Dark Souls

[Spuuky]

I'd probably do Shulva->Iron->Winter

I'm excited for you to try the Challenge Paths on these things and get So Mad that they'd even add such a stupid and infuriating thing to the game. It always pleases me.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'd probably do Shulva->Iron->Winter

I'm excited for you to try the Challenge Paths on these things and get So Mad that they'd even add such a stupid and infuriating thing to the game. It always pleases me.

Oh I've heard. Not helped that I believe all three paths wind up with the extra bosses who are all really phoned in. I've heard the DLC is like 2/3rds awesomesauce and one-third "why did you bother?". So you suggest I do them in order of release?

[Spuuky]

If that's the release order. I forget, though. It doesn't ultimately matter but the end of the city of ice felt like the most "final" confrontation to me aesthetically.

The challenge paths don't all end in phoned-in bosses. The last one certainly doesn't.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll have to see I guess.

So in update news, I used the King's Ring to reach The Throne of Want, and had a very unpleasant encounter with the game's attempts to recreate the Ornstein and Smough fight from DS1. After that, I laid down my summon sign and actually got to do some "Jolly Cooperation" except I either had a situation where the summoner got killed in the fight or I did, because apparently this is where the final boss battles take place and that what every fight was. We took down Nashandra with the first group, but then the summoner kept getting killed against Aldia, except for this one fight where we had him down to nothing and just as I had backed away to take some Estus to heal, the boss decided then to target me with his homing fireball. I assume the team succeeded in winning cause up until then the summoner kept re-summoning me, but the last time I got summoned was a new guy fighting Nashandra and got a bit too cocky and took her scythe to the face which knocked off a good chunk of my health, and silly old me didn't have any healing items in my item hotkey, and so curse killed me before I could heal.

After that, I got tired of waiting for summons and decided to check out the final door which led me to Aldia's Keep. So far, except for being filled with some monsters I don't particularly care for. I did reach the first fog gate for the boss, but wasn't feeling up to it. I did raise my attunement high enough to get a spell, but I still need the particular spell I want, so right now it's a basic healing spell. Though, when I went to talk to my Miracle Cleric in Majula, the game informed that a Cracked Eye Orb was resonating. I am well aware that she's been the red phantom popping up in the last few areas, but didn't feel like pursuing it, on account of the sheer amount of bloodstain in her room. So yes, awkward evening overall.

[Wolf Kanno]

Got quite a bit done tonight.

Met the imprisoned sorcerer who is this game's version of Yurt or Lautric, though I feel it's safer to say he's a cool shout out to Mephistopheles from Demon's Souls since he can contract out his assassinations to you. Made more amusing in that you can actually acquire all the items needed without killing his targets as I already had the first two target's items when I met him, and before the day was done, I acquired the last two.

The dragon at Aldia's Keep was a pretty cool fight when the camera cooperated at least. The Dragon Arie was pretty cool, though I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff going through there. The Dragon Shrine was surprisingly annoying despite being so short. I've heard you can fight the Dragon NPC there, but considering how huge he is and the sheer amount of bloodstains I saw around him, I may leave that for another day.

I was kind of stuck at this point, and had to look up where to go next, so I checked out the Giant's Memories around the Forest of Giants, which was a pretty cool idea. Kind of hated the march up to the Giant's King since I kept getting two shotted with being hit with a bombardment only to get hit with the bosses air slash move. I collected the three Gian't Souls and the Giant's Kinship. I even grabbed the fourth one in Black Gulch as well and the key to finally join the Darklurker Covenant, but again, I'm debating about it.

As of right now, I can go and beat the game and get the original vanilla endings, I can take out Vendrick and open up the opportunity to fight the new final boss and get the new ending, I can finish up the vanilla game by taking on the optional bosses from there, or I can start the DLC. I'm probably going to not bother with just going straight to the end and will either deal with the few lingering quests and bosses left in the main game, or I'll start the DLC, likely the DLC as I'm not really in the mood to fight a dragon that can apparently one shot me with any of his attacks. That and I don't quite want to drop my covenant since I have not been able to really rank it up, and I figure the DLC will help me there. Any suggestions?

Before I do go further, I would like to say that I feel the second half of the game has been much more enjoyable than the first half. Maybe it's because none of the starting areas really grabbed me like some of the final areas, or maybe I felt the opening was a little too directionless for my taste compared to the tighter narrative of the second half, but it's amusing how this is like the opposite of DS1 for me.

[Wolf Kanno]

Played a little last night.

I'm beginning to think I should stop trying to do "jolly cooperation". I got a few more summons last night for the Nashandra fight and pretty much just embarrassed myself with my awful skills at this game. My favorite was rolling away from Nashandra but forgetting to remove the Lock On so I didn't notice I rolled off a cliff to my death about 15 seconds into the fight. The other death was a fight going well where I kept trying to control her aggro from the summoner and learned the hard way that she has an AoE attack to deal with players who like to hug her too much and while my Dark Defense is okay from an armor standpoint, not stat wise and so it killed me. I should be grateful my PS3 started having issues with staying online so I couldn't be summon anymore.

Checked out the first DLC instead. Shulven (sp?) has been interesting so far, I tried hard to fight my way through, only to discover the switches that make the platforms move around. Turns out you can use these switches to either kill some of the enemies or minimize the usefulness of the archers so you can sneak close to them and kill them that way. I did have a nasty time with the Ghost Knights in the Dragon Shrine until I learned you can attack their crypts to lower their defense and make them susceptible to back attacks.

I'm digging the cinematic moments with the dragon swooping around and causing some damage. I always love these bits in the series so it's been nice. The more puzzle aspect has also been really appreciated.

[Wolf Kanno]

Okay, so after spending some time in the Sunken Kingdom, I've found the Cave of the Dead, which I'm assuming is the "hardcore optional zone" since it doesn't appear to have any lore implications. Honestly, it's not that bad, and is thankfully short. It really feels like what Black Gulch should have been like to be honest. It also helps that I have the rings to protect me from all of the Petrift effects going around. Not a bad area actually. The boss fight has been giving me issues but I kind of like the dynamic of it. Sure it's just a lazy PVP fight with three themed Invaders using legacy sets from the series lore, but at least they're all unique and the boss map adds some cool dynamics to the fight than some of the gank fights this game has thrown at the player. So overall, it's been pretty fun, but I still need to "Git Gud".

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[Spuuky]

Definitely the easiest of the three Challenge Paths. By an enormous margin. Good luck with the next DLC, wherein you get my vote for the hardest runback in Souls and (thank god not on the same boss) the hardest boss in Souls.

[Wolf Kanno]

So, quite a bit happened today.

I finished the Sunken City DLC. Took down the Squalor Queen and only had to fight the Velstadt clone twice before she finally went down. Sihn proved to be significantly easier and I appreciated the fact he was almost in the next room to her cause I'm not sure if I was ready to deal with more of the tanky Drakeblood Knights. Overall, it was a pretty great DLC as the dungeon layout was fun and enemies were tricky but pretty fair, even if the Cave of the Dead largely felt like a more well thought out redux of Black Gulch. Overall pretty awesome and I loved the lore.

After that, I went back to the Undead Crypt to talk to Vendrick, and I tend to drop my summon sign whenever I backtrack. I was honestly surprised when I got summoned though as I figured my Soul Memory was too high for this part of the game. Ended up meeting a player who is more reckless than myself, though I get the impression he may be doing a challenge run due to his clothing option which was mostly naked and I think he was using a whip. Anyway, I dropped my summon sign before the hallway where Velstadt is fought, and as anyone who has played the game knows, there are a quite a few obstacles to reach Vendrick. My first attempt to help him ended in utter failure cause the guy decided to YOLO his way to the boss room, leaving me with a bunch of knights and ghosts to contend with before I assume Velstadt one-shotted him and I was sent back to my merry way. I dropped my summon sign again just to see if I could help him again, and sure enough, I got summoned along with another player to try and help him. This time however, the guy ended up getting invaded by another player and in addition to dealing with the usual riff raff of the room, I had a nasty spear using mage to contend with. Course I don't think he expected to be dealing with three players. I was finally able to chase his sorry ass down to the back of the room and finally killed the invader, which got me much praise form the other two players. Then my host ran into the boss room while I was healing and got killed. I decided to spend my time elsewhere.

So I jumped into the the Iron King DLC and traveled to Brume Tower. I picked up some Smelter Wedges and saved them cause I was told I would need them for the area boss fight. For the most part, the area is a bit easier than the Sunken Crown, partly due to having more soul levels and partly cause nothing resists my lightning weapon in this place. Overall, it's a pretty cool place and felt like an extension of the Iron Keep, which is one of my favorite locations so far in the vanilla game. I did the optional hardcore area as well and... it can go smurf itself. It's frankly a nice representation of the issues I do have with this game at times. It's a boring rehash dungeon of the Cave of the Dead with slightly different gimmick (there are two paths now!) and it ends with a reskinned boss, but whereas the Cave of the Dead was kind of an interesting melee with a pseudo PVP type match against popular builds in the series, Smelter Demon is basically the new Asylum Demon where we're just going to change the color, make him do a different elemental damage and jack up his health. The prize for beating him isn't even great to be honest. I ended up just running to the boss cause trying to fight all of the ganky fights in this area is a chore and the last room before the boss room is the worst.

So with that, I reached the bottom of the Tower, and barring that last hallway with all of the animated armors and having to fall through the floor, I managed to reach the bonfire and use the wedges on the human bonfires so the boss doesn't heal. I met Fume Knight, and he certainly lives up to his name as one of the game's toughest boss. His first phase is hectic, but manageable. His second phase is a nightmare and he can easily end me with two attacks. Despite the difficulty, he reminds me of the Artorias fight, where he's actually pretty fun, so dying to him isn't so frustrating and it helps the bonfire is just around the corner to his boss room. Though I am now starting to dislike the "lost health when you die" mechanic of the game cause it's making the fight more grueling than it needs to be and I don't like wasting Human Effigies. Also, unlike a few other boss battles in this game, I'm not using a summon for help as I've been told that Fume Knight becomes an utter nightmare to deal with if he gets the defense boosts from having fellow players, so this will really be like Artorias all over again. Now if I can just figure out how to boost my fire and dark defense without using up a valuable ring slot.

[Bri]

Nice, I need to complete ds2. I got to get the DLC first though which is so exciting. After I am definitely going to give demon souls a try! Dark souls 3 will have to wait until we can get a ps4 :/

[Wolf Kanno]

So it's been an interesting few nights.

The previous night, I attempted Fume Knight a few more times and got totally wrecked. Decided I was going to reagin my humanty the old fashioned way through "jolly cooperation" and went to the final area to wait to get summoned. The difference is that I left my summon sign by the bonfire nearby rather than the boss door. I ended up getting summoned by a guy named tanuki_bros. who is decked out in the Catarina Armor set and what followed was what I could only imagine is what following around Siegmeyer would be like. Not sure if he's been touting the bonfire ascetics or I just happened to get summoned into a NG+ world (probably the former) but I was helping along with two other guys fight off red phantoms, and gank Pursuer fight, and a few of the area bosses and getting wrecked by the stronger enemies, but I kept helping him and the guy actually sent me a friend request on PSN so we're now Dark Souls Bros I guess. Despite dying a smurf ton, it was actually pretty funny and it certainly caused me to step up my game in order to help him. Got a few soul levels and weapon upgrades while I was at it as well.

So that was last night, tonight, I largely dueled with Fume Knight and after expending all my human effigies and a few trips to that special shrine n Amana where you can pray for humanity to come back, I finally took him down. It took three changes in my strategy. I switched out my Heide Sword +!0 for the Drakeblood Greatsword, which I upgraded to it's +5 version in order to get a sizeable boost to my attack power without throwing off my weight. It helped that the weapons moveset isn't far off from the Gwyn's Drakknight Greatsword from DS1 which was my main weapon for a good chunk of that game. I also switched up my armor for something lighter. He was two shotting me with his heavy sword anyway so I figured defense wasn't going to help me and instead focused on stamina recovery. This helped considerably. My final element was changing up my strategy for the fight and having to learn to dodge towards him, not away from him. His hitboxes almost guaranteed that trying to get away from him would make the attack land, not to mention his increased range in his second phase. The other element was that you need to stick to him like a tick in the first phase to avoid most of his attacks, but it's actually better to keep your distance during his second phase cause his two charged up fire attacks are easier to dodge if you're not on top of him. It took some getting use to but, I eventually got the pattern down and played conservatively in the second phase and finally conquered the guy who is considered to be the hardest boss in the game solo, so I'm feeling quite satisfied and he's so far the "Artoriaa" of the DLC for me in terms of being an awesome fight.

The rest of my evening was spent hunting down Smelter Wedges and taking down the rest of the Ashen Idols all over the place. Holy crap is she a pain in the ass, especially in the areas where she inflicts curse damage and their usually inhabited by those obnoxious floating armors. Got invaded a few times for my trouble as well but at least I found the last bonfire and the entrance to the final bosses area for this DLC. It's a tough call as to which DLC area is the best so far for me, and I still have the Ivory King DLC to look forward to as well. I might edge it towards Sunken King just because I liked all of the areas for the most part, whereas as I was not a happy camper with that awful tunnel and the rematch Smelter Demon fight at the end in the Iron King DLC. Whereas Sunken Kingdom's optional areas was slightly less obnoxious and had a more fun boss battle at the end.

After I finish the DLC, I'll probably take on the Ancient Dragon and Vendrick before finishing the game. I also still need to join the Dark Covenant, cause I've heard there is a boss at the end of that one as well.

[Spuuky]

No other boss has embarrassed me nearly as many times as that STUPID Fume Knight. One random trick that some people use is that if you enter the fight with certain gear on (for lore reasons) he immediately goes straight to phase 2 at full health - while phase 2 is "harder" it leaves you with only one sequence to learn.

This DLC's final boss is also really great. What a great DLC, all three of them really.

The Dark covenant boss was actually probably the boss I died to the second most times in the game; although that almost certainly was a stylistic issue and the fact that I fought him WAY earlier, more than that he's THAT tough.

[Skyblade]

Okay, so after spending some time in the Sunken Kingdom, I've found the Cave of the Dead, which I'm assuming is the "hardcore optional zone" since it doesn't appear to have any lore implications. Honestly, it's not that bad, and is thankfully short. It really feels like what Black Gulch should have been like to be honest. It also helps that I have the rings to protect me from all of the Petrift effects going around. Not a bad area actually. The boss fight has been giving me issues but I kind of like the dynamic of it. Sure it's just a lazy PVP fight with three themed Invaders using legacy sets from the series lore, but at least they're all unique and the boss map adds some cool dynamics to the fight than some of the gank fights this game has thrown at the player. So overall, it's been pretty fun, but I still need to "Git Gud".

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I don't get it.

[Wolf Kanno]

Dark-Souls-фэндомы-Dark-Souls-2-Fume-Knight-1877999.jpeg

I don't get it.

The first guy in armor is the Pursuer, a recurring boss with a simple moveset but higher stats than what is normal in the early game. He tends to pop up in old boss rooms and he's the bane of a lot of new players, hence the first image in NG. By New Game + You're character is so overleveled and experienced that you'll start wondering why you were afraid of him the first time around. Hence the second image. The new armored knight in the final panel is the Fume Knight from the DLC who is considered to be the hardest boss in the entire game including all of the DLC expansions, so he makes even a NG+ Player and Pursuer looks like scrubs in comparison. Which he does rather soundly I might add as I'm sure I've died to him more times than any boss so far in the game.

In update news:

I beat Sir Alonne and completed the Old Iron King DLC. Even met and helped another player take him down. While his moveset was simpler than Fume Knight's, he makes up for it by being faster and a bit more relentless making stamina recovery a major task. The lead up to him is not fun either, but a walk in the park compared to the trout hole that leads up to the rematch Smelter Demon fight. A nice message left from another player allowed me to find the last Smelter Wedge and I was finally able to get rid of all of the Ashen Idols and claim Nadia's soul.

Tried some more co-op in Drangleic Castle and discovered that you can't really get help for the Dragon Rider Gank fight or rematch Pursuer battle in their boss room as it's apparently "not in the same area as the first bonfire" so I've had a few times a player grabs me for these fights and I end up getting sent away as they challenge the boss. Spoke to Vendrick as well for my next set of dialogue from him.

Started the Ivory King DLC and the enemies are a bit of a step up. Whereas the Old Iron DLC either hid away the nastier enemies deeper in the level or had the Ashen Idols buff up the regular enemies to problematic territory, this place brings out some tougher enemies from the onset and just gets a bit more hectic from there, especially when you find the Eyes of the Priestess and all those praying women turn out to be Soul Spear casting pains in my ass. The fact they have invisible soldiers wandering around the blizzard isn't fun either. The biggest issue of the place for me is the size, it is easy to get lost and it looks like I'm going to have to switch over to pyromancy to get some of the chests opened.

On the plus size, the first NPC Invader in the area was actually pretty clever. I had heard they stopped up their A.I. to make them feel like human players with several of them using gestures before attacking but this guy did something that finally justified my general paranoia in these games concerning certain OCD ticks I have. I'll leave this as a surprise for anyone who hasn't played it yet, but I'm sure veterans know what I'm talking about. I have not ran into the first area boss, nor have I found the challenge area yet, though I've heard the challenge area is one of the most reviled of all the DLC. We'll see what happens. I also apparently picked up Artorias' Sword, though it goes by another name in this entry.

[Spuuky]

That challenge area is the worst smurfing zone in any Souls game.