The Shrine

Any interest in this game?

I got my butt beat pretty bad in original (Demon's) souls, and this iteration looks pretty interesting. I surely wish that the multiplayer system actually let you team up with friends instead of purely randoms.

Haven't had a chance to pop mine in yet. But I do have a beef with the "Special Edition": it makes you download the OST and making-of video the same way the God of War 3 Pandora's Box one did. Goddman, man, it's 3 cents each, print the fucking CD/DVD. Sure, I didn't have to pay for the Dark Souls upgrade but still, it just screams "fucking cheap"

*Shrug* it's Namco/Bandai. I secretly wish Atlus published it again.

bovine wrote:*Shrug* it's Namco/Bandai. I secretly wish Atlus published it again.

Everyone does. Atlus has great releases, they don't make you feel like you're only buy part of a game like the big boys

Zeus wrote:Haven't had a chance to pop mine in yet. But I do have a beef with the "Special Edition": it makes you download the OST and making-of video the same way the God of War 3 Pandora's Box one did. Goddman, man, it's 3 cents each, print the fucking CD/DVD. Sure, I didn't have to pay for the Dark Souls upgrade but still, it just screams "fucking cheap"

Have you checked the art book? Mine had slips on the insider cover that had the OST and making-of video discs inside them.

On the game: it is awesome. Cruel, but awesome.

Andrew, Killer Bee wrote:

Zeus wrote:Haven't had a chance to pop mine in yet. But I do have a beef with the "Special Edition": it makes you download the OST and making-of video the same way the God of War 3 Pandora's Box one did. Goddman, man, it's 3 cents each, print the fucking CD/DVD. Sure, I didn't have to pay for the Dark Souls upgrade but still, it just screams "fucking cheap"

Have you checked the art book? Mine had slips on the insider cover that had the OST and making-of video discs inside them.

On the game: it is awesome. Cruel, but awesome.

You're in Austrailia, yes?

Fucking finally beat Demon's Souls last night. Yeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

Popped this puppy in tonight and HOLY MOLY does it give me terror flashbacks to my first go at Demons Souls. I am not checking the internet for help and am just relying on my Demons Souls knowledge (beat it last week) and the in-game notes to help me out. I beat the first tutorial area and am not in the proper game and it is as unforgiving and terrifying as ever. BOVINE RECOMMENDS.

Hey bovine I see you're playing Dark Souls have you beaten Demon Souls yet? :P

I SMASH YOU

Shrinweck wrote:Hey bovine I see you're playing Dark Souls have you beaten Demon Souls yet?

After reading his post, i'm willing to guess "yes" :-)

I beat the first proper boss (after the tutorial one). Yup, this game is still pretty rough. I had a rough little duel with a flame eyed-knight very reminiscent to the ones in Demons Souls. I was taking off maybe 3% health with every hit and it took a long time to finally wear him down. This game is highly manageable, but also pretty terrifying. I am doing such paltry damage to enemies that I am considering starting over or breaking my own rule and checking out some online resources to check for some advice on how to better allocate my stats when I level up

I think I'll tough it out for now, though.

Rang my first bell today. That was pretty satisfying. Polished off boss #2 and gave a third boss a try.

He immediately runs at you when you enter the boss zone and you have about 2 seconds to decide your course of action. I fought him twice and just immediately freeze and hold up my shield. His initial attack, when blocked, does about 80% damage to me and he has two other, regular enemies in the zone as well. So both times I tried to scramble away and met with immediate destruction. Will try dodging next time.... but if a blocked attack does so much damage, a wiffed dodge will spell certain death. The terror

I ran into my first blue phantom today, but the summoning failed. I wonder if I am over leveled or under leveled for where I am... I am not sure. Having someone else there to lend a hand against such a rude boss would be very helpful.

Dodging worked! After another 3 attempts, I managed to slay this monster. Once you get past that initial attack, he falls into a pretty predictable pattern where he will not unleash that monster attack unless you run away from him. After I finished him off I went down into some labyrinthine sewers and then things got heck of complicated. Frogs down there breath a gas that curses you. Apparently when you are cursed you are just dead. Unlike normal death, though, you respawn with half health and the only way to cure yourself (that I could find) was to use an item bought from a vendor for either 3000 souls or 6000 souls depending on the vendor. The fellow under the first bell sells them for 3000, so I had to extremely cautiously journey my way back to him. That was a bit terrifying and disheartening, but now I know to respect those frogs properly. Yikes.

I am going to keep posting my experiences with this game, so deal with a long stream of my posts. I HIGHLY recommend this game for people who kind of feel bored with games right now. It is probably the most fresh and exhilarating experience out there for a contemporary videogame. Demons Souls had a very strange set of trappings with a hub world where you could test the waters with any of the available worlds. This one makes you feel significantly more vulnerable and lost when you come across an obstacle. There is no waypoint to baby you and no obtrusive narrative that stops your game and throws cutscenes in your face. The narrative is there when you actively listen and probe the NPCs, and the waypoints are nowhere to be found ever. You have to probe every avenue in hopes of finding the most forgiving path, and something that I think has been highly overlooked is how they deal with death. You die a lot and that is definitely something people point out, but using death as a game mechanic is something that I find very intriguing. Instead of throwing you back to your last "save" or "checkpoint", you are stripped of all of your experience and currency, and the only way you can get it back is by finding the place you died and retrieving those lost souls. If you die on the way to retrieve that, then that progress is lost forever. This is easily the most interesting game released on this generation of hardware.

I'm tempted but I'm already out $200 in games that are coming out in the next 50 odd days.

This game drives me insane but I paid for it, so I might as well subject myself to it's tortures.

Beat the Gaping Dragon today (the one pictured in the gif at the top of the thread). He's got a couple of one-hit-kill attacks that are pretty nasty if you don't see them coming. It was easily the longest boss fight so far. I accrued about 27000 souls when I finished him off. Stupidly I pressed on and came to the most diabolical location yet in the game. There are a lot of narrow walkways and some that even sway. Falling to your death is probably the easiest and most frequent way to die in this game, so adding that extra layer of peril in your movement really drives up the anxiety. I died a couple times in this place. Luckily I was able to press back and grab that hefty chunk of souls. By the time I retreated out of there I have 50k worth of souls and I very cautiously went all the way back to the hub of the game. I have no idea how to properly tree the upgrades for my weapons... so I am not sure if I want to just spend these souls on advancing my level or use them to experiment with upgrades that could yield either great benefit or a great waste of those souls. I will mull this over for my next pay session tomorrow.

I am terrified of going back down into that narrow walkway area again, and instead opted to do some exploring off of the hub world and go and have a chat with the blacksmith about my weapon upgrades. So far all the blacksmith does is give me +1, +2, etc. to my weapons in exchange for currency (souls) and materials (which he sells). This is sort of a moot point, as I have a terrifyingly overpowered weapon in comparison to everything he offers for upgrading vast supply of regular weaponry. This sword does not augment its power based on my stats, though, so it will become underpowered as the game goes on. I needed to find someone that would increase my stats augments on regular weapons (specifically my highers stat of intelligence). I gave up on this and went to explore off of the hub. There are three paths that I can find. One that lead my to my current position, one guarded by some fucking RUTHLESS skeletons that give me no souls for killing them making them not worth the effort, and one that goes down to a set of easy enemies followed by invincible ghosts.

This ghost route was where I went when I first got to the hub, but quickly departed when I saw that I was not damaging the ghosts and I could not block their attacks. Upon entering this place again, I found I have an item that I could expend in order to deal damage to these ghosts and block their attacks. This was very useful, but I only had two of them. I quickly dispatched the first two ghosts who were pretty easy, and they dropped more of this ghost fighting item. Very helpful.

So I fought up this building they were inhabiting and found some areas where I was being attacked from unseen areas. This was very discerning, but it seemed like I could just press on without this invisible damage following me. Also, I was blocking all of these unseen attacks because YOU ARE ALWAYS HOLDING THE BLOCK BUTTON in this game. Like, always. Everything is terrifying and you need to have your guard up. Anyways, I fight my way through some terraces and into a room with one red eyed ghost (all other ghosts were blue eyed). This layered an extra level of caution on the situation when I charged in the room. All of a sudden ghosts just jammed right through the walls and there were about 5 or six of them now. This is where I discover that they can attack through walls and this red eyed ghost has a grab attack that goes right over your guard and she chomps you over and over until death becomes you. Well, those were some souls I knew I was not going to be able to go down and retrieve..... SIGH.

Not all was lost, though, as I found a blacksmith right before ghost area hidden down some stairs. He forged my longsword +6 (which I was hanging on to in order to turn it into something worth actually equipping one day) into a MAGIC LONGSWORD that now used my int stat, but very lightly. He could apparently continue jacking up this magic version, but I only had enough of the resource he required to turn it from a regular sword into the magical variety. Not great, but a nice discovery.

Okay, now for some progress!I realized that I had beaten a miniboss down by the blacksmith and ran into a pretty weird enemy that I just ran from because I was in no condition to go on after the miniboss battle. I decided to probe that avenue. This enemy (a tree man) was taken down with a warning fireball I threw at him to let him know I meant business. I expelled a few more with my fire magic, but was desperately low on magical charges when I discovered the real meat of this area. There were these enormous golem knights that would cast a slow spell on me. My character is lightly armoured and is based on blocking and mobility, so taking big golem sword hits is not really what I am used to... I managed to clear the area of threats with some extremely cautious combat. This lead me up some stairs that was littered with notes letting my know I needed sorcery or ranged attacks on whatever was to come. I encountered a white fog gate at the top of the stairs. Now, for those who are unaware, white fog is sort of a boundary that separates phantom spawn zones or it could mean a boss is to come. When it is a boss, usually the helpful community leaves notes letting you know that a boss battle is to come. There were no notes, so I pressed on. I immediately noticed the large health bar on the bottom of the screen telling me that this was indeed a boss. I was HIGHLY unprepared. I won't spoil the boss fight if you want to actually play this game, but I totally fucking murdered it and felt amazing that I was able to do it in a single try. I then went down the stairs and left a message for those who would come in the future.

I picked up a key to some watchtower, an ember to give to a blacksmith to expand his abilities, and pressed on. I found the watchtower, walked in and WHAM! One hit killed by a giant knight who was positioned immediately inside the door. I then turned off my videogame machine and watched an episode of the xfiles.

REVEEEENNNNNGGGGEEEEEE!!!! I turned on Dark Souls tonight to get a message letting me know that I should properly quit out of my game when I end my session in order to retain all of my data. If you didn't know, this game saves whenever you pick up an item, kill an enemy, interact with an npc, or get murdered. This means that all consequences are more or less final and there is no going back. So when you rage quit, it still saves what happened, it just lets you know that you should properly quit out next time. I'll give a more Readers Digest version of my progress tonight so as to spare anyone who reads this (no one I presume) from a larger post like yesterday.

I managed to backtrack to the knight that killed me in my last session and I teased him into attacking as I was backing off, as to either catch the blow on a block and take a huge hit to my stamina, but still survive, or I would be far enough away to dodge the blow entirely in order for me to hit him with a quick single hit. After about 20-30 successful hits he went down. This was a bit stressful, but I got all of my souls back and that was pleasant. This just opened up a passage that backtracked to the undead burg that is minimally useful.

I went back to the ghost section and finally wiped out that area of all noticeable ghosts. I proceeded exceedingly carefully in order to achieve this. It turned out to be a dead end and that was a little frustrating... but I found new weapons, armour, and a rather nice ring.

I also found a new path in the forest that had the golems in it. It led me to a path into a new zone filled with highly dangerous drakes. I was able to kill two of them, but there were three positioned at the end of a bridge that looked to be the main path. I decided that I was ill equipped to face them and tried a side path that was blocked by a single drake, but it was in a precarious position that my fighting style was ill equipped to engage.

My fighting style is based on blocking attacks and counter attacking. It facing an enemy that is either too large for this to be viable or emits a magical or breath attack that is not negated by my shield, I attempt to circle around the enemy fast enough to avoid such attacks and counter while the enemy is in the attack animation.

Anyways, I retreated back into the forest where a path was open where I fought what appeared to be ghosts of player character type enemies. There was a sword wielder with heavy armour, and a thief. I could not lock on to them and had to very carefully block and counterattack while having to position myself to properly block. This was a bit time consuming, and made ever more complicated when I finished off the sword wielder and had to face the ghost-ish thief and a non-ghost mage. I could lock on to him and was only really able to attack when the thief was trying to sneak behind me to stab me in the back, or when both the mage and thief attacked and were blocked at once. This was a bit scary, but I somehow managed through it. I found a new covenant in this forest that I joined, a GREAT ring, new armour, and a boss zone. I was a bit frazzled by my large amount of progress and my very narrow victories, so I decided to just jaunt back to my bonfire and engage the boss another day.

Oh! I also fought a miniboss consisting of 3 giant cats that I really had to cheese. I hid in a place where their attacks could not hit, came out to bate them into coming to me, hitting them 1-3 times, and then retreated back into the safe zone. It felt real dirty, but it was an extremely close battle with me down to a single flask chug left and all magic discharged.

Relatively little progress tonight. I got killed many more times than I would have liked. The boss turned out to be WAY out of my league.

Interestingly, I did a covenant mission. I was sent as a black phantom to hunt down someone invading the darkroot forest. I just sort of baited him into following me into a bunch of enemies and the enemies just ate him up.

Game is evil, I'm tired of losing souls to a second death.

Fun tho

I've now cleared everything up to both entrances to the Darkwood entrances from the Berg and the Parish, and I have the key to the Depths. I got to this big fucking butterfly boss, I didn't survive long enough to see if there was an opportunity to attack with melee.

Made a lot of progress today, especially after bovine referred me to easy mode sword. I'm level 26.

The depths should be the next place you go. The butterfly does eventually land and remains docile for you to melee it, but its magic attacks that you have to survive through to get it to that point are pretty brutal.... So good luck when you feel like facing off against that guy.

I still have no gaddamn idea where to go right now in my game. I managed to grab 10k worth of souls and they are sitting in this poisonous swamp that I am terrified to go back to in order to try and retrieve them. Le sigh.

bovine wrote:I managed to grab 10k worth of souls and they are sitting in this poisonous swamp that I am terrified to go back to in order to try and retrieve them. Le sigh.

Yea well I walked into the Demon lair that drops the key to the depths with around 12K souls, died like 4 or 5 times going back to retrieve them, but was able to snag them before dying... then I died again, spawned and got pushed off a cliff by a random kamakazi hollowed soldier on the way back to the boss....

I hate how you can lose all of that progress with a stupid mistake.

I lost about 40K souls and 10 humanity in the Painted Workd this morning. Ugh. The price you pay for letting your attention slip for a second.

Andrew, Killer Bee wrote:I lost about 40K souls and 10 humanity in the Painted Workd this morning. Ugh. The price you pay for letting your attention slip for a second.

You said the name of a place that I have yet to discover, so I assume you are a million billion miles ahead of me. That said, what sort of weapon/shield combo are you using?

I'm not that much further than you! I've also not yet ventured into the ghost area.

I've got a couple of characters on the go, but my mage is furthest in and is rocking hard leather gloves and a mix of the Dingy and Channeler sets. I have approximately a million shields and swap them in as required for their resistances. The Crest shield is my go-to, though. I'm using the lightning spear while I level up a Balder Side Sword that I plan on upgrading to Enchanted so it scales with my intelligence.

Andrew, Killer Bee wrote:I'm not that much further than you! I've also not yet ventured into the ghost area.

I've got a couple of characters on the go, but my mage is furthest in and is rocking hard leather gloves and a mix of the Dingy and Channeler sets. I have approximately a million shields and swap them in as required for their resistances. The Crest shield is my go-to, though. I'm using the lightning spear while I level up a Balder Side Sword that I plan on upgrading to Enchanted so it scales with my intelligence.

I have got a long sword that I am trying to get to enchanted as well, but I need some sort of blue something to do it with? Blue titanite or whatever the material is called. Have you encountered any? Because I have not. The green stuff to upgrade a magical weapon, I couldn't find outside of scripted item finds, but I found a vendor at sen's fortress that sold them in a location to farm souls, so I was able to boost up the sword to +5, and it is ready to move up to enchanted whenever I find that appropriate material.

Blue Titanite drops from those crystal enemies standing by the Hydra.

I'm using the armor and helm you buy off the guy in the sewers for 15000 and 10000 souls respectively. I also use the crimson legs/skirt and hard leather gloves.

I'm using the drake sword as a go to still (have it up to +2), have a divine Server, a +2 Raw Claymore, and a +0 Raw Great Axe. Also using a +5 longbow when needed. I upgraded the eagle shield to +5 as well, and swap it out with the Black Knight Shield when I need fire resist. For casting I have a staff that rated at 145 damage and has a really good thrust attack for protection when casting.

I'm at level 54 right now with 32 Str, 26 dex, 20 int, and everything else at around 12 (have 3 spell slots, whatever attunement level that is, 14?).

Bleck. I accidentally went into the painted world, but luckily I was able to escape. The Legion was SURPRISINGLY susceptible to poison. I was able to exit, you can apparently just walk right past the boss and get sent back to andor whateveritscalled. I fought my way up to the boss there and tried it out as a phantom, but my party god demolished. I rehumaned and will attempt to form a party of phantoms to fight the boss myself tomorrow.

bovine wrote:I rehumaned and will attempt to form a party of phantoms to fight the boss myself tomorrow.

Phantoms = other players? Why do you need to be human?

Oracle wrote:

bovine wrote:I rehumaned and will attempt to form a party of phantoms to fight the boss myself tomorrow.

Phantoms = other players? Why do you need to be human?

/shrug/ That's just how it works. I am not sure the reasoning behind it. When you use the white soapstone to drop your sign, other players who are in human form can see it and summon you to help them in their game. You then both (ofr all four, depending on how many blue phantoms have been summoned) all get souls for killing enemies and the boss. The soul gain isn't even split up, so when an enemy dies, you all get the amount of souls that you would get on your own if it was just you who killed it. This creates an incentive for teamwork, and when you are a blue phantom and help another player kill a boss, you gain a humanity to use in order to make yourself human. If you die as a phantom, you get to keep all your souls and you just spawn back at the last bonfire you rested at. If you succeed, though, you reappear in the place that you were when you were summoned.

Alternately, you can use the cracked whatever stone to invade another player's game, who is human, as a black phantom (it matches you to players within 5 soul levels). You are supposed to hunt them down and murder them, and you gain souls and humanity for doing so. I am in a covenant that makes me invade other people's game when they are in the darkroot forest, in order to murder them. If I am wearing the ring I was given, it just sucks me out of my game and usually sends me and another player/phantom in to try to murder the invader.

So I beat the game a few nights ago. Was level 85 at the time.

Very nice that the game automatically puts you into a 'New Game+' immediately after defeating the final boss, so you lose access to upgrading equipment until you find all of the blacksmiths and embers again.

I'm about half way through my second playthrough, just got the Lord Vessel. Goes a hell of a lot faster when you are geared up and know where to go (although the game is even HARDER now...).

Currently at around level 104, using the Black Knight Great Axe +5 (weapon attack is at around 620) and either a Black Knight Shield +5 (default, since it can parry) or an Eagle Shield +5, depending on the type of magic I need to be able to block. I run around with the gold-hemmed black robes or whatever they are called (get them at the Ceaseless Discharge boss), except for the helmet I use Mask of the Child for stamia regeneration. I use Ring of the Favored and Havel's Ring. At around 34 Endurance, I have all this equipped, as well as my mage catalyst, and still have under 1/4 of equipment load. When I need damage reduction from heavy armor, I put on Havel's set.

Stats are ~: 50 Str, 34 End, 15 Vit, 21 Int, 15 Faith, 10 Resistance, 26 Dex (wish I could take that back), 14 Attunement (3 slots)

Other backup weapons: Giant Halberd +5 (lightning damage), Lightning Washing Pole +5 (long katana), Dragon Greatsword +4, Quelaag's Furysword +5, Divine Server +5 (never bothered to max it out since you only need a divine weapon catacombs), Fire Zweinhander +5 (plan to go to +10).

And I've done exactly 2 PvP battles, both of which I lost horribly. I was level 65 last time I tried, and all I found was a dude in full Havel's, including the Dragon Tooth and Havel's Shield. I was unprepared for the fight (was using a Raw Greataxe +5, very slow). Managed to hit him once, which hit him for ~25% damage. He managed to hit me once, too, which insta killed me :p

Hey! I totally beat Dark Souls. I knew you guys were just dying to know.

bovine wrote:Hey! I totally beat Dark Souls. I knew you guys were just dying to know.

Blotus wrote:

bovine wrote:Hey! I totally beat Dark Souls. I knew you guys were just dying to know.

Actually made my mouth water a little.

But seriously guys, PM me for my address so you can come high five me.

I reserve the rights to check your saved games before high-fiving can commence.

Beat NG+. On to NG++!

Man, I need to start playing this again.

Praise the sun!!

Hey guys! Guess who got all the achievements in this game?

Yeah. It was me.

Dark Souls for PC on August 24th. New Bosses, new areas, new PvP area. I would not mind giving this game another go.

Nice. I'll probably buy it at some point unless they butcher it

bovine wrote:Dark Souls for PC on August 24th. New Bosses, new areas, new PvP area. I would not mind giving this game another go.

Are they releasing the updates for the 360?

If not, fuck this game. This kind of shit pisses me off.

Well in their defense, releasing a PC port a year+ after the fact without any incentives is just a purely dick move if you're going to charge full price. After a quick search, the only quote on it coming to the consoles is "I don't know" from the director. It looks like the latest ruckus is the game hopefully not using GFWL. That would definitely be nice.

I don't think they will release the extra content as dlc. I would rather they did that instead of having to buy the game all over again, but I will totally buy this game all over again for new content, as I think the quality of the game is quite exceptional.

HEY! Dark Souls sold 1.2ish million in Europe and North America! Praise the sun!