1601

This is why I preach the value of anti-magic field. It is the mind flayer flayer, and leaves you with only 1-4 to worry about.

As for 1-4… it’s the last level I have to do, and I have basically stalled there. I can beat False King, but I failed the first two or three times, and even having killed the dragon and the black phantoms it’s a long old walk back, and a long old ride in a lift too. The minions on the level require concentration too; the fat ministers and knights can bring some serious hurt. I got kind of tired after coming back to it once more and getting nailed by the boss when I had him down to a sliver of health, then Dragon Age arrived and that was that. I should go back soon or I’ll never finish the bugger, what with L4D2 and AC2 imminent.

I always felt like I was missing something, like there was a shortcut somewhere I didn’t find. But yes, this was the one level I could have used a different checkpoint on for the last boss. That’s why I strongly recommend stealth + death cloud for anyone’s who’s had it with that guy…New game + went a long way to rekindling my love for the game, and it might well have ended at 1-4.

1602

Are you sure about the death cloud? The Wiki claimed this: “False King has been immune to Death Cloud since Patch 1.03, but Poison Cloud still works.” Or it did until yesterday, when someone removed the whole stealth kill guide paragraph. It’s still there in the edit history.

1603

wow I almost think I’m playing this game in a different sort of order… 1-1, 1-2, then completed all of 2, and then went back to 1-3 and now working on 1-4. I’ve beaten the false king twice assisting others, but haven’t been fortunate enough to get to the end with blue souls assisting me - they always do something stupid on the way there.

Perhaps I just do need to get 250 arrows and go to town on the dragon.

1604

Maneater DOWN! World 3 in pure white now. Took down my first player as a black phantom (helping the king). Now I have enough strength to use the Meat Cleaver and even roll around. Progress!

1605

I’m not sure, then. That information is a lot more recent than mine, which was circa 1.02. Fuckers.

1606

I found someone using the Poison Cloud on False King as recently as yesterday so I guess that’s the way to go if you don’t want a direct confrontation with him.

1607

I finally found a fun place to harvest souls for my magic sniper character build. Backtracking from 1-4, the Penetrator Archstone (he fell on the first try with Biorr’s help!), I can one-shot the three red-eyed knights one by one with no fuss and no muss. I don’t even need to run away from them as they just stand there looking at their fallen colleagues.

I’m using the basic Flame Thrower spell with Kris Blade +2, Clever Rat’s Ring and Thief’s Ring equipped. It’s quick to drop my health below 30% by letting a crossbow guy a little bit ahead of the archstone hit me.

With the Silver Bracelets on and using the Evacuate miracle I get well over 6,000 souls in very little time. If the run down the stairs to the knights was shorter this would be almost painless.

I haven’t killed Adjudicator yet so I don’t know how the 4-2 reaper grind compares with this but I feel like a lot of soul levels are coming in short order… I’m now about soul level 66.

I’ve finished worlds 2 and 5, in 3 and 4 I’m still on the first demons. I’ll probably go for Fool’s Idol at 3-1 next but I’ll try False King on for size first. I already drove the Blue Dragon to his second perch. I’d like to drop him, not just run past him, so I’ll need to find a safe sniping spot next. Oh, and I should probably grind for Spiderstones a bit to upgrade my Sticky (Viscous) Compound Long Bow +2 some more. My dexterity is at 28 now.

It’s fun to plan and implement your advancement strategy in Demon’s Souls!

1608

It is possible to get the world tendencies to pure white without going through the laborious contortions walkthroughs advise. It is enough to just defeat all bosses and not die in body form at a world. Proceeding like this, I have already gotten worlds 1, 2, 3 and 5 to pure white on my first playthrough. I suicide in Nexus or a world I’m darkening immediately after reviving to be sure I don’t die in a world I want to lighten.

Q: What happens if you defeat False King while some other archdemon still lives?
A: Organ music is now always playing at Nexus. That’s all.

By the way, Poison Cloud works fine for stealth killing False King. That was a tense twenty minutes.

1609

Has anyone figured out what the 6th gate stone is for?

The opening intro says something about the Giants to the north, but as we all know, it stays broken for the whole game. Was there originally some thought of DLC? Demon’s Souls 2? Or was it just a great bit of world building mystery?

1610

Maybe it’s there just to emphasize the feeling of a broken up kingdom. Boletaria has been ravaged to such an extent that even the world tendency display has a smashed item.

1611

Yes the universal online tendancy for NA servers leans towards white so it’s not too difficult to get worlds in pure white by killing a couple bosses and not dying in body form in those worlds.

1612

Ok. I did it in offline mode, though. I was online a few times before I began seriously trying to influence the world tendencies. Since then it has been offline only but because of this I can’t be sure if I started in truly neutral tendency. I know the worlds reached pure white only after killing each archdemon and not before.

I seem to recall the deluxe version strategy guide listing the tendency change caused by killing all the bosses of a world as high enough to get to pure white from true neutral. I’ll check this later.

1613

Guide check result: Killing all archstone bosses of a world always results in well over a 100% change towards white tendency. So you can start a bit on the dark side and still get to pure white.

1614

The NA servers tending toward white just means that you can be a lot less painstaking about getting to pure white than the guide’s method, which is based off the game’s offline state.

1615

Bit late to the party. I’m on my second playthrough. I started out with a thief, then realized that he was kind of gimped because of his luck points, then made a magic/crescent character. Right before I finished I switched back and made a Blueblood Sword build instead.

Both builds are actually very similar. I’d hoped the Blueblood would have a different moveset but it’s the same as the knight sword. The Blueblood takes a pretty hefty stat investment but you end up with some pretty damn good DPS. I’ve got the base damage up to about 340 now and still climbing. That beats my +5 crescent kilij and then on top of that I can enchant the thing. Being able to spam 7 attacks at 500 damage, over half of which is magic, makes most of the other weapons seem pretty weak. I can’t stand using spears, they’re soooo slow and it takes forever to kill something. :-)

My interest is waning a bit but after I actually beat the game (all I have left is 1-4) I may try a meat cleaver or other Very Big Weapon build. I played around with a meat clever a bit on my BBS character and it’s definitely fun and a different sort of way to play.

I picked up the Dark Silver Shield for this playthrough (beat world 5 before doing anything else for BBS and the shield) but I ended up feeling that it was overrated. I can’t remember ever thinking that the Dark Silver Shield saved me from a death. Having played through once with a Purple Flame Shield I guess I just got really good at dodging all the magic. Meanwhile I miss the hit resistance of the PFS almost constantly. I especially miss it against the Giant Goblins in 5-2. With my first character I had no problem blocking their attacks and then countering and that worked even in the swamp. With my second character I basically have to be on land and take it very safe or (most of the time) I cheese them with arrows from afar.

Also, I’m not a big fan of the bow. It’s definitely nice to be able to snipe but unless I’m cheesing someone I strongly prefer magic. Things that I don’t like about the bow:

[ul]
[li]damage is pretty iffy, even with a +5 viscous and 24 dex[/li][li]I can’t have a shield up while I use it[/li][li]It takes up another hand slot, meaning I can’t have two melee weapons to switch through[/li][li]It doesn’t stun unless I use flame arrows and most of the magic attacks do[/li][li]It seems to be less accurate than attacks like soul arrow[/li][li]Having to carry around 20lbs of arrows is a pain[/li][/ul]
If I were going to do this build all over I’d probably go PFS, just go with the bare minimum dex and then pump magic, luck and a bit of int after meeting all the base reqs for the BBS and PFS.

1616

Also, some impressions:

It’s a great game. The best game I’ve played in a good while. I love the combat system and the character development system is pretty darn good too. The online stuff is a fantastic addition even though I don’t use it a whole lot (yet). Some of the levels are just fantastic. 3-1 stands out as an amazing piece of level design. My first play through on that is probably the most fun I had with the game. Just the variety of enemy designs is fantastic and it’s something that I think a lot of game designers should look at (i.e. don’t just have 6-8 relatively similar enemies and call it good).

I do wish that they’d mix the challenge of the core gameplay with a little more accessibility on some of the other features. I don’t want to lose the hardcore feeling ofo the core game but I could do without things like the really arcane/wonky world tendency system.

Basically the world tendency thing made me feel like I had to use a guide and that got in the way of my gameplay more than anything. I also feel like the upgrade system should have been more transparent. That was another area where I felt that it was obvious that I’d just have to use a guide and I’d prefer that the game just give me the information I need to work with instead of making me run to my PC to read up on requirements. As I go to the PC to answer some of the less vital questions I’m invariably finding out other stuff I don’t want to know and it just ruins the immersion.

Finally it’s pretty silly to let you accidentally and permanently kill NPC’s that you’re going to need. I made the mistake of AFK’ing next to Boldwin and my wife hit the controller, attacked (the R2/L2 are really finicky) and suddenly he was aggro to me. At that point I don’t see why I shouldn’t have been able to just die or leave and have him return to normal. Instead he went into perm-aggro and I had to kill him. My game wasn’t completely ruined. I just got a hit to character tendency I didn’t want and now I have to run to 2-1 every time I wan to repair. However I don’t really think that allowing the player to accidentally fuck up their whole game (i.e. had I killed Ed instead of Boldwin) adds much to the game.

Other than that, it’s still a fantastic game. While I’d tweak a few features here and there if it were up to me, I can’t really fault them too much when I enjoy the game they released as much as I do.

1617

I found it to be situational and only would have pulled it out for some of the monsters that have magic-heavy melee attacks (mostly black-tendency shadows like the guy with the phosphorescent stick on 3-1). I ended up carrying three shields (adjudicator, purple, and dark silver) which was probably overkill.

1618

I just picked this game up (along with a PS3) and it is everything people are saying it is: dark, challenging, frustrating, beautifully designed, sadistic, and utterly compelling. It’s too early to tell if this is my Game of the Year, but it’s in the top 5.

1619

I had a blast with it, but strangely haven’t felt compelled to finish the game yet. Maybe it’s the other huge releases this season.

1620

This game has me in it’s clutches and I know I’m a few months behind the Qt3 curve, but if anyone is still playing this add me to your friends list (Subt3xt- with a hyphen) or, in fact, add me anyway 'cos I just got a new PS3 and none of my friends have one and at some point (just like Xbox Live) I’m going to need a roster of grown-ups to play with :)