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Equip two compatible weapons while you meet the minimum stat requirements and hold Y/triangle to two-hand the left one. If you did it right, your character just adjusts the way you're holding both, and now your left hand attacks swing both weapons around.
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Jun 13, 2018 09:49
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While you meet 1.5x the stat requirements for both weapons, actually. See, I told you it wasn't explained well! It's a really cool mechanic that is only in Dark Souls 2 and we'll get there when we get there!
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Jun 13, 2018 09:55
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I don't think powerstancing is ever, ever explained. it is something you must stumble upon (unlikely), or read about on the internet. I certainly didn't know about it when i played ds2
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Jun 13, 2018 10:09
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CJacobs posted:While you meet 1.5x the stat requirements for both weapons, actually. See, I told you it wasn't explained well! It's a really cool mechanic that is only in Dark Souls 2 and we'll get there when we get there! Is that 1.5x the sum of the stat requirements, or 1.5x the highest of each stat requirement?
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Jun 13, 2018 10:28
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Just 1.5x the requirements of both in general, meaning you have to meet 1.5x of the higher stat for each weapon. For example: Left hand: 10 dex, 8 str -> 15 dex, 12 str to power stance Right hand: 6 dex, 14 str -> 9 dex, 21 str to power stance So you'd need 15 dex and 21 str to powerstance those weapons together.
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Jun 13, 2018 10:46
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And that applies to int and faith too?
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Jun 13, 2018 10:59
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...different shields have different parry chances? drat IT
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Jun 13, 2018 12:16
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mortons stork posted:Yes, I think the point of the discussion on artificial difficulty is moot, since the game often throws curveballs at you and expects you to get murdered by them the first time. Every new player will trigger at least some of those traps, maybe by not being observant enough, or misreading clues, or by simply playing unoptimal. However, often, they'll be able to learn from that without dying. And I think that's a very important difference to games like old arcade quarter munchers or ones that are just badly designed in general, where a trap is a death is a game over is a start from beginning, fucko. Dabir posted:And that applies to int and faith too? CommissarMega posted:...different shields have different parry chances? In DS2, they tried to make parrying more "balanced" (arguably it was hard enough in DS1, or more people would just...do it all the time, but that's neither here nor there) by adding a start-up time to every shield. That means you have to press the button early. And that makes small, designed-for-parry-shields far more attractive to use for their express purpose, because they have a shorter time for the window to open after the button press and it's open for longer. I'm sorry if that's too much DS2 mechanic discussion in the DS1 thread! I can remove it if wanted  .
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Jun 13, 2018 12:31
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Eh, I don't mind it. We'll have to discuss all this again when DS2 comes around but it helps to know what things they've changed in advance, so you can point at stuff in DS1 and be like "they saw this as something that could be improved/redone and changed it".
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Jun 13, 2018 12:46
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CJacobs posted:Eh, I don't mind it. We'll have to discuss all this again when DS2 comes around but it helps to know what things they've changed in advance, so you can point at stuff in DS1 and be like "they saw this as something that could be improved/redone and changed it". Looking at DS3: "All of DS2 could have been improved."
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Jun 13, 2018 13:48
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In case it wasn't obvious for everyone, the discussion about power-stance applies to Dark Souls 2. There is no such thing in the first Dark Souls. When it comes to dual wielding in Dark Souls, the only nice thing you can say is that the game is rather realistic about the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.
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Jun 13, 2018 16:51
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DS3, of course, also doesn't have power stance, but it does have designated twin weapons like the Drang Twinhammers that work pretty much the same, minus the spreadsheet to figure out whether you can do it or not. The main difference is that instead of a double strong attack on L2, you get the weapon skill.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:53
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Dabir posted:DS3, of course, also doesn't have power stance, but it does have designated twin weapons like the Drang Twinhammers that work pretty much the same, minus the spreadsheet to figure out whether you can do it or not. The main difference is that instead of a double strong attack on L2, you get the weapon skill.  " because god drat throwing out the baby with the bathwater there.
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Jun 13, 2018 19:58
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I think something that's being left out of the discussion here is the Orange Soapstone. You're expected to play the game online (which I think is pretty obvious for reasons we'll get to a lot later), and other players are likely to mark the obvious traps. Even if they don't, if you see an area covered in other people's bloodstains, you should be thinking "why is this area so dangerous?". I first completed the game solo (was playing the Xbox 360 version, didn't want to pay for Live), and I am amazed by how much richer the game is with the online experience, even knowing about a lot of the stuff ahead of time.
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Jun 14, 2018 03:50
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What would the Dark Souls experience be without 'try jumping' in front of every single cliff
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Jun 14, 2018 08:19
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I had no idea that the Taurus demon follows you up to the upper area. I saw a ton of messages saying stuff like "try sniper spot" and "weakness: ranged battle" that made me think that you could chump him by standing somewhere he couldn't reach easily and peppering him with a million arrows, and made up my mind to fight him "honestly". I think I only beat the fucker when I realised that flame did heaps of damage and substituted firebomb throws for sword swings. Is it just me or is he really resistant to regular weapons compared to the asylum demon, gargoyles and capra demon? Well, if you have solaire to help you, I had no problem at all with the gargoyles and a +3 claymore. I noticed that around this area a lot of enemies start dropping titanite like candy and it's cheap to buy from Andre - all of this is very strongly hinting to the player that they should find a weapon they like and upgrade the hell out of it right now. The boss fight suddenly turning into a 2v1 if you go in alone is very a  "gotcha!" moment, but I feel like even this is deliberately showing you what an advantage it is to bring a buddy into a fight - by having a strong enemy do the same thing to you. My experience was that it was Solaire's ability to distract rather than to deal damage that won the fight; I can see how badly it would go without him there as the bastards can alternate attacks, making it really hard or even impossible to get in and take a swing at one without getting hit by the other. (There's one place early in DS2 where they team up a big slow guy with a little fast dude and they stick to each other like loving glue and are near impossible to get by if you don't do heaps of poise damage, or aggro one from long range with a bow.)
Crazy Achmed fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Jun 14, 2018 |
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Jun 14, 2018 12:37
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Crane Fist posted:What would the Dark Souls experience be without 'try jumping' in front of every single cliff My most Dark Souls experience is when I did some minor platforming and jumping to reach a mostly pointless area with like, one crappy item, and I was greeted by the player message "fine work but hole".
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Jun 15, 2018 01:07
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I have no idea how the gently caress you guys get so good in the game when I spent like 2 hours trying to get past the undead burg only to die to some balder knight stabbing me in the back out of nowhere.
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Jun 15, 2018 08:03
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Enemies rarely "come out of nowhere" in this game. There's a few that can't reasonably be expected the first time because you have no way to tell that a particular area has a niche or whatever, but 99+% of the enemies in this game can be spotted ahead of time with basic situational awareness. If you aren't managing this, the game becomes ludicrously hard, because managing encounters is key to success. Even basic hollows (truly basic ones - including the ones you get past to get to the aqueduct from Firelink) can maul you pretty quick if you carelessly get swarmed.
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Jun 15, 2018 10:27
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Does happen, though. DS2 and 3 have some particularly mean moments, although as always, DS3 is less rude about it.
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Jun 15, 2018 10:46
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The game does its best to lead you into traps, and it will often succeed the first time. As I said before (I hope in this thread...), the key difference to e.g. hard platformers is that traps in Dark Souls don't necessarily kill you. One such trap moment in the Burg is when you come out of a narrow passage to a corridor with a dead end to the right and progress to the back end of the Parish cathedral to the left; there's enemies on both sides, a Balder Knight to the left and a spear hollow to the right. You see the latter first and can even see him in advance, so if you engage him and he turtles, wasting your time, the Balder knight will gently caress you up from behind. Even if you do know it's there, it's still kind of a nasty enemy placement because you might think that you just have to kill spear dude quick, or decide the better tactic is engaging Balder first (upon which more often than not spear dude will drop the shield and puncture your kidneys), or to run past the spear dude (dead end!) or past the Balder (bad idea). The actual best way to do it is in fact to get both of them to aggro you, then go back in the narrow corridor and take them on one by one. Which is obvious to some, less obvious to others. Anyway, it was built as a trap first and foremost, but it's still an interesting gameplay and tactical challenge if you know about the trap - an ideal situation as far as level design goes, imo. It's after this bit here, and I include the enemy beforehand as well; if you don't see him, he might come from behind and block your way out of the narrow corridor leading in-between Balder and Spear, completely closing you off. I accept "spacial awareness" here because you can see him and take him out beforehand, but I don't think there is a way to see Balder come from the left. You probably should cross every corner with shield up and very slowly anyway, but that way you still have to trigger the trap, you'll just survive it because you had the shield up. That's not an awareness thing though, it's preparation, unless you count "hey this sure looks like a corner" as awareness.
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Jun 15, 2018 12:01
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Palladium posted:I have no idea how the gently caress you guys get so good in the game when I spent like 2 hours trying to get past the undead burg only to die to some balder knight stabbing me in the back out of nowhere. Keep in mind - Patchouli may be using first timer equipment, but she's also being driven by somebody who's been through these areas and these encounters dozens of times. That's one of the things about Dark Souls: knowledge really IS power. That 45 minute chunk of play would probably take a brand new person three or four times the length to get through - if they didn't hit a roadblock. (And there are several - the Taurus Demon alone is a really tough opponent if you don't know what you're doing.) When you're starting out, the key is to just take things slow, be paranoid and always know where you can retreat to.
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Jun 15, 2018 12:55
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Tempest_56 posted:Keep in mind - Patchouli may be using first timer equipment, but she's also being driven by somebody who's been through these areas and these encounters dozens of times. That's one of the things about Dark Souls: knowledge really IS power. That 45 minute chunk of play would probably take a brand new person three or four times the length to get through - if they didn't hit a roadblock. (And there are several - the Taurus Demon alone is a really tough opponent if you don't know what you're doing.) So I got myself a +5 Zweihander, overhead swing everything and just killed Gaping Dragon. I think died to Taurus Demon like 10 times alone, mostly because he blocked all my escape routes after than jumping attack.
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Jun 15, 2018 13:08
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Yeah the answer to "I am stuck in the early game" is actually "start over with a different build." Not "Git Gud." Edit: I also watched a couple playthroughs before I started. So ymmv.
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Jun 15, 2018 14:13
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Usually either Thief (starts with Master Key so you can take another gift, lots of early game enemies are susceptible to bleed) or Pyromancer (upgrades with souls, doesn't scale with skill).
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Jun 15, 2018 14:23
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I had watched Geop's LP before playing this game for the first time and that made it a lot easier. I used a pyromancer, choose the halberd as weapon and took it to the lightning path. This meant that all my damage was non scaling, so I could softcap both vitality and endurance easily. I also went with medium roll with the armor Oscar uses and this is the soulsborne game where armor is the most powerful. The game did not exactly get easy, but still a lot easier than an uninformed first playtrough. That said, I think a Sorcerer is the best for PvE. Unlike pyromancy, you will need to raise a scaling stat, intelligence in this case, but Sorcery is just so much more powerful than pyromancy and you can still use pyromancy anyway. As far as starting classes goes, I pick whatever class has the lowest in the stats I don't intend to raise, resistance exempted of course. Good start stats don't matter that much, stats are raised very quickly early.
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Jun 15, 2018 17:19
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Presenting the most Dark Souls of all pedantic moderation housekeeping, the Battle of the Thread Tag:
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Jun 15, 2018 18:01
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It's gonna get a NEWBIE tag, isn't it?
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Jun 15, 2018 18:20
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I have a very strong I played it a long time ago (actually, I streamed it), got as far as the endboss with a lot of aggravation, then just gave up after getting fed up with all of it (along with the general "git gud" attitude of the bulk of the fans). Then I see someone streaming it whatever and I get the urge to reinstall and try again. Thing is, for the most part I enjoy the parts of the game that aren't boss fights. I like the exploration, the way all the parts of the world fit together and allow you to find alternate paths through the game. I really liked learning all the stuff you can do in and around Firelink to give yourself a leg up, for example. But man, I hate the boss fights. Especially the corpse runs when you lose a boss fight. In summary, dammit CJacobs you're making me want to reinstall this again even though I know I'm just going to get aggravated with the game again. 
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Jun 17, 2018 18:17
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If it helps, most of the bosses have a kind of silver bullet approach where you can just utterly obliterate them with a certain tactic; often, that's not even build specific. You could surely google those or get advice in the general thread if that's the only thing dragging down the game for you. And I get it; I also feel like bosses are mostly gatekeepers of more exploration fun. Don't mind them too much nowadays but starting out when I got stuck on one for days, that sucked.
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Jun 17, 2018 22:25
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Evil Mastermind posted:Thing is, for the most part I enjoy the parts of the game that aren't boss fights. I like the exploration, the way all the parts of the world fit together and allow you to find alternate paths through the game. I really liked learning all the stuff you can do in and around Firelink to give yourself a leg up, for example. This is where summoning is really handy. I have a rule to try boss fights solo just to see what's going on, but the whole summoning players thing is there for a reason. Some boss fights are just super-hard for your playstyle, and there's no shame in getting help for it. Especially ones with a huge run from the bonfire. And right now there should be a bazillion people looking to help out at least. The "git gud" attitude is super annoying though, and kept me from wanting to play the game for years. There's a kernel of truth to it, Dark Souls games do get much easier with experience, both from knowledge and from game reflexes. But just telling someone to be better at a game is useless advice. Instead of "git gud", the best advice I think is just "be patient". Watch boss patterns, see what attacks they do and how to avoid them, and try to find the attack pattern you can exploit for hits. If an enemy comes out of nowhere and kills you, that sucks, so come back and remember where that bastard is and crush him. If you are like me, and get frustrated when you lose a shitload of souls, just walk away from the game for a while. I never play well when I'm dwelling on that level or two I just lost.
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Jun 17, 2018 23:47
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Not to spoil, but the endboss is pretty susceptible to parrying if you can pull it off.
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Jun 17, 2018 23:49
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Lazy Bear posted:Not to spoil, but the endboss is pretty susceptible to parrying if you can pull it off. This is true and also kind of a git gud thing. If I was good at timing parries then a lot of things in dark souls would've been easier, but I'm not. I'm apparently old and slow; I want to plan the game into submission, not have to rely on my questionable reflexes to save me. Relatedly I really suck at Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Nioh, in increasing order of sucking. What let me get through 1 was largely, well, research and planning. I read up on mechanics, where the upgrade materials were and how to get them. I learned that the Greatshield of Some Dude was the highest stability shield you could get, got it pretty early and tanked my way through most of the game. I farmed up the highest physical resistance armor set and materials to upgrade it by helping people do the nearby bossfight. I summoned a lot of helpers. I guess if there's one piece of advice I'd give for Dark Souls it's that "be patient" and "it's hard" doesn't mean you shouldn't just repeatedly throw yourself at a challenge hoping it'll break before you do. By all means, try fights blind once or twice if you want. If that fails then summon a friend, or at least an enlightening google search. You're not alone. That said, if you really hate the boss fights maybe Dark Souls isn't the game for you and that's fine? It's the conclusion I sadly ended up reaching with Bloodborne, which ultimately wasn't a game for me.
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Jun 18, 2018 00:32
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Xerophyte posted:This is true and also kind of a git gud thing. If I was good at timing parries then a lot of things in dark souls would've been easier, but I'm not. I'm apparently old and slow; I want to plan the game into submission, not have to rely on my questionable reflexes to save me. Relatedly I really suck at Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Nioh, in increasing order of sucking. No, that's totally fair! I ended up training my parrying reflexes ages past playing Soul Calibur 2 and 3 back on the old black monolith, so I guess it bled into my own DS1 play, and came naturally. Cross-training is totally a thing in video games too, so sometimes if a core/valueable mechanic is giving you Hell in a game, it might help you to develop that skill in another game with a similar mechanic and lower impact. But that's me.
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Jun 18, 2018 06:03
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 Chosen undead falls under onslaught.
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Jun 18, 2018 07:09
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git gud is funnier advice to give
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Jun 18, 2018 07:39
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Honestly the best advice to give someone struggling with any part of Dark Souls is: put down your summon sign. Getting summoned lets you practice the area with no soul loss on death, see someone else trying the area who will provide a difference perspective on how to do it and helps you find secrets.
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Jun 18, 2018 08:49
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GodFish posted:Honestly the best advice to give someone struggling with any part of Dark Souls is: put down your summon sign. yeah but 
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Jun 18, 2018 09:09
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Im a proponent of 'git gud' as advice because it encompasses a bunch of things: -try again -change your approach -focus on the game a bit more. Also its funny
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Jun 18, 2018 10:15
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Im a proponent of 'git gud' as advice because it encompasses a bunch of things: Same My first playthrough of 3 I was like "This game is BS. I need to grind for ages." Now I'm like gently caress it clear through everything, I know who to kill to farm what weapon I want, I know where to go to get the rings and Armour and upgrade materials. I know what items to use on what bosses to cheese them.
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Jun 18, 2018 14:57
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