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Siivola posted:But see, the player character seeing all the NPCs doesn't mean they're all... There, y'know? For each other, I mean. Solaire spells it out that he and you might inhabit different worlds. Spoopy. That said, Solaire isn't in DS2, and I don't 100% recall anyone spelling co-op out in the same fashion there. Characters definitely interact with each other in DS1 at Firelink though. Firelink 2.0, not so much.
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Feb 21, 2016 12:45
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(On the other hand, the grumpy man at arms stops to complain about the sorcerer's apprentice, who talked his ear off about old Big Hat before wandering off.)
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Veloxyll posted:That said, Solaire isn't in DS2, and I don't 100% recall anyone spelling co-op out in the same fashion there. The Sun Seal ring mention this. Sun Seal entry on the wiki posted:"Ring of the Heirs to the Sun covenant. Slightly increases miracle attack power.
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Feb 21, 2016 13:49
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Lizard Wizard posted:I'm almost positive Gaping has a hard-coded resistance to bleed. you'd think he would. those numbers come from an official strategy guide, which may or may not be full of poo poo AstroWhale posted:He can grab you? I never knew that. i think i've seen him grab and nom on one of the NPC phantoms at least once every time i've fought him ninotoreS fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Feb 21, 2016 |
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Feb 21, 2016 14:14
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Veloxyll posted:That said, Solaire isn't in DS2, and I don't 100% recall anyone spelling co-op out in the same fashion there. No that dude with with the beard and two handed crystal sword thing does. Totally blanking on his name.
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Feb 21, 2016 15:51
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I believe that his name is Benhart of Jugo. Also isn't losing your memories/sense of self part of hollowing in Dark Souls 2, thus talking to other people might just be an exercise in pain for most of the npcs as they all are undead and will someday lose everything.
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Feb 21, 2016 15:56
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Finally grabbed a controller and am running through this again on a clean character. The combination of knowing the game, plus having a sane control method, makes me feel like a tiny Lordran god. I now see the appeal behind light, highly mobile builds, since movement is so much easier, as opposed to my (still preferred) tank-with-black-knight-sword build.
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Feb 21, 2016 18:38
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Golbez posted:Finally grabbed a controller and am running through this again on a clean character. The combination of knowing the game, plus having a sane control method, makes me feel like a tiny Lordran god. I now see the appeal behind light, highly mobile builds, since movement is so much easier, as opposed to my (still preferred) tank-with-black-knight-sword build. It's been said that there comes a point in every Dark Souls player's experience where everything that was inhumanly impossible earlier can now get completely styled on by a naked level 1 jackass doing somersaults and shooting fireballs. Brings a joyful tear to your eye.
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Feb 23, 2016 02:19
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Mazed posted:It's been said that there comes a point in every Dark Souls player's experience where everything that was inhumanly impossible earlier can now get completely styled on by a naked level 1 jackass doing somersaults and shooting fireballs. Brings a joyful tear to your eye. Yeah...familiarity with what the game has in store for you is what helps you survive, way more than any amount of stat boosting or weapon upgrading.
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Feb 23, 2016 02:31
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So I finally took down Bed of Chaos. I'll be looking forward to that rant by Vicas in a few months' time. Just Seethe and the DLC left.
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Feb 23, 2016 07:57
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I feel like I have a confession to make: I got fed up with the Camera Demon because I'm a bad and also because my gear was completely wrong for that fight, so I eventually just firebombed it over the fog door so I could progress. 
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Feb 23, 2016 12:56
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Siivola posted:Camera Demon Those drat paparazzi, they're like demons, I tell ya! 
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Feb 23, 2016 12:59
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Narahari posted:So I finally took down Bed of Chaos. I'll be looking forward to that rant by Vicas in a few months' time. Just Seethe and the DLC left. The DLC is pretty good until you spend literally 10 minutes doing laps around kalameet's room without him swooping you once  Edit: Speak of the devil! Man he isn't even too difficult a boss to actually fight, just getting him to actually let you cut off his tail is where the real dark souls starts 
Cory in the Blouse fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Feb 24, 2016 |
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Feb 24, 2016 04:26
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Enjoy scenic Blighttown today! 20 - Oh, It's Blighttown
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Feb 24, 2016 15:59
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we don't talk about ravenholm.
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Feb 24, 2016 16:18
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I have PTSD of Blighttown and I never even played Dark Souls 1. What a tremendously lovely area. Edit: I have a fear, bordering on a phobia, of falling, and that loving bridge in Blighttown hits me hard even just watching someone else do the traversing. Ugh. Ulvirich fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Feb 24, 2016 |
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Feb 24, 2016 16:27
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Nice choice of music, I love that game.
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Feb 24, 2016 16:50
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Ah, Blighttown, where framerate goes to die. Blighttown is super unfun as a new player and it's not even fun as an experienced player who knows where to go.
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Feb 24, 2016 17:03
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I've played some range/archer characters before, and Blighttown is deceptive on range. Every enemy in each area is always "active" but not always "on." If the enemy is in another "area" that the player can't see at that moment, then the game doesn't load their model, even though they are still there and will aggro just fine. Problem is, if their model isn't there, then that means there is no collision for them. So if you are playing as sniper and want to try taking out some of the dart shooters from afar, even if you know where they are positioned, you can't hit them if you can't "see" them. This is particularly irksome when they are still shooting you with darts all the while your own arrows just pass right through them. Blighttown is the only area in the game that did that. I guess it must've been some workaround they tried to cut down on lag during development.
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Feb 24, 2016 18:36
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Upper Blighttown: the best-designed level that I never go through except when I absolutely need to grab certain items, and even then I take the other approach.
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Feb 24, 2016 19:52
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Grizlor posted:just getting [Kalameet] to actually let you cut off his tail is where the real dark souls starts literally the most difficult non-handicapped challenge in all of DkS1
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Feb 24, 2016 20:18
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Visually I love Blighttown, though. It's just a bunch of girders that some poisonous ghouls have attached to the side of the sewers pouring out of Lordran, and you can see WAAAAY down and WAAAY up. I love territorial continuity.
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Feb 24, 2016 21:27
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I genuinely love Blighttown. It wasn't this way at first, but it grew on me. The reason being: Once you've done a good many playthroughs, not much of the game can mess you up. Certainly everything we've seen so far, once memorized, is a cakewalk. But, Blighttown defies easy memorization, as Vicas points out. The path is so convoluted and the visuals are so busy that navigation is a matter of connecting landmarks to one another rather than following clear paths. Furthermore, the footing is so treacherous that it's going to put your playstyle to the test no matter how you're doing things. Simply put, it's one of the few places in the game that retains some of the tension of a first-time playthrough. Furthermore, the atmosphere is so thick, and so very rich. It is not "fantasy." It's more like surreal horror than anything else, this maze of scaffolding, strewn with wooden frame-structures that resemble eerie totems, the viscous growls of pale, bloated horrors concealed by the oppressive darkness. As if the footing, dangerous opponents, and misdirection wasn't bad enough, the tension is going to put you even more over the edge. Now, there's a caveat: The framerate. I was lucky enough to be playing on a PC using DSFix to mitigate the worst of those issues on my first time, but if you're on a console or you haven't picked up the patch (which isn't an official one, therefore easy to miss), the stuttering can totally take you out of the moment and turn a tense challenge into a wrestling match with shoddy technology, and that's enough to be a deal-breaker for lots of people. Other than that though, Blighttown is good. Great, even. On quick runs I might use the back entrance early to grab a few things from the swamp that I may want for the whole game, but I can never bring myself to skip the rest of it. It feels almost impolite not to let it take a shot at you. All that said: If you've played Demon's Souls, you've been to the Valley of Defilement. Blighttown is sugar and rainbows compared to 5-2.
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Feb 24, 2016 21:42
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Speedball posted:Visually I love Blighttown, though. It's just a bunch of girders that some poisonous ghouls have attached to the side of the sewers pouring out of Lordran, and you can see WAAAAY down and WAAAY up. I love territorial continuity. I don't show this off as much as I wanted to but I will talk about that more as the session goes on. I reallllly love the visual aesthetic of Blighttown
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Feb 24, 2016 21:51
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Morroque posted:I've played some range/archer characters before, and Blighttown is deceptive on range. Every enemy in each area is always "active" but not always "on." If the enemy is in another "area" that the player can't see at that moment, then the game doesn't load their model, even though they are still there and will aggro just fine. Problem is, if their model isn't there, then that means there is no collision for them. So if you are playing as sniper and want to try taking out some of the dart shooters from afar, even if you know where they are positioned, you can't hit them if you can't "see" them. This is particularly irksome when they are still shooting you with darts all the while your own arrows just pass right through them. That is part of the reason that it is so laggy.
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Feb 24, 2016 23:48
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Blighttown is the loving best. Learn to love it, make it your home, and use it's misery as your ally. You know what's worse than Blighttown? Being invaded in Blighttown. Sack. Great Club. Plank Shield. Hollow soldier waistcloth, Steel and Wolf rings. (Dung and Charcoal Pine Resin just to be extra terrifying. The Great Club engulfed in flames is a sight to behold). Doesn't matter that it's an extremely suboptimal build, the range and push of the greatclub will terrify your opponents, and the Two-handed R2 will straight up flatten people unless they've got a greatshield. More often than not your opponent just dodge roll off a ledge. Honestly, I'm sub-average when it comes to DS PvP, but I loving shine in Blighttown. I spent so much time invading in Blightttown I learned pretty much every nook and cranny. It's much less complicated than people think, and I learned to love it. This was back on 360 when the BB glitch was still in full effect, so I had access to almost the entire inventory of the game from my previous character. If I saw some poor schmuck flailing around in a Boar Helm and knight armor I'd usually drop them a better sword or shield before attacking, and more often than not they'd summon me as a sunbro afterwards and I'd escort them through the worst of it.
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Feb 25, 2016 02:51
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McKilligan posted:Blighttown is the loving best. Learn to love it, make it your home, and use it's misery as your ally. I did some blighttown invasions as well, mainly using a guy I'd built as a gimmick who had all the Force Miracles, and would try to just knock people off the ledges with them. It was great fun, and I also know my way around upper blighttown pretty well now from doing that.
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Feb 25, 2016 03:28
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PvP in Dark Souls is basically just dickery one-upsmanship anyway, but it takes a special kind of viciousness to invade in Blighttown. Which is why it is the best invasion spot ever. I remember the first time it happened to me; it was some naked dude with no weapon and some kind of hosed up dragon head that I had no idea what to make of. I panicked, got myself turned around, and then he breathed fire on me and I died.
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Feb 25, 2016 03:45
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Lower Burg + The Depths + This half of Blighttown is just not enjoyable for me to play through. And I think just about everyone who plays through this game a few times eventually gets to the point where they start completely skipping over those sections and reach the second Bell of Awakening via the back entrance/exit to Blighttown. The area design is very solid and all, but unless there's something you specifically want here (like what, a whip?), dealing with the constant barrage of toxic darts just isn't worth it. I think the only other large area I tend to pass through as quickly as I try to get through this one is the Catacombs.
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Feb 25, 2016 04:57
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Mazed posted:Furthermore, the atmosphere is so thick, and so very rich. It is not "fantasy." It's more like surreal horror than anything else, this maze of scaffolding, strewn with wooden frame-structures that resemble eerie totems, the viscous growls of pale, bloated horrors concealed by the oppressive darkness. As if the footing, dangerous opponents, and misdirection wasn't bad enough, the tension is going to put you even more over the edge. I like it because the first 1/4 or so of the game through ringing both bells is just this natural progression with each new area proving how much it can one-up the previous area in its hosed-uppedness. You arrive at Firelink fresh off the turnip truck and you're like "ok, grass, ruins, friendly-ish NPcs, this is a cool ancient land" and immediately you have to go to a dilapidated town, then a ruined church. Then you get lower undead burg being even more messed up than upper, followed by a what else but a sewer level. Finally you feel pretty good for beating the gaping dragon, forget what game you're playing, and think "How much worse can it be from here?" The answer is a lot. You've got the whole confusing 3D maze, the constant fear of dart guys, the fast enemies with low space to maneuver, and HUGE view distance with no real direction given to you than "eventually you'll wind up down there somewhere" and looming threat of a boss. All added together it really gives you this sense of isolation and dread that I don't think I've really felt in a game since Maridia in my first Super Metroid playthrough, two decades ago. It definitely caused more swearing from me than any other area in the game, except for maybe aforementioned Kalameet solo tail cut. Hopefully you show off what happens if you attack that squid dude from the wrong side 
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Feb 25, 2016 06:05
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quiznossubs92 posted:unless there's something you specifically want here (like what, a whip?) Eagle Shield! The game's lightest greatshield, ~95% physical block, very good lightning block. I used it to beat the first boss of the DLC my first time.
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Feb 25, 2016 06:23
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Grizlor posted:You arrive at Firelink fresh off the turnip truck and you're like "ok, grass, ruins, friendly-ish NPcs, this is a cool ancient land" and immediately you have to go to a dilapidated town, then a ruined church. Then you get lower undead burg being even more messed up than upper, followed by a what else but a sewer level. Finally you feel pretty good for beating the gaping dragon, forget what game you're playing, and think "How much worse can it be from here?" The answer is a lot. I love this. That ever-escalating sense of, "you've gotta be making GBS threads me." So you get to Blighttown, and eventually you deal with it, right? You go to do the thing you came for, but happen to glance out over the rail, and then, and then, and. THEN. "Oh, good. Next level is Literally Hell."
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Feb 25, 2016 06:28
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Mazed posted:I love this. That ever-escalating sense of, "you've gotta be making GBS threads me." The game is really good at this. Everything just keeps getting nastier, if not in actual difficulty then in the implicit horror of the place you're in. Or both!
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Feb 25, 2016 06:39
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Mazed posted:PvP in Dark Souls is basically just dickery one-upsmanship anyway, but it takes a special kind of viciousness to invade in Blighttown. I actually enjoyed trolling invaders in blighttown back in the day. Build for healing miracles, get your Resistance stat up to 15-20+ (which no one ever does in DkS1), get that ring that lets you run through water without slowing, get the dried finger, get about 10 or so indictments, head to blighttown. Clear the bottom area of mosquitoes, and wait for invasions. Chug estus as needed like the jerk you are, get back on one of the islands/shores if they retreat and just wait for them to come back. Unless the invader's cheating with a duped divine blessing stack or something, the host has all the advantage. I ticked off a lot of people. good times i did something similar in DkS2 in the Gutter with seeds. So easy to hide in there. Get your invasion priority up, wait a minute so after the invasion message, pop the seed. i farmed so many champion stones. ninotoreS fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Feb 25, 2016 |
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Feb 25, 2016 07:21
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Blighttown is interesting at a game design level because it's one of the notable major milestones for testing the player's skills in one of game's most important design pillars: the fight system's spacing. It's notable because from here on out, goofing up on your spacing no longer means that you get punished due to your attack hitting a wall instead of your target. You fall, instead. You can track the milestones as the playing field gets tighter and tighter from the beginning of the game up until the last bonfire before O&S: - Undead berg / parish / darkroot are generally pretty open and guard railed, with the scarier paths generally safe from hard fights. There's a handful of simple hallway fights to help the player realize that some moves might not work well in tight quarters, as well as some trees that serve the same function in Darkroot. - Lower Undead berg and The Depths get considerably tighter with the walls, forcing the player to take notice of their surroundings when attacking. Else, the attack will hit a wall and will leave the player open to punishment. - Blighttown and the great hollow remain a fairly thin playing field but they remove the guard rails entirely; watch your step, seriously. A mistake is no longer a counter-punish, it's probably instant death by gravity. - Sen's gets even more tight, uses a mix of both the dangerous falls and hallways that disrupt wide attacks. Almost all of the encounters are there to either bait the player into attacking their way off a platform, punish the player for swinging with bad positioning (and hitting a wall), or are an integral part of the newly added layer of tests brought by Sens: timed danger zones on top of the rest. - Anor Londo is the final test for all of these elements put together: the path gets ludicrously small. Those rafters are practically comedic in size and the ramps aren't all that better. The ultimate "danger zone" test of timing here is pretty notorious due to how many people those archers have killed over the years. The final bonfire run seems to stop worrying about environmental space and lets the player worry about straight up fighting, and then... Well, they never really get back at progressively testing the player's skill afterwards. It's probably due to the open nature of the game past this point. I'd argue that it's one of the bigger reasons why the game's engagement suffers past O&S, but I'm sure that everybody has their own theory on that.
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Feb 25, 2016 08:36
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quiznossubs92 posted:but unless there's something you specifically want here (like what, a whip?) -A man that does not understand true POWER. (though to be fair, you barely have to enter the maze proper for that if you go from the back.)
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Feb 25, 2016 08:43
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Cool ninja sword, cool ninja suit, a very nice pyromancy spell, a very nice shield, a joke weapon. These are your tangible rewards for traversing upper Blighttown. But stomping the poo poo out of those snipers and their ghouly pals in their own backyard is the greater achievement. The swamp, in comparison, is just a big happy romp of free titanite and some nice gear. The real treasure, the really awesome thing now, that's in the other section of upper Blighttown. You never forget that place. 
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Feb 25, 2016 09:43
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Hello! 21 - Architectural Musing I make very exciting episode titles, I know. I couldn't find a good creepy image that shows them clearly having a human head, but it is fairly easy to make out the various vaguely human bits
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Feb 27, 2016 04:41
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I'm fairly sure that the big meaty spider monster thing protecting the Power Within doesn't have locational damage or anything. It just has no hit reaction and a whole lot of HP so that you can't cheese it too easily from the front.
Shifty gimbal fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 05:58
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Incorrect on two counts re: the Parasitic Wall Hugger guarding Power Within. First, you can kill it from outside, it's easy with ranged attacks. Second, there's not a specific hitbox, it's just from that position inside, when you're locked onto it, the healthbar is out of your field of view (and it doesn't have any reaction to being hit), so it's tough to tell that you're doing damage.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:00
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The whip is actually a pretty good offhand for dex builds. You can parry with it and it has solid tracking that can't be parried when you strike. I had a pretty good Belmont build that was Rapier mainhand, whip or notched whip off.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:16
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