brinstar's dark souls idiot journey

[Drem]

If you like the environs now, all i can say is they get better. One example? Crystal cavern with invisible bridges

The forest with the suits of sentient armor really reminded me of wakening lands hehe

Picked it back up last night. Looks like i just got past Depths.

And dude, i would love to play all STALKERs but i'm waiting until i buy a new pc that can actually run them

[brinstar]

ah yea that's fair - ukrainian game devs don't optimize they engines very well so you need a beefy box to do 'em justice

and zan my stam must just be fuckin garbage because i can't even block greatsword guy's attacks without him pwning half my life bar

[Zanchief]

He probably just does a lot of dmg. Greatswords have an attack that's tricky to dodge. They hold it for a second and then sweep across horizontally. It always trips me up.

[Drem]

Two handed great sword power attack negates block, which it sounds like he's doing. Just roll past/under, go for the b-stab like z said. Or parry if you're a G

[Zanchief]

One thing to remember with BS. You can't be blocking when you start your attack. You have to release block about a second before you perform your backstab. The timing can be a bit tricky for people who play with their shield up at all times.

[Tossica]

A real G uses that shit in 2h mode and wears the stamina shield on their back. Dodge, dodge, dodge, SMASH!

[Tossica]

Also, getting your poise up will help in melee. You won't get stunned as easily when you're hit or take damage through your shield.

[Zanchief]

I've never done a 2 handed build, but I might try some time. 2 handed str/stam/faith build seems fun.

[Drem]

It is. My build was that. wore silver knight gear, flipped between silver/black knight shields for the excellent resists, and used wrath of the gods and the sunlight covenant bolt spells

[Zanchief]

My first was a dex/stam light armor build that worked really well. I dabbled with faith a little at the end just to give a bit of punch. That character worked pretty well. Then I made a pure int caster with a lot of stam. Still hit like a truck with a good magic weapon and had spells too. It worked really well to the point that I cheesed a lot of the expansion bosses. Many were not difficult at all. Crystal Soul Mass and Crystal Soul Spear would just shred anything up. Even in NG++. Wasn't a great PVP build although there was an expansion spell that made wizards pretty powerful in PVP.

I was all geared up to fire up this game again for a third playthrough but I forgot I lent my copy to my brother. Meh...

[Drem]

Nice. Crystal soul mass is awesome. I wanna do a caster next time. This time i'm doing an archer that uses baldur side sword. Archery is a lot of fun so far. Cant wait til i get the stuff from the archer in darkroot.

I need to burn thru the great swamp tho. My least favorite part. Horrible frame rate on the xbox

[Lyion]

The thing I didn't do my first time through was learn to parry. It's very easy to do and incredibly powerful. Especially against the Black Knights. If you can parry/riposte, they go from being fearsome to trivial.

In a nutshell, when the Knight's weapon (or skeleton, or any bad guy) is at the furthest arc back about to go forward, then push LT then immediately push RB. It's worth practicing a bit and getting good. It makes the endgame boss likewise trivial. He destroyed me until I started parrying his attacks, then I waxed him. I started with Skeletons, now I can take a Knight out at level 1 with a starter club, although it takes a while.

I can't recommend the Halberd enough for a first time through weapon. It has huge range, is very easy to use, and has low requirements. It's also fairly fast. Weapon speed and moveset are extremely important in this game, so one can't just look at stats. I'd focus on Endurance first for blocking and ascend the Halbert via lightning tree. It does the most damage to the widest range of NPCs.

IF you're on the PC and stuck somewhere, let me know and I'll be glad to do some jolly cooperation. I have characters ranging from 20 to 130.

Damn, I might have to fire this up again. I've done a full caster and full strength build. My next project is a full Dex build.

p.s. In almost all scenarios there is an 'easy' way out, if you use it. I haven't read many spoilers, although I did go through the wiki for some lore and tips. The Abysmal Daemon is very vulnerbale to bleed. I killed him in 4 hits with an upgraded Bandit Knife. If you use Pine Resin on the Gargoyles in the tower, they likewise die ridiculously fast, even with a starter weapon and the game nicely gives you some of that early on.

p.p.s. You haven't really ragequit enough until you've hit Tomb of the Giants the first play through. Especially if you didn't have a light source like I didn't, and being an anti spolier guy I slogged through it painfully.

[Zanchief]

p.p.s. You haven't really ragequit enough until you've hit Tomb of the Giants the first play through. Especially if you didn't have a light source like I didn't, and being an anti spolier guy I slogged through it painfully.

Yea I absolutely hated it, but it's the first place I went on my first playthrough. I was really low level and didn't know the game at all. I eventually quit. Now I know it so well it's my choice PVP gank zone.

[brinstar]

finally found time for another binge. let's see...

decided to skip the bridge drake for now (i'd only gotten him to come back twice and i died both times) and went through the white door at the end of thiefdogtown. got jabl0wnd by a capra demon (he HP rather low, but there were two dogs with him and rather close quarters for such a big guy). got him on the fourth try. ventured into the depths. butcher ganked me twice. finally got both of them, then found a secret door leading to the ledge just above giant rat. cheesed him to death with some crossbow bolts. found a white door but thought hold up brosef, i'm sitting on 15k souls and need to get to a bonfire first - i'm still bound all the way back at the bonfire below the drake bridge. explored some more, thought i was real clever in spotting the hole in the floor, but then failed to correctly jump over it. HELLO CURSE FROGS. might've had a chance if i had known their curse move was a cloud rather than a single attack, but i got cursed like a bitch and died.

so respawn and OH WHAT HALF HEALTH? damn son. this bad. i looked on the internets to figure out where the bonfire was (turns out i wasn't far away at all, just missed it), and fought all the way there with half health. rested, but discovered i couldn't unhollow to further kindle the bonfire. great. fought all the way BACK to the other one, rested again, and then fought back down AGAIN to the entrance to depths - went up the stairs to the left instead and bought a cursebox from the dead lady behind the grate. uncursed, ran back to the first bonfire, then once again fought back down to the depths bonfire. unhollowed and kindled, then fought a bunch of depths stuff until i found that same hole again.

filled up health, then hopped down. luckily where you land they don't agro so i was able to gather myself before taking action. oh yeah - and i landed RIGHT on top of my 15k soul cloud. YES. slow and steady i ganked those bastard frogs (stay out of cloud, slash them when they're inhaling). killed a few more, then found a sweet evil eye ring. wandered around some more, then suddenly got invaded. crazy thing is he popped in like right behind me and i cut him down before he was even finished loading. couple more humanity points, 5k souls, and a barbed sword of some kind. ran around some more looking for the white door and found a friendly vendor. skipped buying the crystal weaps/shield since they break, but picked up some new armor for a big upgrade. really wanted to find that damn bonfire again and level up, but i got invaded again. got him down 2/3 of the way, but his polearm was too much.

respawned and was pretty mad about losing all those souls + humanity since i'm still only lv22 or so, but i ran down two hallways and there was my cloud! i had assumed i wouldn't leave a cloud when ganked pvp. ran straight back to the bonfire and bought three more levels, then called it a night.

[Zanchief]

One of the invasions was a scripted offline invasion. That sword is one of the best low req swords in the game. Its the same as a long sword only it has a bleed effect. (note the bonfire is behind a door in the first mucky hall way with a bunch of slimes on the ceiling.

[brinstar]

pfff thanks for ruining it zan >;[

how does it stack up to my black knight bus sword? how about my broadsword +4? (PS just got an ember to ascend it past 5)

[Drem]

Baldur side sword is the best one hander. It's nice tho, that thru proper stat building and enhancing via embers, you can make almost any weapon pretty dope

You got regular black knight sword? Or the greatsword? Thorn sword is ok but your broadsword should be better. Tho i would recommend switching to a sword that thrusts (longsword, baldur) when you do heavy attack. Broadsword is all sweeping attacks iirc?

You're getting close to sen's fortress. The game is really about to get started for you. Ringin those two bells is just like, the longest tutorial in a video game ever

[brinstar]

regular BK sword. got it off the one in undead burg near the beginning (that MFer killed me like 30 times before i parried him to death). planning to use it until it starts to plateau. as far as i can tell it's hard to find twinkling shit to upgrade it so when it stops owning everything with 1-2 swings i will upgrade the fuck out of something else that scales better

[Drem]

Doesnt it scale to str? You will get to a spot in anor lando where you can farm twinkling, too. Theres a farm spot for almost everything in the game except titanite slabs

Im lvl 152 and still swap out to the black knight sword +5 depending on situation. It also took me two playthroughs to get my hands on one. Just didn't want to drop. And a +5 fire claymore that someone gave me at lvl 10 has stayed in rotation. You can farm titanite chunks from those slimes in the depths and kill them in one hit if you have a fire weapon

[Zanchief]

For the barbed straight sword, whats good about it is it has very low recs (10 str, 10 dex). If you do a pure faith or int build you can still use a pretty decent weapon. I used it with my mage and it worked really well. I think it has a piercing strong attack like the balders side sword (but not as far).

[brinstar]

finally got a few hours to play yesterday. hard to find time these days between playing rock shows, special lady times, and doing homework

got lost a few more times in the depths but the good news is i am no longer mortally afraid of curse frogs. farmed souls to get a few levels, then took a crack at the gaping dragon boss. didn't seem overly hard to me, but it took me a lot of tries anyway - i think my health bar should be longer by now? idk. had him down to like 10% with 8 flasks left and then fell off the ledge he crawls up from. yelled at my TV for a while after that one, but then on the next try his pattern changed and he clawed the shit out of me. buhbye 6k souls

took a few more tries after that, but the time i finally killed him i don't think he even touched me. 25k souls was a nice reward though it made me sweat when i immediately got killed by the first ogre in blighttown lol

went back down the pit and sniped him with my bow so i could get my souls back, then backtracked to the depths bonfire to level up a bunch. called it a day and spent the rest of saturday watching football and playing L4D2

BTW if anyone wants to friend me on steam i can be found at "password is taco"

[Drem]

Health only goes up if you raise corresponding stat

You play l4d2 on PC or? I have that on 360, fucking loved it

[10sun]

Health only goes up if you raise corresponding stat

You play l4d2 on PC or? I have that on 360, fucking loved it

PC L4D2 here. Goes on sale for like $5 every couple of months.

[Drem]

Can mac steam and pc steam users play together? I could get it for the imac

[brinstar]

PC. aside from my wiiU i don't have any consoles younger than the SNES