Upgrading a shield reduces chip damage and the amount of stamina it costs you to block stuff, I think.
Maneater was weird, I didn’t have too much trouble with him at all, got it in like the second try with my Knight. I had more trouble with the mindflayer black phantom dude on the stairs going up. Think I just got lucky.
Fighting one of them isn’t that bad, you just have to make sure to avoid getting knocked off by the charge, but they always telegraph the move a lot. Circle around, dodge the punches, and I didn’t mind the chip damage from the magic blast that much - though I don’t know how it’d be for a magic or thief character. Once you get there try to do as much as you can to the first one before the second one shows up.
Definitely fight them in the middle, where you can keep circling and let the fire stay between you. Top priority is not get ganged up on, don’t take them both on at once, you’ll get raped.
In comparison, I died fighting the Tower Knight like ten times…so I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, I think I just got lucky. I beat Penetrator in one try with a fluke Biorr backstab as well. Hardest boss so far for me has been the Flamelurker, hands down. Although the Storm King is kicking my ass right now - I got frustrated on my third try last night and went to bed before killing him.
I still haven’t beaten the meat cleaver phantom in 5-2 either, after like six tries. I don’t know how to fight her, she always kills me before I get to a patch of land large enough to fight her on.
If you know what you’re doing it’s not hard. I think it’s possible to get the platinum in like 60-80 hours easily. I finished my first play through in about 45 hours and that dramatically increases the speed in which I can go through and kill bosses now. Probably takes me about 2-3 hours per archstone after that quite easily since I know the layout the levels and how to beat the bosses already. The time consuming part is mostly just hunting crystal geckos, Pure Dark World Tendency stuff and farming ores.
You only need to kill some of them as apparently there are Pure ores that don’t drop from anything other than those Crystal Geckos and the drop isn’t guaranteed either =/ By the way, you’ll realize how easy the game gets on NG+ in terms of just getting through the content since it’s mostly just going through the motions. It’s still fun, but there’s nothing to really figure out anymore and you don’t really spend a lot of time holding your shield up and walking through areas to conserve stamina. I now straight run through parts I know well. I also am almost done most of my upgrading trips and I just started NG+. I think you need at least 2 play throughs to get all the ores you need to get the trophies for using the pure stones.
Also, how are you supposed to defeat 3 people if you’re an invader. It seems quite impossible as they can just rush you and ambushing someone that knows you’re already there is difficult enough already.
You must learn the art of back stabbing and to attack without auto lock.
As a Black phantom, NPC enemies will not attack you, so get them to come to where the enemies are, it can help sometimes.
Get a weapon that has knockdown too, that helps in keeping one of the ground, while attacking the others. Figure out your quick swap, and honestly being able to roll is not just an advantage, it is a required skill all Black Phantoms MUST have. Can’t roll, then there goes your escape, your rolling slash attack, and your roll into backstab attack.
Soul Level 68 now and I’ve done mostly nothing but grinding. The grinding has been good up until 4-2 and now it’s broke. This is so ridiculously easy that it’s lost all challenge getting these souls now. The game doesn’t even feel difficult anymore. When I get bored with grinding, I go do levels and outside of facing an enemy for the 1st time, once I learn it, it gets destroyed b/c my stats are so high. The bosses offer the best challenge but once I die a few times, I learn how to get in there and deal damage and then it’s easy from there.
As for my progress in the game, I’ve really only killed the 2nd boss from every world except Tower of Latria. The grinding is just too good. Grind beginning level, then go to 4-1 and grind the shit out of the first half before the gold skellys (or 5-1 first just to get blunt for melee), then 4-2 and grind until you’re blue in the face.
how do you even capture crystal geckos??? they run off hella quick even with the thiefs ring on…i seen some video of a dude in heavy armor running up to a gecko and attacking it with a sword…like wtf…
You shoot them. You have to already know where they are or know if you’re close by the ringing sound and then equip the Thiefs ring, walk real slow, when you get a clear shot, shoot and they’ll get put into a knockdown animation, keep shooting to kill them.
If you get fairly close to a gecko you can sprint up to them, lock on, and hack away. It works best with a weapon with good/fast vertical strikes, so far the best I have found is a katana in the two-handed grip. Generally though, bows + thief ring are the best method. You can also use the reload trick where you kill nearby enemies and the gecko, then move over to the gecko’s spawn, and quit the game then reload. If the gecko has spawns left it will respawn right in front of you and you can immediately attack since you’ll be right on top of it. Doesn’t work in the final boss areas though, since it sends you back to the boss door on reload.
Penetrator (1.3?) boss was fun, all about that roll cancel!
Died the first time when i got him down to like 5% with some unlucky rolls… was like NOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo
Dragon God can suck a fat one, but by the time i got to him i had no souls anyway so i just tried all kinds of tactics, gave up and charged through it and that worked, lame
wait until you hit 5-2 and 5-3. it looks and feels like you’re fighting in hell.
i just fucked up big time- knockin’ out the world tendency side quests, no problem.
i just beat maiden astraea, then loaded my game to get garl vinland’s dark silver armor set. i fuck around and fall into the swamp, get out, forget to heal, and bam! there goes my chance to fight black phantom vinland for his sword and crest. now i have to wait until my next run. fuck!
Dragon God was hard for me until I figured out the gimmick.
Dragon God
Spoiler
When he sees you, his eyes turn red and you have a couple seconds to get back in hiding before he attacks.
I was trying to figure out his patterns and stuff forever, I felt pretty stupid once I noticed that.
New Game+ is interesting, enemies don’t seem to take a ton more damage but they can really dish it out. For my thief, it’s basically turning into a game of “don’t get hit.” Also for anyone who didn’t know, World Tendency carries over to new game+, I was kind of annoyed to find all my worlds were in pure white or close to it. It’s a good thing I was farming those ephemeral eyes, it’s going to take a lot of them to get me back down to pure black for the good loot/souls.
I know that one good way to approach crystal geckos is to just keep rolling towards them. As far as I know, enemies actually don’t detect you if you just keep rolling, this goes for geckos as well. I’ve done it a few times myself so if you don’t have a bow or any ranged spells, keep rolling until your within attacking distance and let 'em have it.