Dark Souls
 

Anyone else got it?

I basically played Demon Souls right up until Dark Souls came out because I still hadn't done everything in the game and wanted to try out different character builds so I was a big fan of the predecessor. I've had this one since release and poured an unhealthy amount of time into it, it's ridiculously absorbing (can't see any reason to buy Skyrim or MW3 until I'm bored of this).

I'm pretty close to the end of my first run through but I can see myself going NG+ or starting out a new character so I can use some of the items that I haven't levelled up enough for this time round. I think I love both games because of the near lack of any kind of story, it's basically just running around in a constant state of tension, trying to chip away at the difficulty of the game.

The online multiplayer is inspired, I think, in terms of the co-op set-up and the invasion/duelling, although Dark Souls has toned down the invading a fair bit, which is disappointing.

Requiem got it and has been telling me about it. I should be getting it in maybe a month or so.

Good. Start off as the character who has nothing but a big club and a leather pouch over his naked bollocks. I wish I'd done that.

That could be a problem, I would urge you to stick with it though. The game doesn't fuck you over, you just have to be careful and a bit circumspect. You can't steam in and beat the shit out of enemies and expect to come out alive. The game isn't linear, so you can go to really tough parts of it right from the beginning, but the idea is to wander around getting levelled up and new items that chip away at the difficulty bit by bit.

The co-op is a big help in getting past tough spots.

Sounds like it's the sort of game that would absolutely infuriate me. I've got a lot on my plate gaming wise right now, but I might give it a chance if I see it cheap a bit further down the line.

Friend and I have been trying to play this. Haven't done much on my own but I have a feeling I would get more done.

We are pretty much just getting rocked at parts and are already tired of going through an area over and over again. Seems like the game WANTS us to grind and keep saving/respawning everything but idk if I feel like it. Some parts were absolutely awesome. There were times I had to commend the developers for doing something a certain way. Still.. ugggghhh, it is disheartening at times.

Gonna play some tomorrow by myself just to see if I can focus better and really get through some places.

I heard this was also for 360. When I eventually get a PS3 I def wanna get Demon Souls.

Well you do need to go to the bonfires often to level up and keep your spot in a level, but you don't have to grind if you don't want to. The combat system is pretty fair, you can beat any enemy as long as you are good enough and patient enough, but also thinking about the weapons you are using helps too. For the early game I found using a spear got me through the early parts because I could hide behind my shield, then I got the Drake Sword which smashes pretty much all the early enemies. I had to grind a bit, obviously, but didn't do any serious grinding until pretty far into the game.

The game may not be for you due to its fairly idiosyncratic style, but I think if you stick with it, it's a rewarding experience. It's a cliche to say it but it does remind me of old games, where you basically had no story, no cutscenes and you just had to keep trying to beat levels over and over. The game layout allows you to challenge an area but back out of it again if it's too difficult.

Use the wikis to help too, they contain good info. This game gives you virtually no instruction, so using the community is a big help, unless you want to play in a constant state of worry (which is good too). Lay down a soulsign to help other people, too, it's the best way to get souls and humanity and it gives you a risk-free dry run of bosses/levels. Then revive yourself and summon your own help.

The biggest thing is definitely patience, however.

Probably pick it up when it's cheap. I didn't get on with Demon Soul's a great deal, but I also didn't play it when online, which is a game-changer I'm lead to believe.

I'd get it now, but I'm pretty stacked up until the end of the year now. Might even have to wait until after Mass Effect 3.

Yeah you have to be online. It's unreal. The first time in Demon Souls that I was invaded by another player was incredible. It just appealed to my sense of bastardry that it was possible to go in uninvited and try to fuck up someone else's game up to your own advantage. You never know how it'll work out, the person you invade may be totally unprepared for your character build or they may be a fucking beast who one-hits you and then does a little dance as your corpse dissolves in front of them.

The co-op is great too obviously.

On the whole invasion thing, when someone aggressively invades your game in this one you can "indict" them so their name goes into a "Book of the Guilty." Today I joined a covenant in the game which gives you a special item which, when you use it, randomly has you invade any player with their name in that book as a phantom of vengeance. It's fucking beautiful. I've spent the past hour invading these people and dealing out some reprisal for them being bastards. You get little tokens for beating them (plus some of the game's currency) that you can trade in for better weapons from the covenant. It's a guilt-free method of going in and shitting on someone else for a laugh.

Of course it's only a matter of time before I invade some guy with two other phantoms backing him up and they all kick the dung out of me.

This game sounds so beautiful. :'(

It sounds like a game for my inner bastard.

K so on my own save file, I am doing much better. Think I have a better grasp on how this game works.

Couldn't resist it. I came into a little extra cash and picked it up. If this is as good as you and one of my irl friends say, Skyrim might get put on the backburner less than 24 hours before it's even out.

I'm close to the end of the game but I don't want to finish now because invading these guilty bastards is too much craic. I have a ring that turns me almost invisible (think it's gonna be patched soon to make it less dominant), so I'm running in and stabbing these bastards in the back and kicking their arses before they even know what's happening. They get a message flashing up on screen that I've invaded and most just start panicking and running for their lives.

One guy shat on me, though, he waited until I sought him out then cast a spell that turned himself invisible and proceeded to beat me to death. Can't argue with that.

I didn't know this before I started playing Demon Souls, but it's from the same developers as those who made the Tenchu games, which were my absolute favourite, alongside the Soul Reaver games, on the PS2.

We started over with a new character, so that we had a game where we didn't kill the stupid merchant.

Already farther than we were, and we just got a rapier and gave it a +1 and it is rocking. So awesome because it jabs and lunges and doesn't hit a thousand fucking walls while we're fighting. Getting better at taking out those fucking Fencing Knights. We are AT the gargoyle right now. We are just able to get there regularly but we haven't tried actually fighting him. Just got killed a couple times to see what he was about.

WTF this game gets frustrating after a while. Fun, but fucking hell.

Demons Souls was such a fantastic game. I'm sad that I don't need to be buying anything right now. I'd kill to have some Dark Souls in my life.

You can open up a shortcut (if you haven't already) that by-passes the whole level to get to the gargoyles, it's the lift at the back if the church. It goes directly from the Firelink Shrine to the church. Also there's a bonfire opposite the side entrance to the church in a room at the end of a long lane to another building. That means you don't have to keep fighting your way through the entire level over and over. As frustrating as the game can be, you measure your progress by opening up these shortcuts to make life much easier. I didn't "get" Demon Souls at first until I realised that you just have to be very careful until you open up these shortcuts (or bonfires in this game).

If you can revive yourself to human form also, you can summon Knight Solaire (NPC) to help you with the Gargoyles if you spoke to him before, plus other online players obviously. That makes the fight a lot easier.

Just realised if you've upgraded a weapon then you've obviously found the second bonfire.

Is Solaire the guy you meet before the bridge with the red dragon? Or is he the knight you rescue from the jail cell right before the gargoyles?

Also, is it worth it taking the time to kill the Black Knights now? Or are they a huge pain in the ass and not worth it till you get better? We tried each of the ones we've come in contact with and they demolished us every time.

Yeah Solaire is the guy before the dragon, he leaves a summon sign before the Gargoyles if you are in human form and will help with the fight.

The knight you rescued is Lautrec, I rescued him too but what you probably should have done is leave him there or kill him because he's actually a bastard. He goes back to the Firelink Shrine and sits at the part below it on the side of the mountain across from the silent woman in the cell who upgrades your Estus flasks. He kills her eventually while you're out adventuring and leaves, but it shuts off the bonfire at the Firelink Shrine. You get to take revenge on him later in the game and get the soul back off him so you can revive the woman (although I used her soul to upgrade my Estus flask and now the Firelink Shrine bonfire is gone forever).

As for the Black Knights, basically in this game you can beat any enemy at any point if you're good enough and/or patient enough at the combat, depending on your tactics. I beat them using the Drake Sword and a good shield and just avoiding their heavy attacks. You can't expect to beat anyone in this game if you take hits, but conversely if you avoid getting hit (or have the correct armour/shields) you can beat anyone. Stamina is the most important thing in the combat, probably even more important than high HP. Keep an eye on your stamina and remember that keeping your shield up slows recovery, while having low stamina means that you can get stunlocked or take damage even while blocking.

It's worth killing them because they drop their weapons and, if you have the stats to use them, they're pretty good. Get yourself the Drake Sword by buying a bow and 50-100 arrows off the first merchant, then shooting the dragon's tale from beneath the bridge. It takes about 10-15 minutes to do, but be patient and just keep hitting the tale with arrows and eventually it drops off and gives you the Drake Sword, which will one-hit the majority of the early enemies and make fighting the Black Knights much easier.

We got the drake sword but we're not a strength based character. We use dex/advanced weapons so the drake sword is useless to us. :( Didn't know if it was worth it to even pump up Str right now if we're not going to bother with it at the higher levels anyways due to wanting to specialize more.

Also, we upgraded our Estus Flasks already using the soul we got from the HUGE black knight in the Parish.

Also, am I understanding 'equipment load/how fast you move' correctly? Keep it at half of your equip load and you will move quickly? Does this affect how fast you attack and such, or is that just Dex? Or does Dex even affect your attack speed? Just not sure on the intricacies of the game and how certain things affect you.

I know that by keeping your equip load under half of its max, you move quickly. That's how we got across the bridge with the red dragon. Just took off our armor and BOOKED IT to the stairway. But I'm not sure how movement works with everything else.

I would get Strength up to at least 20 so you can use some equipment. I went for a melee build myself, so Strength/Dexterity basically both need to be upgraded to a certain extent to be able to wield stuff. Endurance is also very important. You may struggle a bit early game if you're focusing on Dexterity, the Eastern style swords (uchigatana, scimitar, falchion) get the best bonuses from Dexterity so get one of those and upgrade to increase the damage bonus.

I largely ignored Intelligence and Faith, as you can use Pyromancy spells without those, but there are some incredible spells if you focus on either of those (impossible to do both).

The Estus flasks can be upgraded to +8 I think, there are other NPCs that can upgrade them, though so it's no biggie when Lautrec murders the silent woman.

Hmm, alright we will bump our Strength up a bit then. Yeah we have definitely made things harder on ourselves I think, but I think that's sort of the idea of this game.. they don't tell you these things and you just kind of have to figure out how to best approach it on your own. We pretty much only have our smartphones with which to look up information on, as he doesn't have internet at his place. So we typically don't rely on guides as much as I would like. It also takes away the online aspect of player hints and such.

Equipment load affects your running speed, endurance loss/recovery and your rolling speed. If you have over 50% equip burden your roll becomes basically a fat fall. But strong armour gives you poise, which means enemies cannot interrupt your attacks.

I'm not sure what effects attack speed to be honest, obviously the size of the weapon is a big thing, I think maybe that the major stat for each weapon class probably affects how well you can use it in terms of attack speed and damage eg. if you have a greatsword, strength will improve attack speed, if you have a falchion then dexterity will.

With bosses sometimes it makes more sense to just put on your lightest armour and evade them. In fact, in Demon Souls I always used the lightest armour possible because it's way better in these games to avoid getting hit entirely (and to have a good shield).

I'd highly recommend playing it online yourself then, you miss out a major part of the game if you don't. The very best way to grind souls and humanity is by helping out other players, as it's completely risk-free, plus it lets you preview levels/bosses.

Just made some massive progress. Well, massive for us at least. We tried the gargoyles a few times and failed, so we decided to just grind out some levels for enough strength to use the drake sword. Went in and ANNIHILATED both gargoyles first try. Rang the bell, and then went through opening up a crap ton of passages that connected a lot of areas. Rescued the guy down in the basement and found the demon with the dogs.

That's basically what this game is about. It's not necessarily incredibly hard, it's just about finding the right gear and the right strategy to get through the levels and getting the shortcuts opened.

The Capra demon gives a lot of people serious trouble early in the game (level 20 or so). There's a stage later on where you have to fight 6 of them.

K, I took that deprived guy because he had the most even stats and I figured I could test out what works and what doesn't early on... I get the feeling armour makes an incredible difference in this game.

It's alright, because armor starts dropping pretty regularly. Not GOOD armor, mind you. But it is not terrible.

Also ECG, is there a place where I'll get to sell items for souls later on? Because my inventory is FLOODED with shit I don't need.

Yeah...sort of. First of all, you can just drop stuff you don't want. Go to your inventory and select the item and it should give you an option to just drop it. You can also purchase a "bottomless box" from the blacksmith (I think) to transfer stuff you want to keep but don't want clogging up your inventory. Later on in the game, a giant talking snake appears at the Firelink Shrine where the crow is and you can feed him unwanted items for a very minor amount of souls.

The blacksmith to the right of the parish? That would come in handy. Wanted to keep pretty much everything since there's no limit to how much we can hold. Figured eventually it would come in handy even if it does only give a small amount. It might add up with a good 75 items or so.

Also, have beat 2 black knights now as of being able to use the drake sword. Definitely makes things SOOOO much easier.

It does but that doesn't last long, it becomes underpowered for baddies pretty quickly. Don't bother upgrading it because there's basically no return in doing so, the damage increase is minimal. Keep any souls you pick up from bosses, don't be tempted to use them to bank currency souls to boost your levels because you can make pretty nifty weapons out of them later in the game that come in very handy.

So we're in our 40's I think, and we're in Anor Londo. We left the Demon Ruins and decided to come back later (I did kill all 7 of the taurus demons before leaving though). So we made our way back up, and now we've actually upgraded the shit out of our main weapon. Have a +10 Uchigatana. Pretty great with the bleed effect. Have contemplated grinding some titanite shards just so we can do upgrades all around.

Not sure what has the best drop rate of titanite shards (I could look it up I'm sure) though.

Discovered the benefit of stability. Using the eagle shield right now and would love to make it +10 for the added stability. (Shit, or was it +15?)

We've been using a pretty thorough guide I found on torrents and it has helped us a LOT. Pretty much blew through a couple places with its help.

You can buy Titanite shards from the first blacksmith you encounter, think they are only 500 souls or something. You can get Large Titanite Shards from a merchant near the end of Sen's Fortress too, 4000 souls a pop I believe.

I haven't played in a while since starting Skyrim, I was quite near the end of the game but I haven't got time to play both. It's weird because I'm not particularly enjoying Skyrim in gameplay terms but I feel the need to progress through the world.

Got it last week and played a few seconds just to see how it works. Might start off as Wanderer, Cleric, or Thief. Might even go as a Depraved.

I'll start tomorrow or Monday probably.

Still haven't beaten this. We are in Anor Londo fighting the dragon slayer and his fat friend right now.

That's a cunt of a boss fight. I helped multiple people fight them before I had a go in my own world and we lost nearly every time. Then I recruited a couple of phantoms and beat them on the first go in my world. Helps if you're lucky enough to get a balanced group with strong melee and ranged magic.

Have used the Sun guy a couple times but I always get raped in the second phase.

Can get them to the second phase pretty regularly now but ugh.. Wish we had online.

Randomly decided to pick this up, I was not prepared. Died so many times to the first boss before I beat him.

One tip for the bosses, and basically the entire game, is that agile evasion is way, way better than relying on armour. People seem to load up on heavy armour which offers big defensive stats but slows them way down, particularly at low levels, but most bosses (with a couple of exceptions) can one or two hit you regardless of armour. Being able to roll quickly is essential. A good shield with 100% physical damage reduction and high stability with good light armour is best (I go for Eagle Shield with the ninja armour, I also have the ninja-flip ring which makes evasion an even better tactic). You can basically beat any enemy or boss in the game at any level if you can evade their attacks and are patient enough.

Yeah we stay below half weight at all times. We use a +5 eagle shield I think and we're still below weight and it's definitely the only way I could imagine playing.

No real 'key'. Consider this your first challenge. He's pretty easy. The only 'key' to bosses are learning what moves they do so you can prepare for them. Many attacks, you can block. Some, you just have to get the fuck away from. Some will one shot you if you get hit.

Just a matter of learning them, and being precise enough to not get hit by them.

I'll give you a hint and say that the 'falling attack' is pretty helpful in some fights. You won't get many opportunities like that though, so don't think you'll have that ability every fight.

just beat moonlight butterfly and went into the tower next to the (evil pain in the ass cunt fucker) hydra and got two hitted by some goon. im level 20 should i go in there? thinking about going threw the sewers instead. save those bugs that curse you i was making good headway in there.

dont fight the skeletons, they way out level you. from the fire head to your right and up the hill. the enemies that way ar ein your level range.

Yeah don't go near the graveyard until you have levelled up a good bit. Just sprint through it a couple of times to pick up some goodies. There are Giant Skeletons that will shit on you until you have a fairly high level and a good weapon. Plus when you get through the graveyard, you simply enter the Catacombs, where the skeletons can come back to life unless you kill them with a Blessed weapon or find the guy who is raising them.

As for the guy in the tower near the Hydra, that's Havel. He can be tough to beat, as one hit can almost kill you. Just strip down to the lightest armour you have, or strip the armour off altogether, as he can one or two-hit you regardless. Then roll around him as he is fairly slow and try to backstab him when he swings for you and misses. He should go down fairly quickly if you do this, I beat him on a fairly low level. He is definitely worth beating as he drops a ring which boosts your equip burden limit by a large amount (you can get his armour later in the game in Anor Londo, but it's too heavy to use unless you have poured souls into Strength). This is the key to Dark Souls really, be ready to be patient, to avoid getting hit and to chip away at tough opponents. Don't be tempted into hitting them more times than you have to.

Taking on multiple enemies at once is always trouble.

I would personally suggest downloading a strategy guide. There was a pretty good and very thorough one I found on demonoid. The main reason, is for the maps! Maps are soooooo helpful in this game. We played without them for a long while, and after not knowing where to go next for a long time, we got sick of wandering around aimlessly wondering if we were even supposed to be in an area or not.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/

I tend to use that if I am stuck. I think using Wikis for this game is fine because it deliberately doesn't tell you much about what to do, you can wander into really shitty areas early in the game, so using the help of the community who play it seems fair enough. I used the wikidot site for Demons Souls a fair bit to find out about good items to get, mainly to find out the best uses for boss souls for weapon upgrades and the like. There's also maps and walkthroughs on that site.

i have no idea what to do with this butterfly soul...

Moonlight Shield. Find out how to make it from the Wiki, it was devastating pre-patch but I'm not sure what it will be like now. It's no good as an actual shield, but if you equip it as a secondary weapon, it was a magic projectile attack that can smash even the toughest enemies.

nice

Starting right now. Deprived with the Pendant. Why not.

Nah I just beat 'em. Rang that fuckin bell too. Fuck those bitches

Reinforced my armor +2 and my shield +1. Threw a black firebomb and one last swing when the 2nd one spawned which took care of the first. Then carefully fought against the 2nd one.

Gargoyles were the first REAL challenge, but it did feel great to kill them. The elevator back to firelink is a nice shortcut too.

It is not impossible. Just do it. If you don't want to fight these because they're hard, you should just quit now. The game doesn't get any easier.

So I started another play through since RoXer picked this up. I don't know what it is, but I am absolutely blowing through this game now. Probably only died like 10 times total and I just beat the Capra demon.

Beat the Taurus demon first try. Gargoyles first try. Capra demon first try. Am level 30 with 4hr 38min played time.

Don't understand it. Maybe we just leveled up our old character wrong and made it harder on ourselves. I'm just running through it now. The only down side is that I'm not getting nearly as many item drops because I'm not doing sections over and over again. At this point in our playthrough, our inventory was crowded with like a hundred items.. at least 10 titanite shards and some larger pieces. Reds and blues, etc. I don't have shit on my new character. Like 1 shard and 1 chunk and that's it.

I also think my friend was making it a lot harder because he played really recklessly and would die a lot.

Use the co-op element. This is the best way to get through the game, both helping and using the help of other people. Help other people to get your strategy right for sections, to gain souls (you don't lose your souls when you die in co-op and you gain large amounts by helping clear levels and beat bosses) and to gain humanity. Use your humanity to revive yourself and then activate the soul signs you see lying around. You can have 2 companions, this makes most bosses much more managable.

You have to buy the white soapstone to be able to leave your own summon sign.

My PS3 died yesterday so I lost all my progress in Dark Souls. Replaced it already and traded in a few games I didn't want, including Skyrim, to mitigate the cost a bit. I'm actually looking forward to starting again and trying a new character build in this, even though I was pretty close to finishing the game. All I had left to do was fight my way through the ghost city to the Four Kings boss, then fight the final boss. Probably would have been hard as fuck to do that really, but still, it took a while to get that far.

Hurry up and catch up to where we're at. About near the swamps-ish.

Fucking hate those swamps.

Got to the spider queen Querlaag or whoever. The one that shoots fire and lava. So she kills me and I go back trying to reclaim about 10000 worth of souls but they don't show up. Pissed me off. She kills me again.

Respawn and as I'm making my way over to her, a message pops up telling me I have been invaded and I start to to panic. This is the first time I've been invaded and had no real strategy on what to do. My invader was an armorless woman wielding a cleaver. But, and this is what freaked me out, she was glowing orange. So I figured she's some super level and probably has some lava ring or something that gives her that aura and I start to panic again. But she gets dropped in the middle of the swamp and I don't think she was expecting that. Hit her 3 times and then parried her cleaver to kill her. Got 9500 souls and some item. Her weapon I think. I kept forward (actually I went back and saved) and she available to summon for the boss fight. Why not. So she helped me with that too. Except this time she wasn't glowing and I'm going to assume that the glowing affect if the "cracked red orb" effect or whatever just to indicate that that is another human player going after you and not some special effect.

Anyway, thank you armorless cleaver girl for the 29000 souls. I wish I could send you a message but this game won't even show you recent players in the dashboard.

That wasn't an online invasion, it was a scripted NPC Black Phantom invasion. I can't remember her name, but you can summon her to help you fight the spider queen thing now that you've killed her in black phantom form. There's several of those in the game, one guy invades you 3 times and when you kill him the last time, you can pick up his thorny armour which does damage on rolling. Pretty sure it does show recently encountered players on the PS3 anyway.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/maneater-mildred

Ohhhh

Fucking game. I can kill the Hydra but not the giant mushroom man or clam people things

The Mushroom people are best left alone. I never went in to face the clams and Seath alone either, had a couple of companions.

Should I not fight the Stray Demon yet when I revisit the Asylum? I've taken out the 2 black knights and that 1 dude no problem but the Stray Demon whips my ass. The guide says I need a shield that blocks 100% fire damage but the closest I have is the Black Knight Shield that is a 95. Then I put all of my best anti-fire equipment on but it still doesn't make a difference when he does that fire blast.

Do I have to wait until I'm leveled up a bit more until I go after him?

And how valuable are Dung Pies? Because I'm just going to trade in all of mine to Hawk Girl for Demon Titanite

Dung pies are pretty worthless because they harm you as well. If you join the covenant of the spider witch girl behind the secret wall after you beat Quelaag then get yourself infected with the egg disease, you can buy Poison and Toxic Cloud from her servant which do pretty much the same thing.

I spent two hours trying to fight the Stray Demon the other day then gave up, the key is just not to get hit, no matter what your armour is. Keep running behind him, but watch out for his big blast that also hits behind. Stay away from him until he uses it, then sprint in and beat the shit out of him while he is stalled. My problem was that I was using the Drake Sword and it was basically tickling him, so I would whittle his power down to his last quarter, then one lapse in timing and he would flatten me in one hit. It got annoying, I've picked up a Black Knight sword now but I might wait until I get the Lightning Spear in Sen's Fortress before I tackle him again. The Lightning Spear opens up a lot of the game when you get it, it deals with most strong enemies and you can hide behind a shield while using it.

I've just beaten Quelaag and rang the second bell, but I haven't went through the swamp very much yet. There are some goodies in it still to get.

Yeah, I'm using the Drake Sword and I got him down to about half. He spams the shit out of that fire blast which I can't really shield against and it takes away 40% of my health. Even if I'm really close to him, he'll more than likely use the fire blast instead of that butt stomp move.

I can't imagine playing what I've played through WITHOUT the Drake Sword. I realize that your strength/dex ratings will eventually make normalish weapons more powerful than the Drake Sword but it seems like that's going to be a while.

I guess it's off to Sen's Fortress then

Also helps if you've been able to get +10 on a weapon you want. Maybe even ascended it. I'd say by the end of Sen's Fortress you should definitely have a badass weapon. You'll need it by the time you get to Anor Londo.

Oh. You can only do each item once.

I was so happy thinking I'd hit the jackpot and was going to turn my 12 Dung Pie into 12 Demon Tianite. :'(

Sen's Fortress is annoying as fuck. Real chore to get through. Don't go there with many souls or humanity stored up. Fight the big snake guys by circling round behind them and back-stabbing, as they are pretty slow.

Once you get through there and to Anor Londo, as Requiem says you can start making some glorious weapons. Quelaag's Chaos Sword became my main weapon on my last playthrough, it scales with humanity and minces all normal enemies in 1-2 hits with 10+ humanity. It's made with Quelaag's soul and a +10 curved sword. There's a couple of spots for farming humanity later in the game.

Gonna get a fire ricard's rapier and a lightning scimitar this time I think.

I had a +5 lightning Iaito last time out. Bleed effect to the max.

The Gravelord Sword is a beast of a weapon as well. Gives toxic status to people after a few swings, great for PvP invasions.

I'm co-opping with people to beat Quelaag repeatedly, going to level up in the covenant to get Chaos Firestorm and buy Firestorm then beat the shit out of that Stray Demon.

I'm thinking of helping out in MP after Sen's Fortress and also specifically leveling up in that covenant since the guide claims an extremely useful shortcut will be opened up.

The boss of Sen's Fortress is a good one to help out with, as he's fairly easily beaten with multiple people, gives out large amounts of souls and you get summoned there fairly regularly.

God this game is fucking annoying at times. I was literally one hit away from killing the Stray Demon after half an hour of trying again (new fire spells are no good, Black Knight sword does do more damage however), I got greedy and had one more swing just as he flew into the air then he fucking flattened me with his fat arse, I got up and ran away trying desperately to get to safety to heal only for the cunt to smack me with one of his cheat AoE attacks. One more hit would have got him, but I got too fucking excited.

Edit: finally beat him. Quite quickly obviously, I toxin clouded him which didn't do much, then equipped my lightest armour and the Grass Crest Shield for stamina regen then two-handed the Black Knight Sword. The jumping attacks do 365 damage, so he's taken down fairly quickly with that.

fuck this game sometimes

omg

So I made it to Sen's Fortress and fine, whatever I'm doing a decent job. There are times where I think it's glitched occasionally because sometimes enemies don't spawn and sometimes the boulder is rolling a different way than before but whatever, I'm doing a pretty good job making my way up there. The mimic killed me which made me lose souls and then I died again before I could recover. When I went to kill the mimic, the item it dropped fell down the elevator in that room. It looked as if there was a bottom to it, so I went after. There isn't. I died. I think the item was a Lightning Spear. Sounds useful. I will never know. Died again trying to make my way back and salvage souls because my controller is messed up.

Ok so eventually, I fall to the bottom on that first bridge and notice those 2 prowling demons and all the goodies behind one of them. Somehow I manage to put on the Rusted Ring and I book it the items, grab the items, and kill that one. That was pretty awesome. I walk back out to challenge the other one and those 3 serpents lighting me and kill me. Great. I tried to recover my souls but I didn't survive the fall. Great. Eventually, I manage to make my way down there and kill the other demon.

So I walk around a bit more and notice there are two more in the other room. They're directly underneath Big Hat Logan. Should be a piece of cake. But one of them takes me out.

This was days ago. I think Wednesday night. It's now Saturday morning. Anytime I spent between then and now playing this game was focusing on killing those other two prowling demons. I tried everything I could think of but I never even got the first one down to half strength and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And if you walk too far to the right, you trigger the 2nd one and now it's 2 on 1 and there's no way I'm winning that. By the way, each time I go down there I have to somehow take out those 3 serpents. I'm sometimes able to plunge one and push one off but most of the time they hurt me pretty bad.

I spent way too long trying everything I could think of to take out those demons but this morning I said fuck it, just keep going. I make my way up there and got about 15000 souls. I need 18000 to level up. I'm using my shitty controller because I don't know why. I'm an idiot. I fall off a ledge and die. I go back to retrieve them and I dunno what happened, but I died. Lost more souls. And I dunno how, but I get it up to about 16000 and I say to myself "just use a homeward bone, go back, and level up". As finish that thought, I fall off and die. I go back to retrieve it and it's on that (I think) last pathway with the slightly different timed hooks. I run and it looks like the last one is about to get me so I roll to make and I roll past my souls, off the ledge, and I die.

I have lost so many motherfucking souls/wasted SO MUCH FUCKING TIME in Sen's Fortress.

WHATEVER THOUGH. A couple hours ago I'm like "Whatever. Just go up to the roof. Fuck those demons. Fuck trying to level up. Just see what's out there."

And I make it to the roof. I take out that black knight. I take out that guy and his rapier. I'm doing fine. Got about 17000 souls or so.

You know that bonfire up there? The one where you have to drop down. There was a helpful tip that said "try jumping" right on the ledge. It was rated a 3. No reason not to believe it. AS I WAS MOVING THE RIGHT STICK TO PROPERLY SEE WHERE I WAS GOING TO LAND, a big burst of fire engulfs me. I guess that guy is throwing fire or something, I don't even know at the time, alls I knows is I'm on fire so I should jump. I did not have time to see where I was landing and I decide to jump. I jumped so far past that bonfire you can't even imagine. Like I'm an Olympic long jumper and the bonfire is the line where you have to jump and I set a new world record.

Went back to recover my souls and one of the hooks got me because my controller was being stupid.

Decided to say "fuck this game sometimes" and take a break.

And then...

(took about a minute for that post to load after I hit reply and I was ready to kill Triple A because I didn't copy it)

So I turn the game on again. I'm using my good controller this time. I am ready and focused to take out any and everything. :)

I make it up to the roof with about 11000 souls or so, I dunno. The amount of souls I once had at certain points are becoming a blur. But as I make my way out, I take out two of the re-spawnable knights (I dunno what they are) who dropped some titanite shards and picked up the ring that boosts your fire defense. I run to the bonfire, drop down like I'm supposed to, and save. Phew.

I do some quick math and realize I can take out those 3 enemies, run to the bonfire and save like 3 or 4 times. And then I can level up. I'm fine with that. Seems easy enough.

I get to 17500. And I sit at the bonfire.

I have a bunch of "soul of a _____" that I could use to get me to 18500. I figured "eh, save them. This is easy enough, just save it for a time I REALLY need them."

And that was my decision. Take out those 3 dudes and I'm at 19000 souls.

Oh yeah, before all this I decided to become human to maybe get some more items from those dead knights. Which I actually did and it worked out nicely. I think I got at least 1 more titanite shard each timeout.

So I'm human. I'm at 19000. And I drop on down to my bonfire to level up.

And I can't save. It won't let me. I hit A and nothing. No pop up message. So I think to myself, "hmmm. Could be a bad guy in the area. I'll go back up and check."

Looked around, and everyone was dead. And then it occured to me what was probably about to happen and I actually said out loud "No. No. No. Please no. This can't be happening. Not now. Please don't do this."

I know exactly what's about to go down and I'm trying everything I could think of to some how prevent it. And sure enough... a blinking message.

"St0ned Ape has invaded your game"

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I don't know what to do. I run around but whatever. I see him and he doesn't look too intimadating. Just has a big weapon. I roll away from his first strike but his 2nd one breaks through my guard, 3rd one kills me.

19000 souls lost.

I decided to send him a message.

"Prick."

http://live.xbox.com/en-US/Profile?g...g=st0ned%20ape

This guy. If everyone could message him calling him a prick that would be fantastic. Thanks in advance.