[mauve]

havel ring does let you wear heavier gear, which on paper looks great

until you watch your stamina bar filling at no speed at all. hope you like chewing on green blossoms all day

usually prefer wolf ring for most of the game for that reason.

[OffalAl]

ring of favor and protection has such a dramatic impact i've always thought of it as dark souls' cling ring equivalent.

from a verisimilitude perspective it's pretty funny that you can't equip two of the same ring ~just because~

god damn i love the dwgr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3Imo5KLuw
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[Toptube]

Havel's ring is so useful, it unfortunately becomes a basis for most builds. I really hope Dark Souls 2 thinks stuff like this through a little more. Staminia can become an issue with PVP, but it's not too hard to mitigate/plan around it. PVE, there's pretty much no reason to not use Havel's ring most of the time. Except of course, if you haven't found it.


The Ring of Favor and Protection is cool, but it breaks if you take it off. and there are some points in the game where you will be switching rings around, if you have some situationally useful rings. As such, I've never worn the ring of favor and protection.

[remote]

http://mmdks.com/5fie
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Guillotine]

I really hope DS2 will be able to do without the "unavoidable" equipments, RoFP, Cling, Grass/Adjudicator Shield on everyone's back... from what I played of the beta I'd say the latter is looking good via mechanics(real dual wielding, power stance).

[misadventurous]

i try to avoid rfp and havel's because they're boring and easily abused. can't pass up wolf ring, though. and most of the rings are pretty uninspiring.

i got really annoyed when i got orange charred ring the first time and had rfp + havel's and to choose between being able to roll and not burning to death in lava

[diplo]

There's no real need to have armor on when traveling the parts of Dark Souls that require you to go over lava. Just de-equip and re-equip when you reach the root leading up to the other half of Lost Izalith.

[BotageL]

I've played this game a bunch of times, but that Silver Archer still gets me with embarrassing frequency.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Toups]

yeah it took me several hours to get past that part on this runthrough
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[BotageL]

The flying demons right before him are really annoying, too, because they get pushed back so far by any normal hit that I have to stop and run forward between swings.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Toups]

if you have a quick enough weapon you can get a hit in before their attack animation connects
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[Vikram Ray]

those stupid archers are what have kept me away from the game for like 6 months.

[mauve]

i haven't had problems with that silver knight in forever? i just roll the arrows until i get close enough he switches to sword, then parry him to death.

the demons on the way there are more annoying because they sometimes like to zot you in the back for ignoring them
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twit

[Vikram Ray]

I have killing those winged demons down to a science. I suck at parrying, however.

[Toups]

as long as you have decent poise and stability you can just block his sword attacks and slowly wittle his health down. as long as he doesn't knock you off :\
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[scratchmonkey]

Knocking him off with the shockwave Miracles feels super-good.

I generally go for the super-cheese move of using the invisibility sorcery and poison arrows.

[Toups]

I wanna try a faith build next but it seems like the beginning of the game would be super intimidating
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[scratchmonkey]

If you take the master key as your starting item, there's a sword you get access to that's basically the Faith equivalent of the Drake Sword, which makes going through the early parts of the game much easier.

I've done it and it's actually not bad at all, Heal is pretty great early on just in terms of giving you a buffer before you have to hit the Estus.

[mauve]

silver knights are fantastic to practice parrying on. They've all got really obvious tells. (and don't do as much damage as black knights, either)
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[diplo]

Toups what the heck are you doing that made you spend a few hours on the SK archers

[Toptube]

[Felix]

a "dedicated" faith build doesn't really make any sense, and I can't think of any circumstances in which lightning spear is better than soul spear, but wrath of the gods is super useful if you're willing to pump faith high enough alongside whatever else you've built for

[Toups]

[Toups]

also, codeine
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[luvcraft]

[remote]

yeah, the silver knight archers are the game telling you learn to parry

roll under his arrow if you have to, get up close with your back to the wall, stand your ground and fucking parry that jerk into oblivion
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Toptube]

here are the ways I have dealt with the archer:

spam force miracle until he falls off ledge

hold a small/normal sized shield as a weapon, two hand it, then use the R2 attack. It's a two handed, head down, full on shield charge, that can charge through attacks. Do it until he falls off ledge. This is something I used to do to people in Demon's Souls (albeit with a fully upgraded spike shield, so it actually does damage). works pretty well.

kick him.

*oh yeah, I've also straight up killed him with the Great Chaos fireball

[Toups]

I usually just engage him on the ledge. I'm okay at parrying but it seems too risky in such a tense situation, especially when you don't really have the luxury of healing if you fuck up.

my problem is honestly just getting close enough to him half the time. but this last time it was cuz I was trying to be cute and taking out the left archer earlier with pharis' bow, but half the time I couldn't line it up right and get knocked off. the only other tricky part is taking on the two lightning gargoyles on the platform below the snipers.
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[misadventurous]

the first time i played the game, i somehow got past the archers without dying on my first try. went left, took a huge arrow to the back, got up and dodged the next one. the left knight is harder to get to first but easier to fight because there's more space on his ledge, so once i got to him it was a snap.

of course i go to the right now. i usually just shield against the dude's hits until he falls off the roof. silver knights have big flourishy attacks so it's not hard to get them to do.

[Toptube]

I have never payed attention to the archer on the left.

[Felix]

Me either

[Toups]

isn't he guarding an item or something?
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[CubaLibre]

[misadventurous]

the other guy is guarding a high-level consumable soul iirc. he's trivial to beat on his own so i always go for it.

[Broco]

For the silver knight archer, I run up close to him (within 10 feet or so), then turn around and run back down where I came from. Sometimes this requires rolling under an arrow. At least half the time, his AI gets confused and he walks off the ledge. If he doesn't, I can just try again.

In fact, I don't hit a single enemy with my sword in that whole section. I just strip down to quarter-weight and run past everybody. This makes retries faster if I do fail the silver archer. Truth is, if you know where you're going, most areas in Dark Souls are easy to complete by pseudo-speedrunning, since almost every enemy type hesitates before striking you.

[lolipalooza]

[fucked up an edit]
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[Broco]

[BotageL]

However you think you have to fight the Moonlight Butterfly, I guarantee you're overthinking it.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[Felix]

[lolipalooza]

[Toups]

blighttown might be my favorite area of the game, design wise. it's so dark and confusing and oppressive and there's that one invisible poison dart sniper in the scariest area. it's so incredibly tense every time
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