Is there even a shortcut in 4-2?
Hell if I know, unless it involves some crazy jump/fall. It might be through that first secret passage black skeleton and onto that lower ledge, but I’ll be damned if I know.
Jab
1883
I guess the reward for 4-2 is that it seems to be the best farming spot for souls in NG+. Which glowing light things are you refering to? The things before the boss fight or those enemies the reapers spawn? I found the enemies to be annoying as they constantly block the passages.
ckessel
1884
Well, part of me hates to give up, but I think this is a rage quit due to Allant, well all of the last couple areas in 1-3/1-4. First, I have to run through the entire damn level a handful of times to get to the Penetrator battle. Then I have to run through another 2 red knights every time I die against the blue dragon. Then I’ve got to go through the same damn knights again to go and die repeatedly against Allant.
It’s ok the bosses are hard, but this hatred of the player by making them run the same damn gauntlet over and over to try yet again for 30 seconds against the end boss down right makes me angry at the game and the developers. If I want to farm a level, fine, let me grind the level again. But when I reach the boss, for fuck’s sake, open a pathway so I can get back there quickly.
Get some Blue Souls for Allant. I must have run that thing 20 times getting Allant to about 1/2 health before dying, and finally said fuck it. It took a couple of tries but I ended up with a decent player and we finished him off. I’ve decided that unless you use a hyper mode build Allant can just wear you down too much solo.
I have to agree that the guantlet to Allant is criminal. Once you get past Black Phantom Ostrava there should be another elevator you can open that takes you to the portcullis on the left of where the 3 black phantoms are.
ckessel
1886
I must have missed where to open that portcullis. Not sure if I should thank you or curse you as now I’ll feel obligated to give it a few more runs…
The wiki indicates you can cheap shot Allant with a bow by not moving after you go through the fog and he won’t move, but that doesn’t seem to work for me. He starts coming at me if I move or not. Can someone else verify if that works or if the wiki is wrong?
So sorry dude, there is no shortcut in 1-4. I meant that I think there should be a shortcut there.
It works for me. I did it with the white bow +5, thief ring, and ring of avarice equipped. Perhaps heavy armor might ruin it, but I doubt it. The key is that you are trying to prevent his healthbar from showing up as a boss health bar, iirc. So you want to arc the arrows down on him from really far away, so that you should be basically unable to see him from where you are shooting apart from the impact numbers registering.
The white bow does have the best range in the game, so it might have affected my experience.
You could try the rage quit tactic. As soon as you see things going south (eg your whole life bar has just gone yellow from a boss hit), you hold down the PS button and quit as quickly as possible. If you’re quick, you’ll be right before the boss mist when you reload the game. It’s up to you whether that’s more or less annoying…usually I find that starting over and trying something different works better than banging my head against the same wall the same way.
This is where the true demon’s souls begins.
Allant definitely took the longest time of any boss, but mostly due to that unforgiving trek to him. I whittled him down with a winged spear +10 only attacking him after he charged at me. Then I’d just roll away and away, and run if he did his super charge. Shield was almost always up. It took a long time, 20 minutes or so, and I went through 2 second chance’s. But the key thing here is that I was able to equip my talisman through the inventory and cast the spell in between his attacks. You have plenty of time with Allant, just take it slow because one connected hit is probably death (or a second chance). Took maybe 5 tries max, which is much fewer than I spent on Maneater…
I love just popping back into this thread. It reminds me that I still haven’t mastered the game and have a pretty fresh newgame + that I want to get through.
The glowing white explody things in the last room. The reaper’s buddies I don’t really mind, since they can be temporarily killed or evaded (sometimes they seem to block an entire tunnel or stairwell, but I find if I lock on to them and press up against each side of them in turn it lets me through in the middle of their attack animation). But I hate those glowing lights because there is no way to counter them, or get rid of them other than avoidance. It makes me miss the mineshaft bombs of 2-2, which while lethal could be defended against and eliminated with a purple flame shield.
Like the floating bombs in the mine, you can trigger their explosion in passing. Takes a while, of course, and you have to be very careful not to slip and be slugged to death. Some of their trajectories are devilish.
Interesting. If I ever beat this old bastard of a hero (he keeps jump killing me in the last 1/5 of his health bar as I get more bored and impatiend) I’ll backtrack and clear that whole area out. So I guess I learned the wrong lesson from the mine bombs…dammit.
Jarmo
1894
They’ll just come back like every other normal enemy. They are not gone permanently. I ran through that place a couple hundred times while farming the Black Phantom black skeleton. The lights are actually not so bad once you remember at least some of their patterns. Just like in almost every other thing in the game, impatience kills you and taking it slow is the easy mode.
The lights are not much of a bother after some familiarisation. There’s time to run away once one is accidentally triggered. In a bind even just jumping down among the snails can work as they are slow.
I also hated the lights earlier. Now I don’t even pay them much heed. There’s a way to run through them in both directions without getting even close to them. Just start at the right time, pause a bit when you need to and sooner than you know you have crossed over. Both routes go generally counterclockwise.
Jarmo
1895
When I tried it with the sticky bow (not super dex at the time) Allant always moved back a bit after a few arrows. In the end I was making only 4 points of damage with each and finally none. You have to be able to hit very hard with a bow to make this work. Do not move at all when you enter the fog. If you twitch, Allant swoops at you.
Jab
1896
Small spoiler warning:
Something that I’ve been wondering, is there any way to deal with the blue dragon on 1-4 without resorting to range or magic?
Just making my way through this thread but I wanted to jump in and say holy ass this is a good game. On paper, it does things that I hate, so I expected a lukewarm reaction at best. But going through 1-1 over and over and over again never got tedious for some reason. And like many have already said, as I repeated the areas, I genuinely got better and better. Blue Knights on 1-1 would kick my butt, now I roll around them with ease double-fisting my 1 handed weapon right through them. Just beat Phalanx, missed the lever to open the boss fight gate for a while. Ready to dive into the game proper.
Love the ambiance, the graphics, the art style, the combat mechanics being more than button-mashing but not brain surgery, the mix of starting classes, how the weapons handle, and the online options. I really feel like the online portion is a genuine advancement in game design that will get borrowed in the future.
Just listened to the QT3 Chromehounds podcast, a game I wish I had gotten into with my online group. I guess the lesson learned from Demon’s Souls and that podcast is to keep an eye on From Software.
I went with a Hunter after trying a Royal and a Templar Knight. Magic always annoys me and I felt guilty for going with the easy starter class like a newb. The templar appealed to me because I tend to prefer more tanky warriors. But the Hunter really has been a great mix of melee with the option to go ranged should the need arise. Light armor keeps me mobile when rolling as well.
ZekeDMS
1899
Right, so, I’ve converted to retail now from the trade demo. Night and day. I enjoyed the game a lot, enough to know that while it might not have been my thing, it was really great.
Now that I’m on a game that has a large population, plenty of messages, and world crossing options and lots of ghosts to see…damn. It’s weird how much the sense of community adds, even when it’s disjointed. The game is just…better. It’s going to be a shame when the servers go down, for sure, but since it’s damn near impossible to get a used copy of the game and new supplies are always very, very low, I think that’ll be a while yet.
Also, I can’t believe what a wimp that first red eyes knight is now. He was the stuff of nightmares before, and now, as a new temple knight with one strength point added, I’ve been beating him into the ground quite handily.
Some of it’s stats, though since I started as a fighter last time and had higher stats when I fought him and he was still a problem. I’m realizing just how much is game skill, learning the combat and patterns, and how to refine my combat to really fuck that guy up.
In summary-Demon’s Souls=AWESOME.
Jarmo
1900
There is no way to melee it. It’s an optional boss so it’s not a game stopper even in the very unlikely case you have no ranged attack capability at all.
