So I finally got back around to playing this, and after defeating Sif I'm just heading down into the Depths. Got the divine ember, made a divine Longsword, etc. The problem is, it doesn't fucking work - skeletons don't stay dead, ghosts don't take any damage whatsoever. Am I missing something really obvious here like needing a higher Faith, or is this game just broken? It'd be pretty shitty if I had to start over because of this, and even though I pretty much unconditionally love the Souls games, would turn me off for a good while (if not permanently).
 
Halp?
 
Edit: Case closed, I'm bad at videogames.

Where exactly are you trying to go? The Depths is the sewer area with the cursed frogs, which doesn't have ghosts or skeletons, so I assume that's not where you are. The Catacombs has the skeletons, and New Londo Ruins has the ghosts.

You can only hurt a ghost with a Cursed weapon or if you use the Transient Curse item on yourself. Divine weapons do make the skeletons stay down, but in the Catacombs there are mage guys who resurrect them, the mage guys die permanently once you kill them.

Have you gone through Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo yet? That's generally the right path before heading down into either the Catacombs or the Ruins.

@Three0neFive: The structure at the entrance of New Londo (where you take the elevator) has another staircase that can be used as a shortcut to Blighttown, but you need to have a key to open the door.

I guess your question is answered but i hope to hi jack this thread with my own divine ember/ weapon problem. So i have a +5 scimitar that i am very fond of right now, will ascending it mess it up in anyway? I mean the scimitar is my all purpose weapon and a quick google search tells me ascending it makes it "special and able to kill undead" (undead=everybody or undead=skelletons?) and my concern is, it somehow becomes ineffective against normal enemies.

@super2j said:

I guess your question is answered but i hope to hi jack this thread with my own divine ember/ weapon problem. So i have a +5 scimitar that i am very fond of right now, will ascending it mess it up in anyway? I mean the scimitar is my all purpose weapon and a quick google search tells me ascending it makes it "special and able to kill undead" (undead=everybody or undead=skelletons?) and my concern is, it somehow becomes ineffective against normal enemies.

It just means that it will make skeletons stay dead permanently. They really aren't that useful, because while they will work against other enemies just fine, they won't do as much damage as lightning or chaos weapons. Take that scimitar and turn it into Queelag's Furysword or turn it into a lighting sword. So much more powerful.

@McGhee: so what i am hearing is, i need to go and look up and research this. Something i always try not to do but i guess its required here. So i should just imbue the ember onto something else? or should i just hold on to it?

Edit: looking up the furysword, i realized that i can make a weapon with the moonlight butterfly soul, But I am not sure if i should get into doing all that.

@super2j said:

@McGhee: so what i am hearing is, i need to go and look up and research this. Something i always try not to do but i guess its required here. So i should just imbue the ember onto something else? or should i just hold on to it?

Edit: looking up the furysword, i realized that i can make a weapon with the moonlight butterfly soul, But I am not sure if i should get into doing all that.

The ember is not a one use thing. You take it to the right blacksmith and he will upgrade his forge and allow you to upgrade as many weapons of that type that you want. The big one use thing when it comes to ascending weapons would be the special souls like the Moonlight Butterfly's soul.

Dark Souls is definitely a game you should do a little research on to at least get some of the basics straight.

@super2j said:

@McGhee: so what i am hearing is, i need to go and look up and research this. Something i always try not to do but i guess its required here. So i should just imbue the ember onto something else? or should i just hold on to it?

Edit: looking up the furysword, i realized that i can make a weapon with the moonlight butterfly soul, But I am not sure if i should get into doing all that.

The ember is not a one use thing. You take it to the right blacksmith and he will upgrade his forge and allow you to upgrade as many weapons of that type that you want. The big one use thing when it comes to ascending weapons would be the special souls like the Moonlight Butterfly's soul.

Dark Souls is definitely a game you should do a little research on to at least get some of the basics straight.

Give it to him, he is the only one who works with it. You can't do anything with it yourself, so there's no need to keep it. As a matter of fact, there are four blacksmiths. Each time you approach one, if they ask for an ember, give it to them.

No problem, just send $20.00 to my paypal.

@laserbolts said:

@McGhee

@super2j said:

@McGhee: so what i am hearing is, i need to go and look up and research this. Something i always try not to do but i guess its required here. So i should just imbue the ember onto something else? or should i just hold on to it?

Edit: looking up the furysword, i realized that i can make a weapon with the moonlight butterfly soul, But I am not sure if i should get into doing all that.

The ember is not a one use thing. You take it to the right blacksmith and he will upgrade his forge and allow you to upgrade as many weapons of that type that you want. The big one use thing when it comes to ascending weapons would be the special souls like the Moonlight Butterfly's soul.

Dark Souls is definitely a game you should do a little research on to at least get some of the basics straight.

So I just killed the butterfly and got the ember but the blacksmith in the church wants me to give it to him. Should I? Or should I save it for later?

Yeah, give the ember to whoever asks for it as soon as they ask for it.

@laserbolts said:

@McGhee

@super2j said:

@McGhee: so what i am hearing is, i need to go and look up and research this. Something i always try not to do but i guess its required here. So i should just imbue the ember onto something else? or should i just hold on to it?

Edit: looking up the furysword, i realized that i can make a weapon with the moonlight butterfly soul, But I am not sure if i should get into doing all that.

The ember is not a one use thing. You take it to the right blacksmith and he will upgrade his forge and allow you to upgrade as many weapons of that type that you want. The big one use thing when it comes to ascending weapons would be the special souls like the Moonlight Butterfly's soul.

Dark Souls is definitely a game you should do a little research on to at least get some of the basics straight.

So I just killed the butterfly and got the ember but the blacksmith in the church wants me to give it to him. Should I? Or should I save it for later?

Just to be clear. You didn't get the ember from the butterfly, you got the soul. In Anor Londo you can take the soul to the blacksmith to turn a +10 curved sword into the fury sword. The ember is for changing a +5 weapon into a divine weapon. The divine weapon can be useful in the catacombs as it stops the skeletons from getting up again after you defeated them, but there are others ways of keeping them down.

Hmmmm, I thought Queelag's soul was used to make the Fury Sword, and the Moonlight Butterfly soul was used to make that weird spear thing.

@AndyD74 said:

Hmmmm, I thought Queelag's soul was used to make the Fury Sword, and the Moonlight Butterfly soul was used to make that weird spear thing.

Ugh, you are right. IIRC you can make the most crazy shield in the game with that soul too, it's ranged attack is the highest damage you can do in the game. Anyway, my point was the distinction between embers and souls, wasn't thinking about the soul itself. Sorry for complicating things.

@jozzy said:

@AndyD74 said:

Hmmmm, I thought Queelag's soul was used to make the Fury Sword, and the Moonlight Butterfly soul was used to make that weird spear thing.

Ugh, you are right. IIRC you can make the most crazy shield in the game with that soul too, it's ranged attack is the highest damage you can do in the game. Anyway, my point was the distinction between embers and souls, wasn't thinking about the soul itself. Sorry for complicating things.

Not anymore it's not. Moonlight Butterfly Shield used to be awesome but they nerfed it hard.

@benjaebe: It has indeed been nerfed into the ground, practically worthless now sadly.

Also to those throwing around comments of what weapon ascend is better, please keep in mind it is entirely down to stats and scaling. A divine weapon will be fantastic with high faith compared to a lightning weapon which loses a lot of its scaling. Lightning/Fire weapons get a lot of damage at lower levels because they don't scale, but they are easily beaten once you've got a B scaling weapon with 30+ in the relevant stat.

@MysteriousFawx said:

@benjaebe: It has indeed been nerfed into the ground, practically worthless now sadly.

Also to those throwing around comments of what weapon ascend is better, please keep in mind it is entirely down to stats and scaling. A divine weapon will be fantastic with high faith compared to a lightning weapon which loses a lot of its scaling. Lightning/Fire weapons get a lot of damage at lower levels because they don't scale, but they are easily beaten once you've got a B scaling weapon with 30+ in the relevant stat.

You're right except Faith is a horrible example. Faith scaling is probably the most busted thing in the game and is easily outclassed by just about any other ascension out there, simply because it splits the damage between magic and physical so it gets damage checked twice. I have a 50 faith character with a +5 Occult weapon that is still doing less than any other ascension I've done. If you're doing a faith build you're much better off going +15 in a regular weapon and using sunlight blade or Darkmoon blade to buff it, unless you're using something like Grant which does some pretty powerful damage but also requires 50 str and 30 faith.

@benjaebe: No doubt that Str or Dex builds will work better in terms of raw damage, after many PvP matches its all to clear that my divine zwei is beaten most of the time. Its all to do with balance of faith also boosting your miracles however, taking off half of someones hp with a blaze of holy lightning is oh so satifying when my clunky sword just wont connect.