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[s0]

i beat him using +14 balder side sword and grass crest shield and <25% encumbrance. i 2-handed my weapon, dodged all his attacks, hit him with an r2 attack whenever there was an opening, and used the aoe thing he does to heal up. the fight is largely a matter of getting into the rhythm. also patience helps.

i actually had the most problems with the guardian and the least problems with manus.

[ink.inc]

get a sword that hits hard; 2 hand it, dodge everything

you can only hit him once or twice before having to back up

[Blademasterbobo]

he will change his attack pattern a bit if you attack him too many times or try to heal.

[TeeGee]

Finally unwrapped this fucker and started playing! It took me -- what -- half a year? Talk about being fashionably late to the party.

It does feel like Demon's Souls 1.5. Everything is the same but a bit better. Maybe except the story/setting. I'm also surprised that it's actually considerably harder than DS. I thought I'm gonna have it easy, but I get my ass kicked as if I was playing a completely new game. Bosses are pretty challenging this time around, and even the common enemies tend to appear in larger groups and have some clever AI that tries to flank and surround you.

One thing I don't like though is how strength and strength/dexterity weapons seem subpar compared to purely dexterity ones. They are either very heavy or require way too much stat investment to be viable, while a good katana is light, fast, and leaves enough soul levels to pump int/faith for some cool weapon buff.

[s0]

it's probably better to just base your entire build around int or faith and upgrade a weapon to +5 enchanted or occult, depending on the stat (weapon upgrades are a lot more important than in demsouls). my main ps3 character is an int build with sorceries and good melee damage using an enchanted winged spear.

i think the story is actually better but the base plot is less straightforward (probably exacerbated by the lack of a nexus where all the important story npcs are) and takes more time to sink in. i didnt really get what was even going on until my 2nd playthrough lol.

btw: i like that the boss weapons aren't the best weapons in the game anymore but i kinda miss getting spells from boss souls.

[Tumetsu]

Defeated Artorias today. Upgraded +10 Eagle shield and evaded his attacks while spamming Homing Crystal Soul Mass and Crystal Soul arrows when he tried to buff himself. Rest by melee. Awesome fight though still not as intensive as Smough & Ornstein. Didn't find Kalameet yet but tried Manus once.

[TeeGee]

I'm currently doing just that. A faith build with just enough stats to carry my weapon. The problem is that a fully stat-boosted Claymore +15 is much better than Divine/Occult Claymore on a faith setup. Deals more damage, as it gets blocked only by one defense stat, and then can be buffed with Sunlight/Darkmoon Blade on top of that. However, it requires 40 of both str and dex, while Uchikatana +15 only needs 40 dex for the same effect. Pure strength weapons on the other hand are too slow and heavy to make the extra damage worth it. It's not very well balanced.

I like the story already, but Demon's Souls just felt more fresh to me. Probably because it was first, not because it's really better.

Tbh, I never used any of the boss weapons in DS. Maybe except Baby's Nail for applying disease to annoying turtlers. A fully buffed normal weapons outclassed most of them. Especially as I used a regenerating build, and it would be hard to find something better than +6hp/sec on a sword. All in all, Claymore and Uchikatana were pretty much the best weapons in DS, and the same (+ Moonlight Greatsword) is true for DkS.

[Ben_Hurr]

A regular claymore does more damage than a divine claymore with appropriate stats each? Even against heavily armored enemies?

That's screwed up. 


I can't help but feel Dark Souls is a bit weak when it comes to balancing different damage types.

[Blademasterbobo]

you also have to take into account the fact that there is much less divine resistance armor laying around than there is physical resistance armor. best way to deal with it is to combine the two and get a +15 weapon and then enchant it when you fight. most people will let you enchant stuff / eat the stamina grass / etc before you start fighting, anyway.

[TeeGee]

A regular claymore does more damage than a divine claymore with appropriate stats each? Even against heavily armored enemies?

Especially against heavily armored enemies.

Let's say you have a Claymore +15 that does 524 physical damage, and a Divine Claymore that does 554 (222 physical and 332 magic). If you attack someone wearing armor that reduces physical damage by 150 and magical by 125, you'll deal 374 with the normal weapon and only 279 with the Divine one. Remember that you can also enchant the +15 Claymore with magic or items for a couple hundreds more points of damage. The only advantage Divine weapons have is that they can do some chip damage through shields without relying on buffs. They can also be handy against monsters weak to magic. But mostly, they simply require less stats to be effective, which makes it pretty balanced overall. If you want to be a spellcaster or a vit gauge build that doesn't completely suck in melee, pick a magic weapon. Otherwise just make it +15.

What's not balanced is that a Claymore needs both 40 str and 40 dex to gain the same damage increase that a pure dex weapon gets on just 40 dex. That's a huge difference. In DS, you could forge the weapon to make it scale better with the attribute of your choice. It's not possible in DkS, so weapons requiring two stats are simply worse. And of weapons that require only one, dex weapons are faster and lighter (meaning you can dodge better and/or wear better armor), while str weapons are too slow and too heavy to make them competitive.

Almost all high-tier builds I checked were dex+faith, dex+int, or just end+vit and a non-scaling elemental weapon (nerfed in patch). The few strength or str/dex builds I saw had to make huge sacrifices in vitality, endurance, and magic stats to be viable at SL125.

Of course, it only matters if you care for PvP and co-op. Otherwise you may as well pump everything up to 40 and stop caring.

[SundownKid]

Dark Souls does have a problem where any kind of "magical" forged weapon is rather weak compared to +15 Normals.

I think that DEX+INT builds are definitely the most powerful in the game, what with the DLC and its new dark magic. However, strength weapons are more cool-looking and fun, so it definitely doesn't detract from the experience. DEX and STR at the same time are just not worth it for stuff like the Murakumo.

[s0]

what? sorcery builds are p much easy mode, at least before ng+

[deathtotheweird]

http://kotaku.com/5957886/dark-souls-secret-revealed-director-was-pulling-a-prank-on-players

o

[SundownKid]

Well, it did say "No Effect". You'd think someone would have figured it out by now if it did anything, anyway.

*Note to self: Build hoax about game to build interest!

[s0]

http://kotaku.com/5957886/dark-souls-secret-revealed-director-was-pulling-a-prank-on-players

o

i knew it!

i mean the description sort of gives it away lol

A simple pendant with no effect.

Even so, pleasant memories are crucial
to survival on arduous journeys.

as in: the pendant is useless but its one of the most memorable items in the game BECAUSE of that.

[Glyph]

That's super cool. I love when big mysteries are yet unsolved on the internet. The intervening time between Fez's release and the solving of the Black Monolith puzzle was such an example (and I still don't consider that solved until there's an explanation for the solution). When you can stump the internet as a whole, you're doing something right.

[Ben_Hurr]

http://kotaku.com/5957886/dark-souls-secret-revealed-director-was-pulling-a-prank-on-players

o

I knew it, they're all assholes at FROM.

[Raptor85]

DEX and STR at the same time are just not worth it for stuff like the Murakumo.

Murakumo is actually pretty ridiculous if you've never fought someone who actually knew how to use it, two handed it's decently fast and hits HARD, plus it can stagger almost any armor on EVERY hit (anything under 60 poise, which is pretty much every armor in the game that doesn't make you do a fat roll), a decent murakumo user has you stunlocked and dead if you get hit even a single time during the fight...makes them kinda annoying in pvp....they swing exactly fast enough to re-stun you before the stun breaks on every hit.  None of the other large swords that can break that much poise swing fast enough to keep a stunlock so it's in an odd class of it's own.

I'd rate the Murakumo as easily one of the most dangerous swords in the game in the right hands...up there with the rapier.

[TeeGee]

I might have just accidentally stumbled into Gaping Dragon's lair and defeated it on the first try. Amazing monster design. Really creepy.

[SundownKid]

Huh, I didn't realize the Murakumo was that powerful. I mean, I made my 2nd character a Murakumo-user after going through the trouble to get one, but it just seemed pretty slow compared to what I was using before. Looks badass, though.

(I got 3 man-serpent greatswords in my 2nd runthrough. There needs to be a way to tweak items between characters...)

I might have just accidentally stumbled into Gaping Dragon's lair and defeated it on the first try. Amazing monster design. Really creepy.

Gaping Dragon killed me the first time, but he's pretty easy if you have a high DPS. P.S. Did you know you can summon Solaire for the fight?

The entire sewer level totally grossed me out, and I've played countless sewer levels in every RPG ever... this one takes the cake.