Hey duders,

So I got back into dark souls, I'm exactly where Vinny was when they started load our last souls. I just lit the bonfire in the tomb of giants after the dark part. I'm level 63ish and I have a Iaito +10 that I really really like but it just doesn't do a lot of damage. My shield is kinda ok...i have some fire spells that only do about 50 damage and i dont think i have stats for them.

My question is, is there a good way for me to get some better gear and continue with my character or should I just start over and build a better character?

Damage on pyromancy is determined by the level of the pyromancy flame and INT so maybe look into getting it upgraded it only costs souls. Even with low INT you can still do good damage with an upgraded flame.

Also if Iaito isn't doing much damage it probably means you didn't add a lot of DEX which is the only thing it scales off of. What stats did you build into? There's probably a better weapon you can move to depending on how you built.

@daggon55: Pyromancy damage is not based on INT, the only thing that affects it is DEX and that just speeds up the cast time.

Edit; Well thinking about it I think it affects physically hitting people but not your magic damage.

Ah yes you are right, I saw the scale number in the wiki and thought "oh I guess it does scale with INT I didn't know that" then I re-read and no it doesn't. My mistake, just upgrade the flame for damage.

What @daggon55 said. If you increase DEX your iaito will get stronger and your pyro will cast faster.

Search Firelink for the guy who will upgrade your pyro flame. At higher levels pyromancy is ridiculous.

If you still feel like iaito is weak you can go on a hunt for the ember to get it up to +15, and you can always use a resin on it.

@cocabis can you tell us your stats? if we have those we can give you recommendations

What's your dex (and the rest of your stats)?

@daggon55: INT actually only increases the pyromancy flame's melee attack. Pyromancy spells scale with the level of the pyromancy flame (1-15) then the ascended pyromancy flame (1-5).

Yeah I think I invested in strength and less in dex. I'll take a look at my stats and what items (boss souls etc) I have and will post it.

I just bought dark souls. Someone throw some starter tips at me. Also, is the dlc really worth it? I bought the standalone edition on ps3, by the way.

@naru_joe93: You can find lots of tips in the Giant Bomb Dark Souls Beginner Thread. You can also post questions there to get them answered.

I think the vast majority of Dark Souls players would agree that the DLC contains some great content (especially boss fights) that is worth its price. However, you cannot access any of the DLC content until you've gotten roughly halfway through the game, so you may want to play the game for a while to make sure you like it before paying for more of it.

Thanks for the tip! I knew that it was only accessible a decent stretch into the game, but I (foolishly) didnt consider waiting until I got a feel for the main game before purchasing the add on.

@cocabis: Since you're using the Iaito I assume you're putting points into Dex? If so, go back into the Catacombs and grab the Lucerne and the Great Scythe. The Great Scythe is arguably the best weapon in the game overall, and the Lucerne is just really fun.

@ajamafalous@you_died

Ok so I'm in the game now

level 63

vitality 22

attunement 12

endurance 25

strength 25

dexterity 20

resistance 17

intelligence 13

faith 12

I have the souls from the butterfly, quelaag (i know i could make a weapon with this), iron golem, ornstein.

I have 4 titanite shards, 2 titanite chunks, 2 green titanite shards, 1 white tit chunk, 2 twinkling titanite and1 dragon scale.

I have fireball and combustion both at 1.

I'm wearing a knight shield +8 and the iaito +10 and havel armor but im almost at max equip load. I also have the silver knight armor.

@elixirbronze: i have both of them, but i didnt know about the dex thing so i only have 20. also both weapons are not upgraded at all.

@cocabis: Don't put points into resistance - it's not worth it.

@cocabis: Since you've sort of spread your points about, you might consider upgrading a weapon along the Raw path, which increases the weapon's base damage an lowers strength and dex scaling. You might actually be pretty well off with one of the curved greatswords. I imagine a couple of skeletons have dropped a Murakamo by now. You can also get the Gravelord Greatsword from Nito's Tomb by entering via the sarcophagus.

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/curved-greatswords

http://darksouls.wikidot.com/raw

@viciousanchovy: I hae a murakamo, if i upgrade it i know i can make the queelag sword also. Im tryin now to use a zweihander +5 that i had, 195 dmg, its kinda ok but really slow and also 1 attack drains most of my stamina

@cocabis: With those stats, I would advice going for a quality weapon (i.e. both str/dex scaling) rather than pure dex like the Iaito. Lucerne is a good choice to upgrade, or maybe the Estoc which is also easy to get. Also, spending points in resistance is generally considered a bad idea.

EDIT: Or hell, even the Longsword is a decent quality.

My favorite thing to do in Dark Souls is try random weapons out and see if their moves are cool. You have a great build for that kind of messing around. I would just pump VIT and END and this point and just use whatever weapons you find that have cool movesets. Don't worry about the damage. You can easily compensate for that with upgraded Pyromancy (level up the glove at the trainer), and if you go back to Blighttown (in the swamp near Quelaag) there is another trainer who has even more ridiculous spells. So just use whatever weapons you like as long as they can handle the regular enemies. For bosses try a mix of Pyro and Melee and you should be golden. It will take some deaths to learn where to strike, etc but that's normal.

That's my advice. If you run into trouble you can always Praise the Sun and find some Sunbros to help you out.

@elixirbronze: I tried the lucerne and its pretty cool, made it +5. Should I grind a bit and make it +10 and then add lighting or something like that? That seems useful. And upgrade the pyromancy flame as much as i can.

:] makes me smile to see everyone chipping in to help.

Not far off from Orensteins spear, I think.

@cocabis: Yeah dude, go for it. The beauty of Dark Souls is that mostly anything is viable. Be adviced though with upgrading with elements; some bosses are resistant to certain elements (while also some are weak to them). With Lightning I think you should be fine up until the last boss at least.

EDIT: I should mention also if you upgrade with Lightning the dex/str scaling will go away.

Alright duders, thanks to everybody for the help, I must go to bed but I will be back so any tips are welcome. I'm already excited to get into it after being kinda bummed about it. I think I\m gonna try the lucerne maybe with lighting, always wanted a weapon with lughting, and then maybe upgrade the pyromancy flame. I have no idea whats past the foggy door in the tomb of giants, well, except the dog skeletons that killed me last time, but can't wait to move forward. I reaaaaally really want to beat this game.

It's too bad you leveled strength and dexterity evenly. To my knowledge, there isn't really a weapon that truly benefits from that. Lucerne is fine, but doesn't scale that well with either stat, resulting in lower damage than any weapon that is specialized in a single stat. Although I hear the Claymore is really good for strength and dex, but I haven't tried myself.

That said, number perfection isn't needed at all to beat the game. I beat it my first time with a Silver Knight Straight Sword + 3 because I had no idea what I was doing. Lucerne would be fine. Great Scythe is also good, but scales more with dexterity than strength.

Anyway, you should stop putting points in Resistance. Resistance is useful on paper, but because levels gain in cost each time you level, it is unwise to spend souls (basically 'skipping' to level an other stat AND increasing the cost of the next level) on Resistance because other stats also raise your various resistances (although obviously a bit less than putting a point in Resistance would), in addition to getting you other things like increased damage, health or endurance. Because you're leveling Resistance by putting a point into anything, it's not worth it.

Also, you should probably keep increasing both strength and dex and you could probably use more endurance as well. 22 Vitality is fine enough, I wouldn't put more into that if I were you. Some people really like it, but it just means you'll do less damage and can block/roll/attack less. A bit more health isn't a good trade of for doing lower damage. I beat the game my first time with 14 vitality. I never leveled beyond 20. It's useful, but you already have several stats you need/want to increase. I'd argue Vitality is fine where it is.

Going through the list of weapons really fast I counted 21 weapons with same scaling on strength and dexterity. So there definitely are some options if ones goes for the balance in str and dex route.

There is an entire subcategory of weapons (quality weapons) and builds that go along with it (quality builds) that scale on both strength and dex (in layman's terms, it usually refers to C/C weapons, though sometimes people include B/D or D/B weapons as well).

First of all, I stuck to the halberds except I also utilized to good effect the silver Knight spear. All my weapons scaled well, but with no magic or lightning etc. It worked for me, essentially the first halberd(what I finally settled on for Ornstien and Smaugh), a boss halberd I believe, and finally the Black Knight Halberd, that took me to 360 I think. I maxed all my weapons except the spear, and reinforced my armor. My armor I progressed from mail, to a havel/silver knight/catalina mix and match, special use shadow garb, and finally Paladin except for a black Iron +2 Helm. I used pyromancy for strictly backup, and chaos ball of fire paid off well twice. But I disliked the power within. I went from heater shield to tower shield (the lighter one) to cleansing tower shield mix

Now to my quandary and advice. Strength is not the end all. I did 40 strength, and advanced End and Vit. Finally I went to Dex, and was amazed by my very quick over-level. Dark souls 2 may get a different approach from me. I'm thinking that some combo of End./Vit./Dex., and also Strn. is what I want for my preference.

And I think that Lautrec ring sucks. Unfortunately perhaps I was already tethered to Havels, and wanted other choices.

With those stats you are better off stats-wise by going with a longsword/bastardsword/zweihander/claymore or something like that in the long run and making it +15. But if you really like Iaito, then you either need to invest heavily in DEX or make it elemental to cover up the damage loss. You probably want more Endurance too, it affects your maximum stamina and lets you swing/roll/block more. The stamina gain caps out at 40 END.

Also I just found out that the Grass Crest Shield has a ton of stamina regen. I just got it last night by messing around a bit and today I learned its actually pretty great so I'm gonna switch to that. So with that I also might be able to play with the zweihander. Hmmm. I also want to go after lautrecs ring though it looks kinda tough. I heard poison arrows is a good way to cheese it

Yep poison arrows will do the trick if you want to go that route. It's not too tough of a fight and there are basically no penalties to losing the fight since its an invasion, so I say just go for it unless you get frustrated.

Thinking also of buying ornsteins armor set. Really like how it looks and its better than the silver knight armor.

What I meant was that the damage output of those weapons are lower than specialized weapons as far as I know. They often scale, for example, D or C with either stat, which isn't that much and because you have your stats divided in two categories, your level will probably be lower as well. Compared to a weapon ranking A or S which receives a great deal of benefit from that stat and since it's the only stat you had to level for that weapon, you probably also have a much higher count there.

Let it be known I'm just using an educated guess here though; I haven't used much of those types of weapons.

Ok guys so: I made the lucerne+10 then 2 into lightning, its pretty decent compared to what I used. I got ornsteins armor set. AND I FUCKIN FINISHED TOMB OF GIANTS. I ran all of it and then with a bit of help from a summon i beat nito. So, now I have 102k souls and it costs 23600 to level up. What should I do with the souls, i really dont want to lose them. I have enough for 4 levels. I wouldnt mind some more stamina or health...

Can't really go wrong with more stamina and health. Most stats begin having diminishing returns past 40 though, so keep that in mind. Otherwise go nuts. Just boost up the appropriate stat for the weapons you like. (Look at the weapons stats and look at the scaling under parambonus)

@cocabis: The one thing I would warn you about the grass chest shield is that it doesn't block 100% physical damage. It blocks 95% so you'll always take a little damage when blocking with it. If that doesn't bother you then keep using it. The extra stamina regen on it is very nice.

@lichbanes: Yeah, thats ok for me. I was just watching vinnys run in load our last souls and wtf is he doing so much damage :(, no wonder I have such a hard time...I wonder if i kinda fucked up the whole game...I mean I could just farm so much to increase my stats for weapon scaling but that would take soo long. Don't know...I would be happy to finish it even if I get help from summons on all bosses. I really just want to see the whole game.

@cocabis said:

40 strength, two-handing a maxed-out large weapon, and Power Within will do that. Don't expect yourself to do that much, that's not really typical.

@cloudymusic: Yeah...I'm really not liking this whole weapons deal. Seemed cool at first but now it just gives me a headache. Guess I'll try to keep moving with the stuff I have and see how far I can go. If stuff gets much harder than the tomb of giants I might just start over now that I know a lot more than I knew when I played it before.

@cocabis said:

two choices, get the Very Large Ember from the ghost place and upgrade your weapon to +15, and increase your dexterity or strength to 40 depending on which your weapon scales best for. This is what Vinny did and is the absolute best way to maximize your damage, you can also buff a +15 weapon to do even more damage.

OR create an elemental weapon. Upgrade your +10 weapon into a +5 Lightning or +5 Fire weapon and it will do more damage than a normal +10 weapon. It doesn't scale with stats well (you can have minimum str and dex) and is the slightly worse route to go down but you will easily have enough damage to beat the game. Personally I would do this in your situation.

@ludorverr: Yeah...elemental was what I thought too, though I have to farm so many titanite chunks. I need 6 and a slab. And put most of my points into end/vit