Yeah, I know how you feel. It took me three years to realize you could run in Dark Souls.
I think one of the skills you can unlock is the ability to sprint into an attack, and it tells you how to do it. Or maybe that’s one of the pause screen messages. That’s how I figured it out. You can also charge up your thrust by holding down the attack button. It does loads of poise damage.
I got past the drunkard last night thanks to y’alls help. (I actually was doing the right think by pulling his adds, but didn’t know you could also reset them by cheesing away. I had to figure out to reset to the left so they didn’t accidentally activate the helper NPC.) I think I went a strange way though. I skipped past the whole bridge approach to the burning estate by going back to where the spear-wielding sub-mini-boss dude was, climbing the tower there and hopping across the river. That led me right to the area where the tunnel into the back part of the estate was. And I wonder if I missed something by going that route.
I went that way the first time, but doubled back later to see what I missed. There are things…
Hirata has a pretty nifty secret too, with a cool little fight that helps prep you for the hole ninja.
The poison blade attachment messes mini-bosses up bad. You can just smack them with it until they get poisoned, then back off while their health melts.
I like the concept of these games so much, but my reflexes just don’t function fast enough…
The advice in this thread that has helped me the most is that you need to be aggressive. I finally took down two bosses (ogre and hunter) that had been halting my advance for hours and dozens of attempts. After finally just being way more aggressive, I took them both down basically back to back.
Of course that feels great, but given how little trouble these bosses seem to be for some of you, I’m really worried about what’s ahead… :)
Oh god I hope that’s not the impression I’m giving. I spent four hours on the endboss of Hirata, whereas some others seemed to shrug her off. I had no problem with the bull, but got owned in the face by seven spears. Then I two-shot a lightning quick samurai, but it took me over a dozen attempts to get the hole ninja.
I think the skill checks come in different places for different players, but staying on the offensive seems to be the true key to overall success.
I’ve died perhaps trillions of times.
At one point, I was worried about dying, but I’m now past that point. If you ain’t dyin’, you ain’t tryin’.
Different bosses tend to have different weaknesses in one form or another. If you find out what they are, they go down fast.
Your experience is the same as everyone else: super hard then something clicks and you take down a couple bosses in a row.
There are harder parts in the future and you may need to go back to the drawing board if you were skating by with certain tactics. But anyone that made it that far should be okay eventually.
I do hear scary things about the final boss though. I might be close.
As long as you talked to a certain story character in a flaming courtyard past a bridge, you’re done with that part of the branch. The route over the river you took meets up with the bridge before the spear miniboss. You can go back and confirm.
Yeah, I did make it to him, so I guess I’m done there. I might go back anyway to grind a couple of skill points and see if there’s anything hidden I missed, but thanks for the sanity check:)
Nice, just beat a major story boss near the end on my second try. He was easy enough that I was worried there would be a second phase. I’m guessing this isn’t the end though…
[EDIT] Nope, still more to go…
Ok… so what is the counter to
Phase Three Genichiro’s slow motion leaping attack. The one where he basically floats and spins slowly then rushes at you.
Because I’m tired of experimenting after a 5 minute fight and getting killed in the process.
Are you talking about the lightning damage? That confusing tutorial pissed me off enough to watch a video, and I still didn’t get it.
Otherwise I can’t recall that specific attack. Hmm.
I figured it out it’s Mikiri. He opens with it usually and then does it from time to time.
The other thing I get, but half the time it just doesn’t work, which just feels like ass.
Well, I managed to get a few more bosses down and started feeling pretty good. Ha! Now I’ve gotten into my head on Lady Butterfly. I actually was doing pretty well, got to phase 2 once. Now, I get killed in 10 seconds every time and I have no idea what I started doing different…
I’d try the other path, but the bull results in similarly short fights.
I wish the trainer had some more intense training. I think I really need to work on deflecting, but the deflect training and free fights are just too easy. Working on it with the bosses is just painful when you only last a few seconds.
I suppose I could go grind skill points to get out of my head for a bit…
I’m pretty sure the most reliable approach for the lightning attacks is to jump straight up, wait a moment to make sure you absorb the lightning, and only then press the attack button. If you attack too early it doesn’t work. Maybe you already know this but it seemed reliable once I focused on the timing.
@Effidian Use the trainer to practice defense only. You don’t even need to attack him. If you can read his attacks perfectly 50 times in a row then move on to one of the swordsmen by the gate stairway idol.
You’ll absorb a lot of parry timing that way. However, the two bosses you’re on will require different strategies than understanding basic combat.
Well the problem I was having was between:
A) it just not working. Like I did everything right and it didn’t matter. Fairly rare, but it only has to happen once.
B) He has a jump attack, they both start the same so if you’re ready for one and he’s doing the other one, you’re toast. You can’t really dodge and have time to jump that I saw, so if you thought he was doing the regular attack and dodged it or jumped into his attack… you were dead.
That said, I did finally kill the fucker. It’s funny how his first stage could still just kill me though. I literally burned him to stage 2 in under a minute one time. Next attempt he killed me in 30 seconds by just throwing out his usual moves and using all his weirdest and rarest ones back to back.
Then I went back to Seven Spears and destroyed his face because I’ve been honed into a killing machine apparently. Wish I had one more freaking bead though, some health would be great.
I even went and killed Headless but he doesn’t drop a bead. That SOB.
Damn what was your strat? I’ve been ignoring that guy.
Congrats BTW. That was a major gate.
I had a couple rounds of beating the crap it if Genchiro, but then he started housing me in seconds… time to take a break.
Thanks @TimJames. I had been doing the only defend thing on the trainer, but I (for some reason) hadn’t thought about using the swordsman. Got out of my head, and put the lady down. I definitely used deflect/parry a lot there, not sure what other tricks I should have used, but once I figured it out, deflect helped me a ton.
Is there some indication on when I should cure dragonrot? I have no idea if it is hampering me, and pretty much every NPC has it. I probably shouldn’t do it before I get this next boss down, because that’s likely to take another 300 deaths…