Hello!

I've been thinking of playing dark souls again for a while now, and since DS3 recently came out, I think now would be a great time to do so. That said I haven't played in a while and the reason I stopped playing way back when was because I thought I specked my character wrong.

Thing is, I kinda decided to go for spears and have gone through wikis to find the perfect one for my point in the game. With the help of a friend I managed to beat Ornstein and Smough to get Ornstein's soul and create the dragonslayer spear (currently +2). Thing is I have a feeling I am not doing as great as with my +5 spear I used up until now. Not sure if it's subjective or I am simply thrown off because of the different styles or whatever.

Here are my current stats:

Originally I went for END and VIT as suggested by Rorie in the QL. Then I tried some strength stuff and got faith up enough to use a heal spell. Now I am going for DEX to boost my spear damage and am thinking of going for DEX swords.

Any input is greatly appreciated. Now I'll check out the Beginner's Guide in the forums and will prepare to die... ;)

EDIT:

the armors I am currently using: black iron for heavy fighting and the ninja armor for more agile stuff

You're not even remotely boned. Remember, people beat this on soul level 1. Your build looks relatively normal, if a little unfocused. It sucks a bit having that much str and then deciding to go dex, but unless you're hardcore into PvP, it won't matter one whit. At least you didn't put any points into resistance.

@atta: You're not boned but that build is kind of all over the place. You won't get the optimal damage out of a lot of weapons that scale favorably one way or the other.

That said abandon spears in Dark Souls as they aren't nearly as good as they were in Demon's. There are in fact several bosses where broad slashing motions work far better than precise thrusting attacks.

In every game (except for maybe three now), I went strength being most important, endurance the second most, health the third, and dexterity the fourth, and everything else was pointless to me. As for being boned, I don't know. I think you're fine, though it depends on what class you are I'd say. If you want to upgrade fast, go back to Anor Londo, and kill the black knights there, or the huge tower guards in the hall just before Orstein & Smough. Using jump attack on them is great. When I fought the guards, it was a rinse and repeat thing where I did a jump attack, killed them, went to another, same thing, bonfire, and so on. You'll level up quick, though again, it depends on stats and equipment.

Edit - And yeah, it's true as Humanity said, spears aren't as good as they were in Demon's. You should use the Black Knight Sword. Once I got that, that's all I used.

Use that equip load you've got, son! Personally I don't find there's that much of a difference between light and medium rolling, so as long as I've got the equip load, I wear the heaviest armor I can find without hitting the fat roll breakpoint. Switching armors just means I've got to carry more around with me, so I stick with what I've got unless I need another set for very specific resistances.

Thats a decent basis for a quality build. Go for a longsword/broadsword, zweihänder or something else that is equal parts str/dex scaling. You'll be ok. Get that vit up to 25~ which is a pretty good sweet spot. Two handing a weapon gives you a 50% str boost, so for max damage quickets you leave str at 27 and get dex up to 40. Then you can go back to str again. Endurance caps at 40 so you can put some more points into that if you want to, but I'd prioritize getting and upgrading a weapon first and foremost. I would recommend the regular longsword. But if you are comfortable with heavy weapons, Zwei is fantastic.

You are definitely far from boned, that almost looks like a planned build being done slightly out of order.

EDIT: Also, your +5 weapon is gonna feel weak as hell after (before actually) O&S. Look into getting the large ember in the depths and get your shit up to +10. It'll be a massive difference.

You're fine. Dragonslayer Spear is a fun weapon, and an even split strength/dex will perform fine with it and give you plenty of options if you wanna switch it up. Having an "Optimal" build really only matters if you're planning to leave yourself at a specific level for pvp or co-op, other than that, while you CAN bone yourself by putting points in Resistance to the point that it takes you a year to gain another level and you can't do any damage, you're certainly nowhere near there yet. With that much extra equip load, if you've already got a particular armor that you're really into and don't wanna wear something heavier, I'd suggest a second mainhand weapon to switch to when you need some broad slashing attacks, as dragonslayer's moveset is pretty pokey. You've got the stats to use the claymore or murakumo if either of those strike your fancy.

You're fine, level your Vitality up to 35, put your Dexterity to 40, get a Pike or Winged Spear to +14/15 and go to town. The reason you're doing worse with the Dragonslayer Spear is it also gets its damage from Faith scaling, which you've only got 15 points in so it won't get huge benefits.

You can never be boned in a souls games since everything becomes fairly easy once you get the patterns down. Super strong weapons just let you cheat the system a bit.

You might as well completely start over. You're completely, unforgivably boned.

Nah. I'm just kidding.

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ON SPEARS:

First things first. Disregard anything suggesting you should abandon spears altogether. Spears are incredibly powerful and versatile weapons in Dark Souls whose benefits, primarily in the form of reach, can on their own merit overcome most of the enemies you'll come to find over the remaining hours of the game. What you should do is think about picking up a second weapon type. Something simple, like a rudimentary long sword, that you can easily use with one hand. While it's nice to specialize in a certain kind of weapon, different problems require different tools. You will certainly encounter situations wherein the thrusting attacks of a spear are either too slow or cover too narrow a radius to be effective. A one-handed sword's quick sweeping attacks will cover those bases. For clarity's sake, I am literally suggesting a longsword sold by Andre, if nothing else, which you can upgrade to +7 or +8 at this point and out of which you will get immediate use.

User @baronsamedi mentioned this before I could, but the Dragonslayer Spear is a bit of a tricky weapon to use properly. It offers good-to-great scaling, but unfortunately, it scales with Strength, Dexterity, and Faith. Your Faith is low at this point, too low to take advantage of the spear's scaling. In fact, it's actually probably holding you back. You would be better served with a regular spear or farming Anor Londo's Silver Knights for a Silver Knight Spear.

Again. Spears are fine. You can absolutely beat the game with a spear, and you can do so easily. The important thing, regardless of whether it is with a spear or not, is to find a weapon moveset you like and upgrade the hell out of that weapon.

ON BUILDS (And you can, too!):

Largely, your stat allocation is in good shape. Though, the extra points you've dedicated to Faith might've been wiser to spend elsewhere. But no matter. They're there now, and this is what you have. If you feel like you're getting mileage off of the Heal miracle, then by all means those points haven't been wasted.

Unless you are dead set on wielding the Dragonslayer Spear, or on utilizing miracles, don't put any more points into Faith.

Focus from here on out on Vitality, Endurance, Strength, and Dexterity, and keep in mind that the soft cap for most of these is 40 (Vitality's is 50). Once you hit 40 in one stat, there is very little need to go beyond it, save grinding some required parameters for a greatshield/heavy weapon. Mostly, don't sweat your stats too much. While your stat allocation is important, devoting souls and Titanite Shards to upgrading gear is exponentially more so. Comparatively, one upgrade of your chosen spear will result in much greater damage output than one extra level of Strength or Dexterity.

Beyond stats, your gear and Equip Load quickly become the most important elements of how you'll progress through the game. And this is the part that will ultimately require more from you than advice from us. From your initial post, it sounds like you've been experimenting with both heavy and light builds without much of a preference for either. I would encourage you to continue doing that as you move forward through the back half of the game. But, do keep in mind, there will be instances where a fast build is superior to a heavy one, and vice versa.

If there exists such a thing as an ideal build, it revolves around two stats. Equip Load and Poise. Ultimately one would strive to have their Poise as high as possible while keeping their Equip Load under 25% of its maximum, providing both the most agile movement and steadfast defense. Poise, if you haven't looked into it, is a complicated attribute, but fundamentally governs the likelihood that you are staggered when hit by an attack. A high Poise stat will allow you to complete animations even when struck by an attack during an animation. This includes drinking Estus, casting sorceries and miracles, and attacking. If you aren't using Havel's Ring, I suggest you do. If you haven't found Havel's Ring, I suggest you look.

This is a long post. And I apologize.

--

TL;DR -- Don't listen to any of us.

You're fine. Use a weapon that scales well with both Str/Dex if you want to take advantage of the points you put into them, and pump Vitality up a bunch from now on.

Surprised to see people trashing spears here. I played through my first time and also NG+ with a winged spear and was wildly successful. When I ran through the game again with the claymore I almost felt like I had been cheating the first time. The reach, and being able to attack while blocking are both huge goddamn deals that can trivialize a ton of encounters. Great for a new player. That said, switch back to your original spear for now. You're really not specced for the Dragonslayer spear and, as cool as it is, it's not an amazing weapon by any means unless you want to do PVP with it. If you're just using a regular spear and dying for an upgrade you can go find the winged spear at the firelink shrine graveyard and start using that instead. It's real good.

thank you all for the very helpful comments. I admit, "boned" may be too strong a word. seeing how incredibly slow leveling has become I somewhat thought that stat-wise I am locked in for the duration of this playthrough. that I am at an "endgame" when it comes to stats. apparently not. I'll keep on trucking then and see if souls come easier in later stages.

for full disclosure: I am not interested in pvp or some weird builds. just want to finish this game.

@inevpatoria: @baronsamedi:you helped me realize something. let ask to be sure: if a weapon scales with 3 different stats, do I need to have all three at high levels to be effective ? I thought I should concentrate on dex (B scaling) and any point in faith or str would be a welcome bonus. is the low faith stat actually making the dragon slayer weaker ?

@tobbrobb: I've just tried out the zweihänder, which I always found interesting, conceptually at least. that said, the damage output is about half as much as the dragon slayer, with way slower attacks. when you say longsword, do you mean a specific one or just any old longsword would do (for now) ?

some random questions, if someone cares to answer them:

- I have been hoarding most loot I have come across (one of each type). is it worth selling the stuff or is the amount of souls you get negligible ?

- should I use that stat boosting ring, which gets destroyed if you take it off ? currently I am pretty much constantly using havel's and swapping out the second ring depending on what I need boosted in the moment

- I have recently upgraded from elite knight's armor (I think that was the name) to the black iron. the idea I had back then is that it pretty much was the heaviest armor I was willing to use end-game wise and it was nearly usable with my current stats (I use the ninja helmet to avoid the fat roll). should I downgrade to a silver knight armor set until I get my stats up a bit or is it preferable to walk around with full iron without a helmet ?

- my next big dungeon is the tomb of giants and I was thinking of investing into INT to use cast light. seeing as that would need 5 whole levels, I think that would be insane, but the skull lantern leaves me without a shield/doll and the sunlight maggot is out of my reach for now?

@atta: Selling is negligible, you can do it if you are like, 1k souls off of a level or something. So it can be useful. You'll get more than enough to keep leveling for a bit, the souls inflation is pretty ridiculous.

Dragonslayer spear is a stronger weapon at base values, a fully upgraded zwei with high str/dex will be stronger. And by fully I mean +15. As long as the spear is stronger you might as well use it, but if you care to switch eventually you should probably start practicing zwei. It's not as easy to use as it might look.

I mean a regular longsword. The one called longsword. Other weapons that fall into the str/dex C/C category would be the broadsword, claymore, bastard sword, silver knight sword. Not neccessarily all longswords. The regular longsword is one of the most versatile, powerful and easy to use weapons. I'd recommend it to anyone, but especially a high str/dex build.

Sure use the ring of favor. It's very strong. Just beware that some areas and encounters will demand you to wear specific rings. So if you rely heavily on Havel's or Darkwoodgrain ring, you can't wear them in some scenarios without breaking the ring of favor.

Since you can switch armor on the fly, just roll with whatever you want or feel like it works. Since there's no inventory limit, and switching armor is pretty fast and low penalty. Just wear what fits the occassion. I sometimes switch to get faster rolls, or more poise depending on what I'm doing. Switching for resistance against poison/fire or whatever can also be smart.

You can get the sunlight maggot if you want to. There's 4 ways to go after Anor Londo, and one of them has it. You can invest in cast light if you want to, 5 levels is a smaller investment than it seems if you aren't min/maxing. But I'd try playing with the skull lantern for a while! Going shieldless is a weird twist on the game which can be fun.

On my many playthroughs, I still fall back on a fully upgraded Falchion. Destroys virtually all PVE enemies. Ring wise Favour + Havels or Covetous souls enhancing one. Armour I always rock Silver Knight once obtained. Shield depends on situation. Magic / Miracles - well I always love lightening spears but couldn't just the stats for the end result, wasn't much good in DS1, and got utterly nerfed in DS2

@atta: On hoarding loot, the amount of souls you get for selling most items is negligible, so I wouldn't bother. If you want to clean up your cluttered inventory, you can toss unused items into the Bottomless Box to get them out of your way.

The Ring of Favor and Protection is a very powerful ring, but it permanently costs you flexibility. I think it's better that you decide for yourself how to weigh that trade off, rather than take backseat directions.

With armor, the details that matter most are physical damage resistance, poise, and weight. You want the first two as high as possible while keeping weight within your budget for whatever roll speed you're targeting. I wouldn't sweat small differences in damage resistance and poise all that much. Unless you're specifically going for tanking, your armor should not be your first line of defense: that should be your rolling or your shield; armor is for slightly reducing damage that you fail to avoid through dodging or blocking.

Personally, I rely exclusively on rolling for my survivability, so as long as I've got a fast roll, I just play Fashion Souls and don't worry about my armor stats or upgrading it. Another way to passively increase your survivability besides armor is to increase your Vitality stat; I like to quickly get it to 30, which is the greatest local maximum in Dark Souls 1.

For Tomb of the Giants, you've already identified your 3 main choices for getting illumination. None is ideal, but all are viable. You have to weigh the trade offs and decide for yourself which to pursue.

Scaling is weird. Damage is weird, too. Defense is weird. The Dragonslayer Spear is weird. Dark Souls, really, is just weird. Let me explain.

At the absolute simplest way to describe scaling: Weapons do a flat measurement of damage. Let's take a regular longsword, for instance, which does 80 damage and rates a "C" for scaling with Strength and Dexterity. That means each point you have in Strength and Dexterity translates to a small bonus in the longsword's damage. "S" is the best rating, and "E" is the worst. So a weapon with an "S" rating gets a higher bonus from that particular stat than it would if it had a "C" rating. When a weapon scales with multiple stats, it receives bonuses from all of them simultaneously based on their respective ratings. In the case of your Dragonslayer Spear, Faith and Dexterity both have a "B" rating, while Strength has a "C," meaning it gets the most benefit from a character with high Dexterity and Faith.

So, to answer your question. The Dragonslayer Spear isn't weaker than it should be. It just takes a bit more Faith than you have to really get the maximum damage from it.

Okay. That's one part of it. You ready for the second part? Because this is where things get tricky.

The Dragonslayer Spear deals split damage to enemies, part physical and part lightning. And the weapon is unique in that the lightning damage is the specific property being boosted by your Faith stat. This split damage is important because, like you, all the enemies you encounter have separate and individual resistances and weaknesses to different elements, including lightning. When you hit an enemy with a weapon that has multiple properties, like the Dragonslayer Spear, the game has to run two defense checks against your attack, one for the physical and one for the elemental.

If you're sticking around in Anor Londo, the Silver Knights have a high resistance to lightning. If you're using the Dragonslayer in Anor Londo and are feeling underwhelmed by it, it might be a result of their defense kicking in against an attack governed by your thin Faith attribute. You're basically only doing half damage to them with the Dragonslayer. You might find yourself more comfortable using that weapon against different enemies for the time being.

I'll try to quickly hit your other questions. Sorry for the wall of text.

I always found it not worth the time or the effort to sell them. You never know when you want to try another weapon or forge one with a boss soul.

The Ring of Favor and Protection? It's one of the most useful rings in the game, boosting those stats by 20% each. But if you like the free ring slot, you never have to use the ring.

Personally, the Silver Knight set is one of my favorite sets in the game. I always run a mix of Silver Knight + Painting Guardian to keep light on my feet. But, as always, it's a comfort issue. And if you like to play with the Black Iron set equipped then you should stick with it.

After beating Ornstein and Smough you should have a lot of paths available. You are by no means contained to the Tomb of Giants and the Tomb of Giants alone. I think the only thing preventing you from getting the Sunlight Maggot is the Humanity you have to spend in the Chaos Servant covenant, provided you didn't kill The Fair Lady.

@atta: Like others have said, people have beaten this at SL1. You can do this, no prob.

Also, I'm of the opinion that if one beats O&S, then they're prepared for anything in the remainder of that game. They are the second trial-by-fire in that game (the gargoyles being the first) and I don't think any of the Lord bosses hold a candle to them in difficulty. I believe in you!

When you finally go into the Tomb of the Giants, you'll be BONEd for sure! Ha Ha

You'll do fine with the lantern, really. It scared me at first too, but I found out that it's actually not that big of a deal. Try it out first, and then look into the other options if you find it too difficult.

@atta: For Tomb of Giants just use the lantern and do a few quick run throughs with little or no souls to lose just to get the lay of the land. That is a terrible area, probably only usurped by everything surrounding the Bed of Chaos in terms of terrible level design. The quicker you get through the better. Also if you're still using a spear, don't forget to ditch that in favor of a black knight sword or the Zweihander which while a bit unruly and slow, when buffed with elements and upgraded can be a boss eviscerating machine.

god dammit

Homeward boned.

Your not boned but boss weapons suck imo. Im not a spear guy but i think i heard the lightning spear was good. Anyway just look up best spear find and use that, or find another weapon type i used greatswords in ds1 and katanas in 2 and now 3

@atta: Thing about the Souls/Bloodborne games is that they REALLY don't reward hybridizing classes (except DS3, oddly enough, from what I've heard), so you're REALLY gonna need to focus on one stat, plus Vit and End.

Min/Max like CRAZY.

This is 100% untrue.

I have heard that it's only really feasible in NG+ and beyond. I will happily recant if not!

@undeadpool: Yea, it's a common misconception but hybrid builds are super strong. But the main thing that most people miss is that unless you're putting 100% of your points into resistance anything is viable. The Souls games are brilliantly flexible in that regard.

Magic/Faith + Str/Dex are the strongest builds in the game, and the most fun too! By NG+, you'll want weapon spell buffs for the extra damage anyhow.

That's kind of what my character looked like around that level, and I waded through NG++ with no problems.

That END (plus Havel's Ring) will let you wear the Black Iron set, and a nice quality (balanced STR & DEX) weapon like the Claymore, Bastard, or Zweihander will work wonders.

Yeah, a lot of stuff I've heard is, essentially: put everything into MOSTLY one stat. Obviously something like Ludwig's Sword from Bloodborne, eventually AGI is as good as STR in terms of scaling, but that's good to know!

There is no way to get boned in this game. Even if you with literally all of your levels into Resistance, (most useless stat) a fully upgraded raw weapon, and the global defense bonus you get from leveling can carry you through.

You will always be better off putting a majority of points into one primary stat, that being STR or DEX, and then having a subfocus like magic of faith for minor buffs - but that sub-focus should be just enough to get you that miracle or two. I see no real benefit from spreading yourself thin among the different classes of weapons. Dark Souls 3 tends to have a lot of weapons that have weirdly balanced requirements so that is the only point where I'd say maybe spread out your STR and DEX a bit more, but considering I beat the entire game with the meat cleaver and had 53 STR and 18 DEX by the end I didn't really see the point into going hybrid. The one smart thing would have been to use a weapon that can actually be buffed and dump some points into either FTH or INT so I can put some elemental damage on it for boss encounters. Then again the meat cleaver had such great damage output and outstanding scaling with STR that it mitigated my lack of buffing (it can't be buffed anyway) and I was able to handle most bosses just fine.

I'd say that it's not that they completely don't reward hybridizing, it's just that it's unnecessary unless you want to get fancy with your build - although that is really something reserved for NG+ or starting from scratch when you know exactly when and where what spells appears so you can plan accordingly. First time playthroughs I think it's always better to just play it safe. If I had gambled on using magic(blood) to any extent in Bloodborne I would have been pretty boned, or in the very least had wasted a whole lot of upgrades.

thanks a lot guys! the single most important thing I have gathered from your comments is that I should just go and try stuff out. if something doesn't work, deduce why that is and change my approach accordingly.

for now, I'll continue to run around darkroot garden trying out different weapons and armor and seeing what I like best. gonna focus on vit, end, dex and str. pick some weapons that scale well,try out the longsword too, @tobbrobb

once comfortable, I'll poke at Syf a bit more to relearn rolling and then try out the tomb of giants or run around anor londo some more

@inevpatoria: well... dang. thanks for your wall of text! I apparently knew the jist of scaling, but the actual implementation into a solid build was way off on my part.

@poobumbutt: yeah... no. I said with the help of a friend, but what actually happened is he rolled in with his Astora gear and destroyed both of them. If I remember right, I played an insignificant part in that fight :D also the gargoyles... well I got the Axe from the first ones tail, but solaire was a real trooper during the fight..

EDIT: praise the sun!

@atta: Ah, I see. Just keep in mind, Dark Souls is all about determination (I believe), never mind Undertale. Practicing rolling is good too, that can make the difference in a fight if you can time one well. If Jeff Green can see it through, so can you. I have faith.

Actually, I don't. I usually do a dex build.

I'm so sorry for that dumb joke.