@colorbrandon said:

@Rhaknar: I'm on NG+++ on my sorcerer and I need to dedicate 4 attunement slots just for dark bead. The best catalyst halves the uses :/

weird. Im usually not a big fan of "gaming" systems like that, reminds me of vanilla wow and downgrading heal spells... just never seems like thats the way it was intended if you know what I mean. Or Im just crazy.

Anyway, after buying 2 more magic arrow types (bought all from the sorceror dude you save except the 8k one which I cant afford) it already feels better, using the shittier magic arrow for shittier enemies, the stronger ones for the big fuckers and whatnot. Should I work on getting more attunement slots before dumping into int? that seems like something I should do, I have 4 at the moment.

Also, even if the magic scaling isnt the best, Im liking the tin banishment catalyst, as it works as a spear basically with the strong attack, and I dont have to switch weapons to a sword for example If I want to melee.

@Rhaknar said:

so killing the gargoyles with a sorceror + solaire makes the boss a fucking joke heh. Not sure how much more Ill play it tho tbh, I think im done with it for, for now at least. Not really "feeling it" anymore (which is completely understandable I think). I think its because you dont really feel like a "typical" mage-type, at least until you get more spells I guess? Most of the time Im still slashing fools to save magic arrows. I got Faith up to 12 to buy Heal, I dont even know if thats a good idea or not, I just wanted another spell :(

Do casters go down both int and faith or not?

Also lol on that first video, is Iron Flesh that good?

PS: I forgot to free Laudrec before killing the gargoyles and he wasnt in his cage anymore, he still shows up in the camp ready to murder the lady I imagine, I tried to kill him but he refuses to fight, just stands there, I almost knocked him off the cliff (which I didnt want because I want the ring, not the souls) and gave up.

Iron Flesh was that good when the game came out. That's why the spell was nerfed in a patch. You could literally walk up to the Four Kings, stand still, and just swing away without a worry. You could still kinda do that, but it's not as effective as it once was.

I've never played as an INT character, but I know they can hit very hard once they get better spells and equipment to boost their damage. Their best spells are those found in the DLC.

@Rhaknar: I think you'll like some of the other catalysts then. The one you use from manus' soul is cool, as well as the one dropped from demon firesage, it has cool fire damage.

@golguin: Speaking of hitting hard...

I think this was NG+, with 40 int

@Rhaknar said:

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

@Rhaknar: Int is for sorceries and Faith is for miracles. You can skip the Capra demon or leave it for later just don't forget to save the sorcerer in the lower undead burg, he'll sell you important stuff, like the billowing dragon ring (increases sorceries damage). You can get the Oolacile catalyst from Dusk after saving her from the golem and buying it from her summon sign. You should also find her armour in the same place as the golem, might need to quit and reload, the head piece, the crown of Dusk, also increases magic damage. Once you free big hat Logan though, you'll get access to the best sorceries, soul spear and homing soulmass, most bosses can't take more than 3-4 hits from those. you can stack up the number of casts by getting or buying sorceries multiple times and attuning them.

thats a cheeky way of getting more uses :( Beat capra demon, bastard is easy after the dogs are dead. Deffinately need to use more rolling on this character. And yeah saved the dude, bought almost all his magics. I dont quite understand magic weapon / shield, doesnt seem to last very long and if I want to use magic weapon I have to equip the catalyst on the left hand in order to enchant the left hand weapon, kinda weird.

I've never used magic weapon or shield, shield is pointless it's duration is very short. Magic weapon is for hybrid builds which focus on melee and buffing weapons. You should use the magic weapon before facing a boss, it adds a lot of magic damage on top of the base weapon damage. Personally, I used an enchanted long sword, magic and enchanted weapons scale with Int, the blacksmith in New Londo under Firelink can modify weapon to magic and enchanted weapons, you should go there and see if you can ascend any weapon you have. The Moonlight butterfly spear is also good for Int builds, since it's a spear you can block and attack at the same time, you'll need to get to Anor Londo first and you can downgrade the Lightning spear from Sen's Fortress to a +10 spear and then upgrade it to the Moonlight spear.

Gaping Dragon down, this is going so much faster compared to my first character now that I know the way and shit heh

I need to check wikis or something to see if / any bosses drop caster weapons from their tails because If I already had a hard time cutting tails on my melee dude, this one forget it, im just spamming missiles from miles away

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

@Rhaknar said:

@Fire_Of_The_Wind said:

@Rhaknar: Int is for sorceries and Faith is for miracles. You can skip the Capra demon or leave it for later just don't forget to save the sorcerer in the lower undead burg, he'll sell you important stuff, like the billowing dragon ring (increases sorceries damage). You can get the Oolacile catalyst from Dusk after saving her from the golem and buying it from her summon sign. You should also find her armour in the same place as the golem, might need to quit and reload, the head piece, the crown of Dusk, also increases magic damage. Once you free big hat Logan though, you'll get access to the best sorceries, soul spear and homing soulmass, most bosses can't take more than 3-4 hits from those. you can stack up the number of casts by getting or buying sorceries multiple times and attuning them.

thats a cheeky way of getting more uses :( Beat capra demon, bastard is easy after the dogs are dead. Deffinately need to use more rolling on this character. And yeah saved the dude, bought almost all his magics. I dont quite understand magic weapon / shield, doesnt seem to last very long and if I want to use magic weapon I have to equip the catalyst on the left hand in order to enchant the left hand weapon, kinda weird.

I've never used magic weapon or shield, shield is pointless it's duration is very short. Magic weapon is for hybrid builds which focus on melee and buffing weapons. You should use the magic weapon before facing a boss, it adds a lot of magic damage on top of the base weapon damage. Personally, I used an enchanted long sword, magic and enchanted weapons scale with Int, the blacksmith in New Londo under Firelink can modify weapon to magic and enchanted weapons, you should go there and see if you can ascend any weapon you have. The Moonlight butterfly spear is also good for Int builds, since it's a spear you can block and attack at the same time, you'll need to get to Anor Londo first and you can downgrade the Lightning spear from Sen's Fortress to a +10 spear and then upgrade it to the Moonlight spear.

what he said

Also, the enchanted amber is very easy to get if you buy the key to the garden

@Fire_Of_The_Wind: I think the dex-int build is the way to go, especially in the first playthrough. BSS + crystal magic weapon is a classic. The dex improved casting speed is also a bonus, although its around 9% only for most of the spells i use.

Weapon buffs are really only for bosses and PVP since they only last a moment. Why did you even fight Capra Demon and Gaping Dragon? You have the master key so you can skip Blight Town and the Depths.

@mosespippy said:

Weapon buffs are really only for bosses and PVP since they only last a moment. Why did you even fight Capra Demon and Gaping Dragon? You have the master key so you can skip Blight Town and the Depths.

I can't remember the last time I didn't make a bee-line, straight for the area boss. It must be the dozens of playthroughs.

@mosespippy said:

Weapon buffs are really only for bosses and PVP since they only last a moment. Why did you even fight Capra Demon and Gaping Dragon? You have the master key so you can skip Blight Town and the Depths.

yeah I just realised that lol. But I still want to do everything anyway :)

About 10 hours or so in with the sorceror and just not feeling it, time to drop him, seems what I really enjoy in this game is the melee. But since I'm still jonesing to play more, I want to make a dex heavy character (what my main was going to be before I drifted into Str), and from reading wikis and whatnot it seems that Pyromancers actually can be great dex users because casting speed scales with dex? If that's the case I can still have my dex heavy char with lighter armors and proper use of queelags fury or uchigatana or something, and still get a bit of caster goodness from pyro.

@Rhaknar said:

About 10 hours or so in with the sorceror and just not feeling it, time to drop him, seems what I really enjoy in this game is the melee. But since I'm still jonesing to play more, I want to make a dex heavy character (what my main was going to be before I drifted into Str), and from reading wikis and whatnot it seems that Pyromancers actually can be great dex users because casting speed scales with dex? If that's the case I can still have my dex heavy char with lighter armors and proper use of queelags fury or uchigatana or something, and still get a bit of caster goodness from pyro.

My current main character is a Dex build, it's so much fun. I'm in NG+ and just started the DLC and beat the sanctuary guardian. Here are my stats for reference

Class: Hunter, SL102, Vit 50, End 40, Str 16, Dex 40, everything else is at base level. Focus on getting your Dex as high as possible first playthrough and make sure you have enough End for a fast roll. After that start dumping in Vit. I put a few points in Str to use the Chaos blade in the off hand.

Equipment: R1 Iato+15 R2 Silver Tracer+5 (for ripostes) L1 Crest Shield+5 L2 Composite bow+15. Full shadow gear(the ninja armour) Rings: Dark wood grain ring (the ninja flip) and Wolf ring (for poise).

Very mobile, fast attacks with bleed, and if you get good at it you can parry enemies and switch to the Silver tracer for insane damage.

@Rhaknar said:

Gaping Dragon down, this is going so much faster compared to my first character now that I know the way and shit heh

I need to check wikis or something to see if / any bosses drop caster weapons from their tails because If I already had a hard time cutting tails on my melee dude, this one forget it, im just spamming missiles from miles away

Seath drops the Moonlight Greatsword which is a really good weapon for Int based builds, so you would probably want to grab that.

loving the pyromancer so much, loving the fire spells compared to the sorceror stuff, and loving the faster weapons compared to my "main" with his slow ass axe.

just rang the second bell (did all of blighttown, im a masochist what can I say), already fucked up and lost 20k souls at once even this early on (lol) but so much fun. Used the drake sword up until now (hadnt used it on the first char), just replaced it with my +7 falchion (already setting it up for queelag when I get to andor), got the pyro glove up to...+12 I think, bought all the spells from the swamp dude, but the ones from the lady are too expensive for now (as are the poison and toxic ones from the egg dude, that was fun to do lol). Been spending A LOT of souls on upgrading and buying spells compared to the first char where I only really dumped souls into lvls until late in the game.

also, I got my ass handed to me by those 2 Sen guards at the start of Sen fortress, so dont think Ill go there yet, might grind 20k for the forrest key for some farming

@Rhaknar said:

also, I got my ass handed to me by those 2 Sen guards at the start of Sen fortress, so dont think Ill go there yet, might grind 20k for the forrest key for some farming

You can pull them on at a time if you just barely walk into the doorway and stand behind the left pillar. Only the right one will aggro.

If you're feeling cheeky, you can activate the trap plate and shoot him in the back with it.

holy shit guys... parry / riposte... my eyes are open :O

so addicting to pull it off, farming those skellys and knights near the parish blacksmith bonfire to buy the forrest key, finally got the hang of parrying and its amazing. And it gives more souls too, I had no idea!

This thread is beautiful. It's like watching someone grow to love a game through forum posts.

@Rhaknar: Parrying is the best. You should try farming silver knights/Darkwraiths just with that! A lot of fun.

@TobbRobb said:

@Rhaknar: Parrying is the best. You should try farming silver knights/Darkwraiths just with that! A lot of fun.

parrying those forrest ghosts... not such a good idea :P lol. for now at least ^^ I love to farm this place tho, gonna farm and ascend my pyro thing and get that shit out of the way

@Rhaknar: Man that Bandit... I remember when I tried to parry him in NG+ for funsies and got oneshot. XD

@Rhaknar: Now parry-cheese Gwyn!

@colorbrandon said:

@Rhaknar: Now parry-cheese Gwyn!

is that even possible?

and also, still finding new things in this game, just got Black Bow Of Pharis from a forrest ghost lady that somehow I missed on my first character. Bodes well too because it has stupid high dex scaling, and this char is a dex build :D Also, the butterfly was evene asier this time, good lord

Yeah, Gwyn can be parried for an easy win. Did you fight Gwyndolyn last time? I think that might be one thing you missed out on.

@mosespippy said:

Yeah, Gwyn can be parried for an easy win. Did you fight Gwyndolyn last time? I think that might be one thing you missed out on.

hmm whos that?

@Rhaknar said:

@mosespippy said:

Yeah, Gwyn can be parried for an easy win. Did you fight Gwyndolyn last time? I think that might be one thing you missed out on.

hmm whos that?

The god of the Darkmoon Blades covenant. If you put on the Darkmoon Ring (I forget the specific name, find it in a cave somewhere in the Catacombs) in the Darkmoon Tomb a statue will disappear and you'll be able to go down a hallway and either join his covenant or go through the door to fight him. He will aslo challenge you to a fight if you attack Gwynevere.

@mosespippy said:

@Rhaknar said:

@mosespippy said:

Yeah, Gwyn can be parried for an easy win. Did you fight Gwyndolyn last time? I think that might be one thing you missed out on.

hmm whos that?

The god of the Darkmoon Blades covenant. If you put on the Darkmoon Ring (I forget the specific name, find it in a cave somewhere in the Catacombs) in the Darkmoon Tomb a statue will disappear and you'll be able to go down a hallway and either join his covenant or go through the door to fight him. He will aslo challenge you to a fight if you attack Gwynevere.

nope never done that.

jesus, killing Ornstein last seems alot harder :/ in fact, I have no interest in the ring or the weapon you make from his soul, so might just do him first like I did with my first character, fuck it.

@Rhaknar said:

jesus, killing Ornstein last seems alot harder :/ in fact, I have no interest in the ring or the weapon you make from his soul, so might just do him first like I did with my first character, fuck it.

It's simple if you summon a buddy. Each person takes a boss to a separate corner and then one person kills one while the other keeps their boss busy by dodging. The only attack you need to watch our for when fighting Super Ornstein is his electric butt stomp.

@Rhaknar said:

@mosespippy said:

@Rhaknar said:

@mosespippy said:

Yeah, Gwyn can be parried for an easy win. Did you fight Gwyndolyn last time? I think that might be one thing you missed out on.

hmm whos that?

The god of the Darkmoon Blades covenant. If you put on the Darkmoon Ring (I forget the specific name, find it in a cave somewhere in the Catacombs) in the Darkmoon Tomb a statue will disappear and you'll be able to go down a hallway and either join his covenant or go through the door to fight him. He will aslo challenge you to a fight if you attack Gwynevere.

nope never done that.

He's got a rocking set of armor you can buy after you beat him. One of my favorite chest pieces for female characters.

Ok so did painting world, actually found a bunch of shit I missed with my first character, including 2 pyro spells (convinient since I'm a pyro now), and of course I did asylum again since I had the doll for the painting.

I've also done the garden and the basin, including Sif and the hydra. The dlc golem isn't in the basin tho, dunno what's up with that. So only the 4 main dudes left besides the last boss and dlc, this is going so much faster than my first character.

I also have my pyro glove maxed out (yes including ascended), my dex at 45 which is the cast time buff cap I read, so I'm going to put some points into attunement for st least 5 slots and then just dump into endurance and vitality... So yeah, I've done some major farming too :p

Still no ring that gives attunement tho, which I want as my second ring (and had on my STR char), can't remember where I got it the first time. Still loving the shit out of this game, even pass the 100 hour mark now. Dark Souls 2 is easily my most wanted game atm.

Ps: oh and I got a friend hooked into it and he's loving it even if he's still just best the gargoyles. I'm passing along all the info you guys gave me, and like me he much prefers to play it like that :)

My character fights as a SL 48 DexPyro with the uchigatana so you could probably fight the Four Kings first and give the lord vessel there instead of talking to Frampt (lizard dude at firelink). You can then become a darkwraith and invade as much as you like with no penalty. PVP is essentially a whole separate game from the single player mode. It would be great practice for Dark Souls 2 since it sounds like you'll be getting that.

Watching that 1 hour speed run, I don't get some stuff, like how is he doing so much damage, he 5 shots queelag, killed the gargs ridiculously fast too, what's going on?

Also, what did he get when he climbs the tower in valley of the drakes, I've never done that.

@Rhaknar said:

Watching that 1 hour speed run, I don't get some stuff, like how is he doing so much damage, he 5 shots queelag, killed the gargs ridiculously fast too, what's going on? Also, what did he get when he climbs the tower in valley of the drakes, I've never done that.

If I remember that video he's using the ring that really buffs your damage when your HP is low (i believe that's in the tower at the valley of the drakes) and he might be enchanting his weapons with Gold Pine Resin. Dual wielding a weapon also dramatically increases your damage.

@golguin said:

@Rhaknar said:

Watching that 1 hour speed run, I don't get some stuff, like how is he doing so much damage, he 5 shots queelag, killed the gargs ridiculously fast too, what's going on? Also, what did he get when he climbs the tower in valley of the drakes, I've never done that.

If I remember that video he's using the ring that really buffs your damage when your HP is low (i believe that's in the tower at the valley of the drakes) and he might be enchanting his weapons with Gold Pine Resin. Dual wielding a weapon also dramatically increases your damage.

ah that must be what he got in the valley then, because he is almost dead all the time in the video lol. good lord.

anyone have any idea why Kirk the thorns dude isnt invading me in demon ruins right after the first capra demon? He did it on my first character... in fact, on that one, I got the demon ruins and izelith invasions, but missed the depths one. Now, I got the depths one, but hes not invading in demon ruins >_> Im doomed to not try out that thorns set

edit: nvm he showed up now, weird.

Man, reading this thread over the last two weeks has been a real treat for me. It's kind of inspiring watching as someone goes from not knowing how to move forward in the game, to beating it and starting all over again with newfound knowledge and confidence. I've just made it to Anor Londo after having put off doing Sen's Fortress for quite a while (I made two new characters once I unlocked it because I was too scared enter, haha). I'm quite close to doing Smough & Ornstein now (I think, I just got into that room with the Silver Knight set). My goal for this character ever since I picked up a spear was to cosplay as Ornstein, and I'm closing in on that now, which is pretty neat. Well, so long as whoever I happen to summon is willing to kill Smough first. I mean, I'll tell them that I want to kill Smough first, but that doesn't mean that they'll listen.

just finished the game a second time, with my pyromancer this time, did a lot more things with this one even if the hour count was lower (of course), killed Darksun Gwynsomething for example. 140 hours of Dark Souls is enough for now guys, I might do a NG+ one day, but I think this is my game of the generation.

...and I just saw that this week Demons Souls is coming out on PSN...oh fuck. Its like its meant to be >_< Be prepared for a ver 2.0 of this thread, only in the Demons's Souls page I guess :P

I laughed. I cried. 
 
What a fantastic thread.