Took down the Gaping Dragon last night. Pretty easy boss where you just take advantage of his pattern. I also got cursed before I fought him which sucks. Time to get a cure for that now. Do those leaf-men type creatures ever attack at all or are they there just to freak me out? I’ve only seen them like 2 or 3 times. They blend in real well and seem to sneak up on you while you aren’t looking at them, but they never actually did anything to me.
Haha…I very clearly remember popping in Demon’s Souls for the first time and it taking 6 tries just to get to the top of the first set of stairs in 1-1. It was glorious! Here was this completely inhospitable world for me to explore. Also right from the get go the precision of the game was evident. In no way do I think the Souls games are for everyone, but for me at least the process of learning the systems was easily as fun as playing post eureka.
It’s good to see people getting into it but this guy makes me cringe.
He’s referring to LP’s and the wiki. I will give that some items are vague in use but a common complaint I see is “I don’t know where to go” and that’s because you didn’t speak to everyone multiple times and you aren’t reading item descriptions! /sigh
KiloOhm
1964
I don’t agree that the community is abrasive or has an elitist attitude. I think most people who play it explain it the way he has, and it’s the people who have dismissed it out of hand who give it the bad reputation of being too punishing.
“Oh that game? Yea I tried it it was like getting kicked in the balls.”
Went through the Catacombs and killed the Pinwheel boss which was more annoying than hard. Went to Tomb of the Giants after that and got beat down quite a bit there. The area seemed a bit advanced for my current state, but I did manage to save Rhea after a long and intense fight. Didn’t attempt the boss and instead ran all the way back to Firelink Shrine. I “discovered” the stairs to New Londo Ruins, but got smoked by ghosts so I’m now in Darkroot Basin. Farmed a bit for that crest also, but I’m definitely not ready to advance there. I did run all the way to the end and poked the big sword-wielding doggy in the foot with my club before he destroyed me though. Think I’ll work on getting a better weapon tonight for some variety.
Edit: Oh, I also killed Patches. I guess he becomes a merchant, but kicking me in the pit of death…yeah, you’re gonna die.
conVurt
1966
I keep getting smoked by Ornstein and Smough. Took me a while to discover that the silver knights don’t net you any humanity, you need to whack a few painting guardians if you want any if you want to try and summon any help, but half the time when you do, you get invaded for your trouble. Annoying, but I now have a large collection of silver knight spears, swords and shields for my trouble.
This is one of the fun parts of the game where you have a lot of options and you have to figure out the best direction to make progress. It’s nice when you can do something else if you get stuck on one thing.
If you need humanity, farm rats in the Depths, downstairs from the firelink there. Half an hour there and you will have more humanity than you will ever need. Well, maybe an hour :)
Why does he make you cringe? He is right. Note that he didn’t say “I don’t know where to go”, you said that. He says “the game does a fairly terrible job explaining almost anything” and he is right. There is a lot of stuff that is not explained in the game at all, like covenants. Even basic stuff like 25%/50% weight limits are not explained IIRC.
Yeah, I agree. I love the mystery and vagueness of the world itself (like layout, enemies and other things requiring experimentation to figure out), but core mechanics being so obtuse is a pain in the ass.
That’s really the only thing I’d tweak significantly in the sequel. Just make stuff like weapon upgrades and other basic information available and understandable and I’d be happier.
conVurt
1971
Thanks for the tip, this will come in handy!
Seriously. Here’s one where I have no idea what’s going on: I see orange soapstone hints all over the place, and often times I’ll rate them, especially those which say “Need humanity” because I’ve been there. And I think that this will help give them humanity, but I can’t really tell, because every time I plop down my own soapstone message, no one else ever seems to touch it, even in areas where I’m seeing dozens of other messages modded. Is there something else I need to do there?
I also took him on while cursed. He is an easy boss in theory but good lord is that a stretched out fight. I killed him on my second attempt but there were some near-misses when I tried to get greedy with some extra hits after his dash.
Hehe, this was the reason for most of my deaths in the game. :) The second reason was cutting tails from the bosses.
nixon66
1974
An incredible easy way to get humanity to summon others for the Law Firm fight is to just lay down your summon sign in that room with the bonfire and Solaire. Each successful run helping someone else nets you a humanity and a ton of souls! Plus it gets you used to fighting those crazy guys. I still have yet to beat them solo after two playthroughs.
Lol, never heard them being called the Law Firm. :) But yeah, it’s always a good idea to get summoned to other people’s boss fights unless you don’t like multiplayer, grossly outleveled the fight or it takes too damn long to get summoned. The last one is especially a concern on the PC since multiplayer there is using GFW Live or whatever that miserable service is called and it can take forever to connect to other people even in ideal conditions.
Wolff
1976
Need humanity typically means they are looking to summon help. When you rate up someone they get a heal or flask I think.
You don’t read enough Dark Souls hipster threads.
Another great way to get souls is to put your sign down on the bridge in Anor Lando and hope to get summoned in by a guy farming Darkmoons. That can yield a boatload of souls and very quickly. I tended to get summoned in for Anor Lando runs as well there, which is succesful also yields some decent souls and a humanity.
conVurt
1979
My understanding is you get a free flask when someone in another game nearby kindles the bonfire you last rested at in your own game.
IIRC they get 1 humanity when someone rates up their message.
And again, thanks to GFW Live this whole aspect of the game is borked on the PC. IIRC messages do propagate themselves into other people’s games (slowly and inconsistently) but the reward rarely finds its way back to the person that left the message.
I couldn’t be happier when I heard that the devs are going back to the server based multiplayer in DS2.
