Dark Souls 3 - April 2016 : You Died, You Died, You Died

hah yes there are some great sounds, lots of ghoulish shrieks, moans of the damned, gargles of the undead, etc. later on there is a dungeon that has some random screams that never cease to scare the shit out of me

good luck on your quest!

that dungeon has one all-time jump scare too iirc

i am trying to figure out whether i should go ahead and do the fight with the giant cursed tree, or try to ascend the tower and take out the crazy watchman who can shoot out giant arrow/bolts/trees/spears, whatever they are. meanwhile, everyone is throwing up

I highly recommend the tower first, but, um, keep an open mind.

The giant cursed tree is always the hardest boss in the game for me for some reason, and the only one I routinely try to summon for. Having a weapon with some vertical action/range can help.

it's remarkable how widely ppl's experience of these games vary. the tree boss was a relative breeze for me each time. my worst boss was the one grimes is fighting there, the guy on the rooftops. if it took me literally 50 tries the first time i would not be surprised. i remember being baffled by my friend who nearly quit demons souls because he couldn't beat tower knight and then (twice) beat maneater on 1st try. also interesting to me how sometimes after eventually beating a very hard boss it's like the code is cracked and i can then beat them easily on subsequent occasions, e.g. ornstein and smough

Yeah, it's so subjective! I've never had a problem with the one you're talking about.

I think I have an easier time with the humanoid ones, and a harder time with the ones that are so big that when you're close to them, there are parts that are off-camera (so you really need to be observant in order to see their tells and not get smushed).

uuuugh, real life and dark souls just collided in the most intensely frustrating way. I went to the tower and resolves the spear thrower situation, then kept going and took out the monster thing circling the fire. I thought about home boning to level up, but decided to keep going a bit further. I got in over my head with the evangelists but managed to whittle them down to the last one, no estus flasks left, no stamina, evangelist down to one last hit, they’re winding up and I’m literally going “aaaaagghhhh!!” IRL and then - the fucking power went out in our building! Everything just shut down (except for the loudest carbon monoxide detector in the entire world, just outside my door, which will now beep every 30 seconds and keep me awake through the night until maintenance comes to fix it 2-3 days from now

Time to walk the dog

But good lord that was intense. Also, very biased because I was on a winning streak there, but this whole undead town and surrounding area is my favorite part of the game so far.

Do keep posting here, with your DS3 thoughts/observations. It's interesting. Tempted to start a new build tbh. Can't work out which the monster... oh wait the woman priest with the hug? She's a fucker, even when you're totally late game overpowered. Excited for some of the stuff you're yet to encounter. Still haven't beaten the final boss in this game (rebuilt my build and fucked up on load carrying and now can't carry on with it).

if i do manage to make it all the way to new game+, i'd like to try some sort of sorcerer or magic-based build. i went with a standard knight STR-based build for this first attempt. i'm trying to test out various weapon styles as i get them, but i reinforced a battle axe with dark damage early on and it's been my go-to during more difficult portions of the game so far. i'm so STR-heavy that it doesn't seem super-slow to swing, either.

i took down the curse-rotted Greatwood last night and also explored the sewers with the key. getting ready to head back in now :D

Melee is more fun imo. I always intend to make these hybrid builds and abandon them for another dex character (I do have a poise + strength one but it's not as fun for me).

Melee is more fun imo

it's a lot more terrifying, too. this game scares the bejeezus out of me, and it's never more frightening than when you're 5 feet away holding up a shield, before you have the enemy's movement patterns memorized.

i'm a couple bonfires into the road of sacrifices. in a game of spooky sound effects, the scream of the magic using dude who emits green fog and fire (don't know most enemy names, sorry) might take the cake so far. luckily they're really easy to kill just by rushing them, but still. i'll be glad to get out of these woods (and i haven't even been into the swamp yet, fuck)

i'm trying to strike a balance between trying to discover everything on this first runthrough vs pushing ahead to new areas. i know there's all sorts of gear i could have collected at this point, but right now i'm at the second bonfire of the road of sacrifice, LVL 32
Vigor: 15
Attunement: 10
Endurance: 14
Vitality: 16
Strength: 25
Dexterity: 16
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 9
Luck: 7

RH: Deep Battle Axe+2 (Physical 116 and Dark 116)
LH: Wargod Wooden Shield (lol at me for having a wooden shield this far in the game but it's better than the knight shield so)
Longbow

Knight Helm, Lothric Knight Armor, Lothric Knight Gauntlets, Northern Trousers

That part is hard! And the swamp can be ridiculous if you get lost/turned around.

Not to be that guy, but I would say the knight shield is better, it blocks 100% of physical damage and the wooden one does not. The starting knight gear is solid for the whole game. Also you're doing great but I would try to get some more vigor as soon as you can.

swamps poison so tiresome. boss battle at end is all time tho.

and yes dex or str builds 4ever.

kinda wished i wouldn't have just blown 20,000 on the tower key...:-/ (i don't think i care about hollowing and don't really want the free levels)

although i guess i am enjoying this conversation about pickle-pee and pump-a-rum. very thought provoking!

i found a boss in the swamp (not sure if there's more than one) on accident but i'm leaving it alone for now.

tower key may seem like a waste but is worth it! there is a very valuable secret near the Pickle-Pee Pump-A-Rum

Yeah I would try to get in the rafters and poke around.

Have you tried giving the crows any presents?

chucking random stuff into the nest is u&k imo

Thoughts and observations: this was my first Souls game and I got near the end (The Nameless King), quit, and can't continue because the controls/mechanics are too difficult to remember.

ayo karl
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/dark-souls-3-all-crows-nest-trade-items-pickle-pee-pump-a-rum-crow

it's not cheating if you have no idea what the game mechanics are. also the covetous serpent ring is IMPORTANT, don't miss that

dang. i never made it far enough to find a crow's nest in DS2, so i had no idea.

Heh I've never used that. Although, I was making this lvl 40-ish invader character, and killed an over-leveled, password-summoned phantom in the forest. Voila, I had enough souls to level up to 44. I was like, ok, I guess my build is done all of a sudden?

(been having fun with this one btw, they have an offhand scythe to mess around with spacing/timing, and I can invade in the catacombs and cathedral)

xp

I think the crow's nest is in the tutorial area in DS2? ;) It's been awhile though. Probably easy to miss.

heh yeah i cannot remember for the life of me the crow in DS2. honestly i thought they skipped it.

the Deep Battle Axe is a great weapon. its a nice reward for fighting the mimic and can probably last you the entire game if you want. it does great base damage and the dark bonus makes it hit twice as hard. i think pretty much everything in the game is vulnerable to dark.

the Tower Key area becomes important later on once you visit the Cathedral of the Deep (a good contender for the best level in the game). if you revisit the area later on there is a story event related to the Onion Knight.

you can also climb up the tree and jump onto the roof to get up there are the very start of the game. it's a pain though, you have to run up the tree just right.

I put some of my recent invasions on Youtube because I apparently did not have anything better to do with my mid-30s

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDz6pkTVAF3WWgYGLstA-UbokJwJpKA7i

just downloading this now... trying not to read the thread for spoilers

spoiler: it's good!

i'm wrapped up in a project right now but i hope to You Died many more times once mid-May hits

It IS good isn't it? it has reminded me how bad I am at the souls games though... or no, actually how bad I am at the *bosses* in souls games

Fine, you happy, sticklers?

I did more exploration of Spookytown Settlement. It kind of spoils you with two bonfires more or less right at the start, so I'm wary of going too deep into town, but I'm doing OK looking around and killing creepy things.The most awkward thing this game does is make you feel like you are cheesing when that's often what the enemies do - hide in ambush, shoot/attack from a distance, etc. Like I said, I keep coming across places that seem designed for you to stick around and pick enemies off at range. Or, for example, aggro enemies chased me to the arena where the ice dog was, but they didn't follow me in. I felt kind of silly attacking the blue knight with glowing eyes from in there (where he cornered me), so I eventually just went out and finished him myself.

A couple of questions. It appears leveling up weapons here is different than in the first game. I've got my claymore up to +3, but I think to get it further I need ... titanite slabs? Is that right? And then the gem infusions, is that like enhancements in the first game? I like the claymore, but I'm considering at least one alternative with a faster moveset, at the least as a backup.

Also, rolling (as usual) seems a pretty important component of battle; even early on there have been several enemies (like those lothric knights) that seem to resist the standard circle-and-slash method of battle. As a knight I am relatively heavy and (I think) kind of fat rolling. Should I start focusing a few more stats on ... vitality? To bring my weight down? I don't really know what levels mean in this game, but I'm hovering around 27 right now. Been putting souls into vigor, endurance and strength, mainly, but was thinking of dumping points into dexterity, too, not necessarily for the fabled "quality" build, but just to give me a couple of other weapon options, like the lothric sword or the uchikatana.

You definitely want to keep your equip load under 70% in this game, so either unequip some things or raise your vitality to just enough.

Weapon upgrades:

http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/reinforcement

I'm not sure what I really have equipped besides my sword, shield and armor, nothing heavy at least...

The claymore is a lot heavier than your starting sword, that probably tipped it. Also if you have multiple weapons equipped etc.

Does upping vitality one or two points make much of a difference for weight capacity?

Okay, leveled up my dexterity a couple of points so that I could use the lothric knight sword. what it has in more speed and lighter weight it lacks in sledgehammer power, like the claymore. think I will switch back to the claymore for now and maybe just work on upping endurance and vitality. not sure I really need to level strength or dexterity any higher than they are now, which I think is 18.

I like the fast travel in this a lot, makes me more likely to take risks, since I know it's pretty easy to pop back and forth. Also, kinda curious that this game has two overpowered enemies so early in the game, the sword master ninja and the blue Lothric knight with glowing red eyes. Both are super easy to avoid, but the fact that they're there at all seems like an invitation.

Fast travel right out of the gate kinda ruined this series a little bit imo. Ruins the sense of familiarity with the world and how things fit together. Also eliminates that dangerous feeling of being lost in the depths or wherever else and miles away from a safe haven.

agreed but tbf dark souls is the exception, everything else (demon's, bloodborne, etc) has fast travel from early on

Yeah, but it’s also the best game of the series. Not saying because of it, but at least partially.

And Demon’s was the only precursor and had that central hub that you would just transport to different worlds from, kind of a different thing, so not like there was a heavy precedent.

There was that thread recently where several people mentioned how they could mentally walking through the Dark Souls map. Probably nobody doing that with 2 or 3.

The original Dark Souls map is really well thought out, but I don't miss it too much, since each area in DS3 is still dense and flows impressively. Like, even that first part, it might not ultimately connect the same way to Undead Settlement (which is where I'm at now) the way the first game connected to, say, the Depths and Blighttown, but you still get a pretty good sense of the layout, and there are lots of precipices and balconies that let you pear toward new destinations. And even if the map is not the same, the character design in this one is really creepy and cool.

DS3 is really good! Superior in a lot of ways to DS1. But I can mentally map out that first one and can’t remotely do that with DS3 even though I’ve played it more recently. That sense of geography was a really cool thing that I was sad to see get left behind.

I can with 3, just because you have to for proper invading (except for the poison swamp, because f that place). But I agree, it's definitely not as elegant as 1. Although it is cool that you can at least see most of the areas in the distance.

Man, there is so much to explore and find in Undead Settlement, it's hard to believe this is just the (more or less) second area. I found ... not a guide but an outline somewhere online that lists stuff to keep an eye out for in each area but not exactly where to find it, which is a nice relatively spoiler-free way to know when to keep exploring. I haven't fought the boss yet (though I know where the arena is), haven't fought the blue ice monster yet, killed the fire monster, made friends with the lady in the sewers, found Onion Knight, even got a ride to Mound of Bodies Land in a cage (to no discernible benefit yet). Made friends with the arrow-shooting giant only after I took all that loot while he shot at me. (That's where I got the white birch to belatedly befriend him, Angela's Ashes or whatever, a few other goodies.) Some enemies are getting stronger, but so far nothing so bad I avoid it. I finally replaced some of my knight gear with lighter stuff to get my load below 70%, but I also have found a couple of cool rings that make things easier, like the one that regenerates stamina faster. In the first Dark Souls I almost always wore that magic shimmering green shield that did much the same thing. Stamina seems to be key when you've got a powerful weapon.

Key lessons learned from the first game: kiting enemies and, when needed, simply running past them. No doubt will come in handy whenever I get around to playing Bloodborne.

bloodborne is, in some ways, Undead Settlement: The Game

Beat the tree on the third try, first time to figure out what to do, second death because I was sloppy, third time was the charm. Then I beat the frost monster (which is really fast and kind of an asshole, like the titanite demons from the first game), and explored (finished?) the Road the Perdition or whatever it is called. Met those two knights chilling by the fire. All the weird dialogue and creepy giggling makes me think any and all of them might try to kill me later. Except Onion Knight, he's a bro.

I hate that tree.

The next area is the first big pvp zone, if you were playing online. Native environment of the hornet ring + chaos dagger + parry spammer twink.