Souls Series (Dark Souls, Demon's Souls, Bloodborne)

[Shinoyami65]

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-You have to fight Thomas? Wow. I find that a bit strange because he helps you kill Mytha...
-By the black toothy things do you mean the monsters from Black Gulch? Oh no.

[Giji Shinka]

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-You have to fight Thomas? Wow. I find that a bit strange because he helps you kill Mytha...

[Shinoyami65]

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The fact that maneater Mildred helps you in the fight against Quelaag right after she had invaded you in Blightown is even stranger than Thomas invading you much later in the game.

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Oh yeah. And her expy Melinda the Butcher, is the only one to show up to help you at the Ancient Dragon fight (which is probably even stranger considering you originally fight her in the Gutter). In that context it doesn't seem so weird.

Listening to Vendrick's dialogue again, I wonder if there's something in the 'strength of lords' he claims the crowns have. As I recall, the DKS1 prologue mentions Gwyn and the others challenged the dragons 'with the strength of lords'. However, the crowns and the kings don't really seem to reference the Lord Soul holders from what I can tell.

Gosh, Heide's Tower seems to be such an invasion battlefield at a high Soul Memory; on my first run there was pretty much nothing; come back with 20,000 souls and there are red signs everywhere and I can't seem to complete an invasion without getting invaded shortly afterwards.

[Giji Shinka]

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Listening to Vendrick's dialogue again, I wonder if there's something in the 'strength of lords' he claims the crowns have. As I recall, the DKS1 prologue mentions Gwyn and the others challenged the dragons 'with the strength of lords'. However, the crowns and the kings don't really seem to reference the Lord Soul holders from what I can tell.

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Interesting fact about the crown:
When you obtain it in the dlc, a text appears on screen - A faint heat lingers in the ancient crown.

Also, this pic is from the old iron king dlc:
Look at the ground, that's ash, the same ash that is seen in the kiln of the first flame/ the throne of want, this means that the old iron king had the first flame in previous cycle.
It looks like that ancient crowns symbol people who had the first flame in their hands.

[Shinoyami65]

^Hmm, that seems pretty plausible.

By the way, how tough is the Darklurker boss? I'm planning on doing the rest of the bosses and the DLC before taking on Nashandra. The only bosses remaining for me are the Ancient Dragon (I've already got 5 Giant Souls and finished the boss they were required for so I don't really need another one) and Darklurker. Of the two Darklurker seems slightly easier; or at the very least not all of its attacks will insta-kill me.

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Also, should I just eat the Soul of the King? I thought it would come with some good loot, but from what I can see the items you can trade it for are all pretty mediocre...

[Giji Shinka]

By the way, how tough is the Darklurker boss?

He's pretty tough, but like +90% bosses in the game, he's beatable and fair.

I'm planning on doing the rest of the bosses and the DLC before taking on Nashandra.

So....You'll wait 2 months before you're finally going to beat Nashandra?

[Shinoyami65]

^Hmm, if it's that long until the final DLC comes out then I'll probably kill Nashandra after Darklurker and then go through the whole thing again.

EDIT: Found this interesting article with a bit of DLC speculation: http://observationdeck.io9.com/4-dark-souls-2-lore-gaps-i-hope-the-dlc-will-fill-1608190210


EDIT 2: Found the Dark Chasm of Old too difficult (damn black phantoms) so I just went ahead and killed Nashandra. It's not terribly difficult if you avoid her death rays and shockwave attack, but I found it really annoying because if you are going to melee her you're almost certainly going to get cursed a lot. Bring a Human Effigy with you unless you want the final cutscene to play out with your character in the Hollow form.

Anyway, now I'm in NG+. I may create another character, though, to try out being a miracle user since I really neglected the faith stat in my first playthrough.

[Giji Shinka]

But I found it really annoying because if you are going to melee her you're almost certainly going to get cursed a lot.

You can avoid of being cursed: Just destroy those smoke vortex thingies with your sword.

[Shinoyami65]

^Yeah, but the rapid rate of the cursing and the number of smoke vortex thingies meant it was more efficient for me to just hammer at the boss and tank the curse than try and take out all of the vortices before attacking her.

[Giji Shinka]

I just defeated Vendrick for the first time on NG+6.

The fight is so intense when you know that he can (almost) one-shot you easily.

[Shinoyami65]

^Does he gain any new tricks or strategies? I can't really talk because I've only killed him on NG, but I heard that as long as you stand behind him you should be fine (and from what I saw when fighting him all of his attacks affect a wide area directly in front of him, but staying behind him and using a fast weapon such as a katana makes it easier to wear him down). He does move around a bit so it's important not to get greedy and relocate so you never, ever wind up in front of him. Even on NG he can one-shot you pretty easily if you let him hit you.

[Paracletus]

I may create another character, though, to try out being a miracle user

You're in for some massive regrets then, especially after 1.08 calibrations.

[Shinoyami65]

^Why, have miracles been nerfed a lot? (Well, to be fair, all that miracles have going for them are extra healing and getting to throw lightning bolts like Gwyn, and I haven't seen many people using any except the lighnting sword one).

I may try out a pure sorcery build instead, then, since my last build started out as a melee but slowly grew more intelligence dependent over time.

[Giji Shinka]

^Why, have miracles been nerfed a lot?

They only nerfed (great) lighting spear and the amount of times you can use them (Before the patch I had 30 attunement and I could have over 30 great lighting spears at once, it was ridiculous, now I can have only 12 at once), because they were overpowered in PvE.

[Shinoyami65]

^Wow. Well, I really want to use Sunlight Spear, since the most powerful sorcery spell (Soul Geyser) is very useless unless deployed against something of a certain size and height, or a certain number of enemies at a certain elevation. A lot of the hexes also seem pretty good, but buffing both intelligence and faith would probably detract a great deal from my durability and the range of melee weapons I can use.

[Giji Shinka]

Someone found these in DS2 game files:

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npcmenu.txt -
0000,7570=[Nadalia, Bride of Ash]
0000,7580=[Alsanna, Silent Oracle]
0000,7590=[Elana, Queen of Ruin]

This could mean Alsanna/Nadalia will be in ivory king/old iron king dlc's as bosses and I think that both of them are fragments of Manus, like Nashandra and Elana.

[Shinoyami65]

^

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Probably. Nadalia is probably the queen of yet another King who linked the fire and became ash, although I've got no clue yet what Alsanna's background will be.

By the way, how bad is the PC version of DKS1 in comparison to the PS3 version? I want to get the first game, but I'm not sure which version is 'better' and I've heard the PC port is pretty bad.

[Giji Shinka]

By the way, how bad is the PC version of DKS1 in comparison to the PS3 version? I want to get the first game, but I'm not sure which version is 'better' and I've heard the PC port is pretty bad.

Without mods, it's pretty meh: Many areas (Like Blighttown) have horrible fps and keyboard controls are awful.
So use graphic mods etc. and use controller if you're going to play PC version.

[TehDonutKing]

Use DSFix if you're playing the PC version.

[Dima]

By the way, how bad is the PC version of DKS1 in comparison to the PS3 version? I want to get the first game, but I'm not sure which version is 'better' and I've heard the PC port is pretty bad.

Don't even dare to try it without the mods (durante's). If you don't want to bother with mods etc. you should go with the PS3. The game runs very good except Blighttown. If you are a PC gamer though you should stick with the PC version because almost all PC games run at 60 FPS and going at 30 FPS after a long time it will feel strange. I played the PS3 version of Dark Souls after beating Dark Souls 2 on PC and the whole game was playing like ''blighttown'' for me.