Dark Souls 2

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Huntsman lizard I had to one shot with a bow to get just was impossible for me until then.
 

Gecko_sl

shitlord
1,482
0
I am trying to dual wield him and I'm finding the spear range helps a lot with his aoe. Also, quartz ring +1. Stuck around 50% atm.
I just got the Fire Quartz Ring. How do you upgrade it, if that's what you are talking about?

I've killed the Demon twice in coop, but solo I seem to get instagibbed lemming partners and I still am taking too much fire damage when his sword is in flames. Rolling seems to be 75% effective. He eventually gets me, and my damage on him with my club, lightning sword, or magic mace all remains somewhat meh.
 

Angelwatch

Trakanon Raider
3,053
133
Smelter Demon was the 2nd boss I summoned help in for.

Here's my strategy for him. Summon two people to help out. For the first half of his life, I go melee and just attack on openings. As soon as he drops to 50% health and pulls out the fiery sword, I drop back and go ranged. The big trick is to wait until he's fully active again after pulling out the sword. While he's doing his power up, he becomes very resistant to everything (they didn't want you killing him during his super long power up sequence). If your summons are halfway competent, the strategy works pretty well and you remove a lot of the risk to yourself.
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,078
2,270
The +1/+2 stuff is just different drops, you don't upgrade them. Not sure where they drop you can probably find on the wiki. I only had the first one too but didn't use it, I only used it to walk in lava for the chests.
 

Angelwatch

Trakanon Raider
3,053
133
Right now I just entered the Castle.

The big spider boss was more annoying than difficult but she did take me 3 tries. It's the little spiders that make the fight difficult. Once I learned to deal with them first (and just kill off respawns), the fight got a lot easier.

The Lost Sinner was very easy for me but I overleveled her by quite a bit. I lost the first time because I underestimated how aggressive she was. Oddly enough the outleveling her hurt me on that attempt I think. I saw how much damage I was doing to her and got way too greedy. The next time I went in, was very patient and killed her without an issue.

I made my way up to the dual dragonrider and they seem pretty easy. I lost the first fight but by the time I got there I knew I was going to need to quit soon so I really wasn't trying to win. I'll kill them tomorrow though I'm sure.
 

Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,494
2,233
The archer dragonrider was much weaker, or weak to electricity maybe. He died much faster than the one that you encounter first.
 

MartyrDumb_sl

shitlord
238
0
The Smelter demon was the first boss that I just could not beat. I've never been good at evading with rolling in these games, so I tank mostly. Tried the npc summons a few times, tried applying weapon buffs. His fire sword phase would always do me in. Then I moved on and eventually got a 100% fire resist greatshield, summoned the npc, a sunbro, applied weapon buff and smote his ass out of spite.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Man, NG+ is nuts with extra spawns and such. Making me ADHD over to new chars instead rather than work on it for plat.
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
9,225
3,299
so far this game feels a lot easier than DaS1 was. Loving it, but seems easier.
Hopefully the later bosses are harder? I just got to the Iron Keep
 

Derkon

Trakanon Raider
2,457
1,193
It feels clearing to the boss is alot harder then the actual boss so far in my experience. I even one shot the Gargoyles >.> Also just hit Iron Keep so not exactly that far in, i'm sure it gets a bit harder.
 

MartyrDumb_sl

shitlord
238
0
Was playing around with dueling the other day. Won about 1/10th of the matches. Over half the time my hits just wouldn't seem to register. I was using giant club, greatsword and gyrm axe. Today I switched to the mastadon halberd. The light one handed attack works like a dream. 4 out of 4 wins so far
wink.png
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,078
2,270
Wow the last boss was anticlimatic as fuck, had to be one of the weakest I fought. In general I'll echo what Derkon said a few posts up, bosses are quite easy compared to trash. Probably a large part due to having played DS1 and such so used to basic mechanics but other than Mytha and the Pursuer at lvl 15, I don't think I've wiped more than 5-6times on a single boss. On the other hand some of the trash mobs kill me over and over fairly easily, like those giant knights in the dragon shrine? Sword ones are alright but halberd and 2H mace I pretty much die over and over, had to cheese them with pyromancy.

Which, by the way, is still broken as fuck. No int, still does 1k dmg per swathe, 600 per greater fireball, chaos storm on large bosses can do upwards to 8-10k depending on the boss position and what part can be hit and combustion is still one of the best "melee" weapon since it does about 700dmg with a fairly short windup, only downside is charges and range obviously. That's with a +10 dark flame and max hollow.

Anyway, finished the game in 70hours, lvl 160 and 540deaths. Only used internet for dagger locations and game mechanics or checking on stuff I had done, started checking this thread only after I was fairly far into the game. Looking into it, I missed a few things here and there, some of which I knew I had missed but assumed they would be later. Worst fucking thing though was the windmill and Mytha, that's just very very poor design. The boss is by far the hardest in the game if you don't do a completely random and illogical thing.
 

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,173
30,367
The best thing about this game is the random wandering that you can do and end up on long tangents. Last night, after farming up some levels for gear reqs, I clear most of Iron Citidel (fucking Smelter is still making me his bitch) and decide to try out the jester gear in the pit with all the ladders in it at the main camp. Six hours and many deaths later, I end up going all the way to The Rotten and one shotting the fucker (he was nothing compared to the bullshit that led up to him) and I am now wondering if I can function at work on three hours of sleep. I think it is safe to say that aside from a few mechanical issues, this is the best in the series.

Pyro is good on the enemies who are not fire resistant, if you are disciplined enough to farm the souls for the magic herbs to keep your uses going. I switched to it for Gultch to burn the oil pits (fuck that place, seriously) and found it descent. Now that I have enough faith to use them, I am finding Hexes to be the best rapeface spells in the game, at least for trash. Plus the Heide Spear is pretty much a good all around weapon for relatively minimal stat investment and it runs on faith, so it all combos together really well for me.

Question for some people who may know: What is that rooftop area above the Iron Citidel for? I am talking about the one with all the midget black phantom guys up the ladder from the hidden bonfire. I checked it all out a bunch, but kept getting chain invaded up there for some reason, so I may have missed something. Also I got a couple tokens for killing a world master, despite the fact that I never invaded a single person in this game (not into it for the pvp). Anyone know anything about that area?
 

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,078
2,270
There's a secret with 2 chests at the end, but it's mostly just a bellkeeper covenant area, fairly pointless I think. The other one had more useful stuff.

On Pyro yeah maybe it's not perfect if it's your only way of doing damage but I mostly used it as a supplement, the thing though is it absolutely rapes a lot of bosses, like anything that doesn't have very fast attack patterns and a large body will die within seconds to the storm spells cast under them/right next to them, and for the other mobs the general spells do good work too. I actually did not use it on a lot of bosses(and mostly used it for adds on the ones I did, like those fucking rats) I could have cheesed to keep a bit more challenge.

I did very much like the way the game was setup this time vs dark souls, it's fairly directive early on and at various points and you don't have as much freedom at any given point, but you always have some options. Like just instead of having say 5places you can go to, you only have 2-3 and they're all fairly contained places not linking to each other, but it's still a good amount to go around and do different shit if you don't want to do an area. Like after doing the Gutter and entering Black Gulch, I said fuck that shit I'm out of here. Granted black gulch wasn't as bad as I initially thought, it's very short, but still.
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
Patch up anyone got the notes? Guessing a pyro need is in there.

And maybe the dupe I just discovered... well dupish... respawns ground drops in a zone when the wife blew the breaker while it was loading me from death.

Tested with menu quit on death and it works too... without death it doesn't though.
 

Angelwatch

Trakanon Raider
3,053
133
I entered the Shrine of Amana and this is the first place that's making me rage a bit. It took fucking forever but I managed to get most of the important stuff despite all of the drop offs which are nearly impossible to see. But the fucking Clerics that chain cast homing arrow are bullshit. I've given up on trying to go conservatively through the zone. Right now I'm taking the attitude that as long as one thing dies before I do, it will all go extinct eventually. I've already made everything up to Ogre extinct...
 

Vaclav

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
12,650
877
I don't go looking for bugs just meant my personal discovery not universal credit.