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 Update on the previous page!Like I implied before, I'm surprised that you two had some degree of trouble and/or consternation with the Demon of Song. The key thing to realize when dealing with her (I'm assuming it's a her given the singing voice and the fact that sexual dimorphism in frogs tends to make the females bigger/males smaller) is that her human arms are the most dangerous thing about her. Once you bait them out and then wait for a short combo, you can then make several good hits with impunity before she shuts her face again. Ideally you'll also want to stay diagonally in front of her rather than in the 12 o'clock position to avoid the occasional water breath attack, but any of her other big attacks have massive tells and windows in which you can dodge them. In particular baiting her attacks out will help because it shortens the length of her combos, since she'll only do the extended versions of those combos if you're actually in range to be hit. (It's a viable first-order strategy on her part, but can be exploited for a second-order strategy on your part.) At this point though I've not released it, I've recorded footage of the Shrine of Amana while cosplaying as Manhunter O'Hara (with the Alonne Greatbow), and when I got to the Demon of Song I actually had to slow down and wait just to show off some of her attacks. You were perplexed about the basilisks in Scholar? Consider that there's a petrified hollow traveler nearby; how do you think he got that way? While he can seem a bit heavy when expositing, I appreciate Aldia's inclusion in the Scholar patch/edition to offer a perspective on the personal narrative in this game. While the Emerald Herald is encouraging you onward out of stoicism and defeatism, Aldia is still hoping for some way out of the samsara of the curse into a state of moksha. (If anyone in the thread has actually studied Hinduism or Buddhism, feel free to correct me. I was raised as a Generic Christian* before eventually proceeding to agnosticism, so I'm viewing things on the outside as it were.) Anyway, samsara basically describes the cycle of death and reincarnation into the impure world, not unlike how the undead curse operates. Thus the ways out of this are nirvana and/or moksha. From what I understand, nirvana is about becoming One With Nothing and is emphasized more in Buddhism. But moksha, as a contrast, is instead about becoming One With Everything and understanding the universe as the self. (This is emphasized more in Hinduism.) In any case, we'll probably see more on these topics as you two progress through the base game and the DLC. The spear backstab is a wonderful sight, and I got to see it a bunch on my most recent Scholar playthrough. In particular I loved skewering the members of the gank squad while cooperating in the Cave of the Dead. Hexes and spell tools haven't really gotten along in either DS2 or DS3. In both cases they're split between multiple categories, and in addition the tools best for using hexes have generally not been suited for using the base spell type as well. DS2 has the Sunset Staff/Caitha's Chime/Chime of Want while DS3 has the Izalith Staff/Caitha's Chime/Sunless Talisman, and in general those are all significantly suboptimal at casting sorceries or miracles as well. (DS3's Pyromancy Flame is good at any kind of pyromancy, but doesn't really address the spread of hexes.) Hence the Black Witch's Staff is likely the only spell tool between those two that actually consolidates hexes well; even though it's not quite as good as the dedicated spell tools for hexes it's still pretty useful once you infuse it the right way. Also I'm not certain what Mog was referring to with hexes and Demon's Souls, unless perhaps she was thinking of the Talisman of Beasts? Demon's Souls didn't have hexes, but the Talisman of Beasts was useful in that it let you cast miracles and sorceries on the same tool. I may be misremembering, but I believe that some of the Imperious Knights (the ones with two interlocking greatshields) will respawn while others will not. In particular, there are two who are one-time spawns in the Black Witch room on NG+ and above. My preferred method for taking down the gravestones that spawn Leydia Pyromancers is to snipe them with spells or a greatbow. This does require a light source or a good memory in certain places, but it's well worth it considering that you've removed one of their two possible spawn triggers (proximity). Going back to durability damage to equipment (thanks for the shoutout), something I've found is that it's generally tracked on a per-hit basis. Thus situations like Iron Keep's lava or Brightstone Cove Tseldora's spike pit will tend to heavily damage your gear, because you're being assessed with hits at a rapid rate. It sounds like Mog left the Ring of Whispers on when talking to Vengarl?  The primary use for it is of course to communicate with Tark, but since it also acts as an enemy detector it was constantly firing as a result of the nearby Forest Guardian. I'm eager to see your take on the next boss here. Dark Souls 2 has had the complaint leveled against it that many of the bosses are "just dudes in armor", but bosses like the next one demonstrate well that there's still a lot of variety to be had even within humanoid movesets. In particular I really like the fact that depending on subtle changes in his stance, he'll make significant variations with his combos. *We went to a United Methodist church, but only because it was the nearest one. I might have been raised Roman Catholic if my parents had settled down in a slightly different place, considering that the nearest such church was less than half a mile up the road.
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May 18, 2016 04:13
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KieranWalker posted:"I ain't even mad. That... was amazing."
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May 20, 2016 06:22
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Hey guys, sorry to leave y'all in the lurch for so long, but I have some bad news. Long story short, the HDMI port on our PS3 went out and we have one of those Elgato capture devices that's HDMI only (the HD60 I think instead of the original). I spent some time looking for a workaround but there basically isn't one besides repair or replace, and both of those are cost-prohibitive at the moment. I'm not going to close the thread yet because Mog and I do have a backlog of video (that unfortunately we also haven't been able to get a good time to schedule for the last 2 weeks  ) that could do for another couple updates and I might things taken care of by then. Who knows, maybe set up a Patreon and see how many rich people are secretly in our streams and really want to see the end of Demon's Souls or something, heh. But anyway, that's the reason for the delay; scheduling conflicts plus me being focused on the long-term problem. If Mog's still up for it we'll have a few more updates later, and since my PC still works fine, this might be a good time for the DLCs if NG and Gothsheep (or anyone else!) are still up for it. Wayne fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jun 6, 2016 |
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Jun 6, 2016 22:23
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I just started watching so this comment is like 6 months late, but: The reason Dark Souls 1 let you level up from bonfires instead of having to talk to a Level Up-lady was out of gameplay necessity. Dark Souls is the only game out of the 5 in the series that doesn't let you warp between checkpoints (or, in the case of Bloodborne and Demon's Souls, back to a hub where you can then warp to any other checkpoint) right from the get-go. Imagine if you had to jog back to Firelink every time you wanted to level up all the way up until O&S. Heck, even once you've gotten the Lordvessel, you can still only warp to about half of the bonfires in the game. Imagine running halfway down the Catacombs, warping back to Firelink to level up, and then discovering that neither of the Catacombs bonfires are warpable so now you gotta make the entire trek again. It's a game that relies a lot more on manual traversal between areas, presumably because they wanted to ground the player in the experience of all the different ways in which they fit together, so leveling up at bonfires was the only logical choice.
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Jun 6, 2016 23:01
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Instant Grat posted:I just started watching so this comment is like 6 months late, Thanks, hope you like it!  The lack of a fast-travel-hub area is definitely a good point. 1 had the most coherent level and world design out of all of them, and From definitely intended for you to experience it serially (instead of bouncing around like in Demon's Souls). I imagine there was a lot of criticism about the "disconnectedness" of the Nexus in Demon's and DS1 was a reaction to that, and 2 was a swing back the other way when people started complaining about "having to wait halfway through the game to fast travel." I think the takeaway is gamers are never happy, heh. Plus, thinking about it; I don't know if you played pre-patch DS1, but originally only a handful of bonfires were warpable. Fast travel was definitely originally a grudging necessity instead of being considerate of the player. Mog and I revisit it in one of the later episodes (after she started streaming Dark Souls 3 and we could add the Fire Keeper to the list of "level-up waifus"), and I think it was important to have the Maiden in Black in the role she had in Demon's Souls, and to make players interact with her they had to make her essential (where you can not talk to anyone else and still beat the game*, except probably Thomas and one of the blacksmiths). Emma isn't nearly as important; the plot is still coh... er, as coherent as it is even if you miss her at the last two locations she appears at (like I did ), but I still liked her.* Not counting level 1 runs, of course. Even then the game makes you talk to her and then the Monumental before getting on with your business.
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Jun 6, 2016 23:40
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Wayne posted:But anyway, that's the reason for the delay; scheduling conflicts plus me being focused on the long-term problem. If Mog's still up for it we'll have a few more updates later, and since my PC still works fine, this might be a good time for the DLCs if NG and Gothsheep (or anyone else!) are still up for it. *The character is named "Punchwitch" for System Mastery's review of Witch Girl Adventures, and in particular a silly but effective exploit they found within the game.
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Jun 22, 2016 08:45
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