brinstar's dark souls idiot journey

[Drem]

I did for a bit when Diablo 3 sucked but then they fixed D3

The only things that have my attention right now are Forza 6, Dirt Rally, and Rocket League

[Arlos]

do any of you turds play path of exile?

the boys and i made a brief foray back into retail WoW for a while, then they got distracted and started playing PoE, and now i think everyone is just biding their time waiting for the next expansion to come out. they've also been dinking around in the Division, and josh is into some silly Mount & Blade game. the name sounds like a gay sex move to me, but apparently the game itself is fun? barf.

i leveled a monk in WoW, then got left behind, so i started leveling a witch on PoE and have been left behind again. WHEEEE. so now i'm playing a lot of bejeweled 2 on steam. :P

I have a free WoW subscription for I think another 19 years or something, but there's no way I could bring myself to play it again. I really only played MMOs for the raiding. Grinding levels bored me to tears, but getting 60 talented assholes in a group and getting them to perform as a synchronized unit for 15-30+ minutes so you could accomplish something no one else on the server (or most of the entirety of the game, for that matter) can do, and seeing some Big Badass fall... That's where I got my hook for playing MMOs. Nothing else compared. I simply don't have the time nor inclination to get back into the game, level up to max level again, then get sufficiently re-skilled and re-geared such that I could get into a quality raiding guild. Which would probably be filled with a bunch of 20 year old neckbearded memesters that I would not want to associate with in the first place anyway.

If you're looking for something to play on your own, might I recommend a single player RPG? One I have enjoyed immensely (enough to play it all the way through 3 times now) is Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Interesting story, interesting characters, interesting world, etc. One of the better RPGs I've ever played, to be honest. You can find it on steam for probably no more than about $20, I would guess. There's 2 other Shadowrun RPG games from the same company, and both are excellent as well. (Dragonfall is almost as good as Hong Kong, to be honest) In any case, it would probably be a lot more fun than Bejeweled 2.

As for me, I'm kind of alternating between World of Warships and Hearthstone at the moment. I've pretty much entirely stopped playing World of Tanks, and am on a long hiatus from playing Armored Warfare too. I am eagerly awaiting the upcoming Warhammer: Total War, and even more eagerly awaiting the Battletech game I kickstartered, from the same company that makes the Shadowrun games, actually. I still occasionally play Civ 5, which probably won't change. The one completely new game I've been trying to get into is Overwatch, due in part to the fact that Tigole is the guy in charge of the game. It's absolutely not my normal type of game, and so far I seem moderately terrible at it. rofl. Could be a lot of fun if I ever get decent at it, though. Oh, and if you haven't seen it, watch this cinematic short:

Minimalist backstory: Somewhat future on Earth. Overwatch is effectively a superhero organization that got outlawed. At the time of this short, a race of AI robots called Omnics has cropped up, and humans being humans, there's big tensions between humans and Omnics. The robot with the diamond pattern on his head is Mondatta, a Gandhi/Dalai Lama/MLK analogue, who is about the only thing keeping war from breaking out between humans and omnics. The blue girl is Widowmaker, the world's #1 assassin who works for an organization the equivalent of SPECTRE. The British girl in the yellow goggles is Tracer, who had a bit of an accident and is now slightly out of phase with time, which lets her blink and occasionally rewind time for herself.



Sorry for the backstory blather, but it's seriously one of the best animated clips I've seen, period, full stop.

[Drem]

Really? Tigole ? That's awesome. Good for him. Not my type of game but that's still sweet

Aside from the ones I listed above, the only other totally new game I'm playing right now is Elite: Dangerous, and I don't have much time so basically all I've done is travel a lot and get killed so far, but I like it. It's scratching the Freelancer itch that I've had for 15 years

[Lyion]

As an interesting aside, most of the WOW players at my current job are 40somethings. The 20somethings all seem to be more into First Person Shooters and are more into The Division. I think it's more about the 80s kids being more into AD&D, but just a guess. Most of my friends and I grew up with Wizardry, Tolkien, etc, and being more into High Fantasy.

I can't get into any MMO that has a time sink anymore. They really just completely turn me off. I fire up WOW about once a year when I get my free week, play it for 2 hours, and then forget about it for another year. I occasionally log into Project 1999, but the game itself is complete ass, just like EQ compared to modern games. The people and grouping are the only good part.

The older I get the more I realize the 'golden age' of MMOs wasn't about the games, but those people. My UO, EQ, and DAOC time was way too much grinding with the social aspect at the forefrount. As of now I have plenty of social outlets so my limited game time is solely just for that, and not a social outlet.

I'm a huge fan of the Dark Souls series. I also still enjoy Skyrim. I didn't care for Elder Scrolls Online at all. Fallout 4 was great for a few months. I'll probably pick up Overwatch, but really it's the exact same game as Team Fortress 2.

I totally disagree with Arlos' comment regarding Bejeweled. It remains the bomb.

I might nab Elite: Dangerous on the Xbox One. I saw it onsale. I just don't have a ton of free time.

[brinstar]

ATTEMPT NUMBER 3 UNDERWAY

sailing right along by virtue of my shiny new gpu and not-so-fuzzy memory. rolled a knight again. killed the asylum demon on first try. killed burg black knight on first try. no rare drop. got invaded and ganked by something with a big floppy bulb for a head??? wtf. jacked the twinkling critter before it disappeared. taurus demon on bridge gave me some trouble, not because i don't get the mechanics but mostly because i get tied up in between his feet and didn't have enough END to roll and swing constantly. also he just straight up blasted me right off the bridge a couple times lol.

ganked him, made the mad dash to get under the drake bridge to kick down the ladder. bought a shortbow off the vendor, cheesed myself a drake sword. gooned around the parish a bit, whacked the greatsword knight on second try, kindled up the blacksmith fire. killed the giant shield knight and channeler, opened portcullis, killed the boar. no rare drop. rode the elevator down to firelink and upgraded estus (can't believe i just straight up used the firekeeper soul last time). came back up and summoned solaire and ganked gargoyles on the first try. got a gargoyle hat! rang the bell and upgraded my hat to +2. cheesed the headless caster demon, stepped into darkroot garden. twinkling critter got away this time. whacked pike knight on first try, got blue slab. grabbed stamina shield and ran back up. kindled secret darkroot bonfire and backtracked to blacksmith. upgraded new shield to +5, saved, logged off.

next time i play i'm going to grind at the parish. the aim is to save up 20,000 souls for the crest of artorias and hopefully score some more baldur gear in the process (currently using gloves and pants). once i get the crest i'm gonna grind up to lvl 50 on the forest humans before taking a swing at the butterfly.

this is already a lot easier with +1 estus, sigh.

[Drem]

crystal lizards should respawn when you hit up a bonfire

also i would smash thru blightown (skip half via valley of drakes from firelink because, of course, you took the master key as your starting item, right?) and get your estus further upgraded. I dont think i did DRG until i was headed to sen's funhouse

[Zanchief]

Trick for lizards. If you stand next to where they spawn and just exit to the main menu and come back to the game they will respawn and you're close enough to them that you can just kill them. Cheap I know, but it works.

What's the your build, Brin?

[brinstar]

just hit 30 last night. so far i've put most of my points into END and STR with a few for VIT and DEX here and there. drake sword, grass shield +5, baldur pants/gloves/shirt, garg hat +2. no miracles or anything. old witch's ring, blue tearstone ring.

coming up on the place where you get the elite knight's stuff, so i'll be upgrading that as far as i can

[brinstar]

lol i goofed again, but thankfully it's not a huge goof

when i finally punched through the demonic foliage and stone knights to get my elite knight set i ran straight back to the bonfire to upgrade as much as i could with the pile of shards i'd farmed while saving up for the crest

i proceeded to use all of them on upgrading my knight set

not the elite knight set i just got... the knight set

luckily i was also sitting on a pile of like 12k souls so i just hoofed it back to the blacksmith and bought a stack of shards to upgrade the correct set

came back and went all the way in and got the wolf ring. about to fight the butterfly; reversed hollow in order to summon the witch. brb

[brinstar]

killed butterfly on first try. well, i should say the witch did most of the work, i just absorbed lasers and drank juice. ran back to blacksmith guy and dropped off the ember. headed back to use basement key but went the long way around so as not to deal with mr. bridge drake. took a wrong turn and used watchtower basement key and suddenly found myself in a fight with havel. i could hang a bit as long as he was using 1h, but when he switched to 2h it was instakill every time. not interested in losing the pile of souls/humanity, i kept going after him. after a while i figured well if my shield holds up when he's 1h and i die instantly when he's 2h, maybe it's better to avoid being hit altogether. next time i spawned i switched to full leather (except for garg hat duh) and enjoyed my newfound mobility. took a few tries to get the hang of it, then had him down to a sliver before getting whacked. next time after that he never touched me. yay new ring

question - obv the havel ring is badass because i can wear plate and move like leather, but what about the 2nd ring slot? i have blue tearstone (raises DEF when HP is low) or wolf ring (boosts poise). wolf ring, right? until something better comes along? kinda fuzzy on how poise works

[Drem]

Ring of Favor and Protection (which you will wear for the entire game because it breaks if you take it off. it's a 20% increase to max HP, max stamina, AND max carry weight) and Dark Wood Grain Ring. I flip Dark Wood for the Covetous Gold Serpent ring when I need to farm stuff. Havel's ring is ok til you get the good stuff but I've personally never used Havel's ring

[brinstar]

ok yeah i don't have any of those

rn it's either wolf or blue tearstone

[Drem]

Did you free Knight Lautrec? Kick him off the cliff in Firelink, reload your game and there will be loot where he was sitting and you get the Ring of Favor and Protection. Also if you do it soon enough he won't kill the Firekeeper

[Zanchief]

I agree with Drem. Favor and the rolling ring is usually what I use unless I'm doing magic build. Wolf is better than bluetearstone. If you want to do pure melee (no magic) I'd recommend a quality build with a bastard sword or claymore.

[brinstar]

he won't kill the Firekeeper

wat????

and zan by rolling ring do you mean havel's or ???

[Zanchief]

he won't kill the Firekeeper

wat????

and zan by rolling ring do you mean havel's or ???

Dark Wood Grain Ring

[brinstar]

alright so i went to kill lautrec and i screwed up kicking him over the ledge so he stood up to fight
and killed me before i knew what was happening lol

i hadn't used the firelink bonfire because i didn't want to bind there

which meant a long run back from burg - and in the process i accidentally flew off the stone bridge over the firelink chasm and died

...marking the very first time thus far this attempt where i was unable to retrieve my soul/humanity after dying

oh well now the pressure's off lol i can be a little more daring when on corpse retrieval

[brinstar]

while i found myself in firelink i decided to go back to the asylum and clean it out

got the rusted ring for watertimes, got some souls, got a doll, ganked two more black knights (red chunks). stray demon took me quite a few tries and i had to revert back to leather rollboss, but once i finally owned the timing it wasn't even really a fair fight. just a long one. over 5k hp coming off by 85 every 10 seconds, yawn

whacked him and headed back to firelink. time to face the goddamn capra demon ugh

[brinstar]

gaping dragon down on third attempt. first one was a disaster, second i did okay until i got pinned against the wall, third he wouldn't have touched me if not for the one random tail swipe

ran back to blacksmith to upgrade whatever i could and deliver the large ember. done for the night.

i forgot to check, can i upgrade further with my repairbox now that the dude got the large ember? or can i only go so high on my own

[Zanchief]

You need to go to the blacksmith for the bigger upgrades (5/10/15) but you can do the others from the bonfire if I remember correctly.

[brinstar]

finally had some time to play tonight. ganked hydra on second try and whacked golden golem. ran all the way from there through the depths to blighttown and fought to the first bonfire before calling it a night. SL44 now, went back to the ol' broadsword now that it's +6 since it's faster and lighter than drake sword. i really remember not caring much for blighttown last time

[brinstar]

just re-read the account of my previous attempt

i'm 13 levels behind where i was when i wandered away last fall, but that's mainly because i have spent almost zero time grinding hollows in the forest

once i finish blighttown i'll be all caught up

[Zanchief]

I hate blighttown. It's just not an enjoyable level. Even now, it's fairly easy to me, but I just hate doing it.

[brinstar]

ya it was bad enough when i could play it on my big 50" screen but BT is so dark and has that weird color wash so it's pretty taxing to play it on my 22" monitor - ESPECIALLY if it's not nighttime (been lazy about putting curtains in my office)

hoping to power through it tomorrow just to be done with it

sidenote: you know where i'm at in the game (finished basin, finished depths, finished parish, killed havel, killed butterfly), where can i go to farm up some large shards? the slimes outside the bonfire room in depths? i want to pump up my broadsword and armor to at least +10

[Zanchief]

Wait until you get the the bonfire at the bottom of blighttown and farm the worm things.