Company of Champions. Are you in?

@golguin: Belfries and duel signs I suppose (and the rats on the side). Eventually there will be enough Brotherhood of Blood players to pvp with each other, the winner of each match gets a cracked red eye orb (ditto training matches and blue sentinels). I might have underestimated the number of orbs you can farm in PvE though.

I think I may have discovered another little feature of the Company of Champions. I figured I was just very weak or something, but I've paid attention to enough fights now that this can't be my imagination. I have 10 strength and 18 dex and I'm using a Scimitar +5. I'm wearing several prices from the Drangleic set so my defense as shown by the character stat screen is...

VS Strike 435

VS Slash 468

VS Thrust 453

and Poise 54

I hit a dude with a 5 hit combo and he loses around 1/6th of his health. I just fought another guy right now and he lost like 1/5th from the same combo. They hit me with a single strike from what appears to be a long sword (just assume Drangleic Sword for worst case scenario) and I lose 1/4th of my total health. How can a single swing take off more health than one of my full hit combos? I remember that combos strung together deal less damage with each hit, but I saw a single one of my hits was dealing 80 dmg.

Can anyone who's done extensive PVPing confirm or deny any of this? I have about 1000 HP.

EDIT:

Joined the Bloods and I'm here to report my PVP activity with the Red Sign Soapstone. My Soul Level is 65 and I decided to use No Man's Wharf as my testing ground. Player soul levels were between 60 and 80. One person said their soul level was 23. I don't know how that happened.

11 Wins

4 Losses

1 double KO

Players went down in a couple of hits and so did I. There was nothing crazy going on like what I experienced while I was in the Company of Champions. I feel fairly certain that invaders get a buff if they invade while you are in the Company of Champions. They do more damage and you deal less damage. It makes perfect sense as your ranking is determined by how many invaders you kill while in the covenant.

I'll need to experience more invasions while in the Company of Champions. I know that inviting an invader with the Red Sign Soapstone does not give you an Awestone upon winning the fight.

@golguin: Duel signs appear to be completely unlimited; I've fought people and one shot them doing Dragon Covenant summons and I've fought other people that have taken 4 times as much damage.

It's worth noting that the Belfry Sol is probably the best designed PvP arena in the series; just a really neat design overall.

I'm hoping to do some Company of Champions PVP today so that I can confirm the buff they get during combat. I had around 8 fights and every person seemed to be incredibly durable and hit like a truck despite their armor and weapons looking fairly normal. These were people that were around level 50 while I was level 60. During my time with the Bloods I was taking down people in their 80s with a few hits and they weren't hitting me particularly hard.

I send a PM after every fight and ask about their soul level to gauge the PVP soul range.

@golguin: I can't speak about the Red covenant, but here's how the Blue covenant works with the Cracked Orb economy:

• You gain Tokens of Fidelity by helping other players beat bosses.
• If you're in the Covenant of Blue, you can use a Token of Fidelity to get into a 1v1 arena duel with another member.
• If you win that duel, you earn a Cracked Blue Orb.

Basically, you can convert Coop token into Invade-Sinner Orbs if you're good enough at PvP.

Edit: I just remembered, I also saw a tooltip for the Red Sign Soapstone on the loading screen. That would let you do unlimited invasions... but you'd have to be invited in by the host. Perhaps there's a limit on the number of Uninvited Invasions you can do per game, while you can do unlimited Invited Invasions? That would be one way of letting people get their PvP fix without letting the non-PvPers constantly get stomped.

There also seem to be specific areas made for constant free-for-all PvP. They could provide a good share of invasions, yet I think you can burn an Effigy at a bonfire to block them for a half-hour.

Are arena duels later in the game? I remember the Blood guy talking deathmatch fights with other blood members, but where/how does that happen?

Nope, you can get into them the moment you join the Blue Sentinels, back in the Cathedral past where you fought Ornstein. It's 1v1 duels against other members of the Blue Sentinels to train for fighting invaders & invading sinners. It's early in the game, but you need to join the proper covenant to participate.

I did join the Blue Sentinels. I didn't see any duel options when talking to the dude.

@golguin: Examine the statues by the bonfire downstairs from him.

I found that and the Blood dueling arena.

Company of Champions update: I am fairly certain that invaders get a buff while they invade while in the covenant. They hit too hard and I do way too little damage when compared to my own invasions while in the Brotherhood of Blood. There is no way to confirm this without other Company of Champions players so if you're in it tell me about the PVP.

I was finally able to beat the Ruin Sentinels. They were pretty much a joke when I helped other players kill them, but trying to do it solo while in the covenant proved to be tricky. After 10 or so tries I finally did it. 8 total bosses defeated. I treated myself to several levels (was not leveling up) and I am now at soul level 77 with a soul memory of 600,000.

The Company of Champions is the shiznit

I'm going to start a no bonfire run; might take me 3 or 4 months at like 3 hours a day and will almost certainly accidentally tap a bonfire halfway through; but should be fun/force me to use more weapons.

Funny you say that... I got the shield twice but they never dropped their weapons, armor, helmet, etc. I think in the end I got 2 palestones, 2 shields, 1 gauntlet, and a metric ass ton of cracked blue eye orbs off them. Ultimately though I figured the route out. The reason I had issues was I never play with a torch save a few specific areas and well.... I missed a switch that makes that one big thing wooden move the first time I cleared the area... >_< (left stupidly vague on the off chance someone may be reading but hate spoilers.... it could happen!!!)

PS: also the shield does require 24 strength.... that's asking for a lot from someone typically fighting the Pursuer.

In other news.... Adaptability is probably the most underrated stat in the game. Once you get it to about 20 or so rolling is back to being Dark Souls 1 rolling and it doesn't take an act of god to drink an estus flask during a boss fight anymore.

@karkarov: It's amusing when you get summoned by someone in full Old Knight Armor who's fighting the Flexile Sentry or something. Malformed Skull remains the gold standard for RNG drops, but it does have a better chance to drop than Old Knight stuff.

I think adaptability also effects it. In later game I pretty much saw most if not all drops. Multiple sets of Syan armor, multiple sets of Alonne (the black knight dude armor), the black knight katana and their great bow, do you know those stone statues with the horse heads have their own armor set too? I have half of it but haven't farmed em. The twinblade they drop is the best twinblade for strength characters though if you want to play with it and happen to have that build.

Company of Champions huh. Sounds crazy. If what i remember is correct, it sets your game to new game++/puts all your bonfires up 2 levels and restricts summoning, so you have to do everything alone. When you consider that Dark Souls 2 likes to do more than just up damage and health in ng+ this seems crazy.

Hey hey all. How is everybody doing in the Company of Champions? I'm on my first playthrough and the difficulty seems wildly uneven. Even in the covenant I managed Skeleton Lords & Covetous Demon on the first try without any idea what I was going up against, while Scorpioness had me crying for hours. Has anybody beaten Baleful Queen while in the Company of Champions yet? I'm at SL 111 and she just seems impossible. Maybe there's a trick I'm missing, if so please don't spoil.

I've mostly been keeping my SL around 70, but several fights with a few bosses convinced me to level myself up to 82. I'm about to take on the gargoyles and the fatty near the poison place. Are you a magic user? There are several bosses early on that literally one shot you, but have huge HP pools.

@golguin:

Yeah, was definitely harder earlier on, until I got to this point. I think I'm 16 Bosses down so far, and she seems like the only route I've got left to go at the moment. Been using a jack-of-all-trades build really, so I've been switching between melee or sorcery depending on the fight. Think I'm going to have trouble meeting the pure damage requirement for Baleful Queen though, unless I grind up and focus on a specific offensive stat.

Edit: Been using a Fire Longsword I found as my melee weapon all the way through, nothing else seems to come close.

I joined not really realizing what I was doing. It took me another 2 hours to figure out why the game seemed to have gotten so fucking hard even though I had got a better weapon and upgraded stats. So after making zero progress, I finally clued in to what I had done.

Never again

Time for a little Company of Champions Boss Update. My current Soul Level is 89 and I'm the new owner of an Uchigatana + 9, but that didn't come into play until 10 minutes ago. 12 total bosses defeated. Here is the boss breakdown.

Flexile Sentry: This guy had been a real problem for me. He hadn't killed me, but he forced me to bone the hell out of there because I simply couldn't do enough damage with my Scimitar + 5 before the rising water level became a serious problem. The solution was a risky one. I had to use my consumable buff items (Dark buff) to help me deal more damage. The fight forced me to be aggressive because the buff had limited time and the fight itself needed to be over in a few minutes or the water would do me in. It worked pretty well.

Royal Rat Vanguard: I actually entered the area without a covenant because I knew there was some Rat King business going on as I had been sent to another person's world. I walked into the boss fog gate and saw a bunch of rats come out. There were lots of messages outside the fog gate letting me know that I needed to watch carefully and pay attention. I wasn't sure what was going on because I couldn't see a boss, but he eventually came out after killing a few rats. I boned out and came back as a Champion with a grand plan. I knew that the rats were slow and fairly easy to dodge so it was going to be my first real attempt at using Firestorm. It worked amazingly well. 4 casts killed most of the rats (seems like I had to kills most of them to force the boss encounter) and I finally forced the rat boss to come out. After that it was just some fancy footwork and arrows to slowly take him down.

Covetous Demon: I saw Vinny fight the dude so I knew he was slow as hell. I tried smacking him a few times and I barely did any damage so I figured it was time to bring out the Firestorm. 4 casts killed him. Done.

Mytha, the Baneful Queen: I fought her a few times as a white phantom to see what her deal was (windmill was burned). She wasn't particularly fast and everyone just burned the hell out of her so I figured I'd do the same in my game. I hit her with the first Firestorm and she took some nice damage. She threw her head on the ground and before I had time to think about that attack it exploded and nearly killed me. I couldn't see any life left on my health bar so it wouldn't surprise me to find out I had less than 10 HP left. I regained my composure and took note to dodge it next time. I waited for openings in her combos and head lunges to use the other 3 casts (she has a long recovery time) and took her out.

Belfry Gargoyle: I didn't know it was going to be a boss remake so when I saw the first two come at me I knew that they would both fall at the hands of my Uchigatana + 9. I had gone to the Iron Keep for the exact purpose of nailing down my main weapon since the Scimitar + 5 just wasn't doing it for me. I got quite the surprise when more started to come in. Multiple targets meant it was time for the Firestorm, but it wasn't enough to finish the job. I had to manually take out the weakened gargoyles, but it wasn't a big deal. I almost got myself killed at the end due to my hubris (tried to do a running strike just before the fire breath attack hit), but I backed off and healed until it was safe to attack.

Those last 5 bosses went down and they didn't kill me. Game was a lot harder in the beginning when I didn't have my gear, stats, and weapons in a more stable state. Firestorm was their true killer (4 out of the 5) though, but it only worked because they were slow as hell.

Next time I go for the Lost Sinner. It seems the key I picked up will do something during that fight.

Eh, kind of a shame you started using Firestorm; that's definitely one of the cheesiest ways to play the game (I wouldn't say Greatsword is cheesy persay it's just super generic like the Zweihander in Dark Souls). At least fight Darklurker without it.

@golguin:

Awesome work on Baleful Queen. Finally took her down last night myself, again with my trusty Fire Longsword. Her attacks were easy as pie to dodge/block, problem was keeping my own health up while constantly poisoned, while getting enough strikes in to out-damage her regeneration. Awesome boss! Not found the Flexible Sentry yet, but Lost Sinner was definitely one of the trickier bosses.

Struggled myself on Rat Vanguard for a while trying to hack them all down, but just wasn't feasible, so I went and brought a stack of bog standard Fire Bombs and blew them all to hell without breaking a sweat.

Just entering Iron Keep now. Fakkin' archers..

Oh trust me when I say that the fact that I could even use Firestorm on those bosses was already an auto win for me. I ranged the Rat King to death with arrows. I only used Firestorm to call him out. It took me like 10 minutes of arrow kiting to take him down. The fatty wasn't going to hit me and I didn't feel like having a prolonged fight (I barely damaged him) so I just burned him. It was the same for Mytha. After that initial head explosion it didn't him me again.

The only problem would have come from the Gargoyles. My +9 Uchi was only scratching them. I've fought them 2 times in co-op after my Victory and they go down REALLY fast in normal mode. Bosses are just so durable while in the Company of Champions. My Uchi would have been broken.

Yep I left it when I found out you can't use a soapstone. That just seems like a stupid limitation. Don't understand the reasoning on that one.

The reasoning would be to defeat each boss solo.

Dark souls coop is cool but a covenant that's suppose to make the game harder would be 100% nullified by summoning. Seriously, all bosses in this turn into pushovers in coop since you don't have to put yourself at risk to deal damage. The guys not currently agroed can destroy the boss by themselves with minimal risk of taking damage.

sounds like you're in for more fun later on , im havin fun with ng++ now so i can imagine ng company of champs isnt that nasty but some bosses are definately complete dicks with ng+ damage

i cant decide if i want to do company of champs IN ng+5 conditions or just start a new character for it , or just bite the bullet and start going for the 0 bonfires run

My advice would be to start a Company of Champions run with a new character. Since my very first run of the game is in the Company of Champions there is a lot of stuff I don't know. Pursuer was the 2nd boss I fought and killed and then I tried to make the Sentinels the 3rd boss and couldn't do it. I came back to them 6-7 bosses later. I had no idea I had taken the shortcut to the area.

I am 100% sure that I'm fighting the bosses in a crazy order because some of them have been complete pushovers while others have required careful planning and practice to get their moveset down. You already have the advantage of knowing where to go and where to find items/equipment/spells/etc.

I even placed a level limit on myself because the leveling in the game is just so damn fast. I'm currently lv 90 and I still have 14 Vigor. Health isn't really an issue when a boss can kill me in 1-2 hits. I'm not a magic user so it's all pretty much been a physical brawl with the exception of one boss that was arrowed to death and 3 others that were Firestormed to death because I didn't want a drawn out fight.

Not what I was talking about. Of course that makes sense. But you can't be summoned to other worlds, either. That's just taking away a huge part of the game for no real reason. I mean, it's not like successfully helping out another player even really gets you anything anymore. A few souls, maybe, but I haven't "regained my humanity," so-to-speak more than once, and I've been summoned a whole lot.

for pyromancy try flame swathe or lingering flame , i have 2 flame swathes taking up 4 attunement slots but its worth it for a goto nuke , it makes a joke out of a certain boss with fire weakness , and in gneral it feels less spammy and you at least have to plant the "bombs" itelligently , that being said its pretty great when staring down giant bastards with giant shields that are just baiting you to come close and lingering flame is just godlike when you cast it right before being swarmed heh

also i was saving a ridiculous amount of souls when i got to sl 120 , but ive since given in and gone to 150 , migth stop there but im having fun playign with all the weapons ive found , and ive use alot of soul vessels already.

keep us posted i want to hear how lategame enemies start treating you hehe

SIT DOWN LOST SINNER!

It was only my 4th time fighting her, but I mostly had her pattern down and I DID IT! I tried fighting her the first two times several bosses ago and was dealt a swift loss. This time I was walking in with my Uchigatana + 10. My 3rd loss was an educational one as I focused on dodging. Once I had a good handle on that I moved on to the offensive part of the scouting mission. Findings? She doesn't have many safe openings. I tried attacking twice and was swiftly punished for my greed.

On my 4th try I was determined to play it safe and ONLY attack her at the end of her 3 hit combo (2 horizontal slashes with an overhead finish). I was able to ding her a couple of times during her jumping lunge attack, but that was only because she happened to land next to me as I was coming out of the roll and I executed a rolling attack. Toward the end I tried smacking her out of the safe window for the killing blow and you can see how much damage a SINGLE COUNTER ATTACK did to my character. She's LV 90 with 1219 HP and that's how much she chewed with a single attack.

The fight lasted quite a while since I could only land a single rolling attack at the end of that 3 hit combo. I believe I used 5 Lifegem's during the entire fight. My hands were shaking after the fight was over because I had to dodge so many of her attacks. I don't remember how much damage each of my hits did and I lost count of the number of times I struck her, but I think it took around 20 hits to take her down.

I'm now ready to see what lies beyond her area. I'm going to try some co-op fights to see how she handles herself during a normal game.

@golguin: theres still other ways for dueling , but not unlimited invading ,its way more than 20 tho sheit , up your drop rate:)

and grats on lost sinner :) i found it to be an easier version of artorias , and ive farmed her a bunch of times now , the patterns become pretty easy to read.

What's at 20?

@golguin: i was just responding to the earlier comment ,(not by you) that there was an average of 20 cracked redeye orbs per playthrough

Oh noes the pyro advice, the horror... the horror.

Yeah the lack of Kaathe Club is a disappointment, I want to suck Human Effigies out of people. In a legal and safe way.

Was getting easy towards the end of the 'Four Old One Souls' arc of the game, but now it's gone full mental mode. Looking-Glass Knight was by far the hardest boss yet, managed to kill him by going hyper mode with Red Tearstone Ring, Great Club +10 and Great Magic Weapon before he summoned too many phantoms.

However, after that...

Shrine of Amana is ridiculous. It's just the most outrageously difficult area in the history of souls games. I'd rather fight Ornstein & Smough in the middle of Blighttown with Anor Londo archers in the rafters than spend one more minute in this god forsaken place.

YOU DEFEATED SMELTER DEMON!

Man was this boss tiring. Each hit from my Uchigatana + 10 only dealt 170 dmg per one handed swing. I don't know how much total health the dude has in the Company of Champions (a quick online search revealed nothing), but I fought him for a long damn time. If I had to put a number on it I'd say 10-15 minutes. Once I had his moveset down it wasn't that hard to dodge him. The problem was staying consistent for such a long time and avoiding two consecutive hits as he had the power to 2 shot me. All in all the boss put up one hell of a fight and he forced me to change around all my armor and rings.

I don't know if it's clear in the image, but my Uchigatana was literally at 20/40 durability at the end of the fight. I had to despawn the majority of the enemies in the road to the boss because my Uchi wasn't going to make the trip. I did manage to bag 3 complete Alonne Knight sets and 2 Black Steel Katanas. I still need to farm out the Alonne Captain as I only picked up a helmet.

I think I'll leave and head into the Shade Forest for a bit.

@golguin: Make sure you re-enter Smelter's room after tapping the bonfire.

Oh, I found him alright. I was fighting a turtle dude and I was leading him back into that room so I could have more space to fight and ended up in a 2v1 situation. I took him out on my 3rd try and got my new Ring of Blades + 1. He's so much easier when I'm Soul Level 99 with my Uchigatana instead of SL 30 with a crappy Scimitar.

@golguin: Pursuer is sort of a weird boss, can be really tough even on a non Champions run if you go at him with a weak enough character; but once you know his pattern you know it permanently more or less. He's still a little sketchy early game though, have to get semi-lucky with the attack pattern for it to go 100% smoothly. Haven't fought 2x Pursuer yet but should be reasonably entertaining with a melee character. Doing no death runs increases your respect for seemingly harmless creatures I find.

YOU DEFEATED Old Iron King! Actually, I'm not that hyped about it because he was pretty easy. I died 3 times on him due to my own stupidity and the small arena. I walked off the edge during the first fight because I hadn't grasped the size of the place yet. The 2nd death he punched me into the hole in the back. The 3rd death his fire kept moving toward the right and I hugged the edge with my shield up and the stagger barely forced me off the edge. On the 4th time I had his moveset essentially locked and he only hit me a single time with what looked like a Firestorm attack (Hadn't seen that). I only used a single Estus during the whole fight. Smelter Demon was a lot more difficult. I smacked him pretty hard by double handing my Uchi for a little over 200 dmg per hit.

I also killed Scorpion Lady, but she was a total push over. I died a single time to her because I just tried to mash my way to victory at the end since since she didn't seem to pose a threat. When my stamina ran out she killed me in two hits. I came back and took our her out really fast, but with cation at the end since she could still hit really hard.

I'm not sure where I'll be going next. I have two areas open that I haven't really explored yet. I included my stats so you guys could see what I'm working with.

Are you noticing any improvement with those 6 extra stamina points? I have been stopping at 20 (120) because 1 point per level up seems like a waste. Not sure how much 1 point actually calculates into swings. But it just doesn't seem like a lot. I'm sure if you push through and get large chunks it eventually pays off. But man it seems like such a slow burn.

I don't know since I've had 26 END for a long time. I can tell you that it BARELY allows for 6 single handed Uchigatana swings and 5 two handed Uchigatana swings. It might not be possible with 24-25 points since it's barely visible (I count 2 pixel lines on my 1080 screen) on the final swing. I always leave myself enough stamina for at least 1 dodge. When it's PVP I leave myself with 2 dodges worth of Stamina. My last 4 level up points went into Vigor. The 5 stat points before that had gone into Vitality and Endurance (Endurance had matched Adaptability at 24 for a long time).

Working on the final boss now - Doesn't seem too challenging, but a hella lot better than Gwyn was. Total death count is at 760+, but a lot of those deaths were through stubbornness or stupidity. I played through most of the game with Ring of Binding on and just kept myself at 75% - Every boss could take me down to near-death in a single strike anyway, so the extra 25% really didn't make much difference.

Even though I tried to explore ever nook and cranny, I think I must have missed a few bosses here and there, but I guess they'll be a surprise for NG+. Still never found the Flexible Sentry, for example, unless that's an alternative name for Ruin Sentinels?

Hardest boss for me was probably either Looking Glass Knight or Mytha. Hardest area was by far the Shrine of Amana, what a pool of piss.

The Flexile Sentry is no No Man's Wharf. You have to ring the bell at the very top of the place to call the ship towards you.

@lunch_guy: There are just a shitload of insanely obscure items/areas in this game; you could spend hours finding new stuff in the Lost Bastille for example. Whereas in Dark Souls you had a few cool hidden areas in like 2 or 3 zones it seems like every other zone in Dark Souls II has really hard to find/get to shit in it.

You Defeated the Rotten for another disappointing boss fight. I stumbled into the place wearing my item find gear/set up and an Uchigatana + 10 that was about to break. I dodged the dude for around 1 minute to see his moveset and then went on the offensive. I walked into the fire areas a few times trying to adjust to the fighting arena, but I only had 2 estus left (I was dealing with poison before I entered the fight). He was 4 hits away from dying and I was suddenly popped in the back by a 1 hit kill wave of darkness from the other side of the room. Didn't know he could do that.

I put on my "hot girl" outfit and took off my shield because I was going to teach this dude a lesson for hitting me in the back with an attack I'd never seen. I ran by everything and reached the fog gate with the poison nearly killing me, but I healed some of that back up with a single Estus and went in. What happened after that? What happened was that the boss couldn't land a single hit and he died at the hands of my two handed Uchigatana + 10. I then found out he was one the primal bosses.

Here's hoping that the last primal boss actually does something.

@golguin: I'm assuming the other boss you're bitching about is Old Iron King? Fret not, for watching speedruns get ruined by him and the Iron Keep is an eternal joy. Apart from that yay unnecessary fanservice.