Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

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.

Really want to keep playing but my wife is chain-watching episodes of Hart of Dixie on Netflix instead.

DAMN YOU RACHEL BILSON

assuming everyone is deep into dark souls world right now

SKULL DEEP. Man, I love the ambient sound in this game. So many subtle touches.

i've helped out a few people via the soapstone, but i've never once seen anyone else's offer to help me. is there some item i'm missing?

You can put down a summon sign in any state, but you gotta be human to summon others.

If you're human you should almost always see summon signs popping up around boss areas. I have had times where quitting and starting up again seemed to "refresh" things and more summon signs started showing up.

ah, that's right. sorry with newb questions.

finally cleared out the wharf. it shouldn't have been so difficult but i started to get really impatient. eventually i ran through the same areas so many times that the enemies went away and things got easier. kind of a bittersweet victory

Yeah, that's a new mechanic. After you kill enemies a certain amount of times, they stop respawning. Not sure how I feel about it yet.

Just had a mega intense gargoyle boss battle. My summoned bro ended up dying fairly quickly and I had what seemed to be a 15 minute fight against four of them. I managed to pull it off! My pulse was through the roof. True Dark Souls moment.