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Huh. I never considered that problem with the gas bugs 'cause I always had something with a reach attack or a thrust R2, but I can see how that'd be an annoying issue if all of your weapons are short range. Anyways yeah the hammer bros are a-holes because of that three hit combo they spam, and since it's strike, armor doesn't help much. Felicia the Brave is an asset for pulling some of the aggro away; I wanna say SOTFS moves her sign to be earlier in the level, but I'm not sure. I think that area would be much improved if there were like... 70% fewer enemies? It could live on the spectacle of being a beautiful area without all the ~encounter design~, especially since it's one of few areas with ambient music.
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Oct 23, 2020 09:57
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Appoda posted:Huh. I never considered that problem with the gas bugs 'cause I always had something with a reach attack or a thrust R2, but I can see how that'd be an annoying issue if all of your weapons are short range. The Demon's Great Hammer is my bread and butter currently, so I do have *some* range to work with but apparently not quite enough. And I guess in fairness you can also tackle it like you tackle any other acid problem - strip naked and use a backup weapon you don't mind breaking if worst comes to worst. (Or probably even just punch the stupid thing. I have no idea if it can even attack.) But obviously that's not exactly the most fun thing to worry about every single time. I dunno if the raw number of enemies is the exact problem for me, but I will indirectly agree that Shrine is a real pace wrecker. The castle is ominous and atmospheric and the Looking Glass Knight is clearly meant to be a minor climax by himself. Crypt is where the actual big endgame turn happens with Velstadt and the King. You'd think Shrine would be the breather area meant to cool you off after the former and start building you up for the latter. Also tangentially related, I have no idea what the deal with the Milfanito is. Like I'm sure there's a whole bunch of Deep Lore there, but just in a game design sense the whole "go down to Shrine to randomly get the keyblade so you can go back to the castle to give the key gimp his release and get...basically nothing for it" feels like it was maybe meant to be a more originally and just...wasn't. Actually I could picture it rather clearly - going on a side quest to rescue the Milfanito and each one rescued adds to the singing in Shrine, pacifying more and more of the enemies (or for a greater time, more coverage of some kind) to make things a bit easier. And if you just wanted to YOLO straight through there's nothing stopping you. Not wholly unlike the Giant Soul stuff with Vendrick.
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Oct 23, 2020 19:07
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Yeah, I think that area would work best as something similar to Ash Lake - a few interesting, one-off encounters but not a gauntlet of ranged, melee, and bottom-feeders. Lore-wise I forget what the deal is with the milfanitos other than that they're supposed to bring comfort to the hollowed undead or something? They sing a version of the dark souls 1 credits song, which could have been a neat link if there was anything else to go along with it.
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Oct 23, 2020 19:46
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John Murdoch posted:
IIRC the Milfanito are just there as a callback to Nito. They're worshippers of Nito I think? One of the relatively few times DS2 directly references DS1. And it's almost always for no reason. Like Ornstein because....
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Oct 23, 2020 20:21
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John Murdoch posted:Like I'm sure there's a whole bunch of Deep Lore there, but just in a game design sense the whole "go down to Shrine to randomly get the keyblade so you can go back to the castle to give the key gimp his release and get...basically nothing for it" feels like it was maybe meant to be a more originally and just...wasn't. This probably isn't too far off the money. DS2 had a messy development, and it's obvious by looking through the concept art and some of the unused assets that they had far grander ambitions than what the final product shows. There's a video I watched recently on the Gutter and how it changed from the alpha. The original design was a sort of grander Blighttown, a home crafted by the Gyrm in a cavernous sewer, and it would've been this vast, built-up sprawl, like a fantasy Kowloon. I think a lack of direction and their ambitions bumping up against the technical limitations of that console generation ended up forcing them to cut rather mercilessly, and it's kind of a miracle that the game is as good as it is with how much it had to be pieced together.
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Oct 23, 2020 20:36
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My guess was that the deal with the Milfanito up in the tower was taken and put there for Vendrick's sake, and that the whole deal with the Embedded was that this would be a good place to hide her/keep her safe/keep her away from anyone who might come and take them. I definitely think that moving from Drangleic castle to the Shrine of Amana is probably a level-patch on par with Earthen Peak to Iron Keep--there's no clear way to place the Shrine of Amana or the Undead Crypt in among everything else, and Drangleic Castle is over that huge pit--does that mean Amana is just like, the floor at the bottom of the giant spire the castle sits on, or what? It feels like they would have used a more visually interesting transition--like I can definitely 'feel' the connection between Aldia's and the Dragon Aerie, because you see how you go from the back of the mansion to the bottom of the spires to the tops of the spires.
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Oct 23, 2020 21:06
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I think Amana is a fine and interesting challenge, minus the big acid bug which is just a gently caress you for no reason bears mentioning that if you are running a strength build and are having trouble dealing with the casters thru just positioning/rolls, the boss immediately before amana gives a soul that crafts into a shield with really good magic resist
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Oct 23, 2020 21:15
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Djeser posted:My guess was that the deal with the Milfanito up in the tower was taken and put there for Vendrick's sake, and that the whole deal with the Embedded was that this would be a good place to hide her/keep her safe/keep her away from anyone who might come and take them. For me it's about how it all just...fails to go anywhere. It's just kind of a thing you can do, if you really feel like it. No payoff, no downside to ignoring it. Heck, I just realized there isn't even any real lore attached to the ring you get, which still would've been a flimsy reward but would've been something. What little is there makes me imagine it originally being required to talk to Agdayne or maybe changing the behavior of the infinite zombie spawns, but even that's a stretch. You don't even get the basic satisfaction of seeing all of the Milfanitos reunited at the humanity shrine or anything. As for Shrine's relative location...it sooort of works for me? I will say one thing that helps, as minor as it is, is you can see a depiction of the tree and its spindly roots in the little chapel area right before Looking Glass Knight. It helps connect the two areas just enough for it to not feel like they were never intended to go together. Obviously DS2 plays fast and loose with this stuff, but I can kind of see the castle being up high above, gloomy and rainy and then Shrine is way down below, flooded by all that rainwater (which also feeds the tree). That said, and maybe it's just because the sound effect for them makes my teeth itch, but I have become a little bit irritated with how often areas are connected via long, long elevator rides. I'm not really a stickler for the world coherence stuff, but they certainly are boring with rare exceptions (Dragon Aerie).
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Oct 24, 2020 06:54
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Separate progress post: Turns out farming twinkling titanite from Shrine is a fool's game, though I did get enough from exhausting the regular spawns (and subsequently gently caress all after flipping on CoC  ) for it to not be a total waste. Bizarrely, the giant beetle does not respawn even with CoC activated, which makes me wonder if it was meant to be a one-off and its flags aren't set properly.  Velstadt took two tries. I don't think I ever knew Vendrick's chamber was actually surrounded by endless rings of tombs. Possibly of kings past? Super unsettling. In my mind's eye, I pictured Aldia's Keep as sort of like Lost Bastille 2.0. A slightly larger area with lots of wacky nonsense and uh, no, it's basically just a hallway. Guardian Dragon existed...briefly. Dragon Aerie is actually as easy to farm for twinkling titanite and dragon bones as people say it is.  Though I suspect I might hit a point where it's too much for me to handle considering how many goddamn twinklers I need in total (and that's after getting lucky with crow trades for a bunch too). At least all the bones I invested into the Old Iron King Hammer don't feel like a gigantic, irreversible mistake now. And I finally got a...teensy tiny incremental upgrade from the Demon Great Hammer in the form of the Dragon Tooth.Dragon Shrine was a bit of a gauntlet but with the big boys it's practically rocket tag - they can two shot me, I can two shot them. I would like the great hammer they can drop but I know those drops are infamously stupidly rare and AFAIK it's not much more than a metal DGH that upgrades with regular titanite. Doesn't seem to be much point in chasing after that. The Ancient Dragon gets to live...for now. 
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Oct 24, 2020 07:45
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I don't think there is much of a reason to change your current beatstick - the DGH is perfectly fine to carry all the way to the end, and all the other hammers are sidegrades or your choice of aesthetics. It's really ridiculous to get immediately.
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Oct 24, 2020 10:24
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John Murdoch posted:The Ancient Dragon gets to live...for now. Ancient Dragon is stupidly easy if you cheese it.
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Oct 24, 2020 16:37
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One thing to try if you're going with Great Hammers is powerstancing two great clubs. You just need 42 strength and 9 dexterity for that. With a Demon’s Great Hammer, you're either close there or already has those stats.
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Oct 24, 2020 17:09
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Dragon Tooth is 8 units lighter, so it's sometimes preferred for that reason. I wanna say the range is a little shorter, but probably not meaningfully so.
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Oct 24, 2020 17:13
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Look Sir Droids posted:IIRC the Milfanito are just there as a callback to Nito. They're worshippers of Nito I think? One of the relatively few times DS2 directly references DS1. And it's almost always for no reason. Like Ornstein because.... The Old Dragonslayer is there to more bluntly call to attention what DS2 is trying to say with its themes of repetition and reproduction, memory, and obscurity. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 24, 2020 |
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Oct 24, 2020 18:46
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The Old Dragonslayer is good and cool
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Oct 24, 2020 19:36
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axolotl farmer posted:Ancient Dragon is stupidly easy if you cheese it. Mostly saving him until I'm fully settled on what I'm doing w/r/t twinkling farming. You can freely burn ascetics to respawn a chest with some (goes from x1 to x3 at 2+) but if you've pissed him off you need to kill him every time and I'm definitely not doing that. Though I guess realistically the Shulva method works the exact same way while being less dangerous, more profitable, and is fully infinite so I guess that's settled. Pretty sure I'm at a level of power where cheesing isn't necessary, either. (Cue me bitching about the fight later tonight.) Appoda posted:Dragon Tooth is 8 units lighter, so it's sometimes preferred for that reason. I wanna say the range is a little shorter, but probably not meaningfully so. Also as is tradition the tooth gives you some bonus resistances. There are three more weapons of note I'm gunning for this playthrough - 1) The giant's club for that maximum AR goodness. 2) What is becoming a tradition of dipping into other weapon categories for their baaasically a club/hammer offerings... And of course finally 3) the biggest, chicken leggiest hammer of them all. Crystalgate posted:One thing to try if you're going with Great Hammers is powerstancing two great clubs. You just need 42 strength and 9 dexterity for that. With a Demon’s Great Hammer, you're either close there or already has those stats. I've thought about powerstancing but I dunno. On the one the hand it is definitely some maximum smash and I can get behind that but on the other hand the moveset doesn't appeal to me all that much and seems like it's liable to get me killed versus most bosses, which is the only place I'd care about the extra raw damage. I do have a complete embarrassment of titanite, so getting it online is NBD though. (I'm sitting on like 10~ slabs, many of which were normal, non-lizard drops or yet more dumb luck with the crows.  ) Oh, and I'm playing KB+M so it's not as smooth an experience using L1/L2 type functions. (Also no, I can't do a jump attack except by accident, why do you ask?) Guess it wouldn't hurt to experiment though.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:40
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the stamina cost of powerstancing means the damage output over time is not as good as you might expect.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:47
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Right, that was the other thing I was worried about. With how big and fat I'm building stamina management has never not been a concern, even with every single passive stamina boost active, a decent weight %, and 30 points in it.
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Oct 24, 2020 20:55
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Look Sir Droids posted:IIRC the Milfanito are just there as a callback to Nito. They're worshippers of Nito I think? One of the relatively few times DS2 directly references DS1. And it's almost always for no reason. Like Ornstein because.... The Milfanito and the Fenito like Grave Warden Agdayne were created by Nito or some reincarnation thing of him. That's why the both have "Nito" in their names. The Milfanito were created to soothe the undead with songs. The Fenito were created to be guardians of the Undead Crypt and see that the residents there rested as comfortably as mad undead could.
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Oct 24, 2020 22:11
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They mention that their song awakens the fireflies in the shrine, and the fireflies give comfort to hollows. IIRC you can even see some of the fireflies around Vendrick's discarded armor in the crypt. I've always thought of the captured Milfanito as one example of the awful experiments that Vendrick and Aldia did to try to cure hollowing, and freeing her to be a simple kindness. (For acid bugs and such, firebombs are probably the best option if you don't want to get close.)
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Oct 24, 2020 22:37
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Just started DS2 after finishing DS:R the other day. I... I can actually parry in this one. Weird. I can probably count my number of successful parries throughout DS:R and DS3 on two hands, and they were all accidental. Am I just in the zone or are the windows really generous in DS2?
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Oct 25, 2020 00:14
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The windows aren't more (or less generous), they're just different. From what I remember DS1 and DS3 start the window as soon as you press the button, while DS2 has some idle frames at the beginning but also ends the parry window later.
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Oct 25, 2020 00:21
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NGDBSS posted:The windows aren't more (or less generous), they're just different. From what I remember DS1 and DS3 start the window as soon as you press the button, while DS2 has some idle frames at the beginning but also ends the parry window later. DS1's parries start instantly, but DS2 and DS3's parries all have startup times. If they're having an easier time parrying in DS2, it's probably just a consequence of them building up experience with it previously and a steady framerate.
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Oct 25, 2020 01:32
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Darklurker. First. loving. Try.
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Oct 25, 2020 07:46
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I think there was a net code related reason for having parry frames be instant in dks1 but delayed in dks2 and 3. Case in point it was ridiculously easy to parry with the banana early on because it was the one parrying item that had 0 frame startup.
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Oct 25, 2020 08:02
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Alsoooo the Giant Memories have all been handled. Giant Lord had a lot of teething pains. The artillery fire, obviously. And Benhart likes to YOLO charge and start the fight early which leads to problems. Then the usual "oops he sworded off screen like *this* and not like *that* so you ded now" issues. But hey now I'm the proud owner of a genuine authentic legendary imitation sword. The memory that's a gauntlet of like 10 giants was a bit of a pain too, if only for the time limit forcing you to find an opening in that alley of death. So how about that 5th giant soul... John Murdoch posted:Pretty sure I'm at a level of power where cheesing isn't necessary, either. (Cue me bitching about the fight later tonight.) Here's my short review of Ancient Dragon: Ugh. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. UGH. ...Does exploiting his simplistic AI in a way that still only works roughly 85% of the time count as "cheesing" him? Or is there some actual Dark Soulsy cheese where you can quarterback dung pies over the fog wall or something? After many, many, many deaths and about as many "okay this has to be my last attempt for tonight"s (both from him directly and that nasty ole runback) I am now packing a +10 Giant Warrior Club powered by all five Giant Souls. Time 4 regicide. 
John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2020 08:16
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the true dark souls experience is beating up a large, sad king
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Oct 25, 2020 12:13
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John Murdoch posted:
Just the old "Poke toe, repeat until it lifts it fooot, run to other foot, poke toe, repeat until dead " strat. I have only fought Anicient Dragong once, and it really felt like cheesing, but the Player vs. Camera fights are the ones I least enjoy in any Dark Souls. Looking at you, Nameless King
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Oct 25, 2020 15:51
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Djeser posted:the true dark souls experience is beating up a large, sad king Without really knowing why Plink plink plonk
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Oct 25, 2020 16:19
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there's no cheesing in Souls. Even throwing dung pies at Capra isn't cheesing. If it was cheesing, they wouldn't have made such a great internally consistent game that supports that strategy 
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Oct 25, 2020 18:59
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To this day I refuse to fight the 4 Kings legitimately, Full Havel's facetanking for me.
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Oct 25, 2020 19:12
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And Tyler Too! posted:To this day I refuse to fight the 4 Kings legitimately, Full Havel's facetanking for me. "legitimately"?
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Oct 25, 2020 21:00
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OutofSight posted:"legitimately"?
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Oct 25, 2020 21:10
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:By completing Reah of Thorolund's quest beforehand by resurrecting her By getting the secret pendant and feeding it to Frampt of course.
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Oct 25, 2020 21:21
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It's still stunning to me that From dedicated resources to something as easily missed as the electric skateboard mount, but in a way that shows the dedication they have to their craft.
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Oct 25, 2020 21:56
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axolotl farmer posted:Just the old "Poke toe, repeat until it lifts it fooot, run to other foot, poke toe, repeat until dead " strat. I have only fought Anicient Dragong once, and it really felt like cheesing, but the Player vs. Camera fights are the ones I least enjoy in any Dark Souls. Looking at you, Nameless King I tried using that strategy but I guess I didn't quite understand the execution (or my timings are just too slow) because what would usually happen is he would stomp once, then either do his death hop or his death fire and welp. Edit: Yeah looking it up on Youtube I didn't know the exact pattern you're supposed to go for. I also probably died to the under fire blast at least once and then gave up. Probably would've had a much easier time if I knew about that method, egh. I did the one where you bait out his long fire breath sweeps, run in, hit once or twice, then run the gently caress away to either bait out another or already be a mile away so the incredibly vague radius of his death fire doesn't end you. Though if those are cheese what's the "legit" way of fighting him, lol John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2020 22:30
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OutofSight posted:"legitimately"? By reminding them that a system of Monarchy based upon Four Kings is Fourking Ridiculous.
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Oct 25, 2020 22:45
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John Murdoch posted:I tried using that strategy but I guess I didn't quite understand the execution (or my timings are just too slow) because what would usually happen is he would stomp once, then either do his death hop or his death fire and welp. Edit: Yeah looking it up on Youtube I didn't know the exact pattern you're supposed to go for. I also probably died to the under fire blast at least once and then gave up. Probably would've had a much easier time if I knew about that method, egh.
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Oct 25, 2020 22:49
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Ancient Dragon is like a 3 node decision tree, start between his toes, if he stomps run forward and then loop back after he stomps, if he flies run towards his tail and then loop back after he lands, if he does anything else, just keep poking and don't run out of stamina. He's basically a puzzle boss. Rubellavator fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 25, 2020 23:06
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Rubellavator posted:if he flies run towards his tail and then loop back after he lands And then get hit by the fire anyway, somehow. Or he slams back down and you get smushed instead. That was my experience trying to do it that way, at least.
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Oct 25, 2020 23:21
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