[sarsamis]

I usually got lockstones as rewards from the auto-pvp

Rat Authority is optional, btw.

[Robosaurus]

[another god]

Easy Souls.
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interdimensional

[CubaLibre]

[diplo]

I'm never fighting it again. No major reason to have its soul and the rat king appears elsewhere.

If you want to save yourself some grief with lockstones, don't activate the one near the second bonfire. It just sets up a wall that makes you have to go around the long way.

[scratchmonkey]

Unless you're a Brodent (almost all of the lockstones in Doors are "for" them) -- that's probably the most important Lockstone to place if you are making people run through your horrorshow.

As others have pointed out, you get a Lockstone for every time you successfully defeat somebody summoned as a gray spirit to the Grave of Saints or Doors of Pharros if you're in the Rat King Covenant. One of my PC characters has used every lockstone in both locations and is just collecting more so that I can trigger all the others scattered throughout the game. There's a timeout on the summoning so you have to sit around for a few minutes before you get a new one -- when I login in for a new session I get somebody almost immediately.

[Iacus]

If you are having problems with either of the rat bosses, get yourself a pyro flame, upgrade it a bit, and attune a firestorm. It's a time and life saver
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Guayaba 2600

[Brooks]

Uhh what do I do about Lockstones or any other PvP related goodies if I'm not playing (i.e. can't) play online, am I gonna run into progress issues?

[Talbain]

[CubaLibre]

Plus as far as I can tell lockstones are never actually required to progress, they always unlock bonus stuff. They can unlock whole swathes of very interesting bonus stuff, though.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[sponkmonkey]

also the amount you find as treasure is totally sufficent if you skip activating the contraptions in the rat areas.
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[Brooks]

Oh okay cool

So I bought a bunch of moth gear from the Majula merchant but I'm not sure how its poisoning function works. It clearly puts a green cloud on targets when close but I'm not sure that it does any damage?

[sponkmonkey]

I think it just fills up the enemies' poison meter slowly so it takes a little until they become poisoned and start taking damage. I've never been on the receiving end of it though so I can't confirm. I'm wondering if it also poisons the host when summoned as a phantom or shade, there's no cloud effect but I've had times where I saw the host's life bar slowly decreasing in areas without any poisonous enemies.

pretty great set though, I nearly-killed several NPCs so far because I forgot to take my hat off before warping back to Majula
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[parker]

Is there something to make killing the ancient dragon easier? I even took the time figure out magic so I could cast the sweat spell and survive a hit from his fire. It's just taking too long, I don't do enough damage and the fight goes on so long I always end up making some mistake eventually. So far everyone I've summoned has been useless, I've had better luck by myself.
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[Felix]

I eventually got tired of telling people not to bother fighting him because it's not that rewarding in the other thread

[parker]

I have to wipe out all traces of the old regime before I take the throne
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[sarsamis]

Don't lock on; use the Monster Hunter claw if need be. Run around in front of him and hope he does a ground fire attack then go hit the claws on his left hand. Run away the second you notice his wings moving. I said don't lock on since not having to un-lock on can make the difference between getting hit by that big bullshit blast or not.

Try to keep him in one place.

As for damage, iuno. I just punched him a lot with the caestus and a lot of strength.



I became a sunbro earlier so I could get the sun sword. I like it a lot! Nice fast move set, 3 weight, and at 70 strength and 40 dexterity it does pretty decent damage, having an A in both. The ceastus seems to scale better with strength, though, despite it also saying A.

[boojiboy7]

man what kind of weird dark souls control set up are you using if you are having to monhun claw?

i mean, i guess for accessing items, but that is nowhere near as rough as the true claw.

[sarsamis]

Sorry, I should have said right-handed monhun claw -- I just meant that I use my index finger for the B-button and my thumb for the right analog stick on the default 360 pad setup. It's worked out well in a lot of the big awkward fights. Let's me run and roll freely while moving the camera.

[boojiboy7]

Ah fair, and I have done that too. It's still not as dexterous as the full monhun claw for me though. I like that my hand can still jsut automatically make the PSP monhun claw at a moment's notice.

[sarsamis]

Man, I'm constantly being invaded in areas filled with normal enemies. One guy popped up behind me in that area in Lost Bastille where all the dudes flood out of that door :/

I guess there's an item you can get that makes enemies your allies while being invaded? I haven't looked for it yet because I was told it's in the Forest of Fallen Giants and i fucking hate trying to find things in that convoluted mess map.

[Brooks]

Stat building: Am I right in thinking it's not really useful to push any single one past 40 points?

[Felix]

40's the sensible upper limit for str and dex (if you use them). int and faith can sensibly go up closer to 50, adp only needs to be in the high teens (but you should really pump it there), and the others will wind up somewhere around 20-30 depending on your build.

[sarsamis]

I only did really high strength for the King's Ultra Greatsword, which needs like 50 to wield and still benefits from going a bit higher. I doubt I'll ever go past 40 dex.

Having maxed out stamina is kind of fun, though, especially since stun-locking is so good in this game and it gives you longer combos. 77 in the stat + the third dragon ring seems to do it for me. I can also block a lot of stuff without getting stunned that you normally couldn't in PvE.

Is pvp kind of laggy for anyone else? I don't know if it's the game or the fact that I'm on less than ideal wifi right now.

[CubaLibre]

Mostly my lag has been almost perfect, though there have been exceptions and I've fallen victim to a few lagstabs. Probably it depends on region (I have cross-region play on cause why not).
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Let's Play, starring me.

[sarsamis]

I met a hacker in Iron Keep earlier. Dude's name was Sir Nick iirc. I got him down to like 5% health, then it went to 100% and he was invincible. I couldn't knock him into the lava, so I tried to run to the nearest fog gate, but he backstabbed me as I was going in.

[cavefish]

there's more "tongue but hole" messages than "praise the sun" messages in this game, i'm impressed

[misadventurous]

[sarsamis]

Thanks!

Also, huh, apparently after 12 million soul memory or so the game just lets you be invaded by anyone higher than that? That would make sense since a good number of people invading me are absurdly good at everything. What sucks is that 12 million soul memory isn't really that high. I'm soul level 264 right now and have like 12.5 million memory iirc. That means I can be invaded by people in their 800's, though!

What also sucks is that it punishes people who want to stay at a certain level, but also like playing the damn game and killing things in it. If you were to stick around level 150 but played long enough to have over 12 million soul memory, the game won't respect your level at all.

The fact that I'm not seeing all santier havel mages is probably just due to the PC version being young :/

I just wanted to make a strong melee dude who can roll around with heavy stuff on. I didn't know that would put me in a world of shit. I actually stopped trying to beef up awhile ago and have just been adding to my hp whenever I happen to have enough.

[Toptube]

Oh man whips are great for PVP. I was lucky and got a really good one right at the beginning of the game. Been whipping butts for the rat king. It's too bad there isn't a rat's tail whip!

[Toptube]

aaaaand the hit detection on greatswords in PVP is some B.S. they are effectively 1/4 to 1/2 again as long as they appear : (

[Talbain]

[sarsamis]

^ I was doing the thing in spoilers earlier and it was fun.



I can actually block then roll away from entire santier spear combos before they can attack again due to my ridiculous stamina, but I get annoyed because the weapon leaves like no window for attack -- they can just spam their bullshit forever. I guess you can counter it, but with its stupid phantom range and lag that feels way too risky.

I've beaten a decent number of santier spear users now, but it usually feels more like them fucking up than me really learning to beat it.

That explosion thing you get from the dragon covenant is pretty fun and I've actually won a few matches with it. You really have to position yourself correctly and watch your stamina if you want to do a follow up attack after using it, though.

[Rud31]

[mauve]

vs santier's: the attacks are uncancelable for about a year, so get high AGI, roll forward right through it, backstab.

alternatively, they're super weak to parrying, so get yourself a monastery scimitar(blah) and do that. (on another note, most of the really heavy weapons, when wielded with both hands, cannot be parried.)
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twit

[Toptube]

SUPER MILD AREA SPOILERS


I'm waiting for you


stand off to side and hide my big white shield behind my back


Lashings for those who would hurt the rats!


'bout to get whipped


quick, switch to another weapon before I accidentally break my whip on a wall!

[Brooks]

I was irrationally terrified of messing my bounding box judgement up and plummeting off those caskets on the wrong side

I really hate jumping in these games

[Toptube]

My first Dark Souls 2 PVP video. No Frills. And even though I used the same settings that got me great quality in BF4, Dark Souls 1, and other games-----the video is too dark : \

OH WELL! Should be fixed for next time. A couple of pretty good fights in here!

[sarsamis]

I switched my ring of life protection for ring of blades +2 for pvp since death is easy enough to deal with and started doing yolo run attacks more and have actually been winning a lot more. Like I'll usually make a few hundred thousand souls before my life gets too low and I have to use an effigy.

-Edit-

I always keep a caestus +10 as an alternate for each hand and the best thing ever is when I summon a dark or dragon phantom who also uses dual caestus. I switch immediately and we have a boxing match. I've found 3 people who so this consistently so far and have fought them all several times. This one dude named Ico was an ass, though, and took out avelyns when I was beating him too badly.

One time I thought it was boxing time but the dude actually had an invisible santier's spear :/ . Beat him anyways, though.

[Toptube]

[Brooks]

It's entirely possible I just hate that jump is bound to the left-stick click, and should probably just fix that