I noticed a lot more summon signs in DS2 than DS1. It almost becomes too easy to play the game by summoning someone to help you beat bosses. Anyone here getting too reliant on summoning help? I've summoned players twice now for the Flexile Sentry and the Pursuer. Part of me wants to do it alone but the other side just says screw it and call for help.

For more than a few bosses this will actually backfire.

Eh, whatever works for you. Don't let anyone try and make you feel bad with the way you're playing the game.

However

Pretty much all of the bosses are designed for single player, so having other people not only messes with the boss' design (and can introduce a bit of jank), but you're also possibly robbing yourself of facing against boss battles how they were meant to be fought. It's frankly why I wish there were a sect of bosses and/or dungeons specifically tailored for multiple players, so you then enjoy the benefits of playing with other people while also still going against a boss that doesn't completely crumble against more than one player. Better yet, I'd love if From made a Souls spin-off that specifically focuses on simply enormous boss battles that are designed to be tackled in coop ala Monster Hunter.

@laudasolem: I'll say this. Dont feel bad about however you choose to play the game BUT remember this some of the bosses actually become harder if you summon help. Also there are a few bosses where help is not avalible. I would say give bosses a good 3-4 tries before you summon help at least that way you'll gain experience fighting them and can start to piece together how to become better at fighting them.

Just equip the Heide Knight Sword and steamroll through the game.

I've only just beaten the Lost Sinner and gotten my first big soul or whatever it's called and I haven't summoned yet. I want to see if I can do it without ever summoning. But so far every boss I have faced, no matter how tough, I've always felt like I can do it I'm just not doing it right. If I ever get to a boss that I just can't figure out a way to deal with, then I might summon.

The last boss that I beat was the Skeleton Lords, and so far I have't summoned anyone for help. Every boss I've beaten in 1 - 2 tries as well, except for the Last Giant.

Play the game anyway you want. I haven't summoned all that much in Dark Souls 2 but I relied on summons for quite a few bosses in the original.

It's part of the game, why not use it? If I'm human and I see a sign I will summon them. I like the coop style of it.

I made it a point to defeat a few main bosses on my own but here and there I summoned - if only because there are just so many bosses this time around. I beat all 4 "main" bosses myself and the final boss as well.

I agree that it can begin to feel very tempting to summon all the time. Lord knows I finished the game with over 35 Effigies. Near the end there where I felt the game started becoming a little exhausting I started getting the itch to summon all the time just to plow forward.

I and many others love and play the souls series for fun and the co-op, not to achieve some form of validation of self worth, that's why you see so many summon signs.

It's like playing dark arisen with real pawns instead of A.I pawns. Just wish you could climb these huge beasts instead of just whacking at their left side the whole fight.

I've been just hanging around the undead crypt helping others make it from bonfire to bonfire and it's been a blast.

no offense to those who play solo for the "challenge".

Ending your post with ''no offense'' won't actually erase the blatant bitterness in your post by the by. I mean ''not to achieve some form of validation of self worth'' says it all really.

Even if I beat the game with summons, I still get the nagging feeling I havent "beaten" the game. For me it's very important to not summon however angry I might get, because for me, summoning is giving up, it's failing the game.

That's just my weird OCD-like point of view though, I do not mean to impede on anyone elses way to play.

At this point I'm just trying to get through NG+ for achievements and I already beat all the bosses solo in my first playthrough so I don't feel any shame in summoning for help. Also I feel that summoning is necessary for the dumb NPC summoning escort mission sidequests. The Smelter Demon battle with Lacatiel would have been a bitch without help.

There is one fight in NG+ that is stupidly difficult without the help of a summon, an NPC summon won't cut it either, has to be a player...it also has to be a fairly smart player.

This would the the NG+ version of the Lost Sinner, when she loses 30% of her life she summons 2 red phantom pyromancers with around 3k health each and they constantly spam fireballs. If the summon and player know what they're doing, one will hold aggro of the Lost Sinner, allowing for their compatriot to go right after the phantoms and kill them off before they become too much of a hastle to deal with.

Lost Sinner is by a long shot THE most difficult boss of NG+ with those red phantoms, to the point where it is actually kind of absurd, no other boss gets this massive difficulty increase in NG+, all the rest just do more damage and have more health, otherwise they're exactly the same.

I just like moving through the game at a consistent pace. Getting hung up at one part for too long just isn't what I'm interested in and if summoning helps with that then well let's team up friendos. Am I probably missing out on some extra satisfaction by not taking the extra time on a boss to master it to the point where I can kill it alone? Yeah, most likely, but I can deal with that.

Besides I do take the time to do it every now and then. And my NG+ play through so far has been entirely solo so I'm aight with it.

If you can solo bosses on your first try, never having seen them before, then I will say that's impressive. I never feel great about defeating a boss that took me more than one try to do it. If I can beat them first try though, feels real good. To me, co-op is more fun, so in the end, I do what I find more enjoyable.

@drmechano: Interesting, I believe that boss is associated with the escort sidequest thing for Lucatiel. I guess the extra guy I summoned alongside the NPC was really good, because that fight didn't seem very difficult.

@rudeboy217: Well the beauty is you only have to fight 3 battles with her. They can even be the same bosses by using a bonfire ascetic. I fought Flexile,The Rotten and Lost Sinner with her. Red Eye Ring helps a lot with this.

@demoskinos: I read that somewhere but I ended up doing all four with her anyway just in case. Smelter was by far the worse even when I summoned another dude. The NPC literally had a sliver of health at the end of the fight.

@rudeboy217: Was this New Game Plus or just regular difficulty? Because regular difficulty lost sinner with any kind of summon is rather easy.

As long as you have 1 summon helping you, the fight goes from 'hardest fight in the entire game in New Game Plus' to 'actually managable'. Solo the fight is just a freaking joke (and not in the 'its piss easy like Dragonrider' kind of joke, the opposite end of the scale infanct), the Lost Sinner gets all up in your face if you try to hit the pyromancers and the pyromancers spam fireballs so the moment you try to hit the lost sinner they'll hit you.

As I said, with a summon (especially the full two additional summons) means that one person can focus on the Lost Sinner while the other goes for the phantoms

It's your game, man. Play how you want. Summoning is encouraged in this game and even bosses fricken summon people. If you like the solo challenge, great. I like to beat the bosses myself just to see if I can actually do it. I think of it as gauging my progress in the game how well I do against certain bosses. But it's also fun as hell to jump in and wreck some bosses with other people. It's about the experience that you want to have, not what other people think you should have. But alas, this is the Dark Souls fandom here, where "everyone has to play the way I played and experience what I experienced".

I'm on NG++ and there are bosses I've never died to and beat them solo, and bosses I've never beaten without a summon. The Lost Sinner has thwarted my every attempt to solo her and I can't imagine fighting Freja without my buddy Ashen Knight Boyd. That dude rocks.

@drmechano: It was NG+. The annoying black phantoms were there but yeah, like you said summoning allowed for one of us to take them out as another took out the Lost Sinner.

Play how you want. Many players do get some sort of weird validation out of the solo concept, whatever floats your boat. I always play them blind and offline the first time because that is literally the only way to get a true solo experience. I feel that is what the game is really made for so I want to experience it the first time that way and learn it on my own. That said that is just the first play through and there never has, and never will be, anything wrong with summoning people for co op.

I actually agree with kaos.

There are definitely a lot of people that seek validation of self worth in these games and I also agree with Kaos in that helping feels so much nicer than beating that boss by yourself with no one around to see it. Of course there is also an inherent sense of pride when you defeat a formidable foe on your own, but I found some of my fondest memories weren't of besting the Smelter demon by myself using almost no armor and rolling for my dear life - but instead helping a player through the foggy woods, showing him the bonfire and then defeating the area boss together.

I don't care that you prefer to coop bosses. Hell, I coop bosses as well, I just preferred to learn and solo them first because it felt more gratifying, as if each boss is basically a combat puzzle, which can be undeniably lost in coop. What I do care about, however, is this generalisation that people play it solo purely as ''validation of their self worth''. I mean, the fuck? That's literally no better than the hypothesised 'e-peen obsessed crowd' that's he's raging against. That's basically the equivalent of me saying ''only pussies coop'' or something. It's kind of ironic actually, because kaos' stance on things is precisely the sort of stance you would expect from the 'e-peen crowd', in that if you don't play it my way, then ''fuck you. You're only playing that way because you're pathetic and find that it's the only way you achieve meaning in life''.

I don't summon simply because it's much more satisfying for me to take out a boss solo. Called in Solaire for the gargoyle battle in DS1 and it was ridiculously easy- i barely had to do anything. Since then, no summoning. However, I've just dipped into co-op and helped a guy take out Skeleton Lord this afternoon. Never helped anyone beat a boss and it was quite enjoyable. I'm down for more of that experience, but my DS universe is going to remain summon-free.

@yummy

Lol, there is zero bitterness on my part, why would there be? It's just a game to me. I added the no offense as while I'm amused at those folks I didn't want to irk their ire over something I find silly. I'd just like to discuss the game as a game because that's what it is, for me.

Can't help it if a few folks take exception if others find the reason they like the souls series so silly. Maybe I'm just to old to still be gaming, shrugs. Its a trial and error game. Unless you are beating EVERY boss on your first and only try I don't see the point in making a big deal out of soloing a boss.

Even a monkey will put the square peg into the square whole given enough chances. So how rewarding can beating the boss on your 6th or 7th solo after you learn his 3 or 4 moves is beyond me. But hey whatever puts a smile on you guys face and you're having fun is the goal.

Just tired of seeing how the souls games are "meant" to be played comments really, zero bitterness though...

I beat many bosses on my first try with no help. Yet I still summoned players every chance I could. I beat the last boss with another player and a summoned NPC. I found it fun to have us all gang up on him.

Why be ashamed? I feel like I have nothing to prove to myself. I'm playing to have fun. Perhaps that's even why I didn't enjoy DS2 as much and I still think Demons Souls is the best of the series. Maybe my tastes have changed as I've gotten older. (well I know for certain I've stop playing MP games... that use to be all I played)

@yummy

The difference is I don't look down on other souls fans for playing however they find the most enjoyable. I give 2 shits if others think summoning is the easy way out, it is! But that's how you can tell what type a player a commenter is by how they react to certain generalizations.

I can't beat the ruin sentinels on my own and give 2 shits who knows it lol. Same can be said for smelter demon and a few others but it was so much fun doing it my sunbros!

Play however satisfies your needs without insulting the other half of the fanbase. Just

remember everyone games differently.

@kaos999: What are you even talking about. Who is this ''we''? Why are you trying to separate people who beat the bosses solo and those didn't into factions? And further more, you quite literally stated that ''I and many others love and play the souls series for fun and the co-op, not to achieve some form of validation of self worth''. You are literally deciding the motivation of anyone who preferred to fight the bosses solo for your own little narrative you've concocted, and are trying to make it seem as if they are beneath you.

I've already beaten the game, I'm on new characters now. I beat every boss solo my first time through and yeah i died ALOT. I just wanted to know i could do it on my own, from that point forward since ive done it once i never feel the need to solo a boss again unless i'm feeling frisky.

Now i summon all the damn time? Why? Cus its fun fighting with other people, its fun having less stressful boss fights.

If someone summons help for a boss they haven't beaten before i dont think less of them for it, why would i? It's a game, maybe he's not that good at the game and needs the help. Maybe he's just frustrated and wants to move on instead of banging his head against a boss for hours. Why be a judgmental prick about it?

I mean the Souls games have a huge multiplayer focus, if PvP is cool why is co-op for "bad players"? It's stupid. I spent an hour earlier tonight just rapidly invading people at iron keep as a brotherhood of blood guy. I got some hatemail too. But does that make me better or worse player than guys putting their summon sign down?

Also I'm gonna say roughly at least 80% of my deaths are from the levels themselves rather than bosses, probably more than 80%. So getting help with the bosses only does so much.

@clonedzero: Oftentimes getting to the boss is more deadly than the boss themselves. I remember my impatience getting the best of me and I died on the way to the Smelter Demon way more often than from that boss. Arrow to the back, fall of a ledge, oops forgot about that last knight. Smelter was difficult, but man sometimes getting there is even worse.

@yummy

Not my intention, I've been coming here for years and there was already a split faction.it's what made me finally join as it was worse in DS1 threads. What does it matter anyway, for someone who's not part of that group you sure sound offended.

Lets not pretend there wasn't a split beforehand and those solo elitists were and are still very vocal in regards to summons. I'm only looking down at those that ARE seeking validation from a videogame because I do find that sad and won't apologize for it.

@fredchuckdave: not really, if the host is careful and the summon(s) know what they're doing, every boss will get murdered in seconds. The only exceptions are the 2 hardest optional bosses but only because they have 3 trillion HP.

Dude play the game however you want ... dont feel less or bad about summoning help , the thing you need to do is enjoy the game , period. :D

I've gotten a greater sense of accomplishment, or a greater sense of fun, by dropping my summon sign down and helping the host beat bosses. The gesture party afterward is usually pretty fun as well. A lot of sun praising and liberal use of the "have mercy!" gesture on their part. It's just fun to help people.

Point is, play the game however you want. If you think summons and getting summoned is more enjoyable than tackling every boss solo, do that. If you think tackling every boss solo is more fun, do that. Do not let someone tell you that the only way you're playing the game "right" is by doing it their way, however. Dark Souls, for some reason, has had the nasty effect of making a minority of the player base feel "accomplished". Like beating a video game actually matters to anyone or is a symbol of your masculinity. It's sad, really.

terrible sword. same with the fire long sword. Terrible weapons. Great for low lvl starting characters but anything past the first 2 bosses make those terrible weapons.

I've summoned a few times and I disagree that it takes away from the experience.

I always put my sign down first to check out the boss and get some souls and the fidelity token. Then I decide whether to put another sign down and practice some more, go solo, or eat humanity and run co-op. Most important is not to run back and forth too much. No time for that these days :)

That said, this morning I helped a guy with the skeleton lords, realized the battle is a joke, was still in human form from the last battle and summoned anyways. Cuz its fun somehow. C'mon, there's three of them ;) which has me thinking. I only summoned one guy. Does that backfire. If I go co-op it always ramps up the diff the same, right? no matter if its 2 or three players.

All the loners should at least try to put their sign down for the ruin sentinels. Works out like a mmo-rpg battle. I put my sign down a good many times and it is very different whether you have a tank, two casters, someone like me rolling around like their on fire, ... :)

I just started sunbroing yesterday and it was jolly good fun. Didn't do the online thing in Dark Souls, but now I'm sold to the concept.

@mcshank: really? care to back that up? Whats the problem with high base low scaling weapons. They have gotten me through first playthroughs of Demon's and Dark1 just fine. And 9 bosses in, the scimi+4/fire+5 combo shows no sign of slowing down. 280 dmg in the right and 240 in the left hand. At very low weight. And I have been able to put points into vig, adp and end.

What am I doing wrong?

There's not really a wrong way to play this game I think. I like to try and take on the boss solo first, but if I get the crap kicked out of me multiple times and I just find it annoying, then I'll summon a person or two. Even then, I prefer to do NPC summons than player ones, but that's just me being weird. I always put my sign down on a boss though afterwards, just as I enjoy helping duders out.

Self worth is probably the wrong word for it but he does have a point, play the game how ever you want and don't give a shit if other people try to look down on you for summoning or whatever. first time i played through it i summoned on a few bosses for fun, then i did NG+ without summoning at all. Then I made a character that i played coop with a friend through the entire game, had a blast doing it. we made up celebrations and tried to get other people to celebrate like we did.

I'd say (as others have) that you should play however you enjoy it most. Personally I enjoy playing solo at least on my first time through because I like the sense of loneliness it adds to the atmosphere; but co-op can be a ton of fun and if that's the way you enjoy it most then you should go for it.

Where I would perhaps make a small recommendation is that fighting a boss by yourself at least once or twice is a good experience - co-op fights are great fun but on occasion can turn into a case where you end up just watching a more experienced player do everything for you (see Vinny fighting Seath in Load Our Last Souls), which robs you of the enjoyment of the fight. However, most co-op fights won't go that way but will rather be the two of you working together to take down a tough foe, and that can be fantastically satisfying.

Absolutely nothing. The problem is in Dark 2 weapon's work differently. If you are a strength or dex build you really are going to get more damage out of a straight +10 longsword than you will a +10 fire longsword. That said enhancements like fire, lightning, or dark scale VERY well with int and or faith based characters. They have simply changed it around so only the casters can really excel with the "element" weapons now and for str/dex characters they are simply "okay". There are a few exceptions like the Hiede Knight Sword that keeps it's full strength scaling while also having lightning but they are not the rule.

Also another huge improvement to Dark 2..... almost none of the weapons actually suck anymore. I could totally see a guy doing a cestus run, or only using a mace/broadsword the whole game. In Dark 1 or even Demon's I would have thought you were gimping yourself to do something like that.

Got it. Actually makes sense if you think about it. I almost feel tempted to roll my first ever magic user :)

Up to this point there is no other weapon that makes a convincing case to drop the fls. And trust me I would drop it for a decent halberd in a heartbeat but whats up with the weight of that thing.

Speaking of halberds. Not to say it sucks but the old knight halberd I found is a little bit of a gimmick, no? Very slow. Extremely heavy. Uses up all my endurance in one mighty swing. And yeah, I guess it breaks too.

But I imagine there's probably a use for it somewhere.

Then of course there is the almighty ladle!

Yeah very similar to me. I try it a few times alone then summon if I get stuck. I much prefer the sense of achievement of beating a boss on my own but that gets over-ridden by frustration and a desire to see more of the game (particularly cos I bailed on Demon Souls half way through).

It's difficult because I still approach the Souls games with the attitude that anything goes - stuff I feel guilty about in other games feels absolutely fine to me (coaxing enemies off platforms etc.). Cos the games are so painstakingly designed that it feels like anything you can do in the game is there with the designers' knowledge that players can exploit it. Personally, I found the Souls games really, really hard so when I get stuck I summon - and enjoy helping others out in return. Although can't sometimes help thinking that maybe, seeing as the latest game has got so much more attention than the others (or at least Demons Souls) that maybe the ease of beating so many bosses with co-op support is concessionary?

But yeah, I find the attitude of "not playing as designers intended"/'messing with boss' attack patterns' etc. is difficult with the Souls games. To me, it's a testament to the level of detailed, precision design work and difficulty level that trying to 'break' the games' mechanics/potential intentions is actually a big part of the games. So I try to think of making use of co-op within that context.