Oh man, following up Blightown with Sen’s Fortress is just mean! Still, at least the poison swamp wasn’t nearly as bad as 5-2, but man those blowdart snipers are brutal in Blightown. Toxic is just rude.
I do have to admit that I wish there was a miracle that always took you back to the Firelink Shrine. All this treking about can get a bit tedious…Still, my +10 Claymore really helps. :) (I am pretty familiar with Slime Alley in the Depths at this point). I also like that they did away with carry weight from Demon’s Souls. It’s nice not having to bother with that.
I am kinda curious as to what people think of a +15 Claymore vs a Lightening Claymore. At Dex 20 (about as far as that’s gonna go) what sort of Str is needed to get a +15 Claymore to around 600 damage. It’s only a C scaling for Str and Dex, but I love the Claymore’s move set.
The other option is to go Lightening on the Claymore and start upping faith/Int for the Artorias Greatsword and Wrath of God/Lightening Spear. Not quite sure what direction to start putting my souls into, now that I have my baseline stats pretty much set.
There are enough shortcuts that there is no need for that, but you will unlock a way to get there quick soon anyway.
foogla
1903
Either you invest in a scaling stat or you don’t. +15 deals higher damage at the high end (especially once you go NG, since all resistances scale) but requires a higher investment. Personally I go elemental on only two melee weapons: Zweihander because of high base damage to speed ration, and Shotel because PVP.
Non-elemental also lets you use enchants and resins, further increasing the damage output, but again requiring more investment.
pg1
1904
This part of the game is confusing. If you judged by stats alone you’d think elemental would be much better but I generally did more damage with +15 weapons.
It’s because of resistances. A elemental weapon has to go through both melee and elemental resists. The normal weapon only has to go through melee resistance. I suppose if your enemy was entirely naked you might do more than a normal weapon, but no guarantee on that hypothesis.
I have to get back to this. I quit at Gough and Ornstein. The whole weapon upgrade thing just depresses me. Maybe I made a bad choice 30 levels ago :(
Nixxter
1907
Well, possibly it was Smaugh and Ornstein that sent you packing. One of the more difficult parts to the game. I don’t think my weaponage was what made the difference with them - I was a sorceror - more like what order I killed them in. I think the recommended way was to take down the faster one first but in the end that wasn’t working so I took down the fatter one first.
Yeah, I generally worked with stat scaling in Demon’s Souls. I am just a bit worried that with a C rating you might need a strength well over 50 to see the results. At this point I need to decide what is going to go to 50, Strength or Faith. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna push Str, since I really do love that Claymore and I agree that Raw physical damage seems to be better in Dark Souls. Plus you can buff a +15, which was huge in Demon’s Souls (why I loved the Blueblood so much).
I’m not sure if I remember right but I feel like magic/elemental damages were hitting harder in Demon’s Souls that Dark Souls. It seems like more of the baddies have more resistances.
Lightning weapons are the best if you don’t want to do stat scaling (or if you don’t fully commit to it), as lighting is something almost all enemies are vulnerable to, unlike fire or magic. Lightning weapons hit harder than elemental weapons in demon’s souls.
Usually, you don’t want to take Str to 50, not for damage scaling anyway. 40 is where damage scaling hits diminishing returns. With Str at 40 and Dex at 20 your Claymore+15 will do 453 damage. Take Str to 50 and it will do 457. Take the same 10 points and add them to Dex instead of Str (taking it to 30) and it will do 488 damage.
It’s hard to tell at which Str/Dex point a +15 weapon starts outdamaging a Lightning+5 weapon. In terms of pure numbers - at around 40/40 but, as it was mentioned before, numbers are misleading due to resistances. And resistances also vary depending on where you are in the game. I would say that at somewhere like 30/20 (Str/Dex) Claymore +15 will start outdamaging elemental upgrades. Not even counting the resins and enchants.
Taking a weapon to Lightning+4 is pretty easy and uses more or less easily farmable materials. So depending on a character, if in the early/mid game I want to concentrate on stats other than Str/Dex (like End, Int or Faith), I make the weapon Lightning+4. Later on, when I am ready to start leveling up Str/Dex, I take the weapon back to +10 and start getting it to +15. But then again, if you are taking Int or Faith up high, you might want to look into Magic, Enchanted, Divine or Occult upgrades.
BTW, here is a link to a very useful Character Planner: http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/
Desslock
1911
The reality is, none of it really matters unless you’re going to play a lot of PvP and want to ensure you take advantage of any possible edge (and in that case, you’d actually be better off designing a character that expressly takes advantage of the vulnerabilities of popular PvP builds). One reason Dark Souls is such a great game is that so many different characters/weapons/approaches can be perfectly effective, so you really should just try different things and do what you find most interesting.
The game will be more difficult if you don’t have both close and ranged attacks of some sort, but that’s the only real fundamental character design feature you should incorporate, and even foregoing that and just having a pure ranged or melee character can also offer some great roleplaying experiences that might offset any additional difficulty.
Desslock is right, all this number crunching, while fun to some (including myself), is completely not necessary. Maybe Claymore+15 will deal 10% less damage than lightning+5 to some enemies, big deal, especially since it most certainly will deal 10% more damage to some other enemies. In the end, it doesn’t really matter - maybe you’ll need to hit a monster one more time, maybe you won’t.
As long as you follow some general, most apparent rules (like don’t use Divine weapon if your Faith is at 9), you will be fine.
On the other hand, some people have natural tendency to minmaxing and the game doesn’t really provide any tools to these people to see how different builds would work at least on paper. For most people, it’d be pretty frustrating to spend 9 Titanite Chunks only to see that the upgrade doesn’t really work as expected. Or to raise Str to 50 only to notice that the last 10 points were pretty wasted damage-wise. Hence all these countless discussions on builds, upgrades, weapons, stats, etc.
But back to Alistair’s original complaint: one of O&S is resistant to lightning. I think that was maybe the only place in the game where I needed to think about my weapon. Yet it’s important because it’s one of the most annoying boss fights in the game.
Or just stick to normal weapons. Most of the time I used an upgraded battle axe and did fine.
Thanks for the advice guys. I think I will just go +15 and use buffs if I need elemental damage since I have no problem farming gold pine resins (other than feeling a bit bad about killing those happy little mushrooms.)
Finally beat the Four Kings…man I hate New Londo Ruins! The lower section is so miserable fighting those Darkwraiths and not being able to see anything. I’m sure I missed a few items (though I did snag the ember) and I gotta be honest I doubt I am headed back for any of that stuff. Ash Lake was pretty awesome though. Very cool mood with the diffuse light and that music. Having the Lordvessel is really handy too, though somehow the world looses something when you can just warp around. Still, I was kinda loosing patience with traversing everything all the time.
Gunny
1916
Anyone up for some PS3 co-op? I just got this, I am currently level 7 after a restart. I am considering yet another restart, as I am learning a lot about the mechanics and can do it better.
I’d be game for starting a new character. My first guy kinda turned into an “everything but the kitchen sink” build since I kept leveling to try different gear and abilities. Now that I know what I like I wouldn’t mind starting a second go without so many points in places I am bot really using them (glares balefully at an Intelligence 18 stat the was raised in the vain hope that Artorias Greatswords would be as sweet and the Blueblood sword).
Anyway, I do have and idea for a Paladin I would like to try. Just add me, my PSN is merryprankster.
Just rented this game. Glad I did.
Really? You guys liked this? Terrible, terrible. Cheap one shot deaths that make you respawn and then resets all enemies. Reminded me of Gost and Goblins gameplay from the 80s. Confusing, unforgiving, intensely repetitive. Terrible!
Defining moment for me was a barrel rolling down a stairs, killing me in one shot, on the first area. This after I had spent an hour repeatedly trying to get past 6 enemies. No,warning, no skill involved, just instadeath.
pg1
1919
It grows on you over time. I agree that the start is rough and you need a certain skill level to enjoy the game to the utmost. Until I mostly mastered the controls I was having a rough time. Once it clicked however it was a amazing experience.
Why was it amazing? Does that model change over time?
I rented it becuase I heard it was hard as hell but fun. What I discovered is that it’s hard as hell becuase of the way you respawn. It’s like a rogue like but with no random content, which is what makes a rogue-like good. This game is like a bad rogue like.
I dunno. I loved Skyrim, and that was hard in parts. But Skyrim was much more about finding a good strategy. Dark Souls is like Skyrim, but as a corridor crawler with an 80s game mentality.
A lot of people like it though, so it may just be a miss for me.
