The RPG Thread

Crone_sl said:

I might restart that way. It's not very cool to have to use melee anyway because I ran out of spell casts.

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Sorcery/Hexing is incredibly useful for clearing dangerous trash at a distance, but I found it harder to use against the bosses. ymmv. I think spellcasting might have been nerfed at some point, though. My first playthrough was a high-str-rape-you-with-my-mastodon-greatsword build and my Scholar playthrough (still not finished) was a Hexer, and I remember being surprised at the mockery directed at spell builds, because that hex build wasn't much easier than the melee build.

I was hoping for some melee with some spell support maybe? Is that Knight?

The classes you start with don't really matter unless you go into it knowing very clearly where you'll end up allocating your stats, thereby allowing you to choose the class that starts with lower stats in undesired attributes and a favorable distribution of stats in attributes you plan to pump up. I think my first character - the STR build with the mastodon greatsword - started as a thief!

Melee with spell support is - as almost all builds are, provided they're developed sufficiently - 100% viable. I think (at least pre-Scholar, not sure if that changed it up) a STR/Faith build was the most common hybrid build, followed by Hex/Dex (late-game oriented, requiring development of DEX, durability attributes, and both INT and FAITH).

I've always found that hybrid builds - which can take a looooong time to build the stats for - are best initiated by focusing almost purely on the melee side to start out, so either strength or dex + however much you want to pump vigor, endurance and vitality.

I'll let somebody else comment on adaptability, as it wasn't thoroughly understood when I was playing the game. It increases resistances, the speed at which you drink potions, and increases invincibility frames during rolls (when you roll, you're invincible for a time).

I'll reiterate that you shouldn't even attempt to raise all the stats you need evenly. You only get 1 per level, and you'll need either STR or DEX (and at least a little of both for the best weapons), INT or faith (or both for hex), and attunement, vigor, endurance, and vitality. Don't even try to do it all at once unless you find you're really good at the game, in which case do whatever you want. Otherwise prioritize melee or casting, then branch off once you've got a viable foundation.

One of the things I find most amazing about the game is that there are people that can beat it with ZERO leveling up. Literally. Skill can take you that far. I'm not even close though.

So from the start do you usually choose just deprived so you can pick everything yourself? Is that what triggers that?

And I'm so noob I didn't even know there were levels because I never saw experience go up as I was fighting things.

That's the idea behind deprived, yeah. That and the growth of epeen. There's almost always another archetype that has sufficient allocation, though, and it's pretty annoying to start out with nothing.

Didn't see the last part of your comment. The souls you get from killing enemies is the game's xp. It's used to level up (need to reach Majula, which is immediately after tutorial zone, and talk to the green lady), upgrade gear and buy things.

If you die you lose any unspent souls. Retrieving your corpse before dying again recovers it. Die before retrieving it and it's gone.

Ohhhh! Ok! I haven't gotten to the green lady yet so I had no idea.

Edit: I've gotten to majula I think but kept finding caves to die in or big giants to kill me. Or packs of undead dudes to kill me! Kill me... Kill me... Kill me...

One other thing and then I'll stop spamming the thread unless you specifically ask a question. Dark Souls II has a mechanic that was received uniformly negatively called soul memory. Aside from fantastic levels that nonetheless fail to match the quality of the first game, it's the game's only shortcoming imo. Anyway, the game keeps a running total of souls acquired. This includes souls spent upgrading weapons, leveling up, and purchasing ammo/armor/whatever. It also includes souls lost when you fail to retrieve your corpse.

It determines who is eligible to help you if you want to summon somebody to help you kill a boss and who is eligible to invade your world and kill you during pvp. For either, you've gotta fall within the bounds set by some formula that involves soul memory. This has a lot of implications, some of which are good and others which are terrible, and it's just not a compelling mechanic.

The point is - and none of this matters unless you're consistently losing tens of thousands of souls, and consistently losing that many souls very often - you should make an effort to spend your souls meaningfully. Try to recover them if you die, and put some thought into stat allocation. You don't at all need to be consulting the internet for build help because, as we've said, you can make anything work. But try to adhere to a plan. When you've got enough souls to level, level, and pump a stat that'll contribute to your character as you want it to be.

If you, say, lose a million souls over the course of the game and have a soul memory of two million (which is to say you've wasted half of the xp/upgrades available to you) you face the possibility of having some dickhead with two million soul memory and 1.8 million souls spent meaningfully invade you and have a clear advantage. Or, alternatively, your memory level could be too high for you to be able to summon help against a hard boss.

Again,do notstress yourself over it. Losing 100k souls at once is nothing. Just always try to recover your corpse and always spend your souls when you have enough to meaningfully power up via upgrades or leveling.

Go Deprived on your first playthrough or you're a coward tbh

Tip that might help you in DkS2: mobs only respawn a certain number of times in each area (barring the use of a specific item) and clearing them out til they stop spawning can make certain areas substantially easier to navigate at times. This also supplements your leveling by keeping you running back to the bonfire (sitting at a bonfire respawns the area) to port to majula and spending them rather than progressing too far and getting killed and risking losing them. Later on this isn't nearly as important, but early on it can help immensely. Especially when you are trying to load up enough souls to use some specific early weapon and need a few levels to do so.

Good tips everyone. I started out sorcerer, and enjoy the ranged killing but I'm not sure I like it more than a melee character. And of course my dick is bigger than noodles so I gotta go deprived.

Noodlemod_sl said:

So I've been playing divinity instead of fallout just because I haven't had a lot of solid time to sit down and I can play divinity in smaller chunks. Holy shit is this game ridiculous. 4 hours in and I'm still in the first town. Hopefully the pace picks up.

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Spoiler:

So I started a new game in The Last Remnant and my first trip into Gaslin Caves the rare mob Bluejaws spawned. I couldn't kill him because I only had a 2 member union and don't know any special tricks so I left. Come to find out you can only fight him once and he never respawns even if you don't kill him? Lame shit.

Nah he respawns. I had the same thing happen on my most recent playthrough, saw him at like battle rank 4 or something and only had two unions. Tried a couple of times and then just completed the area and left. Came back at BR 17 and just chain ran back to that area to try and trigger him. Took about 20 minutes but he does spawn again. Not sure if he "respawns" if you kill him though, as I didn't spend any time trying to force him again.