Dark Souls 2

Sean_sl said:

Holy mother of god this is the most pretentious thing I've read on this forum in a long while.

Bullshit. Bull, fucking, shit. I play Dark Souls for fun and no other reason. I would not play games if I did not find them fun. The Souls series difficulty is part of the fun, definitely, but I do not view any part of it as some kind of "task" to get through. Games are meant for pleasure, not for proving something.

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It seemd pretentious and dickwadish as I was writing it, but it was almost like the pretentious dickwad force in me became so strong I couldn't pull back from the brink of dickwad precipice.

Anyway, all I really meant to say was that there are lots of different reasons to play games. Some are for fun, some are for challenge, and some are for fun because they are challenging. There are lots of all those types of games out there. But I think you are robbing yourself of a different sort of experience if you spoiler DS. I wouldn't call the game fun because without any aids the game is pretty damned mystifying - not just hard but inscrutable from, say, a gameplay mechanic, story, and exploration point of view. That's good because it is different. Systematically getting all you need to know in advance is normalizing something that is otherwise outside the norm, and that just doesn't make sense to me. Why would you want to do that.

I also should have differentiated between death as a gameplay mechanic and the implementation of that mechanic. The objective or point of the mechanic is what I said, but everyone is right in saying that it doesn't in actuality live up to its objective. In many cases dying is just tedious etc. But not in all cases - and in cases where death does act as a teaching tool, that's a pretty unusual technique that you will miss if you spolier the game end-end.

Hopefully I came off as less pretentious and dickwadish but who knows. I'm a tired fucking man.

Why do people have trouble understanding the gameplay mechanics? Every character and item stat has a tooltip that you can see by pressing Select and using the d-pad to highlight the thing you want info on. About the only thing that might take a little time to figure out on your own is how the different rolls work based on your encumbrance. Demon's Souls players should already have a full understanding of every concept other than poise, too.

I guess if you care about the exact amount of poise a certain weapon drains from the invisible meter you'd have to look that up as well, but that wasn't something people could just copy out of the guide and took quite some time after the game was out to be fully tested. That info is entirely irrelevant for PVE anyway. Even if you insist on using poise as a crutch, monsters don't follow the same rules with their weapons.

once a day I hit up xspeeds hoping to see leaked region free torrent available....I have it preordered but I cannot wait to play another second more than I have to ! DeS and DkS were frustratingly fun.....and I have nothing but fond memories of the kings field series either. think I was one of the 200 ppl that actually loved that series.

I guess I'm a bad, I keep getting my shit pushed in by the giant knight in undead burg.

Hekotat_sl said:

I guess I'm a bad, I keep getting my shit pushed in by the giant knight in undead burg.

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The black knight? They can be a bit rough when you first start out. Just block their attacks, watch your stamina, and go for the backstab. Or since there's a bonfire right there, use it as an opportunity to practice your parry/riposte.

Yes, the black kniggit. Fuck that guy.

I hope to pick up a new vid card for my main PC and xfer my old one to my HTPC, when this happens I'll be able to play on the couch and it will be much more enjoyable.

Black Knight is optional and I personally skip him until I have the item find ring to maximize the phat lewtz.

You can kill him early even without 'advanced' strategies like backstab or parry, you just need a decent shield, manage your stamina and be patient. Three things that save you from a lot of deaths if you get them sooner rather than later!

define a decent shield? The biggest issue is basically that your weapon will be a +0 and you'll do like 10 damage per hit. I guess the starting shield of the Knight, one of the best shields imo, will work.

Decent as in 100% physical and high enough stability to withstand the short combos of the black knight. As for damage I don't remember being as bad as 10 damage a hit, but it certainly took several minutes of slow dancing and chipping away to kill him.

Forget the shield. Tactics baby. You will die a lot if you try and fight him in that narrow corridor with poor gear. Lure him back up and around to the courtyard where the undead archers sit. He is easy to circle and kill without parrying if you fight him there. Also watch the direction of his sword swings. Once you get the direction down it is pretty easy to avoid. Personally, I always circle towards his shield side (i.e. away from the power hand if we were fighting

Szlia_sl said:

Decent as in 100% physical and high enough stability to withstand the short combos of the black knight. As for damage I don't remember being as bad as 10 damage a hit, but it certainly took several minutes of slow dancing and chipping away to kill him.

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I meant name the shield. 100% PBlock is pretty overrated anyways, imo one of the best shields is the eagle shield against enemies you can't parry.

I died ~20 times on that black knight my first time through, but it taught me circling/blocking/rolling techniques that lasted the entire game. I did eventually beat him in fair melee with a wooden shield and +0 hand axe. Felt like a champ.

I couldn't consistently parry him at that point, but I learned that later while fighting silver knights in Anor Londo. One small 6-word tip brought me from 25% to 90% parry success rate: "Parry the hand, not the weapon".

Going back on subsequent playthroughs, it's embarassing how easy that first Black Knight is now.

I did it as a cleric so I suspect I used a Hollow Soldier Shield.

So you guys worried about being invaded 24/7 unless you go offline, there's hope. Apparently there's a mechanic in DS2 to deny all invasions (and help) in an area.

It's not a story spoiler, and is probably explained early on in the game, but I'll put it in tags anyway for those that want to go in 100% blind:

So basically, once we're beaten down to half health, we can choose to stay at half health and no longer be invaded?

I think I'd rather just play offline and not waste my effigies on that.

Quineloe: Heater shield from the undead merchant for 1k souls is one of the best shields in the game. And I'd say the exact opposite about the eagle shield. It was great when it was 100% PDef, but after being nerfed to 95% it's garbage.