[misadventurous]

[a pair of gators]

[username]

So... the front doors to that "big" castle. I had to cheat and look up what I was doing wrong. I guess the neverending spawns should have tipped me off to something being odd but I was distracted by all my weapons nearly breaking due to the massive pile of bodies I accumulated.
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http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip1.mp3

[TXTSWORD]

What I've noticed is that it makes an effort to teach you by placing the left crossbow man where they do. Didn't stop me from being completely confused and yeah all my weapons at risk etc

[Schwere Viper]

For what it's worth, I think it's clever how they twisted what I think everybody assumed to be a simple visual flourish of the HUD and turned it into a key for a few specific instances. Just stuck me as pretty cool when I realised what was happening.
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HeavyViper@Twitter ~~~ HeavyViper@Soundcloud
Blog: Machines That Sing

[Broco]

Sure, but it needed to be telegraphed better, or at a minimum they should've added message words that are capable of expressing the solution to the puzzle for other players to explain it to you (Dark Souls gets away with a lot of obscurity because of that fallback, but it's no use if the vocabulary isn't rich enough).

The second time it happens there isn't infinite respawns, so I once got summoned to the world of a sad host who had wiped out every enemy in the area and was running around in circles, summoning all phantoms hoping one of them would show him how to progress. (He probably got lucky the first time and didn't realize what had happened.)

[mauve]

I invaded in the shaded ruins. When you do this, you get the whole area including the foggy woods. The guy was hiding somewhere as camouflage and used a giant tree seed to make the enemies attack me, but that didn't stop me from spending 10 minutes wandering around trying to find him.

Then, after two passes through the place, I remembered there were no pots near where Vengarl's head was. Then, I remembered that the pot was in _perfect_ position to do a jumping attack from up above. If you didn't know, in the area after Tark, you can jump down to Vengarl's area. So I buffed up my axe and leapt for it.

Landed right on his head for 900 damage.

I wouldn't have even cared what happened afterwards because, damn, fistpump. Thinking about it I should have just emoted then like FUCK YEAH instead of axing him to bits, but I was all caught up in it.

[mauve]

also i gotta say there are a fuckton of cookie cutter dark enchant katana users in the arena

did you know pursuer's ultra greatsword's 1h r1 combos with itself until you run out of stamina? i found out the hard way.

is there any listing of combos anywhere? i actually don't know more than a handful of them.
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twit

[a pair of gators]

i don't get those people, it's not like katanas are terribly good this go around

[Talbain]

[mauve]

hitstun is not modified by poise or AGI. at all. this is proven

there are real combos, quite a few of them. katanas, for example, all have 2-handed dashing r1 -> r1 r1. all greatswords can do it one or two-handed. i can't seem to get anything out of my gyrm greataxe but r1 r1, but need to mess around some more. i'm told that if you dual wield lances and don't powerstance them, r1 l1 r1 l1 ... combos infinitely.

this is a decent resource, it's not 100% correct but most of them are there.

also this is the reason i swapped out a ring for old sun ring. because screw stunlock.
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twit

[diplo]

[Talbain]

[Felix]

nope, if you hold triangle rather than tapping it and you meet the dual wielding requirements (and the weapons are compatible, meaning they use the same or similar movesets to begin with) it'll trigger a new moveset using both weapons simultaneously

[mauve]

basically hitstun is increased by counterhit state and when you're in stamina recovery mode. latter being the one where you fully run out of stamina and need to let it fill back up before you can run again.

poise simply prevents you from going into hitstun at all. it seems to go up when you're doing an attack, and thus encourages trades rather than simply armoring through attacks. i wish it were a little less vague than it is but hey.

i don't think anyone's narrowed down the exact iframes for agi to roll yet? would love to hear it if someone has. everything else i've just seen in random early nico videos i don't feel like digging up again.

power stance is what felix said, yeah. wd is while dashing, wr is while running. you also get dashing attacks off backsteps.
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twit

[Talbain]

That's interesting... so does that mean that holding triangle while dual-wielding two maces gives them a unique moveset?
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[mauve]

correct. you need 150% of the required stats though. So if it's 10 strength on the weapon, you need 15. (it rounds down, thankfully, so 11 only needs 16).

dual maces in particular beats up a lot of bosses in the game surprisingly easily
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twit

[Talbain]

[Broco]

Nope, power stance needs 150% of DEX as well.

Most power stance combinations aren't mindblowingly spectacular. The attacks are slow and drain a lot of stamina. Only some well-chosen ones are good. Don't go invest tons of titanite into two weapons until you get a feel for it.

[Rud31]

No one can handle my double whips.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[TXTSWORD]

Small hammer power stance L2 is pvp easy mode. I roll with 2x homunculus maces for PvE at the moment. Pretty much because I don't want to be playing NG+ at all but I'm doing it so I can actually participate in the invasion system :/

Are you sure WR is while running and not while rolling? Not sure that dashing is a different thing from running?

Just about finishing up my acid surge character. Got 6 stacks of acid surge at 32 attunement so they'll each get an additional cast. Guess that's 18 casts if I don't use hexer's hood (which is prefer not to for aesthetics)

Ah, I got shadow knife last night... Does anyone know if this has any redeeming qualities? Not sure why any knives other than the dagger and mytha's blade even exist, sadly. Fix knives ahhhh

[mauve]

uh.. yeah while rolling, whoops. i was in headache town last night okay.

even powerstanced hammers are pretty shit in pvp i think. once you get out of the tier where fools are trying to block it, its usefulness goes down to about zero. need something else...
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twit

[Felix]

powerstanced 1h maces/hammers really just amplify how good blunt/strike weapons are in the early game this time around (due to speed and enemy weaknesses). check out a ruin sentinels speedrun for example.

other than that the only powerstance I really like is 1h curved/straight sword (which I think has the same movement as curved/curved or curved/dagger but the asymmetry is appealing and most people are gonna really like that fire longsword in the early game until they get the magic mace so that's a good time to experiment). beyond that, having a shield is a little too useful in this one to forego it (unlike DeS and DkS) unless you're playing with Santier's later on.

[mauve]

protip: short-handle great axe power stanced with anything gets you the straight sword set.

also i think i'm done playing for awhile because 80% of my multiplayer sessions at ng+ 3m soul memory are dark enchanted katanas now. (how the fuck did that guy with dark resonant weapon hit me for 900 damage with an r1, how did i only hit for 350 when he didn't have gmb) it's more boring than anything else...

i'm actually running shieldless now? it's not so bad at all. you really need that agi for it though.
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twit

[username]

Got to a bonfire in shrine of amana with my pure melee character, celebrated, walked into an orange mushroom cloud, broke a ring, did a double take when the repair cost was 15k souls. Oopsie I guess.
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http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip1.mp3

[a pair of gators]

[TXTSWORD]

So I finally got my acid dude lady prepped and ready for NG+ arena/invasions and played some tonight. Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit it works so gooooooooooooooooooooood! Like, alright I barely ever win... but I have 18 casts and the spiderweb shit from the spider fang weapon works way better than expected. Can typically bait people into fat rolling, which they don't expect, into the acid cloud and getting 2 directly on them thanks to the spider web. I had a guy that just couldn't escape it. Got all 18 on him pretty well. Heard about everything break. Then got a fatal backstab on him. Ran into him again later.... he ended up taking off all his gear mid fight :3 I can't wait to figure out how to vidcap this and edit it and youtube it (to the tune of Linkin Park, "cuz I'm one step closer to the edge... and I'm about to BREAK!)

Oh yeah I got dual mytha's and that's tight af, but I have to abandon them because I gimped my stats for acid build.

[Toptube]

I'm actually finding that going shield less and instead two handing something not only feels more viable, but actually feels correct for many encounters. The key is finding weapons that don't have a long wind up, for their two handed attacks.

[TXTSWORD]

Yeahhh I think shields are pretty bad. Or maybe I just don't know how to use them, but is much rather just not get hit (or aim for that anyways). Other than, say, huntsman's (fast enemies, multi skeleton bosses) I never use one.

[TXTSWORD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgNsFug49iI

^This guy has poison blackbow.

How?

[mauve]

unless v1.00 allows it, cheating.
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twit

[TXTSWORD]

I certainly wish it did exist. Sometimes I don't understand their balancing logic. "Whoa whoa we can't have poison bows with poison arrows that would be too good." *puts Dark Fog + Bat Staff, poison Santier's in the game* Or even forget about comparable methods of poison and just think that things like Climax and powerstanced Avelyn's exist and then compare that to a blockable poison bow :|

I have a long list of wishes, actually.

1) Key to the embedded upgradeable!!! Can still lose it when you go to NG+, just make it a viable weapon.

2) Hexer's hood / that other one wouldn't exist so I wouldn't want to use it

3) The tumorous poison hollows at the entrance to the shaded wood dropping their bone-sculpture posion swordthings

4) Pyro clouds being scalable / anywhere near the same love as the hex cloud (whyyyyyyyyyy)

5) Pyromancy just... being better. I dunno I mean it has some strong stuff but I don't like most of it as much as I liked - say - black flame from DkS1

6) Why is the default dagger the best backstab dagger come on.

7) Builds not feeling like they more or less require the inclusion of a faith or int stat because of the fact that imbuement doesn't really accommodate quality builds or anything pure physical - and not infusing a weapon feels like you're missing out

8) I want post-patch fog ring back because it's fun to terrorize people ion dark areas. (Note: I don't mean GO KILL THEM WITH OP STEALTH BUILD but more stalk them around clouding them and making them unsure where shit's coming from. Ability to escape easily. Would even take a ring that just eliminates invader glow)

9) I don't think dark damage should be nerfed, so much as I don't think it should exist in it's form because I mean it SHOULD be as good as it is considering the investment it requires, but there shouldn't be anything that outclasses everything else regardless of investment.

[TXTSWORD]

"Apparently the work hook degrades enemies equipment. (needs testing)"

Holy shit if this is true.... I neeeeeeeeeeeeed 2x work hook.

[mauve]

so i went back to my original first play character and respecced a few times until satisfied.

50 attunement. hexer hood. flame weapon(7 casts). great combustion(8? casts). SUN(6 casts).

only enough str/dex to equip claymore. using llewelyn shield for parry shenanigans and just generally being a non-terrible small shield. dagger for riposting because why not.

this is actually really freakin' hilarious in pvp so far. we'll see how long until i hate it.
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twit

[TXTSWORD]

Wait... you have 6 casts of forbidden sun? Ahaha

[mauve]

yep! at 43 att single-cast spells get an extra casting. and then the hood on top of that. i had enough room to slot it twice, lacking the imagination to put anything else in there. thought about toxic cloud for a bit though but I don't like juggling more than 3 different kinds of spells in combat; tends to lead to me hastily enchanting my weapon in their face accidentally.

equipped enough poise to withstand ranged attacks, so basically just do anything at all and you explode!
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twit

[TXTSWORD]

I dig it. I'm hoping you're wearing those sinner shackles and king's ring??

[mauve]

nah i don't really need the bonus. i mean, uh, it's hitting for 1k as it is? that's plenty! the tiny little pyro damage boost is so not worth a ring slot when i look at what it's competing up against, too. would be better off going for elemental defense increases, or more equip load for armor, given what I deal with in pvp...
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twit

[mauve]

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm23460305 notice to faith users: mace of the insolent's physical damage carries over into its spellcasting, and even seems to make it break through tough elem resist easier. dude's testing a normal one and a mundane(+170 / all stats 20) version and it's surprisingly competitive.

i kinda wrote it off when i saw the numbers but maybe i was wrong...

ring of blades boosting magic damage is kinda hilarious though
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twit

[diplo]

[Brooks]

Still the best helm