So I just un-petrified that Rosabeth person and she has appeared in Majula offering me the option of upgrading my pyromancy. Now I don't know which flame to upgrade. I have both the normal flame and the dark flame. I have been mainly using the dark flame as it is more powerful, especially as I've been playing most of the game hollowed. A few things to consider before people start making their recommendations:

• I am playing a specifically strength character. All of my magic stats are at pretty much the minimum to use pyromancy
• I play the game hollowed most of the time, which increases the power of my dark flame. However, there is a severe penalty on the dark flame if I am not hollow.
• I'm not making a PvP build or any of that lame e-sports garbage (for losers). I am just playing for the story.
• The normal flame upgrades look cheaper
• I mainly use it to pull enemies, although I have been using only the flame to attack those giants in the poison swamps

I always max leveled both. And used what ever one suited my situation.

It really just depends on how hollow you are at the time. If you're playing through mostly at 10x hollow and never accidentally becoming human then Dark will be better.

How do you accidentally become human?

Co-op killing a boss as a phantom was basically what I was thinking of when I said that, lol.

Hmmm maxing both sounds like a lot of souls.

@sterling: @ajamafalous: Ah the nostalgia of dueling on the lava bridge only to suicide in the lava intentionally because you'd get 10% more human for doing so; hell of a time.

@cookiemonster: Na, its like 24K each in total. But you don't do them all at once. Its only a couple thousand each time you find a seed. And there are not enough to +10 them both on one playthrough unless your using BA or playing SotfS.

I always went with the normal flame specifically because I like to drop my sign and co-op so I end up human a lot. Do you tackle bosses while hollow or do you summon people? If you don't fight bosses hollow then go with the regular. Frankly, it's just my opinion. There's really no right answer here cause you aren't using it as a primary attack so extra damage doesn't matter. Hell, I'd probably go normal in your situation purely because it's cheaper.

I've beaten a couple of bosses in the past couple of days hollow with no bother (Covetous demon, ruin sentinels and maybes another one I can't remember). Also, I've mainly been staying hollow since I renewed my xbox membership recently as I don't like being invaded. However I was playing earlier and got invaded by two people in belfry luna even though I was hollow. I have no idea what that was about.

@cookiemonster: There are NPC invaders that show up whether you're hollow or human. There's been a few red phantoms I've fought multiple times, but seemingly random and at different areas, even after beating them previously.

Well, a) in the belfries you will generally be invaded on cooldown, whether by a generic NPC "Bell Keeper" or by another player who is part of the Bell Keeper covenant, and b) in DS2 you can still be invaded by other players while hollow, you just have a much lower chance than if you were human.

Anecdotally, I've been replaying the game this month, mostly as human because I like to help people kill bosses, and I don't think I've been invaded a single time (other than the NPC red phantoms) outside of the belfries.

I spent a pretty good chunk of the game human because of co-op and I didn't get invaded many times at all. Mostly during the DLC honestly though I did get invaded right before the covetous demon and then about 10 minutes after he killed me I helped the same dude co-op against the covetous demon.

Yeah the ones in the belfry tower weren't red phantoms. It took me by surprise because it said I'd been invaded, but the first thing I saw were those weird black dwarf phantom things. I thought it was referring to them, then all of a sudden some guy comes in and starts spraying shitty spells at me. Then when I nearly dealt with that guy, another guy turned up and back stabbed me. I left the Bell covenant thing straight after because I thought that might be what caused those invasions. I have no idea what I am doing half the time in this game!