ckessel
1761
Heh, I’m doomed then :). I spent 3 hours, probably died 50 or 60 times and never even got to the 2nd spear gun. About 1/2 the deaths getting whacked by his claws as I tried to sprint to the 1st gun, the other half dying to his breath weapon as I thought I was hiding behind a column. It’s really hard to tell where is safe and where isn’t safe to wait between rubble hackings.
This might be why you are hating boss fights. I am primarily a melee player, but I used the bow for most of the boss fights.
Moore
1763
Also, from what I’ve read, the scraping spear SUCKS for PVE since the main feature is destroying armor (which would be evil in PVP)
Can you downgrade it back to a winged or whatever and try a different spear upgrade path?
I haven’t used the Scraping Spear much, but I agree that it might be worth upgrading the other Winged Spear on another path.
Yeah, often I would get stuck and realize I really needed to use some different gear or spell or something. The character build in this game is more about how you overcome obstacles than some fiction in your head. I really like that necessity dictates the character progression, but I can see how someone who ‘really wants to be a mage’ might not like that.
Well, that might be part of the problem. But as a general rule I just keep the shield up in case I catch a glancing blow. I expect a direct hit from Maneater to kill me. At any rate, like I said, if you get a bow (easiest is the compound short bow in 1-2, the second tower you run through, alternatively there’s compound long bow in 4-1 where you run into the second skeleton archer or my favorite, the white bow in 4-2 behind a real son of a bitch of a red eye skeleton that I ran away from twice before I beat…the white bow is the most uncontroversial investment of Colorless Souls imo, especially before you have the stats and the ore to make the viscous bow competitive) and some hard arrows from Patches, you can take out 1/2 of the boss fight before you come in. That must change Maneater’s pattern significantly or something, since I’ve had no problem running in, having him land behind me, and then backpedaling towards the fountain. The wiki says he backs out of arrow range now, but I killed him doing that not more than two days ago. I strongly recommend wearing the thief ring every time you find a boss drawn to your position if you aren’t already. Phalanx’s minions on NG+, for instance, can harpoon you from very far away without that precaution.
On the other hand, endurance is my third lowest, and I deal with mind flayers via Anti-Magic. Flay away, dumbasses.
The other thing is that you can build a certain kind of character with stats you wouldn’t expect to have an effect. I use melee primarily, but because my primary weapons are faith and magic based, that’s where I pour the bulk of my souls and I end up with a character that has a nice “break glass in case of wrath of gods/fireball” alternative built in.
It’s absolutely worth it. The Scraping Spear is definitely PvP weapon, and it’s one best used in tandem with other blue phantoms. The winged spear is a drop in 1-1 and it’s easiest to get from the bridge under the red dragon’s breath in 1-2 (I’m assuming that’s where you got yours). Alternatively, you can buy the short spear from the level 1 vendor and use that, although it’s slightly weaker. Either way, you definitely want to upgrade to something that does regular damage and some other kind, ideally magic, as your primary so you cover all bases. That’s why everyone’s so crazy about Moonlightstone, for instance.
ckessel
1767
I just found the compound bow in 4-1, so I’ll see how that works. It sounds like I’m just not nearly potent enough (in stamina) to deal with Maneater now. The game would really have been augmented by the ability to pay a sage for escalating hints about each boss demon. e.g. For 1000 souls you find out his main attack is physical, or magical, etc. For another 2000 souls you find out he’s vulnerable to X.
Didn’t realize the Scraping Spear would suck. I figured any weapon forged of a demon’s soul had to be better than one that wasn’t. The stats didn’t look impressive, but there are other items (rune shield for example) that don’t have impressive status but their bonus ability makes up for it. My own fault though as obviously armor reduction from the Scraping Spear isn’t going to kick into play very often in single player.
I’m not really having trouble in non-boss areas. I’m, well, not rolling, but progressing nicely in 4-1 with only soul level 41. I’m half way decent with the typical grunt attack timing. I’ve gotten decent at taking a soul ray shot, keeping my shield up while switching to the spear, and then whacking in melee once or twice. It’s just the bosses that are griping my ass.
Hanacker
1768
Does the scraping spear not help much for healing/high hit point black phantoms like the guy in 4-1?
malkav11
1769
The Dragon God is the 2-3 boss, incidentally, not in world 4. World 3 is the prison with the mindflayers, world 4 is the ruins with the skeletons, and world 5 is the crumbling shambles with the swarms of really puny guys. (At least as far as I’ve gotten in any of the above.)
It helps to keep the numbering scheme straight when reading advice.
And yeah, if you can’t defeat a given boss now it’s probably worth exploring elsewhere and seeing if you can’t build stats or get more appropriate equipment.
Hanacker
1770
He did say Dragon God was World 2.
ckessel
1771
Heh, god do I suck with the bow. I can hit with the aiming thing, but then whatever it is charges me and I can’t ever get the bow put away and the shield up before I get killed. Well, the 4-1 things, I think it’s 4-1. The ones with the nasty, fast, rolling, skeletal armor fighters.
IMO, you are better off using Acid Cloud and then switching to a primary high damage weapon if screwing with their armor is part of your tactic. With other players, you know total number of hit points is unlikely to be their forte so it’s safe to focus on the additional powers of a weapon (eg shield ignoring, equipment breaking). But with any NPC black phantom, it’s usually only a matter of time before they will take you down. My goal is always to make the time between initiating contact and the projected end of the fight as brief as possible.
I’ll tell you what, though, I’m not going near that asshole with the meat cleaver in 5-2 until I’m absolutely confident I’ve tried every other challenge in NG+. I got lucky with that guy in my original playthrough (he decided to dodge in time with my magic missiles for a protracted period), but I will never forget the epic duels with it in the Asian version.
Yes. It takes a while to master those transitions, and I still would rather take my chances with a wand to melee switch rather than first person to melee switch. It gets better once you upgrade to a bow with greater range (Compound to Viscous/sticky or White Bow), so you can actually hit people for full damage and so long as you space out your attacks their ability to track you will be frustrated by your thief ring.
You can try a thief ring and see if that helps. In 4-2 that’s how I got past a tricky bit, so it may work on the skeletons of 4-1 as well… To be honest though it sounds like your doing OK using melee (defintately get the blessed mace from 5-1) and magic during the levels so I would stick with that. Break out the bow when you get to the boss though, and try to fins a safe zone to shoot arrows from or at least duck into to dodge attacks.
Meat cleaver guy didn’t mess with me much, I kinda stumbled into him and thought it wasn’t that bad. Satsuki or whatever is the Black phantom I’m just done with…ugh. It’s funny how different bits turn into peoples banes.
Satsuki is a cheesemonkey. Total cheesemonkey.
That’s exactly it. Satsuki’s hyperaggressive style plays right into my hands, and I haven’t died to him in either incarnation since the first time I fought him. Since I’m used to flipping back and forth from lock on with the spear, it’s no big deal to time the pokes to the end of his rolls. His health restoration is usually easy to interrupt as well.
The hardest black phantom for me is definitely Selen in hand to hand, and that’s mostly for the same reason as Meat Cleaver which is that damned swamp. I have the journey to Scirvir memorized now, and that was always the worst part. Plus I bet he’s going to love “anti-magic”.
I would like to think that with my newly minted Purple Shield +10 I have a chance at soaking a direct hit from the cleaver, but all bets are off in NG+.
Jarmo
1778
I was about soul level 95 when I started New Game+. I didn’t really notice a lot of difference to the first go-round. Most enemies are still 1-2 shot kills. But that’s my magic/bow sniper build, 8 endurance, 8 vitality. A real glass jaw, there. So I just don’t get hit. I have no choice. I do practically no melee fighting. Soul Ray is the all-purpose spell for me. Sticky Compound Long Bow +5 with hard arrows also gets a lot of use.
Dog packs are toast with Fireball or careful pulling. The dragons took hundreds of arrows, yeah. I’ll have to grow my dexterity from 30 for the third go-round. I just want to reach 99 magic first. About 15 levels to go for that.
I don’t know whether this is a good investment as I haven’t looked closely at how much the spell damage I do grows with the stat. It’s just a vanity thing by now. I’m grinding for a Pure Bladestone and Chunks of Suckerstone at 4-2 so I get a lot of levels anyway.
I maximise the magical damage I do with Kris Blade +5, Insanity Catalyst and Ring of Magical Sharpness. I haven’t even needed to use Clever Rat’s Ring (aka hyper mode, +50% damage when health is <30%) once and I’m almost done with NG+, only Maneater and Old Monk to go.
Maneater has proved to be the toughest boss for me so far on NG+. It doesn’t seem hopeless at all, just takes more work as there’s no easy stealth killing the second one like almost all of the other bosses. I just dance around the central brazier, my heart pounding like crazy all the while.
So, basically, the game experience can be very different based on your character build. That’s obviously one of the things that make Demon’s Souls a good and interesting game.
Just played as a Black Phantom Boss!
Killed the guy after a grueling 20 minute back and forth stalemate. Initially I tried to sneak attack him after he came through the fog but he detected my ruse. I did get one in later during the fight. I bested him in melee then immediately switch to magic and unleashed Soul Ray while he was trying to retreat/regain stamina/heal which clenched it.
My life bar was huge boss size plus I had plenty of Full Moon Grass. That guy must have been pissed every time I healed to full life.
Jarmo
1780
Did you get these things by becoming the boss or did you already possess them? Plus, gratz!
