Dark Souls

[Sheikah]

Lightning is currently the best damage dealing weapon type, the giant BS can do that modification by default.

 

As for getting the witch to spawn, there seems to be the belief that you need an upgraded pyro glove to make her spawn. Maybe needs NG+?

 

As for where to go next, the places that get unlocked after the lordvessel are left of where you start from where you warp to Anor Londo (Duke's archives), Tomb of Giants (follows on from Catacombs) and the demon ruins after Queelag's domain.

[drahkon]

As for getting the witch to spawn, there seems to be the belief that you need an upgraded pyro glove to make her spawn. Maybe needs NG+?

 

Great, so much for Pyromancy...

 

Entered the Painting accidentally. Now I can't get out apparently -.- Jesus Christ, the last few things I did in Dark Souls pretty much ruined every plan I had. Can't be bothered to play now. Gonna be away for 4 days anyway and then it's time for Skyrim.

 

Maybe in a few months I'll continue or even start again with a new character.

[Pit-Jr]

Great, so much for Pyromancy...

 

Entered the Painting accidentally. Now I can't get out apparently -.- Jesus Christ, the last few things I did in Dark Souls pretty much ruined every plan I had. Can't be bothered to play now. Gonna be away for 4 days anyway and then it's time for Skyrim.

 

Maybe in a few months I'll continue or even start again with a new character.

 

Well i was gonna suggest killing hollow Laurentius in the swamp. This seemed to trigger Quelana finally showing up for me. But your stuck in the painting....

 

If you can reach the painting boss Priscilla, you can actually choose not to fight her and exit the painting that way. Getting to her is a pain in the ass though i agree.

[drahkon]

Well i was gonna suggest killing hollow Laurentius in the swamp. This seemed to trigger Quelana finally showing up for me.

 

Not for me. I killed him and she still hasn't shown up.

 

If you can reach the painting boss Priscilla, you can actually choose not to fight her and exit the painting that way. Getting to her is a pain in the ass though i agree.

 

Well, I've played for a bit just now and I helped some people getting out of the Painted World. I have to agree: It's a pain in the ass -.-

[Sheikah]

You can skip to the boss in the painted world very quickly. As long as you can kill the dragon outside (easy enough with crystal ring shield) you can walk up to its dead legs and do a jump attack (push forward the left stick and press R2 at the same time). This reaninates the legs and allows you to basically walk on past and drop down straight to the boss!

[Agent Gibbs]

i got this for Christmas and its a great game really really challenging

 

got any tips? cos i don't want to miss anything really

I went through the undead burg and parish, managed to get the drake sword by shooting the dragon's tail, got a phantom to help me kill the gargoyles and rang the bell. I grinded to get 20k souls so i could buy a seal from the black smith to open a door in the dark root garden...... only to get my ass handed to me by a group of phantoms/men in the forest

 

EDIT:

while in the darkroot garden i went through the door opened by the seal, found you can make the enemies commit suicide and advanced to a ruined building. I found some giant cat in the window and backed off slowly and fired an arrow at it

only to have "oh what a fool we've found" be said by some womans voice and the cat disappear

then it autosaved

did i do bad? very very bad? was that an NPC i shouldn't have attacked

crap i could do without having to restart

Edited December 30, 2011 by Agent Gibbs

[Pit-Jr]

i got this for Christmas and its a great game really really challenging

 

got any tips? cos i don't want to miss anything really

I went through the undead burg and parish, managed to get the drake sword by shooting the dragon's tail, got a phantom to help me kill the gargoyles and rang the bell. I grinded to get 20k souls so i could buy a seal from the black smith to open a door in the dark root garden...... only to get my ass handed to me by a group of phantoms/men in the forest

 

EDIT:

while in the darkroot garden i went through the door opened by the seal, found you can make the enemies commit suicide and advanced to a ruined building. I found some giant cat in the window and backed off slowly and fired an arrow at it

only to have "oh what a fool we've found" be said by some womans voice and the cat disappear

then it autosaved

did i do bad? very very bad? was that an NPC i shouldn't have attacked

crap i could do without having to restart

 

Yes, you shot Alvina. Talking to her and joining her covenant gives you the very fun option of fighting PVP invaders in the forest. You can remedy the situation by absolving your sins at the church where you fought the gargoyles but it will cost you ALOT of souls

[Agent Gibbs]

Yes, you shot Alvina. Talking to her and joining her covenant gives you the very fun option of fighting PVP invaders in the forest. You can remedy the situation by absolving your sins at the church where you fought the gargoyles but it will cost you ALOT of souls

 

thanks it cost me 25k sould

[dwarf]

Put an order down. Anyone care to give me some pre-game advice?

 

Things like which items to not miss, what's worth upgrading, or anything that isn't explained well in-game. I'm not asking for boss tips or for an easy ride, I just want to be free from some of the annoyances found in Demon's Souls.

[Dan_Dare]

Hallo!

 

There's...a lot left unexplained. In fact, most of the game is. I'll start with big ones that tripped me up.

 

the first is scaling. Basically each weapon has a damage output which increases with each upgrade ( so a +5 longsword is significantly better than a +1) but they also come with scaling ranks. A long sword, for example, might be ranked C for strength but D for dexterity and E for Intelligence or Faith. This means that a Strength based character is significantly better at using a longsword than characters invested in other stats.

 

However! You'll meet several blacksmiths in the game that will offer to build you magic or divine weapons (plus some other stuff) this does not mean you get magic damage on top of normal damage. What it means is the scaling switches to favour intelligence and faith instead of strength so a mage using a magic longsword will do really good damage.

 

the other thing is levelling

 

in DS you spend the same currency on upgrading your stats as you do on upgrading your gear. In short: always upgrade gear first. Stats are not the primary source of damage or protection in the game, gear is. With your stats you should invest as a means of hitting the requirements for a desired weapon. After that, investing in the weapon itself is more effective at upping damage. The exceptions to this rule are Vitality and Endurance, which boost HP and Stamina and are very important.

 

also, don't hoard. Spend as you can. Save up for specific goals but, trust me, you only want to carry what you're willing to loose in a flash.

[dwarf]

Thanks for the tips Dan, those things all sound as if they were transferred from Demon's Souls but a refresh is much appreciated.

 

Are rings still in the game? Which are most useful? Where?

Are there merchants like the one in the Nexus which store all your unneeded items? I'd guess these would be at campfires?

 

And am I right in thinking they got rid of world tendencies? One can pray.

[Sheikah]

Here's my advice:

 

Pick pyromancer class to begin with, they are tied best stats and also start with pyromancy. This makes the beginning of the game much easier while also being amazing later on.

 

Choose the master key as the starting gift, without fail. Let's you get through many doors way before you should be able to.

 

Go with lightning effect weapons (can find a couple, better yet make yourself a lightning uchigatana).

 

Armour actually matters in this game. A great set is the elite knight armour set found in the forest area downstairs of Andre the blacksmith.

 

And your uber power haxord weapon of the game is the crystal ring shield (oddly). Thing screws people up.

 

Save stored humanity until you need it. Go down the catacombs as early as you can to get the rite of Kindling (improves number of potions you get at bonfires.

 

@dwarf gourami A few more things:

 

Humanity replaces soul and human forms. Basically you're undead, but with 1 humanity at a bonfire you can consume that 1 humanity point to become human form.

 

Good news is soul/undead form still has 100% HP. Bad news is, undead form makes you weak to plague and stuff, and you can't summon help like in DS if in soul form. And it makes items drop less often.

 

Humanity is risky to keep on your person (ie. having a number greater than 00 at the top left) as you drop it upon death, like souls. But it's also great to do, because it significantly increases your item discovery rate (combined with Covetous Gold Serpent Ring makes finding items a lot easier) and boosts resistances to stuff.

 

Getting poisoned and plagued is different here. You have a tolerance threshold now, as shown by an increasing bar. When the bar fills, you get poisoned/plagued. Plague is bad, you die straight away and your HP is halved upon revival unless you cure it.

 

Regarding some other rings, they're back, and there's some good ones. Havel's ring is great as it lets you wear better equipment without rolling like a tortoise. They have probably fixed this now, but Fog Ring was fucking hacked. It worked like the thief's ring in that enemies didn't see you from far away. However, it also made you partially invisible to real players and made it so they couldn't lock onto you. Epic lulz at how overpowered that was, but still a useful ring even if it hasn't been fixed. Cloranthy ring isn't bad either because of stamina regen boost.

 

Stats wise, STR is useless past the requirement needed to wield an Uchigatana. Same goes for DEX. Reason is that lightning weapons do not scale, and instead do a set amount of ridiculous damage. Someone did some number crunching and showed that even at ridiculous levels lightning weapons still reign, it wouldn't be worth pumping every attack attribute to max to try get a couple more points damage anyhow.

 

VIT and END are great to have. Raising attunement is also really useful to carry pyromancies with you and useful spells. Second chance is back, get that. But mostly you'll just want pyromancies, which rock.

 

There are no tendencies, instead there are covenants (which are pretty damn awesome). One of the factions is run by an optional boss for instance. All well worth doing, but require multiple playthroughs.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Sheikah
Automerged Doublepost

[dwarf]

Ta muchly.

 

What are the specific strength and dex numbers I should be looking at?

 

Can you explain attunement/pyromancies a bit more?

 

Basically I'll save your tips in a document so I don't have to disconnect from online for advice.

Edited February 23, 2012 by dwarf

[Sheikah]

To do pyromancy you need a pyromancer glove, which you get if you start as a pyromancer (or later on if you didn't, but getting this at the beginning lets you defeat the beginning boss unlike if you pick anything else, and you get rewarded with a cool weapon).

 

Pyromancy spell damage is boosted by upgrading your glove (costs souls), ie. nothing to do with levelling your character. So it's a great way to do more damage without wasting stat points on your character.

 

Some NPCs like the witch in Blighttown teach you new pyro spells. Some are really good like great fireball and great chaos fireball. They do tons of damage even on a low glove level and have splash damage. Great for PvP too. There's also a cool pyro spell called Iron Flesh, which makes you slow but makes you take barely any damage at all. Amazing for soloing bosses, but watch out as the only guy who teaches it you is stuck in a barrel in the depths. Don't slash the barrel, roll into it, or he'll aggro for that playthrough so you can't buy it from him at firelink shrine.

 

Attunement is a stat that as you level, at specific levels of the stat you get an extra spell slot. You will want to get at least 4-5 slots to carry some decent pyro's/spells.

 

Uchigatana needs dex/str of 14/14. Barely anything really. And to make lightning weapons, the giant blacksmith in Anor Londo can do this as soon as you meet him.

[MATtheHAT]

Crystal Ring Shield got nerfed in the recent patch, also the fog ring now allows lock on.

 

Wikidsouls is your friend. To get the most out of the game, as various NPC's and Covenents only appear after a very specific set of events you need to engineer.

[dwarf]

Bows/crossbows?

[Sheikah]

For bows/arrows I just got a composite or long bow and used that, not all too often to be honest. Get some heavy arrows from a tucked away merchant in the Undead Burg.

 

A good use for bows is to shoot off the red dragon's tail from underneath the bridge when you come across it. Needs maybe like 20-30+ arrows but you get the drake sword, which at early levels is a brilliant weapon since it doesn't scale and does set damage.

[Dan_Dare]

Bows/crossbows?

 

Both useful. Dunno how crossbows scale but bows are dex weapons and can be aimed in 1st person for big, big crits if you get a headshot.

 

also: Dark Souls Wiki is your friend. The sections on Humanity are really handy. Plus some great pages on weapons and rings.

 

my favourite rings so far (as a warrior) have been Havel's Ring, which lets you carry 2x the weight in gear before you slow down and the darkwood grain ring, which doubles the effect of how fast you can move under weight. So if you carry 50% of your limit you can move as if you were carrying 25%. It also gives you a ninja as balls evade move that absolutely takes the piss vs slower enemies.

 

Not the easiest rings to find, though... Havel is at the bottom of Undead Burgh very early in the game but he's hilariously hard to kill. Guaranteed 1 shot to kill you and head to toe in incredibly heavy armour. It's doable, but it takes some doing. ]

 

Darkwood ring requires some pretty elaborate shit involving joining a covenant and killing an NPC in it so I won't explain the full works, but read up on it because the ring fucking rocks.

[The Bard]

Man, even my geek ass is laughing at the shit you guys are posting.

[Shorty]

Man, even my geek ass is laughing at the shit you guys are posting.

Haha I was thinking the same. If anyone mentions the wizard key, I'm out of here.

[Dan_Dare]

Fucking buy the game you asshats, then we'll see! You'll all be like 'fuck this shit is hard! Wish I'd listened to Dan when he was telling everyone how to play because he's just a swell guy'

[The Bard]

"Daddy, what does extra virgin mean?"

 

"Son, that's what happens to you when you beat Dark Souls."

 

I've made the joke before, but it just seems so apt

[Dan_Dare]

Actually it's been scientifically proven that beating certain bosses on this game gives you massive dangly badman balls. Even you, Bard. Even you.

[The Bard]

I assume that's because after the fiftieth whooping your weak ass gets from some shlub skeleton, you decide it would proabably be more productive to stick your junk in a mechanical press.

[Dan_Dare]

Hahaha

 

seriously, though: I genuinely think this is my favourite game this gen. I think you'd get a kick out of it.

 

Plus: It's cheap