brinstar's dark souls idiot journey

[brinstar]

went and slew the weirdo in burg for uchigatana. felt kinda bad about it. upgraded it to +5. not quite as strong as drake sword, but it's nice and fast and the bleed thing is cool (plus the R2 thrust move is decent too). didn't have enough titanite to go past +5 ;\

went back to darkroot to farm moss and managed to find my way down to basin again. took a detour to fight (and kill!) some electric drakes. cheesed the undead dragon, picked up useless shit he was guarding. ran down and reacquainted self with golems (and hydra water jets). cleaned up those crystal bastards, then ran right off the ledge before i could get a swing in on the hydra. came back and remained mindful of the edge; hydra battle easier than expected. poking around waterfall and found a ladder to go up - found myself back in the garden! decided to cross stone bridge and immediately got jabl0wned by some big stupid cat? sigh

climbed back up basin the way i came in and went to farm souls from the humanoids past the artorias gate. got enough for a level (L50!) and finally killed that stupid barbarian that used to shred my ass. of course HE respawns, ugh. worked up another 8k souls towards the next level then called it a night.

[Zanchief]

There's a cat in that area that will let you join a covenant. If you do, those humanoids won't fight you anymore. You can ignore them and run past them if you want though, provided you don't get lost in the woods.

You can cheese the cats by hiding down the cliff before you fight them. They'll roll towards you but they'll never go down the hill so you can attack them as they're backing up. There's a boss after you fight them that can be tricky.

[brinstar]

eh i already joined the dead spider lady covenant - plus the idea of getting summoned to that forest to fight other players doesn't really sound fun to me (i've never really cared for PVP, no matter the game)

not to mention those humanoids drop big piles of souls

[Zanchief]

Well yea, all good reasons not too. You don't get summoned unless you wear a pvp ring though, but still.

[Drem]

So the Firekeeper at Firelink Shrine is dead because of Knight Lautrec of Carim, the guy you saved in Undead Parish before the gargoyle fight. Next playthrough, if there is one, you should kill him at Firelink Shrine before he has a chance to murder the Firekeeper. You'll get a really nice ring out of it. At this rate though, you'll be waiting until well into Anor Londo before the battle with Ornstein and Smough to be able to invade his world and kill him and get Anastacia's soul back.

As far as weapons go, yeah, the Silver Knight Straight Sword is great. Depends on your build. Are you STR or DEX or both?

I loaded my guy up for the first time in a bit, apparently i was 39 STR and 30 DEX. Silver Knight armor with the dad helm. Black or Silver knight armor/weapons depending on the situation, mostly using Silver Knight Halberd and Black Knight Shield. Most important thing you should focus on is getting your END maxed. Do the rest after that. Stamina caps at 40 END and is the most useful thing for any class or build imo

I have no idea what I was going for with STR, because by NG+ I ended up using Silver Knight weapons, which are DEX weapons.

If you're a DEX build, the Baldur Side Sword is the way to go. Best moveset, best scaling, best damage. Unfortunately, dumbest look

[brinstar]

is END for hit points? i'm definitely a bit behind on that if so. i feel like i have pretty good stamina bar for my level though? right now i'm 21/21 in str and dex, though now that i've gone uchigatana i will probably abandon str

should get some time to play saturday, if i'm not out biking around doing ingress

[Zanchief]

Endurance is stamina and equip load. It's not necessary that you get 40 end now, but if you plan on attacking and or block its worth getting it to 40. Only a pure magic build can get away with less.

[Drem]

i think of it more as my roll/dash meter. which i figure i would use even more as a caster

[Zanchief]

Not really. I played a few pure casters, and you gain more stamina than you need. If you play one that uses a shield sure, but I didn't. Rolling doesn't take much stam if you aren't attacking before hand. You need some endurance though. Just not 40. I might still do it, because even a pure caster can deal a lot of dmg with a magic enchanted weapon, so why not mix it up.

Right now I'm playing a heavy weapon mage build that's doing pretty well. Just killed Artorias (who was pretty hard for me). I think Magus will be very hard with this build, but we'll see. His Catalyst will be excellent though.

[Drem]

Oh nice. I've really only played knight builds that throw fireballs. I started an archer/baldur side sword guy but haven't got very far.

I also have never played the Artorias DLC. I bought it a while ago, but never have any time to sit down and play it, also kinda saving it because I know it's going to be fun. I got past the first fight and into the Royal Woods. Kinda wanna do a thread like this where I journal my blind playthrough. Kinda wanna wait for Alex to get there too tho so we could do it together and have a big dumb thread about being newbs

[brinstar]

wait i thought the thing i had to buy for 20k souls that opened the sealed door WAS the dlc area? i don't know which is which because i'm playing the PTDE steam version that came with it already integrated

[Zanchief]

That isn't the DLC area. Once you start the DLC you can't leave until you kill the boss. He is the hardest boss in the game with certain builds.

I can explain how to go into the DLC part if you want. You need to get the Lord Vessel first though, so until you get that you can't go.

[brinstar]

stayed home from work tuesday with a tweaked SI joint, pumped a couple hours in the DS machine. didn't really do much of note, just a bunch of grinding on the forest humans. went from 50 to 56 and put all six points into endurance. killed all of them for once, including the greatsword knight and the hunter with the cool bow. met cat lady, politely declined. found stone armor set and logged off

is there a compelling reason to stick with my (somewhat) upgraded Elite Knight set versus the Stone Armor set? SA has bonkers physical defense but it's way heavier. right now i've got EK BP/gloves/boots, eastern hat, and upgraded crimson waistcloth thingy (to boost resists). thoughts?

[Drem]

It's purely up to you. Do you want mobility or armor? I like to find the balance and keep weight ratio low enough to fast roll

[Zanchief]

I always keep my weight at a quarter for the quick roll too, but if you like the extra defense, have at it.

[brinstar]

so after nearly 7 years of coasting, i am finally making upgrades to my PC - just ordered a 4GB GTX 960 gpu and my very first SSD

though much of my initial time will be spent on GTA5 (i picked it up last week but i have to crank it so far down on my current system that it looks like PS1 graphics lmao) i will once again be relishing the luxury of going through all the classics with beefy new hardware and all the settings cranked up to max

this includes fresh campaigns through:

Half Life 2
Dark Souls (hence why i am posting in this thread)
all three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games
Metro 2033

and probably some other things i've forgotten about

aaaaaaaaand hopefully by the time i slog through all that stuff the cost of No Man's Sky will have come down a bit

[10sun]

Stalker games still play like shit fyi.

[brinstar]

oh i'm sure - the only one that ever ran worth a shit was the last one

but i still love them all

[Drem]

yeah there's nothing else like it. i'm still taking my sweet time with that series, I never want it to end. still playing Clear Sky

Edit: also I don't see Last Light on your list. fuck's up with that?

[brinstar]

was that a Metro sequel? i think i missed that one due to school stuff

[Drem]

Direct sequel. You're still Artyom but it continues from the ending where you nuke the dark ones (the shitty ending imo). Had really awesome DLC too

[brinstar]

ok yea i'll throw that on the ol' wishlist

[brinstar]

OH SHIIIIIIT just got my new GPU installed and fired up steam when what do i see

metro 2033 redux + last light redux bundle for $7.49, more than 80% off full value of $19.99x2

damn my backlog is getting REAL

[Drem]

nice! my backlog is stupid. i'm not even calling it a backlog anymore, either, they're just games that I wanted that now I know damn well i'm never going to play

well over 120 games at this point with less than half installed and under a quarter played more than 15 mins and probably only 4 or 5 that I've played more than 2 hours. I got this laptop because I wanted to game and now that I have the money to get whatever game I want, I have zero time to enjoy any of it. Oh well

[leah]

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