You played through in ironman mode but took a hit from Garl “I-couldn’t-hit-a-sleeping-snail” Vinland?
lmao
Jape
2742
Yes. That was my sloppy moment. Gotta have those :)
Propably happened because used meat cleaver in that fight (i very very rarely use big weapons, so not used to those).
Assuming you killed the tutorial boss, You were in body mode the whole time? Crazy.
Offline, I assume? Or are the griefers gone now too?
Jape
2744
Yeah. Killed the tutorial boss and played offline.
Hmmm…I don’t remember how the World Tendency works exactly, but in theory, by not dying in body form, your world tendency at the end should have been pretty high, right? So, the later bosses may actually have been slightly easier than they would for a naive playthrough? Assuming that WT applies to bosses.
Jape
2746
Dying in body form gives -1 to world tendency. All worlds were pure white at the end. Didn’t bother doing all the pure white content because its not exactly challenging or useful (killed miralda for the armor and grabbed purple flame shield when in pure white basically)
Dunno about boss difficulty (cant remember if it affects damage at all). I think pure white only gives little bit more health when in soul form.
White WT, IIRC, generally makes enemies easier and more likely to drop healing items.
Jape
2748
That would explain those healing grasses (had over 40 full moon grasses at the end and never bought them)
Well, hats of to you man. Considering how easy it is to fuck up in that game, beating it in ironman mode is no mean feat.
If I even think of beating Flame Lurker without dying I get sweat drops.
Indeed, care to share a sort of breakdown of what you did? Builds, which order you did the levels, where / if you grinded, etc? Any particularly hairy points?
Jape
2751
Progression went something like this:
- Boletaria: Thief’s ring. Kill phalanx.
- Valley of defilement: get blessed mace +1 to make shrine of storms easier.
- Shrine of storms: Get Crescent falcion, get regenerator’s ring, kill adjucator. free saint urbain.
- Boletaria: kill tower knight and red dragon (for pure white tendency). Kill miralda for armor and get purple flame shield.
- Stonefang tunnel: kill armor spider, grab dragon longsword. And get nice amount of ores on the way.
- Valley of defilement: blueblood sword (kill all the bosses, grab broken sword). And while there get rest of the nice items lying around the swamp (lots of souls, large sword of moonlight, etc…)
- tower of latria: kill fools idol, free freke.
- stonefang tunnels: kill flamelurker (weapon upgrades)
- shrine of storms: kill old hero, kill storm king.
** Got requirements for blueblood sword before final run to latria.
- tower of latria: kill rest of the bosses. (i really hate maneater fight)
- stonefang tunnels: Kill dragon god.
- boletaria castle: free Bjorr, free Yuria (didnt need her though), kill penetrator, dodge angry dragon and kill Allant.
- done
I basically used regenerator’s ring and thief’s ring the whole game (only used fire resist ring couple of times when running past blue dragon and during flamelurker). Didnt get eternal warrior’s ring.
As armor, i only used binded set and black leather in valley of defilement (or mixture of both towards the end because i didnt have enough endurance to wear blueblood sword, full binded set and silver shield)
Build was well rounded melee guy (wanted to use blueblood sword, so it evens out your stats). Magic and faith were lagging behind other important stats. Got 16 luck (blueblood damage bonus)
Wepons i used:
Crescent falcion: early game plus stonefang tunnel mines (very nice against lava bugs and worms)
Blessed mace: shrine of storms (great against breakdancing skeletons)
Winged spear: stonefang tunnel, upper floors. Great against crystal geckos because of running attack.
Dragon longsword: valley of defilement
Meat cleaver: Karl Vinland
Blueblood sword: Rest of the game after requirements are met (GREAT with light weapon spell).
Demon’s souls were used for:
- light weapon (only used it in king allant fight because its got so late in the game)
- lava bow (rarely used)
- meat cleaver (rarely used)
- blueblood sword (love it)
- soul ray (rarely used)
- cure (never used)
- God’s wrath (never used)
- Second chance (never used)
Didnt do any real soul or ore grinding (used 4-2 farm spot only once because i was missing couple thousand souls for weapon upgrade). Only couple hairy moments mentioned in earier post (bramd in the face, fire storm from black phantom and maneater). And King Allant because my hands were shaking a bit (was bit nervous at this point) :)
Pretty awesome. I would be pissing myself in the Maneater fight at that point, and nervous all through Latria and Valley of Defilement just from fear of falling to my death carelessly. So many ways to die carelessly…
Blueblood sword is pretty great, I was using it when I played because I’d scattered points pretty carelessly anyways.
I’ve always maintained that DS was rogue-like-ish. Don’t know that I’ve heard of anybody actually Iron Man-ing it before though.
How long did it take? (This character and total time with the game)?
Did you kill the Maiden?
Jape
2753
Playthrough took 15h 41min. Total DS playtime is propably bit over 100h. (finished it twice before).
Went for good ending, so let the maiden live.
DS is actually pretty good game for ironmanning, because most of the things in the game are directly dependent on player skill, knowledge and strategy. Not luck (cough maneater cough :)). And player really cant grind his way to victory.
That is impressive Jape, congrats. I did a full body run with online enabled, but it wasn’t a no death run. But that was also about a month after the US release came out and most of the black phantoms didn’t understand how the meat cleaver worked.
I almost completed a no leveling run, but finally caved at maneater and had to drop a few levels into Int so I could get the poison cloud spell. Every boss has a trick to make beating them ‘easy’, but I never have any luck with maneater. I just end up cheesing him by poisoning him and hiding on the side of the stairs.
Well, I’m suitably impressed regardless. I feel like you can probably check some kind of personal achievement off a list: “Iron Man the hardest game of a generation.”
No, that would be Dark Souls.
Jape
2757
Was thinking of giving dark souls a go in iron man mode, but i dont like the game nearly as much as demon’s souls. Its weapon upgrade system is stupid (lightning is better than fire. and fire is better than magic. In demon’s you actually need to know what weapon to use). World layout is little meh (nexus is way better than running around the world). Stuff like that. I always start playing it again and get bored half way.
Jape
2758
That would be a true achievement. I think maneater basically one shots any starter class. And fighting two of them at once with crappy hit point pool… Argh.
Trying that would require lot stronger blood pressure medication (and lots of extra controllers).
I agree on the weapons part. I liked the overall game system a tad better in Demon’s Souls. Also, the input queue bug, that was never fixed, alone would prevent me from trying ironman in Dark Souls.
Moreover, there are still some bosses in Dark Souls where I’m not entirely sure how to beat them reliably (solo and without exploits of course).
Ceaseless Discharge is one of them. It has an attack which to this day I have no idea how dodge reliably (it’s unblockable) and I’ve played the game for over 100 hours and got the platinum trophy.
Still I just love certain areas and bosses in Dark Souls.
Also the whole experience of the progression from beating Iron Golem until you reach the Princess of Sunlight is unmatched this generation in my opinion.
When you open that fucking door to that glorious music after the battle before, man… that made it all worth it.
Jape
2760
I think its intended that you can beat him by running back to fog door and punching his arm 5-6 times so he loses his grip and dies.
Not sure though.
But you are correct. Control lag bug would make iron manning dark souls pretty much a no go.
