[Felix]

[Oh God Spiders No]

One thing that someone probably should have mentioned is that during global white tendency week it is possible for the tendency of your local world to temporarily dip below Pure White, but that going in and out of the nexus or loading your profile a couple of times will get it back up to normal.

But, I think the event is over now. Sorry. But, struggling with managing the tendency is a big part of the game, and Global Events kind of rob you of that. So don't feel too bad. The Real Demon's Souls starts here.

When you do make your white tendency run, all you really have to do is just NEVER enter or play a level in body form at all, by suiciding in the Nexus immediately after every boss.
(But I have a feeling you already know that.)

[Felix]

In general, internisus, it sounds like you and I had a very similar first experience through the game, probably due in large part to our preference for 1h curved swords. For what it's worth, I definitely agree that 4-2 and Maneater are the hardest parts [for a character like this]; I eventually beat Maneater with the Meat Cleaver, which was the only other weapon type I made much use of, because it's just that overpowered and fun to use. I also eventually beat 4-2 by running the fuck through it (which really doesn't miss out on anything after you've fully explored the first big chamber, before you conclude that that level is a motherfucker).

As arrows are concerned -- they are boring and you should only use them when you have to. It is a real shame you didn't get the Sword of Storms! That said, the Lava Bow is by far the best bow you can have with minimal investment (like, Meat Cleaver/Crescent Falchion levels of great-for-no-investment). I think there are only a couple of other bows that beat it, and they require very high STR or DEX, respectively.

1-4 is definitely "supposed" to be the level you play last, so good job on that. I will tell you right now that the fire-breathing dragon is a huge asshole, and that the safe window for running past him would be twice as long in any other game. There are exactly two things you need to know to make the boss of that level -- the effective final boss -- pretty easy, and I will spoiler tag them here for you:


1) Fight him at mid-range -- that way he'll mostly use his projectiles, which are by far the easiest attack to stay on top of.
2) You can interrupt his AoE chargeup.

[internisus]

I won't read that until after I've tried to get through on my own, so I'll come back later to make my report. Though I'll take a moment to agree that arrows are boring. I like bows in general a lot on an archetypal level, so it's too bad. Are you saying that the lava bow is better than the white bow? I'm planning to use the white bow until my sticky compound long bow and dex are high enough to be superior. It's unimportant, though.

The reason I'm posting again before finishing the game is that I feel like something just clicked for me about its structure. I was looking at what I can do with colorless demon souls, trying to decide on which of my uniques I should choose to spend the three that I've got, and I realized that most of the unique weapons have characteristics that make them tactically interesting for PvP. Since there's a limit on how many colorless demon souls you can collect in one playthrough, it seems to me now that the meta goal for the game is to keep your soul level as low as you can while still completing the ever-increasing challenges of repeated NG+ to acquire colorless demon souls and improve unique PvP weapons. Spreading primordial demons among the five worlds is what pushes you to play the full game rather than just beat one archdemon and then the Boletarian Palace each time. That's kind of brilliant!

Understanding that Demon's Souls has this thoughtful meta-structure now causes me to consider PvP more seriously! My only real concerns: 1) What do you do with collected souls when you are trying not to increase your soul level but also unwilling to risk losing a very large accumulated quantity by simply holding onto them? and 2) What would you say is an ideal level to be around for PvP? Where are most of the players in terms of their level?

[Felix]

White Bow is good if you have high enough STR, Sticky Compound Longbow is good if you have enough DEX, if like me your STR and DEX are only high enough for weapons, the Lava Bow is far superior.

Like DkS, most builds are properly done around 70-80, but you can always boost your health after that!

[Oh God Spiders No]

[internisus]

[Oh God Spiders No]

I'd say pretty much. It's definitely is one of several the factors that encourages you to develop a specific interesting build. That is, getting colorless demons souls legitmately is inconvenient enough that it makes you have to consider which two items (at most) you'll be upgrading fully per run. So if you want to have a baby's nail +5 and hiltless +5 and also a dark silver shield +5, well then you're out of luck or you're going to have to face Flamelurker in NG+

What weakens this metagame idea a bit is the fact that after the first NG+ the scaling doesn't ever increase very dramatically again, and after NG+7 it stops increasing altogether. Also, it's unlikely that you're going to develop a solid pvp build that really uses a ton of unique items anyway; two or three is probably the max for most players, and more than four would be pretty unusual (since that's the max number of weapons/items you can equip at any given time anyway). It only takes two full runs to max out 4 items.
----
After doing it legitimately many, many times over, I've grown pretty bored of the work that goes into getting all ten colorless souls, so I now just cheat to give them to myself when appropriate instead of subjecting myself to the grind.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

I've never managed to figure out the timing to get safely past that second dragon. I always end up biting the bullet and take the half hour to kill it while I watch a TV show.
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[CubaLibre]

Down with curved swords, get your overacrobatic nippophile crap out of my ponderous medieval fantasy game

Never found 4-2 to be THAT hard, though I guess it's in the running for hardest (1-3 can be tough too). The only real roadblock is the laser ghosts, which is why I usually clear world 5 first for the DSS.

[Felix]

It's the first one that fucks me up, not the second.

[CubaLibre]

Yeah, I know.

The key is that he has three attacks, not two as you think/assume. There's one for each end AND one for the middle. The way it's timed, if you start running as soon as he's done breathing at you on your end, by the time he attacks again you'll be about 2/3 along the wall, which will trigger his other-end attack, which starts at the end and comes towards you: unavoidable. Instead, you run to the middle (about where the farther fat official is, dragon usually doesn't automatically kill him like he does the one close to you which forces you to stop and fight him, this is a hint) and wait until he starts to attack again. The middle attack starts at about the 1/3 mark and goes to the 2/3, so as soon as he starts you start running again and you'll make it to the door. Works every time.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

EDIT: Ignore what I wrote here originally if you saw it, I think I misread what you wrote.

I've tried to use whatever I remember of your strategies when I get to him but I usually run out of patience before I actually try to pull the text up and break it down step by step.
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[CubaLibre]

1, 2, and 3 are the total areas of effect of the dragon's attacks. The arrows denote the way the fire moves. The dragon will use the attack of whatever zone you are in when he starts attacking. So you wait at the beginning until 1 is over, run to the middle of the wall into zone 2. When he starts breathing fire he will be using attack 2, and it will start behind you at the approximate 1/3 mark (where 1 and 2 overlap). Then you can safely complete the run all the way to the end.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[internisus]

I'm postponing the end of the game, and I ran through 4-2 again. No problems. Differences this time: I have the DSS instead of the rune shield; the three black phantom skeletons at the end were gone; and I wore the thief's ring. It was actually really smooth, but part of that was that I knew how to handle it already.

Anyway, I think I'm going to farm some bladestone for awhile because I don't want the game to be over. I've decided to turn a kilij into a sharp kilij +5 instead of using an uchigatana like I guess everyone else. I know the katana is a little more powerful and has higher bleed, but it's so unwieldy; I just can't imagine it as my main weapon. Feel free to talk me out of it!

[Oh God Spiders No]

[CubaLibre]

Oh that one's easier. He basically sweeps left to right and right to left. Stay at the far right. When he does the right-to-left sweep, run the instant you can, keep right and book it all the way to the door. You're at <50% equip weight right? It won't work if you're in heaver armor, you won't run fast enough.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

What's the highest safe point I can stand? Ie where should I be standing before I start running?
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[CubaLibre]

That I don't know, I always just eyeballed it. If you freed Biorr, it's right behind him.

Biorr makes the whole thing slightly easier. I'm not as clear on the fire pattern for the second stage but basically he does the sweeps on the lower stairs and then just blows out the entire upper section (where it gets flat right before the door). The thing is the sweeps take so long that you can make it all the way through the door to safety in one run, though you'll barely make it (he will be torching the flat part right in front of the door as you scoot in). Biorr takes the pressure off because the dragon focuses on him, which means he'll never flame the top part. He'll just do the sweep until Biorr dies, which takes a real long time.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

Makes me sad that Biorr apparently doesn't survive that fight...
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[CubaLibre]

He does if you kill the dragon! I guess that's one reason to do it. It's so boring though. Also you need to learn the runs for invading suckers in 1-4!
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

I DO like invading suckers...
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[Oh God Spiders No]

Say, speaking of suckers, does anyone have a perfect bladestone they wouldn't mind giving me? I really, really don't want to spend 20 hours farming that thing.
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[Toptube]

@Inty

Even though its a tough place, I like the Valley of Defilement.

I've had a lot of fun fielding invaders there, dual handing my Sharp +5 Spiked Shield : )

and I liked World 4 a lot. Its very twisty and its got surprises up its sleeves.

[Toptube]

Inty, if you don't already know this, drop rates of rare items improve slightly in Pure Black.

[internisus]

My level 80 build is kind of shitty. Too well-rounded. I should have left my strength at 14 for the kilij, but I didn't know what I liked yet!

25 Vitality
24 Intelligence
25 Endurance
20 Strength
25 Dexterity
18 Magic
10 Faith
13 Luck

Point total: 160

I'm at like 68 right now, so there's not much I can change. I should be able to keep soul level 120 more specialized by pumping dexterity and magic.

I'm going to kill myself a bunch and get worlds 2 and 4 to black tendency so I can work on sharpstone and bladestone drops. Then I'll try some invading in 1-3 and see if I have any success. I'm going to equip warding, acid storm, and soul ray for spells, and I might swap my kilij for the Baby's Nail if the other guy goes for a drawn-out Scraping Spear thing. My problem when that happens is that I can't stop myself from blocking when I should just ignore attacks and give my own. I'll carry some grindstones too.

This is pretty cool! I guess I'm more sympathetic towards the people who were total dicks to me before now that I understand how the game implicitly encourages you to create ruinous PvP tactics at as low a level as possible.

[Oh God Spiders No]

I wouldn't worry about making your first build being too generic. That's what I did and it's probably what everyone else did here, too. They're great games that beg to be replayed.

I would definitely encourage you to NOT try to farm a bladestone for this run, though. You may be working on that for ten hours or more, and for what? So your mediocre jack of all trades build can have a dex weapon when he would do just as well with a strength, magic, or quality? Save that for a future dex build.
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[internisus]

[Oh God Spiders No]

Aight, just proceed with caution.
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[internisus]

[Toptube]

[internisus]

[Felix]

1-2 is not a difficult level

in fact it's the only -2 that I can't see certain players having reason to hate, other than that it's a little too easy

2-2 is sort of long and confusing plus people don't like Flamelurker (I love Flamelurker)
3-2 is Maneater
4-2 is 4-2
5-2 is also sort of long and confusing and a slog but it's still cool and atmospheric

[Toptube]

1- 2 is the most openly bitched about section of the game, as far as I've seen. and then The black version spices things up!

[Oh God Spiders No]

Why, because the punishment for failure becomes more severe, or is there some other spice that's added?

[scratchmonkey]

The section right at the end of 1-2 and then Tower Knight is definitely one of the points where many people hit a roadblock -- the area right before the gate is the first portion of the game where really nasty enemies are grouped with regular enemies in a pretty unavoidable way (assuming you do 1-2 right after finishing 1-1). And then Tower Knight is a lot more punishing than Phalanx, although he's a pussycat once you get past the intimidation factor.

FWIW, I would pick 4-2 as the toughest level in the game (if you don't have a shield that resists magic).

[Oh God Spiders No]

I hate 5-2 because of those damn close battles with the giant ogres on the tiny islands. Having thief's ring to carefully aggro single enemies helps a bit, but if you pull two you're essentially completely screwed.
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[Toptube]

Yeah I wasn't saying its THE TOUGHEST, just that it seems notorious. Namely due to how you get funneled along.

Oh God Spiders No, The "spice" comes in the form of BP enemies added to the group at the end. and you can't just turn around and run easily because of the Dragon. Its a tough spot, especially early in the game. I got hit by it early because I have the asian version (Demon's Souls Version 1.0 on the disc) and in that, the worlds turn towards black with EVERY death, not just human form death. I didn't connect the game to the internet for probably the first 1/4 of the game so I hadn't gotten the patch that fixed that. So yeah I was in pure black by the time I hit 1-2, which was I think the third area I completed.

[diplo]

Those manta rays in 4-2 drive me nuts because at particular segments it seems like you've just gotta hope you don't get slammed by a giga spear from a heavenly point that you can't see

[Oh God Spiders No]

Ah, very nice, that sounds awesome. I usually only dip into PBWT for the phantoms after I've completed PWWT, and haven't ever really forced myself to play through the levels with the extra challenge. I should do that one of these playthroughs.

Man, getting PWWT in the original version must have been crazy hard to do. The Keel Blade must have been so rare and coveted.
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[analogos]