Dark Souls - successor to Demon's Souls - Page 3

Tank it... hmm.

My strategy was to keep focusing on one of them and kill him off before another showed up. I have to say this was one of the boss battles that I was able accomplish in only one try. Luck, I think. Because I never got the one hit grab and kill move they can do. I stayed in close and just kept pummeling him with the combustion fire spells untilled they died.

That said, If I were tanking it I'd make sure to get some good magical defenses and maybe try to do it fully human so I could bring some phantoms in on my side. I'd also say equip Havel's ring to move faster (Havel is at the bottom of the watchtower basement by the door that leads to Darkroot Basin) or maybe that ring that boost magical defenses (sold by the merchant in Sen's Fortress). The moment you see the first King, run to him. The quicker you engage in battle the more time you have to defeat one of them before another shows up.

Congrats Trevor, you must get different servers than I do because I've pounded everyone that's invaded me. I get that it's in the spirit of the game but I refuse to bow and act all civilized about some prick coming into my game and trying to steal my shit. :P I always two hand and rush them when they're in the middle of bowing. FUCK YOUR BOW! ...on the flipside though I'm Darkwraith so I'm an invading bastard myself.

 

If you're gonna tank the Four Kings you need good physical and magic defense in your shield/armor and remember that the grab can insta-kill you if your hp is low. Trevor is right, you've gotta get on them and stay on them and remember that the Abyss has invisible walls that will screw you over if you try to let the fight drag out. There's trouble with spear hit detection on them too so I'd recommend a sword you can two hand and just skip a shield all together. The build I beat them with was, I believe, the Stone Great Sword in my right hand and the Crystal Ring Shield in my left. The shield is what I beat them with too, it's not the quickest weapon but it seems to fuck them up. Instead of having a parry attack it shoots a little light shield laser that does the damage of whatever weapon is in your right hand plus a multiplier. It's pretty good but each use drops its condition by 4. I think it starts at 80 so you've got a fair amount of uses.

 

If you're in doubt man, go to Anor Londo, meet the giant blacksmith and have him make the Crystal Ring Shield for you, it's any small round +10 shield and the soul of the Moonlight Butterfly. It might take you some time but I've said this over and over again. I'd rather backtrack and be prepared than tear my hair out trying to beat a boss with whatever I'm using at the time.

Thanks for the suggestions.  I actually JUST made that shield so I'll give it a shot.  I've read a lot of things that recommend iron flesh, but I never bought it from Laurentius before he turned hollow.  Jerk.  I think the most frustrating part of the whole ordeal is having to work my way back through all of the darkwraiths each time I fail.  They're not especially hard, but each time I lose I get more impatient, which is deadly around those guys.

You can parry the fuck out of those guys man and you have to admit their little sword flurry spinning move is pretty cool looking. The shield works really well and don't be discouraged if it misses a few times, it seems like the hit detection on it can be sketchy if they're even a little bit to the right of you. Line it up, hit him with a couple and roll. Rinse, repeat.

The problem isn't that I'm on different servers - it's that I fucked up my game by going STR. Dark Souls penalizes you for putting points into STR, because the scaling benefits are weak, even for the "A" weapons. I built the Dragon Bone caestus and used it a grand total of once. Stat scaling sucks, and doesn't make up for the boost you get when you apply lightning or fire to a +10 weapon. I got stars in my eyes when I saw the stats on the Dragon Greatsword - little did I know that a lightning Zweihander beats a +5 Dragon Greatsword by over 200 points, with a STR requirement of much, much less.

 

Hopefully they'll patch this deficiency, as going up against rogues with good magic weapons is nearly impossible with a strength build.

Ah, I see. I'm not sure if I learned it from Demon's Souls or not, I never really put much thought into my first build in any game, but I went DEX out of necessity. I hate playing with heavy weapons and armor on this because the stamina bar puts you at such a massive disadvantage when you actually have to block. It's a lot easier to just roll around like an idiot and backstab someone than actually try to hoist your sword and shield and put in work. Reality would be the complete opposite but we can't have both I guess. Havel's shield has that pretty cool rock affect. You go that, some high def armor and iron skin you should be able to hold your own in raw, slow power.

 

Most people try to exploit the fuck out of stunlock weapons.

I also was never a block and parry kind of guy so high Dex is the way to go for me too.

I do wish that this game had some good all round light armor like Demon's Souls's Ancient King set. As it is my build is just riding under that 50% percent mark of my equip load (which I pumped up to 80 points).

How are your guy's armor builds?

Me:

Head: Elite Knight Helm +6 Weight: 4.5
Body: Paladin Armor +5 Weight: 12.9
Arms: Paladin Gauntlets +3 Weight: 7.6
Legs: Black Leather Boots +9 Weight: 3

This is the best compromise I can find. Nothing else beats the fully pumped up Paladin's armor weight verses protection ratio, yeah it is heavy at a weight of 12.9, but the only protection that beats it are the armor sets that weigh 17 to 20 points. I tried pumping up the Cleric Armor and while it has better physical stats at the same weight it offers little in the way of status effect protection.

I'm not too happy with the Paladin Gauntlets, but I need more Twinkling Titianite to beef up other gauntlets that I'd like to try out.

The Black leather boots are perhaps the best light armor protection I can find for my legs, the only thing that beats it is the Maiden Skirt; I'll be damned if I wear a skirt on my build, I look silly enough in with the paladin Armor and elite Knight Helm.

Yeah, I think Demon's Souls had better looking armor than this game.

Thanks for the help everyone, I managed to beat them after another handful of tries.  Ghost, that shield trick worked great.  I actually had to wait around for the last two kings.

I maxed out on them while trying to farm for Twinkling Titanite. They are dropped by the Man-eating Clams at Ash Lake and in the Crystal cavern.

If you desperately need some then you can get two pretty easily back at the Undead Asylum. To get back to the Undead Asylum go to the elevator that goes between the undead Parish and the Firelink Shrine. After the elevator gets moviing, walk off of it on to a ledge just above where the elevator starts in the firelink shrine. Go to the cliff on the right and look to your left to see a buttress. Jump down onto the buttress and follow it up to a staircase that leads to a the giant crow's nest. A command will come up asking you if you want to curl up into a ball, agree to do it and wait. It takes about 30 seconds to a minute of waiting before the crow will take you back to the asylum.

Once you make it to the Asylum, down and to your immediate left there is a much smaller nest out on a ledge. Before venturing out to the ledge you should kill the enemies at the bottom of the area so they don't sneak up on you and knock you off. Once on the ledge a bird will ask you for something warm and soft. Go into a the menu and drop one Cracked Red Eye Orb into the nest (like the bird in Demon's Souls, you can only trade one of each item, so don't bother leaving more than one Cracked Red Eye Orb).

Now quit out to the title screen and load back into your game. Pick up the two Purging Stones left in the nest by the bird and head back to firelink or stay and explore the area.

I'm pretty sure that all the vendors have x amounts of particular items per playthrough. Meaning you can buy moss all day but humanity/purging stones, etc. are in limited supply.

I feel you man. I was playing this a bit yesterday and the thought crossed my mind that you can't just come home from work and throw this on to blow off some steam. Outside farming areas or just being a boss and knowing every attack pattern it's a grind to go and do anything "for fun".

 

I've somehow managed to finish a play through and only got cursed to the point I died once but it seems like the biggest, "FUCK THIS GAME!" complaint I've heard.

Grab the covetous snake ring and farm the ash lake clams. Instant purging stones for very little effort.

The Gold Covetous is the one Trevor is talking about. It raises the likelihood of item drops. The Silver one raises EXP. Just to make it clear for the lazy not googling sorts.

Unless you have a really streamlined master plan for exactly what items you need, the GC snake ring is invaluable. I had to farm Titanite Chunks (which are ridiculously rare, it turns out) in Anor Londo to get my +5 lightning Zweihander, and the ring cut the time it would take to do so in quarter.

Great game, but Jesus, what a disappointing ending!

I'm in the Darkmoon Blade covenant and have been experimenting with invading the "worlds of the guilty"

I get my ass handed to me 4 out of five times, mainly by people who are clearly waiting for invaders, because they are eating away at my health before I'm even finished with the spawning animation. Those few rounds that feel like an even fight are plagued by a lagging connection (I swing where they are, but hit air instead). Anyway I didn't come in here to just vent I came to ask have any of you encountered a completely invisible player in PvP?

I don't mean someone wearing the fog ring, I came across a guy in PvP who I could not see at all. I managed to kill the bastard by luck and following where the spells were coming from, but it left me curious. I want to know how he did it (Hidden Body + Chameleon? or does Hidden Body + the Fog Ring double the invisibility effect to 100%?).

So did you guys just play this non-stop or am I really slow?  I'm about 60 hours in and I just beat Seath and I'm starting the catacombs.  I expected Seath to be really difficult but I beat him in just a couple tries.  

 

I think I must be going out of the intended order because the catacombs are ridiculously easy so far compared to New Londo and the archives.  Am I in for a shock soon?

 

Finally, I went ahead and made a lightning zweihander after Trevor talked it up so much and Jesus Christ that thing is a beast.  I thought I didn't like it at first due to how slow it is, but when I started killing everything with one or two hits I stopped worrying about that.

Good luck with the catacombs. That and Tomb of Giants were the hardest parts of the game (thanks, skeleton dogs). Getchaself a divine weapon!

I'm surprised that you found The Catacombs that difficult, I just breezed through it and Pinwheel was a joke.

 

The Tomb of the Giants, on the other hand...

I found the Cast Light Spell to be invaluable in the Tomb of the Giants because it got that damn Skull Lantern out of my left hand. You can buy the spell from the phantom you rescue from the yellow crystal golem in Darkroot Basin. 

Catacombs wasn't bad, but me not having a divine weapon made it a bitch, and there's a serious lack of bonfires in that place. Pinwheel may as well have been a regular enemy. I tend to lump both of those regions together in my mind.

 

 

God, what a great game. I sprinted through New Game + up until the Capra fight. NOPE.

Yeah, I can't imagine how aggravating it would be without a divine weapon.  I made a few well positioned falls that took me straight to pinwheel with minimal fighting after I'd checked the whole area out.

 

That capra fight is such a bitch anyway, I'd say it's one of the few moments in the game that actually borders on unfair.  The room or the dogs alone would be difficult enough, but to put them both together is just cruel.

Been playing this during this weekend as a getaway from Skyrim, and damn, Im addicted to this masochist experience.

Through sheer determination and obssesion, i managed to defeat the Gaping Dragon yesterday; took only a few tries, but the ordeal of enduring hours of gameplay while cursed nearly made me give up (fuck those frog things, fuck them forever).

I get that the game is hard and challenging, and never so much as cheats you downright, but still...screw killing that Firedrake; If i could take on the Capra Demon and the Gaping Dragon, i should be able to kill this bastard, but he keeps pulling out taht one hit kill flame shower cheap trick.

Also, loving my enhanced broadsword; works while using a shield, and both its attack patterns work for most situations, especially the normal, sweeping attack, which has saved my ass from side ambushes while focused on one enemy on several ocasions.

 

I picked this up for $35 during Amazon's Cyber Monday sale and just got around to playing it.

 

Holy shit.

I picked this up the other day having never played Demon Souls and all I can say is "Holy shit!  This game is fucking HARD".

 

I'm loving every minute of it though.  I especially like how it doesn't hold your hand, has a minimalistic plot (that makes you figure it out), and how the enemies respawn everytime you light a bonfire.

 

It took a while to get used to what I was doing, but 9 hours in I am starting to figure it out.  It's crazy how you can invade other peoples' worlds and shit.  Either way, I'm only around the Undead Parish area, since I keep leveling up and looking for secrets and things. 

 

It's an exhilirating game.  My heart was pounding when with lots of souls, I took on a black knight far from my previous bonfire knowing if I died I'd have to trek back and be careful in order to get souls back.  All good stuff.