Hotfreak, how many hours did it take you to finish Scholar? Were you checking every nook and cranny to see what changed?
Trying to decide if I can wrap up Bloodborne this weekend and then knock out DS2 for good in a week before going back to Pillars prior to TW3.
Whew, what a release window for huge RPGs.
I feel the same way, and I don’t even have a PS4 for Bloodborne.
Then add in my strategy game catalog exploding and… I have no idea where I’m going to find the time to play all these excellent games.
I only have two genres left on my frontlog and backlog (RPGs and sims, plus a couple indie games) but they are so deep and time consuming.
These From games are so crazy because they keep hitting us with more content.
Tim, it didn’t take me long, and I did dilly-dally/farm a bit. I could have done it in 30 hours, I expect. Much of my time has been spent “shopping” recently and getting through the DLC zones. I imagine you could breeze through it pretty quickly. I was circumspect about clearing areas in many cases but left a bit on the table when I just wanted to get through an area (Black Gulch and Gutter, for example).
My memory is not great for these things (which can be useful to make it fresher) so I’m not sure I could give you a good rundown of all the changes. The most significant for my playthrough, trying a sorcery-only heavy Int build, had to do with item location changes (ring of binding, staff of wisdom, Estus shards, sublime bone dusts, fragrant branches) and the new enemy arrangements. With regard to the latter, I found the changes really helped move things along in most cases. I hit a lot less progression walls. Most of the new arrangements, in other words, made things easier.
There are many more NPC invasions now – and they tend to come at inopportune moments, I must say. Some of these comprise the most interesting fights in the game.
I heard the DLC hasn’t changed much. I could simply skip it since I’m so burned out from playing it recently over multiple characters.
Maybe the Iron Keep DLC just for the bosses.
yea…that’s what it was…I will be going back down there
So how bad is the Scholar edition? I have read in some places that it adds baddies without much thought to balance or good design, and I’m not so sure I want to experience that. My favorite moments in Dark Souls have to do with somewhat isolated battles, and not feeling overwhelmed by numbers so much as the mechanics of the particular encounter (be it a boss or otherwise).
imho Scholars is better in every way to the original, though I’ve only gotten to Drangelic Castle in this play through. Part of it is the fun of re-learning old areas, but I really don’t agree that no thought was given to the new placement of enemies - quite the opposite, in fact.
Yeah, I can’t agree with the “No thought” comment either.
Thirded.
“So how bad is the Scholar edition?” might be a leading question. You may now treat me as a hostile witness.
Surprisingly, upgrade materials are far more easily obtained in DS2. Long story short, don’t feel like you have to be stingy with even titanite slabs. If you want everything wrecked, upgrade a blunt weapon ASAP.
I haven’t found any blunt weapons yet. I’ll go see if that vendor has one, the one that sold me the key to the locksmith’s place. I remember she had a few weapons in her inventory. I think she had an axe. Is an axe a sharp weapon or a blunt weapon? I’ve seen it as one or the other in different games.
There’s actually one at the start, if you’re interested the details are in the spoiler.
Weapon location
There’s a morningstar in Majula, just off the little ramp/decline when you first enter the zone. If you peek carefully over the side of the cliffs, you can see a ledge where you can drop down and grab it.
The guy whose shop you got the key for? Check out his inventory.
Fair enough, and thanks for the info.
So I have a question regarding the 60fps durability bug, now that From is fixing it. One of the things I’ve seen posted on various DS2 discussion threads on other sites is how important getting ADP up is to get the additional immunity frames on your roll. I see a lot of people rave about it, and then I see a lot of people say they can’t really tell the difference. I fall into the latter camp, but I’ve only played on PC.
So my question is, if things like weapon durability are tied to frames of animation and thus 60fps causes issues, does the same hold true for dodge frame immunities and is that why I notice a disparity of opinion on whether immunity frames are worth it? Do people at 60fps get half the immunity frames in a similar way that they get double the durability damage?
It’s something that I’ve always wondered about, just curious if anyone has heard anything or noticed a difference, if they’ve played both the 30fps and 60fps versions.
I’m pretty sure that was a myth. You can Google it, just watch out for the early FUD in March of last year or whatever.
I don’t know the technical reason why it affects durability (and physics) but not iframes.
Also I believe the quoted frames are relative to 30 FPS. You can double them for 60. So the max iframes is half a second I believe. Oops looks like 16/30 or 32/60.
Cool, thanks Tim! You da real DS2 Scholar.
I’m in a happy place with Pillars of Eternity right now, so I thought I’d sneak in a couple hours with this game.
There are so many little comments I could make, but most of all I’m surprised how quickly I got used to it again after playing Bloodborne. There is something serene about rolling, limited stamina, and high enemy poise.
I’m satisfied with the new enemy and item placement so far. You definitely need a spare weapon handy early on until they fix the durability issue. And when did the physics and asset loading get so bad? The corpses pop up and down as you come into view a lot more than I remember.
I’m playing a tribal caveman with a club and pyro flame. I’d better make it my last character in DS2 before I get hooked again.