So, inspired by Brad playing this game, I decided to pick up Demon's Souls, and it seems great so far. I took the same route Brad did, namely picking the Royal class like the pussy I am. In 4-1 I picked up the Crescent Falchion +1 and loved the sword along with my Soul Arrow.

But then I made an incredibly stupid mistake; I went to the grumpy blacksmith in 2-1 to upgrade my Crescent Falchion to +2, and so I did. Now, I should mention that I'm playing the game in Japanese because I'm in the process of learning to speak and read the language. I noticed there was a second upgrade available with the Falchion that upgraded my physical damage that, in retrospect, was simply called Falchion +1. In the mindset that any available upgrade would actually be a genuine upgrade, I clicked it. After that, I went and tested my fantastic new sword on those brown miner-dudes in the level and was horrified to find the damage I did had been heavily reduced. It was only then I realised my Crescent Falchion was now no longer Crescent, and thus apparently does not scale with my magic stat any more. I'm an idiot.

This, as you might imagine, upset me somewhat. So, my question is this; how do I deal with this? Is there another good weapon I might use in the meantime (preferably one that scales with magic) that can be found in one of the early levels? Also, I'm guessing I'll be able to restore my Falchion to its Crescent status with Darkmoonstone, right? If so, I might try farming it off of the Reaper in 4-2 (the internet tells me he has that stuff) though so far he's been offing me with one hit, so that's not going to be a walk in the park.

Any tips would be appreciated.

You can upgrade any weapon to Crescent, meaning you can remake your Falchion a Crescent Falchion, it will just take a lot more materials than if you hadn't reset the weapon.

First you will need to upgrade your falchion to +6 then you can use Darkmoonstone to make it Crescent.

Oh man, really? That sucks. Hmm... Guess I'd best find another weapon to use then. Any tips on that? I felt like I was doing quite well up to this point (though again, I'd already watched Brad play some of it so there's that) and this idiocy has really taken the wind of out my sails.

There's a blessed mace or whatever in the shithole Valley of Defilement (5-1).

I'm sure this map won't help (actually they're okay just takes a bit to figure it out). The "falling down" route is how you get to the mace.

How many hours in are you?

I went for the Crescent Falchion right after the 1-1, if you did the same, it would just be quicker to restart.

I've already beaten 1-2, 2-1 and 4-1, as well as having grinded the skeleton dudes in 4-1 for quite a while. I'm not exactly inclined to start over, therefore. The mace sounds like a good idea, I guess I'll go for that. Thanks for the suggestions!

You could always look up the item duplication glitch and duplicate enough sharpstone and darkmoonstone to restore the falcon. Obviously that has the potential to start a slippery slope as to why not save your self some more time and skip all grinding.

Not sure why everyone insists on glitching the game; just go get the mace and keep playing normally.

I came back to my save after Brad started just to find I'd created a thief with Luck preset to 15. What a waste. But even so, I seem to be doing fine, so I say accept your dumb mistakes and move on. Just find a new weapon.

@jjweatherman: Having a good luck stat is actually pretty helpful in Demon's Souls. It increases drop rates. Which makes farming for ores less painful.

@jjweatherman: Luck boosts the damage of the Blueblood Sword (up to 30 luck I think?), which is the best weapon in the game.

@fredchuckdave: The mace won't really be all that helpful to him, since blessed weapons scale with faith. He needs either a Moon (Moonlightstone) or Crescent (Darkmoonstone) weapon to leverage his magic stat.

@dudacles For beating the Reaper, best advice I can give is to see if you can get far enough into 3-1 to rescue Sage Freke and buy Fire Spray from him. It works reasonably well against the Reaper, and you can run around the altar while using it.

@blacklagoon: This is a pretty early character, no reason he can't buff up faith. Homeward is probably the best spell in the game that isn't totally broken.

Well, I got the Blessed Mace +1 and that has helped me out greatly so far. In combination with my Soul Arrow, which I've been whoring against bosses like the little pussy I am, it's allowing me to progress quite comfortably. The only real downside so far has been that I now have to upgrade both Faith and Magic to keep my weapons decent in terms of damage, but that can be dealt with, I guess. Thanks for all your advice, guys!

I almost had a heart attack right then and there when I accidentally smashed my mace into Stockpile Thomas' face though. "What in the world are you doing?!", he yelled to me, clearly infuriated, but I hastily turned off the PS3 and upon rebooting he was back to his brooding manners. There have been few times I've been so relieved after resetting a video game. I suppose I was just in time to stop the game from quicksaving or something. God damnit Demon's Souls. You are hell and catharsis like few games I've yet played.

@dudacles: You have to hit him twice to aggro him, but yes Stockpile Thomas is secretly the most dangerous enemy in the game.

Crescent Uchigatana is better. You can get the weapon on 4-1, upgrade it to +6, then darkmoon it up for the crescent upgrade.