[scratchmonkey]

Wife gave the signoff to go pick it up at the midnight release and then said "I won't even make fun of you".

<3 <3 <3

[scratchmonkey]

Lolololol.

I uh, can't figure out how to equip my torch. It's sitting there in the equipment screen with a five-minute timer (I assume); it doesn't show up when I'm trying to put stuff in my slots (pause).

[scratchmonkey]

Only just got outside of the tutorial area myself.

I have apparently entirely missed the lady by the bonfire that gives you the Estus Flask. I swear there was nobody there, although there was a message on the floor reading "Praise Woman!" Interested to see when I get home whether I'm just blind or she bugged out.

[scratchmonkey]

Got a little bit further last night, having a lot of fun so far.

Specifically, to the first bonfire in the Forest. I nipped down and got the Fire sword from the cave that's below it and I also found the small white soapstone, so I've been putting my sign down -- haven't gone longer than a minute without being summoned and I think I'm getting an idea of how the surrounding area works. Got in at least one boss fight, although the host died with the boss at about a third of its health. Also had a weird summon where a sorcerer summoned me, ran to a spot where usually there's just a fire-bomb-y dude and then there was an odd cut-scene followed by a fight with what I can only describe as a Jet Knight. I successfully tanked him while the sorc whittled him down and was rewarded with a giant chunk of souls, enough for 6-7 levelups plus enough left over to buy a full set of Elite Knight armor.

[scratchmonkey]

I had a dude un-summon me and another white phantom when a boss was at minimal health. Bastard.

[scratchmonkey]

Yeah, she blended in with the sea for me when she was standing near the tree, I only spotted her once I'd been told to look for her specifically.

[scratchmonkey]

I've had tons of weird bugs while being summoned -- one time the dude who summoned me was invisible, a couple times people will have their input "clump" - stand still for a long time, then race faster than possible to a location and unleash a whirlwind of strikes, and there seems to be this weird consistent problem where it doesn't seem your blows are connecting with an enemy, you'll suddenly switch to two-handing your weapon automatically and then switch back. Haven't figured out any sort of repro for that one yet.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

There's at least two widgets of the type that you're talking about -- there's one in the Majula mansion and there's another sold by the merchant sitting next to the first Forest bonfire.

[scratchmonkey]

A good one for those was a message on a hard to get-to pinnacle of rock that said "Hurrah for head."

Just found out what Smooth and Shiny Stones are good for. Duuhhhhhh.

[scratchmonkey]

You might have to accept at this point that she might be just a little too hard to spot in her starting position considering how many people have missed her. And these are people who have played a ton of Souls, it's not like we're all running straight out of town wearing an askew saucepan as a helmet.

(What I'm saying is how did this bug wriggle through the net? I blame QA.)

(j/k)

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

I'm betting that she'll turn out to be eeeeeeeevil, or the like.

What I've been doing: Just got to the Lost Bastille via the ghost ship in No-Mans Wharf, my strategy of getting to a new area and then spending a bit of time just getting summoned to learn the lay of the land is working out pretty well. Still wielding the Bastard Sword +3, I've also upped my Faith and my Attunement so that I can cast Heal now. Probably going to backtrack to the Tower of Flame and take on An Old Friend and see where that goes.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

I am, as usual, way over-leveled -- I'm the same SL as Felix and I just beat the Skeleton Lords and Executioner's Chariot -- the latter is actually pretty easy if you have one summon who knows what they're doing. A lot of my SL have gone into having a non-chunky roll with the Greatsword and the 100% damage blocking greatshield. I also got my Faith and Attunement up to the level where I can cast Heal. I have absolutely no ranged capability, which is something I need to fix soon.

ETA: One thing I'm missing from the Dark Souls thread is character snapshots. Should we post them in the other thread or in here, behind URLs? Or just put 'em out there?

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

Here's my tank-y guy:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/547/giz7.jpg

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

I'm still pretty early, got a bit more exploring done last night, after beating up the Trio Boss in Lost Bastille, I decided to run around and do some item gathering/exploration, I managed to open up the "hidden" bonfire and second blacksmith in the Bastille, got summoned for an unsuccessful run at the Lost Sinner, opened up the Belfry then suicided after a gray invader decided to hide, and headed back to the Wharf to pick up the Ring of Life Protection and the Pyromancy Flame/Fireball that I had missed initially. Final act of the night was to throw myself repeatedly down the hole in Majula, I made it to the Grave of Saints, was swiftly murdered after being summoned as a gray, then dropped down to what I think is the start of the Gutter, only after grabbing what was in the chest, I got repeatedly slaughtered by the flame ghouls. I'm hoping that I can just head back tonight and missile-weapon the fuckers. I got my Greatsword up to +5 and I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it although I'm noticing what feels like bugs where you will somehow attack 180 degrees behind you when locked on to a target -- I'm not sure if it's actually a bug or something where I'm moving the left stick when I trigger the attack and that causes you to do a "hit shit that's behind you" maneuver. I'm thinking that tonight will be: opening up a bit more of the Gutter, doing an item grab run in the Huntsman's Copse and seeing if I can take the Lost Sinner.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

The one downside to this is that people will write messages directly in front of them, and then you can't open the passage because you'll prompt the message instead.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

So I'm about at where most of y'all were at Page 7 of this thread, last night I beat Lost Sinner, used the petrification item on Straid, got the Dragonrider bow, went up to poison valley for an item scrub, found another un-petrifier, wound up summoning two sunbros, they led me into Earthen Peaks and we took out the Covetous Demon, although one of them died in the process. Then I co-oped Skeleton Lords and Executioner Chariot for a while while item-scrubbing Huntsman's. Plan for the next time I play is to go down to the Grave of Saints and see what the heck is going on in there (aside from countless invasions).

Unfortunately I'm going away for the weekend, so no more DS2 for me until Sunday night.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

I brought it up a few pages ago and there doesn't seem to be any real consensus by the public on whether it's a bug or not, DJ says he's pretty sure that it's not and that it's desired behavior.

In any case, the trick to having it not happen is to not be pressing a direction on the Left stick that's away from what you want to attack when you're attacking. Once you train yourself into playing that way, it becomes pretty easy to avoid it happening.

[scratchmonkey]

Yup, I've done a ton of co-oping and haven't noticed any real repeatable rules in terms of when you're unhollowed or not, regardless of whether you died or had Duty Fulfilled either through defeating a boss or the timer running out.

[scratchmonkey]

Anybody want to recommend a good weapon for poison infusion? Is that even worth it or should you stick to poison throwing knives and the like? Thinking of respeccing my character so that I can have something approaching a PvP build as an alternate to my almost-completely PvE-focused current build.

[scratchmonkey]

Here's my character currently:

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img27/2747/ssp8.png

Got that Greatsword up to +10, just killed Smelter Demon and grabbed the Dull Ember. Places to go are: further into Iron Keep, basically everywhere in the Shaded Forest and I think those are my only two open paths right now, as the Belfry really doesn't count -- waiting until my PvP build is a little more set up before going there.

[scratchmonkey]

I like using the mini-soapstone in front of boss fog. Gives you enough time to complete the battle, you get an idea of what the boss's patterns are like and you get to gamble for a potentially great item.

[scratchmonkey]

Pretty sure I'm going to make a Poison Shotel as my PvP main weapon and put Pyro glove on the left.

[scratchmonkey]

Think I found a bug, was building up my alt as a change of pace and I pretty much rushed through the Forest of Giants in one session, then headed back to town -- I moved the merchant woman back and then realized I never bought the blacksmith key. I bought it and talked to the smith...and he told me to go get his key.

So now I'm stuck, as I've already bought the key and he doesn't acknowledge it. It's not the worst situation in the world as I'm trying to play a pretty pure mage and I can get by until I unlock the secret smith in the Bastille, it is pretty weird, especially since a quick internet search indicates that it hasn't happened to anybody else that I can find.

[scratchmonkey]

Haha, oh sweet crap and I'd already done that with my first character.

Humm. Um. Er. Well.

[scratchmonkey]

I've been invaded around half-a-dozen times myself, all except two have been people who did cheese-y runs to get really-good equipment and are invading really early-game areas, like first-bonfire forest early.

I think making that sort of thing non-trivial is good, because as much as you like that experience, it does wind up feeling really cruddy for some of the people being invaded. If that's what they need to do to combat the shitshow that the church was in DS1, that's fine by me.

Why don't you do Bell Tower/Rat King covenants? Those seem like the natural outlet for non-NG+ PvP, or is it that you really want the frisson of being the red invader?

[scratchmonkey]

I was blue sentinels for a while (Drangleic PD) and I only got summoned to help twice (killed the invader once, drove the other one off long enough for the host to make it to the boss fog), given how tight the netcode has been for the game thus far, I'm betting that it's a situation where you just don't get called that often because there aren't that many invasions taking place. As touched on in with the exchange with TXT, they appear to have made the balance call to make it a lot harder to do a straight-up red phantom invasion in NG via limiting invasion resources, which has the effect of both making "legitimate" invasions and dick-move noob-camping a lot more difficult than they were in DS1.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

Isn't there a door with the same sort of design as those doors (except smaller and no message) in the section between Flame Tower and the Wharf? There's one in my notes...

[scratchmonkey]

I like one-handing massive weapons myself, I play a really conservative block-stuff sword-and-board style though, which means stuff like the iron turtles wreck me if I'm not really careful. My Greatsword +10 does 530 damage though, which feels pretty great.

ETA: Also I apparently got into Drangleic Castle without all four Great Souls somehow, it just happened to be the next branch I tried and now I'm at the first bonfire in there and my friend was all oh, what did you think of Pharros and the Cove? And I was all "Hwwwwaaaa?" as I'd managed to skip those entirely. I'm probably gonna head back and check 'em out.

Thought the statues outside the castle were bugged out for the longest time until I finally figured out that I had already triggered one without noticing and just needed to kite the souls into the other one.

[scratchmonkey]

Oh no he wasn't.

[scratchmonkey]

Got a fair amount of progress done yesterday:



I finally finished up Drangleic Castle yesterday by defeating Looking Glass Knight -- the hairiest part of it was when I was invaded in the hallway on the way to the boss fog, unfortunately for the invader, I had two summoned sunbros with me and they got caught in the clusterfuck of the three of us plus the statues and got taken out after an initial scare. Then used the small White Soapstone to shade-jump through the Shrine (basically, I just drop my small sign and start going through the level very slowly, using when I'm summoned to learn more about where I'm going and to refresh my casts/estus). Did the Demon of Song a few times as a summon and as a human, then headed into the Crypt.

Got invaded twice early on by the same guy, which was actually kind of lucky because I was close enough to the bonfire to book to it and summon a phantom each time -- he should have ran, instead he decided to stick around and we were able to pin him down fairly easily with one of us tanking while the other pelted him with ranged attacks. The overall lack of 100% block shields and no heals for invaders makes it really tough to fight against hosts + summons when they play conservatively; although this guy really shouldn't have tried to take us straight up, he would have been better served trying to set up an ambush and targeting me in a cramped space later on.

Anyway, managed to get through the Crypt and defeat the King's Vanguard, did not kill Vendrick, grabbed the ring and did a little bit of cleanup before going to bed. Quite fun and looking forward to what might actually be the endgame at this point.



Toups, welcome to where I was like four pages ago, I'm even slower than you considering that I got the game on launch. Should we reboot this thread for the PC release considering that there will be a fair amount of people playing it for the first time then?