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

dragons, man

a small flight of stairs with a ledge at the top you can hop down from is the most powerful weapon in this game.

this dried finger i bought for 2000 souls really does enhance the sound of my bonfire turntable

lol

Always fun to read a new Dark Souls liveblog, kiu please

(what platform are you playing on btw? I wonder how many people are still doing invasions in this game)

I am on switch. been playing mostly handheld while my oldest watches lego ninjago on the television. I hope there are some new switch players online, as I picked the game up during a recent eshop sale. I see the 'ghost' of other players at bonfires from time to time.

Definitely more ghost players on Switch recently as its just been on sale. I haven't had any invasions but I am non hollow about 3% of the time...

kept getting wrecked by some 'free folk' in a forest last night, so might go back to Anor Londo and see what the fuss is about.

Spoiler: the fuss is 'YOU DIED'

when i talked to the sun-obsessed knight for a second time, i thought he was repeating himself, so i skipped the dialogue. but i guess he wasn't repeating himself because he asked me some questions. i defaulted to 'yes', and i think i roll with that dude now.

and hello, Hamildan, please don't invade lowly Derbis

If you would like to be invaded, by all means reverse hollowing and step into the forest :)

very modest progress last night. i can clear all of the hollows out of the first bit of undead parish. that leaves me with the angry metal bull. i believe i'm meant to ole the bull into breaking a door or wall down? i thought the glowing skull was for that, but the bull didn't care much for them. maybe i lure the badass knight from his tower with them, and he lures the bull? hope not, as i already used most of them for a party. but wtf are we going to do about this metal bull problem, guys? we can sit in this conference room all day discussing my numbers and how they're down, but i think management should first acknowledge that we've got a big metal bull problem here.

(I don't actually want to be told what must be done. could be there's a gate opening lever somewhere i overlooked.)

No spoilers, but sometimes it helps to prioritize nuisance threats first over bigger targets. Also, there is literally no way I could have played this game without any guide or substantive guidance.

I'll probably give in eventually and consult a guide or this thread. Thinking about it, it'd be somewhat easy to kill the metal bull by leading it to the large stairwell, where I'm safe. I might put more effort into killing it next. If it's impossible to kill, that'll confirm that I'm supposed to use it somehow.

use it or avoid it, I guess

i don't really understand what is happening in the humanity-reverse hollow-rekindle process. it seems like there's an extra step in there that shouldn't be needed. anyway, i get 10 pepsis from the bonfire now.

Oh man, you're definitely on the right track with using your environment vs bull, keep playing around.

Basically you have to be human first to do fancy human stuff, because the undead are an oppressed minority, and kindling bonfires falls under fancy human stuff.

i can understand that, but i don't understand why i need to "use" humanity and then reverse hollowing. it seems like the menu should say "use a humanity and reverse hollowing?" and let me do it. i guess it's just that "using" humanity might be somehow beneficial out there, away from the bonfires.

Yeah you can consume it to instantly get back full health out in the wild, but can only use it to reverse hollowing at bonfires iirc. Also semi-laborious menus are a Dark Souls tradition.

ah, i see. this seems like a game that comes with a thick, actually useful, manual. something i miss in these convenient eshop sales.

Here's the PS3 manual:

https://support.bandainamcoent.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/307/325/dark-souls---instruction-manual-ps3

the manual won't help much if at all, these games are deliberately obscurantist

> i guess it's just that "using" humanity might be somehow beneficial out there, away from the bonfires.

having humanity in the top left counter and being unhollowed are 2 different things, and you may want to have one or the other or both.

humanity boosts item discovery and curse resistance and i think other defenses too. you can verify that in the stat menu, 0 humantiy = 100 item discovery, 1 humanity = 130, etc. some weapons scale with how much humanity you have up to a max of 10

being unhollowed lets you kindle, be invaded and summon help

This time around, I had no qualms about buying the biggest hardback guide I could...

there are around 1000 weird game mechanics in this that if you dont know, you are just making things so much harder for yourself,

with the guide that takes it down to just approx 200 weird game mechanics..

you guys it's a PIG not a bull, sheesh.

or a boar, more accurately

I always feel like the boar helmet drop is trolling new players, they can't resist wearing it and end up fat rolling to their doom.

lol that was 100% me first time around

no fat-rolling if they wear nothing but the helmet, ie the one true build

can't believe it's a bull only in my game. chalk it up to another weird game mechanic, i guess.

the mechanic where i never really look at the boar directly bc it scares me

I know I killed the armored pig when I played, but even at the time I have no idea how I did it. That is, I died at some point and when I came back, it was ... gone. Magic!

i think i hit him in the arse then ran behind a wall * lots, it was very undignified.

You guys are really missing an element here

I just looked it up, and apparently there are multiple ways to use the environment to your advantage on that one that I was unaware of.

I kinda poked him in the butt and ran and hid behind things the undignified way too.

i didnt get to play last night, but i thought to jump down from the cross bow hollows' roost to get him

He might be too far away though

Can maybe do a falling attack, run up the stairs and repeat

I could not fall attack from the archway, but i did find the basement stairs while trying. In the next run, i found that i could lure the boar near the right stairs where he couldn't get me, and i could fall attack from there. This is the same technique i'd used on difficult hollows before, and it seems to be very useful with an axe (and a bit cheap). I was able to open the gate! Holy shit this game is hard. I had to immediately return to the bonfire 2 times bc the goddamn sewer rats poisoned me.

It seems like the boar wasnt killable without doing the fall attack, so i don't know how it's done any other way.

I can tell you, there is (at least) another way that's pretty ... hot.

Humanity seemed strange to me too, I started using a weapon that powered up with it toward the end game and it was useful and good, but I played the first two-thirds of the game hollowed, I think, only humanizing to kindle

Yeah, I played entirely offline and almost never turned human except to kindle and whatnot.

SG, did you find an item up on the bridge above the boar perhaps?

just glowing skulls, most of which i wasted

Hmmm

lol

The fuck?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6wqti0w54

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb4CxTTFDfA

I think when I'm done with Zelda I'll move back to Spider-man for a bit (which was fun but I haven't given it much time yet), but then after that I think I'll ready to move on to Dark Souls 3. Personal debate is, after following recommendations/a guide for Dark Souls 1, will I do it again for this one? Or will I go in blind? Blind is intriguing, but honestly, since I'm not playing online I don't get any tips or player assists, I might just go the guide route again. It's not like these games are much easier when you know the broad outline of what's around the corner, and for better or worse the DS games really lock you in to a certain style of play or strategy based on really early decisions/mistakes.

ok lol @ "Quelaag and (scorpion lady) are nude from the waist up...and nude from the waist down."

Btw no offense Josh, but you may not be a 'blind' type of player, if you get too anxious about missing things and doing it 'wrong'.

I try to go through areas blind the first time, but then I usually look it up to see what I missed.