How is NG++?

Just finished up NG+ and was curious from anyone who has played it, are the changes similar as to those going from NG to NG+? Is it worth it to go through it again, or are all the item pickups going to keep being the same?

There are no new changes to items and no new enemies as far as I remember. It just a bump in enemies HP and defenses/attack I think. I breezed through it though. I am at NG+7 right now. And I don't think anything has really changed other than stats since NG+.

Are you playing it.. 7 times in a row with the same character or..? Whats the motivation after NG+ ?

Holy shit man.

Well, Sterling is mostly correct. There are 2 armor sets that begin being sold by 2 merchants in NG++, along with a few weapons and spells being sold by Chancellor Wellager in NG++. I think a certain armor piece is only sold in NG+++ as well.

And there are black phantoms (and some normal enemies) that only spawn once per playthrough, so you will need to ascetic them to get all their unique drops.

Only thing I can think of besides that is the increase in difficulty and number of souls earned until NG+7+.

source: I'm level 370!

I wanted the damn blue flames on the map! And yes same character.

The achievement or does something special happen after NG+ ?

@humanity: No, no achievement. Just my craziness of wanting to do something in the game because its there. In NG+7 the flames on the map turn blue. I just wanted to see it. Plus I was doing other things during those runs, like grinding covenants. And attempting no death runs. I did a no bonfire run in one of them. Respec'd for one run to play as pure magic only.

I will now list all the reasons to do NG++:

1. Wrath of the Gods

Nuff said.

Getting WotG in NG requires you to win 150 duels in the arena. You can also defeat invaders as a Blue Sentinel, but those counts don't stack with arena kills. For example, if you defeated 20 invaders as a Sentinel and won 10 duels, your count would still be only 20. You probably won't get summoned at all, maybe once in NG if you're lucky, so you're entirely dependant on arena kills. Which, require you to use a Token of Fidelity to enter. Which means you need to be summoned in co-op at least 150 times and complete the co-op. If you do not, you won't get a Token of Fidelity and cannot enter the arena. Also, if you lose in the arena, the Token of Fidelity is still used and it doesn't count towards your kills.

So, let's assume you are 'decent' at PvP and you win 50% of your duels. Let's assume all your summons go well and you'll earn a Token of Fidelity each time, which will not happen, but let's just humor this. You'll need to enter the arena 300 times. Which means you need to be summoned 300 times.

I've been a Sunbro for an entire playthrough. I felt I was doing summons a lot. Yet, by the end I did 'only' 60 of them. It is crazy. You will not get Wrath of the Gods in NG unless you are crazy. In NG++ you can just buy it.

Also, fun fact: Bountiful Sunlight requires 500 wins. Assuming the 50% again: that's 1000 arena duels, 1000 summons. Sounds fun. You can buy that in NG++ as well.

So yeah, there is reason to play NG++. I'm going for WotG right now. I like that miracle.

Well I finally got invaded for the first time in ng++ and someone one shot me from full health with Wrath of the Gods, which seems pretty insane, I'm a faith build too so I guess when I get WotG in a little I might actually start invading to take advantage of that before it gets nerfed. There's no way they'll leave it that powerful, one shotting someone with armor that has pretty good magic and physical defenses and 2200 HP doesn't seem right, I don't care how much of a pain it is to get that spell.

So yeah I'd say its worth doing ng++ to get and abuse that spell asap.

@kerse: Yeah that spell is bullshit. The worst part is there are multiple windows where it can damage you, so even if you roll through the initial one it'll hit you immediately after coming out of your roll, no matter how quickly you hammer the roll button again. They're going to patch it so you can roll-dodge it, but I'm not sure if they're reducing the damage. It one-shots me with full Havel and 99 vigor with Third Dragon Ring. Ridiculous.

How do you know this?

Also, why on earth do you have 99 Vigor? How long have you been playing with that character? That's crazy.

I'm sorry but, I call BS on that. I can't one shot kill anyone with it. And I've been hit with it while having full health, and it only took half my health. Its actually not that powerful. And it was already nerf'd in this last patch.

Depends on how high his faith level is really. For the tanks that dumped all their points in str/vig they'll go down a lot faster and easier. Haven't lost to a tank build yet as they are helpless if you never get close enough to use those big swords lol. Magic needs a serious nerf though, it's just too powerful and versatile.

Of course pure magic "builds" are easy as well as long you do the exact opposite and stay very close to them to whack them as they try and cast. Still op if you get hit, especially those dark orbs..

@kaos999: Not that much... I find beating magic users to a pulp much easier than tanks and agility builds. They go down fast and you can simply roll through almost all their spells.

@sterling: I don't know what to tell you. Go respec your character to match my description and fight some arena battles til you get hit with it. I'm pretty sure I had 6 Faith and 6 Int(not that Int matters).

@zevvion: Uhhhh I read it in a Reddit post a couple days ago. So that's like 3nd-degree hearsay, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong, heh.

To answer your second question...

I'm level 380-ish. I can almost get every stat to 50 and make my mundane weapons ridiculously powerful, but their scaling tapered off awhile ago. I think I recently raised my Faith to 50 for the Dragon Chime and my other stats are all 49. Haven't noticed much of a hit to my pvp success with the 250-ish less health. I still run around with my Havel and Gyrm Greathelm and my dual Mastadon Halberd and Mundane Helix Halberd. Bruutttal combination.

If you're playing on PS3 in the North-East of the US you might run into me. I've run into about 6 of the same people over the course of multiple days; both co-op and PVP.

Been playing this character since a few days after release, probably.

@development: I don't know if that answers my question. What is the point of having 99 Vigor? There doesn't seem to be any, as my character on NG+ has 26 Vigor and I do not get one shot by WotG unlike you.

On another note, am I the only one that plays with multiple characters?

@zevvion: Nope, I do too. When I feel that my current character has a sufficient SL, I roll another one, to make another build. Currently I have 3 :
- My first, dex/hexe, SL 165
- My second, Dex/str, "divine fist" (Company of Champion crest + invisibility rings), SL 135
- My current, the ninja (intend to make a bleed/poison build), which will probably be SL 150

I've been kind of breezing through NG++ much faster than my previous play throughs mostly thanks to the experience of replaying. Keep in mind my build is a full magic user. Even the areas that I had previously burned Ascetics can't really stand up to the damage I've been putting out between just the sheer number of Dark Orbs and Great Lightining Spears. And bosses are kind of a joke in most cases when I have slots to spare for Sunlight Spear and Great Resonant Soul. The thundercats in Shaded Ruins are easy enough to outmaneuver with a Raw Shortsword. Other than that I'm maybe an hour away from getting the platinum trophy.

@zevvion: I definitely do, I'm just going through ng++ because just buying the spells from that dude in ng++ instead of the like 500 kills you have to get in like 2 or 3 seperate covenants for the trophies. I have a faith/str character and a pyromancer/sometimes sorcerer and I just made a character that I plan to go pure strength with like a great club or something. As much fun as pvp sounds to me, I always have more fun making new characters and co-oping through the game again.

@zevvion: Well you get a bunch more health up to like 70 Vigor, and I think 5 health per level after that. It might taper off even more, but I already had well over enough points to respec to 99 Vigor so I wasn't paying attention to the specific scaling marks. It makes a difference, though. Way more of a difference than equipping the Life Ring +2, for instance. Going from your 26 Vigor to 99 Vigor is probably... an easy 200 percent increase, roughly estimating off the top of my head.

I'm away from my computer and PS3, so just go look it up if you want anything more exacting than that.

As for getting one-shotted... yeah I don't know, guys. I'm just telling you what happens to me. I'm likely conflating fighting Mega-Licia in NG+7 with fighting other players using WotG, but I have definitely, at the very least, had 70 percent of my total health remaining and was killed instantly by WotG by other players with my Havel set + Gyrm Greathelm and 99 Vigor.

@development: Maybe you have crazy low lightning defense and they have crazy high lightning damage. Can't think of any other reason.

@kerse: with the nerf it can be hard to hit someone with but there is still the issue that it looks like great heal but i got invaded today by someone in sinners rise he was at the elevator just came up i was looking down from the bonfire i threw a sunlight spear i thought it was going to miss but the sunlight spear changed direction right before hitting the ground and 1-shot him i laughed my ass off i'm a horrible person lol

old thread :)But yea, I have one shot my share of turtles with wotg. You need to set it up right, otherwise it will get you killed instead, but when it hits it is usually game over or at least very close to it.

p.s. against a skilled opponent you will usually not get the opportunity to use it. Nor is it any fun. So it is more of a last resort against otherwise unskilled healing turtles.

p.s.p.s. nothing wrong about that incident. No wrong way to get rid of an invader. Had you summoned him into your game it would be a different story of course.