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