Giefcookie

If there was 1 premium video per year I'd still want to subscribe. It's not about "getting your moneys worth" for me, it's about putting money towards my favourite thing on the internet, so maybe it will spawn more stuff like.

Its a branching tree structure like you described. Upgrading a base weapon will unlock new branches, and if you decide to upgrade "into" a branch, you lose the base weapon and access to other branches, and need to remake the old base weapon to access the other branches. Reaching higher ranks will let you buy more advanced "base" weapons (at least afaik) but you will still most likely end up having to go through multiple upgrade tiers.

I tend to just upgrade towards a decent middle ground between damage and sharpness until I get into the higher end of High Rank, then check a wiki (Kiranico is the one to use) for a specific weapon I need / want and farm for it.

2 grudge throwers early on in your 20/20 stack is the most I'd go for, later on once you unlock some of the more exotic artillery you can experiment more. And yes, quarrelers are sort of broken in the early game.

My one big tip for starting the dwarf campaign is to rush the province north of your starting location, once you have secured the main province of course. The settlement on the edge of the map there has insane income potential (A special mine structure), and it gives you the possibility to trade with the northern dwarves. Once you have 2 full provinces under your command, maintaining 2 stacks (a full 20/20 and a smaller 15/20 or even a 20/20) makes pushing south much easier.

For me securing that outcropping province (with Iron Rock and Black Crag) was the hardest part of the campaign because Grimgor has a tendency to get his Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh going around that time. If you can weather the storm and secure that province the rest of the campaign is sort of a breeze.

Also a dumb mechanics / math thing with this game currently, if you have any chance of winning, autoresolve against Grimgor Ironhide. He is a complete beast in manual battles (unless you have single target spells etc to shut him down), but autoresolve doesn't calculate his OPness so your losses should be lesser if you autoresolve.

When moving around the map, I'd recommend pretty much always sticking to burrowing stance. No fatigue damage and usually underground fights are favourable for the dwarves since the battle areas are narrower, giving enemies fewer chances to flank with cavalry etc.

Played through both of the levels, and really enjoyed it. Took me a while to get used to the movement after playing 60ish hours of DS3 but after a few deaths I got used to it.

Seems like an OK balance between different types of progression with loot, killing non-respawning enemies, opening shortcuts, leveling up, unlocking skills and getting to the next Shrine.

After a bit of getting used to the combat was fun, fairly fast paced and rewarding. Hopefully there are more different types of weapons within each of the 3 main "Groups", so far it seemed like I got 2 types of katanas, 2 types of "heavy" weapons (axes and maces) and 2 types of spears. Though maybe the variation is supposed to come from switching up your stances with those weapons.

My favourite combat mechanic so far was definitely the fact that they straight up show you the enemy stamina bar, and that knowing how much stamina the enemy has matters when making decisions. Knowing that you can use your kick move to do some stamina damage to the enemy, stagger them and then use a finisher on them because of that opens up some cool possibilities. Also it seemed to be pretty key in groups fights, waiting for a spot where that asshole with the spear doesn't have enough stamina to stab you in the back while you pound on his katana buddy was cool.

@hark: If you aren't beyond a little cheesing, you can pull them back all the way to that broken window you come through to get to that upper walkway of the archives (the part with the mumbling corpse in the chair and single scholar enemy). The 3 enemies have real hard time pathing in that area and you can separate them.

Afaik you can't reverse or "cure" your hollowing at any point or the ending will be negated.

Those big dragon-dog-shaman enemies in the swamp were definitely my least favourite to fight as a dex build. Other than that I had a bit of trouble in Irithyll for some reason, just could not reliably kill those knight enemies.

Finished the game without getting the bullet deflect or power swing sword upgrades, I'd say wait till you get a gun you like and put 2 points into that. Health pack upgrades and both bomb upgrades felt worth it to me. Chain dash is nice even though I never learned to do it reliably (think I got to 20ish in the "test chamber" thing). Bought both of the dash attack upgrades and never really used them in actual combat.

@csl316: @fredchuckdave: Saying that a build "trivializes" the game might be a bit harsh. But I guess that depends on what you come to a game for. I don't come to Souls-type games for the challenge, I come for (and this is why the original Dark Souls is still my favourite) a good balance of meaningful RPG-math and action gameplay "skill". And I absolutely think Salt and Sanctuary has that. Even if the math part sometimes boils down to "hey this boss does fire damage, what armour / rings do I have to reduce that".

I felt both good and bad about how I built my character from a "numbers" stand-point, but I also felt like I had to do some decent dodging and picking when to attack (at least on some bosses). Though maybe I should have gone with my initial Souls-instinct and do my first playthrough with a dex build. The katanas seemed pretty rad.

@kid_gloves:For me it was less the tankiness, and more just the insane reach on 2 handed weapons. You can initiate a swing, do good damage and be out of enemy attack range without even dodging before they have the time to wind up their attack. The same thing happens at times in Souls games too but there it feels like a bigger gamble because of the 3d space.

Yeah, I killed so many bosses on the first try by just using a fire paper at the candles and.. playing the game. Not a lot of thought or strategy, just some dodging and insane damage with a GreatSword. The bosses I died on were ones that had magic attacks that killed me in "one" hit.