Dark Souls!

[eksdee]

I want that Dragon Lance.

 

[Billargh]

I haven't really had a chance to play over the weekend, but, Blighttown is really putting me off, that place is dreadful

 

[Aada]

I haven't really had a chance to play over the weekend, but, Blighttown is really putting me off, that place is dreadful

lol yeah it's torture, have just started it myself on my new toon, got to the first bonfire and turned it off! Will crack it today as after that the game is a lot better.

 

[eksdee]

You can power through Blight Town pretty quickly once you get your bearings. The boss is also a cakewalk. Definitely the worst zone in the game though.

I'm in Anor Lando now. I've heard the boss there is insanely hard. Any tips?

 

[Billargh]

Yeah it's not that it's a difficulty zone or anything, I just really dislike it Will try and power through it shortly like. And can't help you eksdee, you've overtaken me now!

 

[eksdee]

The framerate really doesn't help. I was getting headaches down there . When you get to Anor Lando and see the incredible view as you arrive, you'll be even more amazed at how bad the frame rate issues are in Blight Town.

 

[Rulke]

I want that Dragon Lance.

I got it, but even with 27 str & dex, my lightning spear was better. The R2 laser beam is nifty but it rapes durability

I'm in Anor Lando now. I've heard the boss there is insanely hard. Any tips?

The zone has one central path from the start straight to the boss - AFTER you unlock all the gates via side routes and kill some mini bosses. Basically, do all that then summon a couple of phantoms at the bottom of the elevator near the bonfire and go pwn the boss

There's 2 bosses together, when you kill one the other absorbs it's power and goes into uber mode (you only get the soul of the one you kill last). Ormstein is apparently the harder of the two, but his soul's used for the dragonslayer spear. The trick is to stay close to him, most of his attacks are wide swings. Just watch for his grab

Enjoy Anor Londo though, I thought it was a hugely epic zone

 

[eksdee]

Yeah I am so far, I just got the first bridge thing done when you go through the church. When you first land there it's like... oh my fucking god.

 

[Billargh]

Anor Lando is sounding bloody terrifying listening to you lot.

 

[eksdee]

Nah, the oh my fucking god is because it's just stunning.

Entered the Painted World of Amaris this evening but was pretty tired. Lost about 10k souls stupidly then realised Dark Souls is not a game to play when you're not fully concentrating.

 

[Rulke]

Ariamis was excellent too, loved the atmosphere and feel of the place. The entrance is really well done, looking at the huge painting of the castle from the rope bridge then zoning in on that same bridge looking up at the castle.

Did you go back to the asylum already then? I thought you needed the painted doll to get into Ariamis. Oh and you can't get back out again til finish the zone....

 

[eksdee]

Yeah I did. Took me quite a while to figure out how to beat that Stray Demon.

 

[Billargh]

God damn, turns out I was right next to Quelaag's Domain the whole time, I was going the wrong way through Blighttown

Boss wasn't so bad like, I 'summoned' the guy at the door, quite clearly a faux bot I mean, I killed him 30 seconds previous! I managed to find a secret passage just after the bell, turns out that's where you join the Chaos Servant covenant.

Not sure whether I should continue to the Demon ruins or not though, or back up and do Anor Lando.

 

[eksdee]

There's no story element to the Demon Ruins. I didn't bother as I heard Ceaseless Discharge is really tough and I basically couldn't be bothered.

 

[Rulke]

You get some nifty ringwraith style armour at discharge, he's passive til you pick it up. Its actually really good for its light weight.

 

[eksdee]

I'm wearing that Black Knight armour from next to the Painted World entrance because I'm a BOSS!

 

[Billargh]

That armour seems pretty sweet Rulke, might have to do it after all. I try my best to keep my encumbrance below 50% for mobility like, makes my armour pretty flimsy though

 

[Billargh]

Hah just been looking through the DS wiki, turns out Ceaseless drops an ember, however...

Spoiler

Found in the amidst the lava that cools after defeating Ceaseless Discharge. There are 7 Taurus Demons guarding it.

Fuuuuuck

 

[eksdee]

Rofl. If you can pull them alone it should be easy enough though.

 

[Rulke]

You can and they're not that hard when you're not trapped on a thin walk-way. You can grab the chaos ember behind the taurus demons and the Fire ember is further into the demon ruins

I never made a chaos weapon, apparently their damage scales with how much humanity you have

 

[eksdee]

Yeah I read about that, it seems to be pretty widely accepted that the damage caps at 10 Humanity. Frankly I can't think of many situations where I'd run around with that much Humanity anyway tbh.

I have a +6(? or thereabouts) Divine spear, are any of the others really worth/need making or?

 

[Rulke]

I never tried any of the divine/magic weapons on my playthrough, but had fire and lightning ones which were awesome. You'll probably have some of the titanite kicking around anyway if you wanted to try some

 

[Billargh]

Hah I'm still not using any kind of 'magic' weapons, I'm still using the Drake sword Prolly gonna upgrade my dagger to Divine so I can do the Catacombs a bit easier, I'm too scared to use my special Titanite in case I need to use it later on a better item

 

[Everz]

Right.. if I want this is it best for 360? Seeing as I've not touched a console for neigh on 3 years.. is the learning curve for buttons and such hard?

 

[eksdee]

The controls are pretty simple, it's mostly about energy and space management. If you plan to try and parry a lot, that takes some timing but really if you've ever played a video game on a console it's very easy to get into. The combat is very well designed, extremely fluid and responsive so you never feel like - as with some other action rpgs - the game is kind of counter intuitively trying to 'help' you.

That said, the game is undeniably tough and if you fuck up some mobs can 1 hit you quite easily. So it won't be a cakewalk, but it's the kind of challenge that never feels frustrating (at least to me) because, in short, if you die it's generally due to you fucking up and nothing else

 

[Everz]

Yeh the toughness was part of the attraction to the game, if its something that you have to get stuck into and think with rather then running round mashing buttons then I'm all for it.

Next is..

360 or should I get a ps3 for such a thing?
How does the online work?

 

[eksdee]

Well, so far as I'm aware both versions are identical. No performance issues on one but not the other etc. I believe those of us chatting in this thread about the game are all playing on 360. Whether that makes a difference or not to you I don't know, but other than that it's really just personal preference and what other games you might think about buying.

The online works in such a way that you can invade other peoples' games to try and kill them and steal their Souls/Humanity (two of the game's major resources) and vice versa. You can also put down a marker to invite other people into your game to help each other on, say, a tough boss. You can only do these things while 'human' (as opposed to being 'hollow'). It's a concious choice to become human as you have to use a (somewhat rare) item to do so. As described, it has benefits and risks so it's another thing to manage in the game.

 

[Turamber]

Bought this when I got back from Germany on Friday afternoon. Played most of that afternoon and evening... have to say other than being very hard it isn't particularly good. Combat, graphics, even the story in the game are all a bit 'meh'.

 

[eksdee]

Should have really done some research on the game if you were expecting a Bioware-esque story.

 

[Billargh]

Man got all the way through Sen's Fortress without finding the bonfire, decided to take the boss on, got him to half health then he knocked me off the platform. Goodbye 30k souls. Had to look online to find where the bonfire was, which turned out to be pretty useless cause I got the boss down second time Stupidly easy for a boss that Iron Golem was.

And now I'm in Anor Londo, hot damn this place is pretty.