First google if Vanquisher Seal has been nerfed recently - if not, try to farm it. Best way when I did it was to burn ascetics at the rat area above Gutter - if you do it offline an npc red phantom spawns - I think you’ll need 4 ascetics total and kill him about 45 times and farm the remaining items from Heide tower - this is all assuming that they haven’t changed anything in SotfS. Don’t forget to join the covenant first (and then leave it after cough)!
As for the playstyle itself - drop all armor, pump agi until you’re at 105 or 110 and keep using the powerstance (don’t forget the stat multiplier requirement). Some enemies will be hard to hit because of the wonky hitboxes and short range on your fists, for those I recommend you try to hit them from the sides, usually hitting their legs. That was pretty much the only way I was able to do any real damage to that boss with the hammer before King Vendrick.
If you’re gonna stick with Caestus I recommend you prioritise weapon upgrades over stats.
Last part is something I haven’t tried yet myself - DLC added a new fist weapon which does a wicked kick knockdown move at the end of combo. You’ll have to google this one if you want any more information however :P.
You don’t need to farm the Vanquisher’s Seal until maybe midway through the game when you run out of upgrades for your caestus. Otherwise it makes the game too easy.
Apparently they’ve found more details for invincibility frames from agility. So land on one of these.
My main problem so far is that I used up the three weapons I’ve found so far, and with the weapons damaged, I hardly do any damage anymore. Is there any way to find more weapons in the game without killing someone? I can’t really kill even the low enemies anymore since my weapons are gone.
I heard they’re going to come out with a patch soon that gets rid of the fast weapon degrading bug, but I wonder if that will help me, since my weapons are already gone? I wonder if I should just start over with a new character? Maybe you’re supposed to use the starting weapons to get past a certain point before they degrade, and get enough souls to buy a new weapon?
I can’t quite tell if this is sarcasm or not. In any case, wearing a Bracing Knuckle Ring goes a long way towards increasing the longevity of a weapon. It’s also good practice to carry two weapons if you think you can’t make it to the next bonefire without breaking the first one. Some weapons break faster than others, this holds true for most dex based weapons (especially katanas and such) and all Old Knight equipment. Generally you want a weapon with at least 60 or so durability.
The key is accessible almost straight away. You can Google it, but if that’s not your thing just pay attention to NPCs you run into early. If you want a hint or a general location (like the zone it’s in) just let me know.
Weapons auto repair whenever you rest at a bonfire, as long as they’re not broken. So use a weapon until it’s beat up then swap to others, don’t let them break until you’re back at a bonfire.
Oh! Nice! So that’s how you defeat the enemies then. You go beat up a few of them, when you get the weapon warning, switch weapons, when you get the warning again, retreat to bonfire to repair weapons. Now, when you go back to that spot, do those enemies stay dead, or do they come back?
It’s not. I started with a sword and shield. That sword is now toast. And I found a Thief’s sword and another sword like the one I started with. All 3 are currently toast. I can’t find any other weapons, because killing things without weapons seems impossible. Even the lowly puds take too many hits to die.
In any case, wearing a Bracing Knuckle Ring goes a long way towards increasing the longevity of a weapon. It’s also good practice to carry two weapons if you think you can’t make it to the next bonefire without breaking the first one.
No idea about the bracing knuckle ring. Is that something I can pick for my gift when I make a character in the beginning?
And yes, I did carry all 3 weapons I had on me before they all broke.
I just googled it. It’s available for sale somewhere for 1000 Souls. I haven’t had that many souls at one time in the game yet. So it’s an item beyond where I’m at, I’m guessing. Besides, don’t I need weapons in order to kill enemies, in order to get Souls?
You will have 1000 souls when you reach that NPC. You do need a weapon to kill enemies (well, easily, although you can punch them to death!). Just out of curiosity, what are the three (broken) weapons you have now? There might be more that you’re unaware of.
Also, if it’s that early it also doesn’t hurt just to roll a new guy, this time avoiding weapon breakages. When you rest at a bonfire the enemies will return (a limited number of times), but you should still be able to reach the NPC with the key before your weapons break - again, as long as you’re swapping between them before they break completely. Worst case scenario is you keep killing NPCs then resting at a bonfire until they stop respawning. Then you’ll have a stack of souls as well, I suppose. :)
Thanks, Tim/Bateau. Probably not going with Vanquisher’s due to the grind, but I could be persuaded if it’s that much better. The agility tiers are extremely helpful. Thank you. :)
I’m assuming stone ring and ring of blades for NG. Does it make sense to have any infused Caestus as I’m Ali-ing my way through? I was thinking of trying an alternate poison set for PvE.
Yeah, I have one weapon left. I can kill 5-6 enemies before it gives me the warning that it’s at risk of breaking, so I retreat back to a bonfire. Then I go back and the enemies have respawned, and I kill them again, then the weapon is at risk so I retreat back to the bonfire. Thank god you told me about the bonfire trick, otherwise even my last weapon would be gone.
The weapon? It’s a straight sword. Well, it used to be. Now it’s a broken sword.
But yeah, I’m not to that point yet where the NPC can sell me the key.
I have to say, this whole weapon breaking thing doesn’t strike me as a good game mechanic so far. But maybe it’s just a way to force the players back to bonfires pretty often? Which forces them to accumulate souls early on and not be so foolhardy? I don’t know. I would have never known about repairing at bonfires if you hadn’t told me. More likely they just wanted players to break their first weapons and start punching enemies.
Forest of Fallen Giants, something like that. I just found a bonfire there, near where I’d been fighting this whole time. It makes running back to the bonfire much, much shorter than going back to Maluja every time for weapon repair at the bonfire there.
I think I put poison on them after I got the VS, but I never used them again. You might have to experiment because eventually the normal damage will feel like it has topped out.
Wasn’t bonfire repairs one of the tutorial area notes? Can’t quite remember myself. In any case, durability was not intended to degrade that quickly. Cap the framerate to 30FPS and it’ll fix a lot of issues, durability included.
I can’t do that, as far as I know, since I’m playing on console. I think I’m stuck at 60FPS. They have said that they’ll issue a patch soon so that durability isn’t tied to frame rate.
And no, I don’t remember anything about bonfire repairs in the tutorial area.
The durability bug is one of the reasons I have not played more Dark Souls 2. It can be seriously frustrating having your weapons degrade so quickly as it devalues the effort I put into upgrading them and I don’t get to use the movesets I enjoy most. Or at least not for long. I think my last play session I had my main hand weapon break just after Pate’s gate having only run from the merchant’s bonfire, and I was granted the unparalleled joy of finishing that section with my fists. Not a problem for someone who’s sunk 500 hours into Dark Souls, but for newcomers I imagine it’s awfully unforgiving.
