I think you need to do the DLC before finishing the game. If I remember right it goes straight to NG+ once the game is won.
Level 202…you really do bleed an area dry. I think I finished my first play through at 150 and I thought I did that. I think my second round was closer to 120.
Me too. I think I was around 150.
I still get killed a lot by invaders who are probably half those levels. Unless they don’t find me when I’m a chameleon!
You have to manually go to NG+. One of the many reasons why this game is so convenient to run through.
I’ve had no luck with that yet. :(
On the plus side, I must have gained ~100k souls from helping kill the Pursuer over and over.
To clarify, you don’t get effigies from helping someone in co-op, but successfully helping someone has the same effect as burning an effigy, i.e. turns you human again.
So far I’ve got 15 effigies in my inventory and I haven’t been stingy about using them. I’m at about level 110 now. I even used some over and over outside a DLC boss room because I wanted to summon an NPC helper. I still failed and gave up for now! So if you want to use an effigy, don’t sweat it.
Yep, understood. My problem it seems was that the first Pursuer fight doesn’t count - I helped with the giant and that did the trick.
Cheers Rob; I polished off Forest of Giants last night and look to currently have a fair few in my stocks. I’ll try use some without sweating too much. :)
Man the Fume Knight is a bastard. I can’t decide if I’m better off armoring up and a heavy shield or going in naked and rolling. I can get him to about a 3rd rolling, but I can’t stay alive long enough to kill him. I killed the Dragon DLC boss with a summon but this Fume Knight packs a punch. Once he gets that flaming sword he becomes deadly.
Fume Knight is very aggressive so you probably don’t want to heal unless you’ve dodged to the point where it would be safe to attack. Make sure you don’t summon for that boss. The phantom will just get killed and you will be stuck fighting a boss with higher HP.
I’ve tried summoning and not summoning, it always ends the same way :-)
After trying a ton of times solo and almost killing the Fume Knight once, I summoned 2 human heavy hitters and we made pretty short work of him. We were all sporting large weapons and pounded the crap out of him. Just one more DLC boss to go. I’ve already killed King Vendrick.
Is Fume Knight really that bad? I thought the usual armored dude strategy, using a really big shield and strafing under his right arm, worked really well for me.
For some reason I had a ton of trouble against him. The DLC dragon took many tries too, but I won in many fewer tries. I didn’t really have much trouble against the vanilla bosses. There were a couple that took a bunch of tries but never to the point that I got frustrated like with the Fume Knight.
Could be. By the time I got to the DLC I had stopped using shields.
So did I, thinking I was too cool for shields, dual weilding and stuff, and then the DLC taught me the value of shields again.
…when all else fails, Havel’s Greatshield +5 won’t!
Well there’s really big shields, and then there’s that one. I fought that guy enough times that I’m sure I tried all the shields I had upgraded, like the big 100% fire one and the dark-infused Rebel great shield I believe. I likely lost too much stamina on each hit.
That’s okay. It’s a very hard boss that borders on unfair** but he’s super fun to dodge once you get the hang of it. So many moves to read.
** after playing Demon’s Souls NG+, I’ve found myself questioning the value of one- or two-hit kills. Someone commented recently these games just jack up the damage received and call it brilliant game design. Obviously there’s more to it, but I always wish they could find a way to bring out the good stuff – pattern reading, patience – without so much of the tedious frustration.
Are there still a lot of Invasions? It seemed to be dying out by the time I finished my second play through.
I saw a youtube DS2 playthrough where a guy tried hiding as a barrel but the invader got him anyway.
Well, the shield is kind of a security blanket, really. I prefer to roll if I can. Turns out the greatsword is in his left arm, sorry, so if you bait his greatsword horizontal slash while close it’ll whip past you and leave him vulnerable… but it’s so long it can get you from behind.
The buffed second round is not too bad, he does much more damage but he loses the quick sword strikes. The left arm strategy still applies, unless he does his very slow big charge move, then you have to roll under his right arm.