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Serephina posted:I think I'm also making things unnecessarily hard on myself with my choice of tools; I started with a fencer character and after pumping HP and AGL, all I'm able to power stance are short swords. I think maybe I should just reroll and dump a lot of points into Str and use a shield, as clearly I'm not good enough to rely on "don't get hit" yet. I also tried parrying with an offhand falchion vs a dagger mook, it took four estus charges and I got maybe one parry out of a few dozen hits. Get a rapier and powerstance it with the short sword or falchion. The regular rear end rapier is strictly one of the best weapons in the game, especially against bosses, but the lack of variety in the moveset limits it against normal enemies. You’ll get a good shield pretty soon if you just keep going through the forest of fallen giants, and you may want to pump strength enough to switch to it when you want a shield, but you don’t need to switch to a strength build unless you like strength weapons (the mace is also a beast of a weapon, especially against some of the dangerous early enemies). Levels are very plentiful in ds2, so there’s nothing stopping a dex build from picking up some strength. I don’t know how coop is now, but if others are playing use the small white soapstone constantly. It’s a fast way to recover your max hp. Actually thats one of the best features from ds2 that never made it into the other games for whatever reason.
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Jun 29, 2023 01:47
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I feel like they kind of brought it back for Elden Ring
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Jun 29, 2023 02:18
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christmas boots posted:I feel like they kind of brought it back for Elden Ring It depends on if someone chooses to rest when they hit a new bonfire or not. I think the time limit would probably work less well for ER given the relatively expansive scope of the world, but it is a little annoying to want to do some quick drop-in coop and either be summoned for a weak catacombs boss or dragged in to a full zone exploration.
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Jun 29, 2023 02:22
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There is a not-entirely-obvious item in Heide's that limits your HP loss while hollow to 80% instead of 50%. Your roll when you start off is bad. Powerstancing is a neat gimmick for when you know the game's systems well. Don't start off trying to do it.
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Jun 29, 2023 03:21
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The dualwielding starting class not having the stats to powerstance them is honestly a disgrace no matter how much I love DS2, almost on the level of the "hurgh hit things" class having rock bottom ADP Anyway I agree that powerstancing is stat-hungry and maybe an advanced tactic, but if testing it on the short swords really works for you, then you can absolutely go for it. Do not parry with anything but a Buckler in DS2. The timing is weird and the active frames on weapon parries are very low. Did you know that you can parry with bigass two-handed swords? Don't do that either it sucks insane rear end. Funny tho
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Jun 29, 2023 08:49
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ds2's powerstancing is absolutely better implemented than elden ring's "as soon as you have 2 appropriate weapons you can powerstance them with no additional stat investment" regardless of the dualwield class not starting with enough stats, so I can give them some slack on the stat requirements angle
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Jun 29, 2023 09:04
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IronicDongz posted:ds2's powerstancing is absolutely better implemented than elden ring's "as soon as you have 2 appropriate weapons you can powerstance them with no additional stat investment" regardless of the dualwield class not starting with enough stats, so I can give them some slack on the stat requirements angle
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Jun 29, 2023 09:05
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Yea a quick search of tutorials shows guys parrying with their fist, while I'm here unable to use the buckler to parry poo poo. I was power-stancing the dual short swords for a while, but I've given up and using a lightweight shield now instead; the comfort of not getting instantly gibbed every time I misjudge a great weapon's rage is very nice. It feels wrong that I've found the short sword way more forgiving than any of the dex weapons I've encountered, but hopefully that changes soon and I find a reason to put points into dex. Defeating the Pursuer suddenly unlocked like five new areas, things seem less cramped now and the despawning enemies are less burdensome. But seriously! That shouldn't be a thing! Like on the run from the fireplace to the Pursuer there where two shield+spear hollows who I hadn't quite "figured out" how to gracefully beat while power-stancing. Sure, I killed them a ton as they where previously in the way of exploring the room behind them, but they had been removed from spawning long before I was "done" learning from them, farming had nothing to do with it.
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Jun 29, 2023 09:06
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Serephina posted:Yea a quick search of tutorials shows guys parrying with their fist, while I'm here unable to use the buckler to parry poo poo. I was power-stancing the dual short swords for a while, but I've given up and using a lightweight shield now instead; the comfort of not getting instantly gibbed every time I misjudge a great weapon's rage is very nice. It feels wrong that I've found the short sword way more forgiving than any of the dex weapons I've encountered, but hopefully that changes soon and I find a reason to put points into dex. I really can't emphasize enough that the parry timing in DS2 is weird. I don't think I ever quite got it down, and I actually bother to learn how to parry in these games. The best advice for parry timing I can give is that you kinda have to predict the attack, because the active frames are later than they are in the animation than in the other games.
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Jun 29, 2023 09:25
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This is my favourite and most played souls game, I also 100%ed Sekiro, and I still can't parry reliably in DS2. Don't mind parrying, it's really really really optional. It's not like in DS1/DS3 where parrying is the ultimate strat against otherwise tough bosses. In DS2 it's just a way to see more of the stupidly brutal riposte animations (which, for best effect, should be done with a greathammer or UGS). Good job on the Pursuer too. I feel like this is the main roadblock on a first playthrough due to the low stats and tools you have when you meet him. Once you're past it, things get a lot easier.
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Jun 29, 2023 09:50
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Simply Simon posted:what do you mean with "better implemented"?
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Jun 29, 2023 10:23
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Also you can powerstance different weapon types in DS2
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Jun 29, 2023 11:05
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IronicDongz posted:balance issues
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Jun 29, 2023 11:25
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they had to nerf powerstancing multiple times in elden ring and it's still insanely strong with some setups and for a long time was just overtly better than wielding weapons normally with most setups. and that with no additional stat investment required beyond perhaps needing to free up some weight. it's still like that on any build that cares about status infliction at all, which happen to be an incredibly good sort of build(bleed)
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Jun 29, 2023 11:49
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There is a Fire Long Sword in a tunnel in the Forest of Fallen Giants that really helped me out in my first run of the game. Use Life Gems, all the time anywhere. The animation to pop them is way shorter than drinking a flask and it gives you decent health regeneration that is useful in every situation, even like before engaging an enemy that you know will probably damage you. Buy them with your left over souls every time you visit Majula imo. Get the ring that nerfs the HP loss on death and try dabbling in short jolly Coop sessions to get back your Humanity with the small soapstone if you like. There are invisible guys that usually are given away by their shadows, that drop things you can trade with some birds in the tutorial area. There is also a really good ring in the area where you start before you go into the house with the old ladies that you might want to pick up if you haven't already (drops from a big dude). Using a torch to light up all sconces in certain areas will occasionally do things, like spawn extra invaders that drop loot, stuff like that. Plus marking your progress through dark areas. Weapons actually break sometimes in this souls installment, so always make sure you have a backup weapon or a couple of repair powders on you. Dump weapons you can't use in your item box unless you plan to use them, so it is easier to swap to something else in your inventory in nasty situations. If you want to progress npc questlines this usually involves talking with them until they repeat themselves and then summoning them for a couple of boss fights (that i think they have to survive, i'm not sure, i always half rear end it). Most importantly DONT GIVE UP SKELETON and have fun. This game can be incredible if you manage to find your footing and start getting stronger. :-)
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Jun 29, 2023 11:50
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DS2 is somewhat unique in that it leans into regen-based healing, you can pop resources in advance to facetank incoming damage sometimes
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Jun 29, 2023 13:53
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IronicDongz posted:they had to nerf powerstancing multiple times in elden ring and it's still insanely strong with some setups and for a long time was just overtly better than wielding weapons normally with most setups. and that with no additional stat investment required beyond perhaps needing to free up some weight.
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Jun 29, 2023 13:54
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Fister Roboto posted:Play the Scholar of the First Sin edition and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. 
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Jun 29, 2023 14:03
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Simply Simon posted:Did you know that you can parry with bigass two-handed swords? Don't do that either it sucks insane rear end. Funny tho Despite trying countless times over the years I have never actually pulled that one off
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Jun 29, 2023 14:25
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Serephina posted:I am INTENSELY TILTED at this "you lose maxhp on dying" horseshit. I've lost 23k xp when I've only ever bought a single levelup, and my next still only costs 900. Every hit is taking off 40% of my effectively-max hp, and I've run out of consumables to reverse the process. I think I'm just gonna kill 3 enemies, run back to town to levelup, and repeat ad nasuem. Jesus christ that's grinding what am I doing wrong, I never had to grind anything with the first game gently caress me. Do coop. You'll be at full HP while in someone else's world, and if you complete it successfully, you'll be restored to fully human. You'll also get everything healed and repaired as if you just sat at a bonfire (but without resetting enemies). The small soapstone is especially good for this, because all you have to do is kill normal enemies and pray that the host doesn't die. You have found the white soapstones, right?
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Jun 29, 2023 16:40
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There is absolutely no way that I would go online, this is my single player game du jour, tyvm. This might be the wrong title for it, but oh well. Also that ring of binding have been a game changer, it really does pull the hp values above "one hit = flask usage", thank gosh. I've clocked off several more bosses, and amusingly my lovely powerstance works great vs bosses, better than on the fodder it seems.
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Jun 29, 2023 17:18
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Serephina posted:There is absolutely no way that I would go online, this is my single player game du jour, tyvm. This might be the wrong title for it, but oh well. Yeah, the ring is huge. The DeS equivalent was similarly critical to having reasonable amounts of HP.
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Jun 29, 2023 17:23
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Serephina posted:There is absolutely no way that I would go online, this is my single player game du jour, tyvm. This might be the wrong title for it, but oh well. Similarly the ring i mentioned in the starting area ( Stone Ring iirc is its name, allows you to guard break easier ) and the Leo Ring from Heide's ( enhances thrust counter attacks, I.E. poking someone while they attack ) are also potential game changers. Especially the Leo Ring is an absolute monster that combines perfectly with weapons that have a high critical stat. The Grand Lance in Forest near the Kings Ring door melts dudes with Leo on.
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Jun 29, 2023 18:16
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Go online. Jolly cooperation in DS2 is really fun.
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Jun 29, 2023 19:50
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I wouldn't feel pressured to go online, but you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't try to stay unhollowed when you can because DS2 has a wealth of amazing and useful NPC co-op partners, particularly in Scholar.FireWorksWell posted:Despite trying countless times over the years I have never actually pulled that one off When I was bored out of my skull farming pearls from swine, I figured out how to parry hollows with the Demon's Greathammer. Though in that case I'd argue it's less the raw timing and more the crappy animation that makes the whole exercise too cumbersome to bother with. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jun 29, 2023 |
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Jun 29, 2023 21:09
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Simply Simon posted:Okay, I didn't follow the ER thread because it was just too many posts. I just don't think "balance" matters at all in a mostly single player game, and a lot of the spell poo poo you can do in ER seems way the hell more unbalanced - also, it's not like you're not going to go up to 60 in your main damage stat, so eventually you could just powerstance anyway. Or is being able to do that with big-rear end hammers an actual problem? If you don't care about balance then balance problems aren't really a problem for you, yeah.
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Jun 29, 2023 21:12
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axolotl farmer posted:Go online. Jolly cooperation in DS2 is really fun. Also unless something has radically changed, it will be extremely unlikely that you will be invaded by other players
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Jun 29, 2023 23:45
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Yeah I didn't get invaded very often in my DS2 playthrough - mostly in the endgame DLC areas which is where you'd expect that. If you are worried about invasion remember that unlike DS1 you don't reverse hollowing at a bonfire, just use the human effigy from your inventory. This means you can save it for when you get to a fog wall and minimise the risk of invasion / dying to some trash mob. Getting invaded can be fun though, even if (like me) you suck and usually die. I was invaded in Shulva around the bonfire with pillars you can raise and lower by shooting targets. I waited until he'd almost jumped across to me and then dropped the adjacent pillars to strand him and ran the gently caress away.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:22
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Shulva is an invasion hot spot, probably because it's so oolacile-like
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Jun 30, 2023 00:25
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Party Boat posted:Yeah I didn't get invaded very often in my DS2 playthrough - mostly in the endgame DLC areas which is where you'd expect that. If you are worried about invasion remember that unlike DS1 you don't reverse hollowing at a bonfire, just use the human effigy from your inventory. This means you can save it for when you get to a fog wall and minimise the risk of invasion / dying to some trash mob. Getting invaded can be fun though, even if (like me) you suck and usually die. Invasions are always on by default, has nothing to do with your humanity status. The important thing is that 1) DS2's current population is tiny (and soul memory mucks with things further) so you're only ever going to get NPC invaders 99% of the time outside of Return to Drangleic and 2) you can burn human effigies at a bonfire to block invaders and you get a freebie version of the effect after beating a boss.
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Jun 30, 2023 02:56
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Oh that's a good question, what triggers the NPC invasions? There's one guy in the misty jungle ruins who is really erratic about when he shows up, and I owe him a favor. I've used a human effigy once or twice on a walk to a boss and seen the summon signs, but only used it for the very first boss as I was tilted and cbf trying. Technically I summoned a second guy on a whim for the pirate bay boss, but let her die after I saw the boss become trivial and I'd rather do it solo, which only took another try or two. There's a lot of gratification in winning these fights, and unlike a lot of the comedy troll level layouts all the bosses seem very fair and fun so far. ----------- On a different topic, I had a bit of deja vu then recognized where I saw it before: in the Forest of Giants castle, right underneath a bonefire, there's the fire room with a bunch of salamanders in it. I remember some drama from years ago about how people where angry that the teaser screenshots didn't represent the ingame reality? What's the lowdown on that? I have noticed some slowdowns here and there despite having above suggested specs, so knowing gamers I'd imagine there was a lot of shrieking about that lol. I constantly have to remind myself that despite how beautiful Madjor and other vistas are, this game is older than the DS:R I just played and so things like what you look like hollowed are expected to be worse.
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Jun 30, 2023 04:02
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IronicDongz posted:they had to nerf powerstancing multiple times in elden ring and it's still insanely strong with some setups and for a long time was just overtly better than wielding weapons normally with most setups. and that with no additional stat investment required beyond perhaps needing to free up some weight. It has been speculated that the elden ring power stance animations were implemented relatively late in development, without much thought to how they would compare to each other or to the normal r1 moveset. So many power stance movesets are objectively better. Standouts are spears, straight swords. They are just as if not faster than normal movesets, and have the normal length recovery. Then there are ones you’d think are good, like daggers, which are in fact bad because they lock you into an animation for too long.
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Jun 30, 2023 06:59
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John Murdoch posted:Invasions are always on by default, has nothing to do with your humanity status. Oh yeah, that's right. I've just finished DS3 so it's difficult to keep the invasion mechanics across the series straight in my head. My favourite invader had the username "NOT TODAY". It was accurate. I don't know if this is what you're referring to with the salamander room but DS2 was initially going to have a much more advanced lighting engine with torches being integral to gameplay. Some of that design philosophy has survived in certain areas but the lighting itself had to be drastically simplified at some point in development to deliver a playable framerate on consoles. As such there were early screenshots where the game looked very different to the final product and people complained about a graphical downgrade.
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Jun 30, 2023 07:46
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One of the reasons why DS2 kind of looks bad in comparison to the 3rd Generation of Souls is they really hadn't worked out how to make lots of good looking normal maps everywhere. A decent normal map breaking up a wall's texture makes even cheap textures like those of DS3 look great. DS1 made up for its textures with lots of blinding PS3/360-era bloom, but DS2 hadn't worked out its lighting engine (not even in SotFS). Also, the invader:host dynamic is actually horrendously tilted in favor of the invader in DS2. For a start, you can be invaded while hollow. And not only can the invader have more health at the same vitality investment than the host, but the invader can potentially have more skill points total if they were using their soul memory efficiently. And the hosts are drastically under-served. If you use the wex dust mod in DS2, you can get constant activity everywhere. It's great.
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Jun 30, 2023 10:15
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:One of the reasons why DS2 kind of looks bad in comparison to the 3rd Generation of Souls is they really hadn't worked out how to make lots of good looking normal maps everywhere. A decent normal map breaking up a wall's texture makes even cheap textures like those of DS3 look great. DS1 made up for its textures with lots of blinding PS3/360-era bloom, but DS2 hadn't worked out its lighting engine (not even in SotFS). I thought it was more that DS2 was planned for the PS4/xbone, but they shifted back to targeting PS3/360 late in development so everything got screwed up by that. They ended up with a pile of high res textures made for a new lighting engine, which got compressed down into crappy soupy textures for an old engine.
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Jun 30, 2023 10:21
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Serephina posted:Oh that's a good question, what triggers the NPC invasions? There's one guy in the misty jungle ruins who is really erratic about when he shows up, and I owe him a favor. It's just a matter of a blundering into their spawn points, they'll always show up in the exact same place. Scholar has one specific invader type that plays by slightly different rules, but nobody seems to have concrete info about how they actually work beyond RNG factors. I know in DS1 NPC invaders were missable if you beat the associated area boss, but I'm not sure if that's the case with 2. Though because 2 is cool they're not truly missable anyway. ...Not that they're required for anything or drop anything of import as far as I remember. Unless you really, really like the Predator.  Re: Lighting. Early footage showed a much more severe lighting setup where basically anything not in broad daylight was way more likely to be dark enough to require a torch to see or some other means of gaining light (the weird little mansion in Huntsman's Copse has breakable boards over the windows for instance). They basically ripped that entire lighting engine out for the original release without being able to compensate for its removal, resulting in a game that looked less than ideal and certainly a far cry from what was shown. Scholar was a next-gen re-release so they were able to add dynamic lighting back in, but it's very clearly a basic system tacked onto the existing game after the fact and still nothing like the more dramatic all encompassing darkness.
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Jun 30, 2023 10:30
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There's a work-in-progress mod that tries to update the lighting throughout the game to make the areas look better. I haven't tried it personally but from the screenshots at least it looks much closer to DS3's style.
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Jun 30, 2023 10:34
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Serephina posted:There's one guy in the misty jungle ruins who is really erratic about when he shows up, and I owe him a favor. Might be Forlorn, who has multiple spawn points and two variants (GS and scythe). Some spawn points are guaranteed, some are RNG. Forlorn has probably killed more DS2 speedruns/challenge runs than gravity.
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Jun 30, 2023 10:42
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Promethium posted:There's a work-in-progress mod that tries to update the lighting throughout the game to make the areas look better. I haven't tried it personally but from the screenshots at least it looks much closer to DS3's style. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68XVjtUk8zk The mod's absolutely worth it. giZm fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 11:44
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ive never had a player invader actually try to kill me in DS2 they just point out a shortcut i missed or something and then roll off a cliff
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Jun 30, 2023 12:22
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