Dark Souls

danthefan

Gave up on Artorias for the time being and went through the Catacombs, which was fine. Now I'm into Tomb of the Giants and it's easily the worst area I've encountered in the game. Nothing is fun about it. Just want to get it over with.


Also would like some shield advice. I've been using the Eagle Shield mostly but the fact it's only 95% damage reduction is doing my head in, want to change for 100%. Any recommendations for something that isn't a greatshield (which will either be too heavy or I won't have the Str needed to wield)?

Colonel Panic

Crest or Dragon Crest Shield. Balder Shield is a good alternative too. All relatively light, all shield that let you parry.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

ive been using the spider shield this playthrough, loving it
although i keep others around if I need fire/magic/lightning protiection

Cravez

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

ive been using the spider shield this playthrough, loving it
although i keep others around if I need fire/magic/lightning protiection

Great thing about the Spider shield is, if you're in Blighttown and see those toxic blowgun guys (very annoying), if you hold your shield up and one of the darts hits you there is no toxic build-up at all. I don't think any other shield in the game does this. So if in Blighttown you're best using a Spider shield.

@danthefan: What is your current STR?

[CrimsonGhost]

chickenboy wrote: »

You need to get a hold of the very large ember and give it to Andrei. This can only be obtained once you have the Lordvessel (I think??), and can be found in the

New Londo Ruins once you lower the water.

Don't need the Lordvessel, so you can get it quite early in the game if you know where it is from a previous run, or looking it up.

Cravez

[CrimsonGhost] wrote: »

Don't need the Lordvessel, so you can get it quite early in the game if you know where it is from a previous run, or looking it up.

Yep if you know where to go and ready to commit some 'Sin'. *Obligatory Oswald laugh*

Big Knox

danthefan wrote: »

Gave up on Artorias for the time being and went through the Catacombs, which was fine. Now I'm into Tomb of the Giants and it's easily the worst area I've encountered in the game. Nothing is fun about it. Just want to get it over with.


Also would like some shield advice. I've been using the Eagle Shield mostly but the fact it's only 95% damage reduction is doing my head in, want to change for 100%. Any recommendations for something that isn't a greatshield (which will either be too heavy or I won't have the Str needed to wield)?

An upgraded Silver Knight Shield is the best rounded medium shield in the game. Very nice resistances to everything and the highest stability for a medium shield when it's +5 but you need twinkling titanite to upgrade it.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

how do you have to sin to get the ember in new londo?

answers in spoilers please I guess

Cravez

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

how do you have to sin to get the ember in new londo?

answers in spoilers please I guess

You have

to kill Ingward the Sealer to get the Key to open the Floodgate. That is if you want to get the Very Large Ember early on without the Lord Vessel (Ingward won't give you the key to the floodgate unless you have the Lord Vessel, killing him is the other option).

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

aaaaah right, yeah that makes sense.

something that's bugging me atm

why the hell did they put the very large divine ember in the tomb of giants. once i'm done with the tomb of giants and catacombs.. what the hell am I going to want with a +10 divine weapon

Colonel Panic

If you have a character with high Faith then having a Divine weapon your be a good thing as the damage would scale with that stat. It's not like other enemies are particularly immune to that kind of damage.

Mickeroo

Sen's Fortress

Had just beaten the Golem, went back to open the shortcut with the cages down to the bottom. The cage literally stops right at the serpeant soldier on the first walkway with the swinging blades and also in range of the serpeant mage overhead. Couldn't get out of the cage while the warrior was there, and I couldn't kill the warrior while I was being blasted by lightning by the mage.

45,000 souls gone along with whatever humanity I had. Had lost 35,000 earlier but that was through my own careless, this was the first time it felt cheap or down to plain lousyness on the developers part. :mad: /rant

On the plus side someone invaded me in Anor Londo after that and I managed to kill them, any other time I got invaded it was by somoene much more powerful than me who would just one hit me.

Baldur Side Sword finally dropped for me yesterday too, now if only one of them lightning knights would drop one of their spears.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

yeah how the hell are the invasions meant to be within 10% of your soul level, but I still tend to get 1 or 2 shotted when I get invaded. i end up going aroud the game as hollow 90% of the time as a result, its bloody annoying


i actually got one of the bastards down to practically dead. there was no red left on his health bar, but it was in the depths and there were slimes everywhere. the ****ers trapped me against a wall as i was trying to dodge him and he just lolraped me

Mickeroo

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

yeah how the hell are the invasions meant to be within 10% of your soul level, but I still tend to get 1 or 2 shotted when I get invaded. i end up going aroud the game as hollow 90% of the time as a result, its bloody annoying


i actually got one of the bastards down to practically dead. there was no red left on his health bar, but it was in the depths and there were slimes everywhere. the ****ers trapped me against a wall as i was trying to dodge him and he just lolraped me

There's one in the depths that's actually a computer controlled character, he attacks near the end/beginning of the Basilisk tunnels.

But yeah apparenty, some players just beef up their stats to the bare minimum required and reinforce all their weapons & armour, so they stay fairly low level but with powerful weapons in order to get matched up with beginners when they invade.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

yeah I got the npc guy and a few others throughout the game, this lad was right beside the bonfire and he had a stupid name so was definitely a human

my first playthrough I got invaded by the same guy 5 times. 5 damn times. i really hated him.


part of the game I suppose

Cravez

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

something that's bugging me atm

why the hell did they put the very large divine ember in the tomb of giants. once i'm done with the tomb of giants and catacombs.. what the hell am I going to want with a +10 divine weapon

Divine weapons are also good against 'God' bosses such as Gywn, Gywndolin, Nito etc.

Pretty much what Mickeroo said, players can beef up their armor, weps to maximum and if they are using Pyromancy you can fully upgrade the Flame even as a level 1 (as long as you have the souls to upgrade it). Btw you can be invaded by anyone who is a lower level than you, my SL 2 Darkwraith can pretty much invade anyone who is the same or higher level than me.

The NPC guy in the Depths is called Kirk, you can bump into him 3 times in total. Once in the Depths, Second time in the Demon Ruins (need lord Vessel) and lastly in Lost Izalith. If you kill him those 3 times you can get his armor

found in the end of the room where the Fair Lady (Quelaag's Sister) is

Mickeroo

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

yeah I got the npc guy and a few others throughout the game, this lad was right beside the bonfire and he had a stupid name so was definitely a human

my first playthrough I got invaded by the same guy 5 times. 5 damn times. i really hated him.


part of the game I suppose

My first night playing I got invaded twice by the same guy in Undead Burg. I looked at his XBL profile and it's the first time I've ever actually seen a player with no stars. I've never noticed Rep making an impact on the stars before so I always thought they were just superficial before this, must have had a serious amount of people marking them as avoided.

Danonino.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

aaaaah right, yeah that makes sense.

something that's bugging me atm

why the hell did they put the very large divine ember in the tomb of giants. once i'm done with the tomb of giants and catacombs.. what the hell am I going to want with a +10 divine weapon

I actually do that section of the game as early as possible, in the official guide they have you head there last.
My first few builds were Clerics so I figured out that the

Skeletons died outright when smacked with divine weapons

pretty early so wanted to head down in search of possible cleric loot. When I got to the other later parts I found them easier than I should have I think. except Dukes archives.... that was hard. Very hard for some reason.

Its a bit lame they placed it so deep, you can do a suicide run for it from either bonfire in the catacombs pretty easy once you know the route. I've grabbed it really early game recently. Once you are out of the catacombs you only need to dodge one giant before you enter that hell of a room, but a run a skip and a drop later you can mash A for some holy awesomeness.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

yeah.. one of these days I'll do a faith/intelligence playthrough, but I like my melee fighting too much. I guess if I just ng++ my current character he'll eventually be a god with max stats and I can try everything

returnNull

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

yeah how the hell are the invasions meant to be within 10% of your soul level, but I still tend to get 1 or 2 shotted when I get invaded.

I just play off line.If I wanted to get trolled I'd go play Call of duty

Jericho.

I need to go back and play through the dlc at some stage. Downloaded it last week when it was on sale on xbl. I built a kinda tank character. Bit slow but can both take and deal large amounts of damage.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

the dlc is actually pretty fun. the bosses in it are a good challenge and oolacile township is weirdly fun to explore, although it's kinda linear.

royal wood is a pain in the balls though, those stone giants and scarecrows.. on their own they're grand, but they work real well together to **** you up

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

two things dlc related

(1) **** manus


(2)

sif is the most useless ****ing **** in the game. i was sad my first playthrough when I had to fight and kill him, when I get around to it this time I'm goign to enjoy every minute of it. the useless prick.

Mickeroo

Danonino. wrote: »

I actually do that section of the game as early as possible, in the official guide they have you head there last.
My first few builds were Clerics so I figured out that the

Skeletons died outright when smacked with divine weapons

pretty early so wanted to head down in search of possible cleric loot. When I got to the other later parts I found them easier than I should have I think. except Dukes archives.... that was hard. Very hard for some reason.

Its a bit lame they placed it so deep, you can do a suicide run for it from either bonfire in the catacombs pretty easy once you know the route. I've grabbed it really early game recently. Once you are out of the catacombs you only need to dodge one giant before you enter that hell of a room, but a run a skip and a drop later you can mash A for some holy awesomeness.

I ascended my Baldur Side Sword to a divine weapon last night before I entered the Catacombs, how was I able to do this if the Divine ember is in the tomb of the giants?

Also, Tomb of the giants is horrible, will be glad when I'm done with it.

chickenboy

(2)

sif is the most useless ****ing **** in the game. i was sad my first playthrough when I had to fight and kill him, when I get around to it this time I'm goign to enjoy every minute of it. the useless prick.

[/QUOTE]

You say that now, but the altered cut scene will hit you right in the gut!

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

it didn't. but I got sad when he started limping at the end. he's still a useless bastard though

2smiggy

Mickeroo wrote: »

I ascended my Baldur Side Sword to a divine weapon last night before I entered the Catacombs, how was I able to do this if the Divine ember is in the tomb of the giants?

Also, Tomb of the giants is horrible, will be glad when I'm done with it.

i believe it's a large devine ember, that can take the weapons to +10. the other small devine ember is found

near the mushrooms fellows in the woods i think

ya the tomb of the giants is a pain in the hole.

Cravez

Divine Ember is found after the

Moonlight Butterfly

fight. On the top where the petrified blacksmith is.

The Ember beside the two parent mushrooms is the

Enchanted Ember or Large Magic Ember

Mickeroo, having a Divine ember isn't just for Tomb of the Giants/catacombs, the damage scaling increases anyway if you have high faith character and God Bosses apparently are more susceptible to Divine weapons.

Danonino.

Yeah its the very large divine ember. Once you have placed the lord vessel you can reach the tombs to get it. Lets you proceed past +5 and it gives bonus damage to pretty much everything you will run into down there. I can see how characters that don't have high faith would find the dark tombs a fecking nightmare. I loved it, taking baby steps with a little lantern, scared ****tless to move and afraid of the dark. It was epic.


Spoiler laden wall of text.

Its also really well laid out. Especially for a faith build the level design is unreal. The giants are are sudden jump up in difficulty and you struggle to get to the first bonfire if you don't find the shortcut. You meet first Skeleton beast almost immediately after you finally do. They hit so hard its retarded and you will rage... seriously rage. But you just found the v.large ember to convince you to look for white chunks (two I think are nearby) and take the trek back to Andre to return with a better weapon. Even better you notice Rhea in the church (who you just saved in the tombs) on your way to Andre and she sells some serious holy firepower. You return, step into range and blast them with a holy spell, they advance and you Smack them with your awesome +6/8 divine weapon of justice and realise you can move forward especially with wrath of the gods as a backup.

Once you have played through the tombs once you will know it like the back of your hand To get to the first bonfire you can run and only have to avoid one Giant. You grab the v.large ember, then the skull lantern save rhea and travel back. That makes the next bonfire a lot easier to reach. Once you reach the second bonfire you can actually run straight through the last dark part. You skip 4 beasts and a giant iirc just by stciking to the path and hugging a wall. That makes a huge difference. Also with the patch you can warp to the bonfire in the tombs... that makes it far easier.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

tried to start a new character there, going for a heavy tanky sort of fella rather than my last two rolly rolly slash slash characters.

didn't enjoy it though. i hate how slow the heavy lads run, if i'm not at under 25% I get pissed off. might leave it for a while and then just do another dex/~25% build in the future.