[mauve]

I still think the ability for people to express themselves through their actions is far more important than what they're equipped with. That being said, yeah, Zweihander is incredibly boring and dumb and badly designed. But that is the game. Unless the designers say so, that's what's there and that's what you're stuck dealing with.

However... You're falling into the same common trap I see all the time. Every low tier player thinks he's playing smarter. I'm using crappier stuff but I'm winning or at least going even therefore I'm better than they are. That may be true; but it is also probably true that you're not seeing real competition either. If you fight someone as capable as you are playing who is equipped better, then who is really playing with the game, rather than at the game?

I also find the idea that there isn't weapon variety to be a rather interesting conclusion. You're basically insinuating Dark Souls is even worse than I think it is by stating that, in order to min/max, you must be using one of a very select few weapons. That's pretty silly, man.

Like I said, this can go around for days. I'm not budging.
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twit

[remote]

[mauve]

Yeahhhh I think the term "min/max" has kinda lost all meaning at this point.

I think of it like optimizing a Magic the Gathering deck. There's plenty of concept decks or single-purpose decks and so forth, that are meant to fit specific niches. This isn't the same as just "herp derp i am zweihander derp mask guy," to me.

So yeah. Whatever. I'll just say I found much greater variety in really viable styles for players to take in Demon's than I ever did in Dark, and leave it at that.
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twit

[CubaLibre]

[Youpi]

Demon's had enough health that winning actually meant maybe you were the better fighter probably, but it had like five viable weapons, two viable armor sets, and one viable gender.
Half of the equipment in Dark Souls is viable but everything dies so fast you need to play the same person a dozen times before you start having a clue who is the better fighter.
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Twitter: @youpi

[diplo]

Apol, I took care of the Maneaters with no problem, so no need for co-op there.

I got an A.I. Old Monk :( I mean I assume I did because of how dumb

For some reason the Makoto does less damage than my Mirdan Hammer +7 even though its attack power is listed as ~210 while the Hammer is like . . . ~170? I don't get it. Actually I should review the stat menu to make sure I'm not being me

[probably fine]

I think you should have seen a cutscene at some point in the staircase before the fog gate if the Old Monk was another player. Or maybe a fog gate goes up by the Maneater archstone trapping you in the final area. Something like that.
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Drawing & writing, mostly.

[diplo]

There was a cutscene, but I didn't backtrack to see if there was a fog gate behind me.

[remote]

You know you got AI Old Monk when he's just wielding claws... unless a player is doing the same, I guess, but that would be pretty rare.

A fun trick, maybe.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Toptube]

[Mr. Apol]

yeah but mirdan hammer owns
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[klj5j6li]

[Youpi]

If the old monk cutscene plays before you open the gate it's an invasion, and I think you always get an invasion message after the cutscene.
However, putting your blue stone in 3-1, 3-2, or 3-3 will often disregard your wish and summon you to play as the old monk instead: some people who don't want to play that role (with the 5 minutes wait it implies) disconnect, in which case the cutscene interrupts you but you fight the AI.
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Twitter: @youpi

[diplo]

I can't figure out the dragon's fire breath on the first part with it in 1-4. I've found the boundary between safe and unsafe before I make my dash so that I get as much of a doable time window as possible, but I am constantly hampered by what seems to be a combination of the second fat official (who I cannot snipe because of the angles of the bridge) getting in my way and the fire still hitting me near what I assume is the end of the blast. I've only made it to the second phase of the dragon because I've used a stone of ephemeral eyes for an extra boost of health (being hit by the dragon's fire is an instant kill if I'm in soul form, no matter what). So I can do this, but I'd prefer to not use a stone of ephemeral eyes every time I restart. What am I doing wrong?

[thestage]

make sure you've got fast run and as much fire resist as you can equip, basically. including the ring and the best fire resist shield you have (I think the shield under the dragon in 1-1 is the best?). I don't really remember if it's possible to get past him without getting hit, but I'm leaning toward no.

the other option is to kill him with arrows from the bridge, but he's got a lot of health.

[scratchmonkey]

I highly recommend just getting 100some arrows and pelting him until he flies away. It's not worth the trouble otherwise.

[Felix]

yeah, the timing on the dragon's breath is way more finicky than it needed to be

[diplo]

[analogos]

you can absolutely run past without taking damage. i mean i don't know if you want me to link a specific instructive example of this but that's certainly what i did.

the funny thing is that in the youtube video i found, this player highly emphasizes vitality over endurance, which is something i've never done until my most recent dark souls character.

[CubaLibre]

In the first phase, the dragon actually has three attacks: one at each end of the battlements, and one in the middle. If you run straight through, you'll skip the middle attack and get blasted by the far attack. Instead, you have to hang out a bit and bait the middle attack (right in front of the second fat man) before making a run for it. Works every time.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[BotageL]

The easiest way to do this is to just stop sprinting for a moment -- you probably need to recover stamina anyway, if yours is low like mine was there -- and normal run a short ways, then gun it once more. Maybe roll a couple times at the end for good measure.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[jjsimpso]

I popped my asian copy of demon's souls in yesterday and was surprised how many people were still playing it.

I never really messed with world tendency when i played before. Is it accepted that you pretty much have to do it offline? Does the asian version have the world tendency events the NA version has?
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[Toptube]

[jjsimpso]

Thanks for the info. It is as I feared :(

It would be almost worth it to buy the NA version just for the world tendency events. Although I don't know if they're having any more.
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[Toptube]

If you have the asian version and you want to do a pure black playthrough, delete the game files/patch files from your PS3 and then make a new character. In Demon's Souls 1.0, tendency shifts towards black ANY time you die. Not just when you are human. So you can start a new game, die 8 times or whatever in all the worlds, patch the game, and then proceed with your playthrough.

[jjsimpso]

Ah, cool. I will probably do something along those lines since I'm most interested in pure black.
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[Toptube]

In case it wasn't clear to you or anyone else: The above method to play pure black does not work in the Western releases, because the discs are pre-patched.

[diplo]

Agreeing with dinghy (not sure if it was this thread or the Dark one) that Demon's is harder than Dark.

Edit: Boring post so I'll add a few reasons why I think so. I'm saying this having started NG+ and finished a few of its stages since.

- No poise. A lot of my blocks are being broken by enemies' attacks (and am I mistaken, or is the reeling animation longer than it is in Dark?). Minor enemies, like the mining grunts in 2-1/2-2, take off gigantic amounts of your stamina.
- Stages seem to have you dealing with more things at once than Dark. Afaict, Dark has nothing like, uh, 4-1.
- Bosses usually give more resistance and pressure. The only bosses I'm not really worried about are Adjudicator, Dirty Colossus, and Leechmonger. Maybe Storm King.
- Already mentioned: when I finished Dark for the first time I had a pile of powerful weapons. With my file in Demon's, the best I appear to have is a leveled-up Mirdan Hammer. It's unwieldy and necessitates two-handing for higher success rates. Apol gave me the Dragon Bone Smasher last night, but that was an outside method of acquisition.
- When you die, you always start at the very beginning of an area.
- Negative reason: the targeting is sort of problematic, at least compared to Dark's targeting, which I think is close to perfect. I'll have a rolling armor skeleton in front of me and try to target it, and the targeting will instead go for a flying manta ray 180 degrees behind me up in the air.

[Talbain]

I dunno, I tend to think of them as being different rather than one being better, particularly that everyone who had experience with Demon's Souls knew, to a certain degree, what to expect when coming into Dark. From what I can tell, introducing Dark to a person who hasn't played Demon's is far tougher mostly from a navigational standpoint. In Demon's Souls the game is very straightforward about what's expected of you and where you're supposed to go. My brother spent a good three hours in the Dark Souls starting area before figuring out that fighting the skeletons wasn't the right way to go, but given that it was the obvious way to him at the time, he spent a long time dying there before attempting a different path. When I played Dark Souls blind, there were areas I was absolutely terrified of due to not knowing where the next rest point was. Playing Dark Souls blind makes you appreciate the brilliance of its waypoint system immensely, whereas Demon's rest points feel very forgiving (though this is playing both blind, I suppose your mileage may vary depending on how you played it). While it's true that Dark Souls had nothing like 4-1, Demon's Souls has nothing that's like the Painted World, and the Painted World is by far my favorite area in any game. Still, there is also nothing like Maiden Astraea in Dark Souls, the closest to it might be the Artorias fight/post-battle encounter. Again, they are games of differences, and each is extraordinarily rich, both with a different mythos and pathos to consider.
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[diplo]

I don't know why you read my post as being about which game is better/worse.

[Broco]

[Talbain]

[Felix]

Maneater and O&S both took me about as long (2+ hours) the first time around, but I've since been able to mop the floor with O&S whereas I haven't returned to Demon's (where, in my one playthrough, I used that crescent falchion for almost the entire game).

[Toptube]

[Talbain]

[Felix]

Whereas both Flamelurker and False King were relatively doable for me (maybe 3 tries each). The more you know!

[mauve]

First cycle Maneater is easier than Ornsmough. If it's more difficult it's because you came with insufficient weaponry, which is entirely possibly a thing, moreso than in Dark. NG+ or later, Maneater is way harder than NG+ or later Ornsmough. Or anything else in Dark. Easily.

On the whole I don't think either game is that bad in any cycle once you get kitted out, but it's much easier to get a strong 'kit' in Demon's than in Dark. Most of the really strong early weapons in Dark are either Black Knight equips or Gravelord Sword, mostly due to their relative ease to upgrade compared to other equivalent weapons.
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twit

[Talbain]

[klj5j6li]

[jjsimpso]

I'm playing through Demon's Souls now offline, and I'm going to take Flamelurker out legit this time. No cheesing. Next will be Maneater, who I co-oped the first time through. Until I've done this, I don't think I will feel like I've really "beaten" the game.
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[diplo]

Yyeeaahh. After having invested an hour to beat the Maneaters on NG+, in addition to what I wrote above, I feel more confident than ever in my statement about the games' comparative difficulty levels. Although, tbh, that boss fight is just a mess (lots of imbalanced things going on with the models' detection of level geometry and lots of funky behavioral things that happen when a Maneater falls off a ledge or flies away/flies back). I have a hard time believing it's possible to do solo without exploiting the A.I. in some tedious, dumb way (probably manipulation around the central platform), and/or having a really powerful weapon.