Dark Souls group therapy session

[wilco64256]

Moonlight Butterfly - down.  Wow I'm so glad I did all that just so I could get:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

A dead end.  The soul from this thing better be really good for something.

Also, I made the same mistake as Lamb and just used the Fire soul that said it would make me flasks better.  Bad idea.  You actually should take it to an NPC who doesn't talk who lives behind some bars on the way down to the ruins.  Stupid translation issues.  Though I suppose it did ask if I was really sure I wanted to use it and naturally I just said Yes.  Oh well.

My current pet peeve - the constantly re-spawning skeletons in the catacombs.  Super irritating.

One thing that makes the ruins area nicer (and the hydra easier, though I still haven't managed to kill it just yet):

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

Go back to the asylum and you can open the locked door on the 2nd floor using a key that you can grab off a corpse on the roof of the building that's right by the bird's nest before you fly back.  There's a ring on that corpse that makes you walk in water as well as you do on dry land.  Maybe that was already discussed in this thread, I dunno.

I also soul farmed for a while and paid the 20,000 souls for the crest that the blacksmith has.  It opens the big door in the forest, behind which:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

There's this mage or something who summons a ghost-type soldier that you can hurt but not target.  Annoying as hell.  Not sure what the point of that little area is but it better be good for that many souls just to open the door.

Also, as far as Drakes are concerned:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

I hate them.  Are they weak to anything?  I hardly do any damage to them at all and they keep flying all over the freaking place so it's a pain to keep up with them.  They're relatively easy to kill, they just all feel like mini-bosses and I hate taking ten minutes to kill each one except when I can get them to fly themselves off the cliff.

[Lambonius]

Haven't had a chance to touch the game in the last few days.  I'm going to have to try and resist the urge to read under the spoilers tags in these new posts, as you guys are probably getting far beyond where I am currently.

[Cez]

Haven't been playing it either recently. I miss it!

Too much to do! I sometimes hate having aspirations lol. I hope I can finish this before I leave California for the next 2 months starting mid-november

[wilco64256]

Protip - sometimes it's better to be able to run faster than have good armor. 

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

Gaping Dragon is an excellent example especially when he spits at you since that stuff corrodes armor faster than a good Coca Cola will.  That was an epic easy fight without any armor or a shield and just running up to him two handing a sword every time he rushed and stopped for a few seconds.

Course I then promptly lost the 25k souls I got from him by getting cursed by one of those damn frogs on the way out of the sewers.  Wow I was pissed about that one.  But now I'm cursed so I'm heading to Anor Londo for a while.

[Lambonius]

Ouch.  That's really strange--I haven't been having any problems at all with the Curse Frogs.  The curse effect seems to build up so slowly on my character--much more slowly than poison.  I'm wearing Crimson Robes, which has good defense and high resistances.  Found it on a corpse in Blight-Town, I believe.

[wilco64256]

Yeah I went through that area several times no problem, but then suddenly the last two times I got totally thrashed by like the first one I encountered.

I also got invaded once yesterday and totally thrashed the invader.  That was nice to get an easy humanity.

I'll be out of town for the next few days so I won't be playing for a bit, but when I get back it's time to further explore into Blighttown (I only opened the door), Anor Londo (where the ghosts are really pissing me off when they show up in groups of three or four at once), and the Drakes area.

[Lambonius]

There are some sweet goodies in the Drake Valley...but the enemies are hard as balls.  Run past them, I say!! 

[drunkenmonkey]

Ironically I use the Drake sword on the Drakes. The two handed running slash is deadly. Some extra stamina regeneration doesn't hurt either. Not sure about the Drakes that are across the bridge for the moment.

Don't get New Londo confused with Anor Londo, they are different places.

I've made it quite far into the Demon ruins, fire protection is the key, without it you don't have much of a chance against the bosses. 'Flash Sweat' pyromancy spell is really useful.

Anybody know good places to find crystal lizards. I think I found two or three, do they come back. Also there's a strange eyeball thing that appears sometimes.

[wilco64256]

Awesome protip - how to get lots of twinkling titanite really easily:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

Those different moss things that the spiky tree things drop in the forest area fairly commonly?  They're nice for curing some poison and stuff, but can also be used to get more twinkling titanite.  If you go back to the asylum there's a trading nest to the side of the path by the guys with the torches where you can drop stuff to trade with the crow like in Demon's Souls.  If you drop any of those moss clumps and then quit/reload he will have replaced it with a twinkling titanite (2 twinkling titanites for the blooming purple kind).

I've tried dropping various armor items and he doesn't seem to care for those.  Don't ever leave him more than one item at a time.  Those dung pies (I'm not sure they're actually good for anything ever) will get you demon titanite too, so I think his main use is getting more titanite.  But the twinkling one makes me really happy.

[Cez]

can you do it multiple times? Or just once? I don't remember if I tried it more than once.

[wilco64256]

I did it several times in a row with the red moss, just drop one then save/load, drop another moss and pick up what was left, repeat.  Used all the red moss I had at the time.

I played for a little while this evening and I'll say that I really enjoyed exploring around Blighttown.  I love being able to see that there's some item off in the distance somewhere and trying to figure out how to get to it to pick it up.  I also killed two invaders pretty easily and they both dropped some decent goodies for me.  It seems like the invaders in Demon's Souls were a bit better at coming after me.

I explored quite a lot of Blighttown and then found myself looped back around to a path up to

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

the ruins.

I know there's more stuff in Blighttown to do, I just avoided one path because there were a bunch of guys throwing knives at me that made me toxic which I find particularly annoying.

[drunkenmonkey]

You'll find a fire keeper's soul where the guys are shooting poison darts at you, in Blighttown, down the bottom where the dogs are. Best poison protection is the tattered clothes at this point(until you get past Queelaag), keep your grass shield up and walk towards the pygmy things, once you kill them they don't come back, and they drop moss too.

I made it back to the asylum, going to take on the new boss today.

[wilco64256]

OMG the double archers in Anor Londo are more annoying than any boss I have ever faced in any freaking game ever.  EVER.  *punches self in the face*

[drunkenmonkey]

Where did you say there was an item that makes you walk on water.

[Cez]

I miss this game... I really do

*must...finish...episode 4....and...get..ready..for...saturday*


I have friends coming to visit right after the release of ep4. I don't wanna I wanna play Dark Souls and sleep, instead

[wilco64256]

Where did you say there was an item that makes you walk on water.

Well not really walk "on" water, but rather walk "in" water without being slowed down by it.  If you go back to the asylum you can get through the locked door on the 2nd floor to a body that's at the top of a broken staircase.  It has a rusted ring (I think that's what it's called) that lets you move through water the same as if you were walking on regular dry ground.  Very useful in swampy areas or water.

The key to that door is on a corpse right by the staircase you go up to the bird's nest for going back to the asylum.  Just look around by the bottom of that staircase and you'll see a body on top of a building nearby (I think that's the roof to the pool-type area where the NPC that eats items for souls is).  You can jump over to it and loot the corpse.  You'll have to drop down from that roof and go back around to the elevator to get back to the bird's nest staircase but it's worth the trouble.

Pro-tip: Get the hang of the parry-riposte thing and you will be able to farm souls like no other once you get past those stupid archers in Anor Londo.  There's a lot of silver knights inside the castle and they are SUPER easy to kill if you can time the parry-riposte stuff.  They each drop 900 souls and I can one-shot any of them so I spent a while just doing some farming last night right before bed.

Archer pro-tip:  If you find yourself stuck trying to get past them here's the brilliantly easy solution I found:

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

Sprint up the first ramp and hope not to get hit.  On the second ramp just run normally and save your stamina.  They'll miss you every time.  Walk over toward the right archer and roll under an arrow if needed.  When he draws his sword back away fairly quickly until you're back right close to the top of the ramp.  The left archer can't hit you with that tower in his way and the right one will come after you with his sword and just fall off the ledge.  Then you can head into the castle and there's a bonfire right inside so life is good again.

I died there easily forty times before figuring that out.

[Lambonius]

Oy, just picked up the game again after being too busy to play it for two weeks or so.  Lol...looks like I'm going to have to take some time to relearn everything.  I'm getting owned here.

(Posted on: October 29, 2011, 12:08:31 PM)

Made some decent progress.  Wish there was a bonfire in Sen's Fortress (that I could find.)

Noticed a couple of obnoxious inventory bugs.  I had around 100 titanite shards simply disappear out of my inventory (I had been hoarding them to do some equipment upgrades...I get to my bonfire, go to do the upgrades, and poof!  No titanite shards.  What the f***, game?  Are bugs part of your deviousness, too?

[wilco64256]

Oy, just picked up the game again after being too busy to play it for two weeks or so.  Lol...looks like I'm going to have to take some time to relearn everything.  I'm getting owned here.

(Posted on: October 29, 2011, 12:08:31 PM)

Made some decent progress.  Wish there was a bonfire in Sen's Fortress (that I could find.)

Noticed a couple of obnoxious inventory bugs.  I had around 100 titanite shards simply disappear out of my inventory (I had been hoarding them to do some equipment upgrades...I get to my bonfire, go to do the upgrades, and poof!  No titanite shards.  What the f***, game?  Are bugs part of your deviousness, too?

There's one at the top, right before the boss.  Where that giant guy first starts lobbing those cannonball things at you, look for an area where there's a break in the fence near a big black patch where they land.  Look over that break and you should see a bonfire down there.  Drop down to it to use, and if you walk back in from it you'll be right past the end of the swinging blades stuff just before the stairs lead you outside.

Also, you should definitely kill that guy before heading to the boss.  He's pretty easy if you try to stay behind him and just watch his legs.  He doesn't respawn but if you kill the other one that's dropping them into the obstacle course he will respawn.

[Cez]

ok, I'm back into this. Gotta finish it before next tuesday!

I worked down my way pass Queelag and into this lava section. I killed all the demons and got the chaos fire ember, and then started my way down to the other side. I found a centipede attached to a wall that killed me. I noticed I can attack him with arrows but man, that wasn't going anywhere. He eventually killed me. How much HP does the guy have?

[Lambonius]

Are you talking about the Demon Ruins area?  I wouldn't bother tackling that til later.  Eventually you will get an item that

Spoiler (mouse over to reveal):

allows you to warp between lit bonfires

, at which point you can head back to those areas with ease and clear them when you're at a higher level.

I've been playing this a lot lately, too, after a long hiatus.  I'm around level 57 or so and have been through the Catacombs and Anor Londo.  Haven't yet tackled the boss in Anor Londo yet though--I've read he (they) is a real pain.  I've been farming a bit there--the Silver Knights are easy once  you figure out their patterns (and if you have a good shield), they drop 900 souls each, and there are a bunch of them that you can easily battle one at a time right near a bonfire.