Dark Souls - Discussion Thread

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Allwyn, I am done with the Painted World of Ariamis. Slayed Priscilla and paused it right there. This level netted me in excess of 100k souls! And there are so many souls left to be consumed including Priscilla's soul.

I am not sure where this will transport me back to. Is it to the same painting area? But what of those painting guardians aka Assassin's Creed clan? Wouldn't they be spawned? From here, where do you think I should move on to? I am thinking of New Londo Ruins. But I just have a couple of Transient Curse Items with me now. Would they be sufficient? Or should I buy some from that Undead Female Merchant?
 
I am not sure where this will transport me back to. Is it to the same painting area? But what of those painting guardians aka Assassin's Creed clan? Wouldn't they be spawned? From here, where do you think I should move on to? I am thinking of New Londo Ruins. But I just have a couple of Transient Curse Items with me now. Would they be sufficient? Or should I buy some from that Undead Female Merchant?

Once you take the leap of faith off the ledge near Priscilla's area, you'll return back to Anor Londo's painting spot, from where you initially accessed Ariamis. Yes, the Ass Creed clan would re-spawn.

New Londo Ruins would be an ideal area to move onto. Transient Curse should be dropped by those floating ghosts, so just buy a couple of them for the initial exploration part. Each of them last for around 5 minutes and has an aura surrounding you. Use a Drake Sword on them, once in cursed form.
 
I think I have about 3 of them for now. If the ghosts drop them eventually, I don't suppose I would need to buy any more yes?

I sold my Drake Sword since the Astora's Straight Sword and the Lightning Spear outclassed it. I guess one of these two should be fine. Let me see.
 
3 should be enough to start off with. Just to make sure these ghosts drop the loot, try to equip the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring to boost your item discovery. This should easily have them drop 2 of it. Beware that there is no bonfire in this area and you'll re-spawn next to the Firelink shrine's bonfire, if you die. The only ones who'd probably be a challenge in this level would the those Darkwraiths. If you plan to take out the 4 Kings boss(s), I suggest you better drain the water from this area, as this should now open up the shortcut between the Valley of Drakes and New Londo Ruins.
 
I ventured out into New Londo Ruins sometime last week just to get the Firekeeper's Soul at the start so used one Transient Curse, leaving with me 3 of them. The plan is to equip the CGS ring and amass some Transient Curse initially. How hard is the level in general? And how's the boss?
 
Not hard at all. Just explore this area thoroughly and FYI these Darkwraiths drop Titanite chunks, in case you need them. So a good place to farm them.
 
Yes ... aslyum demon is old news now :) ... Pushed a little in the new area. Tried to explore by going down to 2 skeleton. They were just 2-shotting me. After wht seemed like a millions deaths, i understood that was the wrong way and started climbing up. Killed the undead there, died a lot. But getting a hang of the parry riposte thingy ... thank you #Gannu for that . Leveled up to 6 now ... Did spent some time dying to collect more souls ;)

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I got a shot sword, the starter axe and a bigger axe. The bigger axe deals more dmg is harder to use. So sticking to the starter axe for now. Which weapon type is better ... axe or sword ?
 
Completed New Londo Ruins yesterday. The whole level was pretty simple and barring the few ghosts and darkwraiths, there weren’t any serious foes to contend with. Assuming the boss battle would be something similar, I dropped down into The Abyss after equipping the Covenant of Artorias ring and what followed later was a series of gang rapes! The first king spawned after a couple of seconds, and I sprinted towards his location, locked on to him and started poking him with the lightning spear +5 which dealt minimal damage. Less than a minute passed by, another one spawns adjacent to him and this one starts blasting with the magic attacks! The first king grabbed me and consumed one humanity in the meantime (reminded me of Old King Allant that motherfcuker!) And before the third one spawned, it was already R.I.P.

The second time, since the shortcuts were opened I was able to quickly sprint towards the fog door (from the bonfire next to Andre at Undead Parish!) and touch the bloodstain. I donned the Havel’s Armor this time which restricted the motion heavily and the stamina took a pretty bad hit. Used Iron Flesh as well and although the kings were now not able to inflict much damage, the weapons were falling short here. Died again.

The third time however, I checked my inventory and I had a Crystal Halberd (durability - 20!) with a 242 phy. dmg. And there were 7 Gold Pine Resin left - had never used it before. Said my prayers and entered into The Abyss with a slight hope and emerged victorious! One-handed the halberd and poked the hell out of them while circle strafing. Each of the king went down before the other one spawned! A pity that the durability of the weapon is only 12 now! Perhaps an upgrade might set it to default once again?. Anyways, it felt really good. Consumed close to 7 flasks however since the magic dmg was taking away a lot of HP. The boss dropped 4 humanities and 30k souls netting me close to 100k souls for this chapter.

A small correction from the previous post - the Painted World netted me in excess of 200k souls not 100k! I do not recall the exact number but after consuming Priscilla’s soul and the other souls pillaged from this level, the souls were close to a whopping 210k odd!

Leveled up to 78, major stats i.e. Vitality, Endurance, Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence leveled up evenly at 27 IIRC. I might have to improve the strength and endurance now. Haven’t touched Resistance and Attunement from start.

Might visit Ash Lake and The Great Hollow today. :P

Yes ... aslyum demon is old news now :) ... Pushed a little in the new area. Tried to explore by going down to 2 skeleton.

Glad to hear that. :)

Don't venture out into that region for now. They are far too powerful for you now. However, that area has some loot which may be worthwhile. Now, get yourself a good sword and the shield. Go down into the area underneath the bonfire at the Firelink Shrine and explore the Valley of Drakes. There is a nice sword and shield guarded by an Undead Dragon. You can simply walk slowly (not RUN!) towards it and grab that loot plus a soul but the moment you grab one of those equipment, it will aggro the dragon and it might wave its paws. Simply roll back. Heck, even if you die you will have those in your inventory if you managed to collect it before you died. You need this equipment before you venture out any further!

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Which weapon type is better ... axe or sword ?

I haven't used axes so I am not sure how good they are but I've seen few videos with users wielding great axes with ease. Takes a while for the blow and consumes a lot of stamina but yields a good deal of dmg. Stick to a sword for now.
 
Yep using the sword now. Its a lot more faster i feel. Got a large sword yest as drop. AS such didnt make any progress yest. I was roaming in the Undeadsberg and reached the taurus demon. Couldnt kill him yet. Died there and no way to recover souls and come back ... which was bad. So just kep roaming and dying there and reached level 16 now. There is also a big ass knight there, he can like 3 shot me. Any suggestions for him ??
Also got a couple of crossbow drops, are they good (run and gun ??) and how to acquire the bolts ?

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Also used some of the mods from dark souls nexus ... DSfix, high res UI, health bars. And game looks a lot better now :)
 
Are you referring to the Black Knight who guards a small tunnel overlooking a balcony under the Undead Burg? If yes, he is very very strong for you right now but nothing that cannot be beaten. Do parry and riposte. Almost all his attacks can be parried with ease. With a good sword, he should not take beyond 3~4 shots. As for crossbows, the only occasion I've ever used them is for those pesky mosquitoes at Blighttown swamps. They are one shot kills so doesn't take much time else the crossbow can be a pain during reloads.

As for Taurus Demon:

Did you simply walk straight towards him after the fog door? Do not do that! Clear out the 2 undead on top of the tower atop the fog door. As soon as you come outside the fog door, turn right and climb the ladder. Finish off those 2 undead. Climb down and approach the other tower. The moment the Taurus Demon spawns, run back towards the ladder and climb it. The demon will stand guard below. Do a plunging attack. Walk towards the other tower now and let him approach you. Once he waves the hammer, roll across and run back to the other tower. Do the plunging attack again. He should now not have beyond 20% health. Slash him to death while avoiding the attacks. Else you can spam him with some fire bombs as well.

You should also acquire the Astora's Straight Sword and the Dragon Crest Shield ASAP! The location is in the video below:


I managed to take all the 3 items and rolled out before the Undead Dragon could hit me.
 
Demon Souls then Dark souls.

One of the big reasons why I left demon souls was ps3 platform not sure why but I prefer playing on 360
 
#Gannu ... i thought about the jumping tatic today morning ... forgot all about that yest :( ... I did kill the crossbow men on the top. Will focus on getting the items today. (Saying no Crysis 3 MP today :)). Any about those items ... i dont have a master key :(

The blog has said it so well. Hope i too fall in love (even if i cant complete it ) :).
 
The biggest problem I had was lack of free time for long hours it requires long continuous game sessions and for weekdays I get only 1 hour of gaming and no pause screen hurts a lot since every now and then my family members come to my room make it even more difficult I remember when red eye Knight was chasing me and my mom started calling me
 
^Haha that would have been epic! I mean the REK chasing you and then mom calls you, Dinesh responds "Yes, mom! In a minute!" and SLASH!

YOU DIED! :P

krugur: Dude! You should have selected the Master key as the starting item. It helps a lot! :(
 
#Gannu My bad ... should have checked that too >.<.

Had a lot of issues to fix .... so didnt play at all yest. Will see how it fares tmrw. Gonna go for the taurus demon. *fingers crossed*
 
Good luck! :)

What starting item did you choose anyway? Is there any way I can persuade you to start the game from scratch choosing the Master Key as the starting item? It will be extremely helpful and won't require you to backtrack often after you find the actual key for those doors.

As for my progress, I ventured out into The Duke's Archives from Anor Londo. But before that, I would like to mention something here which might be interesting for other players. I had spoken to Allwyn yesterday and he did not encounter this either. We get the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring from Sen's Fortress during our playthrough and sourcing this ring is pretty much straight forward using those boulder stacking on the pit which you will come across. This ring is a blessing during farming and with added humanity on the counter (NOT the inventory!), it adds to the item discovery rate for a max. of 410. Which essentially means, you can possibly get rare drops from enemy loots.

I had this ring equipped during my last playthrough at New Londo Ruins (to get some Transient Curse from the ghosts) and after killing one of the several darkwraiths, I happened to get a very unique weapon which can otherwise be obtained only after joining the Darkwraith covenant (through Darkstalker Kaathe which IMO no one would be willing to do during the first playthrough because only one of the primordial serpents can be awakened. If Fraampt awakens, Kaathe will be no more and vice versa. And Frampt is useful cos he can break down bigger titanite shards and trade souls for stuffs. I know this sounds like rocket science to the unknown but once you acquire the Lordvessel you will figure all this out. :P) This weapon is called the Dark Hand. It has a 200 phy. damage which takes a lot of time for the animation and 999 durability but this weapon has a secret heavy attack i.e. the R2 attack. It will absorb the humanity from the NPCs! And here's the best part - they do not become hostile! But the downside here is it adds to the humanity counter directly and not the inventory so it cannot be sold to Frampt for 1000 souls. But the point here is, although you may be able to farm several humanities later on, it might be a good idea not to use them to add to the counter immediately.

I did a quick check by using the R2 attack on several NPCs at the Firelink Shrine - absorbed 5 humanities from Laurentius, 2 from Petrus, 5 from Solaire and 3 from Griggs! Right now my counter shows some 57 odd humanities! And there are some more NPCs strewn around so I might use it later. More humanity = more resistance to all attacks including curse and more item discovery rate. :D

Anyways, back to the progress. At The Duke's Archives I met Seath and he greeted me with a nice cold spiky crystal death. Thanks to the Rare Ring of Sacrifice, I did not lose any souls or humanities acquired this far. Got out of the prison, and farmed those pisacas for some humanities. Released Big Hat Logan from his cell and collected the Firekeeper's Soul. Collected all the loot here. The undead crystal soldiers are one shot kills from backstabs using the Lightning Spear +5. Also managed to kill that lone Crystal Golem for the Broken Pendant (thanks for the tip Allwyn!) which is the key to the DLC region entry. Will possibly visit the DLC regions this weekend. Paused it atop the balcony overlooking the garden. Will resume today.
 
Completed Crystal Caves and Seath the Scaleless is no more! :D This boss was fairly easy. Smeared some gold pine resin on the Crystal Halberd and poked him. When the crystals were spawning from the ground, held the shield up but the stamina took a hit so consumed some estus when the health was < 50%. He was gone in under a minute.

Just look at the amount of souls I had amassed after this level:

l7M6f.jpg


And then it was time to upgrade the stats so went ahead with the Strength upgrade sufficient enough to wield the Black Knight Halberd which was 32 so upgraded that straight away. The maneater shells near the boss’ lair was kind enough to drop several twinkling titanite and I had amassed close to 17 of them in total. Went to Andrei and upgraded the halberd to +5. And the result was completely shocking! When Allwyn told me that this was one of those badass weapons, I was a bit skeptical initially. But I was wrong. This weapon owned all the major foes in a couple of hits! Way too overpowered IMO. A sentinel at the Anor Londo entrance for instance took at least 8 hits using the Lightning Spear +5 but now using the black knight halberd +5, it took just 2 shots - 2 fcuking shots! :O

Look at the screenshots below:

Before:

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After one hit:

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That’s it:

ULzP6.jpg


Also upgraded the Astora's Straight Sword to +5 and ventured into The Catacombs. The skeleton minions were dead in two shots and the bigger one in four shots. Saved at the first bonfire and paused it. Looking forward for the weekend. :D
 
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