Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

i'm digging Majula. nice place to just stare out at the sea and think baout things.

i was in the same boat re: should i upgrade this or wait. i found a sword that i liked (bastard sword) and just said fuck it. if it's like DS1, there will be enough materials around to fully upgrade more than one weapon. good decision cuz bastard sword +4 is currently wrecking shit. still looking forward to the zweihander though.

http://i.imgur.com/Y7oPByy.gif

lol. same here re: bastard sword (although i hedged my bets and took it to +2, it's my current main weapon).

i've been terrible about specializing in stats, hopefully that doesn't turn out to be dumb in the long run. i committed to being a heavy shield/heavy sword warrior lady that also will someday use magic, since i want to at least dabble in it this time. got my INT and attunement up to the minimum and i have a few soul arrow spells, just need to find a staff now.

i upgraded the fire long sword to +4. btw did anyone else's character change gender seemingly at random. i thought it was a glitch and then looked it up and loled. good one, fromsoft!

i was like why is my zombie dude wearing a bra?????

haha. you didn't even climb in that coffin?

started as a magic dude. hoo boy, those initial physical stats are butt. had to play a lot of the game with a dagger and no shield before i could afford to wield a shortsword and crappy shield. eventually got a shield on and got the fire sword and leveled my stats to use it at about the same time and it was a total game changer. things moving pretty smoothly since then. stopped pursuer boss. died maybe 10 times and the mobs between the bonfire and the boss disappeared?!! sellouts! anyway, that's where i had to leave things. getting close with the boss, won't take much more. no margin for error with low phys stats and then half HP on top of that. refuse to summon on 1st run thru unless totally stuck (e.g. little n large first time in ds1).

i have def experience the sound glitches but no other bugs so far. there seems to be a load more of the passive online stuff? coming to an area with tonnnns of bloodstains is hilarious.

mobs stop spawning after you kill them a bunch of times apparently.

they added rewards for people who can a) beat the game w/out dying and/or b) beat the game without using a bonfire. you get rings that make your left and right hand weapons invisible

haha. you didn't even climb in that coffin?

― festival culture (Jordan), Thursday, March 13, 2014 1:23 PM

i did but i thought huh that did nothing i'll come back later. then hours later i'm taking armor off and see zombie boobs

gender reassignment coffin

i am fully human about 0.1% of the time in this game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqHy0lM1b4

lol

pizzalawyer420

I DIED

I've barely poked my head into the Forest of Fallen Giants and my HP has already been capped at 50%. Not sure I'm enjoying that change to the game tbh

yeah, i played all the way up to the boss of the forest at 50%. i finally realized that i needed to join the blue men group covenant so that i could occasionally be summoned and rewarded, but even after joining i've never been summoned.

yeah, i was confused by that too. Way of the Blue covenant members, when wearing the ring, will have Blue Sentinel covenant members summoned into their world when they're invaded. i think that's how it works.

Have you been wearing their ring? Only just noticed it in my inventory.

yep, wearing the ring! the ring also gives a small HP boost (about 30 HP in my case)

since i never really messed with invading/summoning in dark souls 1, i don't really have a good feel for how often it's supposed to happen.

Tip for you guys struggling with the health penalty. The ring that limits your hollowing health reduction is in a zone right off Majula, Heidi's Tower of Flame. It might be a little rough if you're fresh out of the gate, but it's not a super high lvl area or anything. Might be possible to pull some crazy suicide run. It's by one of the fog doors in the area. Left and up, not right and down.

think you have to get the white soapstone off peter serafinowicz and help somebody kill a boss to do the blue man group stuff, haven't talked to crestfallen sadcase yet to see if it actually works in practice

how do you get to that tower of flame place then? i can't remember finding any other directions off of majula in my initial root around

in what has been a pattern for me throughout the series, i died a bunch of times to pursuer boss, left it, and then beat him first time the next time i played. i ended up in the lost bastille place without necessarily planning to be there, but i seem to be coping okay so i figure i am in the right place. got to the boss(es) and died p much immediately and had to quit there. ring of binding would be sweet to have right now.

just to clarify tho, the Way of the Blue that you join in Majula will only summon others to you when you're invaded, you won't be summoned anywhere. xps

Heidi's Tower is down the long tunnel/stairs off of Majula. looks like it leads to a dead end, but poke around a bit at the bottom.

oh, whoops - of course that's right. i haven't been invaded yet (i think). i picked up the white soapstone just before i finished playing yesterday, so haven't had a chance to use it yet. if i place it a little bit before the 1st boss maybe some fellow newbs will appreciate my assistance.

i've got about 16 hours logged and i haven't been invaded yet either. i think if you invade others, you're more likely to be invaded? i haven't even bothered with that yet.

yeah man, would recommend trying out that soapstone. get some souls, fight experience, and (possibly) some humanity back. no risk, all gain.

The ring that limits your hollowing health reduction is in a zone right off Majula,

oh man, i beat nu-Ornstein this morning and must have ran by there 10x without noticing it!

re: spending all your time hollow and at half health, i highly recommend helping people beat bosses (once you get the soapstone) to regain your humanity (which is why i was so bummed that the servers were down earlier).

lol, so apparently From is saying gaining humanity from co-op is a bug and shouldn't be happening at all.

nooooooo

that's kind of a bummer, then. i guess i should reassess how i use my items, but everything i'm reading is like "save your effigies! don't use them willy nilly!"

so i tend to just be at 50% all the time, maybe using an effigy if absolutely needed (before a boss fight, say)

tbh though, being able to pop to human after a handful of co-op sessions in front of a boss door and then summoning someone for your battle did feel a little cheap.

oh ok yeah there is a Way of Blue and a Blue Sentinel covenant (guy after old dragonslayer boss) which are different, one theoretically summons help if you get invaded, the other automatically summons you to be the help when people get invaded

I've never been invaded so don't know if the first one works properly

i did the other half of heide's tower, nice surprise there

got invaded at the belltower by the covenant ppl there. also was summoned as a grey phantom, which was weird cuz im in way of the blue. i think the ring the cat sells pulls you in when you wear it, like a secret covenant?

that first sinners rise bonfire location... lol

Tip for you guys struggling with the health penalty. The ring that limits your hollowing health reduction is in a zone right off Majula, Heidi's Tower of Flame.

shiiiit i missed that

lol, so apparently From is saying gaining humanity from co-op is a bug and shouldn't be happening at all.

i liked the idea of it reviving in steps, which is how i assumed it worked. oh well. i guess its just for farming then?

lot of benefits. tokens for covenants, souls, scope out a boss w/out risk, refill estus flasks and repair weapons. lot of outcry about this online, but straight up i've been abusing it and it does make the game feel a little broken. i've hardly soloed any bosses. there needs to be some sort of risk or real expenditure involved in summoning help.

idk, this "it's actually a bug" stuff is based off of something they recently said on twitter, in japanese, so there could be some sort of misunderstanding at work here.

phew, two bosses down (last giant and dragonrider dude, who wasn't that hard)

i'm thinking of totally rerolling my stats using that one item. (although...i murdered everyone in the hut at the beginning of the game so maybe i'm not allowed now? i think i remember reading that you had to talk to someone there to use the item. sigh.)

i started as a knight but didn't think about how badly that would cutoff both INT and Faith. i don't want to be a spellmaster or anything but i was hoping to at least be able to cast a miracle or two in a pinch.

you killed them? lol why

too many "heh heh hehs"

so yeah, fuck it, i'm going to be least faithful, least intelligent soul in this terrible land. level 36.

isn't int / faith base requirement 10? thats only a few levels needed

i'm thinking of totally rerolling my stats using that one item

let us know how it goes if you do, i'm curious if you have total flexibility with that. until i get another one i'm saving it for NG+ (unless i hit a wall and just have to level up a neglected stat, of course).

man, that would be a bummer if the co-op humanity thing gets changed, but i can see it making things too easy. it certainly has a lot more edge & tension when i'm agonizing over whether to use an effigy to summon help on a boss, or just to get hp back for a better shot. and here i thought they were just encouraging us to help each other out, haha. if it's a bug that would explain the inconsistency too.

i wonder if anyone's killed the emerald herald yet. guessing there will be hardcore runs on youtube for that.

oh yeah u can revive killed npcs if you go back to where you killed them and pay whatever it costs. might work with the hags i dunno

am i supposed to attack lautrec in the forest of giants?

four ring slots is both luxurious and somehow still not enough.

my original plan was to kill the 3 hags and free the 4th woman in the room. she seemed to be sending subtle hints that she hated her job and i expected a high five from her after i murdered her terrible bosses. but no, after the 3 hags perished the remaining person chased me around the room with a cleaver or something. i even left for several hours and came back, and she was still angry. so i had to kill her.

*dark souls psychopath*

i love touching the blood stains around NPCs around majula and lol at ppl that died cuz they attacked them

Thanks to circa1916 for the Tower of Flame ring info. It's difficult to suicide-run your way to it cuz it's hidden behind a drawbridge and you need to kill the giant armoured knight which guards the drawbridge control before the knight's other giant bastard mates catch up to you. So I ended up grinding combat against roomfuls of giant knights until I finally got to the ring and managed to level up a lot on the way. Then I killed Dragonrider on the second attempt. Felt like a total fucking hero.