It wasn’t so bad. Although you’ll have less estus because you need to sacrifice some for mana pots. I think 4 or 5 is usually enough for everyone. Slight adjustments sometimes for bosses but the count mostly remained static. Also enchanting my weapon with greater magic weapon or whatever allowed me to deal really good melee damage in pinch. I used the rapier because of its ridiculous lightning fast near instant attack speed and can be got really early. Duel wielding with my wand in the other hand of course. Magic missile at distance and poke when they get close! Mind the range.
I do recommend a magic run because the gameplay is a bit different.
That is why I have done it in the other games. But the other games don’t limit your estus and supply lots of various consumables that make being a spell user pretty easy. but yea, no shield. You dodge because you have a weapon in one hand and a wand in the other.
Blightown probably is the worst area in any of the three DS games I have played. The Gutter in DS2 is a very close second simply because it has no obvious ending point, whereas at least with Blightown you just keep going down.
Since you are already there I will tell you there is a door/gate you can get to that if you have the key (and off hand I don’t recall how you get it but you can get it very early in the game) that will let you go down below Blightown without having to pas thru Blightown.
I have probably played five hours today (in two shifts) but I have only advanced the plot a little bit, having beaten the summoning boss in the church. The rest of the time I have been getting summoned, mostly at the Achives. Great place for co-op because some people want help getting thru the area, others are looking for help in case they are invaded, and it is a busy invasion spot, and others want to go all the way to the boss.
I only have two bosses left to fight. The final DLC boss and the Lord of Cinder. So I am dragging out the end of the game by helping others. I think I have around 70 hours into the game, but probably 15-20 has been helping others, or just killing things while my summon sign is down. Ya gotta do something while you wait.
Got through Blighttown, and now I have three or four different areas I could go to. Not sure where I should go. I actually did get through Darkroot Garden and the Butterfly last time (when I said “no thanks” to BT) so maybe I’ll start there. This is the first time I haven’t taken the Master Key as my starting item, and it feels somewhat restrictive.
Man, I hated those knights so much. In retrospect, though, the thralls were my least favorite enemy still. From must have agreed that they were the worst, since they show up basically everywhere.
Oh, man, haha. Yeah, I thought the Painted World was very bad…until I got to the Ringed City.
Also, wow, DS3 is super, super generous with bonfires (and boss shortcuts) compared to 1. And I can’t even tell you how much I miss warping (although I know that will come eventually).
Strange fight. This was my third time thru the DLC and I had never had a problem with the Boy and his Dog, until this run. They were demolishing me. The fight becomes a dodge fest at about the halfway point, and you have to guess where to jump, usually forward and to the right works. With the wolf left is death for some reason. I ended up using my Lothric Sword +10 Poison infused and that got him. It really is a fight that calls for patience.
So you did the wolf fight first? I always save that for just before the final boss fight.
I actually think in they let you warp to soon in the other games. There is something extra when you have to choose a direction and follow it thru because there is no quick return to other areas. When you finally do get the warping ability it is so nice you really appreciate it.
I just wanna upgrade my weapon with the rock that just dropped but I’m at the bottom of this stinking hole and the blacksmith is so damned far away. >.<
There are lots of crafting items down there, but do you really want to go up Blightown and then back down? That kind of decision isn’t required in the other games.
Yes, it has become a “staple” in each game. Although the actual swamp in Demon’s Souls is much worse. Being vast and perilous with the town being a refuge of sorts. Unlike in Blighttown’s case, the worst part of it for everyone involved is the vertical descent “town” proper and not the actual poison swamp waiting idle below, which I would argue is pretty tame in comparison given credence to the back door virtually reducing the area to just its swamp.
I missed the discussion earlier, but I completely agree with @Scuzz with regards to how travel was done in Dark Souls was the best. Distances meant something. Going back to the blacksmith was as much a decision based on how far away you were as it was on how many souls you had. So there was the tether to each bonfire, but there was also a mental tether to vendors, and a mental tether to blacksmiths. And then the instant travel later was really a revelation and just changes the game a lot.
That’s not to say that this should have been repeated in sequels. It’s kind of cool that they went with different systems and chose to forgo it, but it’s one of the things that makes Dark Souls special. Even more so than Demon’s souls, since Demon’s Souls already had a hub-based system like Dark Souls 2 and 3, and you could warp back to home base.
Yeah, but the levels I’d played so far (1-1,1-2, 2-1,2-2,2-3,3-1,3-2,4-1,5-1) were designed so that you never got that far away from the archstone, as compared to Dark Souls where you get much farther away.
For all of Dark Souls’s vaunted shortcuts, I do think a lot of the Demon’s Souls’s shortcuts were designed to give you a much better path through the level to the boss.
It took me forever to realize that while many bosses have annoying runs up to the boss in almost all instances you could run past all the bad guys and go straight to the fog door. I used to kill everything in the way and then get to the fog door down an estus or two. Now I just run past that.
So I had something happen yesterday that I don’t think has ever happened to me before. I was going from boss to boss putting down my summon sign. I finally did it in front of the Pontiff’s door. I was summoned in and upon materializing was instantly attacked by both Pontiff guards and one of those dark ghoul things who are normally down by the shortcut gate. I had been ambushed. The Host who had summoned me was nowhere to be found. The guy must have been in an NG+ game of some level because the Pontiff guards were hell to kill, and nearly killed me. After surviving the ambush I looked around thinking the host might show up but he never did. I wonder if he had used a White Birch Branch and was just there somewhere watching the whole thing. I also wonder just how he did it. He got three enemies to be at that spot as I showed up and they didn’t go after him. Pretty slick.
I also helped a guy take down the Lothric Twins. He had me and another summons, a Sunbro. After that fight I warped to the Final Boss of the DLCr and there was the summon sign of the exact same Sunbro. So I summoned him and we destroyed the boss. That was kinda cool.
Been a bit out of the game for the last week as I’ve gotten my new pc up and running. Now that it’s working, and I have everything reinstalled, I keep hovering my mouse over DS3…but not clicking on it.
The DLC for the souls games really does seem geared toward people who play the base game at/or near release. The wait for new content after finishing the game would seem to serve as a necessary cooling off period.
But when played together, it feels like a slog. Having done this three times in a row now, the difficulty ramp up counters whatever pleasure I find in exploring new content. The painted world was fine. I had a good time with it. Partly, because I hit it before making the end run at the base game. The Ringed City is just hard as nails, and completely unforgiving.
