[mauve]

*sure why not.

[mauve]

mauve's running thoughts:
- Hair color in the character editor still doesn't match up with hair color outside of it. Except now remaking takes longer. Yep, it's a Souls game.
- Visual quality is all over the place. Some places look great, some places look so flat that they're hard for my eyes to read properly, moreso than Dark ever did. The hollow soldiers may as well be wearing camouflage right now.
- My short sword can hit an enemy so hard that they get pushed back out of a followup hit. Pretty annoying!
- HP reduction on death _and_ Estus nerfs _and_ limited consumable heals. Well, I guess I just have to not get hit then.
- Current status: Hunting for better weaponry. Also back to development...

spoiler tagged:
- After choosing class I went back and killed the giant whatever-it-is before the crazy old women. Dropped a ring that I'm not sure about how useful it'll be.
- Got the key to the mansion in town, went in there, saw a huge mass of messages warning about a skeleton. Walked up, saw it was the same model as DS1, went 'oh, what the hell' and tried parrying just like before. Worked. Huzzah.
- Sheer density of enemies is throwing me, especially since I am having trouble seeing and hearing them. Maybe it's time to get my eyes checked...

also, BotageL: You can't two-hand a weapon and then pull your torch back out anymore. Not that it seems to even matter, wtf happened to the lighting From...
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[mauve]

meanwhile even though i was against using a shield almost religiously in demon's/dark, here i am hiking around with a greatshield i bought at the shop. not having ranged attacks is a real problem on some enemies now, with the increased tracking they have going on reducing the evasion window you have available, and due to the way dying works with progressively lowering your hp maximum i'm much less inclined to sit around and press my luck learning timings when getting it wrong once is almost instant death.

halberd is still awesome

very much laughed when i got to the cathedral entrance boss, sat around for awhile cooping to get souls there because i couldn't resist. coop works way way way better than it did in dark souls, i get picked up almost instantly.

also, related bug: got summoned into coop, summoning failed(probably because of my shitty router), couldn't put down my white sign again until after i quit/reloaded. at least i could sit at bonfires unlike when this happens in dark...

edit: i, uh, did have a very unexpected pvp session though, in a way that i really don't want to talk about outside of spoilers though!

started as swordsman class, ending up very knight-like now with high strength to go with the dex, because i just want to wield everything
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[mauve]

i have to say that the game looks much better outside of the forest of giants and its fort and i haven't honestly had any complaints about anywhere else

but that one zone looks godawful.
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[mauve]

all hail the rat king.
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[mauve]

the description of the old knight's stuff makes me think that if i break them something cool will happen

kinda doubt it though
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[mauve]

coalesced further thoughts as i progress more through the game:

- i didn't really feel very motivated to fight bosses last session, so i just explored everywhere i could, which leads me to... wow there is a lot of ground to cover in this game. this game has way more areas than i was expecting. there is definitely some uneven quality and they're not all up to par, but damn.
.. - still not excusing how rough some areas are, sorry.
- there really is an area so dark you need a torch, and what's beyond there was actually rough enough to get me to turn back for now.
- i love seeing a "shortcut ahead" next to a fall, and then a whole pile of blood stains nearby. sure i'll happily upvote that message!
- beta area get. i liked how i saw a "This place again?" message as soon as i got there.
.. - also it's the first time i decided i'd rather use the fire sword than the halberd, i think i'll be running both weapons for awhile due to durability.
.. - didn't even need a torch anymore, welp.
- felix, i dunno, magic weapon seems pretty good to me, it's cutting my hits-to-kill count down by one more often than not, which is enough for me right now. working my way up to great magic weapon atm.
- have accumulated a crapload of elemental rocks for weapons but no idea how to use them still
- i have found pyromancies but still no flame. dammit. it occurs to me now i'm not even sure if i need one, though?

generally liking the enemy design a lot but not so much the levels.

also i mentioned this to botagel last night but the loading screen showed me the witch hat and it has +1 attunement slots.
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[mauve]

i like how sb continuously logs me out for no reason, so it made sure i got to see that image in all its full-sized glory
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[mauve]

the more i explored the more the game gave a very strong demon's souls vibe, moreso than dark souls. except slower because we can't have that level of speed anymore.

i count five directions from the start, each of which doesn't seem to intercept the other paths. not sure how i feel about that, honestly, but it's definitely a lot less metrovania-ish now.

also i watched a japanese dark souls 2 video at random and people were cracking helix fossil jokes at the petrified item gift. dammit. (...not that i didn't do the same thing when I saw it on the list...)
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[mauve]

there is a boss that eats you up and then spits you out. with all your equipment removed. you still have it, though, you're just naked.

you can kill it without ever finding that out though.
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[mauve]

[mauve]

i was noting more and more stuff was leaving bodies on the ground as the game went on

...then i realized that it's only the undead that are vanishing on death. just like you.
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[mauve]

beat the gargoyles third try. would've been second but a loud noise outside distracted me at 95% and i died. insert fist shaking here

i really like how much is open to me at any given time, I can just wander about forever and keep finding new things. definitely agree with botage about the structure; it's less interlocked but more wandering.

found the claymore and, yep, it still has its awesome stabbing r2s. too bad i'm not finding any damned large titanite anywhere, so i'm kinda stuck with the weapons i have. why is the game even stingier than ds1 was? aggravating.

edit: it just now occurs to me that, if the ore thing is pissing me off, i should probably go to where ore usually comes from...

[mauve]

lost sinner was a pretty fun fight, i realized what it was halfway through and just stripped all my armor off mid-battle, opting for rolls and my greatshield all day instead. this turned out to be the right solution!

also once you've beat that go check out the equipment shop in town again.

lighter weapons are proving more useful than they were in dark souls 1, which is good because they kinda sucked there. this time around the halberd too slow for anything that actually moves.

starting to get some serious weapons back, found the black knight halberd too, which i'm not sure I'm going to bother getting the stats for due to its weight/my difficulty upgrading anything.

and yeah i think i'm around 15-16 hours atm?
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[mauve]

yeah i'm fully aware of the nature of spacing and pre-emptive attacks; hello i'm a fighting game player. many boss-class enemies don't seem to leave gaps large enough for you to really attack with heavy weapons now anyway, so even if you do you're probably going to just trade hits and that's not in your favor. you can roll them and get the opening you need but it's usually not worth it, especially since you really don't want the rolling attack usually.

halberd is good in this game, because:
- one-handed, your r1 attack that is purely vertical, and the second followup r1 does a ton of damage relative to how quick it is.
- the one-handed running or backstep attack is a nice, wide area attack that's a good starter for a larger followup after. (the r2 is specifically there so you can do it off a backstep without getting the running attack, which you don't always want)
- two-handed the r1 combo hits a pretty wide area in front of you and can unload (gaplessly? nothing's escaped yet) pretty substantial damage. I'm usually breaking 800-900 on it.
- two-handed dashing and r2 attacks leave you wide open afterwards but cover a huge area and do the equivalent of about 2.5 normal hits worth of damage quickly. fantastic finisher, if you know it'll finish.
- the range is really good, so you can pretty easily just bait, walk out, and punish.

downside are that it's too slow for some encounters, but this game is encouraging you to diversify your weaponry via durability anyway, so it's a keeper in my book. they're basically good weapons for heavy armor types because you're not going to roll on reaction to everything but patiently space them out instead.

i want to get my claymore going as a backup but upgrades are making me seriously sad.
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[mauve]

if you preordered ds2 on psn, you can get your preorder weapons now by redownloading it and selecting the 'free' version when it asks you to pick a version. (and then canceling the actual game download in the download manager) they're all shit. some of them are covered in shit too. i think the best i could say is that they are a starting class equalizer, since now everybody's got something.

analogos: for any boss wherein heavy attacks work, i've been using my halberd. any attack where i haven't been able to pull off punishes via roll safely, i've switched off. it's pretty much that simple.

at any rate i'm thinking of upgrading the claymore and using that instad because goddamn do i love the claymore moveset too. not sure if i will though.
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[mauve]

where are the katanas i haven't found any katanas

iaito please
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[mauve]

my weapons being only +5 and +3 have not proven to be a liability yet at all, and the damage calcs in this game seem completely different from demon's/ds1, so being a little low on AR is not as terrible as it once was. just that, if i get the shards, that sucker's shooting straight to +8 and everything will die.
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[mauve]

getting a good build on your first char is futile anyway!

i just like the moveset personally
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[mauve]

[mauve]

yay found out how to imbue stuff. good on me for getting completely lost trying to find some stoned dude i'd forgotten about.

also i have spied an enemy with an iaito AND I WANT ONE. committing genocide until it drops
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[mauve]

woohoo, confirmed that the katana dudes, the smaller ones, in the iron keep do indeed drop an iaito equivalent weapon. it's 25 dex required. new favorite weapon!

also died like 40 times to the smelter demon. though much of that was me getting annoyed that i was losing to such a simple pattern and tried to just roll it to death. once you beat him and zone out/travel somewhere, go back to where he was for a special something~
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[mauve]

i spent forever dicking around in the iron keep. decided to belltower it up to upgrade my weapons as far as they could go, and now i'm sitting on a +9 magic katana and a +10 halberd, hell yes. maybe i should have switched the enchantments on those two around, so it's a magic halberd and a normal katana? dunno.

the current global death count is 314159xx. pi day was yesterday, guys.

When I finish the game I will write up a whole long list of thoughts on the game, good bad and ugly. I'm getting a feel for what they were trying to do now as I lurch closer to the end, but I'm not there quite yet and want to reserve judgement. I am definitely thinking this is going to be less fun pvp than dark souls was. But I thought that was less fun pvp than demon's souls was, so... Dunno. Might change my mind as I play more.
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[mauve]

I just coop when I want to get back to full. Even if I jump off a cliff I seem to end up fully human again. So uh, whatever?

Not losing souls would be nice though.
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[mauve]

after a long string of deaths awhile ago i noticed a flash on my character while respawning, when i was at the minimum 50% max health

does that indicate some sort of humanity recharge point or something? maybe i'm just overthinking things...
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[mauve]

if this morning's headache is anything to go by my progress is halted for today, ahaha. the sheer amount of stuff in this game has worn me down clearly

that being said i'm now sitting on a couple nearly maxed out weapons and have a pretty clear idea of what I need to do next, so there's that at least.
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[mauve]

i died 40-50 times in a row on smelter demon and the very next coop, after i beat him, wherein i fell off a ledge within a few minutes because i was being stupid, i regained full humanity. so, no.
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[mauve]

the rat king is just and benevolent, you are doing important work

also i forgot to note that i do all coop with the large stone, not the small one. (what's the small one even good for...?)
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[mauve]

katanas have very high dex scaling, so hope you dig them.

digging my new iaito
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[mauve]

so my headache cleaned up and i got way further than i was expecting to get, clearing out a bunch of areas i hadn't yet finished, getting the rest of the great souls, found a third blacksmith, stumbled my way into drangleic castle, etc. SL 105, for reference.

but rather than talk about progression, there's something else on my mind. in the shaded ruins, i bumped into an old man npc hanging out in a cave, talking about the Dark. specifically, he said I wasn't with the Dark enough yet. does the true Darkwraith covenant start here? And if so, how do I make myself Dark? do I go invading with my cracked red eyes)?

also in 'this game's visuals have issues', one of the areas i went back to clear was the wharf, and the switch i needed to clear it i must have walked right past without noticing it the first time around. using the lockstone thing helped with it a lot, and forget gaf for saying it has absolutely no benefit to doing so!
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[mauve]

i'm completely done for the day, so if you continue you'll beat me! i suspect there's a number ofareas left.
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[mauve]

i actually placed a message down in front of the drop down to the binoculars and it is so not getting upvoted.

nobody trusts it!

edit: WHICH REMINDS ME. who do I have to hate on for having the YOUR MESSAGE HAS BEEN RATED/YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED box covering up subtitles? because that shit's happened to me twice this game so far now.
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[mauve]

i am told that a two hour speedrun already exists.

what the fuck seriously.
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[mauve]

my build is so half-assed no-plan and i don't care, it's great. given first char is doomed anyway i'm alright with this.

30 vigor 13 att 25 str 36 dex 18 int. dunno about the rest don't care; working my way to 10 faith so i can actually talk to shops that want me to be faithydarky.
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[mauve]

i have more titanite slabs than i know what to do with

thank you from, none of this 'one or two sweet items per cycle' crap
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[mauve]

yeah it's kinda odd how small shards are finite still. maybe i missed a shop somewhere? i have infinite sources of large shards and chunks but the other two i'm limited on. maybe there's a shop somewhere?

i keep forgetting where npc shops are in this game. i know i'll remember eventually but sheesh.

noticed this morning that the travel menu is showing me ALL destinations now, not just ones I've been to, though i can't warp to bonfires i haven't been to. not sure what exactly the trigger for that was but I think I can guess.
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[mauve]

her stock is finite to me. did i miss something
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[mauve]

ok i think i'm calling a hiatus on progress for a bit because this game has worn me down and i have other stuff i REALLY need to be doing when i can't think of anything but souls, haha. probably 33-34 hours logged at this point.

that being said, i made it to the sshrine of amara i think it was called, and oh my god i can almost picture the devs placing down mobs and giggling like schoolgirls about how many people this is going to kill. i died more there than i did in the last several areas+bosses combined, which is funny because there's a lot fewer bloodstains around than there were around the (frankly, easy) castle drangleic entrance mastodon guards.

found the stamina recovery shield, and, uh, this is definitely not on the same tier as grass crest was. it's a usable replacement for weaker shields but i'm not sure i'd actually want to use it on any fight i actually want to use a shield on. ng+ might change my mind. finding stamina consumption really rough in general as i haven't really spent many points on END at all and the game is starting to revel in this.

and yes, she does get infinite small and large shard stock eventually, cat shop in town also gets infinite stock. it's also kinda creepy how forgetful everyone seems to be getting... makes me wonder exactly how much time i am spending in that world dying over and over and over.
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[mauve]

[mauve]

i have decided that the guy who shows up in a chair and talks at you about the Dark is named Steve, because he reminds me of SMT Steven a lot. Also because it's funny.
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[mauve]

i figured that out immediately. and then i weeped when I saw what was behind most of the doors.
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