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

I don't mind that, but per our discussion of hidden rooms and fake walls, let alone leveling and scaling and the like, there is tons of stuff I literally would never know if I didn't ask or look it up. Which is cool if I wanted to dedicate my life to playing this over and over, but as a new PS4 owner I've got DS2, DS3, Bloodborne, Uncharted, Last of Us, etc. to go. And God of War and Spider-man, when I get them. I know better than to buy Red Dead any time soon, if at all.

RIP Sif! (Remarkably, only took me a few tries.) But man, the forest is not only the first place where I felt bad killing things (wolf, mushroom people, even those giant rolling wildcats) but the first place where I just got my ass kicked repeatedly by NPCs until I reached the shelter of the talking cat/dog thing and joined the forest covenant, which protected me. I don't know if I could have successfully fought my way to Sif and had any estus left, even if in the end I somehow beat Sif with just one estus refill. I think I got lucky, which I think is still more likely than getting good. Sif is also the first time I've had an enemy glitch on me, in this case floating above a ridge where it couldn't hit me but I couldn't hit it. Don't think that helped me at all, though, since when it got free it and I locked on again it promptly killed me.

So I can go back to Undead Asylum? Why? Do I want to do that?

yes you do.

how did you find out?

I googled (more or less) "do I go to Sen's Fortress or New Londo Ruins" after Sif, and the first thing I saw was someone saying Sen's Fortress, but first go back to Undead Asylum, and I was all, huh?

New Londo Ruins looks challenging. I've not faced any ghosts yet, and some of it seems to be in water, which slows you down to a crawl. Oh well. Prepare to die!

sen is the intended way. the water slowdown can be fixed by a ring you get from the asylum (but that's not the best or even second best reason to return) but i don't recall it being much of an issue in new londo. blighttown swamp was much more annoying in that regard

I didn't have much trouble in Blighttown in that regard. Considering you get poisoned no matter what, it didn't matter if I slowed down as well.

I do get the sense that both the swamp and Blighttown, and the forest, are good places to mine for Souls. Depths, too. Though the level requirements are high enough lately that I don't think it's worth wasting time doing that.

I wish I was up to where you guys were at

I just killed a Titanite Demon thing

Is it good and right to always carry 1 humanity and play unhollowed? I read a thing that said "yes"

for what it's worth, sometimes I thought I was playing with some level of humanity then looked over and saw that it was at zero. Other times I thought I was playing at zero and looked over and saw that I had a few. So I don't know what difference it makes.

Hmm, maybe I am confusing hollow with human (because it is confusing). I guess I've mostly been playing hollow, whether or not I'm carrying humanity. I'm not sure what advantage there is to playing unhollowed unless I was online and wanted to fight with other people.

The two gargoyles were causing me trouble so I levelled up my longsword and resin'd it all lightning and unhollowed myself and summoned a friend in to pound those stone losers to death

But yeah, an FAQ I read said that there are benefits to carrying souls (whether hollowed or human). Optimum in terms of benefit/risk was 10, once you're a good player. (Best was 50.) But for beginners like myself, 1 is good. The biggest advantage is that there is a big jump in the frequency of dropped items for players carrying one soul.

I do struggle, though, my gameplay is largely focused on retrieving my stash after a death.

Any early game recommendations for things I should do, not do? I just scored a nice armour set (Elite?) from the garden of the stone knights in the forest level. I have no rings. I have a +5 Longsword and Knight's shield. I've upgraded Vitality and Endurance to 20 and am getting Strength up there next.

From my own recent experience, I would focus on leveling up vitality and endurance, unless you have specific weapon needs that require higher strength or dexterity, for example. Then I would focus on leveling up weapons. But I would also focus on defense, both parrying, which is hard, and rolling, which is very fast and briefly makes you invincible. I I think it's more important to be fast and light and able to roll fast than well armored and heavy. The game design seems to favor defense over offense. As long as you can avoid the enemy you can either slowly hack away at them or bypass them entirely. That's the lesson I took from so many creatures that could kill me with one or two hits.

Are you playing online fgti? If not, then I really wouldn't worry about staying human, unless you're trying to summon npc help for bosses (not sure if you summoned a real person or not).

The item drop thing, sure, but that matters more if you're looking for a particular item. If you're playing through the game (and dying a normal amount), you'll still get drops.

Otherwise, sounds like you're doing just fine!

I think it's more important to be fast and light and able to roll fast than well armored and heavy

grab a 100% physical shield

level up your weapon, don't level up armour, never level up your resistance stat

after you've explored an area to your satisfaction, start running past enemies, it's faster, safer and less tedious than killing them over and over

if you have humanity to spare play unhollowed as much as possible. humanity sprites fully heal you when consumed

never ever consume a fire keeper soul if you find one

What do I do with boss souls?

You use them to turn a +10 weapon into a new unique weapon, if you want. Do not eat.

I've only ever actually done it with Quelaag's soul in this game, the resulting sword is pretty cool.

I worry that I've been having trouble with rolling because I've been overburdened. How do you know if that's the case?

If you look in your stats (which are overwhelming and hard to navigate) one will list your weight. Ideally I think you want to be around 25. Also, as I learned above, leveling endurance is pretty helpful. As has been, in my case, eventually getting a magic shield that helps with endurance in the garden stone knight area. It's on the way to the hydra, and you'll have to defeat a black knight, so maybe wait a little until you're tougher.

It's just about staying below 50% of the total equip load. So it'll show like 19.5/40:

http://https%3A//people.rit.edu/jdn1885/230/project1/PlayerAtt/Build.jpg

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/equipment-load

You can equip a bunch of stuff to see what the overburdened roll looks like, and then strip down accordingly.

Ohhhhh that makes so much more sense. I thought below 50% was good and that I was a crap roller, but I think I'm actually above 50%. I'll try and further reduce.

i forgot in ds1 the stat screen doesn't automatically calculate the % for you, must be a ds2+ thing

another rolling tip: don't break barrels with your weapons, always roll into them instead. npcs sometimes are trapped in barrels and hitting will aggro them.

in general never attack anything in this game until it's shown to be hostile

perhaps my favorite lesson learned so far was when I was in the forest and i came across those giant slow mushroom people and i kind of messed with them, and then they just kept killing me with one or two hits. Repeatedly. which given how slow they are was kind of stupid on my part.

Those guys are a lesson in poise imo. There's no way you can interrupt their attacks (or even block really), so you have to learn spacing rather than stunlock them to death.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/f9ca541f1d70950f8828e393d359e969/tumblr_mkoo6d3Iwp1qbper1o1_400.gif

supposedly hardest hitting non-boss attack in the game

I love this game now

Capra Demon was insane but I'm getting a nice pace on this, starting to get a feel for the levelling and so on. Really wish there was something comfortable and protective for me to wear so that rolling was more of a possibility? considering switching to a Dex build or something idk

Love this game

I don't get the impression most armor is particularly helpful. As opposed to shields, all of which seem to be degrees of good, or at least effective.

are the blight town issues still there on switch in handheld mode ? or is the frame rate solid on switch. anyone even playing on switch here ?

Josh is otm, it's better to block or dodge than to tank hits. Unless you put your whole build into endurance + heavy armor + poise, which takes a lot of levels to do effectively.

Glad you're enjoying it fgti!

i heard the switch version has some audio and visual compromises but there are no frame rate issues at least

and yeah, armour is a lie, just the game abusing convention/your expectations. in terms of damage reduction anyway; poise is a thing, i suppose.

Btw there is a ring found in the garden on that can give you poise without bothering with armor, it's very good.

really enjoying fgti and josh’s real-time souls conversion experiences itt, thx guys

armour is mostly for looks, yeah. when trying to kill the undead parish drake and fiddling a lot with fire-resistant gear and spells all it accomplished was that i'd die in 2 hits instead of 1.
min-maxing, pointless, etc

poise is a Big Deal in ds1, though, it's for armour what stability is for shields, the one stat (other than weight) you should look at when comparing items

i think some heavy weapons have hyper-armour properties, which iiuc means that even if your character has 0 poise they won't be interrupted when swinging that weapon

So should I switch to my newfound thief set and enjoy a roll in the slime

I tried taking off my elite cuirass and leggings and just going helmet and mittens and I got tree'd right away very easily so I went back to tank-mode

nothing more satisfying or useful in these games than a lithe, athletic roll that costs virtually no stamina

OK, I spoke too soon: my grass shield is pretty useless against the first two snake people in Sen's Fortress. So far I've been most effective two-handing and killing as fast as possible. The swinging blades are a PIA, but I made it a bit farther than the spell casting monster before being lured into another snake people trap and thinking I already need to take a break. Needless to say, preserving my souls might be a fruitless task here, given how often I'm getting killed. For that matter, between this and the forest people I suddenly sense a steep difficulty incline that will necessitate a change in strategy or something. I'm sure when all is said and done I'll be a master at Sen's Fortress, but it already seems to be throwing significant challenges at me with every turn of the corner.

played this with my son (9) watching last night... We lost 9 humanity to the Capra Demon, but in doing so, learned him a life lesson that Lego City Underground is unable to.

Dark Souls gameplay as parenting lessons.....

imo DS is one of the few games that teaches actual life lessons

such as "be sure to hoard purple moss"

- bob marley

One big life lesson: if the game gives you the ability to cheese ... should you cheese? What if you're *supposed* to cheese? What if by cheesing you are exploiting a glitch or design flaw?

life is mean and unfair, don't feel bad about taking shortcuts if they present themselves.

I murdered the hydra last night. Surprisingly easy boss once you get what's up. I'm doing pretty good against black knights and Havel, takes about five tries to get a perfect "riposte" scenario going on, but I can do it and I'm getting better at it.

Climbed up the infinite ladder to some higher-ground place in Darkroot Something and the Demonic Plants seem to have a lot of Demonic Plant Protein Powder up there and are doing double damage to me.

What should I do next? I got Vitality to 20, Strength to 18, Dexterity to 17, and have been pumping all my levels into Endurance so I can deal with heavy melee assholes better (Endurance is at 27 or so now).

I went back to the Insane Asylum but was just getting no joy out of multiple attempts at killing the Surprise Basement Demon. Couldn't do it. Got the Rusted Ring and the Doll and traded an egg for a dragon scale and left.

Should I farm some souls and upgrade my Elite Knight armour? Havel's Ring has made me quite lithe and I'm not switching back to Thief armour any more. I haven't +1'd any of my armour yet-- been focusing on upgrading a longsword in hopes that I might imbue it with fire fire (it's at +5, as is my Knight shield). Should I start upgrading? My grass shield? The spider shield? Something else?

I know Blightown is next but I'm feeling like I might need a little buffing for my dude, he's very melee-only

depths then blightown. If you've settled on a weapon then upgrade that as much as you can, don't bother u/g armour or shields.

I'd say the hydra is more like local megafauna.

Yeah upgrading armor isn't worth it, upgrading shields improves their stability but I never really bothered (just weapons).

Goddam, Sen's Fortress. As far as I can tell the only way to find your way around it to all but invite death. Hey, let's jump in this dark pit! Hmm, I wonder if I can outrun a boulder? Cool, I can, but I think I have to ... run toward them now? Erm, there seems to be no way to avoid getting hit by magic, guess I should just take the hit and try to attack the source. I have no idea how far I've made it before I die, and like I said earlier, not even a point trying to recover my souls, I'm just going to lose them again.