The Real Dark Souls *spoiler* thread starts here

I think some builds work better with some bosses, and I also think some of it comes down to luck. I had no trouble with the Gaping Dragon or Sif or Seath or Ceaseless D, but others did. Part of that may have been my build - melee, high stamina, high poise, etc. - and some of it may come down to the luck of which attacks I faced. I watched a video of a guy fighting the four kings and they didn’t attack him with a spell once. Yet when I fought them, they would hit me with two or three in a row. Sometimes you just have to be lucky to get a good pattern of attack from the boss…and you have to be good enough to take advantage when that patterns happens.

So as much as I love this game I think I may be done for a while. Literally on the final fight with Gwyn, but I know I’m not skilled enough to take it solo. I have 8 humanity and I did the stuff I need to get Soltaire to summon for the final fight.

Lost the first two tries, ok. Next 5 tries I never even get to Gwyn because I get invaded.

Last try, camera gets weird as I get caught up on something on the ground I can’t see.

So I farm 2 more humanity from the rats in undead burg. Lose the first Gwyn try with Soltaire. Next one, my last humanity, I have him down to barely any life left when he grabs me (again caught up on something on the ground I can’t see). Soltaire pounds him as he finishes the grab, should literally be a few hits, but instead of dealing with the guy pounding him in the back, Gwyn does a flying leap at me and he looked to go through a pillar.

Truth be told, I hate farming. Really hate it. I farmed humanity to get the Chaos shortcut and I was bored out of my mind. I know I don’t have the skill to beat Gwyn one on one, so I’m sort of at an impasse. I could spend 10 hours on this one boss fight solo and probably never beat it. I want to finish this game but I don’t know if I have the patience to go dig up more humanity somewhere. I can’t parry to save my life so that route is out.

If anyone knows a super easy way to cheese this or glitch it or whatever, I think I am at that point. I don’t know if I care enough about one fight to invest tons of time into.

Some highlights though, finally seeing Anor Lando at night. And the best surprise… running through the Tomb of Giants getting near the end, you come out from the dark on a cliff path overlooking Ash Lake. I loved that, especially knowing how potentially hard it could be to even get there in the first place. The idea that some players may go through the game, get that vista, and never realize there’s a whole area to explore just boggles my mind.

  1. Summoning another player to help.
  2. Farm the infinite respawning skeleton babies for more humanity (lightning spear works good)
  3. Help other players beat Gywn to get humanity, and more practice beating him!
  4. If you put a lot of points into Int, homing crystal soul mass kills Gwyn real good. He’ll gets staggered by the full mass blast allowing you to effectively chain homing soul mass him to death.

Learn Parry.

It’s how I beat Gwyn solo after god knows how many tries.

Thanks for all the advice. I didnt know the skeleton babies dropped humanity and I think I can get there much easier than dukes archive. So that may be the route I go. I guess I can grab a heater shield to learn some parrying but since I got so close with help hopefully some humanity will help.

There was one player summoning sign in the area but that summoning kept failing. With the npc and a player, I’m sure that fight would go pretty quickly.

I beat him by going in and just a few feet in front of you to the left is a mound of stalagmites: over there you get 2 advantages: getting him stuck on the stalagmites, or have a height difference so he misses a few of his attacks. I ended up getting him to moonwalk the entire fight, and wailed on him with crystal ring shield until he died.

But the best way I would say is get a buddy to help, then you stand in the back and chug potions while your buddy hopefully parries him to death.

Gwyn is wicked easy with sorcery. Just bait him into a heavy attack, dodge it, unleash a Crystal Soul Lance. 4 of those did like 95% of his health for me.

If you don’t bait him into an attack before firing he will dodge it. Homing Soul Masses never connected for me because he would dodge.

You can also hit him with a spell when he’s coming out of his dodge, but you have to time it right. I found it very easy with Sorcery, killed him on second attempt. Once I worked out how to stop him dodging, it was cake.

Thanks again for the magic suggestions. I have an INT of 16 or so, so I may need to just beat Gwyn toe to toe somehow (with some summoned help). Will check out the stalagmites to the left of the entrance.

If you get help, let the phantom take a beating to draw Gwyn off you. Gwyn will turn and face the dude who hit him last, you can use this to your advantage. If you bring 15-20 estus shots, you can keep your phantom alive long enough to let him do serious damage to Gwyn, and you can grab a couple of pokes to his back, while he’s distracted.

Took me a ton of runs too to get him solo. I had a very heavy build, and went even heavier for Gwyn. Full black iron, took off my Havel’s ring so I couldn’t even roll, put on a great shield artorias.

Then I pulled him to the central column, and then backed around it in a circle, tanking and dodging his attacks and waiting him to try and grab me. When he missed the grab, I’d get one hit in then resumed my circling. Once I learned his attack patterns I killed him on the last attempt using only 4 or so estus flasks.

Don’t know how well my experience translates to other builds though.

Wait, drinking health also cures the phantom?

Yes, as long as they are not an NPC Phantom. (like Solaire or Witch Beatrice)

awdougherty, if you really need to farm humanity, the Depths are far easier than the rats under the bridge in the Burg. Go to the bonfire in the Depths, turn right going out of the room, cross the room where you could see the giant rat through the bars, and you have… I think 6 rats all lined up for you to go to town on.

As a bonus, in the room directly outside the bonfire room the oozes can be farmed for titanite chunks and green titanite. Just bring fire.

The trick to farming humanity, no matter where you are, is to consume it. This will raise your item find rate, allowing you to find more humanity, and you can snowball from there. Of course you run the risk of invasion… but if you die, you can pick up the humanity stack from your bloodstain.

You can’t actually send invaders home with the Black Separation Crystal. Only co-op players, or yourself if you’re currently a phantom.

And you can still consume the humanity item and have the counter tick up without going human.

Also, the item find rate only goes up until 10 humanity, at which point it flattens out. The Covetous Serpent Ring will boost the find rate further, though.

hm? patch notes said item find goes up till 20.

This is how I beat him too with my heavy melee character: pure attrition, backing up circling an obstacle, shield up at all times, only attacked with my heavy weapon after the grab attempt. With good armor/fire resist his attacks will still hurt, but slowly enough that you can do enough damage between estus swigs. Just remember when he jumps away from you, that’s the worst possible time to use estus because he is about to nail you in the face.

Sorcery was a joke, homing crystals destroyed him pre-patch anyway.

Last night I had my first phantom control issue since the patch. Seems to still be some kind of queuing issue when you are blocking and attacking quickly I think. Fortunately that was the first time in around 6 hours of play that it happened, compared to how frequent it was previously.

Has anyone considered a meetup spot for some Qt3 PvP action? Tournaments are pretty tough, as is picking a person to battle specifically, but if we had a time and place, lots of us will probably get slapped together. We would need to pick a place that isn’t frequented as often, or is populated mostly by newer players, lowering our chances of running in to other phantoms. Plus, if we used Red Soapstones, we wouldn’t all have to be human, costing us less humanity overall.

Any ideas? Was considering Valley of Drakes, but the titular drakes are pretty annoying. Other thought was the room with the Butcher in the Depths, big area, breakable obstacles, mobs die quick, not too many invasions (at least in my observance)