Dark Soul's: Prepare to Die Edition (PC)

Tibbz2 said:
Solaire is pretty useless, he dies pretty quickly then it's back to a 2v1 rape session
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Would rather have a decoy to take hits though, heh. You should be able to take out Smough or Ornstien before Solaire dies. I've had him survive the whole fight once too...

strumpusplunket said:
...Took me forever to poke the Gaping Dragon to death in his scaly butt with my Winger Spear
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Yeah that sentence is pretty strange!
Better to return and fight back through than to die and worriedly fight back through for your lost souls, no?

Sorry for the late reply, I'm rollin' deepin in DSII:SotFS while I can!
 
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Jarrastafari said:
Would rather have a decoy to take hits though, heh. You should be able to take out Smough or Ornstien before Solaire dies. I've had him survive the whole fight once too...


Yeah that sentence is pretty strange!
Better to return and fight back through than to die and worriedly fight back through for your lost souls, no?

Sorry for the late reply, I'm rollin' deepin in DSII:SotFS while I can!
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:)

In the end I did push on. With a tiny sliver of health left and no estus I saw the beautiful sight of the first Blightown bonfire! :D

I pushed on further than that, but with such caution that I was slower than, as Blackadder famously put it, an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping.

All was good until I peeked around the corner of a tunnel and an ogre swatted me off the map with one bash of his club :(

Getting back to reclaim my souls was the most tense gaming experience I think I've ever had. Made it though, and had a similar frantic push to the second bonfire (fell into the swamp twice, used all my estus and had to use a humanity to make it). I then fell off the waterwheel thing three times and had yet more tense runs to reclaim my souls, but just now exited the game at the top of that contraption.

Still more tension to come, and now 45,000 souls at stake :eek:
 
Jarrastafari said:
Would rather have a decoy to take hits though, heh. You should be able to take out Smough or Ornstien before Solaire dies. I've had him survive the whole fight once too...
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I managed to beat them with him, he survived until super Smough was about 1/4 down on health, so he wasn't much use in that part of the fight :p

By God were my hands shaking after defeating him though, I was ******** myself the whole fight!
 
First time I beat them was without Solaire! I had summoned him so many times and died so many times, I ran out of humanity and couldn't be bothered farming more.

So, they can be done, but it's just one of those fights that when you do do it, you'll feel amazing!
 
So one of the things about coming to this game so late is that I feel like I've missed out on sharing the wonder with other people discovering it. I was party to so many conversations about this game and it was all so intriguing, but the picture I built in my mind doesn't quite match the actual game.

I've had to cultivate a completely different attitude to gaming, where failure is expected, where you can't expect to beat a boss on the first, second or third try because you need to fail to learn their patterns and vulnerabilities.

Just finished Sen's Fortress. Now that level transcended simple challenge and became what I can only think of as an exercise in sadism by the designers. Example: so, here we go with attempt number 23, I've learnt where the boulders roll, what's waiting for me after the swinging blades, I must be almost at the top... this time for sure! So around this corner and... wtf is that... something's behind me?... ah ****, oh god, god, no... YOU DIED! *clears mind like a zen master, refocuses for attempt number 24...*

And of course I already know what's waiting for me at the end of Anor Londo. Gulp.
 
You really do have to get in to completely different frame of mind than most games for your first DS playghrough. I didn't have much trouble with Sen's Fortress tbh(one of the greatest 'levels' ever imo), but for some reason had a lot of trouble in Anor Londo as I just couldn't get used to the silver knights. It was the first time I thought about giving up!
 
When you complete it I heartily recommend an SL1 run through it (even if you never finish the SL1 run)

It made me appreciate the game in a different way and realise that all the gear/stats padding and so on really doesn't matter and the feeling of accomplishment when you get further is excellent.

It's almost the feeling of an arcade game where you die, respawn and carry on until you beat the next challenge. You also get to learn all the boss patterns really really really well :P
 
agnes said:
First time I beat them was without Solaire! I had summoned him so many times and died so many times, I ran out of humanity and couldn't be bothered farming more.

So, they can be done, but it's just one of those fights that when you do do it, you'll feel amazing!
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Same, I would actually recommend people dont res Solaire for the fight. Not because I want to be all edgy or hardcore, but I actually think it makes the fight harder with him in it.

It took me forever to beat them , but you soon figure out what they do and the rest is just being patient and a little luck.
 
Wife's been working a few nights this week and I've two days off, so I've really been caning this game. Yet more digital crack!

Out of interest, what builds did people run?

I generally favour magic users so I started pumping INT as a pyromancer before I discovered INT doesn't do anything for pyromancy :( (who'd have guessed?!). Then picked up a catalyst and started trying to get some sorcery spells. Only there weren't enough and I ended up meleeing a lot. With 10 VIT and light armour. I've since found that magic upgrades make weapons scale with INT so that's good and I've been furiously soul farming to get my END a bit higher so I can wear better armour and be a little less squishy. Currently 15 VIT, 20 END and 41 INT. Barely increased anything else as I'm still using an early-game spear with magic upgrades. Magic is starting to feel quite powerful, but I feel I'm a bit weak when I can't cast. Am I setting myself up for problems in late game? (Currently just got sucked into that painting in Anor Londo)
 
You've already reached the INT soft cap so unless there are spells you really want to use that need a higher level start putting everything into VIT, END and Attunement if you start needed extra spells. Don't go over 50 INT until you're 40 VIT and END.
 
Moothead2 said:
You've already reached the INT soft cap so unless there are spells you really want to use that need a higher level start putting everything into VIT, END and Attunement if you start needed extra spells. Don't go over 50 INT until you're 40 VIT and END.
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Cool. Thanks. I didn't know there was a soft cap, so that's useful. Also I guess I could use more HP! Bit worrying that I've reached the soft cap for INT though and my magic enhanced weapon is still only doing around 150 to the generic undead. At least I have spells I guess.

I know there are tons of build guides on the web, but I always like to try to make my character feel my own. Only I was starting to feel I'd gimped myself in this game.

I think I'll farm some more souls then and pump up my VIT and END. Oh and ATT until I get enough spell slots.
 
Got a bit of gaming time today too. Made it through to Ornstein and Smough! I didn't have any trouble with the archers, really. I fell off the ledge once but otherwise it was fine. This made me feel quite confident. Then I died six or seven times to various Silver Knights, and felt a bit more despondent. Then I reach O&S for the first time.

Apart from Capra (because of those damn dogs!) this is the only boss I've died to without doing even a sliver of damage to (either of) their healthbars.

It didn't help that I was invaded on the run from the bonfire and was already tense from the run into the white fog. This is going to take some work I can tell.
 
Left peacefully. It would have have felt bad to kill the painting lady needlessly.

And... just got O&S down on my third try. Lots of frantic rolling, but homing soulmass and soul arrow actually made this fight quite straightforward. Once I'd figured out their movements the only time on my last go I got into trouble was when I forgot to toggle off the lock-on when I needed to get some distance. Ornstein went down to four homing soulmass, I missed with Smough with a few due to always trying to keep pillars between us, but was able to mop up with soul spear and then soul arrow. Hadn't quite figured out how to read his charge attack, but was able to do enough damage with spells to whittle him down.

Now in the unusual position of having died three times as much to the Gaping Dragon as to O&S.
 
I made black knight halberd to +5 as soon as possible and it made this game really easy. Killed O&S on my first try and never really had any problems with bosses as a result of the damage it dished out. Only artorias and Gwyn killed me a few times.
 
That would ruin the game for me to be honest, I'm glad I was using the Balder Side Sword my first playthrough (I think), made the game much more tense and fulfilling. I did find it quite fun demolishing everything though on NG+, ++ & +++ with my magic build. Dark Bead and Crystal Soul Spear destroy everything other than the DLC bosses, took Ornstein down in 2 hits with Dark Bead on NG+++ :p.
 
A lot of DS can be trivialised by severely outlevelling the content in SL and/or weapons.
If you can't be murdered in a couple of hits by what you are fighting, you are doing it wrong :D
 
Yeah everything is much better when you're up against possible death every hit :D

Still milling around the game farming before facing Gwyn. Trying out the DLC too, Artorias wasn't too difficult but Kalameet is a different story!
 
Well, I'm up against death every hit now! Last night I gave up in despair against those damn crystal golems in the Crystal Caves. They take so much damage, dish out a fair chunk, and there's no damn room! I fell off those bloody crystal/invisible paths whilst fighting them one time too many and couldn't face anymore...
 
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