[Talbain]

[apfEID]

Flamelurker was easy-ish for me, because I had a shield that significantly blocked fire damage, (and I was mostly using Soul Arrow from a distance, I think.)
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Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est
http://ageoffire.tumblr.com

[Talbain]

I played a Mage the first time through and I simply could not get at a distance where I felt safe casting spells (and Soul Arrow was pretty much my default against the boss too). Was always super tense about doing anything other than blocking whenever I fight Flamelurker.
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[Ronnoc]

Speaking of 2-2, I'm surprised at how fast I'm being summoned. Guess getting stuck there is still a thing.

[Oh God Spiders No]

White Tendency event starting noon pst today.
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[all monsters]

just reached the boss of 5-2, I'm kind of suprised by how much hate this level gets. I liked the feeling of looking out into the swamp and seeing soft focused torches in the distance, and slowly groping your way towards them. and finding an "I'm lost" message just when I realised how lost I was. and all of the equipment littering the swamp...

I like how careful you have to be about rolling too, thanks to the poor footing. it makes the little island fights with the depraved ones really tense, like fighting in tiny arenas

[Oh God Spiders No]

White Tendency Event is on
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[Felix]

[Oh God Spiders No]

Just finished a Faith Build run through. Played mostly with an Istarelle, Large Sword of Moonlight, and/or Blessed Mirdan Hammer. I also toted around a Baby's Nail for pvp to plague people, which makes them freak out so that Demon's Souls can happen.

There was a pretty healthy pvp crowd this time around. Maybe because of the White World tendency event, people were more keen to stay in body form, since there was no risk of messing up the tendency?

The Large Sword of Moonlight made me pretty fucking unstoppable against invaders and hosts. Seems like players in general have no idea how to handle the shield phasing thing.
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[Felix]

I've been thinking about running back through the game instead of just futzing in NG+ but I glanced at the wiki and decided I made such an enjoyably well-rounded character the first time around that there aren't that many other builds I'm even interested in

but we'll see.

[Ronnoc]

Had a trip down memory lane today as I backstabbed a guy over a dozen times for no damage.

[all monsters]

I dreamed last night that I was playing demon's souls and every weapon I tried to use was breaking immediately, then today when I challenged dirty colossus my katana broke on the first strike. should have heeded the warning!

[Oh God Spiders No]

someone want to help me beat penetrator ng+?

lvl 90ish?
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[Felix]

sure man. tonight?

[Oh God Spiders No]

Tonight is probably okay. What time zone are you in? Can we tentatively say like 10pm PST (6am GMT)? There's a fair chance the thing I'm doing in the afternoon might end up going into the night, though, and I'll feel bad if I stand you up.

PSN is Ohgodspidersno, but I think we're already buddies.

[internisus]

I wasted too much of the White Tendency event banging my head against the wall that is Maneater. I think I'm just ill-equipped for this fight right now. But it looks like I won't get to worlds 4 or 5 or to 1-3 and 1-4 by the end of the event. So I'm just wondering: Do you guys know what happens to my world tendency when this thing shuts down?

[Felix]

Maneater is the hardest part of the game, don't feel bad

also stop doing the game in perfect exact order you obsessive compulsive lunatic

just play world 4 now

[Oh God Spiders No]

If you log off it will stay white. It will then be changeable, though, so be careful not to die in body form or kill anyone. Also, if you log in again after the event is over it will change it.

Felix, I'm logging in now if you want to play.
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[internisus]

Ah, okay. Well, I'm not willing to give up the online experience; I'll just worry about tendency in NG+ as originally intended.

[Toptube]

as soon as I feel like I'm "done" with Dark Souls, i'm coming right back to this!

[Oh God Spiders No]

Oh, also ost of the white tendency things are geographic changes that persist even after you revert. So you might miss the special items and armors that pwwt npcs give you, but most of the pwwt weapons are on the ground and will probably remain available to you.
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[Greng]

I've just cleared 1-1 and loved it to bits. I might be several years late to the party but coming from Dark Souls to Demon's Souls I actually like the differences that feature here that were refined or replaced in Dark Souls.

I was wondering when I would find my first bonfire. Once I unlocked the second shortcut I understood.

The Pantheon was unexpected and interesting. There sure are some ridiculously oversized weapons in this game.

Aside from looking up mechanics and weapon upgrade stats I'm not going to read any guides for this game. I feel bad for spoiling too much of Dark Souls by following guides (although I stopped that completely from Anor Londo onwards).
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Steam ~ Be Preying | Resident Evil.net ~ ElSpank

[jjsimpso]

I finished my second run through the game over the weekend, offline with a magic using backstabber on the Asian version. Took the time to do most of the World Tendency stuff and finally beat Maneater and Flamelurker without help or cheesing them. If I ever get back to the game I'll probably give NG+ a go with one of my two characters. I'll probably do Dark Souls dlc first though.
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PSN: TaipeiGamer

[Oh God Spiders No]

Yea, just read about what each stone does and where its respective upgrade branch begins.

The dude in the Nexus will do standard +1 through +10 upgrades. There's a particular boss that you need to beat and ONE particular NPC (not four like in Dark) that you need to find before you can do exotic upgrades (special stones and unique boss soul weapons).
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[CubaLibre]

The tricky part is knowing where your desired upgrade path branches off (it's usually +3 or +6, boss soul weapons are usually +7). There's nothing in the game that tells you this, the only way you'd know is if you held off on upgrading until finding the Secret Blacksmith and then going to him every time you upgraded at the Normal Blacksmith to check. Oh, and if you already had the relevant stones in your inventory. If you accidentally normal-upgrade your weapon past the branching point, you have to use a melting shard to take it down to +0 and start all over again.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

You wouldn't have to make that trip every level; secret blacksmith also does normal upgrades.
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[CubaLibre]

Well, fine. The biggest problem is that you can very well upgrade a weapon to +10 normal before you even get the boss soul that unlocks other upgrades, and never even realize that other upgrade paths exist (though eventually you'd wonder what all those other stones are for). It's definitely on the bad end of obtuse and it's good that Dark made it relatively more transparent, even if it is more of an actual pain in the ass once you know how it works (just because you have to run all over the place and go to different smiths).
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

Oh yes, I still agree with all that. To me the only real offense is that the paths start at different points. You might upgrade your spear to +3 and then see that quality, mercury, and fatal were open to you and then think that those were your only choices, never realizing that moon was waiting for you at +6. There's no way to effectively experiment with or even predict your options.
If it weren't for that I'd say the system was perfect.
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[Greng]

That's why weapon ascension is one of the few things I am willing to consult a wiki on.
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Steam ~ Be Preying | Resident Evil.net ~ ElSpank

[Felix]

also the fact that the Crescent Falchion they give you for free is actually a viable weapon for 80% of the game if you're doing a quick-1h-melee-with-some-magic build (this guy right here)

my other favourite weapon (the Meat Cleaver) is equally easy to assbackwards your way into.

[internisus]

I was having a fantastic time, admiring the level design of the Shrine of Storms after I beat 4-1 on my first attempt and was feeling ecstatic as I saw confirmation that 4-2 would take me down and into and hopefully around the bottom rim of the island. I was happy about my latest equipment loadout and just really looking forward to what was next, so I didn't go back to the nexus after I got my body back. Immediately I was invaded by one of those shits using scraping spear and plague. It's always scraping spear and plague. Jesus. He couldn't kill me for like ten minutes, and then when I realized I couldn't kill him either because he broke my shit I evaded him by running blindly through the level for another ten minutes and finally got killed by an arrow trap. I'm so fucking pissed right now.

Thankfully tendency didn't change and I got Makoto on 4-2. But then when I went back to 4-1 Satsuki wasn't there anymore. I'll have to search more thoroughly for him when I have time to go back. Sadly, it looks like world 5 has dimmed a bit on my map, so I may miss out on that event this time.

[Oh God Spiders No]

Don't fret, what you get from Satsuki at that point can be found in many other places in the game. The real gift is the makoto itself.
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[internisus]

Ah, okay. Thanks. I hope I can find a way to still do the world 5 stuff, though. Maybe if I just beat 5-1 in soul form I'll bump it up to pure white.

I'm still mad about that phantom. See, I really like having my living body. I like hearing my footsteps and not having a green aura surrounding me all the time. It adds to the immersion factor. So it's really frustrating to get it trolled away as soon as I get it back, especially since I'm currently in a no-man's land of uncertainty; everything I knew from my last time playing is behind me. I also played 1-3 today, and it was pretty great, but Penetrator killed me. I think I can take him, but I'm more interested in exploring 4-2.

The way you enter the Adjudicator's arena is thematically perfect for the geography of the Shrine of Storms. It tickles me in all my sensitive places. This is the opposite of the architectural idea that is the Tower of Latria, which is all vertical extremes and sprawling horizontals. The Shrine reminds me of the HL2 mod Minerva: Metastasis, all dense and folded within a finite shell. I can't imagine that Dark Souls can compete with this kind of level design because it's supposed to be a contiguous world whereas this is a bunch of encapsulated ideas with no relation to one another. (But if it does anyway, man, I'll die of excitement.)

[Felix]

4-1 is probably my favourite level and 4-2 is probably my least favourite

take that as you will

it's almost more appropriate that you got dicked over there of all places

[CubaLibre]

Man if you see a dude with scraping spear just R1 him to death. He can't do any damage, and you'll kill him before he breaks your shit.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

One of the PWWT events is in 5-1 and results from a geographic change that won't go away, so you basically already have that, provided you at least enter the level at some point before the white tendency server thing finishes.

There's another PWWT weapon later on in world 5 that I'm pretty sure is the only one that requires that you actually currently be in white tendency to get. And it's pretty unlikely that you'd find that weapon useful, anyway, unless you're actively going for the All Weapons (Soldier) Trophy.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

I've been reviewing what you've told us, and I'm pretty sure if you can manage to beat the entirety of world 5 and then TINY CONTENT-FREE SPOILER DETAILING WHICH AREA TO LOOK: go back to that boss' lair before the event ends tomorrow, then you should be able to get all white world weapons in this run, even if you don't manage to actually find and collect all of them before the end of the day.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

Finally got the pure darkmoonstone on my spellsword that I mssed in NG. Crescent Kilij +5 is disgustingly good
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[Toptube]

I like the Kilij. that was my main weapon for my dex character until I discovered the hiltless.

[Felix]

[internisus]

The kilij is my weapon of choice, as well. 4-1 is full of good equipment for a character like mine (low equip burden, dex focus with magic), but I'm glad I didn't go there earlier in my game because it would have been like skipping to the end of my journey. I never found anything that felt as good to use as the falchion I started with, so I was really happy to find that the kilij is wielded the same way. The uchigatana is superior, but it seems to have a heavier stroke with longer recovery. So I'm rocking a kilij +7 at the moment with a knight's shield +8 most of the time.

I missed the white tendency event in 5-3. I was good for it and did the stupidest thing by wading into the plague river to get some items; those little babies surrounded me and trapped me in a corner, and I couldn't manage my health fast enough. No way to raise the tendency now short of killing an invading black phantom. I could try that later, but I'm unlikely to succeed. It doesn't really matter. After this play through I want to make another character who is more of a slow heavy-weight with strength and miracles, and the reward for that event will be more relevant to him.

So 4-2 is a huge pain in the dick, huh? I thought the architecture of it was cool because of the way you're moving around the boss chamber as you descend (like a large-scale version of 4-1's boss room), but that has to be the hardest level in the game. I read about it afterwards and facepalmed for not thinking to use the thief's ring as a way to avoid constant storm beast harassment, and I probably made it harder than it needed to be by actually engaging every enemy rather than running past at least the black phantom skeletons near the end. Hell, I bet I could have raced through the whole stage since that would jive with my approach to the end ghost segments. Anyway, I ran that thing probably 15 or 20 times and got my routine down to a science; I could write a 5 page paper explaining my tactics for each little segment because I felt like there was only One Possible Way to make it. Yeah, it kind of sucked to have every single moment of this level be a thing that could kill me in one or two hits if I made the slightest mistake. It seems more claustrophobic than the gameplay usually is; there don't seem to be a lot of things you can try. But in retrospect it is pretty Demon's Souls.

As is the Valley of Defilement. I've read that some people really hate this place, and certainly it is no fun to play, but it's a place they just had to create for this game, I think. At the same time, I didn't find it very difficult, with the exception of my panicked attempts to fight multiple giant troll things in the restrictive swamp muck.

After 4-2, everything seemed easy. I went back and beat Maneater in one attempt. I think before I was still using a heater shield +6, and my knight's shield +8 holds up much better to their pounce attacks. Another improvement over my earlier tries was my replacement of protection with warding, of course, but I don't think I needed it. I actually dodged almost all of the pounces this time. And I guess my higher soul level means more defense. I think I'm around 62 right now. But it's the higher damage output of the kilij over my falchion that made the most difference because I killed one of the Maneaters shortly after the second showed up.

Sadly, the Old Monk was an AI. And I ruined the Storm King fight by using arrows, only realizing what was supposed to go down when I explored afterwards and found the Storm Ruler sword. I don't see myself using it in general, but I can see how that boss would feel epic if you do as intended and run in to grab the sword. Astraea was interesting! I appreciate what they did there.

I'm nearly done with the game now. Worlds 2, 3, 4, and 5 are completed. It's got me feeling wistful. Only 1-4 and whatever lies beyond are left to discover. But at the same time there's so much that I have left to learn. I haven't used magic damage weapons at all. I keep a kris blade on me just in case, but I've yet to need it. I wonder whether moon/darkmoon stuff is better. I wonder if/when I should be using these weapons. Likewise for inflicting status ailments; I've never tried poison or lifeleeching weapons and can't really imagine them being very helpful in PvE, although I have gotten a few kills through bleeding. I don't use large shields or miracles at all, and I only use spells for buffing so far. There are so many different kinds of upgrade materials that I haven't used at all. So in some respects I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the game. I'm sure that I'll replay it many times.