold by the hag) instead of two of the Tseldora pieces. That said, I wouldn't bother upgrading anything but the chest (the Nahr Alma one, not Tseldora).

And your roll sucks because of adaptability -> agility. 20 ADP makes a big difference early, then more (39 max) later on if you don't raise attunement.

Find a good looking set and upgrade it if you must. I had a fighter build and waited a good long while to upgrade until I found the "official" set, the one that's on the prototype DS2 hero. It's about halfway through the game but it's hidden and you can easily miss it if you don't explore thoroughly. The game really doesn't have a set that's above the others and that you should wait for, and you'll probably juggle them to fit your 70% weight limit.

Dragon torso stone summons armor (black dragon) that is easily the best lightweight set. Also the best looking armor in the game, imo. Best part is you don't need to upgrade it, for obvious reasons. Can't get it until fairly late in NG though.

Watched those speedrun world records, really humbling. I did it right and watched them after I beat the game this time. Hexes seem downright insanely powerful. Was thinking about trying it out for fun and seeing how fast I could go.

Tuco_sl said:

So uhh, it seems like with some enemies my spear does good damage against, and other enemies my spear does shit damage against but my mace rocks them. (Ex: The Ironclad dudes). Is there any way to tell which enemies are susceptible to which damage without experimenting with each enemy?

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You can look at the stats of the set the enemies are wearing. Ironclad set comes at 427/395/454/427, which is pdef, strike, slash, thrust. So lowest value means best weapon.

Generally speaking, heavy armor is always better against slash and thrust attacks than against strikes, but heavy armor is still better against strike than any light armor is, so against someone wearing leather, both strike and thrust/slash weapons will do very high damage anyways.

Slash is generally speaking always the worst damage type to have, I can't see a single armor set where slash isn't the lowest defense of them all.

if they look like they have heavy armor, mace will wreck them.
mace will 99% of the time, wreck any enemy

My large club +10 wrecked any enemy I saw in one or two hits.

There were only a handful of bosses in this game that were actually difficult for me (Pursuer is one). I also found as I progressed through the game it got a lot easier. Even just walking through areas I was plowing through most enemies with the exception of some places (Aerie). I'm not good enough to one-shot most of the bosses, but there were quite a few that I did.

For Melee, Pursuer and the Smelter demon are, probably, the two hardest bosses in the game.

Dark Souls 2 simply has a LOT of bosses. Many of them are really boring and not difficult at all.

Pursuer is piss easy. You can dodge through his attacks and should never take a hit, and even if you do, some of his attacks take so long, it's easy to estus back up.

Agree on Smelter demon. I'd also say the Dark Seeker covenant boss guy is almost impossible as melee. At higher NGs, Gargoyles become annoying as well because they're not easily killed anymore.

Pursuer is potentially the second boss in the game and if you aren't prepared he will rape you. It took me a lot of attempts to get him.

Of course, he is piss easy after the first time.

Specially after you realize you can almost 1 shot him with the crossbow launchers lol

Few things in this game were more gratifying than coming across the Pursuer a second time much later and not even getting touched by him.

Me too accidentally. Ran to the crossbow in a panic

Wait until you get to twin pursuers, no crossbows to save you there!