Got the game yesterday, and I'm in far enough that I feel like I have a decent grasp of what's going on. If anyone has any pressing questions about the game, I desperately want to talk about what I've played. Because it's awesome.

Please make sure to use the spoiler blocks aggressively - also have you taken a look at the other topics in the DS2 forum yet? A few of us have the game also and have been posting about it. Just want to try and avoid duplicate topics, especially since over the next few days there are going to be a ton of these "AMA" threads popping up.

@mb: Understood about the spoilers. And looking through the forum, it seems like a lot of specific topics but none I can find are general info about the game/experience.

@mb: The title was clearly marked spoilers. Let's not be silly here.

@demoskinos: I'll still use tags if there's anything story related. I just didn't want someone to freak because I mentioned that X item doesn't show up for Y number of hours or something.

Also, I'm at work, so if I get any questions it may take a bit to answer them.

@waffles13: do you know of a way around the death & progressively reduced health cycle? I'm fighting a boss, and dying a lot, and combined with the fact that sometimes enemies will just stop spawning, I now am looking at half of my normal health pool and not enough souls to restore myself to human and full health. Essentially I now have to roam around farming what enemies are remaining to get enough souls to buy an Effigy, then attempt the boss again.

I feel like I'm missing something, because now even though I'm getting a little better and learning something every time I attempt the boss, I am getting one shotted. I can't even upgrade my weapon any more, the titanite I need hasn't dropped yet and isn't sold at the blacksmith.

@mb:

I'm about 5 hours in and have to say that the game is good and it is hard, maybe because I just started and know nothing about the game so far but it seems harder than DS1.

@fire_of_the_wind: I haven't found it - I know there is an item on a ledge near the water I can't figure out how to get to, maybe that's it. I did find a health regen ring near the bonfire where Melentia is, though.

@fire_of_the_wind: nevermind, I DEFEATED! Freaking finally.

@mb: A health regen ring?? Where was it? Melentia is the level up lady? I'm playing a swordsman class dual wielding and that ring would be really helpful. Btw which boss where you fighting? iirc I found the cling ring after the first boss.

@fire_of_the_wind: Melentia is the merchant by the bonfire in the Forest of The Giants. Ring is in a chest near the elevator the level below the bonfire. As far as bosses, I beat the first boss (The Last Giant) and was having trouble with The Pursuer, just beat him.

@waffles13: MB mentioned the frame rate being very stable but they hadn't played quite as long as you. Would you agree with their assessment so far?

@mb: I must've missed it, I went a different way than you I haven't fought The Persuer but did beat another boss.

10 hours in? Hope you have like 40 left...

How long does the game seem to be because man if I buy another 50 dollar demo this month...

:D :D :D :D

Can you make the heads slightly bigger and reduce the shoulders? Is there anything under "Advanced settings" that will make the characters look more human?

Someone answered me this when the game was still in the beta phase, but are items automatically added to the D pad slots when you pick them up? Can you press Start and consume items from your equipment screen? Because I don't want to cycle through ten of them.

@ezekiel: Yes, the character builder is pretty great. Don't worry.

How is the difficulty?

@waffles13: Did you find the Stone Ring? I just got it after backtracking towards the beginning trying to figure out where to go next.

@mb: Not sure which boss you're at, but even at lower levels I wasn't being one-shotted much. Like others have said, there's a ring that makes it so health only drops down to 75%. Don't remember where I got it, but I had it pretty early on.

Also, Effigies are pretty common where I am. I think I've got 12-15 stockpiled and only use them if I'm facing a pretty tough boss.

As for the Stone Ring, I went back recently and got it. Seems cool, although how much of an effect it actually has is hard to judge. I just really want to fuck those ogre guys up.

@bane122: Haven't noticed any bad frame drops. The weird thing is that the FPS is unlocked, so occasionally you'll hit 60 in small spaces or looking at mostly sky, which makes it look like crap when you're back in normal areas. Still, it's usually at or near 30 from what I can tell.

@geraltitude: I believe I've beaten 6 bosses (only two of which had fancy cutscenes). There's no real indicator of how deep I am, but for reference I haven't found a single piece of non-standard Titanite (meaning I've found large shards and a slab, but no fancy red/green/blue etc). I'm guessing I have quite a while to go.

@ezekiel: I didn't mess too much with the advanced settings, just gave my dude a giant beard to compensate for the shitty face. Items are not automatically added to the D-Pad. You can consume items from the inventory screen and you can consume multiple souls of a type at once. Which is awesome.

@flacracker: Feels fair. I haven't had a super rough time with any one section, although a couple of the bosses took about a half a dozen tries (although two of them were total pushovers). Keep in mind, I've played something like 200 hours of DS1, and while I'm no master at that game, the mechanics are very, very similar. I was having some trouble with getting stunned and not getting my shield up in time, but that was before I realized how important the Agility stat is. Now I'm having much more luck after dumping a ton of points into that.

@mb: Are you playing online or off? I've got a hard copy of the game, but I'm still hesitant to go on Live. There's so many leaked copies that it's gotta be fine now, right?

@waffles13: I'm online but the Dark Souls servers are off anyway, so I'm not sure it matters. As far as Microsoft goes, they have stated numerous times that they don't ban people for playing games early. Not a big deal, I do it all the time.

@mb: Didn't know MS had ever said that. Good to know.

Also, here's my character for posterity:

@waffles13: oh yeah you are way farther than I am! I'll try to get a picture if I ever find a damn Effigy.

@mb: I double checked and I'm only like 8 hours in. Dogs seems to drop Effigies rarely, although the reason I have so many is probably because I've only used like 4 total.

That boss you got stuck on - was it that one? The one that everyone was bitching about finding out about?

Also, how do you feel about the need to go back to the village to level? It seems to make sense from a lore perspective, but just seems totally pointless for gameplay purposes. Load times haven't been bad, but it seems like they just want you to lose souls due to impatience.

Watching Demon's Souls, the environments are kind of dull and boring. Castle, prison, cave, etc. Does this one take you to more interesting places early on?

@csl316: The tutorial area is fairly striking at first (although it is a cave, it's a cool looking one). But the main village that seems to be the Firelink of this game is super bright and cool looking, and there's one area pretty early that is super interesting both visually and in terms of the lore.

Beyond that, the first "real" area (in the Undead Burg sense) is sort of generic and reminds me of what I watched of Demon's Souls, and the castle area I just finished was sort of underwhelming. That said, there's no Blighttown or Depths equivalent yet, so I'm not too concerned about variety (and I'm presumably still early and have a lot to see).

@waffles13:

@waffles13: Warping back to Majula to level isn't a big deal since you can warp to and from anywhere, but it feels totally unnecessary. That system was fine as it was.

I was trying to keep away from Dark Souls 2 prerelease info so I'm not sure which boss you're even referring to, this is all new to me.

The only major annoyance right now is that I'm still at 50% max health, have no effigies, and the vendor who I previously bought a few from is now sold out. I haven't seen a single effigy drop yet. As far as progress, I just encountered dogs for the first time. I'm not that far in.

Since I found out that Strength helps in breaking enemies' guards and I never got to use any giant weapons or armor in the first game with my lame Faith build, I think I am going to start heading towards a strength/agility setup. Still not sure. Also I am curious about the Soul Vessel and what the downsides to using it with the Firekeepers may be.

OH! Now I remember. One thing I was hoping for was maybe a level that takes place underwater with normal physics (that you maybe need a ring to enter in order to breath underwater).

So if anyone finds anything awesome like that tell me.

@mb: I really wish I remembered where the Ring of Binding (Cling Ring) was so I could tell you; it helps immensely. Beyond that I'd say to just dump some points into Vigor and then just like at half/75% health for as long as possible. That way, when you do boost up to 100%, it'll be a way bigger difference. Also, for reference, I've only seen one or two Effigies drop, so it's not super common. Seems on par with how humanity used to be.

As for the Soul Vessel, I believe that you can use it at any time to reset to Soul Level 0, but you need to talk to the Firekeepers to retain all your gained souls. No confirmation on that, just a guess.

@neonie: No underwater level yet, but there's a whole lot of ocean and flooding in the environments that I've seen so far. I wouldn't consider it out of the question.

@waffles13: Cool. Seems every time I saw my buddies play Dark Souls, they were in some cool fantastical area. Glad this one is leaning that way.

@csl316: I haven't seen anything as striking as the Great Hollow or the first time you see Anor Londo in DS2 yet, but that one environment I alluded to is pretty close, and that's right near the beginning of the game.

@waffles13: Yeah, I'm definitely not going to be the one to test the Soul Vessel! At least not on this character. Also I'll just put out there that I am no pro at these games and I tend to really take my time exploring and reading things, and of course I die a lot.

Other rings I have found include:

I've found a couple of basic weapons so far, but nothing that has replaced my Short Sword +3 as of yet. As far as armor goes, I'm wearing some leather armor that I can't recall the name of right now. I did find the Drangleic set but it's just too heavy, at least for now.

@mb: If you're in the Bastille, then you're really not far behind me at all (although the boss is a massive pain in the ass). The boss I was referring to earlier was the one in the cathedral - did you head there yet? Because that environment may be my favorite part of the game thus far.

@waffles13: Cool thanks.

Also does it seem like rings are nerfed now that you can wear four of them?

@waffles13: No, I haven't been in there yet. I have only spent maybe 15 minutes in the Bastile and then took a break. What are your thoughts on the map in that Majula basement?

@neonie: Not really, many of them are the same as the ones from DS1 and the ones that aren't seem on par with those. Although within like 2 hours I had like 6 rings and was already having trouble. If you consider that most of the time you'll be wearing the ring that keeps your health at 75% when hollowed, that leaves only 3 slots, and if you're like me you'll wear the Havel's Ring equivalent all the time, leaving only a couple slots for useful stuff.

It seems like it adds more strategy rather than nerfing rings in general.

@mb: I didn't look to closely at the map, but I saw it after the cathedral area so my mind was already blown. It's really close to the beginning. The implications are staggering.

Are miracles good? Work the same? I wanna be a Jesus freak with a big sword the first time through.

@geraltitude: Waffles said he is about 10 hours in and has beaten 6 bosses. He could be a bit ahead of the curve due to having a lot of experience with the original game, so maybe we should assume that he is progressing slightly faster than an average player. Now here comes the big spoiler, but you can use this bit of information to ballpark how much longer he has to go.
The number of bosses in the game is...
34.

ahhhh I'm so excited!! For me you can take iburningstar's game time and just multiply it by 10.

I hope y'all know I was just joking about the game length stuff right...

@waffles13: With the movement changes, what would the havels ring equivalent actually do? Even if you lower your item weight wouldn't you still be heavy rolling without adaptability, or does that ring increase agility?

@zacagawea: I'm the most vanilla player there is: Big-ass shield and big-ass sword/axe. Maybe some pyromancy here and there, but I can't speak to miracles or sorceries at all.

@iburningstar: Good to know. Like I said earlier, that was closer to the 8 hour mark, but even so, that puts me on pace for a 45-50 playthrough, which seems pretty reasonable. Plus, a couple of those bosses were pushovers, which I assume isn't going to be the case from now on.

@neonie: I'm not super clear on what the boundaries are for equip weights and whatnot (the percentages are different this time). But to the best of my knowledge, equip weight determines what roll animation you have, and agility determines how fast you do that animation and how quickly you recover. So high weight/high agility means you'll still fat roll, but you'll get into and out of the roll faster. Again, I haven't tested much, but I know for sure that lower weight = faster roll animations.

@waffles13: Oh I see. Alright then.

@waffles13: I was just thinking that the reason why I am having such difficulty is I'm steering away from how I spent the last 150 hours in Dark Souls. My character in the last game was essentially a Paladin battle tank with poise for days, maxed out faith + claymore, and of course miracles. Now I'm playing a dual-wielding nimble swordsman so...it's pretty difficult. Previously I could just stand there and tank practically anything. I was never the best at roll-dodging in DS (because I didn't need to), but I figured it's probably a good time to learn. Steep learning curve though!

@mb: My last run through DS1 I tried to go for a more nimble, parry class and hated it, so I'm sticking with the Vinny Stratagem.

Also, for the record: The Bastille is where this game starts to get fucked hard. I'm now between two bosses that I can't manage a thing against.

Any of you run into any broken swords? I love useless equipment in RPGs that you can upgrade to make something baller with.

@redyoshi: My class started with a broken sword. Also, any weapon can break, but I'm assuming you're talking about deliberately shitty weapons. Don't know if they upgrade into anything good, but they exist.

@waffles13: Oh geez...I'll probably get to that point tonight. Without giving anything away, do you think things would be going better if you were faster?