DARK SOULS: if you need me i'll be in an induced coma so mvrch comes tomorrow

...

(I'll say it's a different black knight. And they're generally placed in ways that don't block your progress, since they're pretty tough for early game.)

Dark Knight up the tower before you get to the metal pig? Yeah, he's a different guy then the one down the stairs before you get to the taurus demon. You haven't seen the last of those fuckers by a long shot.

Yeah, it's up a tower, right before the pig. First time I found him he chased me down and killed me. Maybe I'll just leave him alone up there.

I did end up running past the dragon, eventually, which took a while to time right, and was rewarded by a convenient bonfire. So maybe I will fight the knight after all and figure them out. Right now backstabbing is definitely hit or miss for me. So to speak.

Was doing pretty well yesterday. Killed that black knight after a million tries, got virtually nothing in return. Shard? But now he's dead. Somehow killed the armored pig but have no idea how! That is, I stabbed it a bunch then at some point later was killed by something, and when I came back ... pig was gone! Huh. I did find out the hard way that the dragon comes back to roost, so I know to avoid the bridge for now. I was mildly stuck in a courtyard where there were three or four relatively easy to kill shield knights, and then some honking weird knight and, inside, something shooting magic at me. But I think I know a different way to go, one that I avoided because I assumed a rickety bridge would just collapse under me.

Still confused about vendors or other things that seem to be earlier places I need to hit later on. Do I have to backtrack all the way to, say, the undead burg, to get to that one giggling vendor? Past all the enemies I've killed but respawned again? I've found one or two little shortcuts, but I don't know if they save me that much time. (I did find a different way around the dragon, but that doesn't matter as much now.) Or will travel and shortcuts get easier as the game goes on?

I still need to work on parrying. What I thought was parrying before was just blocking I guess.

Well done with that Knight, those things gave me so much trouble my 1st time. The shard is for weapon upgrades.

There is some backtracking. Between the kicked down ladder to 1st bonfire and the bonfire behind the dragon, you can get from one end to the other of undead burg without too much difficulty. I used it as parrying practise.

What I thought was parrying before was just blocking I guess.

Ok this is pretty funny :)

Sounds like you're nearing another shortcut too. It'll get easier, but yeah, learning the world is part of it and vendors don't really change places (but other NPCs do).

parrying is urgent and key, as is backstabbing

the feeling of unlocking a dark souls shortcut and suddenly realising how one area is related in space to another is one of the greatest pleasures in gaming imo

Ha, turns out I had been using the wrong button for parrying. Much better with the correct button.

i never learnt how to parry in any souls game, bloodborne included

Me neither, but on those rare occasions when I get it to work, that sound effect is so satisfying.

Oh man, how did you guys get through Anor Londo?

The funny thing is that late-game knights are way easier to parry than skeletons at the beginning, who have more moves and those crazy long delays.

xpost Yeah, it's almost like a big gong!

Does this game encourage grinding, or is that sort of a cheese? I noticed as I was practicing my parrying by a bonfire that I could just kill something, rest, kill that thing again, repeat, and obviously my soul count was going up the whole time.

Another question (and I guess there is an easy way to find out): I've noticed twice now some super fast baddie in a basement somewhere that does not appear to be on the way to anything. There's a hulking thing with a club early on, and later, by the first blacksmith, there's a magic shooting giant scorpion thing below him. Are these optional battles with big rewards? Or things I'm going to have to fight eventually?

You can certainly grind but it's almost never a requirement. Like you said, people do broken straight sword runs. But if you're having trouble, bumping up your health/endurance/damage can make things more forgiving, as far as making mistakes or playing carefully.

And everything except bosses (and even then, not all) can be considered optional. So if you're having a hard time, you can always come back later.

I'm not there yet, thank goodness. Nothing has stumped me for long, though I'm sure that'll happen sooner or later, probably soon. My biggest fear is that I will make it really far and then learn I should have done the thing at the thing with the thing but oh well, it's too late now. Because while I can imagine having fun playing this again, god knows it took me long enough to play it at all in the first place.

I do get the impression that some of the more mysterious items and whatnot may be related to online play, which I'm not doing. Though my PS4 asks me more or less 4 times if I want to play online at the start. But fuck a monthly fee. This ain't cable.

I'm up to the gargoyles. Most annoying thing about this game is the perverse way it punishes saving by bringing (almost) everything back. To that point, I can't tell if it's a trademark glitch or not, but I've had two big baddies - the armored pig and the magic channeler (?) - more or less die or disappear without me witnessing their demise. It's possible I somehow killed the pig, but there's no chance I killed that babbling magician; I was too busy killing his army of minions in the hallway. But neither came back, so ... good?

I have several more questions about this game's design. Stuff like scaling and leveling up - how in the world did anyone figure that stuff out? I still can't even see my weapon parameters! Anyone know how to do that on a PS4, so I can learn where to apply my souls to most benefit my weapons? I don't even see the option. And stuff like reverse hollowing - I know you can do that to kindle a fire to get extra flasks, but is there any other reason to be human if you're playing offline? I got the impression it allows you to summon help, but is that only in the form of other irl online players?

Once I found that elevator I went back to Firelink to mine some souls, and the skeletons are still really tough! Can I just lure them out one by one and try to pick them off? Is there any reason to? I think I was able to snag most if not all of the good stuff running through the graveyard, but as soon as I saw those giant skeletons I decided, hm, hint taken, I'm not fucking around in here anymore.

Yeah, certain enemies don't respawn. The pig probably wandered into the nearby fire, the channeler...fell off the ledge?

Stuff like scaling and leveling up - how in the world did anyone figure that stuff out?

Lots of trial & error and comparing notes online: http://darksouls.wikidot.com/

You can go into the menu > equipment and see your weapon stats. Might have to toggle the view, can't remember what button it is but it should say on the bottom.

You can also summon npc phantoms for help, but some of that depends on triggers, like if you've found/talked to them elsewhere. There's also at least one npc invader (only if you're human).

I think you click the right thumbstick:

http://https%3A//darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/file/Dark-Souls-3/equipmenu.jpg

I'll have to try that, because none of the buttons on the bottom do what I want them to do.

I can't remember why I picked Warrior - maybe someone said that's a good first-time character? - but I've been leveling up endurance, vitality, dexterity and strength to the exclusion of everything else, so far. Also more or less as I get enough souls. Is there an advantage to carrying a big balance of souls? Seems like a gamble for no gain, I've been spending them as I get them.

No advantage. Eventually you may want to save up to buy or upgrade things, but that should be obvious.

I hate seeing everybody playing this game while I wait not-so patiently for the Switch release

Having played this a bit now I can totally see the appeal of the Switch version. My worry was, besides those months and months of delays, that it will have performance issues, but you never know. It's also often a pretty dark game, so I was worried I wouldn't be able to see what was going on!

I might even double dip on switch if the price is right. josh has my appetite whetted again

will see what the performance is like

After the Network test, I am a bit concerned about the ergonomics of constantly holding down shield raised on the smaller shoulder button on the Switch, especially when in handheld mode.

Will still double dip as I have DS on the PS3, so no worries about performance being worse than I am used to...

Just beat the Gargoyles on maybe my fourth try! Not quite sure how. Anyway, from here on out I really have no idea where to go or what to do. I assume backwards to Firelink, because I can't think of any more ways to go forward.

That's pretty good! Honestly they can be a tough boss to solo, especially if you have a build that is not good at racking up damage quickly, and you have to deal with both of them.

The game sorta opens up here so there's no one right way to go. Although you did get a key from the gargoyles, so you might want to try to figure out what door it opens (I will say that it's not in the most obvious location, but you have passed it).

Interesting. I think I was so surprised/shocked to have beaten them that I'm not even sure I noticed what they gave me, beside a giant tail-ax that seems kinda silly. Certainly I've passed a locked door or two, but I think that means backtracking. At the least I skipped fighting the black knight in undead berg, and the monster club dude in the basement there, so maybe I'll work on that.

Oh wait, you don't get the key from the gargoyles, you pick it up somewhere else in the area. So maybe you have it, maybe you don't!

I have a basement key, I think, plus my master key, and a mystery key that I used to get a dude out of jail. Maybe a residence key, too?

You're good then

Basically started at the beginning again, where I got to interact with that golden knight sitting on the ledge at Firelink (iirc I'm supposed to kick him off? I can't remember how to kick!), then basically repeated the first few hunks of the game where, after beating the first black knight (I've gotten better), I did indeed find a door to brought me to some stairs down to sort of a ... town? Where I killed some dogs, found a wizard or something that gave me a bunch of magical crap, iirc, then walked into an ambush by some jumping zombie ninjas that leaped on my back and killed me. Time for a break!

kick = up + light attack

can't be done with curved swords as your character will instead do a backflip right off a ledge

Or you could leave him alive, and see what happens ;)

That's a good path you're on btw.

This game should be called See What Happens.

(You die.)

gargoyles were an absolute fucker for me. i hadn't learned to keep my distance and be patient just yet (i cheesed taurus demon a bit) so i predictably kept getting caught on fire.

did you settle on a weapon?

Since I watched a walkthrough back when up to gargoyles, I knew I could shoot the dragon's tail off (once I figured out the shortcut around the bridge) which gave me the drake sword, which has been a big leg up. But I killed the earlier vendor and got the katana, and lately I've mostly been using that, because I know I can scale it with dex (right?). What I don't know is what paying the blacksmith for +1 etc gets me. Do I have to do that before it scales? Does it matter? I have no idea. It's been educational trying to figure out how the wield the katana after the drake - a stab vs a swing, it seems - but they've very different. May also try to wield the claymore I got earlier, since it also seems to scale pretty well, but it's pretty slow. Not sure what difference all the shields make, since even pretty generic seeming shields seem to do a good job.

Katana does more damage if you have high dex yeah, but if you upgrade it, it also gets more base damage, AND better scaling (so you get even more value from having high dex). So if it says 100 + 50, that means 100 base damage + 50 because of the dex scaling. And the 'B' scaling for dex means the scaling is pretty good (better than C or D, not as good as A or, for some reason, S).

do ask about weapon upgrades (or check a wiki if you're not afraid of bumping into major spoilers) because fuck figuring everything out by trial and error and waste all your titanite on a dead end upgrade path.

S > A > ... > E but there's variation within each letter, you can see it when upgrading and you go from B > B but the upgraded B is blue, meaning scaling has improved but not enough to cross over to A

Katanas and other dex weapons cause bleeding but not all enemies bleed

shields tl;dr: get a shield with high stability that is light enough to not impair your movement

how shields work: there's a bunch of dmg reduction percentages for physical, fire, magic, etc damage types. 90% physical means that when an enemy strikes you with a pure physical attack and you have your shield up, 10% of its attack power will damage you no matter what. how much damage your health bar takes from will depend on other factors like your defense stats, armour, etc

the other 90% don't just disappear, though. they go through your shield and deplete not your health bar but your stamina bar. if you have enough stamina to take the hit, you get no further damage. if you use a 100% physical shield and have enough stamina, you take no damage at all.

notice how when you hold your shield up, your stamina regenerates very slowly? keeping it up all the time and getting hit with weak attacks in quick succesion will eventually exhaust your stamina and stagger your character

the conversion rate between attack power and stamina depletion is determined by the shield's most important stat, stability. 50 means 50% of the attack power will be nullified and the other half will drain your stamina; 80 means 80% is blocked and only 20% goes to stamina

How in the world did anyone figure that shit out?

I've mentioned which stats I've been leveling up, though I barely know what point by point effect that has on anything. Same with my overall level (which last I checked was ... 24?). As for weapons, I have no idea what to go for or why, why one thing is necessarily better than the other besides the advantage of brute force or some special ability. Is there really a reason to switch between weapons (bows and range weapons aside)? For example, will I ever use or need my mace or ax?

More pertinently, what exactly do I want the blacksmith to do? I know he repairs weapons, which get dull or damaged. But I can also pay him souls to make them, say, +1. What does the +1 mean? Is that what you mean by upgrading? Does that mean I just make the weapon "better" by 1, a bunch of souls at a time, until they max out their +-ness? Will that make a noticeable difference? And then I can enhance them, too, right? What does that mean? And all of this is different/separate from scaling?

Just look up weapon upgrading on a wiki. It's ultimately the most important thing in the game, more impactful overall than levelling with souls.

The list of things that matter in DS1 are:

1. Maximizing damage output
2. Not getting hit
End of list

Understand attribute scaling and weapon upgrades. Understand maximizing your roll speed, shields (good info above), and stamina. Don't put souls into any attributes that don't contribute to these until later in the game when you start getting diminishing returns.

How in the world did anyone figure that shit out?

As for weapons, I have no idea what to go for or why, why one thing is necessarily better than the other besides the advantage of brute force or some special ability.

moveset. between 2 weapons with roughly the same damage output and weight, pick the one with the moveset you like most, even if it does slightly less damage than the other. it's subjective

Is there really a reason to switch between weapons (bows and range weapons aside)? For example, will I ever use or need my mace or ax?

most weapons will be completely useless for the character you've built. you may occasionally want to change it up if some enemy is resistant to what you're normally wielding... or you can just run past them

Does that mean I just make the weapon "better" by 1, a bunch of souls at a time, until they max out their +-ness? Will that make a noticeable difference?

yes, like RS said, you can easily go through the game without ever leveling up your character but upgrading your equipment only

weapons go from base all the way up to +15 in the regular path. the material required to go from +14 to +15 is extrememly rare. it's no big deal, +14 is plenty

And then I can enhance them, too, right? What does that mean? And all of this is different/separate from scaling?

at lvls +5 and +10 you can choose to continue your upgrade path or pick a modified one, like fire weapons, magic, lightning. each has pros and cons and may need different upgrade ores

while upgrading within a path always improves a weapon, changing paths alters its properties, which may or may not result in an upgrade from your point of view.
for example, doing a fire upgrade from WEAPON +5 to Fire WEAPON will add fire damage type in addition to phys at the cost of removing all stat scaling

Is there a reason to upgrade more than one or two weapons? And soul leveling, is that mostly just to let you wield and scale certain weapons?

Oh, and what am I missing out on by playing offline? Besides getting invaded by overpowered assholes and having to deal with people in addition to a vindictive computer? Messages and tips?

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier I am really reluctant to subscribe to any sort of Playstation online plan. Seems like a ripoff to a modest at best gamer like me.

And is grinding for souls expected or just sort of a cheat/shortcut? Given how easily you can die in this and/or lose all your souls, it seems like that's the only guaranteed and therefore tacitly encouraged way to quickly accumulate souls to spend, aside from killing bosses, esp. since everything respawns at a bonfire.

always found myself grinding a lot less than expected or to the extent that other people said tbh. that said dead cert kill methods for high HP enemies certainly comes in useful. there’s some late stage knights and enemies in DS3 that were go to places for me. those infested club wielding things in blighttown (which is where i’m at in DS) are currently handy as well, tho i lost 15000 souls on a fucking tree trunk.